Category Archives: Fortitude

What it doesn’t say in the fine print of life: Arthritis

Fortitude, patience, perseverance

It’s funny. I started writing this blog 12 years ago (that’s 2009 for the mathematically challenged), before “aging” kicked in. I was in my late 30’s, I was looking good and yeah, 12 years later, the world looks a whole lot different.

So, here I am just a few months shy of 50 and I have a complaint. Nobody bothered to hand me the fine print of life where it says, “By the way, when you’re about to turn 50, watch out for…”

NoooOOOooo. Why would life bother to at least give a heads up or something? It’s not like life has been plotting this entire time, making sure there is a proverbial rake right in front of me at any moment, no! It doesn’t do that! It’s not a sadistic thing just waiting for the right moment to make sure everyone knows I have an adversarial relationship with gravity, no!

Come to find out — those were the easy parts. When you’re young, everything works. (For most people. My pal Janet would heartily disagree, but those are special circumstances.)

I’m finding out that the whole aging process is kind of like parenting. There isn’t a guide or a book you can buy that will tell you how to cope with things that start hurting at random or prepare you for the moment that the pinkie on your left hand looks at you and says, “Peace out,” relinquishing any strength it once had. I’m looking at mine going, “Come on, man! You used to carry heavy bags of groceries up a flight of stairs for me single-fingeredly while I had my backpack and all kinds of other stuff to carry as well, and NOW you decide to give out? What the heck? I thought I could count on you…” (*snicker*…unintended pun.)

Don’t get me wrong. I have observed the elders in my family. My grandmother had Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). One of my cousins has it. As we all know, Janet (a.k.a. Pehpsee) had it almost her whole life. Author Goddess Auntie Lee has it and she’s a successful novelist. Auntie June had it. I’ve lost count of how many of my friends and family members suffer with it. Before I was diagnosed with it, I watched as the auto-immune disease ravaged their bodies and I have to admit until you have it, you don’t know what it’s like. All you know is that it’s painful and it sucks. To be honest, I don’t remember my grandmother’s hands ever being straight or ever seeing her casually gripping things like a glass or a cup like everyone else. I just remember seeing them folded over because she was unable to open her hands without assistance and overwhelming pain. When I received my RA diagnosis and my doctor told me I had bone loss in six out of ten fingers, all I could think of was me having my grandmothers hands. Nightmare fuel to say the least. Now, with a little bit of mileage on this road, I just wish that she would have had the goodies we have today to fight the dreaded RA. I even have pressure gloves that I wear when I sleep to make sure my fingers stay straight.

The biggest thing I am grateful for is that I have a great rheumatologist. It’s like a trip to Wakanda every appointment because he sounds like Chadwick Boseman in Black Panther. You should hear him say “methotrexate.” It’s the cutest thing ever. He’s very thorough and every time I have my virtual visits with him, he forgets to tilt the tablet so I end up looking at the top of his head while he’s making sure I take my folic acid every day so I don’t get liver damage from the “met-o-tress-ate”. It’s pure MCU every time, so it’s made my RA treatment fun.

Y’all know me. You know I always try to tackle these tougher moments with a sense of humor. Come on! I am sitting here smelling like BenGay (extra-strength, thank you very much) because I’m pretty positive I’ve used too much Voltaren for the week. Read the label, it has a stroke and heart attack warning on the side. (Oh, that’s fun.) And then there are the RA medications they show commercials for on TV that has a list of side effects longer than the benefits of the medication. (Oh, that’s fun too. But at least it’s not an E.D. commercial. Dear Gods, when are they ever going to stop?!?! Lordy, when I was younger and a Tampax commercial would come on in front of a boy I liked, I’d want to dive under the couch and DIE. Now, between the RA med commercials, we’ve got to hear about…well, you know. *eyeroll*)

To top it all off, I just love injecting myself with my RA medication. Man, when I was young, the only little pricks I had to deal with were the ones with delusions of adequacy, but nooOOOOOoooo, now that I’m older it’s an epi-pen kind of hypodermic that I get to shoot into the tops of my thighs or my tummy every other week. On second thought, I might have lucked out. Medications don’t have delusions of adequacy. They work or they don’t, but they most certainly don’t sulk if they fail. And with the Humira, I only have to depress the plunger for 10 seconds on the injection and then it’s over for another 14 days…yup, I’ve lucked out – the meds are definitely less trouble!

Speaking of trouble, what nobody ever describes is what RA pain is like because I think it’s different for everyone. For me — it’s a dull ache in my joints all the time except when a specific joint starts hollering “Over here! Hey! Hey! Help! Please help!” like C-3PO flagging down the Jawas on Tatooine. And let me tell you, there is no little astro-droid to help with repairs on this ride. You get out the Tylenol, the analgesic cream, deal with the issue and keep going.

CP3O Waving
This is an inflamed joint when you have RA. It’s going to keep waving at you in that annoying voice.

And then there’s “when the weather changes.” Okay, what they don’t tell you in the fine print of life is that humidity hurts when you have RA, especially if you live in the desert like I do. See, in the Mojave, we have 9 months of summer. Hot, dry and oh do my hands love it. But when the weather changes, I just want to curl up in bed with some heavy duty painkillers because everything hurts. The joints in my feet, ankles, knees, hands, wrists, elbows, shoulders…if it’s a joint, C-3PO won’t shut the *bleep* up because everything swells and gets really awful.

Another thing they don’t tell you in the fine print of life is that life doesn’t end once you get one of these auto-immune diseases. (Hey, I’m up to two, I can definitely speak on the topic.) Every morning, you get up, breathe in and out, take a Tylenol or Advil and once a week it’s a party for methotrexate night, then a shot every other week, two days after methotrexate night so the party never ends. (If you saw my pill drawer, you’d fall over. In the beginning I had just one bottle, my levothyroxine. Then came my anxiety meds. It was just the two of them, I swear! Then, I came back a few months later, looked in my drawer, and PILL BUNNIES! You can’t put two pill bottles next to each other. They breed like Catholic rabbits. Next thing you know you’re up to 10 bottles staring at you from the medicine cabinet! Pill bunnies are real. Carter who?)

I really do wish that someone would publish the fine print of life. That way bookworms like me could actually have a chance at getting through things without having to look them up or bother Auntie Lee for guidance.

And leave it to me to put the BenGay on my hands, then rub my eyes mid-post. LOL. So much for reading the fine print! (Book smarts are directly and inversely proportional to common sense, trust me. *facepalm*)

Thanks for sticking with me through this ramble. It’s been a while since I’ve written. I’m just proud I did. Writing is a muscle. You’ve got to keep doing it if you want to see improvement. LOL. (And if anyone wants to volunteer to be my editor, let me know. LOL.)

If you have the ability, please think of supporting the Arthritis Foundation. I was just tickled about the letter I got about my last donation…

My thank you letter from the Arthritis Foundation
Pehpsee Lives.

