Emmylou

In December, I acquired a fifty-two pound ball of exuberance in the shape of a yellow lab named Emmyolou. Les than five months later, she is gone and probably will not return.

The short story is that she walked me into a poll at full speed and I fractured the bone graft in my nose. In consultation with the guide dog school, it was decided that she needed a work evaluation to make certain being a guide dog was her calling. My instincts tell me her destiny lies elsewhere.

In my experience, the bond between working dog and handler is distinct from that of pet and master. First, the canine has been bred to be smart, sensitive to people's emotions, and think independently. They need a facility with language, a sense of duty, and a drive to be of assistance. They also provide help that pragmatically positively impacts the handler's life. This means the connection possible is deeper, richer, and far more complex.

Initially, on some level I tried not to bond with Emmy, but when a friend pointed this out, I made a serious effort to connect with my dog. I thought the problems we were having as a working team might be caused by a lack of closeness. While that proved not to be the case, she wormed her way into my affections.

Multiple times a day, Emmy would come over an paw at me, the doggie equivalent of "Pay attention to me!" Sometimes she would instead work the cute angle by wiggling on her stomach across the floor to me. A tail wag was a full body experience with her entire body wriggling. She had a toy chicken that became her favorite and she would poke at me with it. "Play! Play! Play!" I'm pretty convinced she learned to give commentary by the length and frequency of squeaks from various toys. She even pursued any flies that entered our house. I've never seen a dog snap them out of the air. Once I let her up on the bed at night, she would walk around and around in circles as happy to step on me as the mattress. Circles were in fact her favorite walking pattern. If I dared sit on the floor, she would walk around and around me until I was done. If I danced to a good song on the radio, she would join in by leaping around me in, you guessed it, circles. This dog spent most of her day either saying "I want to play!", "You love me, right?" or "You're mine."

I have never met a dog who did so much to connect with a person, had such a sense of playfulness, or engaged in physical antics as if she were the canine equivalent of Charlie Chaplin. Having her around was sometimes stressful because I never had enough attention to keep her satisfied, but always a source of laughter and joy. There are no words for what life was like with such a creature as my constant companion.

Then there was the guide dog aspect. Emmy had issues in this area, but still changed my life. Cane's for me are exhausting in a way dogs are not. I could walk a mile with Emmy and be less exhausted and more relaxed than a 4 block walk with my cane. Activities became possible that I never considered before. The degree of independence I achieved was more than I thought possible and far more than I ever reached with my last dog. I became addicted to it without even knowing the process was occurring.

Now my exuberant companion is gone along with my addictive autonomy. In the time it takes for a bone to snap, my life has been turned inside out.

I have been through the ending of two long term romantic relationships that lasted several years. In both cases, I was upset in the cry your eyes out way of most people. This experience is almost worse. In fact, if Emmy had been able to engage in actual conversation, it would be worse. Unlike romantic heartache, there is no common wisdom about how to cope. Last summer when I had to put my retired guide dog to sleep, it was the last Hard Thing in a long string of insanity. I had no emotional energy left in my tank to feel anything, so I let time pass. Eventually, as I had known I would, I got past it.

This, however, is different. I feel like one of those wimpy paper shredders that can only chew up two sheets of paper at a time, but I am faced with five layers of cardstock in an endless roll that vanishes in the distance only because the human eye cannot see further. I'd love to deal with this, learn whatever I can, and move on. Instead I just sit with this event before me unable to get my mind around it. The part of me that usually copes with whatever life offers is either missing or broken. I literally have no idea what to do. None.

Eyes Bigger Than My Oomph

So I have a wee bit of a problem, a willing spirit but a tired body. There are just so many fun things to do like presentations and panels and nonprofits to start and groups to organize and craft projects all calling my name. Then there are the things I should be doing such as making ketchup, cooking a real meal, watering my plants, and answering email. It seems as if I am either running around doing stuff or sitting on my couch feeling too tired to move. No middle ground exists.
For what it is worth, this is not the recommended lifestyle for anyone with a chronic illness that impacts energy. You are suppose to take life with moderation and achieve a balance between doing and resting.
I have no balance. Nada. Zip. Zilch. And I can't even figure out how it happened. One minute I was keeping up with everything and still having free time not spent flopped on the couch and the next I feel like a hamster trapped on one of those wheels only allowed to rest when the wheel stops moving.
Can I just tell you that it sucks when you have cool opportunities, the skills and talents to do well at them, and can't because you have to take care of yourself? In this at-the-speed-of-light world where everyone runs around chasing their tails, I know the feeling of wanting to do more than you can is familiar. While I empathize with people in that situation, I'm complaining (whining?) about a different animal. Or maybe it's the same thing just a matter of degrees. I like to think I'm coping with something unique, but in all likelihood I'm not.
There is a gratitude in all this because three years ago I would have been thrilled to have such a dilemma. Back then I was struggling to stay on top of far less. So, yes, I appreciate the fact that I am able to do more. The choices I have now, about the direction of my life and "career," are luxuries that speak to a level of health I didn't think possible.
AS I work to find the sweet spot where I can do most of what I want without abusing my body, I am coming to realize that happiness might not be so much about getting to do what you want as it is about not wanting to do more than you can. Struggling to always keep up detracts from the joy you reap from pleasurable endeavors. Maybe happiness is about not having eyes that are bigger than your oomph.

