4 posts tagged “friends”
Happy New Year, Everyone! Today I have some significant news to share.
On December 17, 2009, in the very early hours of the morning, I nearly bled to death. I’m afraid I’m serious ─ by the time I was admitted into hospital from the emergency room, I was down to about a quarter of the amount of blood needed to sustain life.
The irony of this situation is that I was under a doctor’s care at the time, and that’s one of the reasons that I’m going public with this today. The second reason is because since I have been off Facebook, my blogs, and other social networking sites, I’ve been getting emails from ‘fans’ asking questions such as: “Are you in rehab? You can tell me! My brother was in rehab last year at this time.” and “Did you have Demi-Moore-head-to-toe-plastic-surgery? Please post pics!”
I was inclined to let these strangers think what they would, but I’ve also been receiving messages of genuine concern, and those are why I’ve decided to write about this very personal experience publicly.
As boring as this probably makes me, a drug habit and/or a craving to own gravity-defying boobies had nothing to do with my absence from the internet. What actually happened was that on November 9, I had what should have been routine uterine fibroid surgery. I wanted to keep the knowledge of that fact limited to my family and closer circle of friends, because to me there is nothing more cringe-worthy than people announcing these things on their Facebook status updates: Jack is …”getting out of jail this week!” Jane…”’s a husband is a lousy cheat!” Patricia…”had a fibroid the size of a baseball removed from her uterus.”
Yuck.
So, I didn’t announce it, (until now) and only made vague references to “not feeling well”, and even those mentions were only because I’d missed some social and business events. However, the “not feeling well” stretched on and on, and when I questioned my doctor, he went from voicing some concern to being brusquely irritated, “You must be patient. You’re not a patient person.”
And that’s where he got me. I’ve heard that more than once. Even my own husband seconded it. So, I tried to be patient. And, as it turns out, I can be patient. Actually, I was so patient, I nearly died of it.
I’m sorry, I still squeamish about writing the specifics, but suffice it to say that I was bleeding, but in such an unusual pattern that it didn’t raise any alarm bells with the doctor. To be fair to him, the symptoms were atypical. Coupled with this detail was my enormous energy level that was only somewhat depleted by the anemia that was increasing weekly. In fact, the day before I was driven to the Emergency Room by my panicked husband, I attended a business meeting, then went to the market, and ended the day with a walk on the treadmill at my gym!
So, I can’t completely blame the doctor and others around me for missing the signs. But I do blame myself. For the reason that I knew something was wrong, and yet, I allowed myself to be talked out of that gut feeling, because an authority figure’s opinion on that was different than mine. I allowed my criticism of myself for my renowned lack of patience to cow me into accepting advice I knew I shouldn’t have accepted.
This really galls me. In the aftermath of a surgery from which I was not even remotely recovered after six weeks, followed by near-death in which I could literally feel ‘things shutting down’ on the way to the ER, a frantic blood transfusion of six units of blood, a second surgery to correct the problem that was causing the internal bleeding, and a stay in hospital that was like a Saturday Night Live skit (they actually woke me up at 2 a.m. after this ordeal to weigh me), and now looking at another few weeks before I’m able to resume all my normal activities, that one fact that I conceded precedence is what still disturbs me most about this experience. Because if I hadn’t, if I’d trusted myself, none of it would’ve occurred.
Usually, I am confident, capable, and secure in myself. In my writings, especially my political ones, I’m constantly stating how we must all think for ourselves, not cling to an ideology or allow some rhetorical speaker to do our thinking for us. And yet, it took this illness to discover that on some levels, I am still trying to be that ‘good little girl’ who is liked by everyone. Given the right circumstances, press the right buttons, and I will still defer to the instincts of others rather than my own. This was a more shocking realization than the ER doc’s words, “Wow- your blood counts are dangerously low. Lucky for you, you’re so fit. You wouldn’t have made it here otherwise.”
And now, because I’ve been so sick for so long (close to two months, now) I have to work twice as hard just to get back to that fitness level I worked so hard to attain in the first place. I also left the hospital with a cough that makes me sound like a TB victim, due to the second surgery temporarily diminishing my lungs capacity, and am short of breath just walking up a flight of stairs. I have to drink a horrid iron potion that tastes like rotted prunes and old coffee grinds. My skin feels like sandpaper, and I have been warned by my hairdresser that some of my hair might fall out due to the trauma. Pitiful, right? You bet. And stupid, too.
