Nine Months, Like Riding A Bike

[[Ve...]]

If you’ll indulge me in this celebration of a milestone, this temporarily noteworthy moment in time, I can’t promise anything but I’ll give it my all if you join with me in this ritual of commemoration, pregnant with significance, of the day when it all ended and the point where it all began.

 

If you don’t believe for a moment all this jubilation let me iterate: nouns are my bouquet, my disco dance, and my nine-month birthday cupcakes; verbs are my jug of wine, my run of luck, and my rapture of saints; adjectives are my present, my delicious cool and my exultant, spicy fabulous. This is my song of songs, if you’ll forgive the intimation of imitation.

 

If you were to ask me what one thing could be done to alleviate the weird manifestations of this ridiculous affliction we share, my answer would be what worked for me, what changed the way I think and feel from night to day, from chalk to cheese, from unresponsive to irresistible. You’d very likely tell me that it probably wouldn’t work for you because you are in too much pain, but I’d tell you how much pain I experience on a daily basis and that my feeling has become, if it’s going to hurt so much I’m going to give it a darn good reason. You might say that the fears and anxieties are too much, that it just wouldn’t be possible to do something so obviously dangerous, to which I’d have to reply, to wit, the best way to become fearless is to perform fearsome acts and miraculously survive. What if the depression makes it impossible to perform, you ask, and I would answer calmly, knowingly, that the most powerful antidepressant ever made, that ever will be made, comes in the form of a rush of wind, a scent of land and sea, a glimpse of sky, a taste of freedom, and a song in your heart, and the best part of all is that this remedy is spellbindingly and unabatingly habit-forming in the most necessary of ways.

 

If you were to ask me what miracle supplement, what guru’s practition, what’s this fantastic phenomenal fifth food group, I’d tell you it’s simple as riding a bike: go ride a bike. Seriously, go out and buy a bicycle, new or used, or unearth that mountain bike your kid neglected for the Playstation, get a helmet that fits and go for a ride every day, long or short as you like but preferably long. It’s as simple as that, and remember that no matter how long it’s been since you’ve last ridden a bike, bicycle riding is one of those proficiencies that does not fade away with time, it’s literally like riding a bike.

 

If at this point you’re asking yourself why, oh why, am I bothering you with all this, it’s because today I’m nine months post taper which puts me somewhere around a year since the day I started taking three, one milligram tablets of klonopin instead of four and learned for the first time that my childhood fears of poky pitchforks and devilish demons in a fiery brimstone pit were a pale imitation of the tortures awaiting me. One year ago, I was learning what crazy and crippled really felt like, despite having lived with what I thought was psychosis and disability for over ten years which turned out to be summer day camp compared to what was in store for me.

 

So when I tell you that riding around like a lunatic during an eclipse atop my slightly used but brand new to me Schwinn city bike upon the congested, potholed and tar-patched, ridiculously hilly streets of the fifteenth largest metropolitan area in the United States, please understand my full meaning when I tell you that this experience has been to me as if Doctor Feelgood herself had written me a prescription for Extra Strength Panacea. Take as needed. Unlimited refills.

 

Balance issues? Tell them to walk a plank. Akathisia? Sit on it. Gastrointestinal problems? Kiss my sweaty butt. Depersonalization? Don’t use a machine, become one. Dry mouth? I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow this hill down. Metallic taste? Anything is the best meal I’ve ever tasted after a two hour ride. Fatigue? I’ll show you real fatigue. Weakness? That’s what coasting downhill is for. Paranoid? It’s not paranoia if the automobile drivers really are out to kill me. Derealization? The reality of a forest of giant sequoias is never-ending, undeniable, and overpowering, nothing can diminish it. If you don’t have a thicket of giant sequoias on your friendly neighborhood bike trail, the trick is to find something like it in your neck of the woods. I guarantee there is some aspect of the universe that holds court in your daily life, waiting for you to come by for a respectful visit to give grateful thanks.

 

You get the idea.

 

If you’re wondering why I don’t just get it over with and post a success story it’s because this isn’t success, this is what it feels like to be on the road to success, but it’s not success itself. I suppose one could just as easily say that success isn’t the end of the journey, instead the journey is a success only as long as it doesn’t end, but if that’s true we should all be writing success stories the day we decide to start a taper or cold turkey or when we’ve had enough of feeling sick and tired of being tired and sick, as it’s been said. I haven’t given up on the dream that one day I’ll feel well enough to believe that I’ve healed from this brain damage and recovered from the nerve damage. That some day the neural remediation will be complete and the transformational informational negotiations will have summed themselves out and solved for x, y, and z, until then I’ll still have the most precious gift you all have given me and that is a firmly-grounded hope that I will feel not just better but I will feel well.

