People who really know the deal wonder “how I do it.” My neurologist says I have an unusual attitude toward dealing with MS. The mediator of the support group I attempted (once, and likely last) made sure everyone there knew my way wasn’t the only way (well, duh).
What is my way? Cowboy up, baby! If you don’t speak Midwestern, “man up” is the closest translation, though it really leaves something to be desired. Short and sweet; you just deal. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly; Clint Eastwood taught us all how to cowboy up.There's a great line in "Brokeback Mountain" that I always remember. "If you can't fix it, Jack, you gotta stand it." I'm sayin'...
I have to give my Bubbe most of the credit though. For those of you who don’t speak Yiddish, “grandmother” is the closest translation, though it really leaves something to be desired. Man, she was made out of all the best stuff. She could do anything, and she did. My family may correct the story some, but the long and short of it is that when she wanted to buy a donut franchise in the 50’s, she was turned down because she was a woman (she had a college degree too!). She wasn’t too pleased about that, so she started her own donut chain. If you’re old school Omaha, you may remember Dippy Donuts. Yeah. When she closed her restaurant (The Deli / Babes / The Revolving Door Lounge), she got bored and opened a plus-sized consignment store. In her late 60’s. For something to do. This says nothing of what she did for the blind community in Omaha. And, when she was very sick (she hadn’t yet been diagnosed, but she had cancer), she flew to NYC, schlepped around the city, just to see me sing. I had “a role in an opera on stage at Lincoln Center in NYC,” you see (I was a chorus member). The point is, she wouldn’t have missed it for anything. Literally. She died only a couple months later. My Bubbe knew how to cowboy up.
That is what I think about when I’m overwhelmed. When it’s all too much. When I feel like shit and I just keep thinking about how I’m never going to get better. When I wake up to go to the bathroom and find myself on the floor. When I can’t sing through a whole song because by the end of it I need a nap. It’s amazing what changing your thought processes can do for you. And, listen, it’s not as though I haven’t experienced what lying down to die does for you. I’m not sure anyone, when faced with the enormity of that reality, could make it through without a period of misery. Mine took a while to get to, but that’s another story. After being laid off, having to wait 6 months for unemployment to kick in, and watching the world implode around me, I spent a couple years stoned, sitting in front of my computer and very rarely leaving my apartment. It is no bueno, friends. It sucks far worse than getting up and facing what just ain’t goin’ anywhere. So, when people ask me how I do it, I usually respond with “what are my options?”
What else can I do?!
