Saturday, June 30, 2007

Woody Allen Film

Sometime, I think my life is very much like the story lines found in Woody Allen Film... filled with episodes of neurosis.

I sort of passed out the day of the accident.... Did I have an anxiety attack, did I pass out as a result of the impact and did I really become in coherent?

I sort of felt I was about to pass out on when attempting to go to work the first time. Did I really feel so physically weak or was it me who was trying to play sick and be lazy?

I had to lie down on the floor in my office the one day I got back to the office. Did I really have the need of lying down or was I putting on a show for the others to see?

For a few days, I limped around when walking. Did I really need to limp or was it me unconsciously try to fake my condition.

When walking, my pace is slow and my body looks stiff. Am I trying to play sick or is my body so very stiff?

When I went to see my doctor, I asked, "How could I feel so bad from falling down such a short distance? Are these symptoms psychosomatic?"

I constantly have this fear that... the aches and pains are not real and it is me who is imagining up the whole thing.... (It is my delusion or the inverse of my delusions?)

Last night, I put on a patch the doctor asked me to try on in addition to the pain killers and muscle relaxant.

I slept through the night and slept more till I needed to get up to see some friends.... in total, 13+ hours of sleep and I could have slept more.

Waking up, I found myself done away with most of the lower back pain and the muscles also more relaxed... less limping and funky way of walking.

I was able to walk, and check out shops, and, even move my body along with the rhythm of the music.

"I feel great! It is getting better and better each and every day." I told my mom.

Then, I helped carried a bottle of Cranberry Juice from the pharmacy across the street.

After I got home, I started to feel the aching and some other uncomfortable kind of feeling.

I ate, I took the pain killers, I took a shower, and I placed ice on my back.

Are the pains finally coming back after the effect of the patch finally seized after 8 hours or so (or did that patch really work in any capacity after I took it off 8 hours ago)?

Or, did I see something in people’s behaviors that forces me to put on a show to me and my mom while thinking the whole world is watching, including that investigator hired by the workers' compensation company?

Am I expecting that the words would get out after this writing is posted so as to justify my agile gaits and joyful being?

Are there really aches and pains in my being? :-O

Is it all but, in capital case, F-A-K-ing?

Thursday, June 28, 2007

headache

It's been a while since the last time I had headaches so bad like this... It started yesterday afternoon. Pain killers did not help too much until the dosage got up to 2 pills per day and three times a day. Yet, the headache still lingers around up to this time.

If you ask me to chose between mental and physical health problem now... I guess I'd rather be a mental who is healthy like a cow.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Life and its unfolding: on extraordinary

An accident happened at work last Tuesday. I was at a meeting that attempts to bring the higher education and local school communities together.

A chair collapsed under me and I fell flat to the ground while munching on a piece of cookie while the participants were sharing their reflection about where to go from there.

After I felt on my butt and got up from the floor, I still have the remaining piece of the cookie in my hand.

All eyes were on me-- in shock, in concern, and in everything else-- regardless where they came from.

My immediate response was to look at that piece of cookie—in good health and in one piece. Then, I looked at the crowed with curiosity or else. “It seems like I am too heavy for the chair. I might have to stop munching on the cookie.” So I said.

They had a good laugh and went back to discuss whatever was in their mind.

I sat there still in shock while getting a bit woozy in my head.

It was later did I realize that, the point the accident took place, instantaneously did a partnership form among the rest of the participants with what happened to me in their mind, regardless how they went on interpreting the situation.

After the meeting, I went to check on the chair—realizing the chair was already broken before and someone apparently tried to fix it with a single nail.

My laughing it off might have dissolved the attention at the moment. Unfortunately, the impact of the strategy did not extend to the consequential aches, pains, discomfort and inconvenience as a result of the unfaultable fall.

Essentially, the impact of the fall finally hit me about 30-40 minutes later as I started moving. My back and neck started to become extremely sore. I started to feel like passing out and my speech sort of incoherent. When the paramedics came, I couldn’t even have my eyes open for long enough to take a good look of them—men in uniform. Stayed awhile in ER, finally got a few of the pain killers and muscle relaxant before they took all those CAT scan and X-ray.

Before they released me, high on the meds, they put me in one of those rooms for possibly observation purposes.

The last time I was in one of those rooms--- I, for the first time, almost di harm to myself because of the voices. It was also the day when I was told that I am only human and I am no Buddha. The world was in a state of apocalypse where nothing but annihilation. All things alive died and, later, so did Gods, spirits, ghosts, zombies, and anything else imaginable except for those demonic. They came through my body before proceeding to that state of evaporation, or, non-existence. It was one of those days when I would die a thousand deaths per day but I just could not die while everyone else was eligible for that congenital right. The only thing I could do to help is to have a heart so vacuous that nothing would get attached. So shall I see through all things in order to see no good, no bad, no in-between—no nothing. Where did I get these ideas? God knows… gotta have something to do with my cultural background.

This time, another one of those butt concussions, I guess. lol

Over a week later, I am still living the aftermath of the laughing-it-off.

Thought I could have gotten over the whole 9 yards and back to live my routine life. Today, the aches and pains have gone from ranging between “the head the lower back” to from “head to heel.” Never knew that my body could be innovative to such an extent… lol And, although I could work on days when I am drugged out like a walking zombie or on days when old drugs got me poisoned to the extent that my body retains not a drop of water, for once in my life, I really have to take off from work and be home to stay put for more than a day or two—or more exactly, for 1 week and more.

The good thing about ordinary workdays is that it is possible to take time off the working mode after work. The bad thing about being sick on workdays is that, paid or not paid, you cannot take time off the pains you want to get rid off. Moreover, new injuries seem to have triggered the old injuries—as a result, the new and the old injuries, together, trying to compose my life’s symphony or cacophony at their own chosen time and their preferred forms.