How long has it been since we did song of the day? Well, this one is for Janet who is in Heaven right now, running, jumping and climbing. You go, girl.

Learning to Fly

Learning to Fly

Fortitude, perseverance, PTSD, Recovery

Building new coping skills in the therapy room isn’t easy. For me, it’s an exercise in looking at my reactions and examining how I can approach things differently. Let’s just say that I grew up in a way that kept me on constant defense. I was so busy trying to protect myself that I spent most of my time mentally curled in a ball, my head covered, hoping I could save some little part of myself from being torn away while the rest of me was being torn apart.

When you don’t know or haven’t been shown how to properly process stimuli, the odds of responding rationally are slim. You go to what you know; getting in fighting stance, running away, or curling up in a ball, just waiting for it to be over. To try to navigate through it any other way is foreign. It’s like getting shoved out onto a frozen pond while wearing leather soled slippers and trying to walk back to shore, just something you know is not going to end well. But that’s where you suck it up, surrender and go into the treatment room and re-train the brain to cope properly with it.

From my perspective (which I’m finding out is more and more unique by the day), I’ve learned that most people live life at eye-level. They see what is immediately around them: front, back, right, left. But rarely do I see people who embrace living life in three distinct dimensions. In other words, they don’t look up or think of what is below them.  It almost seems like they’re missing an entire dimension of life.

Remember, my world is logic based, so this is my “natural” way of looking at things. 

Consider this:

If your heart were at the point of origin where the x, y, and z axes intersect, where do you really live? Thanks to gravity, we can’t fly so, “up” really isn’t a natural option. From my viewpoint, we really only actively live life in the space between the X and Y axes.  It’s almost like there’s no Z at all.

To me, the only people who really live in three dimensions are divers and pilots because they have apparatus that allow them to break the mold and allow an active Z-space existence, but still even with those exceptions, the time spent living a true three-dimensional life is limited.

So, let’s go back to being curled up in a ball, surrounded. From that viewpoint, life ceases to be at eye level, it’s ground level, nose-to-nose with the family pet. “Up” definitely becomes a non-option as it’s reinforced that you are where you belong – down or being crushed down by everything around you. Without any other input or stimuli over a span of years, the normalization of the down state becomes the lens that the world is viewed through.

The down state is what I refer to as “being given gravel sandwiches,” and it’s a unique perspective to have while going through PTSD therapy because it is a firm recognition of the down state and gives it a visual reference. It’s basically sitting underneath the banquet table of life, living off of emotional table scraps. It sucks and is no way to truly live. It’s survival mode, nothing more.

As I’ve been progressing through the process of re-training my brain and learning new coping skills, I’m finally able to live life at eye-level and I have to say, I love the view.  However, that doesn’t mean I’m not constantly thinking of living life three dimensionally.

We all know the magnificent revelation I had when I learned what “don’t take it personally” really meant and it really baked my noodle. Now I’m on to a different phrase, “rise above it” and my most hated of phrases, “get over it.”

(Please, for the love of God, stop telling people with PTSD to “get over it”; unless you have our illness, you have no f’ing clue what you’re talking about. Until you get educated on the illness — heaven forbid you try to walk a mile in our shoes — try being a little more understanding.)

Moving on, as I’ve stated, UP (thanks to gravity) really isn’t a natural option unless I’m in a wetsuit, gearing up for a dive, then of course I’m in a naturally three dimensional medium. Notice the literal logic. (Remember, I don’t “get” jokes because I’m very literal). So, you guessed it, “rising above something” was always answered with a very literal “how?” Laugh, it’s okay.

You don’t know how lucky you have it if you take knowing things like “don’t take it personally” and “rise above it” for granted. My universe is rooted in logic so all of those wonderful coping skills you take for granted are things I have to work really hard to get. Ya know, I can project trend three to five years ahead of the curve, I can see the connectedness of all things, I have talents that people would kill for and among all of the puzzles I can solve and all of the amazing things I can do, being human and human interaction are BY FAR the hardest things for me to handle.

Recently, I’ve felt like I’ve been completely surrounded by ignorance, bigotry, pride, greed, and just all-around ugliness. In my universe, to reject the idea of learning another language or refusing to learn about a different culture just offends me. To reject philosophy and the great thinkers, or to dismiss the sciences, or refusing to help people, or worse, being forced to live in an uncultured world is complete anathema to me because I don’t know of a moment in my existence that I didn’t value learning something new. I don’t know of a moment in my life that I didn’t appreciate art or music or debate. How many more facts can people twist until no truth remains? How did we come to live in a world where stupidity is a celebrated trait? No matter what I seem to do, I feel crushed by the ignorance that seems to permeate everything like an inescapable, choking sickness. Like Neo surrounded by Smiths in Reloaded’s Burly Brawl, I’m left trying my level best to take things one at a time and not feel completely overwhelmed, but it’s hard.

 

While you might have known that the best way to get out of a situation like that would be to “rise above it”, I most certainly didn’t, and I have wasted countless hours on trying to solve, change minds, anything and everything to keep everything at eye-level under control, coping with all of it.

It wasn’t until I was lying in bed last night doing my pre-bedtime meditation that I found an answer. With my anxiety through the roof after being triggered earlier in the day on top of trying to keep focused and steady all day, I was exhausted. When I began to meditate, I was just trying to get calm and still, but then my brain threw me a curve ball, visualizing being surrounded on all sides, then daring me to find an escape route. In the moment, it seemed the only way escape was possible was to go UP. Now, as I’ve stated, while UP really isn’t feasible in the literal world, I will be damned if it isn’t in the mind. So, I basically gave myself the ability to rise and get above what was troubling me.  And DUH! I could look down and see everything, the connections, the trends, the why’s and the how’s all spread out beneath me. My brain did it all on its own and I couldn’t explain to you how I got there, all I know is that my mind presented a solution to me that I hadn’t previously considered.

It was a powerful moment, giving myself the ability to fly. To take my consciousness out of the fight at eye-level and look at it from above, rising above it and giving me the ability to examine it, or better yet, leave it behind. It made me feel better, more in control of my emotional state and I finally had an easy time going to sleep. I think I might have even smiled as I drifted away.

So, if you’re battling PTSD or your world gets overwhelming, you might try learning to fly. It helped me learn how to “rise above things” and no matter what, I now have a unique new coping skill based on a very old expression that I defined in my own way. While it’s not the assistance of a PTSD dog (that I want so badly), I found a way through.

Everyone’s PTSD is different. How each of us find ways to conquer our illness is up to us. The most important thing is that we stay in the fight, step by step finding our way into the light.

It’s been a while since I’ve done Song of the Day, so let’s go with “O” by Coldplay.

 

 

 

 

Bramasole West

Fortitude, Home, patience, perseverance, Recovery, Restoration/\Decoration

After almost five years and an abundance of obstacles later, I am finally in my own place again.

