08 October 2008

Honestly...?

When people ask me how I’m doing, more often than not I don’t know how to respond. I could say “just fine”, and that would let me off the hook. And too often it would be a lie. My grandmother, whom I adored, died last week. Year to date, I’ve lost 31% of my retirement account. Daddy’s been dead only a little over a year. My baby sister is making my mother’s life a nightmare while Mama’s trying to put her life back together after being with the same man for almost 50 years.. Shannon’s sister-in-law just had her uterus taken out because of cancer. One of his oldest friends is wasting away with Parkinson’s and another’s leukemia has reduced his survival prognosis to 5-10 years.

People who ask that question more often than not will respond to my answer (“okay, I guess”) with “just okay?” I tell them it’s a hell of a lot better than “crappy and depressed”. I’ve visited that town too many times already.

I don’t understand the implicit expectation that one should always act like any given day is the greatest in ones life when that is rarely the case.

Great days are increasingly rare.

Aging and surviving means by its nature that we outlive others that we care for, that those same people will develop serious health problems that may or may not be terminal. It means that more people have more chances to disappoint us on every level.

We do not live in bubbles where bad things cannot intrude. At least I don’t. Anyone that does should probably seek professional help.

Very few people expect an honest answer to that question. Most don’t give a rat’s ass about anything outside their own little delusionary worlds, where lollipops do grow on trees and the sky is as green as the Emerald City.

The military has a policy called “don’t ask, don’t tell”. That one’s fraught with problems, but I’d like to see a general policy of “if you don’t care, don’t ask.” Leave me to work out my life in my own time and in my own terms.

My life is neither the best nor the worst. It simply is. Good, bad and scary, all at once, all piled in on each other.

Some think that honesty equates with pessimism. I am not one of them.

Honesty is the beginning of peace. Without it, every thing else leads down Valium Lane.

Not a place I’m comfortable with.

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