Just when I was thinking about how much time I have wasted the whole year on mental and physical health-related issue, a mail came to my lawyer’s inbox from immigration, stating that, to show that I am an extraordinary alien, they need me to show them more and even more.

They want to see more of the honors and awards be granted to me national or internationally.

They want to see more of the peers to praise me and cite my work, publicly, in print, on TV, or on Radio.

These are the ordinary criteria needed for a streamlined selection process of alien inclusion.

Yet, shall ordinary be the synonym of normal, given that no longer am I aspired to be normal (actually given up), neither is it of great consequences for me to be abnormal or extraordinary.

I don’t want fame and I don’t want name. I don't want to learn for the sake of writing but write for the sake of reflecting on my learning. I don’t want to publish for the sake of publishing and being recognized for being what I am not entitled of. All that I want is (in addition to make a good living lol) to to love, to live and to work (lieben, leben und arbeiten)—and, perhaps, to envision a world without boundaries (lol).

10 years of my adulthood is not a short time. So, by the time the immigration ships me home, let me sing you, America, this song, “Don’t cry for me America, the truth is I never left you… ” lol

35+ change years old. Perhaps, it is time for me to stop cheating myself and say no to not living up to my life’s standard.

Just as shit happens… shift also happens.

I shall say yes to baking, painting and enjoying life and its unfolding (such as the headache that would not go away since this afternoon’s physical therapy session lol).

No longer shall I wait till God let me get knocks down to the floor or poisoned by my old drug—to pick up that paint brush to make a thank you card, green card or not, married or not, healthy or not, full time job or not, rich or not, everything I want and its counterpart or not, and, most importantly, vacuous or not.

Also don't worry about me sitting to long typing... for it took me over 5 hours on and off to finish this writing for the love of writing.

Pains and aches... time will take them away eventually.

Green card? In God's hand and the evaluators' hand. Have mercy... please.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

again-- to live

I was told by an esteemed gentleman the other day that he likes my philosophy.

I was not quite sure what my philosophy was but I happily took the compliment with me.

While I was taking my shower, I got an epiphany.

Shall there be anything I could conceive of that is close to a philosophical statement... that would be...

To live, to be in phenomona, in health and in sickness, in good thing, bad thing and everything else in between.

It then occurs to me that what sustains my life is phenomenology- to see and not to see, to hear and not to hear, to sense and not to sense, to feel and not to feel. :-O

Yet, the most important thing now is-- to sleep (especially when my mom is not to spare me with her nagging). lol
  

10 o'clock in the morning

I don't think that this is for the first time for me to come to the realization... after all these years, symptoms like computers have become, if not merely part of me, part of my family.

During my meeting with my psychiatrist today, my old pal came out again... the psychosomatic symptom of anxiety that start from making me stuttered and gradually mutes me.

The new psychiatrist hadn't seen things like that before and asked me whether the phenomenon was scary to me.

I, to a certain degree, really did not understand the reason why I should be scared.

After all these years, all phenomena are but part of my being.

What is to be scared about and what is to be concerned about?

Physical conditions could really kill you.

Thank God I am merely well experienced in mental health problem and I am in no rush to have more physical conditions to enrich my understanding of phenomenology. lol (and knock on wood)

Regress back to my childhood? Anxiety tightened the vocal cord? Meds gone crazy? Or the feeling of me getting overdosed again and the anxiety induced by the anticipation about the coming struggle with my psychiatrist about the dosage adjustment?

It doesn't matter why I lost my voice.

What matters is my understanding that... with or without you, symptoms, I live. lol

Gotten back to my office, my voice came back (i.e., I could speak.) although I was still trying to get over with the extra amount of stress introduced by the experience…

I thought, then, to myself…

What a busy life.

10:00 o’clock in the morning---

I had begun my day rushing to see my psychiatrist, experiencing some anxiety-induced speech pathology, getting the voice back and loosing it again, adjusting to the after-effect as a result of the experience while running back to the office.

It’s 10:00 o’clock in the morning. Just got into the office. Have you had a few rounds of anxiety attacks in psychosomatic forms yet? lol
    

Sunday, June 3, 2007

A whole lot of nothing day



Today is quite a day for my head although nothing really happened today.

Found some old meds that I cut out from before…

One piece must have been over 170 something mg due to the imprecision of my pill cutting skill.
Last night, I thought to myself… to hell, nothing much to do tomorrow, might as well take this super sized one.

Only to find out today-- a day of dumb-dumbness as a blatant consequence of my own dumbness.

In the afternoon, around 1, I picked myself up wanting to go to the gym. After picking up my cup of coffee from the usual joint, on the street, I found myself sleepy and decided to come back home to get some more sleep.

When I got back, mama was still in the kitchen.

I told her what I did last night and I told her that I was going back to get more sleep. And, I went back to sleep.

Staring in the air or the TV set with nothing on.

Making no sound and wanting no sound either.

No speaking and not wanting to eat much.

Slept a whole lot and wanting nothing but to sleep a whole lot more.

Mama found me wired while knowing the cause.

“You looked “loosing soul” today.” She said.

While at the same time, no much to cause her worries, “You always adjust well.”

“Never mind of me today cuz all you see is the meds. Go back and do what you are doing and I will do a little bit of walking around myself.”

Mama got back to check on her stock market and resumed her ordinary self-talk.

I walked around and come back to the computer to finish typing these sentences out.

I will get back to sleep in an hour or two. So shall I end the day of losing soul for the lost soul in limbo. Lol :-x

The moral of the lesson... don't play with drugs or the drugs shall play ya.... lol :-x