The Ring Theory

A while back, I came across a piece by Susan Silk and Barry Goldman that talks about how to behave in relation to another's trauma. How Not To Say The Wrong Thing. Think about personal trauma like this: You drop a rock into a lake and that stone is the ordeal landing on the head of the person experiencing it. The ripples move outward, water closer to the impact point rippling more significantly than water a foot away. Now apply this to personal trauma. The closer to ground zero, the more a person is affected by the trauma. A significant other would be close to the center whereas a next door neighbor would be further away. In this way, you can gauge the degree to which any given situation is impacting others and place yourself within that structure. The rule is to not complain or otherwise vent your feelings about the situation on anyone closer to the trauma than you. Instead, dump your feelings about the situation on someone even less affected than you. To those closer to the center, give love and comfort and support. And the person in the center whose trauma it is? They get to do and say and feel and be whatever they want. That is the benefit of being at Ground zero – nobody complains to you, gives advice, judges your behavior or otherwise sends negativity inward toward you. Obviously there are limits to this, like how long the person experiencing trauma is at the focal point. Life moves on, people adjust and eventually things shift. If your beloved cat dies of old age, you probably aren't at the center of things as long as you might be if your beloved cat was hit by a car at age five. Degree of trauma matters in terms of duration of the complain/support rule. Having been at Ground zero more than once in the past few years, I can say with absolute certainty that people who respond to me with negativity or their own fears and reactions to my situation are not helpful. In fact, it often causes me to shut down and relegate that individual to a more distant sphere of my life. Make me cope with your feelings about my predicament? Go away. Decide you know better about my situation than me? It's time for a friendship vacation. Silk and Goldman do not touch upon one aspect of the situational dynamics. When those you would count on for support instead offer negativity and judgment, you are in a complicated place involving rocks and hard things. If you push the person away, then you lose any hope of gaining support in the future. If you tolerate the suboptimal behavior, then you open yourself to more of the same. At a time when what you need is propping up with love and comfort, you are not only getting something far less helpful, but you must also figure out how to handle it. Coping resources already stretched to the breaking point by the trauma have to now also withstand interpersonal drama. Ground zero needs to be about the trauma not drama. Offer love, support, foot rubs and pot roast. Refrain from offering up yet more for the person with the trauma to handle. Make it your unspoken gift to them. How Not To Say The Wrong Thing. Think about personal trauma like this: You drop a rock into a lake and that stone is the ordeal landing on the head of the person experiencing it. The ripples move outward, water closer to the impact point rippling more significantly than water a foot away. Now apply this to personal trauma. The closer to ground zero, the more a person is affected by the trauma. A significant other would be close to the center whereas a next door neighbor would be further away. In this way, you can gauge the degree to which any given situation is impacting others and place yourself within that structure. The rule is to not complain or otherwise vent your feelings about the situation on anyone closer to the trauma than you. Instead, dump your feelings about the situation on someone even less affected than you. To those closer to the center, give love and comfort and support. And the person in the center whose trauma it is? They get to do and say and feel and be whatever they want. That is the benefit of being at Ground zero – nobody complains to you, gives advice, judges your behavior or otherwise sends negativity inward toward you. Obviously there are limits to this, like how long the person experiencing trauma is at the focal point. Life moves on, people adjust and eventually things shift. If your beloved cat dies of old age, you probably aren't at the center of things as long as you might be if your beloved cat was hit by a car at age five. Degree of trauma matters in terms of duration of the complain/support rule. Having been at Ground zero more than once in the past few years, I can say with absolute certainty that people who respond to me with negativity or their own fears and reactions to my situation are not helpful. In fact, it often causes me to shut down and relegate that individual to a more distant sphere of my life. Make me cope with your feelings about my predicament? Go away. Decide you know better about my situation than me? It's time for a friendship vacation. Silk and Goldman do not touch upon one aspect of the situational dynamics. When those you would count on for support instead offer negativity and judgment, you are in a complicated place involving rocks and hard things. If you push the person away, then you lose any hope of gaining support in the future. If you tolerate the suboptimal behavior, then you open yourself to more of the same. At a time when what you need is propping up with love and comfort, you are not only getting something far less helpful, but you must also figure out how to handle it. Coping resources already stretched to the breaking point by the trauma have to now also withstand interpersonal drama. Ground zero needs to be about the trauma not drama. Offer love, support, foot rubs and pot roast. Refrain from offering up yet more for the person with the trauma to handle. Make it your unspoken gift to them.