I’m grateful and thrilled to have four walls that allow me to fully decompress and recharge. Looking around, I believe this place has the potential to become a very special space.

To give you a proper visualization/idea of this new place, if you have seen Under The Tuscan Sun, it is pretty much how Katherine describes Bramasole at the beginning of the film: “Run down, but redeemable.”

The previous tenants of this condo were, (how does one put this gently?) maliciously careless with almost every square inch of the property. They and their canine companion left behind massive holes in the drywall (sheetrock to you Southern people out there), destroyed carpet, demolished baseboards, broken plumbing, undusted doorframes, beneath the fridge yuck, enough mildew, mold, discolored grout and Drano damaged sink (among other issues) to make Happy Quinn on Scorpion go “Not good.”

Because of time constraints and other issues, I had to move in before the completion of all the repairs which means that, yep, you guessed it, it hasn’t seen the final deep clean you would expect to be done before moving in to a new rental; leaving me with moldy toilet tanks, splatter painted toilet bowls and all kinds of fun smells to tackle on my own until the repairs are completed.

Welcome to Bramasole West. Like it’s namesake in Italy, it just needs some tender, loving care.

But tender, loving care was the very last thing I thought of when I walked in to see the unscrubbed tub, the dirty grout and so forth after an exhausting day of moving. At that point, I sat down on the newly-laid wood floors and cried. Then, before I became completely hysterical, I promptly got a hotel room for the night.

Laying in bed at 2am trying desperately to calm my 20-on-a-10-scale triggered PTSD, I remembered what Frances said about Bramasole upon moving in:

Buyer’s remorse is a very common affliction among new homeowners. Just because you have an acid stomach and a sudden urge to weep, that doesn’t mean you’ve made a mistake.

Everybody knows old houses have their quirks. Especially 300-year-old houses.

I have inherited 10,000 empty wine bottles, one grape, every issue of “La Nazione” printed in 1958, and assorted previous “tenants.”

The trick to overcoming buyer’s remorse is to have a plan.

Pick one room and make it yours.

Go slowly through the house.

Be polite,
introduce yourself,
so it can introduce itself to you.

So, here we go. Bramasole West, meet everyone. Everyone meet Bramasole West. I am hoping after the final repairs are done, a cleaning service will come in to attempt the undertaking of cleaning up what is left of what the previous tenants left behind. If not, it’s going to be me and enough cleaning supplies to choke a metaphorical horse, going room by room, introducing myself, so it can introduce itself to me.

I am open to advice (that’s what the comments section is for) and donations so I can hire the proper people and/or buy the mountain of cleaning supplies required before I can even THINK of bringing in my sister in to start the interior design. (If Nan saw the condition of this place right now, she’d have a coronary! So, I am waiting to bring her in AFTER the repairs are finished and it’s been properly cleaned and disinfected.)

This is definitely a case of “Restoration BEFORE Decoration” because the very first time I went to the bathroom, the toilet overflowed as a “welcome home gift,” leaving me scrambling, trying to prevent water from seeping into the cracks above the tile and into the walls. Well, at least I don’t have an owl in the house or have to witness a washing machine being electrocuted by a storm.

With the right attitude, it’s doable. It’s a great cautionary tale of how NOT to treat a rental. Most of all, I am going to treat it as what it is: an obstacle to overcome. And when I leave, I hope this place is infinitely more beautiful than how I found it. That’s what having a restorative strength is all about.

And just in case you feel like donating to this daunting project, here ya go: 

If you want to send a mop or a bucket or grout cleaner, let me know in the comments so I can tell you where to send it!

For song of the day, from the Under The Tuscan Sun  soundtrack, here’s “Buyer’s Remorse.”

 

 

The Death of a Make-Up Bag

Fortitude, patience, perseverance, PTSD, Recovery

A couple of weeks ago, I was in my bathroom in the midst of my morning ablutions when I looked down and noticed my make-up bag.  Now, my make-up bag is similar to any other woman’s make-up bag…it’s filled with lotion, concealer, foundation, powder, eye shadow, blusher, brushes of all shapes and sizes and of course a few liner pencils, a sharpener and what my face is most famous for: my cake of black eyeliner with which I create my signature cat-eye look (that has kept people from asking my age and swearing I’m in my 30’s). But as I looked at that old bag, I realized that it had become time for a new one.

As with anything we carry, eventually our baggage is going to begin to show signs of wear, and my make-up bag was no exception. Years of unintentionally spilled loose powder had colored its once-white interior in a flesh colored hue, eye shadow brushes in-between cleanings had added highlight and shadow on top of the powder stains. While the exterior of the silver Clinique bag showed little signs of wear, the inside had (to say the least) taken quite a beating.  It survived the end of my marriage, my college education, a new relationship, then the death of that relationship, several moves and countless trips to the therapist for after-session touch-ups. There are few places I have been that my old make-up bag hasn’t tagged along for the ride.  And all the while, its exterior never showed signs of wear while the inside most certainly did. It got washed, dried, cleaned out and cleaned up so many times, but alas, some stains just wouldn’t come out.

After years of service, that old bag had finally given out. The silver vinyl exterior finally began to crumble, separate from the fabric and tear apart. The insides were stained and to the point of being unsalvageable. And there I stood, looking at it, denying that it was time for it to be replaced. “Oh, it’ll last one more week.” “Next paycheck, I’ve got to go to the mall for new blusher, so I’ll grab one then,” then “Crap, can’t afford the new blusher, it’ll wait until next paycheck,” and the excuses just kept coming until finally a business trip forced me into the obvious…my old bag wasn’t going to be able to make the trip. While it had held more girly crap than I can ever imagine during its lifetime, that old bag looked at me as if to say, “Sorry boss, I’m afraid this is the end of the line,” as a huge patch of silver vinyl cracked, tore away and drooped sadly off the side.

It was then that something occurred to me, kind of like a lightning bolt out of the blue. I looked at myself in the mirror and said,

“I’ve got to learn how to keep dying.”

Now, before you flip out, the phrase “I’ve got to learn how to keep dying” is a metaphor for the fact that we have to let old parts of ourselves die to embrace the new parts of ourselves.

I got the phrase from Finding Joe:

 

And with that in mind, there I was in the mirror, reminding myself to keep dying.

I was out of excuses to keep such a stranglehold on the past I have survived.

I realized that, in a way, that torn up old make-up bag was a metaphor for myself. Me trying desperately to carry things I shouldn’t be carrying. Me battered, tattered and doing my level best to put up a good front to hide the inside which had seen too many traumas, too many mistakes and too many hurtful things. Me dying to let go of all of the things that had caked themselves to my insides until I was unrecognizable, even to myself.

So, like Campbell says, we have to learn how to keep dying in order to keep evolving. No death, no life. That metaphorical death – of letting old things go – is just one more way to be reborn, to evolve and to change.

It’s like Doc Kat said to me so many times,

“Change isn’t only possible, it’s probable.”

