ya see what cha wanna see…

…can you be what ya wanna be?

I live a very complicated existence, living with a varying severity of chronic head and spinal pain. I am diligent to take the best care I am afforded (and beyond affordability) that I can do to maintain any functionality. I am healthy, I have a very clean and healthy bodily systems but I live with severe pain. I Look Good, I must, it is what people always say, “James, you look great!” and it is always pre-supposed that because my Looks are in order and appealing to the eye, that everything is to follow suit… Not One person, whom said this followed up to inquire, ‘James you look great, …how are you feeling?’ - Who wants to know? - Many of us just want to think that what we see is the answer to what we think - or just too self involved to actually care to know how your friend is actually doing, knowing the severity and frequency of their ‘pain’full condition. I too have thought what I see, truly IS.

This July 8th makes a 16th anniversary of this massive trauma I endure, it is officially the longest segment of my ‘career’ I have had. After school I worked for many years as staff recording engineer at Nola Recording Studios and continued freelance as I entered the Broadway theater world for 15 years and now 16years in the DisAbility profession!  

I must be a pro! But:

I am in pain, and it hurts and it sucks and it really sucks sometimes and it really really fucking sucks, a lot of the time, too. I do not have a life, as you do, well I know we all have our ‘things’ because I hear that too, “Oh, my back always hurts, ya gotta just grin and bear it” or “You have all that going on? what meds are you on?” or “Shit, I don’t know how you do it, live with this type of pain!” or the best “I could never do what you do”. Look, we DO all have our own ‘shit’, No One is immune to ‘the shit’, because the shit; happens. If there is challenge, we have ways we find to ‘deal’ with them, however, when the challenge is constant, and relentless; then what? So, I am like you - I got shit - but damn…

One may have ‘the shit’ in their life but need not be overrun by the shit. The shit can be a valuable lesson; who am I, when there is this shit? am I just this shit personified, and miserable. Am I anything I ever thought I could be? I know I am not who I was, and have not been for too long. But. I am this now, this man whom has Taken The Shit On! I got shit, I got Good shit AND Bad shit, I got a mound of it - and I can sit on this mound with reverence (can you?), it (shit) has only the aroma of what I have put into it, into my person, it only will produce waste of the highest quality, haha! But it’s true, my shit stinks differently, and often not at all… Because I can exist with it. We all have our shit, No Doubt, but - can we all sit with it and understand it and even welcome it? 

I can. 

I will admire what the conditions are and how they arise and present themselves - it is my only companion, my only communication with an outside world. Whether I am trapped in a cage of, or I am chained to, this pain, I am not a prisoner. Physically yes, there is this challenge of not ‘being able’ to do what I want to or what someone you love would like to do, but, and even, like that loved one; it is entirely MY conditions that contain me in this cage and chains. In my aloneness I can be ok and work on these issues but historically not with another person. I am alone in this aloneness, in my pain, in my body, in my confinements, alone. So…