But I did learn some lessons, and oh, boy ─ they were big ones. And I think they might be important enough to share:
First is that this year has been an amazing year for me, and not just because it was almost my last one. I didn’t know when I first published my book that there would be a number of people who’d dislike me as a result. Never thought of that aspect of it, but there it was. So that was a lesson, if not learned for the first time, reiterated: Your true friends are the ones who stick with you not only when times are bad, but also when times for you are really, really good. A sad thing to realize, but an important thing.
On the plus side, there were yet a far greater number of people who were tremendously pleased for me and supportive of my first book. Friends I hadn’t seen in years contacted me to offer sincere congratulations, and new people I met through my writing groups, blogs, etc., were equally enthusiastic and complimentary. I feel truly blessed by this. I’ve always thought that the media overhypes the evil of humankind, and now that the average person has his/her own way of communicating globally through the internet, I find that this is true ─ humanity is mostly good, not mostly bad. It’s a shame that we only get reports about the bad from our mainstream news sources. This was a terrific thing to discover.
I also understood from being ill, that my husband and children, to borrow a phrase from Sally Field, “really do like me”. My son slept at hospital with me the first night I was there, and my husband, whose idea of cooking is to make a sandwich, delivered hot, homemade meals to my bedside every night once I got home. And then there were my friends who rallied ─ Thanksgiving dinner, two Christmas dinners, flowers, get well cards, and phone calls. Messages on Facebook and emails from my colleagues, new friends and former pupils, (who feel like nieces and nephews to me) all meant so, so much.
I’ve always valued my friends and my family, but I admit it was wonderful seeing the tangible proof that they value me, too. It was one more reason to get well, so that I could appreciate and enjoy them all the more.
But the biggest lesson I learned is from now on, with no worries about how others will feel, I’m going to embrace my impatience, rather than try to change it. It’s full speed ahead for me, now and always, because I’m made that way. And never again will I not trust myself. Never again will I feel intimidated by others’ opinions, be they valid or not. And when I find myself wavering from this resolution, I’m going to remember the bruises on my arms from IV needles, the feeling weak and dizzy, the crying as the questions ran around in my head as to why I wasn’t recovering, and all the other momentous experiences of this illness now burned in my memory. They all happened because I still haven’t completely shaken the “Good-Girls-Don’t-Make-a-Fuss Syndrome.” Screw that. From now on, I AM MAKING A FUSS. And it will be your choice to like me for it or not, however you please.
I challenge everyone reading this to do the same. If we do one thing differently this year, let’s embrace ourselves, even with all our faults. I don’t mean ‘be a sociopath and proud’. I mean that while not deliberately causing harm to others, let’s acknowledge that we will make mistakes, that we are not perfect, but we are still worthwhile human beings who have something to offer our friends, our family, and the world. Let’s acknowledge that we can and should have faith in our own selves, even with those imperfections. If we start with that attitude, the year ahead will open us to new encounters. Since we’ll feel more confident, we won’t be afraid when one of our beliefs is challenged, because if we learn that that belief is wrong, it will make us feel empowered, not weakened. We’ll have the courage to fail, not feeling that we are “failures”, but rather human beings on a journey to ever-increasing knowledge. And while none of this will necessarily make the year ahead be filled with all the health, happiness and success we all wish each other every January 1, it will certainly help it be filled with less anxiety and self-doubt.
So, look out 2010 ─
here we come!
P.S- As is the case due to VOX software problems, anyone who would like to leave a comment, can do so on my Facebook page, or on my Word Press blog. The links are: http://www.facebook.com/#/patriciaVdavis?ref=profile
and http://patriciavolonakisdavis.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/2009-the-year-that-ended-dangerously/ I'm very sorry about this continued inconvenience.Main reason I rarely post her anymore. Happy New Year, Everyone. I wish you all a wonderful year!
Even I can’t think about George Bush’s plan to take over the world all the time. Every once in a while, “Aiz got-sta have a leee-tle fun.” And for those of us stateside (United States-states that is,) ‘Turkey Day’ is coming up. Now, ordinarily I don’t like even Turkey Day. In fact, I could scare up a whole other political blog on the propaganda surrounding Turkey Day. Not to mention the excess calories. But not this year. ‘Cause this year, three out of our four surviving sons are coming to our place for Turkey Day and that in itself is enough to be thankful for. So, to hell with diets and politics both. For anyone who’s interested, here are some of the little (and not so little) things, in alphabetical order, that make me smile*:
2. Berries - Blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries. Tasting them one by one, or a spoonful with vanilla yoghurt. Nothing else to say except “yum.” Nature is so good to us.
