I always look forward to your posts and save them to read …. Which is frankly weird as they are grim and depressing and you are clearly having a shit time, but your honesty is compelling. So much writing is selling itself- yours feels like you are working out your ideas in front of us and that’s valuable even for people inhabiting totally different lives.
So much to relate to in this brutally articulate post. The battlefield analogy painfully apposite. I used to refer to spinal injury rehab as like fighting trench warfare with my own body: bloody, shitty and painful progress towards inches of marginal gain. Stick in & keep fighting.
Thank you for your transparency with what you are going through. I can't imagine going from being so active to what you have to endure. The voice that comes through your writing is beautiful and I can feel all of it. This body as battlefield concept resonated with me so much today. I'm recovering from breast cancer and the side effects from medication feel like a war on my body.
Oh yes, the body is a battlefield. Mine recently acquired a few unsightly scars indicating where I acquired replacement body parts to 'keep on keeping on'.
Nothing in comparison to you, or to the body map of scars that tell a 36 year-long story of my daughter's battle to stay on this planet.
A rough list from the time she was born: closure of lesion on spine; ventricular shunts inserted both pulmonary and abdominal (and revisions) numbering approximately 15; Spinal syrinx shunt (experimental surgery by gung-ho neurosurgeon which failed-she lost weight-bearing capacity as a result); scoliosis rods and rings x 2 and ribs removed during the same operations; Arnold Chiari malformation; release of tendons in foot.
Then there's the skin graft for a 3rd degree burn caused by a 'carer' who 'unwittingly' ran super hot shower water on her foot which was the bitterest of all her scars.
In her case, the body literally keeps the score.
I was tempted to send your post to my daughter who would identify with your struggle for control over the body but figured she'd misinterpret my meaning. I identify with a lot of your limitations and physical problems as being the same as hers and the loss of muscle tone resulting in a little tummy.
Would i like her to have the musculature of some of the para-athletes we see? Yeah.
Do I love her less because she doesn't? Nah.
She does her best, and has been a surprisingly steady rock for me these last 13 months while her father underwent treatment for, and succumbing on Tuesday to GBM.
GlioBlastoma Multiforme or Gross Brain Monster that stole Graham's Beautiful Mind.
My point? We don't have to be mountain climbers or paralympians to love ourselves, and be loved by others.
Such compelling writing as always Paul. I cannot even begin to imagine the struggle you are going through but it may help you just the tiniest bit to know that you have fans all over the world who are thinking of you and sending you positive energy. Please keep sharing your phenomenal writing with us and keep taking care of yourself as best you can. Warmest regards from Australia.
Something I read of Zelensky, early in the war when there was all this optimistic talk of negotiation and what Ukraine/Russia would or wouldn’t settle for:
“He may only have bad choices.”
Didn’t then go on to say “he will have to make them anyway, that is leadership”, because that was implied.
Got to be the most positive thing you have shared so far - life as a battle - agreed - yours is different not going to say harder - applying your fine mind to it is in your favour - keep going with that
I am a physiotherapist at a hospital. Thank you for writing what you do. I do not understand how the medical world seems to put some kind of silver lining on what some folks have to go through. They give them antidepressants because "oh, maybe they're depressed". My reply is always "no shit they're depressed, wouldn't you be?!" They encourage the patient to look for the positive after having everything the patient loved and lived for taken away, and then they are surprised when the patient is wanting assisted suicide. Your writing explains what you are going through brilliantly and I hope that when you choose to get peace you will be able to.
I suspect that I am about to sound like one of those influencers/online life coaches who bolster their income by selling generic vitamin supplements that are literal black pills; or, even worse, like that grifting imbecile, Gonzalo Lira, who came to a bad end in the Ukraine earlier this year – the inevitable result of wilful neglect while incarcerated / torture at the hands of Zelenskyy's goons.
A few years ago, somebody had the impertinent gall to correct me when I mentioned that I was battling a dynamic duo of chronic illnesses that are joined at the hip in some manner that eludes the current understanding of medical science. People can frame their own problems however they want. Call your battle with buttock deflation an “amazing journey” if you must, just so long as you stay out of my back yard. For me, illness is a battle and, regarded in that context, I think that it pays to walk through life with your sword drawn.
I don't mean that you should be elbows-out obnoxious or out looking for fights, especially those that can't be resolved and will drag on for years with no clear purpose or ending.
I do think that, if only to achieve peace of mind, it is necessary to rise above your circumstances, whatever they may be, and to attempt to exceed your own expectations of yourself. You need to lean into life because that is what living is – an engagement with the inner and the outer worlds.
