Priority List, A ReWrite

The Big Priority List (A Little Less Than Lost)

A quick rewrite

The eleven years of recovery following my toxic exposure in 1998 have been a skim board ride on a banana peel across my psychology. It has left me up-ended in a peanut barreled of honky-tonk noise.
Sometimes I can’t hear myself think.
I remember reading poetry in places like this, with no one listening. Even crowd noise has a beat. I rumbled across the bongo skins of my fears, beating strength and intuition on the rim shots, really reading for myself, discovering my own breathing, my own thoughts.
I stood in the strip lights on bare board floors and looked for the right page.
Once doing stand up comedy I reached the same place, staring into the quiet, thoughtful crowd listening to the silence.
“Listen.”
They did.
It was pretty darned quiet.
That got a laugh.
It was my night. They laughed when I walked out onto the stage.
This is my first full year living independently. I feel like I am pacing that stage again, thinking things over.
I’ve become isolated. I swore I wouldn’t be. I did my volunteer work. I joined a few clubs. I’ve struggled with huge open time. I haven’t got my economics down yet. You are supposed to spend only the money you have on only the things that you need. I have become like my country. I spend more money than I have on things I don’t need. As a result, I don’t do what I need to do. I throw money like darts at a board. It is something to do, spend money.
You only get three darts in this game, and then it’s over.
This is exceptionally good motivation to make more money and have fewer needs. I haven’t hit the bulls-eye yet on that one.
I need better control.
I’ve decided to surf banana peel instead.
As I hobbled around on crutches these last few weeks, hating every hop and skip and jump of it, I wanted a messiah whose garment I could clutch and kiss to make me strong ankled and footed. I was ready to be better.
The messiah did not come.
Instead I saw several doctors whose observation and advice were that my foot would get better.
It has in little tiny increments.
It still hurts.
It is angled off in some odd-ball ballet-like position.
The ankle knuckles looking like twin Christmas tree balls.
Pain still shoots up my leg like the lead puck in a bell ringing exhibition.
But there is progress. I have to acknowledge it.
I no longer wail and gnash teeth every time I walk like the Mummy across the floor to pick up my crutch.
Even toxicity runs its course.
It may not kill you. It may make you stronger. It may kill you at its own pace. It may not kill you at all but instead produce ghastly side effects. It may not do anything at all, embarrassing you in front of your peers and social security.
The weird combinations keep coming together no matter what I do.
It makes me feel romantic.
I think I am ready to date again.
My priority list is not dramatically different than any other time in my life.
It’s still health and safety, money, love, family and spirit that fill my dreams.
Why don’t we act on what we know to achieve these things?
That’s the psychological primal question.
The answer varies according to your orientation. If you are Freudian, the answer is death.
I’m a cognitive/contemplative as a psychologist.
The answer for us is more like “huh?”
Yeah.