Blog 22 – The Shoulder is Your Own

1/25/2012

Forgive me Father, for it’s been fifteen days since my last blogfession.

(That note was just for my Dad. He insists I speak strictly in banal Catholic ironies.)

In reality, I’ve felt less-than-stellar about my lack of updates to my Internet sounding board, but the actual reality is I’ve had so little to say. After the “lawl, it’s MS” hilarity that I endured at Johns Hopkins, I have buried myself in my work in an effort to not give it any further thought. Whether that ends up being a healthy solution or not remains to be seen, but in the meantime I’m getting a staggering amount of work done across multiple things.

So let’s real talk.

Avatar was on HBO the other day and that movie is really stupi—

Oh, that wasn’t the real talk we were gonna have?

Even though it’s a shallow depiction of good vs. evil using the transparent and manipulative tropes of corporate greed in conflict with an indigenous people perfectly in tune with the vaguest of glowing-leafy deities? 

Still nothin’?

Stop making explosions noises with your mouth. That’s not helping.

This is what’s known as “stalling” because the last thing I want to subject myself or anyone to is to breakdown and pepper the ‘net with Sadsies ™. I made a promise to myself when I started this blog that I would catalogue everything I could so that anyone else going through fairly debilitating issues in their life would have a place to go and see a light at the end of the tunnel. Like an annoyingly verbose Lite-Bright.

So, with your permission to degrade this into something that would cause you to delete people from your Facebook wall:

The last two weeks have been lonely and terrifying at any moment I allowed myself to slow down and breathe.  It’s depressing to admit you’re lonely, especially when there isn’t a shortage of people around that are bending over backwards at a moments notice to be there for you. I get to go into a building and make videogames with some of the most talented people on the planet; people would kill for that, which is another reason I hate even saying this – but it’s reality. We made a pact to share reality.

You have to, unfortunately on your own, come to terms with whatever hand you were dealt. Great friends and family will help push you through the door, but the journey is your own. The journey takes a lot longer than you would expect. It might actually take you’re entire life to come to terms with the unfair realities of the universe.

It just so happens that the hand I was dealt gave me an incredible gift to entertain and bring happiness to people around the world for a job. The other half of the deck just happens to have a hole in my heart that gave me a couple of strokes and a shotclock-violating diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. No one on the planet can look you in the eye and say, “It’s going to be okay” in a way you’ll believe – well, maybe Nathan Fillion. He’s got Michael Landon hair and dreamboat eyes.

*SWOONAGE INTERMISSION*

And writing it down helps. As much as you don’t want to be the Facebook-wallflower, you know the type: continuously lamenting their own bewilderingly vague sadness on repeat until someone chimes in with a “u lonely bro?” It’s okay to admit you’re sad or lonely and need some time to heal. We all need a shoulder to cry on, but in the long run, that shoulder is your own. Get that shit out. It’s what I’m doing this very second and everything I felt like I was shouldering today is beginning to fade into an acceptance of circumstances.

I’ve noticed a lot of people have been talking about their own ailments and circumstances in the comments to the blogs and the best piece of advice I can possibly offer to you is:

Keep doing that.