Right now, on November 14, 2011, on my 45th birthday, as I write this blog, my right thigh is itching out of control. I am exhausted as usual and the acid indigestion just won't go home, but all I can think and imagine is how beautiful and wonderful is this rare gift of a human birth. Yes, these clinical trials to ride me of Hepatitis C truly suck! My doctors have told me that my side effects are the worst they have seen in the clinical trials so far. But I continue to endure even as my body is under siege with the rash perambulating back and forth between a poison ivy-like itch and a bad sunburn-like pain and sandpaper tautness. But when you have been so reduced, when even a half hour of relief and comfort seems a blessing, there is nothing left to do but surrender all of your bullshit and all of your delusions. I am living and surviving at the core of my being, and what I find there is a true sense of value and beauty, wonder and gratitude. What I find there is a light.
At the core of John Lavitt, there is a beacon that shines beyond the darkness as I realize how lucky I am to be alive. I put myself through literal hell in the past, hurting the ones I love through the extreme indulgence of my drug addiction, through a car crash and brain damage that should have left me a shell of myself as a creative entity, and through the everyday selfishness generated by fear. At this very moment, however, as I write this and do my best to ignore the cramping in my lower back and the nausea rising that has nothing to do with Jean-Paul Sartre's classic, I know that I am sober and that I am a decent man and that I am loved. What more could a human being need to have to be happy?
On this birthday, I make the conscious choice to believe in the inherent goodness of human beings and to have faith that I will continue to be loved and taken care of by the universe. After all, I am a working part of the whole and a pretty damn good part of the divine machine if I say so myself. And I guess I am doing that right now. There is such beauty in being able to feel gratitude in the midst of these physical challenges. I know one day soon they will come to an end, and I am so grateful that I will be able to return to the everyday roller-coaster of just trying to get by and live my life.
I love the birthday picture below of Linda Carter as Wonder Woman, and I figure it makes sense these days to embrace the possibility of superheroes. Yes, I am often a flawed and petty little creature, but, despite all these defects of character, when challenged I actually seem to rise above the drowning tides by focusing on staying afloat with a smile. Can you imagine how much this physical affliction has taught me about what I truly value and what is meaningful to me? What a lovely wonder it is to be able to toss aside the crap because I do not have the strength to do anything other than hold tight to the beauty and the love.
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| Linda Carter: The Only Wonder Woman For Me! |
It's funny because in my apartment I have a limited edition Wonder Woman snow globe in which her silver bracers are raised in battle to block the bullets of the bad guys. (Wow! How is that for a little aliteration? It always makes me smile when the poetry just pops out without any explanation.) Although I love the snow globe, I have planned since I first bought it to give it as a symbol of my belief in and my respect of the woman who will be my partner in this life. Despite this rash and those scars, I truly have faith that I will one day be with this woman and that she will be with me. After all, isn't the ultimate gift in human life the ability to love?
On my birthday, this is my wish — to love and be loved. Maybe not tomorrow and maybe not next year, and there is no time line, but I take a deep breath and I go on waiting. I shall continue to wait and to experience my own authenticity and to do my best in the eye of the storm. Because I know that I must find the strength to continue waiting for a little while. If that is what is asked of me. If that is what is asked. Because I will never surrender my faith in the possibility of love. Yes, I have that faith and it consoles my soul as I stumble through this blizzard of side effects and become healthy again.
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