Living in the Moment Gets Old

As great as it is to have the ability to live in the moment, after a while it gets really boring. I've been stuck in a moment for some time now, unable to move my life forward, and I learned not to think about past and future too much. When your life is in limbo, all you have is the moment, and you don't know when you're going to get the 'tomorrow', so it's best not to drive yourself crazy thinking about it.

It's especially difficult for someone like me. I have to have constant mental stimulation. I used to require constant physical stimulation, too, but that's a whole other subject I'm not planning to share at the moment. (Before anyone gets too excited, I was never a nympho if that's what you're thinking, just...healthy...normal...mostly. And here comes the Monty Python bit..."Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more.")

I keep my brain engaged constantly, because if I don't I'll go crazy. Maybe I'm already there, but I can pretend, can't I? Even when I'm lying in bed (mind out of the gutter please, maybe I'll get mine out of there one day, too), my body in agony from my various injuries, and my head on fire because I'm going through pharmaceutical painkiller withdrawal, I have to keep using my brain. My daughter brought home a Sudoku book for me, so I've been doing that. With my head splitting open, it's about the extent of my intellectual capabilities at the moment.

My point is, and this time I have one, I miss being able to plan for the future. I still have dreams I want to fulfill and goals I want to achieve. They're always there in the back of my mind. The problem is, I can't plan anything. I can't take steps to make things happen. You want to talk about frustration.

This definitely affects the whole love life thing, of course. Even if a man became interested in me, why the hell would he want to involve himself in the current state of my life? I'm okay being alone, and even wrote a blog about it at one point, but that doesn't mean I rule out the possibility. My problem there is that I'm happy enough being alone that I'll be damned if I'm with someone who isn't what is right for me.

I'll also be damned if I'm with someone who doesn't think I'm right for them, or I'm not good enough for them. Being at the lowest point in my life (and believe me I have a huge basis for comparison there), I don't think I am good enough. I'm on disability for crying out loud. In other words, I don't have a real job. Sure, there are damn good reasons for that, but they're temporary so I feel pretty stupid about the whole thing. I'm used to carrying my own weight, running my own company, or at least working my ass off for someone else, not sitting on that ass and doing nothing useful. If the disability were permanent I'd be able to go for retraining, and at least move on with my life in a wheelchair should it be necessary. At least I'd know where I stand, and be where I'm supposed to be in life. Still, I'm very grateful it's not permanent.

My 'love life' is kind of like the Groucho Marx quote, "Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member," although that's not entirely accurate in my case. I mean, there are a few men I'm sure, who would understand the whole temporary thing, and see me for my past and future conquests in the world, but if they don't know me well enough to know about them, then they shouldn't want to be with me. Yes, I'm a human being deserving of respect, but guys with low standards usually expect me to have low standards, too, and I really don't.

The flipside of this is that a man would have to be prepared for the person I suddenly am when I'm no longer hopped up on pharmaceuticals and unable to live a normal life. I have a wee bit more energy then, and I tend to launch myself into things somewhat. Can you say "obsessive"? Okay, I'm sort of kidding, but the principle still applies. I won't be the same once I'm off the pills and disability. Back to my old, passionate self, basically. Not that being old or passionate is a bad thing. (I think I hear Monty Python chiming in again.)

Someday I would like to be with someone again. I'm picky, though. Damn picky. They better respect women, love animals, and be good to children. They also have to respect me and accept me for who I really am, and not who they want me to be. I've been on both ends of that bang-your-head-against-the-wall experience, and I won't do it again. You can't change someone into what you want them to be. It's an exercise in futility and extremely hurtful to boot. You're giving them the message that they're just not good enough the way they are, and that you don't really love them.

I need to be understood and accepted, because if one more person utters the words, "Calm down" at me when I have good reason to be pissed off about something that's going on in the world, they're likely to be emasculated. Well, verbally at least. I guess I'm getting old, and I've gotten to the stage of chew-'em-up-and-spit-'em-out when it comes to lack of patience with people shrugging off the inequities of the world. No, it's not okay that animals are being abused. No, it's not okay that women are dying of gang rape. No, it's not okay to joke about those things, because they're very real sufferings that are going on and they need to be stopped.

Of course, that's one more source for my frustration with living in the moment. There are things I want to be doing with my life to help make this world a better place. I have chosen to focus my efforts on animals for the most part, but that doesn't preclude me helping humans at the same time. I was supposed to be helping ferrets all over the world, only to be shut down just when I was getting started. I feel like I've let down a lot of animals in the meantime, and that really hurts me. Never mind the suffering they might have gone through that I could have prevented.

I can't concentrate well enough, for long enough periods of time, to effectively operate a business, and my business was built to support shelters. I'm incapable of working the 60 or 70 hours a week that I used to. I'm lucky to manage the time I can focus enough just to write this blog and my articles. I have to take breaks, though, and sometimes it takes me a really long time to do a post or article. Especially when I'm not on pain meds. They fog my mind so I'm not as smart, but at least I can work until the piece is done.

I think the most difficult thing for me with my writing at the moment is editing. I've written the words, so reading them loses a bit of excitement for me, assuming anyone gets excited reading what I say. Then I have to really focus, avoiding letting my thought stray while I try to be ruthless with grammar and spelling. It doesn't always work, and I end up with mistakes, which drives me battier than usual.

One benefit of living in the moment, however, is spending time with Stimpy, my ferret who is at the end of his lifespan it seems. I'm not in a rush for that, that's for sure. For those who have been following his progress, he's been good since yesterday morning. He's not bleeding internally (as evidenced by normal stools the last few times), the famotidine seems to be helping, he's eating and drinking quite well, he's not grinding his teeth (he does that when he's in pain), and he's moving around fine still. Cancer with an ulcer, and yet he's still truckin'. He's one ferret that's determined to live. Maybe it's because he knows how much he's loved, and how devastated we're going to be when he's gone. We, meaning myself, my daughter, and our other ferret, Pepper.

Even Rabbit, one of the cats, is going to miss him. Dip (AKA Dippy Doo) is ambivalent, although she did give him a lick a couple of times. It's the other ferret she hates. In case you're wondering, her name comes from the white spot at the end of her tail that makes it look as though it was dipped into a can of white paint. There's no other white anywhere on her body. Rabbit is named because of his facial markings resembling those of, you guess it, a rabbit.

So, maybe I should be thankful that my life is where it's at, rather than bitching about it, huh? Well, damn, I like to get a good bitch on.