Pussy-Whipped
A transcribed handwritten journal entry from this morning.
I’m mad at Lola, but being mad at her won’t stop her from walking across my pillow when I’ve just gotten back to sleep, much-needed sleep ended prematurely by this furry little bitch. Nor will it stop her dispensing poop on the counter as she licks herself from her latest diarrheic episode, nor will it stop her from sticking her ass over the opening of the litter box so she craps on the floor. It won’t stop me spending $100’s on special diet food and new litter boxes trying to manage this geriatric phase of my cats’ lives, even as I try to manage my bronchiectasis by upping my cleaning and attempts to sanitize everything. I need sleep for health, I need cleanliness for health, I need health. These fucking degenerate degenerating decrepit cats are…killing me? Are they killing me? I want to kill them sometimes. I need my fucking sleep.
I can pray but experience tells me I can only pray for acceptance. I must accept some situations are shit. If it’s not actually shit I can pray for the wisdom to see that, and if there’s anything I can change I can pray for the courage to change it… But I’m not gonna kill my cats. I love them.
Resentment is the flip side of love. Only by loving am I vulnerable enough to be hurt enough to resent. I’m extraordinarily vulnerable; I guess I’m extraordinarily loving. Did I love everyone who cancelled me? I loved the world and trusted people, yes. Did I love (unnamed psycho trans activist)? Not specifically, but a certain base level of trust and love of my fellow human beings was degraded by him. Did I love (relative)? On some primal level, sure, and now any shred of conscious love for him is gone, leaving only the dead weight of obligation.
My poor kitties, though. As much as they hurt me, they are innocent. I can’t lock them out at night because I love them and their cries would devastate me (and keep me up anyway). Poor Lola, who wants only love and closeness to me, and knows nothing of human hygiene, and is incapable of rudimentary reasoning because she is a cat and also may be going senile. She’s incapable of considering my needs or — ha-ha — any boundaries at all, because she is a cat.
But Lola is amply able to love me as only a cat can. She loves me, this I know. It’s a love devoid of human respect or empathy; it’s about pure closeness, primal trust/dependence, and touch. I need these things in my life too. So I’m grateful for my evil fucking cats.
Sermon by a Part-Time Atheist
Nature is cruel; see illness and death, see animals eating each other. See extinctions and starvation and catastrophe, White Nose Syndrome in bats, Alzheimer’s in humans.
By Nature, I mean God. God is cruel. How can we accept that, and why should we?
God is not held to the same standards as humans because God is not human, and humans are not God. If a man kills another man, it is a sin. But God kills men all the time; indeed, God kills ALL men. God makes disease; that is Nature. If man makes disease and unleashes it on the world (i.e. Covid) it is a sin.
Killing, disease, cruelty: these are God’s job, not man’s. Likewise birth. Bringing Life into the world and taking it out: God. Living and dying: man.
That’s why Catholics oppose artificial insemination and other fertility interventions, as well as abortion: this is not man’s business, it is God’s. Do not play God. Do not manually create or destroy Life.
Some say we should strive to be Godlike. I think not. We should not strive to emulate God’s cruelty (though we do anyway, made in God’s image and all). God handles Life and Death and disease and catastrophe; we handle living with it. Men meddling in these affairs are “playing God.” But that is what we do, we can’t help it; we are God’s cruelty and catastrophe manifest.
Why accept, let alone worship, a God like this? Because this is how the world really is. We invent a personality called God, but we don’t invent Reality. The God of the Bible, thousands of years old, inherited and evolved from traditions even older, is a personification (or mask) of Reality, with all its horrors. He is cruel, capricious, and unfair. It is man who seeks kindness, rationality, and fairness. Man’s justice is appealing; God’s justice is nonsensical. But God’s justice is what we got, ultimately.
God is where the buck stops. God is not man. God is God.
One reason (only men need reasons, God does not) to worship God is it keeps us from worshipping man. God and only God can kill. Men may not. Men who kill may be held accountable by other men. Men are subject to men’s law and men’s justice. Meanwhile everything is subject to God’s law — to the laws of Physics, Nature, Reality.
We cannot hold Physics, Nature, Reality accountable to our laws. We are accountable to theirs, always.
God, or Reality, isn’t good or bad, unless we judge it by human standards. That is why religion advises man to not judge. (We judge anyway, as we are made in God’s image.) Human standards and laws are the only way we can have societies, which we need. (God made us social, we can’t escape that. I’ve tried and failed.)