Perspective

At FabTherapists's recommendation, I have joined group therapy. After two sessions, the jury is still out as to whether or not it will be beneficial. One goal is for me to intentionally work on how I interact with non-disabled people in an environment where I can get feedback. In other words, if another group member offered me help I didn't need, I could actually question the person about the impact of my response and their initial motivation. Last week, someone discussed how their job was making them unhappy and stressed. As they were leaving work ruminating on this, they walked past a vet who was a double amputee and "it put my stuff into perspective." I hate when people do this and had a rather intense response. It did not go well and the therapist said, "That pushed your buttons. Next week how about you come back and explain why." I decided that a blog entry would be an excellent way to clarify my thinking. My first objection is that life stressors should not be compared. Each of us is a unique individual possessing certain personality traits, backgrounds, coping abilities, resources and so forth. How we each deal with life stressors should be viewed separately in the context of who and what we are. Invalidating your own life stressors based on your perception of others' circumstances being worse minimizes and invalidates what might be a truly distressing situation for you. It's not fair to do that to yourself. My second objection has to do with the way disability is being viewed. To make a comparison, an impression of what the disabled person's life must be like has to be formed. What is that impression based upon? All the societal beliefs about disability that we are taught come into play to create a picture of what that person's life must be like. Often, such knowledge is based on inaccurate information, distorted images portrayed by the media, stereotypes and misconceptions. It eventually boils down to seeing the life of the person with a disability as being les happy, more burdened, less rewarding and more stressful. The person with a disability is suddenly relegated to a place of less, lacking and unhopeful. When I have questioned those who view my life as "hard," I hear about how it must be awful not to be able to see x, y and z, how I can't enjoy a, b, or c, and how I won't ever be able to do j, k or l. I *never* hear about how my life must be hard because I live in a world that sees me as less, has distorted ideas about blindness, treats me as a child and refuses to perceive my value. Which do you think is actually what I would label the "hard" part of my life? And that's the reason why what my fellow group member said bothered me to such a degree. They just diminished the double amputee vet to a "hard" life based on physical limits. He wasn't a father, brother, or lover. He was someone whose life must be so stressful that it makes one grateful for the paltry stress they have. Personhood was stripped away. Value was ignored. It isn't that much of a leap to go from "They just reduced that man to nothing" to "Do they see me as nothing?" I struggle every day to find ways to be valued for who I am, to be connected by love and affection to other people and to live my life authentically. The last thing I want is for my life to be reduced to someone's means to feel better about their own existence. *I* just got lost in that equation and used in the process. To answer my group therapist's inevitable question, "How does that make you feel?" Devalued. Invisible. Used. Angry. Frustrated. Resigned. Tired. Hopeless. Sad. Worthless. Scared.

