You Bet Your Boots, #SoCS

It’s another
Stream of Consciousness Saturday, #SoCS
and I am thinking about yesterday.

I am thinking about eyes and, yes, about a lot of other random words that do and don’t include the letters “y…e…s”.

Not necessarily “yesterday” as in the actual yesterday, which is about to change, as I waited to write this until the very end of my Saturday.

I spent my actual Saturday having fun with family. That is exactly what I needed to remember what is most important and to forget the yesterdays lately, ever since November 8th, 2016.

I thought of the Beatles documentary I saw recently and their song:
Yesterday.

The “yesterday” of the times during the Beatles popular years looked a lot different from my yesterday. The world is made up of the big and the small things that make up both. Times really change a lot and yet, yes/no, they don’t, as it would appear.

I couldn’t believe my eyes, but “yes” I could. The world is not actually any worse than it was yesterday. My eyes didn’t deceive me, though I wouldn’t have a problem wording it that way.

My eyes help me less and less, though most days I don’t notice either way.

The times spent with my niece and nephews involves me and also my brother explaining more and more that we can’t see, that our eyes don’t work. Sometimes one of them tries to make sense of this by stating that “their” eyes work, as if they are trying to make sense of the fact that they can still see and to work it out in their mind.

My niece is oldest and seems to understand. My nephews are a few years younger than her and are still working it all out, but they are getting there. They need to be reminded to let us feel a toy they want to show us, for example, like on this most recent visit when my nephew wanted to show us his lip balm. I should have smelled it anyway. I soon did and it smelled like strawberries.

Yesterday I could play a game with my soon-to-be-six-years-old niece and not have to think too hard about all the things that are hard. She accepts me for me, her aunt, and she puts her small hand into mine and guides me to where she wants me to go in our games.

My eyes made it impossible to watch my nephew’s swimming lesson the other day, but I still wanted to be there.

My eyes made it impossible to read the menu at dinner with my family, but luckily they could read and we knew, pretty much, what we wanted at a restaurant we’ve been to eat at hundreds and hundreds of times before.

My yesterday of sorts had my eyes working better than my today. I can’t change that. I eat pizza with my family and it tastes just as delicious, with or without fully functioning eyes.

Yes, okay, so the world makes little sense to me, more than ever, but it’s not all bad. I can still write stream of consciousness thought and not have to be perfect or say what any one person expects me to say.

Yes, I do like living in Canada and having it become dark so early, as I feel the night has just as much to teach as the daytime.

Yes, I can focus on the good and use a positive word, instead of no no no no no all the time. I can agree that the world is out of sorts and this is a “yes” statement, instead of just being something negative, where “no” is like a shake of the head.

Yes, I have all the Cherry Coke I could possibly need right now and to last me for a long long time. Can you say sugar rush/sugar coma anyone?

Yes, if I’m not careful I will hold down the shift key for not just the first letter, “y” and onto the second letter, “e”. My computer’s voice program sounds it out like “yeeeees”. That’s how I know, but soon I will have actual braille to read from when I write, so my own editing can go more smoothly. I won’t have to rely entirely on those little subtle clues that I made a small blunder.

YEs.

🙂

I realize that this is a small thing, in the grand scheme of things. All the things, all that my eyes cannot see, so my ears pick up on instead.

Yes, I have been somewhat of a “yes girl” in my life, not wanting to say “no” if I can help it. Hearing that word, “no” isn’t always easy, but sometimes we have no choice. Yes doesn’t always give us what we want.

My yesterdays have been a mixed bag of yes’s and no’s and maybe’s because I can’t always make up my mind. I am somewhat famous for that indecision actually.

Yesterday is in the past and my broken eyes can’t look back to see what I may or may not have gotten wrong. Tomorrow is all I can do anything about now.

Yesterday is over and done with now and tomorrow is all we’ve got to work with.

Yes, I will do my best. My yesterdays’ weren’t all that bad really. It’s just easy, with working eyes or without, to see things that are in the past as being worse than what they maybe really were.

Yes, I have a lot to look forward to coming up. Yes, I am looking ahead to these things. Yes, I loved all the yesterday days I have had.

And YEEEES, I absolutely did eat some of my niece and nephew’s old Halloween candy while visiting, but it was mostly the stuff they don’t like, so it’s okay.

Uneasy Me, #FTSF

“It’s not easy to be me.”