It was only after I had reminded myself to “die” and let go, did I reach under the sink and bring out a new Clinique make-up bag that had been a gift-with-purchase that I had forgotten about completely. With a bright orange zipper and cheerful pink and yellow flowers, there was a “changing of the guard” so to speak, heralded by the migration of my MAC compact, brushes, liners, blusher tin and the remainder of the contents of the old bag, into the new one. What made the transition even more poignant was that I made a conscious decision to let go of even more, ridding myself of a few items that should have taken a hike a while ago, like the emergency Cover Girl concealer I was carrying for those times the circles under my eyes were so black I looked like Jenny in Forrest Gump right before she stepped onto the railing of the balcony but thought twice about jumping.

After I finished the transfer, I looked at the torn up, empty bag, I said, “Thank you for everything you’ve carried for me,” and placed it into my bathroom trash can to go out the next trash day. I then picked up my new make-up bag, placed it on my bathroom shelf, smiled at my reflection, turned out the lights and headed to the kitchen for breakfast.

Like the song by REM goes, “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.” Yeah, that happens after you end the world as you know it –  to move on to a new one that you create for yourself. Like Campbell says:

We must be willing to get rid of the life we planned,
so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

Rabbit Nike’s

Fortitude, Funny, patience, perseverance, school

Photo credit: Fresh to death. Khovd Museum

Photo credit: Fresh to death. Khovd Museum.

Last week there was an article in the news on a 1,500-year-old mummy in what looks like a pair of Adidas running shoes. If you didn’t get to see it, the above photo are what those ‘supposed Adidas’ look like.

When I saw the article, it made me think about my first semester at UNLV. My marriage had just gone belly up and I was trying to readjust to a life on my own. I found myself in Doc T’s Composition II (Argumentative Essay) class, a 37-year-old surrounded by students young enough to be my children. After writing almost every day to chronicle my experiences, I suddenly found myself knee-deep in schoolwork. I had completely slacked off on writing in my blog as I was researching and preparing to fight the battle of creationism versus evolution for my final 10-page paper that I would eventually title “Centerfield.” While I was procrastinating on getting my writing done, I came in here to unwind and air out a few wild theories that I couldn’t really put in an academic paper. The result? A pair of “Rabbit Nikes.” 

As I re-read the post, I laughed out loud a few times. Man, the things I come up with. 

Enjoy.

I like to think of evolution in terms of a pair of “Rabbit Nikes.”  So let’s use our imaginations and think about a caveman for a second, and here’s a visual to help out…

Wait, on second thought, let’s not…because all of the pictures I found on cavemen or Neanderthals…well, the pictures all have everyone’s “whatevers” hanging out and, no, I’m just not gonna go there.  No pictures of some caveman’s willow on my blog!

But that does illustrate my point quite the bit…let’s imagine our very nude caveman walking along.  He steps down and gets a sharp rock in the sole of his foot.  Now in today’s society, we’re liable to hop up and down like a jackrabbit hollering about the pain, but to Mr. Caveman…well, that’s normal.  Sighing at the fact that he’s taken one more sharp rock in the foot, he reaches down and pulls the rock from his foot and keeps going, accepting that it’s always going to be like that. He doesn’t even consider another option.

Now, let’s switch to a different caveman, same situation. He’s walking along, minding his own business when he gets a sharp rock in the bottom of his foot, but this time instead of sighing about it, removing the rock and going about his business, he figures he’s about had enough of his only means of transportation constantly being hurt by things on the ground that he inadvertently steps on (or in).  Just then, a rabbit quickly scampers by. He sees the rabbit…he’s hungry, so he figures, “Hey!  Food!”  (I’ll leave out the quip that the rabbit was probably the first rendition of “Fast Food”…go ahead and groan, it’s ok.) He chases down the rabbit, kills it, skins it and has a really good lunch…BUT then he looks at the leftovers…bones, fur (if he’s not eaten them in the process)…all sorts of stuff…so, he looks at the cut in his foot, looks at the fur, feels how soft it is and figures out that “Hey, that fur could be protecting my foot!”   So he takes the skin, wraps it around his foot, uses the remaining bones to fasten the fur together so it’ll stay on his foot, then gets up and walks on, not worrying about rocks on the ground anymore…our friend the caveman invents the first “shoe” of sorts, a “Rabbit Nike.”

Now, let’s put the shoeless caveman next to the guy with the Rabbit Nike’s on. Is the caveman with the “Rabbit Nike’s” going to be able to go a further distance when he walks?  Odds are he will.  Odds are that he’s got better survival skills than our caveman who just pulled the rock out of his foot and moved on.

Think about it. You’re a caveman. If you hurt your feet, how are you supposed to hunt and gather when you can’t walk?  Now I’ll concede that the caveman foot of prehistoric times probably had the sole of a Doc Marten because their bare feet were their only mode of transportation; the skin of the foot was probably extremely calloused and made to survive a sharp rock or two.  But now we’ve got this guy with the Rabbit Nike’s on…he invented something that he probably put on his girl, then on his children.  What happens to the feet of that family?  Odds are they got softer, because there was not a lot of damage being done to them; the damage being absorbed by the fur and skins that encased their feet.  They got to walk farther in inclement weather, (snow, ice) and generally survived a lot better.  That is a great case of evolution.  The next generations of the family of the Rabbit Nike inventor unwittingly had caused a change in their feet, with less damage being done to the foot and fur-lined insulation cutting down on illness, that means they could hunt and gather more and enjoy a better quality of life, thus leading to the dominance of the Rabbit Nike-wearing caveman.  That singular innovation passes down through the generations, changing the foot over millennia to what we see today when we look down at our feet to get out of bed, all because some caveman was sick and tired of getting a sharp rock in the sole of his foot and was smart enough to use the remains of his lunch to protect them.

Now while I’m using a male pronoun for the caveman, it could have easily been a cavewoman who invented the shoe. Actually, I’ve got odds that a woman invented the shoe because, I mean, come on, girls and shoes? Yeah…that whole thing had to start somewhere.

This, of course, is followed by the evolution of the first shoe salesman:

”You like fur?  You like no rock or thorn in foot?  You like to run fast to catch mammoth for big meal or run away faster when big cat tries to eat you?  Shoe made from rabbit.  Rabbit fast.  You be faster wearing Rabbit Nike.”

Evolution, isn’t it grand?

I’m sorry, I had to do it, it was too funny to pass up.

The Antidote to Numbness.

Fortitude, PTSD, Recovery

Today, let’s just say it out, I’ve been feeling awful. My session yesterday had me wake up this morning and feel like I had just taken a quadruple shot of novocaine straight to the chest. Numb. Absolutely wretched. Like some jackass came in and just sucked all the hope out of my body and left me for dead. But PTSD therapy is like that.  What did we say?

I adore my brain's personal trainer.

