Read this as a metaphor, if you wish. Or a wildly illustrated Daniel Pinkwater tale of outlandishly surly surreality. Or just a story on a fecund summer Saturday morning when you can smell the heady aroma of a crop of well-tended new paradigms laden with ripening fruit.
Sometimes being an optimist is strangely akin to becoming the ringleader of a destructive cult. You live in this fragily concocted pseudo-quasi-simulacrum reality wherein you believe you can improve practically everything simply by taking apart the linchpin of what's holding the bad stuff together and substituting it with delicious gumdrops made up of the underlying goodness of life and society and the universe and stuff. And before you know it, you've led a bunch of well-meaning people into a fetid swamp of delusion that you've convinced yourself (and them) is really just a corner away from being paradise. Complete with cheeseburgers that are by no means what they appear to be: the eyes of crocodiles as seen through the cheeseburger-colored glasses of Everything Is Really, Really, Really, Really Finetm.
In this scenario, Pollyanna is a Typhoid Mary selling well-intentioned mercury makeup to cover up pustulent pox.
Or maybe not. I'm still working on the imagery.
Yeah, so I've been a little sick. Better days are just around the corner. I know it for a fact. Honest. Trust me. And I don't need no steenkin' help! I can do it on my own. Really.
But then at some point last week, I woke to the smell of something cooking in the kitchen and found that in my zest for a healthful bowl of chicken soup to make myself feel better without deigning to accept the myriad offers of support, love, and assistance from friends who thought I might need and deserve a little TLC, I had tossed into a crockpot the following items:
- a bag of whole, unpeeled onions (bag included)
- a package of chicken breasts (plastic packaging included)
- a jar of bay leaves (Yep. Jar.)
- five pounds of baby carrots
- a quart of lemon-lime Gatorade (hey, it was in the same shade family as chicken broth)
And I'd left the kitchen sink running for several hours, apparently meaning to add a small bowl of water to the Gatorade to flavor the delectable soup that was going to make everything better.
Being in the emergency room was a gas. I kept passing out. But being a cheerful gal with a can-do spirit that I am, I spent the hours in between passing out and falling asleep helping other patients who needed a hand. Sometimes literally -- like the guy who'd broken his wrist in a soccer play gone terribly awry yet was expected by the intake receptionist to fill out his own paperwork. Sometimes just a little boost now and then, as with the elderly man in the wheelchair who was being beckoned to the triage center, only he was too weak to push his own wheelchair and the attending ER staff stood by waiting patiently for this man to muster his geriatric strength and get that wheelchair humming across the room powered (ostensibly) by moonbeams and unicorn whickers.
Later that day, after ten hours of IVs filling me up with whatever they fill people up with after they've tried to make chicken soup with plastic and Gatorade, I pulled off most of the leftover adhesive and cardiac lead patches and headed to work, where I was hosting a film series on civil rights issues. Because, you know, better times are right around the corner and we can't let poor liver function, low potassium levels, electrolyte imbalances, and severe muscle spasms get in the way of making sure that everyone gets a bag of freshly popped popcorn when there's a good cause involved.
The next day, I headed off to a task force meeting to guide grant funds for a project to stop resegregation of our local schools. I volunteered to take notes, and to develop a Likert scale for initial review of applications for a development director and grant coordinator. I also said I'd create an evaluation plan based on the original grant application and develop a template for working teams to maintain consistency and accountability benchmarks as we moved along through implementing the grant through 11 working teams.
Because, you know, better times are right around the corner -- but only if I'm raising my hand every time someone asks for a volunteer. Many a magician's assistant has been accidentally sawed in half when volunteering while under the influence of autoimmune crisis, but why would I let that stop me?
If you're not an optimist, you can probably already tell that this story will end badly. Or maybe you'll give me the benefit of the doubt -- or surely would have, if you didn't anticipate the part about the attack by a overwrought car thief who was understandably overcome with paranoia after I'd approached him with a bottle of cold water when I noticed he was parked on the street outside my house for eight hours in ten-billion-degree heat while dressed in a hooded black track suit. Hey, I was worried about him. The poor dear was out there in a car for more than eight hours, for crying out loud, and probably shriveling in the heat like an underwatered tomato plant. As someone who'd just been hospitalized for dehydration myself, I was feeling his pain.