 

So, if I decide not just yet to declare victory and go home it’s not because I don’t feel victorious, because I do every day as I slowly reintegrate myself into society. Every day I’m making the choice to carry on with my life, not because I don’t feel absolutely horrible anymore but in spite of this suffering. I want to be absolutely clear that this doesn’t make me extra strong or a spiritual giant or lucky or exceptional or brave, not in the slightest. If there is one talent I have it’s an exceptional desire to avoid pain, as can be deduced from my apparent willingness to spend nearly fifteen years taking a stupid medication that after the first few weeks didn’t have even so much as a palliative effect at all and eventually sunk me into a profound illness that had me absolutely convinced my neck was on the chopping block and waiting impatiently for the death stroke.

 

I will admit that my suggestion that you run out and purchase a bicycle is almost entirely selfish on my part. Were my scheme successful it would translate into thousands of new bike riders who would otherwise be driving or driven in an automobile who instead might spend some part of that time not opening the door into a bike lane without checking to make sure I won’t be garroted by your window or pulling out onto the road without looking left, then right, then left again. At least I have something sensible to obsess over while having my nightly panic attack, right? Though, that doesn’t stop me from wondering what would happen if all the rear spokes broke at once or if my chain broke and wrapped around the front brakes locking them up while in near free-fall coasting down the Denny Way bridge across Interstate 5, oh that’s one of my favorite anxiety scenarios that is.

 

It might also mean there was one less carbon-heaving monstrosity slowly but inexorably suffocating life on this oh, so beautiful planet that we’re oh, so very lucky to call home. That’s my other apprehension, the steady transmutation of our climate from cheerful sunroom to terrarium with the lid sealed shut. Call me a hippy, call me selfish, that’s okay. Just do it from your electric car and I’ll ramble on smiling happy.

 

While you’re calling me names, I’ll say that yes, I’m content to be crazy thank you very much. While my therapist may have an distaste for the word, I find it liberating in its ability to describe my uncomfortable past, my delightful present and my sensational future.

 

Has it been all sunshine and bunnies? Not even slightly, it’s been downright uncomfortable. It’s like I’ve been unknowingly dosed with a particularly strong hit of LSD except it doesn’t stop after eight to twelve hours, it just keeps being weird. Allow me to go through my journal and pick out a few choice quotes: “I feel like one of those giant African millipedes is crawling around in my gut,” “I’ve never been stabbed, but if I ever am, I hope it doesn’t hurt this much,” “You know the expression ‘my nerves are shot’? My nerves are shot in the head at point blank range,” “I feel as if my heart had been carelessly unplugged, wrung out with an iron fist, and plugged back in the wrong way.” I never realized there were so many ways to be uncomfortable.

 

Or maybe it’s just like I had a big cup of coffee this morning and forgot breakfast except I didn’t have any coffee and ate a reasonable breakfast but why do I feel jumpy and jittery without any good reason. It wouldn’t be a big deal if there was a reason for it but darned if I can find one, so here I am, I guess. Except what really happened is I did have a big cup of coffee this morning and I also had a pretty good breakfast and sure I’m jittery but about as jumped up as I’d be if I’d had a big warm cup of coffee so why would I even consider not having coffee if it makes no difference either way? Nothing adds up, but I’m starting to get used to that. I remember reading someone ask, do we heal or do we just get used to feeling this way, and I’m starting to be of a mind that maybe there isn’t a very big difference between the two. If the quality of life is the same, does it really matter?

 

I suppose I have to bring this to a conclusion, despite having said way more than I wish about too few of the topics I’d wanted to cover. That’s okay as this is a celebration and not a graduate thesis, a poem of epic length if not epic content, a literary jumbo bag of sugar cookies to be eaten passionately and forgotten quickly. It may be years before I feel well enough to consider myself past this experience but I’m not going to spend years waiting to be joyful. I’m going to steal my happiness back from the unassailable fortress in the dead of night with a robbing hood’s pluck wearing a desperado’s mask. I plan to be disrespectful and downright disobedient in the face of this intractable condition. It deserves nothing more from me so I’ll do nothing less.