We muddle through with our always-imperfect laws. We always aim for more perfect. We never reach it. Whenever we fix one problem, seven more open in its stead. So many unintended consequences of the best intentions: that is God’s law, Reality. Still, we must strive in this absurd environment, because God and Nature made us so.
It’s not supposed to make sense.
Not human sense.
Why accept, let alone worship, this crazy God, Nature, Reality? Because it’s the only way to relax. It’s the only path to serenity. I can’t explain why acceptance changes everything, only that it does. I will not pretend God is “good,” that “everything is okay,” or that any of this makes sense by human standards. By human standards, Life is a shit show. By God’s standards, who knows? It’s the only game in town. We cannot understand, we can only accept.
Accept, and live.
Illustrating The SSDI Blue Book
I just applied for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). I don’t expect to get it. Although I have at least 3 qualifying conditions — Crohn’s Disease, Bronchiectasis, and Major Depression (treated) — I haven’t been hospitalized over 48 hours for any of them.
The application process was worthwhile anyway, because it brought me to the SSDI Blue Book. This lists all the ailments that may qualify you for Social Security monies doled out in modest increments prior to retirement age. They are a reminder of the many things that go wrong with the human body: Vision loss. Hearing loss. Amputation. Heart disease. Neurological degeneration.
In addition to broad categories like Musculoskeletal Disorders (1.00), Digestive Disorders (5.00), Hematological Disorders (7.00), and so on, the Social Security Administration maintains a list of Compassionate Allowances Conditions. These are almost all fatal, and bypass the often years-long application process for a merely months-long one that may or may not outlast the applicant. Reading it gave me a sense of perspective, as well as discomfort, fear and sadness: Heart Transplant Graft Failure, Lymphoma, ALS, Hydranencephaly, Mixed Dementias, Cancer, Cancer, and more Cancer, all terminal. Kinda makes Crohn’s and bronchiectasis seem less dire.
We’re all gonna get here sooner or later, unless we die suddenly (accident, homicide, etc.). Covid brought me here to Disability Land sooner. It left me with a permanent low fever and ever-expanding autoimmune conditions I never had before. It took away what I thought were another decade or two of active mid-to-latish life. At 57 I am accumulating conditions more common to those in their 70’s or 80’s. Still, I got off easy compared to many. Crohn’s, for example, is often diagnosed in adolescents; I didn’t get it until I was 55. Many disabilities are invisible, and we have no idea what everyone is struggling with.
Plus, my pulmonologist says 57 is Old. So it’s time for me to make some art about being Old:
I’m going to illustrate (parts of) the SSDI Blue Book.
Maybe I’ll make another playing card deck with them: The SSDI Qualifying Impairments Deck.
But to start I’m just illustrating.
If there’s a specific ailment you want me to include, you can commission one here. Be sure to name the condition and let me know it’s for this project. I can also make its sufferer resemble you or another victim of your choice.
I have felt a lot better since starting this project, so even if it’s in terrible taste and everyone hates it, I’m doing it anyway.
Bronchiectasis Mascots
What’s a good shorthand for bronchiectasis sufferers? People with Crohn’s disease are sometimes called Crohnies. I suggest people with bronchiectasis should be referred to as Bronchies. That of course suggests images, so I drew two:
Until recently bronchiectasis was classified as a rare disease. The symbol of rare diseases is the zebra.
You’re welcome.
Autoimmune Disease
Bronchiectasis
For my 57th birthday I got a diagnosis of Bronchiectasis, a chronic incurable lung condition often associated with Crohn’s disease.
In addition to coughing for the rest of my life and being extremely susceptible to infections, there’s the problem of pronouncing it. The syllabic emphases are like “bronchi-ecstasy,” although it is in fact bronchi-agony.
Or, as my friend Caroline called it, Brontosaurus Ecstasy:
A week ago, the day after my birthday, I went to “Convenient Care Plus” because my pinkeye and nosebleeds had returned and my cough never left. They gave me a CT scan which revealed calcification of my airways. I was put on new drugs, and although I am still miserable the pinkeye has gone away and the codeine helps me sleep.
Appointment with pulmonary specialist is in about 2 weeks. I wish it were sooner but that’s what they got.
As I wrote on Xitter:
My job is now being sick, and I’m being sick like it’s my job. I ROCK at this. So many symptoms, so many serious disorders. And I just don’t recover! Shows real commitment. I excel.