December 1, 2003

• Discipline

  
  

  I was trying to discipline myself to write about self-discipline, but I got distracted by this comment:

  
  

  
  

  Fybromylgia is communicable via mycoplasma? 

  
  

  Whoa … most heinous.  <—- to be said in very serious surfer dude voice.  I shall tell Joe straight away, and he will immediately say, “SEE! I told you I wasn’t feeling well!”

  
  

  Posted 12/1/2003 at 8:45 AM by oOMisfitOo

  
  

  I did say, in that blog, that there is no expert consensus on what causes M.E.  The stuff is widespread enough that I suppose there were other ways Greyfox could have got it besides from contact with me.  He seems to be convinced that he caught it from me, though.  I suspect that could just be more of his NPD way of blaming me for everything.  He did have what I think are signs and symptoms of fibro before he met me, but he won’t own up to them.

  
  

  It’s all anecdotal, Sarah:  the communicability, the signs and symptoms Greyfox has now or had over fifteen years ago following his Xerox machine neck injury, and even, some people claim, the existence of mycoplasma… in fact, there are still some physicians who don’t believe in the existence of the disorder.  The deeper I investigate into all this the less I think I know.
  

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  This day might have passed for me without notice had I not had that passing fancy to blog about discipline.  I was discontentedly sitting in Couch Potato Heaven, puzzling out the geo-panel problems in Disgaea, unaware of the date and not even thinking about getting on the computer.  Then I had that blog-thought on a trip to the bathroom.  Since Doug had just gone to bed after a night spent on washing dishes, and splitting and carrying firewood, with some roof-shoveling after daybreak, and Greyfox was over at our old place across the highway raking snow off his little travel trailer so it may last another year, the computer was not being used.
  

  Thus I noted the date.  December first is notable to me for only one reason.  I guess there have been a few years in the past fifty-two of them in which the day slipped by unnoticed and I didn’t recall 1951 and the the day I killed my father.  There haven’t been many of them, though, and on whatever day in December I’d realize what month it was, then I’d remember.

  
  

  The “holiday season” was one of mourning for my mother for all of the 35 years she survived after he died, and was troublesome to me for many years before I had the therapy that helped me deal with it.  I still had that flash of memory today when I realized what the date is, and I still miss him, though it’s unlikely he could still be around, given that 2-to-3-pack-a-day Camel habit, because he would now be 98.

  
  

  
  

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  Okay, time to drag myself back to the topic of self-discipline.  Now, nearing the end of my sixth decade of life this time around, I have begun to learn a little bit of discipline.  It has not come easy, isn’t natural to me.  The image I have of myself in childhood is of running full-tilt, tripping and skinning nose and knees, or climbing as high in the tree as I could, until the branch broke and down I went, with scrapes and bruises to show for my triumph.
  

  As anyone who has browsed those memoirs linked in my left module knows, I was a sickie all my life.  Remission and relapse is the name of my theme song.  Every time I’d start feeling well enough to move around, I’d move too much, go to far, “over-do it” in my mother’s words.  It never required discipline to just lie there during the times when lying there was all I could manage to do.  It is damned hard, however, to just sit or lie still when I can get up and about, and when there is so damned much to be done–stuff that has gone undone while I’ve been incapacitated.

  
  

  I always used to suspect that the relapses would have come anyway, even if I didn’t overdo.  Experience has shown me that relapses do seem to just happen, whether I’m “taking care of myself,” or not.  I have also learned that I can make them come sooner and be more severe if and when I don’t take care of myself, so I do tend more and more toward taking it easy, especially in times like this when I’m beginning to get back on my feet again after a really bad relapse.  That takes discipline.

  
  

  It also takes discipline to write about this, or talk about it.  I never wanted anyone to know how less-than-able I was.  If I could get the kids in school to believe that I’d been playing hooky, that would have been better, but it never happened.  Friends would stop by on their way home to drop off my homework, and find me on the bed or couch, surrounded by books, puzzles and such.  How much better it is now, with interactive games on the PS2.   I always read both fiction and non-fiction, and preferred crosswords and logic puzzles over simple reading most of the time.  Now my mind is challenged with complex strategic problems at the same time I’m amused and entertained by the story line.  (Disgaea is the first game NOT published by Squaresoft that I’ve found so enjoyable)

  
  

  See how quickly I glossed right over my trying to keep my chronic illness a secret?  Of course, I never mentioned on any application for a job that I had a chronic illness.  Then when I’d call in sick I wouldn’t be specific, either.  I’d just hang onto each of those jobs until the management decided they had to replace me with someone who could be there to do the job, and kept neglecting to reveal the illness until my employment record was so bad that no one would risk hiring me.  Now I’m free of all that, but still trying to get through life with the appearance of healthy normalcy.

  
  

  This week’s discipline has this shape:  today I am not going to town for my favorite meeting at the rehab center, and tomorrow I’m not going in for the regular Tuesday night Space Cadets’ meeting, so that Thursday night I’ll be able to go drive the van to take the rehab residents to the other weekly meeting and stay afterward for the monthly business meeting… which reminds me I still haven’t typed last month’s minutes yet, and don’t at this moment know where I put my notes.  But I have a couple of days before I have to have that little job done. 

  
  

  Can’t let myself become too fanatical or compulsive about this discipline stuff, can I?  This morning I already put away the baskets of clean laundry that we washed a few weeks ago.  Funny thing about that discipline business:  it took discipline to do that little bit of work, just as it takes discipline to stop there and not clean the whole damned house, hang that shelf that’s still sitting on the bathroom countertop, etc.  Back when I ran wild and thought of myself  as a free soul, I had no idea how complex self-discipline is.

  
  

  OH!… and Riott, no, I wasn’t consciously sending you any psychic messages, but I do stuff like that unconsciously, and in my dreams.  Sarah knows….

  
  

  

  • 7:11 pm
  • 5 Comments