HAARD...

I wrote the following on November 14th. 

I'm hesitant to click publish. Why? 

I don't want to misrepresent myself... 

The piece may come across as a bunch of insubstantial muddle...

As clear and thin as muddy water...

And maybe that's okay...

Maybe that's a good reason to click publish...

~*~

11/14/24

So how did I feel when I learned that Trump had again won the US presidency?

Maybe I should start with what I did not feel.

I did not feel disgust or anxiety or shock.

Perhaps disappointment?

But... I can't even say I felt disappointment.

I felt more like someone who, through a series of explorations, reaches the acceptance phase of living with a rare, incurable disease.  

With an incurable diagnosis, after the initial shock, at some point, comes acceptance, resolve, determination and adaptation. 

Acceptance for what is and what may come.

Resolve to do one's best despite the diagnosis or prognosis.

Determination to accept and live each day, each moment, as it unfolds.

Adaptation as one finds a new way to function in their new abnormal-normal life.

I'll call it AARD. (Hmmm...if I add an H for Human, it becomes HAARD. Ain't that the truth?) Depending on the length and severity of symptoms, the afflicted goes through AARD multiple times with ever widening and deeper levels.

One learns to adapt and live with their changing limitations; to navigate the physical-emotional-mental roller coaster of symptoms, remedies, laborious self-care, appointments, ups and downs, twists and turns, and isolation.

One learns to mourn and grieve their losses, often alone in the privacy of their own world.

If the person is fortunate, they have one or two confidantes whom they can trust to be with them through their various levels of grief and acceptance.

And one learns to find joy, despite their circumstance.

To find silver linings.

To discover how to flip a dire circumstance (without bypassing the reality) into something meaningful, finding something to hang on to, something to help ground them, to help find peace with it all without allowing the condition to become one's full identity. It can be a huge undertaking with circumstances that the disabled did not consciously choose. (Again, I think of Dad who lived over 12 years as a quadriplegic.)

Like others, I have lived this up close and personal. not only in my own life, but in others for whom I have cared, human and non-human -- from quadriplegia to blindness. I penned a prose recently, endeavoring to relay a bird's eye view of what one woman has felt in her journey to acceptance. That woman is me. 

This feeling of accepting the presidential election news like an incurable disease wasn't about Trump himself, but more about our society with so many of us trapped in an insular loop of rationalization, justification, true believerism; where opinions and beliefs beyond one's own are judged as wrong, evil, demonic. I think I think that this incurable disease is the narcissistic side of our human condition depicted by traits such as lust, greed, arrogance, self-righteousness.

I, like others, have lived this also. I once "knew that I knew that I knew" the truth. I didn't just believe, I knew that "the Bible was the revealed Word and Will of God." I knew that The Way was the genuine "household of God" teaching the "rightly divided Word," the only accurate interpretation of the Bible. 

Then that which I had known as absolute and inerrant, shattered.
And I began to puzzle back together the shattered pieces to form a new vase.  (Poem: Shattered Pieces)

From my experience, one of the main characteristics of cultic thinking is limited choice.

It's what I discovered not only in a religious cult but also in the anti-cult movement.

And I learned that that cultic behavior is human behavior which happens on a continuum. 

We all have biases.

So, what about you Carol?

Where are you trapped?

I feel trapped in a crippled body which (figuratively) climbs a mountain every day to perform the simplest of tasks such as clothing and feeding oneself, making the bed, and squeezing a toothpaste tube,...

I feel trapped in a continual repetition of levels of AARD, over and over and over, like Groundhog Day...

Does that mean that I am trapped in the tribe of the disabled, though I rarely communicate with others in that tribe? I rarely communicate with others in general. Engaging takes energy that I seldom have. ( A prose from 2021: Bubbles of isolation into sacredness...)

It seems, through much of my life, I have been/am often in the minority.

Polyradiculitis is no exception.

In the over 13 years that I've lived with this condition, I've only met one other person who has the same. 

But they have it only on one side of their body affecting only one arm.

I have it on both sides affecting all four limbs and extremities, my back, my neck, my jaws, and more. 

Even though it determines my choices in my day-to-day life, polyradiculitis is not my identity (or at least I don't want it to be)...

This is just my life...

Given to me to live...

One day, one moment, one circumstance at a time, with its continual adaptations...

Thus far, it's been a rich, full, ever-learning, and sometimes wild ride...

~*~