Reason's Vanquisher

In excruciating detail, I can create a voluminous list of all the ways it is communicated to me that I am of less value because I am disabled. I can then offer explanations and arguments to counteract each item. My skills are sufficient to convince you that I have worth. Now if it would only work on myself. Reason is a wonderful tool that is not adequate to the challenge of conquering the emotions of irrelevance and devaluation that currently rule my insides. My reason lacks the tensile strength to overcome the indomitable force these negative thoughts and emotions wield. The depression I'm experiencing because of current life stress and mental health issues definitely saps reason's strength. It does not, however, generate the need for reason to be so powerful. the might reason would need to surmount the negativity is defined by the power of that negativity. What is responsible for negativity's capacity to overpower reason? Society in general and the individuals that act out its beliefs in particular. The thoughts and feelings an individual has about disability informs their actions and those actions transmit those beliefs to people with disabilities. Complimenting a mundane task demonstrates the lower expectations used to judge the person with a disability. Refusal to accept a "No thanks" to an offer of help illustrates devaluation of the disabled person's judgment. Even running up from behind to hold a door for a person with a disability conveys the assumption that the person was unable to do it themselves. Whether it is meant or not, whether it is intentional or not and whether the intricacies are understood or not, behavior communicates beliefs and those beliefs have power. A lot of power. Counteracting them takes a significant and constant force of will. It is a battle people with disabilities engage in each and every day. It is a war without an end in sight where victory is never possible because the "enemy" has an endless supply of assets. There are a lot of battles I'm currently fighting and they are consuming vast resources. I have nothing left to wage war against the societal devaluation that comes at me without end. Words and deeds matter. Take care that you are not unintentionally contributing to the strength of the negativity people with disabilities must beat back each and every day. And, if you need self-interest as motivation, remember that non-disabled people become disabled each and every day. The negativity you put out there might turn on you down the road. Do you want to battle it?

What Does It Take?

I'm convinced there's some unknowable and Mysterious Act that if I only discover and do, I'll get the support I need. Telling people I'm not alright hasn't worked. Appreciating the support I do get so as to encourage more fails. The other day at the end of a rough yoga class, I spent five minutes sitting in a fetal position. Even that didn't elicit a single expression of concern. I'm beginning to feel more than desperate for some ongoing support. In my soul, I feel a scream building that might explode at any moment. I want to grab one of the people who purportedly cares about me and shake them as I ask, "What do I need to do to get you to notice the emotional hell I routinely occupy and get off your ass and do something?" What ever happened to unselfish compassion? Loving someone enough to do what they need even if it's inconvenient and hard? Acting without someone giving you explicit, help-by-the-numbers directions? And I'm not talking about a one-shot deal here. I'm talking about consistently over a period of time being there for someone *because someone has to*. Pragmatically, the support also needs to come from more than one source. I do have a couple of people who make their supportive presence known, but each has other responsibilities that necessarily come first. They do what they can. They cannot do it all. That's why people have a collection of friends, not just one. As a society, I have noticed the tendency to approach life with a triage mentality. Unfortunately, the measure of what is and is not emergent solely seems to rest upon how much smoke is visible. What looks worst at an unthinking glance gets the attention. I, who communicate my struggle with simple, calm words doesn't look like a critical case. Stooping to theatrics in order to be seen as worthy of aid strikes me as wrong. And, in fact, it would lend credence to and affirmation of behaving badly in order to get attention. I don't want attention. I want support. They are not the same thing. If they were, then I'd be thrilled when people pour on the praise for my mundane "achievements." Since I tend to cringe, brush off the compliment and change the subject, I can pretty much assure you that attention and support are not synonymous. Instead, when I seek support, I get things like: "Jen, I can't even imagine dealing with what you deal with, so I don't know what to say to you." How about this: "I can tell you are truly upset and hurting. What can I do to support you while you deal with it?" Now was that so hard? "Jen, you are so inspiring. How you deal with what you deal with amazes me." Well, great. The amazement has become the center of the conversation, making it about the other person and pushing my pain into some dark corner. So helpful. "Jen, I can't watch you be so negative. It's too painful to me." Now the other person's pain has trumped mine because watching me go through hard stuff is harder than going through the hard stuff. How is that even possible? "Jen, I know it will be alright." Great. Meanwhile, I'm in pain, but it has been dismissed as unimportant because it won't last forever. By word or by deed, many who say they care about me dismiss, minimize and otherwise make irrelevant the overarching reality I occupy *right now*: I'm fighting my way through some very difficult, painful things without sufficient, reliable support. How can that be acceptable to anyone who truly feels affection for me? I no longer doubt that I deserve and am worthy of support. I now question the affection others express. Is caring real if it never translates from feeling into action?

