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The Regeneration Episode

New teeth.  That’s weird.

Man October is just getting to the good parts and I already feel like I’ve been on a big adventure.  This is a landmark month for me because it marks the 12th month since my new doctor changed my medicine.  It’s also my birthday in just a week or so, it seems appropriate to take stock of how 33 has been.

Let’s start from the beginning, 32 was rubbish.  Relationship went sour, got toxic, ended with a precipitous sensation of discard.  Has been explored elsewhere laboriously.  Doesn’t need further analysis here.  Job was looking shaky.  Rent was reasonable but heavy once I turned single again.  Mind you I adore my landlord and i’ll always remember that apartment as the place where I showed that I was capable of long-haul and nurturing, but it had become ponderous.

Social life was badly- perhaps even dangerously- contracted.  Arms were weak, cardio was nonexistent, joints were beginning to act like old people joints.

And then I turned 33 and my doctor switched me to a drug that didn’t depress me.  This was possible only because the job that was starting to feel like a trap became a critically important source of stability.  I could wake up in the morning unburdened by the sensation that my efforts were futile.

So, waking up at 4am I did the only sensible thing and went in to do deadlifts, as one does.  So now I was getting out of bed without feeling like some kind of ghost and i was starting to be able to move heavy things like I used to do.  Then heavy things turned into drills with a sledgehammer, turned into the climbing wall, turned into the obstacle course, turned into even heavier deadlifts including a personal best.  At the end of this month it will be true that I have trained a full year with no more than one break and that no greater than 5 days.  51 weeks of commitment to my goal.

I took the energy from the gym to the office and many things were easier than before.  I didn’t feel belabored so often.  My restlessness could be easily converted into the energy to pursue new work projects.  Turned my performance record (which was not awful but needed work) into one of the better ones on my team.

Brought that energy back home and made some plans for the future.  Engaged a realtor.  Toured lots of houses.  Learned many things about property and location.  Bought a house.  I planted a garden full of yellow and orange flowers and tomatoes and herbs and it was wonderful.  I built a garage gym so no snow drift may stay me from my goal.

I had already begun and now began accelerating a project to make one new friend in each month.  I reconstituted a new and reliable D&D group.  I had tea with friends.  I attended events and participated in things new that I hadn’t tried.  I saved a room full of people from a zombie using my karaoke portfolio.  I remembered that booze was useless to people who can sing in public without shame and discarding it has been immensely helpful in controlling costs and freeing up more money to spend on things like protein shakes.

And here we are looking at 34.  I’ve made a commitment to do a fitness competition sometime when i’m 35, because you really do have to lay such plans in terms of years.  I’m looking forward to new house improvement plans.  I’m pursuing exciting new opportunities at the office. My cat is happy, my house is secure and peaceful and comfortable.  I’m playing in a campaign as a player for the first time in years.  I visited with dear old friends in Florida and I went to a nude beach.  I promise, I’m not a woman in my 60s, I’m just experiencing the same relief because my brain is unclouded by a paralyzing mist of inertia and self-doubt for the first time in years.

I was out at the park training with the sledgehammer on the tires and I got invited to the rugby practice.  I decided that i’d spent enough time exercising largely on my own and that it was time to stop hiding myself away and get back out among other gay people so I joined up.  I might as well check off the one-friend-per-month rule because I figure that once I get over my social anxiety this will be a healthy thing for me as a means to rejoin gay society on terms I can relate to comfortably.  Aggressive, invigorating terms.

I think that depression, if it is chemically induced like mine or if it’s a normal thing for a person is just awful because it claims our time, it slows everything down.  I don’t think one can overstate the radical differences in a person, so to reiterate the difference between healthcare that gives access to modern drugs for me was the difference between being a self-defeating slave willing to put aside his own goals to be ‘supportive’ of someone who didn’t really see me as anything more than an accessory in his own saga and a reinvigorated man who hasn’t either felt so driven or felt as though so many goals were in reach in nearly a decade.  Sixteen inch arms seemed like a big deal back at 14.5 but now that i’m here it’s clear that I need to take a look at 17 or 18 and see how I feel about those.

I’ve spent the year practicing self-love and it’s a pretty wonderful thing.  I’m excited for 34 as the Year I Got Big and The Year I Stopped Living Like Some Kind of Pariah.

33 has treated me really well.  Apart from the new kidneys.  I don’t like the color.