In Memoriam

Charles Peterson

"Kurt Cobain, Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver, B.C., 1991"

When I heard the news on April 8, 1994 that Kurt Cobain had blown his fucking head off with a shotgun at his home in Seattle, I said I didn't care.

Told everyone that I wasn't a fan.

Made damn sure that EVERYONE knew that he didn't speak for *me* or anyone I knew in my generation.

But really, I was fucking mad.

I was 19, on my way to 20 years old. I was getting divorced. I was drinking too much. I was waking up next to people who's names I can't recall and who's faces I probably wouldn't be  able to identify in a lineup. I was doing a lot of things that desperate people do to kill pain.

If Kurt Cobain had nothing to live for, if he felt like this world had failed him, then what did I have to live for?

How could the man who wrote at least five songs that I love, who had money, someone who loved him, a small child, and friends who wanted nothing more than to create with him, just wake up one morning and decide that there was nothing left for him.

I don't have the passion anymore, and so remember, it's better to burn out then to fade away.

Peace, Love, Empathy.

The fact that *I* am still alive after this period of my life is surprising.

So, I just want to say this. I didn't mean what I said about Kurt Cobain in 1994. I understand the place he was coming from, and to a lesser extent I've lived there.

If I were an American citizen and resident, I would be dead now.

Sometimes I am angry I'm still alive.

 Fuck you all, this is the last song of the evening.

"I hope you are able to find new hope while living with this disease."

This is one of the things I just don't understand. This person is a stranger to me. She just happened upon my blog, and decided that I was a great candidate to give hope to other people neither of us know because I have self-identified as someone with MS.

You know what I have hope in?

Science.

I have hope that the collective fundraising groups are throwing more money at research and science than they are building websites to build hope.

Hope is a false profit.

Science, that's got the chance to really change things.

I don't believe that there's a "cure" for MS that doesn't include completely changing one's immune system. Fucking with DNA, wholesale stem cell transplants; that's where the hope is.

It's not on a website full of platitudes.

I'm still well enough that if they found a way to permanently halt the progression of my disease, I'd be okay. I could live for the next 50 like that. No problem. I think that that kind of cure isn't that far away. I suspect that we'll be there by the time I'm old enough for CPP.

It's the reversing of MS related damage... that's going to be where the money is.

Once they get there, the next thing is to prevent MS from happening in the first place.

My hope is in science, not in a bunch of people I don't know.

Wrong person

There's a comment in my previous post from some for-profit, US Healthcare bullshit, asking if I would post a short video of hope, encouragement and inspiration for those just diagnosed with MS.

I'm the WRONG person for that.

You see, I know that that the "power of positive" thinking is bullshit.

It's not going to help me get better. It's not going to make my symptoms go away. It's not going to give me back functioning ovaries, or put my hair and nails back to healthy.

I can't think my way to not having MS.

What I can do is share my experience:

In a nutshell, if you liked your life before MS, you're going to hate it now.

If you hated your life before MS, you're going to go through bouts of suicidal depression and a level of self-loathing that will make you wish you were dead.

Any plans you had that go beyond maybe a year from now: accept that they're just plans, and probably not the likely outcome.

No one has a cure for MS. From the best research available, most people with RRMS are not completely disabled after 10 years who:

do not smoke.
get regular exercise.
eat a diet of small amounts of protein and large amounts of plants.

Which is kind of funny, because that's what they tell people who DON'T have MS to do to stay healthy.

MS broke me at a time where I was just getting my shit together. I will never be able to make up for what MS cost me.

I don't have anything to offer a newly-diagnosed person. My MS isn't your MS, and if forced to choose between the MS I got and the MS you got, I'll stick with what I have. It's not a gift, it's not full of great lessons, and it did not happen for a reason.

I will concede one thing about the "power of positive thinking".

It makes my family and friends happier to be around me when I pretend I have it.

Where have I been?

So, for the longest time I didn't want to write about anything at all.

I'm not exactly what you would call "in love with life" these days.

Finances continue to be a struggle.

Car ownership continues to vex me.

The heating situation in our apartment makes me want to stab someone.

Seriously, when it's 30 below out there, it does not need to be 40 degrees in here.*

Also, when it's hovering around zero outside, it needs to be warmer than 10 inside.*

Joe's schooling continues to be a challenge. Nothing is working out as previously planned, so now it looks like he's going part-time until Spring of 2016. Which means he's gotta find a job. Find a job with a poli-sci degree in a town where the official unemployment rate is stuck at 9.5%

I'm not sure I'm cut out for self-employment, but hopefully my two new clients work out better than my three old ones.

I'm biting my nails again for the first time in 10 years. Right now I'm just glad that I haven't started smoking again.

Things are different here.

I miss living in a city.

A lot.

There's so very little from my old life that crosses into my new one.

I did the work. There's practically nothing.

I suppose that I would hate it here less if I could get away from it more often but between the location restrictions from the funding program I'm in for my business and the lack of money we're still going through, I can't really go anywhere.

***

My MS remains a pain in my ass.

I started working out with some regularity in late October of last year. The goal is to get physically stronger and improve my balance.

I don't know if it's working.

I learned that I can't do a 45 minute work out at the gym and then come home and do three loads of laundry up and down 3 flights of stairs and have enough energy to do much of anything after 4 PM.

***

I learned that cheap Indian food and a shot of Canadian Club not long before bed causes me to have dreams where I hit people I haven't seen or heard from in over a year in the arm and yell at them to stop haunting my dreams.

Yeah.

I know.

*All temps Celsius 

Long time ago

in a land, far, far away; my last and only hope to stay in Vancouver was dashed.

A year ago I got the call that I would not get the job I'd been hoping for. They decided to go with the person they thought they would get along with better.

Yeah, I know. I think about that sentence at least once a day.

I regret not staying in Vancouver less and less. When I realize how little money we actually make, we'd have been homeless by now had we stayed.

***

This weather though.
Fuck this winter.

***

I spend a great deal of my time pretending to be someone I am not.

It's difficult.

Still, I haven't had a progression in my MS symptoms since I originally got sick in December 2008.

It just the same shit, every day, all day.

I'm trying my hand at self-employment.

I really hate it.

I really hate the people you have to deal with in order to both eat AND pay the bills. I hate the person I have to become in order to be perceived as competent and capable.

I'm depressed, but not as bad as I have been before.

I hate it here.

I need to start dating an extrovert with money, because I'm bored to fucking tears around here.