3. Duncan Hines Deluxe Yellow Cake Mix - A very different food than berries, I know, but, come on-- how can you not love everything about this stuff? The delicious scent of the powdery fine flour mix. Stirring in eggs, oil, vanilla and water, easy and even more fun than making mud pies when I was a child. Scraping the batter off the bowl. The way the kitchen smells as it bakes. The anticipation as it cools, of frosting the done cake with dark chocolate fudge icing. My husband’s smile when I hand him a slice. The moist, creamy taste when I take a bite. Mmmm. Yeah.
4. Frasier reruns - I’m so glad they’re still on air. Every actor in this sitcom is a super-talent. The writing is really something special and the actors deliver their lines with slapstick, genius timing. Two episodes air back-to-back, five nights a week here and hubs and I try to watch at least two each week. It’s so much fun to sit together, watch the actors do their thing and laugh, laugh, laugh.
5. Justin Oliver’s corny jokes - the reason I get to eat yellow cake (well, sometimes, anyway,) is because I work out with Justin Oliver. Apart from being an excellent trainer, Justin tells really excellent corny jokes. Like, “Hey, you better call a plumber- those pipes look ready to burst!” I love working out with Justin, because he makes me work hard. But he also makes me laugh. Those of us who work out with him can’t decide if we should pay him extra for that, or if he should pay us for all the corn kernels we have to shake out of our gym gear when we get home.
6. Laptop, My - my laptop is the way I make my living, my door to the entire world outside my little spot on earth, a testament to what genius man can create when he’s not busy making war and a great game board for ‘Spider Solitaire.’
7. Morning coffee on my patio - a morning spent on my patio is better than meditating. It’s surrounded by bay trees and oak, but there is one giant liquid amber tree, which every fall, scatters gold and red amongst all the green. There are deer, raccoon, squirrels, birds and other creatures who stop by. The grass around my patio smells sweet and slopes down to meet a creek, which trickles or surges, depending on the season. When I can drink my morning coffee on my patio, sitting there in the quiet of nature’s anticipation, I feel thankful, blessed and awed all at once. And the coffee tastes so much better, too.
8. Music - All kinds, from all countries. One of my VOX neighbours, Snowy, said that “music is the only sound you hear with your emotions rather than your ears.” So right. When I think about what musicians give to the world, I am proud that we have so many in my family.
9. Pete’s kisses - You know, it’s really not polite to boast about such things, but I have to say, I am one lucky woman to be the recipient of Pete’s kisses. Wow. Far better than berries or chocolate-frosted cakes. Perfect, in fact.
10. Red lipstick - Nothing makes me feel more feminine than a tube of red lipstick. Twisting up that sexy red cylinder of colour, slicking its softness over my lips, I feel I’m transformed from ordinary girl to fabulous woman when I’m wearing it. My favourite kind? Max Factor Midnight Red.
11. Sixth Sense - ESP, whatever you want to call it, (Pete calls it “nonsense” but he believes in ‘poker gods’ so he’s not fooling me) I've had the ability to sense what most people would say is extraordinary phenomena since I was a child. It only happens sometimes, when I’m not thinking about it, or trying to will it, but when it does, it’s accurate and astonishing. And I like it very much because it convinces me that there’s much more to this world than science or organised religion tells us there is.
12. Sons, mine and Pete’s - when I married Pete, we had five combined. My cousin Jo said, “Do you remember when we were young and you told me you wanted to have five sons someday, just like our grandmother had?” I had forgotten about that. She was right and I couldn’t have picked out five better sons from a line-up, if I’d tried. Each is wonderful in his own way. I’ll keep this simple and just say I love them more than anything. We lost one and he’ll always be missed, but the four who remain, just they alone, truly make life worth living for hubs and me.
