Little Plastic Chairs And Fear.

This post was originally published on 28 Jan, 2023, and moved here, to my new blog.

Tam and I have been at this for years. We have worked hard for the twenty-five years we have been together, and really put our energy into this retirement plan for the last five of those. We did the steps. We planned, we followed through, we didn’t allow compromises or distractions (or even fun, for that matter) to derail our plans, and then we  pulled the trigger on our plans. They worked. All of it came together exactly as visualized. In some ways, the Rube Goldberg machine of our life functioned better than the expectation. We are retired now, instead of working as travel nurses.

Our plans have become the reality that seemed unattainable up to about one month ago. 

We are both ER nurses. We always will be. It is an affliction that never goes away. We will now always view the world through the lens of the ever-present potential for what can go wrong, and the list of potential disasters is long. Please don’t get the wrong idea. This doesn’t force us into the bubblewrapped, watch-in-terror-as-everyone-else-lives-the-life-you-want existence. Quite the opposite. It has taught us the impermanence and the importance of life, and of the necessity to take the apple from the tree and take a bite. And another… and another…

It has also taught us how to patch up the inevitable scrapes and bloody bits from a life lived to the greatest potential. Those injuries are okay, the visible ones that leave the interesting scars and badges of honor that people always want to ask about. Also the hidden ones that sit just behind the smile at the corner of the eyes.

So, this is how I started this post.

Then I wrote a bunch more. I wrote about how I had a TIA here this week, and that I felt the possibility that I may lose my physical ability to surf, and kiteboard, to adventure. I wrote more and more, and the longer it went on, the more disgusted I became with myself.

I deleted it and started again.

I tried again. I wrote about all the things I was grateful for in my life, and then wrote about all I had to lose with the possibility of worsening medical issues. Then I became disgusted again. I sounded so entitled, spoiled with my first world expectations of how I should be healthy and whole until the end.

I deleted it all again, and this time I did not copy it to notes.

I tried again, about my disappointment at possibly having to deal with a life less capable.

I deleted that too.

I tried one more time.

I deleted it.

I couldn’t write the thoughts in my head, so Tam and I went for a walk to the local market here and ate good fruit, and walked among happy people. They are not happy because they have the ability to climb rock, or paddle off waterfalls. They haven’t a care for kiteboarding. It wouldn’t make them happier. They are not happy because they were lucky with genetics and have led healthy, disease free lives. They were all happy because they understood the value of every moment, of balancing the inevitability of impermanence with presence. they were happy simply because they were. 

I felt something sliding off of me. I had remembered that I too was once happy because I was. I let go of my disgust with what I had felt about my medical problems, and let myself be there, and be happy. 

At about this time, Tam and I sat down on a concrete sidewalk to eat some fruit. We had just walked by a man selling luggage at a stall in the market, and thanked him, but let him know we did not need luggage. This same man, when he saw us sitting on the concrete, came over with small plastic chairs for us to sit on. He did so with a happy smile. All I needed to do was sit there, with the realization from a kind man and a small plastic chair, and be there with Tam, who will love me forever without expectation or demand.

I felt the selfishness of all the words I had written and deleted. It resurrected those feelings of disgust in myself that my priorities were so skewed by entitlement and self-aggrandizement.

And then I understood: I was afraid. I had no intention of admitting that to myself, or to anyone. I could only write what I could perceive as my possible losses, and could not see beyond the words themselves that what I feared I might lose was ridiculous in comparison to the lives of those surrounding me. The losses I feared so deeply were minuscule even to the losses I myself have suffered previously. 

I could not finish writing here because I was afraid.

The disgust I felt for myself was not for the fear, but for what I feared.

I am afraid, but I am afraid of a concept. I have fear of an idea of who I am and how I measure myself. I am afraid of a misguided belief in what effect I have on the world around me and the people that choose to be with me, that I am measured by capability over being.

What I should really fear is not being.