It's all relative. For a bona fide renaissance man like da Vinci, it meant attending to one of the many irons that he had resting in the fires of his genius. For people like me, who exist in the shadow of greater minds, on the overcast left-hand side of the IQ bell curve, it's adding a couple of thousand words to a novel, or stacking a few house bricks in a rucksack and going for a walk, or maybe, if there is time, deepening my study of Bob Geldof's accent so that I can read Ulysses out loud with greater authenticity. This morning it entailed blowing up fifty balloons.
Your daily battles begins inauspiciously with a wrestling match with your T-shirt. It reminds me of a book edited by the late Paul Auster, that is comprised of short autobiographical pieces penned by ordinary Americans, one of whom recalls the occasion where he was wrestled to the floor by his own coat while attempting to put it on. The fracas with the T-shirt, where your performance is sub-Olympian, is a prelude to a part of your life where you out-perform a large proportion of the population: What I am going to uncharitably describe as your musings because it is late and I can't think of a better word – the laying down of augments and the testing to determine whether they can hold weight.
Greater even than that is your teaching. You can say without any shadow of doubt, that you continue to exert a positive influence over the lives of those students who engage with your tuition. You broaden their appreciation and their understanding of the world. You transform figurative vistas into panoramas. You refine their critical instincts; God knows, we need more of that.
You fight for them, your students. Everyday you wrestle with your T-shirt you are fighting strong odds and the crushing weight of your present circumstances so that you can be in a position where you can instruct them.
Thank you for sharing this. Your writing is really beautiful. Intimate, courageous, honest, generous, intelligent, enquiring. I feel a bit disrespectful in talking about your writing style as it is such a life-and-death matter and I am not moving away from that - but, I think that it is all of a piece anyway - you stay with, and express, your experience and its meaning for you and potentially for others. It is a great gift regards Peter
There is a guy called Todd Perelmuter who has a wonderful meditation podcast I have been listening to for a few years now. I think you would really enjoy and benefit from listening to him. He is very real and down to earth and not one of these awful woo woo new agey types. Not sure if we are allowed to post links but if you search his name you will probably find the site.Thanks for writing this blog.
I always look forward to your posts and save them to read …. Which is frankly weird as they are grim and depressing and you are clearly having a shit time, but your honesty is compelling. So much writing is selling itself- yours feels like you are working out your ideas in front of us and that’s valuable even for people inhabiting totally different lives.
So much to relate to in this brutally articulate post. The battlefield analogy painfully apposite. I used to refer to spinal injury rehab as like fighting trench warfare with my own body: bloody, shitty and painful progress towards inches of marginal gain. Stick in & keep fighting.
Thank you for your transparency with what you are going through. I can't imagine going from being so active to what you have to endure. The voice that comes through your writing is beautiful and I can feel all of it. This body as battlefield concept resonated with me so much today. I'm recovering from breast cancer and the side effects from medication feel like a war on my body.
Hello Paul,
Oh yes, the body is a battlefield. Mine recently acquired a few unsightly scars indicating where I acquired replacement body parts to 'keep on keeping on'.
Nothing in comparison to you, or to the body map of scars that tell a 36 year-long story of my daughter's battle to stay on this planet.
A rough list from the time she was born: closure of lesion on spine; ventricular shunts inserted both pulmonary and abdominal (and revisions) numbering approximately 15; Spinal syrinx shunt (experimental surgery by gung-ho neurosurgeon which failed-she lost weight-bearing capacity as a result); scoliosis rods and rings x 2 and ribs removed during the same operations; Arnold Chiari malformation; release of tendons in foot.
Then there's the skin graft for a 3rd degree burn caused by a 'carer' who 'unwittingly' ran super hot shower water on her foot which was the bitterest of all her scars.
In her case, the body literally keeps the score.
I was tempted to send your post to my daughter who would identify with your struggle for control over the body but figured she'd misinterpret my meaning. I identify with a lot of your limitations and physical problems as being the same as hers and the loss of muscle tone resulting in a little tummy.
Would i like her to have the musculature of some of the para-athletes we see? Yeah.
Do I love her less because she doesn't? Nah.
She does her best, and has been a surprisingly steady rock for me these last 13 months while her father underwent treatment for, and succumbing on Tuesday to GBM.
GlioBlastoma Multiforme or Gross Brain Monster that stole Graham's Beautiful Mind.
My point? We don't have to be mountain climbers or paralympians to love ourselves, and be loved by others.
These posts have really put my diabetic ulcer into perspective.
Bravo!