 

Lastly, if you have a serious medical issue that prevents you from bike riding — please don’t unquestioningly believe that you can’t but ask a doctor, shaman or licensed soothsayer if there’s a style of unicycle, tricycle or millicycle that you can ride before you decide you can’t — my next suggestion would be to spend the same amount of time in wild dance, moving your body to the rhythms in your heart, groovy or gritty or both at once, as often as practicable and if you don’t believe you can dance I admonish you to YouTube to search for videos of wheelchair dancers so you can be inspired by the certainty that if you’re able to read this you’re able to dance, and dance beautifully. Yes you. You too. We’re all beautiful when we dance, it’s axiom.

 

To be really honest, I’m a big fan of dancing whenever I’m not biking and biking whenever I’m not dancing, except when I’m doing something even more interesting. But that’s just me.

 

See you in three months, friends, count on it.

 

(Please forgive typographic, logical and sociological errors but grammatical and spelling errors are unforgivable. Also, I'll try to reply this time, so I look less like a spambot trying to trick your email filter, not that replying will make me look any less like that but there'll be more interactivity.)

[[Mo...]]

Jessuss VEP...what a great writing talent you have .....

 

never seen anything like it here. I really enjoyed every sentence of your post.

 

I just came by to congratulate you....can't say much more cause I'm

 

a lousy writer. See ya again int three months time....in the meantime

 

take care and don't laugh at my high standard post please.....

 

I do have talents too....writing isn't one of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[[Lo...]]

Jessuss VEP...what a great writing talent you have .....

 

never seen anything like it here. I really enjoyed every sentence of your post.

 

I just came by to congratulate you....can't say much more cause I'm

 

a lousy writer. See ya again int three months time....in the meantime

 

take care and don't laugh at my high standard post please.....

 

I do have talents too....writing isn't one of them.

 

FULL AGREEMENT! MY FAVE:

 

If you don’t believe for a moment all this jubilation let me iterate: nouns are my bouquet, my disco dance, and my nine-month birthday cupcakes; verbs are my jug of wine, my run of luck, and my rapture of saints; adjectives are my present, my delicious cool and my exultant, spicy fabulous. This is my song of songs, if you’ll forgive the intimation of imitation.

 

AND I HAVE BALANCE ISSUES...SO THIS HIT HOME!

 

Balance issues?? Tell them walk a plank!

 

Happy 9 months off!!! A new birth!!! 

[[Lo...]]

I used to African dance before all of this mess! I love it when you said, "my next suggestion would be to spend the same amount of time in wild dance, moving your body to the rhythms in your heart, groovy or gritty or both at once, as often as practicable and if you don’t believe you can dance I admonish you to YouTube to search for videos of wheelchair dancers so you can be inspired by the certainty that if you’re able to read this you’re able to dance, and dance beautifully. Yes you. You too. We’re all beautiful when we dance, it’s axiom."

 

 

3 cheers for dancing!

[[Mo...]]

I used to African dance before all of this mess! I love it when you said, "my next suggestion would be to spend the same amount of time in wild dance, moving your body to the rhythms in your heart, groovy or gritty or both at once, as often as practicable and if you don’t believe you can dance I admonish you to YouTube to search for videos of wheelchair dancers so you can be inspired by the certainty that if you’re able to read this you’re able to dance, and dance beautifully. Yes you. You too. We’re all beautiful when we dance, it’s axiom."

 

 

3 cheers for dancing!

 

I second that. :clap:

[[Ve...]]

Thank you both so much, you're very kind. To tell you the truth, the most difficult thing for me is to write a short reply like I'm trying to do now.

 

Your replies gave me such a boost and I was able to go out to a community meeting last night and sit in the middle of a big crowd of people. Crawling out of my skin the whole time but sometimes I feel like the trick to getting better faster is to put myself in stressful situations and hope my nervous system does that adaptation thing. No idea if it has any actual effect on getting better faster or not, just feels like it should, ya know?

 

Maybe it's sort of like dancing, if I'm not feeling a little bit silly and out of place, I'm not doing it right.

 

Thanks again and happy healing!

[[Mo...]]

You are welcome Vegan......

 

As months go by it will get better and better, eventually going to those meetings

 

will be a piece of cake for you, i'm sure. Its all about nerve regeneration

 

and CNS recovery......you've got the right attitude which is priceless.

 

 

 

 

[[no...]]

*bump*

[[st...]]

I feel like you did a good job of capturing what it feels like to feel sick from a medication that should make you feel better. Thank you