13. Toddlers in supermarkets - Gosh, I love watching them. Whilst mum and dad push them in carts, they look around as though they’re in a wonderful, exotic country. Take them through the produce section and their eyes go wide at all the colours and shapes of the hundreds of fruits and vegetables. Seeing a supermarket through the eyes of a toddler makes me realise how remarkable some of the things we take for granted are. But the best part of toddlers in a supermarket, is waiting in the check-out line with one in front of me on the queue. I can make ‘peek-a-boo’ faces at them to pass the time waiting and they almost always smile with delight. To me, coaxing a smile from a toddler in a supermarket, is like winning a prize.
14. VOX neighbours - never in my life has it been this easy to meet so many fantastic human beings all at once. Knowing that I’m communicating with people based everywhere from Bombay to Sidney, male and female, ages 16- 70, who are all so intelligent, kind, funny, and loving, just restores my faith that we will all be all right and so will our planet, eventually.
15. Women in my life. They are strong, brave, loyal, hardworking. They encourage and comfort, they inspire, they have lifted me up when I needed getting off the ground. We share a drink, a story, a smile and our lives. They make the world better just for being in it. They are my friends. I’m proud of them and I would be lost without them. I won’t say I saved the best of this list for last, because it’s a tough call. But if I’ve learned one thing in all my years, it’s that if you’ve got just one truly good friend, you’re blessed with riches beyond counting. You know who you are, ladies.
Do I give thanks for all these things? Hell, yes. Thinking of them reminds me that, apart from every other reason we’re here, we’re here
to LIVE and ENJOY living.
And you? - What are some of your “little” things?
*Inspired by the Muse of Comedy, Thalia, who is shown here painted by the artist Thalia Took
Last week, when I wrote about “Some Things I Wish I Knew When I Was Eighteen,” I got some comments on ‘Number Three’ specifically. So I decided to write more about it this week. Because I learned ‘Number Three’ in a most painful way.
For many years I had what I believed was a very close friend. We’d become friends because we shared some surface commonalities. Similar professions, backgrounds, comparable issues with our parents and the big one - “difficult” spouses. As young women will, the longer we knew each other, the more we confided our anguish over our ‘common ground’ situations. We commiserated over how we both wanted our careers to advance more quickly, about how we both wished our parents would stop criticising and let us lead our own lives and about how we wondered if every woman’s husband was such a trial as ours were. It wasn’t that we were ‘whiners,’ stuck in inertia, it was that, being young, we had a lot to learn about how to handle life’s thorny situations. And as we were learning, it was so wonderful to have someone who could identity with it all, someone from whom we could receive sympathy, support and encouragement.
We did that for each other, but I always thought that she did that more for me than I did for her, because I was the one of the two of us, who was having the most trouble, you see. While her career wasn’t exactly where she wanted, mine was just as far a ways as it could get. While her parents were domineering and judgmental, mine were positively cruel. And while her husband was sometimes a pain in the a**, I felt like mine was a vampire bleeding me dry. And that was why I was so very thankful to have her in my life. I looked up to her. I aspired to be more like her. She was smarter, slimmer, able to handle herself better and going places faster. She seemed so much more together than I, that I couldn’t believe she’d even want to have a wimp like me as her friend.
That was why, when she let me down on occasion, little things, like not coming to a birthday party because we were having it at a place that was “too far to drive,” or cancelling an hour before she was supposed to come to a dinner I’d prepared and a myriad of other small, insignificant things, I hardly noticed. They didn’t seem important, because she was ‘there for me.’ She’d listen and she’d console me whenever I needed to talk about my absolutely sh**ty life and my career that was going nowhere.
And that’s the irony of this story. Because by her doing nothing more than listening, slowly…somehow…I began to crawl my way out of the ‘barrel of crabs’ that was my miserable existence. Maybe it was her support alone, or maybe it was something brave inside of me that I never knew I possessed, that eventually helped me resign myself to the sad fact that I was going to have to love my parents from a distance - a very far distance - if I wanted to maintain my sanity. And maybe it was her friendship, or the fact that I was too weak and dizzy to donate any more blood to my insatiable husband, that made me summon up the courage to dump him. Whichever, neither of these things happened overnight, anyway. They took years and my friend was there through all of them.
It was when things got even better for me than that, that she stopped being there. Well, she’d still listen. But now, there were no words of encouragement in her replies. When I joyfully told her I was getting in shape- finally- she said, “I don’t think you should lose any more weight. You’re too skinny.” (Look at my photo. That’s me as I am now, the “skinniest” I’ve ever been in my life. Do I look like I’m starving? Hardly.)
