The New Fairy Tale

Life has become something of a fairy tale lately. It feels as if I am watching things in my life occur from some far off distance. Like part of me has been left on some harbor while the other part of me is floating on the deck of some ship that I did not intend to get on. Zora Neale Hurston wrote that “[s]hips at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men…. Women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.” I have been somewhat lost in the realms of both men and women, not knowing what it is that I actually want to remember and watching various ships bob up and down against the rigid line created by the horizon. I seem to be a mix of the male and the female, waiting for my “ship” to come in, at the same time trying to remember the things that make up who I am, desperately attempting the separate the dream from reality.

At this point, I really don’t know where I am in my life. I have all of these ideas rolling around in my head, and for some I have the means to get them off of the ground. But that fear of failure keeps me at bay. Not to mention that my credit is basically in the toilet since I’ve been sick. I can’t really fathom how to begin to deal with that aspect of my life. I have been trying to pray and pray but it seems that every word of every prayer is falling on deaf ears. I remember my grandfather always telling me that “God helps those that helps themselves!” And those words open the issue of whether I am “helping” myself to get out of all of these situations… am I helping myself get out of debt, am I being proactive about the whole transplant process, am I, at least, trying to get out of the depression ridden funk that I sometimes wallow in? The answer to most of those questions is a resounding: not so much! So, now I must find a way to help myself in each of these endeavors. I realized that it is not a good idea to actually stop seeing your therapist when you think you’ve been ‘cured’. I realized that there is no cure for depression and that one must really be proactive in your treatment, whether it involves therapy or taking anti-depressants. I have concluded that anti-depressants are not for me, but that I must keep seeing my therapist. I am still learning to tell people how I am feeling (thanks to my therapist) and yes, there are times when I literally am cannot see beyond the fog that has become my life, but she always finds a way to make me wake up and shake it off. I am learning to deal with things one at a time. The process is dealing with all of these things and not running away (and believe me there are many times when I wanted to tuck tail and run). In a sense, I can feel myself growing up… who would have thought that I would have to mature under these circumstances? I know that all of this is supposed to make me a tougher person, but I just see all of this as a means to keep my head above water. I am literally just trying to survive, to live to see my thirties, forties, fifties, and maybe even my sixties, to get my PhD and become a Spanish professor, to write a book, to own a business, to get married and have kids. Those are the things I want to achieve in my lifetime… but being a dialysis patient makes you realize how fragile life really is…