That said, in the overall, therapy has been going well. No, scratch that, it’s been going just freaking awesome. My therapist says that I’m one of the hardest working clients she has. I never miss an appointment, I’m never late for my appointments, I do my homework, I apply it to my life instantaneously and I refuse to stop, give in or give up until I’m healthy again.

I walk into her office and say, “THIS is what’s bothering me, and I don’t want it to bother me anymore” and we rip off the band-aid, pour alcohol directly into the wound, break out the wire brush and clean out all the crap that’s holding me back. You really don’t get how much I want to feel better. I have things to do, a world to conquer, and I will be damned if I let a set of triggers caused by a bunch of ignorant assholes to get in my way. I’m just done with allowing them, AND MYSELF, to be the biggest obstacles in my own path.

I’m aggressive with my treatment because I want to get better. I’ve squandered too many years on allowing myself to be treated badly and outright treating myself badly because I thought that I didn’t deserve love, that I didn’t deserve good things to happen to me, that I was a discard, that I wasn’t worth the skin that was holding my bones in place. I lived for over 40 years apologizing for breathing because I (wrongly) assumed that everything was my fault because I was so used to being the scapegoat and the target for maliciousness by people with some serious issues.

Well, guess what? That’s a bunch of bullshit. That’s someone else’s shoulder yoke and heavy buckets, their emotional baggage and THEIR issues that I was just oh so happy to run up, pick up and bolt it to my skeleton so I never dropped it. And then I proceeded to carry it. Like a moron, I carried it for YEARS!!! Baggage that wasn’t mine to carry…that didn’t even have anything to do with me, and there I was carrying it.

Ugh. *facepalm*

What a damn waste of time. That’s the thing about being an emotional baggage bellhop, the bags aren’t yours to carry and the tips suck. The person you’re carrying it for isn’t going to say thank you, and newsflash, they don’t even CARE if you’re carrying it! They don’t even KNOW! But there you are, dragging it along like some schmuck that doesn’t know any better! When the ton of bricks hit me that it didn’t matter if I was standing in the vicinity or not, people are going to say what they’re going to say, they’re going to do what they’re going to do, and it doesn’t make a flying fart in space of a difference who’s there, they are going to spew their bullshit anyway. This unique tidbit brought to you by the phrase “Don’t take it personally” because that’s the working definition. Hello. 43 years to learn what that phrase meant. *facepalm*

In college, Doc Cat clued me in that I was carrying stuff I didn’t need to carry. Remember how I struggled with that? Well, guess what, thanks to Ferris and my Aunt Lee, I got on the phone, found a therapist and promptly took KP’s advice and promptly went to work putting the serious hammer to nail to build my bridge to stomp on and get the fuck over it ALL. I got to the point where I said, “Enough already. If I’m supposedly SO brilliant, as smart and talented as everyone says I am, then you know what? I can take this on and win.”

So I got into the therapy room and I went to work. And I’ve working my ass off for two hours every Thursday for the last six months. And a lot of the time, yeah, it’s hard. Some days I get to slack off and laugh. But there have been a LOT of days where I cry inconsolably. But you know what? I’m committed to the process and that’s the WORK. You want easy? Screw you, get back in the corner and wallow in your self-pity. Settle for living with the pain. Be lazy and do NOTHING about it. You wanna feel better? Then DO THE WORK. Believe in something, the very best something that you would never in a million years believe could happen to you. See yourself the way you’ve always wanted to: strong, vibrant, desirable and most of all, loved. Loved for every quirk, idiosyncrasy, genius moment, goofy yet charming chortle and clumsy fall.

I knew walking in and committing to treatment that it was going to be hard, that change only happens when you want it so badly that you can taste it in every breath, that you don’t want the constant anxiety anymore, that you’re tired of getting triggered by some jackass not worthy of your time, much less for you to waste more time dwelling on said jackass.

I didn’t go into the therapy room to start this journey thinking it was going to be easy all the time. Had I assumed it was going to be easy, I’d still be some strung-out doodah letting some guy treat me like dirt. Or allow some jealous herd of cows to pass judgement on me because I just happen to be extremely smart and pretty to boot. By the way ladies, it’s not a crime if boys like me. I’m actually pretty fucking special, so I’m sorry if you have a problem with that, but that’s YOUR problem, not mine. Carry your own fucking luggage for a change because it’s not my fault you have self-esteem issues because boys don’t look at you the way they look at me.

No, that’s not who I am anymore, thank you very much, and I’ll be damned if I ever let anyone make me feel like I’m not worthy of being loved, adored and goddamned *worshipped* for the really awesome person I am ever again. Hey, like my therapist says, “You have to love yourself first and best, only then can someone love you the way you want to be loved.”

So, as I was sitting here at my desk, feeling awful and numb and just wretched, I was listening to the Under the Tuscan Sun Soundtrack and I remembered what Diane Lane’s character said in the middle of the renovations to her villa in Tuscany. There is only so much work you can do on your house, your soul and your PTSD before you just have to GET OUT.

I happen to live in one of the most exciting cities on the planet. It’s Vegas for fuck’s sake! So you know what I’m going to do tonight? I’m going to finish working, I’m going to go to the gym, then I’m going to go home, get ready, and then I’m just going to get out and see the city. Take a walk, go visit the conservatory at the Bellagio, I DON’T GIVE A SHIT where I end up going! I’m going out!

Thank you Christophe Beck! Without hearing “Roma” go off in my headset, I’d still be sitting here feeling horrible.

Now, I have a plan. Thank. The. Maker.

And if a hot guy asks me out, I’m saying YES.

Here, be inspired.

Guardian Down.

Bullies, Fortitude, patience, perseverance, PTSD, Recovery, relationships

A lot of you know why I write with such passion about PTSD: I don’t ever want anyone to go through what I did. It’s the reason I refused to have children. I couldn’t justify exposing a perfectly innocent child to the cruelties of the world.

I will fight against child abuse, neglect and bullying until the last breath goes out of my body. No one should have to live with what I do: nightmares of cruel children doing their best to drive me to suicide.

I rarely write about my childhood in a positive light because, to be honest, there wasn’t much light to be found. Even though I would search high and low for a moment of respite, it didn’t happen often. I got maybe about three hours a day where I wasn’t getting knocked into the dirt and expected to get back up and wear a smile to hide the agonizing pain I was constantly in.

That’s what always amazes me. People come to me now and say, “I remember your beautiful smile.” As the great Robin Williams once said, “The brightest smiles hide the worst pain.”

By the time I hit high school, I was lucky enough to garner the assistance of who I now call “My guardians.” Rebel elements themselves that didn’t fit into the status quo, but found solace in each other enough to garner the safety in numbers needed to ensure survival in that kind of hostile environment. I don’t kid when I say I grew up with some pretty treacherous animals while carefully traversing poison-filled school hallways. Like one of my friends recently put it, “I remember this incredibly sweet girl that never seemed to get a fair shake.” During that time, I was forced to accept that “a fair shake” was just something that I was never going to find in life, so I did my best to keep my head down, endure the daily mental beatings and spiritual eviscerations, always hoping one day that life would get better.