Such compelling writing as always Paul. I cannot even begin to imagine the struggle you are going through but it may help you just the tiniest bit to know that you have fans all over the world who are thinking of you and sending you positive energy. Please keep sharing your phenomenal writing with us and keep taking care of yourself as best you can. Warmest regards from Australia.
Something I read of Zelensky, early in the war when there was all this optimistic talk of negotiation and what Ukraine/Russia would or wouldn’t settle for:
“He may only have bad choices.”
Didn’t then go on to say “he will have to make them anyway, that is leadership”, because that was implied.
Never give up
Got to be the most positive thing you have shared so far - life as a battle - agreed - yours is different not going to say harder - applying your fine mind to it is in your favour - keep going with that
I am a physiotherapist at a hospital. Thank you for writing what you do. I do not understand how the medical world seems to put some kind of silver lining on what some folks have to go through. They give them antidepressants because "oh, maybe they're depressed". My reply is always "no shit they're depressed, wouldn't you be?!" They encourage the patient to look for the positive after having everything the patient loved and lived for taken away, and then they are surprised when the patient is wanting assisted suicide. Your writing explains what you are going through brilliantly and I hope that when you choose to get peace you will be able to.
I suspect that I am about to sound like one of those influencers/online life coaches who bolster their income by selling generic vitamin supplements that are literal black pills; or, even worse, like that grifting imbecile, Gonzalo Lira, who came to a bad end in the Ukraine earlier this year – the inevitable result of wilful neglect while incarcerated / torture at the hands of Zelenskyy's goons.
A few years ago, somebody had the impertinent gall to correct me when I mentioned that I was battling a dynamic duo of chronic illnesses that are joined at the hip in some manner that eludes the current understanding of medical science. People can frame their own problems however they want. Call your battle with buttock deflation an “amazing journey” if you must, just so long as you stay out of my back yard. For me, illness is a battle and, regarded in that context, I think that it pays to walk through life with your sword drawn.
I don't mean that you should be elbows-out obnoxious or out looking for fights, especially those that can't be resolved and will drag on for years with no clear purpose or ending.
I do think that, if only to achieve peace of mind, it is necessary to rise above your circumstances, whatever they may be, and to attempt to exceed your own expectations of yourself. You need to lean into life because that is what living is – an engagement with the inner and the outer worlds.
It's all relative. For a bona fide renaissance man like da Vinci, it meant attending to one of the many irons that he had resting in the fires of his genius. For people like me, who exist in the shadow of greater minds, on the overcast left-hand side of the IQ bell curve, it's adding a couple of thousand words to a novel, or stacking a few house bricks in a rucksack and going for a walk, or maybe, if there is time, deepening my study of Bob Geldof's accent so that I can read Ulysses out loud with greater authenticity. This morning it entailed blowing up fifty balloons.
Your daily battles begins inauspiciously with a wrestling match with your T-shirt. It reminds me of a book edited by the late Paul Auster, that is comprised of short autobiographical pieces penned by ordinary Americans, one of whom recalls the occasion where he was wrestled to the floor by his own coat while attempting to put it on. The fracas with the T-shirt, where your performance is sub-Olympian, is a prelude to a part of your life where you out-perform a large proportion of the population: What I am going to uncharitably describe as your musings because it is late and I can't think of a better word – the laying down of augments and the testing to determine whether they can hold weight.
Greater even than that is your teaching. You can say without any shadow of doubt, that you continue to exert a positive influence over the lives of those students who engage with your tuition. You broaden their appreciation and their understanding of the world. You transform figurative vistas into panoramas. You refine their critical instincts; God knows, we need more of that.
You fight for them, your students. Everyday you wrestle with your T-shirt you are fighting strong odds and the crushing weight of your present circumstances so that you can be in a position where you can instruct them.
Thank you for sharing this. Your writing is really beautiful. Intimate, courageous, honest, generous, intelligent, enquiring. I feel a bit disrespectful in talking about your writing style as it is such a life-and-death matter and I am not moving away from that - but, I think that it is all of a piece anyway - you stay with, and express, your experience and its meaning for you and potentially for others. It is a great gift regards Peter
There is a guy called Todd Perelmuter who has a wonderful meditation podcast I have been listening to for a few years now. I think you would really enjoy and benefit from listening to him. He is very real and down to earth and not one of these awful woo woo new agey types. Not sure if we are allowed to post links but if you search his name you will probably find the site.Thanks for writing this blog.
It would be a loss for us all to lose your writing skills.
What advice would you give to current enthusiastic outdoor climbers?
enjoy every minute, get out as much as you can