5 December 2020
Written in response to the Tale Weaver prompt “Barriers.”
https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2020/12/03/tale-weaver-304-barriers-december-3rd/
What barriers exist in your life?
Are they barriers that can be overcome?
I will probably use this prompt to create both a fiction and
a non-fiction piece. It is inspiring thoughts for the latest chapter in my WIP,
The Key Of Eidolon. However, I also have answers to the above questions.
I have both physical and psychological barriers to
accomplishing my goals. They don’t stop me from trying, but they make things
harder.
There are physical goals that I will never be able to
accomplish because of my handicaps.
At this point, I can walk up to two miles a day using an
upright walker. Without the upright walker, I can only manage between a quarter
of a mile and a half mile, and a half mile is pushing it. I never thought I
would be having to use a walker at 55 years old, and the promotional material
for this item indicates that no-one else thinks that people my age are using
such a device at my age either.
We need to stop with the assumption that only elderly people
need assistive devices or that there is some sort of shame in needing an
assistive device if you are not elderly. I have a lot of problems with my back.
I am not ashamed to use this device, but I am very conscious of the fact that
people are conscious of my use of it and some of them pity me for it.
I have diabetes. This is a disease that can be managed, but,
conversely to the bill of goods that some overpriced snake oil sellers are
trying to hand you, there is no cure for it. Type 2 diabetes does occasionally
go into remission, but this happens so seldom that I do not expect it any more
than I expect to grow several inches taller.
Diabetes does not really frighten me. I am aware that it
makes me vulnerable to kidney failure, which also doesn’t particularly frighten
me, although I would not want it. The one that scares me is the vulnerability
to strokes and vascular dementia. Fuck a whole lot of that shit. Fortunately, I
also take antihypertensive medication, so my blood pressure remains in the safe
zone.
My thyroid destroyed itself when I was in my early teens, so
I have been on and off thyroid medications since then. I can’t tolerate
Synthroid. It gave me headaches and it almost put me in the E.R. because it was
elevating my blood pressure and heart rate so much. Rather than consider that
the Synthroid was the culprit, the doctor I was seeing at the time blamed my
weight for causing my blood pressure to rise and put me on propranolol, which
is a beta blocker. I have asthma. Beta blockers make me feel like I’m breathing
underwater.
Because of the panic attacks I was experiencing when I
became tachycardic (talk about your vicious feedback loops), he also put me on
clonazepam. I tend to have paradoxical reactions to benzodiazepines, and I had
the worst panic attack of my life. I went off ever single one of the
medications. It took me three months to return to normally abnormal.
I have been on Armour thyroid for the past 14 years. My
current P.A. has adjusted the dosage a couple of times to strike a balance
between my TSH reading and my blood pressure and pulse. We seem to have found
the sweet spot. I like my current P.A., who has been respectful and treats the
patient rather than the chart.
Alas, although my TSH is now in the zone, I am still tired
all the time. It is what it is.
I have been trying to get on disability this year. I have
been working with a lawyer, and it is still taking forever. I lived in a state
of constant anxiety for literal decades due to not being able to sleep properly
because I was afraid that I would oversleep. I worked night shift because it
worked out better for me than day shift. However, I can no longer do the
punishing physical work that I used to do.
My son and I moved to a remote rural area in September of
2019, and we both love this house and this town very much. My son is
high-functioning autistic. He has a lot of skills and he is physically
able-bodied, but he has never been able to work a normal job.
Both of us would be happy enough to do certain types of
remote work. However, even though it has been shown through the pandemic that
certain jobs can be done remotely, nobody wants to hire the smelly poors or
icky disabled people.
My physical appearance has also been a barrier to achieving
certain of my goals, including, oddly enough, my writing goals. You’d think
that it wouldn’t matter if a writer has a good face for radio, so to speak, but
I’ve seen that, at least with female writers, people tend to want us to be
pretty. Seriously, what the hell? Would looking like a beauty queen or a Playboy
centerfold make me a better writer? I get so fed up with the bullshit and am
disgusted that I’m still fighting the same battles at 55 that I was at 25.
So, what’s to be done? Well, I am nothing if not pig-headed,
so I will keep hammering away at things until I make some headway.
I’ve been working to craft my Rough Writer monthly zine,
which includes my WIP chapters, poems, and daily-ish nonfiction blather as well
as anything else I may write in a month. Sometimes I think that this is a great
idea and I’ll be sharing some wonderful wisdom. Other times I’m afraid it’s
just another one of my crackpot ideas and that I’m not nearly as deep as I imagine
myself to be. I suppose it remains to be seen, but at six bucks for some 50,000
words, you can’t beat the price!
And there you have my thoughts on the barriers in my life.
~cie~
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