Superman’s Dead (It’s Not Easy) – Five For Fighting

Superman was always one of the last of the superhero stories I would choose. I was always more of a Batman girl. I don’t know how many Superman films I watched there for a while, but none of them stuck with me as being particularly interesting. I didn’t understand the whole backstory or even the definition or importance of kryptonite.

That’s why, when I read this week’s FTSF prompt, I froze in my tracks, unsure if I would write anything at all, have anything to link up with.

I looked up the meaning, refreshed my memory, but still drew a blank. Kryptonite meaning, basically, weakness and still I was coming up with nothing.

Come on, I nudged myself over the last few days. You’ve got to have a weakness. What is it? What would be the main one?

I am working on writing my memoir. It seemed like a perfect moment in time to start again, as I think back on the twenty years, exactly, that I was diagnosed with kidney disease as a frightened twelve-year-old.

Since that point I have been called brave and inspirational many many times. How did I do it? How was it that I managed to survive feeling so sick, dialysis, and surgery to have a transplanted kidney from my father?

I am not as strong as all those well-meaning family, friends, medical professionals, and acquaintances assumed. I don’t want what happened twenty years ago, what was only really a few years out of my whole life, to define me forever. I try to get past it, really, but I keep going back to it and writing my story down is a big part of that.

Sometimes I wonder if that’s even a good idea. Maybe I should just move on and look ahead. That’s what I am doing, but then I turn my head round and admit to myself that what happened during those rough months, all those years ago now, that stuff left its mark on me and I can’t honestly say I don’t look back in reflection.

My kryptonite is the past. It’s the affect a physical illness had on my body, my mind, the girl I was trying to grow into.

It influences my body image even now, as a grown woman.

When I was treated I was clearly under-weight and malnourished. I was lacking proper vitamins and minerals, things the kidneys are supposed to take care of.

I stayed stable on dialysis and I had the transplant. This got me back to a healthy state, but I went from being barely eighty pounds, maybe less, at age twelve. My puberty was hugely disrupted. I was not growing.

Once I had a working kidney, one being all you technically require, I began to gain weight. I gained weight as a side effect of more than one of the medications I had to go on.

I remember standing on our bathroom scale, realizing I was ninety-two pounds, and starting to panic. I wasn’t relieved I was gaining. I was horrified.

I was weighed every time I went on and off the dialysis machines. This was necessary, to monitor my fluid loss and gain, but it played havoc with my head. I was shown to focus on weight, at a time I shouldn’t have had to, when only months before I was pushed to put on the pounds.

Now, the weight was coming on abnormally quickly and I was visited by dieticians who went over the list of foods to stay away from if I didn’t want to gain even more weight.

So now I like my chocolate but I also like my fruit.

At Easter I love chocolate eggs, but come summer I go nuts eating strawberries, peas straight from the pod, peaches, and apples for weeks and weeks on end. They are really all I want to eat.

All in moderation. Diets don’t work. Or avoid some foods entirely?

I can list all the excuses in the book as to why exercise and weight loss hasn’t been easy for me, but I know I am not alone. I must keep plugging away at it, remaining mindful of it. I don’t want to make excuses, to use chronic pain or my blindness as reasons why I am now gradually gaining weight over time. I only get my kidney checked twice a year, but they still take my weight at the start of these appointments, and I am forced to look back and try to recall what the scale read six months before, to keep track, somewhat, of where I’m at. So although I don’t keep checking my weight on my bathroom scale every morning, I’m made to be accountable, every time November/April rolls around.

Yes, the meds have decreased, things are more moderate now, but the damage is done – floodgates have been wide open for twenty years. I deal with something so many people deal with, I know. Emotions also play a part and my psychological state becomes a factor.

Can I keep things under control? Can I not let the events of my past rule my present or influence the future?

My kryptonite are the stretch marks I’ve had (not from a pregnancy, like most women my age), but since I was on high doses of prednisone, when I was fourteen years old. I can feel the clear visible evidence of how it all began and I feel weak because I can’t keep things in balance as much of the time as I’d like, but that’s why I write about it all. I hope that part doesn’t make me weak. I don’t feel all that brave or inspirational and I don’t want the weaknesses I live with to bring me down. They do serve as reminders of the scars of my past and the toughness, as they’ve driven these bits of my past in deep.

Now I’m off to go eat a mango and some chocolate.

🙂

The brains behind this week’s FTSF is

Lisa Crisp Witherspoon

of The Golden Spoons.

Kryptonite – 3 Doors Down

And, as always, Kristi of

Finding Ninee.