Believe Maybe

A couple of weeks ago, I read Frank Deford's "An American Summer" which tells the story of Christy, a fourteen-year-old boy who moves to Baltimore the summer of 1954. Almost immediately he meets Cathryn, a twenty-three-year-old who contracted polio six years ago and now lives in an iron lung. It is an unlikely connection that leads to an extraordinary relationship. At one point, Cathryn is trying to convince Christy to do something he doesn't believe is possible. She asks, "Can you believe maybe?" The distinction she makes between what we believe and what we believe maybe is effort. If I believe maybe there's a God, then I still have a question to answer and thus work to do. Believing there is a God pretty much settles the matter. I have been struggling with the concept of hope for quite some time. It first became an issue when I realized hoping I'd get healthy was causing me to live for tomorrow and not enjoy today. Then hope got all tangled up with the lack of dating in my life. People kept telling me that if I didn't have hope that I'd meet someone, then I never would. I argued hoping for something that was statistically unlikely was the road to insanity. After that, my life began to completely come apart at the seams and I was devoid of hope that it would get better. Our hearts are designated the home of our emotions. Over the past four years, I've learned much about following mine and so far it hasn't caused me to do something I regret. In fact, my regrets tend to stem from the times when I don't or where circumstances won't allow me to listen to what it says. My heart was devoid of hope. It contained wishes, dreams and desires without expectation to tether them to reality. I think hearts learn, shaped by the negative and positive re-enforcement of life experience. My heart was taught not to hope because nothing good ever came from it and many let downs happened. What has hope done for me lately? Caused oceans of tears. So, I'm done with the idea of hope for now. We're on a relationship break. in its place, I'm entertaining the idea of believing maybe. It seems far more suited to me for it allows acknowledgment of things that feel unlikely while not summarily dismissing the possibility entirely. It allows for effort, but it doesn't have the black hole effect of trying and trying and trying and then watching all your trying vanish into some unreachable place with nothing to show for it. Instead, the trying is tempered by knowing it might be for naught or it might work. When I think, "I believe maybe this mess my life has become can be fixed," I do not hear from my heart, "Bullshit." I hear an echoing "Maybe?" Blog moving. Bookmark or otherwise get yourself to People Aren't Broken I mean it. :)

Apples and Oranges

A member of a musical duo I adore was chatting with me after one of their shows, which we have done many times before. He asked how I was doing and I replied that it had been a struggle of late. As he put his hand on my upper arm, he intensely said, "You need to sit and really listen to the new CD. It's all about that." I took it home. I sat. I listened. I did that pretty much every day for three weeks. I still couldn't connect. It wasn't that the music lacked emotion or that something didn't quite come together. It's a great CD and the artists in question conveyed their message well. I just couldn't identify with it. At all. I had an extremely hard time with this fact. A musician I respected felt his work would speak to me. Why couldn't I hear it? It took five months for me to figure it out. They're singing about apples while I'm trying to juggle oranges. The music conveys the inner struggles around love and relationships, not so much about love gone wrong or love unrequited, but about how one's thinking can keep you from finding love. Clearly someone went through emotional hell trying to discover why he longed for love but couldn't quite embrace it. It has a more general message about hitting bottom emotionally and then finding your way through it discovering that the journey through the awful helps you better appreciate things. At it's core, the music is about inner struggles to overcome internal obstacles. My two ongoing issues are my medical complications and social isolation. Obviously the problems my body has developed cannot be solved by an emotional struggle. My esophageal muscles will not become strong because I searched my soul, figured out the problem in my head, and fixed it. In other words, it's solution is not within myself to discover and implement. It requires doctors and tests and surgery and living with side effects and hoping it all works as advertised. Social isolation seemingly has a more emotional basis for all I need to do is get out there, overcome my shyness or other maladaptive social behaviors, and I'll meet people. That's all within my control to fix, right? What happens when you do all of that and the only result is frustration and a bone-deep belief that it's not you? With every fiber of my being, I have come to believe that my social isolation is a factor of how others perceive me, social norms, societal beliefs, and how what we are consciously or unconsciously taught shapes our thinking. I could be Mother Teresa or Hitler and the bottom line wouldn't change all that much. In case you need a little bit of proof, I am more active in the world than I have been in probably twelve years, yet it has not had a perceivable impact on how many friends I have, the quality of those friendships, or dating. While it is true that many more people know who I am, that has not translated into meaningful human connection. In fact, in many ways being more socially engaged has only served to highlight my inherent aloneness. So, while the musician was kind having the best of intentions to offer me solace, it didn't work. They sing about apples and I juggle oranges –both fruit, but very different. American as orange pie? Fresh squeezed Florida apple juice? Okay, maybe the second one if Florida had the appropriate climate. Blog. Moving. Soon no new here. Plan. People Aren't Broken