Well, Pollyanna is being forcibly retired. Yesterday my infectious diseases doc laid down the law: I'm disabled. I have to quit doing stuff just because I believe the world is an AWESOME place where we can do everything we want to do simply by believing in magic and a compassionate universe that will, pretty much always, bend the laws of physics simply because you ask nicely, fill out paperwork in triplicate, sign it with little hearts over the "i"s, and bring a plate of homemade jelly-filled shortbread cookies from your grandmother's recipe box to create happy feelings amongst the various factions of warring electrons.
A few tips on how to shift a paradigm of self-reliant optimism that's on the fritz:
- When you haven't eaten or drunk in several days because you're pretty darned sure things will get better on their own if you just stick to your guns, throw caution to the wind and live dangerously by calling Patty to ask if she wouldn't mind picking up some orange-mango juice from Trader Joe's. And a few bottles of Gatorade. And maybe some carrots and bananas. And some good bread to make toast with. It's fairly likely that Patty wants to do this or she wouldn't have asked you six thousand, three hundred, and ninety-two times what she could do to help. Seriously. She's not that flaky. (Even though the fact that she's still your friend after you've refused to let her buy you chicken soup may bring her flakiness levels into question.)
- You're probably not going to be able to fill out the seven million forms required to apply for patient-assistance programs to help cover your medication copays and medical costs. Use your noodle and your experience as a campaign worker and ask Sarah and Prabha to host a paperwork-filling-out party and invite a few friends with good handwriting to help fill out the forms, address the envelopes, and lick the stamps. (Some people work better with the high that comes from licking adhesive stamps. I don't know why, and I'm not going to ask.)
- When your ex-husband tells your fretting daughters that he hopes you die slowly and painfully -- wait, maybe not so slowly but definitely painfully -- it's perfectly fine to entertain for 3.2 microseconds the idea that this is his unique way of telling his children that he is always there for them with all the love and care he can possibly muster, and that he surely meant it in the good way but it came out wrong because he's had a bad day and we all have bad days. But after 3.2 microseconds, you should hospitably welcome any revenge fantasies that visit you while you're in the throes of a febrile delusion about being able to fit into that slinky Wonder Woman costume without making your thighs look fat while wielding a sledgehammer and chainsaw. (Little-known fashion fact: accessorizing any vengeance-and-righteousness costume with sledgehammers and chainsaws is actually quite slimming, particularly if you don't overdo the stripes and cut the costume fabric along the bias. Be sure to baste stitch the hem first, though.)
- Consider the sales success of the Magic Eight Ball. It does well not because it permits the rationalization of bizarre contortions of logic (such as "Sure, lead the bake sale this one time, but not for more than 36 hours at a stretch and just don't spend ALL your heart-medication money on chocolate chips") but because it offers just a few succinct answers and doesn't append endless excuses, footnotes, and weaselly explanations that end with vapid sighs of surrender and a chipper, "Of course that's possible! Go for it! You can do it all!" Practice these answers to people's queries to the Pollyanna Oracle of Volunteering: "No." "No, thanks." "Sorry, but no." And, if you're feeling particularly skilled, toss in "That's just not in the cards right now." Do not elaborate, because in doing so, you are killing the genius of breeding capitalism with curiosity -- and who wants to be known for all eternity as the bastard who murdered something so glorious?
- Disability is not the end of the world for someone who adamantly believes that life around the next corner is going to be amazing: It's an opportunity to rehabilitate atrophied reality skills and practice the ability to identify the little rosebuds of amazingnessitudinousness that lie nestled amidst the thorns of no-can-do-kiddo. The two kind of have to go together: like salt and pepper, the Captain and Tennille, and red popsicles with Tide pens.
- Embrace delirium. But don't let it be your reconditioning plan while recovering from a debilitating illness. Reconditioning means knowing that exercise is not the same as activity, and that rest is 85.97% more important than offering to cut turf and make canvassing packets, run to Kinko's to photocopy the ballot samples someone else forgot to copy, and train volunteers for a three-hour door-to-door canvass on a North Carolina summer day.
That's all I've got for now. Because I had to let Bob cut the turf and make the packets for today's canvass, and I am supposed to be resting while other people tote six pallets of water and ice. And I've got some paradigm shifting to do to change expectations of what successful living is in the midst of an illness that is all about change and nothing about wasting all my energy propping up a no-go status quo.