What I didn’t expect is that this band of brothers would come to my aid, protecting me when they could, and for a brief, sweet year, they treated me with respect and gave me my very first taste of acceptance. It was heavenly and for that brief time, I felt better. That is until they graduated and left me alone once again to fend for myself against individuals I can only describe as putrid souls without a shred of decency or mercy.

One of my guardians, the strongest of all of them, stuck around and still watched over me and became a powerful influence on my life from that time on. Because everyone gets a pseudonym here, I am going to bestow onto him the highest honor I can, and that’s to name him after my favorite book character EVER. Sherrilyn Kenyon’s biggest badass in her Dark Hunter series: Acheron, or “Ash” for short, after the river of woe that runs through Hades.

Now for those of you who read Sherrilyn Kenyon, you know that Ash is just all that and a plate of cookies. Dark hair, swirling silver eyes and “a predator’s lope” that (thanks to his Aunt Epithymia) made everyone who came near him want to touch him. Okay, he melts underwear at 30 paces but gives off such a dangerous vibe that you know not to mess with him. But if you know the character, you know he’s Mr. Severe PTSD because of a lifetime of atrocities that make him unable to even get remotely close to anyone. That’s why I adore the character so much, because I fully understand what years of unending cruelty will do to the soul.

My real-life version of Ash is right on par with the book description. Okay, let’s break it down: his IQ is 30 points higher than mine. That fact alone should tell you to just bow down because a 169 is something you must bow down to. To me, that’s a godlike intellect that I respect without hesitation. I live in 30 point envy because holy gods, he is just off-the-charts brilliant. As we know, the one thing I prize over all else is intellect, and Ash has got it for miles. Talking to him is like paradise on Earth because we move from topic to topic flawlessly, fluidly, and I am able to sample the sweetness of an equal, kindred intellect like sweet wine flowing across my tongue. His presence is so entirely heady that it steals my breath. It always has.

I remember watching him walk into a room when we were kids and feeling my knees absolutely buckle under me because to me he was (and still is) THE most gorgeous man I have ever seen, and trust me, I’ve dated my share of hotties in my day. Ash puts them all to shame without even an effort. As a kid, I remember turning around to see his topaz eyes staring into mine and me instantly melting because, just, just, just WOW. His essence, mind, body and soul, was just overwhelming. 25 years later? Still, just one look and I go from jaw-gape to MELT. “Aunt Epithymia” did her job, that’s all I can say. His unparalleled beauty aside, I remember that he and I would play word association games to challenge each other’s vocabulary: a war of bigger and bigger words would go flying back and forth until I would finally give up because he never failed to beat me every time, but we would always walk away laughing. He NEVER once made me feel dumb or inadequate or anything else except special. If there was a singular moment of joy from my childhood, Ash was it. And we never went on a single date. Ever. But at least I can admit now that from the very first moment I saw him while walking across an asphalt practice field, it was love at first sight, and it would endure, unspoken and unrequited, for decades.

Now, I know you’re going to ask why I’m suddenly going on a dote-fest and out of nowhere telling you about Ash:

Last weekend, I got a text from Ash wishing me happy birthday. It was the first time I had spoken to him in over a year. So, what do you think I did? Like a jerk, I started yelling at him with “Where the hell have you been?” “What the hell is going on?” “You jerk!” “I’ve been worried sick!” Oh, I just absolutely went green rage monster on him, that was until he knocked me over with a ton of bricks. Upon the screen of my phone popped a picture of a wrist with a bright pink scar across it. One look and I knew: Ash has my illness. If that’s not enough to knock the wind out of you, I don’t know what will. The guy who watched over me, protected me, loved me from afar, who always adored me no matter what anyone said or did, has PTSD.

My therapist has been challenging me for weeks to find some way for me to look at myself through the eyes of others so I can understand my importance as a person. But there’s a bigger reason I’m writing about this now. While I now understand what my therapist wanted me to see, this is my way of doing the same for Ash. He needs to see how I see him and how much I believe that he is worthy of being loved. Technically, it is called the inability to receive love and it’s just part and parcel of the illness, borne of inadequate nurturing during development. I have it too. It sucks. Basically you have to learn to raise yourself because some people aren’t equipped with nurturing skills. Oddly enough, when Ash and I interact with the rest of the world? We trust no one. But when we sit down together and talk, all of our trust and intimacy issues vanish and it becomes the most naturally honest and open communication I have ever known. I think that says something pretty friggin’ huge because we light each other up like fireworks and we make each other feel so much better, which is extremely healing and good for our therapy process.

But when that picture flashed onto the screen of my phone and I found out about his illness, my heart shattered into a thousand little bitty pieces. I sat down and began to cry uncontrollably. Of all the people in the universe, why God why would you do that to someone so perfect? I mean when he smiles, he shines like the sun! When he speaks, brilliance flows from him like water! His heart is golden, his soul more precious than anything I could ever describe, and he’s in pain all the time like I am. Why? Damn it, I can understand how and why it happened to me, I get it, I accept it, I’m fine with it, I go into the therapy room and deal with it. But why him? WHY???????? I would endure what I went through a million times over again to save him from this, but here we are and I can’t help but want throats for what was done to him. Damn it! Bring it here! Beat on me! I can take it! But you leave Ash alone!!!!

Come to find out, the pathology of our illness is IDENTICAL. We both suffer from severe childhood onset PTSD. In the 25 years we have been apart, our collective suicide attempts total 13. Four for him, nine for me. Remember, PTSD affects 5.3 million Americans a year and I am convinced that the damage done to Gen X by our selfish, abusive, twisted, absentee Baby Boomer parents is going to reach epidemic proportions by the end of the decade because PTSD and suicide are inextricably linked. Trust me, this much non-stop pain will drive you to some severe lengths to make it stop. It starts at addiction and usually ends up in suicide. The only thing you can really do is get a really good therapist, grab your bootstraps and get into the ring to re-fight all of your battles that gave you the illness in the first place in order to FINALLY learn the proper coping skills you should have in childhood. Only then are we able to finally put the trauma to bed.

In most cases for Gen X’ers with childhood onset PTSD, we were forced to learn to raise ourselves because our parents just didn’t exist. Can’t blame them, it was the 80’s, it was a big party. Millions of parents across the U.S. said, “Screw the kids, they can take care of themselves.”  Well played Boomers, thanks for defining “cruel”, “selfish” and “negligent” for us.

I go into the therapy room this afternoon knowing that one of my beloved guardians is down and I am powerless to help him except to encourage him and support him while he fights for his life. I can’t transfuse the hope that resides in my veins into his, the illness doesn’t work that way. But at least he’s in treatment. While I’m just a machine in the therapy room mercilessly crushing my traumas and progressing by leaps and bounds, he’s just begun. But I will be damned if he does this alone.