Hope

While introducing a song entitled "Hope," a local San Diego musician gave an inspirational pep talk that exemplifies what I have heard time and time again. To paraphrase: Everyone goes through hard times and the only things within your control are your attitude and your effort. With a good attitude and if you try hard enough, you will get through it. He's not wrong, exactly. He's just talking about some subset of people to which I do not belong. They are folks whose "hard times" can be gotten through with the right attitude and sufficient effort. I've watched it happen, so I know attitude and effort work for many. I'm just not one of them. Attitude can accomplish a great deal, like when I focus on what I might learn from a situation or the humor that exists within a predicament. It cannot, however, transform steps into a ramp. Similarly, my attitude can't morph someone's ignorant behavior into a more palatable experience. Being treated badly can be endured; Being denied access to something cannot be overcome by the powers of positive thought. Similarly, effort is problematic for me. My chronic illness limits my energy leaving me with definite constraints on the sweat I can expend. Thus, I do not have the luxury of endless get-up-and-go necessary to fix misfortunes. Perhaps the key here is what the musician meant by hard times. I'm fairly certain he wasn't referring to the kinds of situations I encounter. Instead, he means troubles universal to all human beings such as the death of a parent, having something stolen or getting your heart broken. What rang false as I listened to his pep talk are all the things I encounter each day that are unique to people with disabilities. Inaccessibility, lack of accommodations and people's ignorance create some of the most distressing problems I come across. Attitude and effort cannot resolve all of them. Sometimes, I'm left with lousy circumstances not of my making and beyond my ability to fix. With them, speeches about attitude and effort leave me feeling hopeless not hopeful. Case in point. I'm dealing with the way social perceptions of disability make friendships harder and reduce my chance of finding a mate. Emotional intimacy is as central to my mental health as calories are to my physical well-being. I cannot force people to befriend me nor can I change how they perceive me by thinking positively. If someone keeps you from food, eventually you will suffer physically. If what keeps me from adequate human connection is other people, how is that really different? How is trying hard or having a good attitude going to feed my soul? I never know what to say to people like this musician. For them, effort and attitude work and I do not want to discount that. Unfortunately, he is talking about peeling apples while I'm trying to peel oranges. This entry will elucidate Apples and Oranges So, I sit in the audience feeling like I do not belong alienated by someone who is just trying to help people get through tough times. I become the invisible other apart from the crowd I inhabit and isolated from the human experience being referenced. Blog. Moving. People Aren't Broken

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.

What 2010 Taught Me

As all of you know, 2010 has been quite the year for me. With medical insanity around every corner as well as personal tragedies, I sometimes wondered if I would survive the onslaught. At the turn of the year, I'm permitting myself to engage in a wee bit of introspection because as you know, I am never otherwise reflective

1. Though I knew I possessed emotional strength, the events of this year showed me a resilience I not only didn't know I possessed, but I didn't imagine existed in mere mortals. I amazed myself. And, yes, I said amazed.

2. My health can take a beating and I will recover, so I do not need to live in mortal fear of the next medical issue's destructive impact.

3. Friendships might be even more complicated than romantic relationships.

4. I never regret following my heart. Now if only my brain had an off switch.

5. The things I thought I was good at are things I now KNOW I am good at. I have skills and talents that possess the ability to impact more than just myself in a positive way.

