September 11 A Door I Went Through
Six years ago today I had a stroke, they told me. Half my body paralyzed. I lived in a hospital for 6 months, gave up my cat and apartment, put my belongings in storage, returned my nice Toyota van, my only debt, no longer needing it having used it to work as a courier for cash to live.
I focused on my formerly devalued self and art career in hospital. Photgraphize, an international magazine of incredible art, based in New York, the centre of the art world, took me on as part of the 1% of the thousands of applicants they accepted. I applied to Elephant Ear, a local arts emergency health organization with strict professional qualifications and they granted me some money to use to recover. I wrote and self published a personal history book as part of my refurbished self evaluation and subsequent practice and as part of my study of REBT using it as a means to aid my psychological health.
Other procrastinations, a consequence of abuse by narcissist family and lovers, were also dealt with. Such as years of neglected tax returns and cleaning house of shitty relationships, from the formerly intimate to my being spiritual financial prey of a yoga school.
A woman nursing in the hospital said, “God is healing you.” “Where was the fucker when I had the stroke?” was my response. I seem to be in a daily confrontation with the passive aggressive regarding my injury that prey upon the seemingly vulnerable to signal their virtue in support of the batshit beliefs of the narcissist.
I am subject to their resentment and lashing out and smear campaigns when I say, “No thanks”, to their unoffered and unrequired assistance with my doors and groceries.”Do you need some help?” is a welcome question. Then I can choose, which is my right. The virtue signalling creatures just grab my door in condescension and judgement, forcing me to find some other way to balance, or when I simply say, “please don’t grab the door I’m using it for balance”, they grab the door aggressively anyway, and wonder why I ignore them in the community as a consequence. Sometimes, like this past week, I am criticized as “a miserable fucker”, I respond that I find them aggressive, that’s why I don’t talk to them.
I rarely respond in kind as I don’t wish to behave as they do, as I don’t have their psychiatric disability.
In fact the neurologist, psychologist, physiotherapist, and occupational therapists found me only slightly disabled on their scale of disabilities, which include the cognitive. Apparently my I.Q. is excellent as is my ability to wipe my own ass. Oh. The sordid and squalid indignities of the hospital.
Months later, living independently in community and attending outpatient physio, an occupational therapist who liked to rub her breasts on my affected arm (David Cronenberg gets his ideas from meeting hospital staff), informed me that I would be driving within the year. I love to drive. My 1000 year old Scottish clan of peasant Islanders often took to the transportation of people, cargo and war, by land and most often the sea, it’s in my bones. Seasickness is unknown to me and I love the sensation of wind and speed. I have the typical injuries that go with that life, sciatic damage and a finger partially amputated by a client’s type 3 diabetic alzheimer’s dog. The WCB had sued and just then arrived enough money to buy another Toyota, fix it up, and get it equipped for special needs.
After 2 years of living indoors I returned to my first love, the mountains near my home in Calgary and I visit my big rocks regularly.
So was it fortunate or God’s will or unfortunate that I had a stroke? I rely on the advice of my psychotherapist Albert Ellis, who said, if you lose an arm (or anything) do everything you can to deal with it, then ignore it and focus on satisfactions. You may not have as many choices but you still have some. The purpose of life is satisfaction. Shitty things happen to nice people and nice things happen to shitty people. If it is to be, it’s up to me.
