relevance of time

I am learning through the actions and interactions of friends and acquaintances that I have different value on time than most of whom I associate with. The days of me not wanting or needing to converse with someone for a period of time and then picking up where we left off are no longer something I am capable of handling emotionally. It is because I believe and know that I am on borrowed time and minutes in a day and a day in a week is something that I place high value on as I accelerate my need to complete.

The day of me writing an e-mail and not expecting a response for a period of several weeks are no longer. It is too much time past, time that becomes a memory without that or those whom I crave to hear from, to see, to listen to. I now think in blocks, simple blocks, and try to accomplish all that I can in a short block of time, leaving little to chance as I do not know how much more time I have been granted and allowed.

And as I listen to how my internal organs function solely with the assistance of medication FOR NOW and that in time, my body will reject the assistance which is the symbol to the end of my life as I know it, TIME has become a priority for the alternative is unfathomable. On those occasions when I am too ill to return a phone call or respond to an e-mail, I know it is lost time. And as I slow down I watch my response and ability to respond slow down, my mind is still thinking in terms of accomplishing all or nothing in the here and now.

I understand how lives complicate and situations arise where communication becomes a challenge between two people, me and another. I also know that the 'go with the flow' mentality and I will get to later mentality has distanced from my vocabulary as that time I speak about in the future may not be left for me, but will be for the others I involve myself with.

Now, it is more important for me to hear that 'I am too busy to talk' than to hear silence as I interpret the now silence as a closure of sorts as my future, when spelled out before me, is grave and spoken of in first days and then weeks and possibly months and never any further. So when I feel the need to see and do and be and go and I do not get a response for several days, which is a short period of time, I realize that I only have so many periods left and thus have almost over emphasized how valuable time truly is to me and my being.

Logically I know I will not accomplish so many things that I originally set out to accomplish. Figuratively I still am a visionary with high hopes and grand dreams and in my perfect world time could continue until infinity, people and situations would change with the times and I would witness it all. But this is not a reality nor even a wish for I am more concerned with the hoping I will hear and I will get to do sooner because the later may never arrive.

Still, I too am torn with some days just needing to be alone and needing to rest and needing to think and needing to be quiet as well but when I re-examine how my time was spent, I realize what I have gained in self and also lost in others for I too did not have the time or simply did not take the time as I needed to allocate it elsewhere for my own comfort, my own fears and meaningful relationships suffer. I still remain patient, but even patience has its limits with me and is something I have, like it or not, learned to have less of only because patience and time go hand in hand just like relationships.

I am more forward in my line of questioning, more direct in my answers and still remain an abstraction trying desperately to understand something that is too surreal for my mind to fully grasp the concept as to do so would erase all hope. And in the time that I have been given I live with HOPE as a conviction. Hope for another minute, another day, another phone call, another laugh, another visit all while battling that which has brought me to this way of thinking and feeling, my terminal illness. And I accept my illness but not entirely, for to accept at the deepest level there would be no hope and there would be no time and there would be no me.

quiet time

I sit and enjoy my quiet time as my parents have taken a vacation of their choosing and realize that although I am grateful that my family offered me a place of shelter, I do miss, whether I think about it consciously or not, my years of 'independence' and separation from the nest and all the questions that came with the role I now call child.

Surprisingly though, my internal growth and maturation and the years of distance and often my own personal avoidance of family, has not altered my role and unfortunately I am still looked upon as a child. And due to the fact that I am terminally ill and my parents have knowledge and awareness of this fact and digest the information in their own way(s), my role of child is not an adult child, but a child. The nurturing that was not there before is not there today and I, for lack of knowing how to be any different, feel more like a fourteen year old and many of the issues that I face with my family and much of the conflict that arises is different scenario, same players, been-there-done-that-before.

The frustration and the lack of privacy, lack of freedom, lack of independence and lack of ability to sustain sufficiently on my own is heightened while I have some alone time, much appreciated and every bit as much wanted as it is needed. The effort and the amount of time that has been spent to break down this child role plays havoc with the mind, body, spirit connection and often more than not, I remove myself from situations that disturb and even disorient me from my self proclaimed opinions and ways of conducting everyday life by not talking and pulling away in the room where my belongings are.

To look and to study the self induced isolation is uncomfortable and soothing at the same time as it gives me a sense of control over my life and sometimes my everyday living situation.

I no longer seek the approval and the guidance the child requested and demanded. Instead I request that I be allowed to simply be. I enjoy this time of solitude and quiet and see it as a time of self healing, a way of regrouping and refocusing, possibly on what is and is not important. It is a pleasant change, a right of passage that I accepted once before, when I became an adult or was allowed to make adult decisions.

When my parents arrive home they will be welcomed and I am hopeful that their time away brings them a sense of peace and the realization that although some family time is important to sustain a household, the alone time is equally or even more important, at least to me.

workings of my machine

As of late, possibly three weeks or longer, I have noticed a heightened sense of awareness of my surroundings. Often I am seeing signs and symbols in my peripheral vision including lights that twinkle white and intermittent splashes of rustic yellows and sour reds. Stars fall from the night sky and those surrounding me stare too, but cannot see what and where I explain. I glance in the direction of a well drawn shadow, even turn my head, only to find nothing and no one present. Yet I am seeing something with my naked eyes which often blur and twitch but certain not to tear.

My feeling of touch has become powerful as warmth is felt, sometimes the warmth of another person before one, other than me, enters the room. I visualize smells of a finished product prior to cooking it and as I smell the spice, I grab for water that seems not to quench my growing thirst. Hunger pains are no longer present but I feel pains of a different nature, still internal, but nauseating to the core. Colors blend before me and I sit quiet trying to figure out what I have been witness to and smelling wrong.

I answer before my name is called and begin a project before I am asked realizing that some things are very different and continue at a steady pace to throw me off balance, steal words from my thoughts and alter my course of doing. Noises become loud and still I cannot hear pitch well enough to complete a sentence that has been sitting in queue, at the tip of my tongue for minutes or less.

I watch as my stomach rises to a rumble that even stirs my sleeping dog and I wonder why the itching, fierce and all consuming, bleeds my skin as I scratch with nails cleaned and bitten knowing my nerves crave rest and my body lay exhausted from self.