6. Laughter can transform, heal, and pretty much save sanity.

7. I can truly and completely fall to pieces and the only person needed to put myself back together is me.

8. If you view the actions of now as the story you will look back upon in years to come, it is sometimes easier to find your way through muddy waters. This year I have learned that when I get stuck, I need only ask myself, "How do I want to remember this moment?" and suddenly things become clear.

9. People, myself included, often hold back from going the extra mile for a "friend" because they believe that person would not do the same for them. I have come to realize that it is more about making sure you go the extra mile for those you know will do the same in return. It's not about who isn't going to do what. It's about lavishing attention on those you want to be a part of your life. Making it about opening up your heart and giving freely feels much better.

10. A year full of Hard Things can also be the best year you have ever lived. 2010 has been that for me.

PTSD

I have some very personal experience with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that, even after successful treatment, sometimes impacts my life. Typically, PTSD develops after an individual survives a traumatizing experience and only afterward has a reaction to that event. Those who are raped and combat soldiers are most often thought of as people at risk for PTSD, but it is also widely recognized as a possible consequence of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, neglect, violent crime, natural disaster, and the events of 9-11. Symptoms of the condition vary widely, but are generally depression, inappropriate fear response to specific situations, flashbacks, body memories, and nightmares. That was my experience of PTSD, at any rate.

MY PTSD was not a result of any of the circumstances I listed above. Instead, mine evolved about five years after I stopped having reconstructive surgery, and was a direct result of how I handled (or in this case didn't handle) what happened to me. (The entry "What My Classmates Never Knew" describes my medical history.) The PTSD exploded onto the scene when an interviewer asked me a simple question, "How did all that hospitalization effect who you are now?" My stomach fell into my shoes and a floodgate opened with memories pouring forth day and night.

Any little thing – word or even a specific texture of plastic – could trigger a swamping of my mind with events of the past. Body memories are a kind of flashback with which I became very familiar. It goes beyond remembering to actually experiencing the physical sensations associated with the memory. Some completely lose touch with their current reality and the remembrance is all they know, but I didn't have that experience. Instead, I recall making my hands into fists and focusing very hard on just breathing because somebody happened to mention needles. I avoided one specific plastic food storage container because of the shape of the rim evoking memories of oxygen masks held over my face. There was one January day where my roommate held me for a very long time because I couldn't stop the memories from coming one after another.

With therapy, I learned to control the memories and work through what I had experienced as a child. Ironically, an emergency appendectomy aided in my healing in ways I still do not fully understand. I guess it has something to do with going through a medical situation that was 100% necessary for survival and coming out the other side without experiencing the kind of trauma I did as a child. Whatever the case, one year after it all came pouring out I was getting better.

To be clear, better does not mean gone. I do not know anybody who has dealt with PTSD who does not from time to time have a disproportionate fear response to something or the occasional nightmare. Current life events can sometimes drag up old issues and things get "interesting" for a time. At the moment, that is the case for me. One of my eyes is misbehaving and, though it has no useful vision, it still lives in my head and can develop problems. Of course – and this happens to me a great deal of the time – the doctor has no idea what might be actually causing the symptoms, so I have been making rounds of experts, including a totally weird but incredibly brilliant ear, nose and throat specialist, to determine if my facial structure anomalies explain current symptoms. Fortunately his quirks were an intriguing distraction whereas the ophthalmic plastic surgeon was fear-invoking. At the best of times, this species of doctor makes me want to scream and this one found it necessary to start discussing how a "cap" on the eye not giving me trouble could be beneficial.

Now surgery looms on the horizon, filling me with instinctive fear. Some days I think my emotions are irrational and perhaps I should be declared the literal kind of insane. Other moments find me proud because I have managed to not have a single nightmare. Part of the problem is that I have no idea how freaked out a "normal" person would be about current circumstances. Am I just the usual amount of scared or something beyond that?