Flavors of Desperation

Saturday I joined a gathering of people with chronic illnesses. While not my first time doing so, the group has only met thrice – I am a novice when it comes to such situations. Historically I tend to do badly when I attempt to join a group based on one of my identities: The blind people don't get the sick people, the sick people don't get the blind people, and the bisexuals understand nobody and are understood by nobody. Let's not even throw facial differences into the mix. The proposed topic of how your illness positively impacted your life journey seemed to fit my overall philosophy, so I went.

Desperation. That room was full of desperation. People were so focused on getting better that they weren't remembering to live in the interim. From my perspective, I wasn't the healthiest person in that room, but I was probably the happiest with my current life.

It's not that I have some magical ability or special power that keeps me happy in the face of the complexities of illness. I think it's that somewhere along the way, long before chronic illness was a part of my reality, I stopped totally listening to what the world was teaching. A partial education in how people "should be," the benchmarks of success, what's appropriate, and what you need to be happy has actually been a benefit when it comes to living a reality outside the norm.

Even I struggle with issues of success, happiness, and feeling like a valuable member of the human race. I just have distance allowing me to see that what makes me feel bad is not within myself but coming from the larger world. Knowing that makes it not just easier to dismiss, but less miserable to feel.

By the end of Saturday's meeting, my contentment was shattered. Something about watching people dedicated to fixing themselves in order to be happy wore at me. Instead of also wishing for health, I became despondent over being single because after realizing I was probably the happiest person in the room, it dawned upon me that I was the least likely to find a life partner. Ridiculous, full of self-pity, and some would say patently untrue, but I felt it. Strongly.

Over the past few days, I have come to know this is my weak area. I might not feel broken, I may not need health to find happiness, and I feel no need to fit any traditional roles, but I am firmly and unwaveringly convinced my chances of finding a life partner are lower than the average person. Moreover, lower far too often translates into not going to happen. Friends have tried to use logic and reason, pep talks, contradicting examples, and every other method under the sun to get me to see it otherwise, but I'm stuck. Totally stuck. I'm so stuck that I'm starting to annoy even myself.

I did have one useful realization: If I think it's most likely that I'll partner with a man, then maybe I should hang around heterosexuals more and queer folk less. At the moment, I'm eating, breathing and dreaming bisexuality as I put together a panel workshop. Perhaps my next endeavor should be more heterosexual. Then again, of my last three crushes, two came from the bi community, so maybe the focus should be on men who actually date women. Anyone know where to find those? So far they haven't created a guide dog command, "Find a man."

Getting My Mad On

For the past two weeks, I have been trying to avoid the terrifying thought that the last dose of anesthesia zapped the writing part of my brain. The mechanics were possible with words forming sentences and sentences becoming paragraphs, but the unnamable quality making words into more than the sum of their parts was beyond me. Fortunately, as the past tense indicates, I got my mojo back. In the middle of a concert.

I should probably thank the musician who caused me to lose my temper waking the writing part of my brain from its slumber, but I'm not sure it would have the desired results. "Time after time, I have heard you put down your looks and while I assumed you were probably making it seem worse than the reality, I concluded you were probably of average looks. Then my friend informed me that you are adorable. I sort of lost my temper which finally woke up the writing part of my brain that I thought had gone into a permanent coma. Thank you so much for helping me get it back." Yeah, that would backfire.

On the surface, my anger seems simple to explain. This man puts himself down in order to get positive feedback from others. Immature, but he's twenty-seven and male, so it's understandable. The fact that he is making people feel sorry for him reinforcing our society's obsession with appearance equally justifies my anger, but also doesn't quite cover it.

No, I got my mad on because he seemingly hates his body more than I dislike mine with far less reason. Every day in a myriad of ways I am told that how I look is unacceptable. I invested and continue to invest a great deal of time and energy in counteracting that message. In the past year, circumstances have forced me to integrate loss of eyes and the advent of prosthetics into my body image and I can even see the light at the end of that tunnel. I work my backside off to have feelings about my body separate from what I'm told to think. The effort is completely worth it because most of the time I walk through life happy with myself.

Then there's this adorable twenty-seven-year-old who referred to himself as ugly. How ungrateful and lazy bringing new meaning to the term 'self-deprecating.' I truly would like to shake some positive body image into him. Jump up and down until he understands what he has and starts valuing it.

Please don't misunderstand. This isn't about one of us having it 'better' or 'worse' than the other. Simply put, I am proof that you don't have to accept societal beliefs about appearance. Why, then, is he doing it? For that matter, why does most of the human race do it?

Maybe I'm incredibly fortunate to have lived at the edge of socially acceptable appearance. It allowed me to clearly perceive the subjectivity of our standards of beauty and how they are imparted to us. Then again, there are tons of people who also inhabit that extreme edge and they pursue changing their appearance with single-minded determination. Perhaps the combination of blind and unusual looks offers the answer. Whatever the case, I am truly lucky to have found a way to not hate my body.

Back to the musician. What can I say to someone like him? Offering my own experience up as an example of "It can be different" would probably engender pity not elucidation. Telling him he's adorable would simply re-enforce his behavior of putting himself down.

Guess I'm stuck listening to his put-downs and offering up prayers to whatever higher power is out there that he one day gets it, puts the sentiments into a song, and changes the world by playing it everywhere.

Oops

Because I had a minor medical procedure last Friday, I had a blog entry set aside for use. Today, I read it. Hate it. The concept is good, but it needs work. Rather than post something inferior, I'm going to wait.

Didn't want anyone to think I fell off the face of the earth.