Today’s song of the day is from the guys who gave us the Eternal Sophomore theme song, “Marching On”… Just for you Ash, OneRepublic’s “Feel Again.”

 

The Importance of Excellent Spelling Skills

education, Fortitude, Funny, IMC, perseverance, Work, writing

The Eternal Sophomore Tackles Spelling
SHCOOL is painted along the newly paved road leading to Southern Guilford High School on Drake Road Monday, August 9, 2010, in Greensboro, N.C. (AP Photo/News & Record, Joseph Rodriguez)

Oscar Wilde in the 1895 play “The Importance of Being Earnest” once said, “To lose one parent, […] may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both seems like carelessness.”

While Wilde uses that quote to illustrate the sometimes ludicrous nature of “high” society, it has a more powerful message when you look at it through the eyes of a writer.

In today’s instant gratification, instant information culture, the amount of time we have to create copy/content has become extremely limited. Writing on deadline is not only a journalistic ideal, but a mandatory part of SEO writing as well. The unrelenting demand for content has come with a terrible side effect, the loss of accurate spelling, punctuation and sentence structure.

Every morning I start my day with a look through multiple digital media outlets. I start with The Wall Street Journal and New York Times; make my way down the coast to Atlanta and CNN; then to the West for The LA Times; across the pond to BBC News from London; then round out my digital globetrotting with the Associated Press and Reuters’ websites to read the breaking news. After that, it’s checking my local news on all three broadcast networks and finally sitting down with a print copy of the local newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal or “RJ.” Yeah, I consume a lot of news before I have finished breakfast.

The one thing that I have repeatedly noticed? Typos everywhere.

In our mad rush to sate audiences with fresh content, we’ve either forgotten to proofread or we have become far too reliant on spell-check. I catch typos with frightening regularity in large publications like The New York Times and USA Today. Every time I spot a typo or a fumbled sentence, I sit back and ask two questions:

Doesn’t the writer realize that typos damage the credibility of their story? Don’t they realize that they are damaging the reputation of their publication each time they don’t thoroughly check their work?

I’d hate to think that most news stories are entered through a smartphone, but odds are that’s closer to the truth than I even realize – because I have caught some errors that could only be attributed to auto-correct.

The argument can be made by those who think the typo is “okay” that people are lazy and don’t read past the headline. To that I ask, what about those who do read past the headline? Should the people actually reading the entire article be forced to put up with atrocious spelling and expect their work to be called “credible”?

My answer? Each time I see a typo, I can’t help but think that writers are dropping the ball and not doing their jobs right.

One of my favorite sayings is:

“Spell well, write well, communicate unforgettably.”

It’s pretty simple, right? It just says that when you spell well, your writing has a fighting chance to reach and impact an audience. But then again, I may be asking too much. After all, as a wise friend of mine once said, “Not everyone speaks Sheri,” meaning that I communicate differently than most everyone else.

I wrote script and cursive and read aloud from National Geographic by the time I was four and then wrote my first lines of computer code by the time I was eight. But it all boiled down to one thing, I have always known the importance of spelling. The reason that I began reading so early is because I was taught to sound out my words, using phonics to make sure I was pronouncing words correctly. When it came time to write, I used the inverse, sounding out the words to ensure their proper spelling on the page. Over my lifetime spelling has become my stock in trade, so when I see a typo or witness the desecration of the English language on social media, I cringe. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Shouldn’t we all be cringing when we see a typo? I would think so, but maybe that’s just me.

When you write, you have to make sure that your word usage and spelling are accurate. I’m often told that I own “The Vocabulary of Awesome” because I use words that other people usually don’t. The truth is that really I don’t own “The Vocabulary of Awesome,” I just make sure that when I write that I use the perfect words to convey my thoughts or emotions. I have no fear of saying “I don’t know”, so going to a dictionary to look up a word’s proper spelling or definition doesn’t bother me one bit. At least I know that when I write, I can at least reach the bar of good spelling skills, which in the end, gives me outstanding credibility. (It makes me fun to read, too.)

Right now, in schools all over the world, they are taking handwriting out of the curriculum. To me, that is tantamount carelessly wiping an endangered species off the map. When we take handwriting away, we take away a sensory mechanism for teaching proper spelling. Besides, in our instant information/instant gratification culture, a handwritten letter sent by snail mail has become a treasured artifact.

So, for me, the next time you go on social media, write an article or attempt to communicate with the world, make sure what you write is spelled properly. It will do your credibility a world of good. Think of it this way, when you spell well, people take you seriously and your “street cred” (“cred” being short for the word “CREDIBILITY”) will skyrocket. If that fails to convince you, think of Oscar Wilde:

“One typo may be regarded as a misfortune. Two or more seems like carelessness.”

The Janet Initiative

Fortitude, MMO's, Uru

A few weeks ago, I got a note from a reader named Justin in regards to a piece I wrote called “Cavern.” In his beautifully worded letter, he asked me to describe my friend Janet’s motorized wheelchair in order to create a memorial for her.

If you recall, Janet (a.k.a. ‘Pepsi’ or ‘Pehpsee’) has been a fixture here on the Eternal Sophomore because she is, bar none, one of the most important positive influences on my life. She was one of the very first people to adopt me inside the Myst Universe. She helped me win the Myst Movie writing contest with “A Trip Through the Linking Book“, a piece about how she, the Cavern and the entirety of the Myst Universe has impacted my life in a very real, very positive way.

Justin’s note shined light on something I have never really written about:  the day Janet died. On the evening of December 28, 2004, I went to my computer after dinner to check in with my friends around the world. Upon checking my e-mail, I received a note that changed my world forever. It was from Katie Postma, gently telling me that Janet was gone. I sat staring at the words on the screen in disbelief. My mind just would NOT accept it. I knew Janet was down because of the surgery on her ankle, but I thought she was doing better! Next thing I knew, I literally crumbled into my ex-husband’s arms wailing, “No! NO! She can’t be gone! No!” and he held me while I wept uncontrollably and inconsolably for hours that turned into days. Someone might as well have set off a nuclear bomb in the middle of my chest because, as far as I was concerned, the world had ended. The very first person who I felt truly accepted me for who I was, was gone. My lamp in the darkness, my best pal, my sister, my teacher, my collaborator, my favorite peacemaker, would never light my screen up again with a “What’cha doin’?” It’s ten years later, and I can still feel the incredible loss.

