Reflection is a bitch

Reflection is a bitch.

I have been forced, due to the murder of my hard drive, to rethink the way I look at my writing. With that came a greater look at all of the things in my universe. It seems that almost systematically all of the things I have come to use as crutches over the last several years are vanishing. (I’m going to talk about my health nightmare here so if you’re sick of the subject move on.) Those things included my Doyle, who I miss everyday, my job at the shop, which has been taken from me, and also my writings, which are all gone.

There is an enormous amount of change happening in my life right now. It feels like the life I have lived while ill is rapidly disappearing. When parts of it go I feel this amazing sense of loss and fear. Why? Is it because I held on to it so tightly when I was fighting to stay alive? Is it that I have become comfortable with it and change scares me? Or is it because growth is painful? I am not the same man I was 5 years ago that’s true but I am also not the man I was during the surgical horrors. It seems almost like the life before was training, a sort of pre-requisite to living my real life. The surgical nonsense was the process (horrifically painful process) that not only killed my old life, the old me, but also gave rise to the new me and the new life. When another part of my old life ends I have a moment of panic that seizes me until I realize that it isn’t really happening to me but to the ex-me. It starts to get a bit existential I know but really I am not having some sort of psychological thingamajig.

The process is oddly liberating. What happens next is all up in the air. I don’t have the control issues that I used to. Hell I don’t have control over anything. You just have to watch me try and get Charlie in for dinner to know that. More importantly there is a future. I have been throwing away so much stuff lately. All of the little stuff that I have accumulated over the years. The crap and bits that seemed really important at the time but now seem so pointless. Don’t get me wrong I’m not talking about those little things that remind me of a place or time or person or a time with a person. No I’m talking about the effluvium, the kitsch that has filled up all the corners and surfaces in my life. The old camo gear from days long gone, the stacks and stacks of magazines that were kept for one article or another and rarely, if ever, re-read. That stuff is on its way out.

Of course one of the biggest changes, as anyone who knows me will attest to, is Kate. I am not going to get into all of that but it’s definitely a big change in the world of Sam. A shift in the way I live my life. I am making some appearance changes as well. I'm growing a beard. Sorry mom. She hates my goatee already but so it goes. Before you ask no I am not going to grow hair on my perfectly shaven head just the beard. At least for now I'm growing it. Who knows what will happen in another month. Maybe more tattoos!? That was for my mom. It's fun to fuck with your parents. The poor woman has this big, bald, opinionated, motorcycle riding, ex-gun bunny for a kid. Hey I'm her fault. She raised me.


Later,
Sam