I know my childhood medical experiences and the resulting PTSD will be a part of me throughout my life. My appendectomy helped me realize I can manage a difficult situation without it resulting in trauma. Perhaps this surgery will be the time and place where I realize that the part missing from me being "better" is me declaring it to be so.

Doing it with Grace?

I've always wanted the word "graceful" to describe how I live through the Hard Things life throws my way. At its core, this desire is based not on how I perceive my own actions, but the subjective interpretations of others. In many ways this contradicts the stance I have taken that I care little for what others think. Guess what? I'm contradictory.

This desire to be seen as graceful during stressful events stems from more than one source. First, I do not want to disappoint anybody. The praise I receive for my strength feels like a burden that I must shoulder while fighting my way through troubled waters. It doesn't help that I am one of the above-mentioned "anybodies" who I am afraid of disappointing. When life gets hard, I feel like a newly blinded person walking an obstacle course, increasing my feelings of inadequacy--for who wants to feel as though they cannot manage to cope with their life without crashing into everything in proximity?

Oddly enough, I cannot actually articulate what it would look like to live through a Hard Thing with grace. Does that mean I don't complain? Am I supposed to avoid self-pity and always seem totally alright? Maybe I get to fall apart but only a little bit on alternate days. Perhaps I can cry but only if it doesn't make my eyes red? I want to behave in a manner I cannot even describe, which highlights the ludicrousness of the entire thing.

Turning to the dictionary for help proved to be rather useless. Abstract definitions of graceful, such as "characterized by elegance or beauty" offer nothing concrete. By whose yardstick do we measure elegant, and isn't beauty in the eye of the beholder?

Next, I tried talking to my yoga buddy to see if I could verbally express the state I wished to reach, coming up with things like "never fall apart," "never complain," "don't need anything," and "always be positive." As the words passed my lips, I heard their failings. Not showing others how I feel is a type of dishonesty I endeavor not to commit. Furthermore, I lack the ability to be entirely self-sufficient and my sense of humor, with its sarcastic tendencies, is not suited to perpetual sanguinity. If those phrases describe grace, I am not capable of exhibiting it.

TV and film offer a plethora of examples of people living through Hard Things with grace almost as if they pass through the experience protected by the emotional equivalent of Teflon. Whenever I watch such things, I feel judgment pouring out of the television directly at me, a dented frying pan with a surface so scratched that half the scrambled eggs stick to the bottom. There has to be some middle ground between damaged to the point of uselessness and so pristine that nothing has penetrated.

A friend observed that those who stoically live through tribulations are often praised because they make witnesses feel better. Not only are the observers spared from watching someone in pain, but they are comforted by the idea that should they have a similar trial in their lives it will be equally routine.

In the above I may have finally found some useful truth. Relentless optimism in the face of a difficult situation ignores part of the experience life is offering. Life's Hard Things are meant to make us feel a myriad of emotions, and relentlessly wallowing in the negative is considered unhealthy. Perhaps it is equally destructive to remain determinedly positive, for there is no joy without sorrow and no sorrow without joy. Maybe, just maybe, allowing yourself to feel whatever happens to grow within your heart is true health. It's possible that truly living means you must fully experience every emotion. Could true grace be following a course through turbulent waters that zigs and zags while you maintain the certainty that you will reach your destination on the other side?

Now I don't have a word to describe the quality I wish to possess while I wend my way to the other side of a Hard Thing, but I finally know its nature and that I possess the ability to engender it in my life. I want to embrace all the emotions that pass through me and express them without the clutter of self-judgment. Though mine might be sarcastic and ironic at times, I know humor must be a part of it. And through it all I will possess the bone-deep belief that I will get to the other side having lived all of it – the good, the bad and the comical.

All this is simply words on a screen that mean little unless I can actually do it in the face of a Hard Thing. Well, I am in the middle of such an experience, and in fact wrote this entry to try and sort out my feelings. One of my eyes has decided to use pain as its means of expressing a desire to no longer be of this earth. Removal in some form is on the horizon, and my attitude has not been what I would like. I now have a clarity about how I wish to live this next little part of my life. May clarity go further than the end of my nose.