Justin wanted to know some very granular details about Janet’s chair, its’ color, make, model, if there were any decals or stickers on it; a bevy of details that I sadly don’t have because she never shared that information with me. You have to understand that in all the time I spent with Janet in Cavern, through all of the projects we collaborated on – from how to publicize Cone Kicking and Eddie Soccer matches to mapping the D’ni Games Marathon Course – we never talked about what she couldn’t do. We always talked about what she could do or what we had plans to do together or projects we wanted to undertake to benefit our global Cavern family. To be honest, in the majority of time I spent with her, I never knew about her condition and how juvenile arthritis had taken its’ painful toll on her life until the very end. But if you knew Janet, that’s not a revelation that would surprise you. If you had spent even five minutes with the woman, you knew that she wasn’t about pain, she wasn’t about complaining, she was about solving problems and keeping everyone else’s spirits up when the hard times inevitably came.

Janet wasn’t about “I can’t.” Janet said, “I CAN.”

To put it succinctly, she never focused on herself, she focused on what the community needed. If I have ever been likened to the sticky stuff that holds things together, I’m convinced I learned those skills from Janet. She was a problem solver, not a drama maker, and I am convinced that she wouldn’t want to be remembered for her wheelchair, but for how she lived: a life spent humbly serving her community to the best of her abilities.

Janet taught me to always give more than I take.

Janet taught me to always greet everyone I meet with a smile on my face and love in my heart.

Janet taught me that even though life may deal you a pretty dismal hand, you have to do the best you can with what you have and don’t complain a word about it; just be grateful for what you have and get on with life.

Janet embodied one of my favorite quotes from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations which says:

Take on life’s tasks like a soldier storming the breach. So what if you are lame and cannot scale the wall alone? Does your lameness prevent you from asking for help?

But, contrary to what you might think, Janet wasn’t the one who needed to ask for help. Instead, she was the hand reaching down from the top of the wall, stretching with all her might to reach out and help pull you up. She had this uncanny way of always finding the bright side of just about anything, no matter how bad things truly got.

But on that dark day when I thought all was lost and Janet “Linked to the Perfect Age”, I made my pal a promise: I would never let her legacy die, that as long as I remembered her and carried her words forward, she would live forever.

As her husband would later tell us, “Every morning she got up without fail and went to the computer to do ‘her work’.” Janet’s “work” was comprised of moderating several forums, doing full-time greeter shifts in Cavern helping out new Explorers, working as a part of the D’ni League of Activities (D’LA) to make the term “Explorer-Based Initiatives” a part of every community member’s vocabulary. She referee’d cone kicking matches…heck, you can name it and Janet was probably right in the middle of it. She ate, breathed and slept Cavern even more than I do! And that’s a lot! Her whole goal was to take on any task that had to do with maintaining high community morale. She was committed to “the cause” that was Uru; whether it was because she felt like it had given her her legs back so that she could run, jump and climb again, I’ll never know, but if it was for the good of the community, she was neck deep in it. She wanted Uru to succeed that badly.

But, there were two things you would never find her doing…being negative or hurting another living soul on purpose. I honestly believe there was not a single malicious bone in her body. Okay, she could be a pistol at times, yes, but truly malicious? No way.

So, with all of this in mind, I sent a note back to Justin that read:

Unfortunately, I have ZERO clue about what kind of wheelchair she used. She never shared that with me. In fact, every time that topic would come up, she would dodge it, go around it; it was one subject she didn’t really like to talk about because she LOVED the fact that she was accepted as a run-of-the-mill explorer: running, jumping and climbing just like everyone else. The reason why she loved Cavern so much is that no one ever treated her any different because of her condition. She wasn’t treated like she was in a wheelchair or judged because of her disability, she was just “Pepsi.”

and everyone loved her for it.

I continued:

Stereotypes and disabilities go by the wayside real fast inside of a virtual world, that’s why she and I used to giggle, “You never know who is on the other side of the screen.”

That is why she loved the fact that Uru was also known as You are YOU, because it didn’t matter if you were sitting in a wheelchair or stood seven feet tall, you were loved for who you are, not how you sat, where you lived, or what color your skin was; all that mattered was that you put aside all the negatives and were genuinely who you were in your heart. (Believe me, Janet could spot a fake a mile off. She didn’t much take to folks that weren’t genuine, I can tell you that!)

Finally, I told Justin about how I remember Janet every day:

I think of an empty workstation with a can of “Pehpsee” clearly visible on the desk; computer and monitor on, notes strewn all around the desk (puzzle clues, maps, phone numbers), post-it’s stuck on the edge of the monitor with written reminders; all of it just waiting for her to come back, as if she’s just taking a break for a moment. Of course, you could simply add tire tracks on the floor to infer the nature of her chair, but that’s just me of course.

Janet would never want to be remembered for being “the lady in the wheelchair.” She would want to be remembered for the work she DID, and that’s the most important part.

The one thing she told me that will stick with me forever was the time where I expressed a lack of faith in my own talents. I could tell she was about ready to lose her cool with me when she said,

Don’t be afraid! Get involved, share your gifts, and you’ll find your niche!

The next day, I was an amateur sports reporter for the D’LA. Now, ten years later, I’m a journalist.

So, now here is where YOU come in. Yes you, sitting there reading the rantings of one of the many, beyond count, friends she left behind. I guess we’re still here to carry on Janet’s legacy, an initiative if you will, that reminds you, and everyone you interact with, to give more than you take, to greet everyone you meet with a smile on your face and love in your heart. Life is far too short to spend it complaining about other people and not being honestly grateful for what you have, from your health to the smile on your child’s face when you make the time to play a simple game with them.

Every day I look out into the world and see people complaining, being greedy and malicious pains-in-the-backside. I see people neglecting the needs of their fellow man, completely unaware of how much damage they are doing to everyone around them with their craptastic attitudes. This just will not do! Not according to Janet, not according to me, and not according to her legion of friends who carry her legacy forward every single day of their lives because they saw with their own two eyes what it means to live a life of humble service and never take for granted that they can run, jump, climb and be a positive influence on all those around them.

This is The Janet Initiative. It is following in the footsteps, yes, footsteps of a truly great woman who understood that sometimes we have to exercise patience when faced with adversity, that when life deals us not-so-favorable cards, it’s time to be grateful for what we DO have and make the very best of what we’ve got. And doing it ALL, no matter how badly it hurts, with a smile on our face and love in our heart.

If Janet could do that without flinching and not even whimper about her own pain while doing her part for her community, you can stand up and join her, can’t you?

Can you make a positive difference in someone else’s life without asking for anything in return? Can you be kind when you have no reason to? When your patience is tested, can you hold your wrath in check? Can you live without pride? Can you be generous instead of greedy?  Can you be selfless in a way that sets a standard for others to follow?

I have a feeling you can. Like Janet said, “Just share your gifts and talents with the world, you’ll find your niche.”

Since it’s the New Year, it might be time to try something new. I suggest taking some initiative and help us carry Janet “Pehpsee” Burress’ legacy forward. Heaven knows, the world needs something much different than the negativity we’ve sadly become accustomed to, don’t you think?

Like a wise man once taught me, “It’s not about the say, it’s about the DO.”

Shift into positive gear. Do it for Janet.

Happy New Year everyone.