And when I rang to share with her the happy news that my new lover, (a man who has a very strong blood supply of his own and never steals any of mine,) bought me a pair of earrings that I’d coveted forever, my ‘best friend’s’ remark was, “Well, he didn’t have much of a choice, did he? You practically asked him for those.”
That comment didn’t only crush me, it scared me. I knew something was happening, something bad in our friendship and I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I only knew that she’d been a part of my life for so long, that I couldn’t imagine her not being in it.
This shift in our relationship placed a pall over everything positive that was happening in my life. In my head, I sifted through conversations we’d had in the past. And as I did, I slowly put it together. I recalled remarks she’d made about other friends of hers, too and they began to take on a new meaning:
“_____’s house is always so well decorated. But of course it would be - who’s got the money she has?”
“_____’s husband is always bragging about her artistic talents. He’s just showing off.”
And her most telling commentary of all, “ Wow. _______’s marriage is really a mess. At least my relationship isn’t that bad.”
“At least.” It was a assessment. I finally got it. My ‘best friend’ didn’t really have friends. She had ‘gauges.’ As long as the women she surrounded herself by, could be seen in her eyes as less ‘something’ than she was - less successful, thin, happy, etc., - she could comfort herself that her life, which I see now was a very unhappy one, too, was not as bad as theirs. For reasons of her own that I’ll now never know, she felt that since she couldn’t change her life, at least she had the knowledge, as her consolation prize, that ours were far crappier than hers.
And when I’d inadvertently shown her that it could be done, that we could make our situations better, she no longer had anywhere to hide. From her perspective, our friendship had to end. And it did, badly. It’ll always leave a hole in my heart, too.
But, wait. Before you start thinking, “Wow, what a total b***h she was,” let me add this: it was just as much my fault our friendship ended as it was hers. After all, hadn’t I done the same thing to her as she’d done to me? I’d been comparing her to me, too. I’d put her on a pedestal on which she’d never belonged and I never saw that she had her own weaknesses, doubts and insecurities, that in fact, were more life-lasting than mine. If I hadn’t been so hurt by her not being the woman and friend I’d assigned her to be and had stuck with her, perhaps even confronted her with why she was treating me as she was, maybe she’d have eventually trusted me enough to let me be the support she needed to change her life, too.
Then again, maybe not. Who knows? One thing I do know now, that I learned from all this is: It’s not only a marriage that should be entered into as whole and complete partners. It’s friendships, too. You can’t have an equal and mutually rewarding relationship of any kind, if it’s based on the neediness of any one person in it.
I’m a much stronger woman now than I was when I knew that friend and I surround myself by women equally as strong. We all admire and support each other. But I’ll never get over the loss of that first close friend, I’ll never stop wishing her well and I’ll never stop wondering if our friendship could have had a better ending.
*****
Note to Fellow Voxers: Please check out the contest on my website: www.patriciavdavis.com. We've already got two out of five final winners. I'd love someone from VOX to win!
1. The football quarterback you sighed over all through high school English class, will usually be the first guy to go bald, get fat and have a bypass. You won’t recognize him at your tenth-year high school reunion.
2. Generally speaking, teachers, doctors, clergy and police officers are no smarter, no more compassionate, trustworthy nor dedicated to their work, than the rest of the population. Sometimes they’re even less so.
3. You should judge who your true friends are not only by the sympathy they express when something very bad happens to you, but by the genuine joy they express when something very good happens to you.
4. The Captain and Tenille were wrong. “Love” won’t keep you together. A mortgage you can’t pay on one salary, might do it for a while.
5. If you love a man because he’s strong, brave and has all the answers, you’re doing him and yourself an injustice. If he still makes your heart flip through the times he’s scared, aching or unsure, you’ve both got something good going on.
6. The sexy butterfly tattoo you get when you’re twenty, will just look like a misshapen bruise when you’re sixty.
7. The physical effects of cigarettes, alcohol, McDonald’s twice a week and lack of sunscreen, will all magically show themselves on your face precisely ONE day after your thirty-fifth birthday.
8. Every single politician on the planet, particularly the one you admire most, has his/her own agenda, that may or may not have anything to do with your welfare nor the welfare of his/her constituents.
9. Don’t do all the talking when you meet new people, listen to them and learn. Don’t assume you can figure out whether they’re basically good or bad, either. Time will tell.
10. All the good you do does come back to you, as does all the bad. This is especially true of sit-ups.
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