You’ve posted enough cryptic hints about your past that I can believe you were an asshole, so I won’t insult your intelligence by trying to convince you otherwise. But I will tell you that, asshole or no, you are smart and kind (now, if you didn’t used to be) and funny as hell. You have touched a lot of lives here, hundreds or thousands of them, and you’ve made us think (which is even harder than being smart yourself) and you’ve taken us on wonderful flights of fancy which end up revealing things about ourselves and our assumptions that we rarely face in real life. That’s good stuff.
I won’t try to fill you with false hope, because, again, I don’t like to insult your intelligence, and I don’t know exactly what’s going on. But I will tell you that things are *rarely *as dire as they seem alone in a hospital room at 4 am. And if you have any need or desire to vent or ask questions about medical stuff you’re not clear on or whatever, just PM me. I may not have all the answers, but I can usually point you in the right direction to get them.
I don’t usually post, but from your stories you’ve long been one of my favorite people on the board. Whatever you may have in your past, I know you now as a brilliant, funny, perceptive, generous, and compassionate person. Your children are going to be proud all their lives that you’re theirs.
And the longer you don’t die, the better things will tend to get. You are in a low place. The bad thing for me about low places is that I tend to think I will be in that low place forever.
Not so. Things change. It gets better. Sometimes even only in a change of attitude, but things change.
The trick is in keeping your mind busy and the fear at bay until this happens.
Hang on and be strong. Fake it until you make it. Do what you have to do. And remember that you are not alone.
Whatever may or may not have happened before, you’re a good person now, with many people who love you and care about you. When you get right down to it, that’s the pinnacle of life’s achievements.
Hang in there Skald! We’re all hoping you get well. Don’t be afraid to cry. Tears are the sound of pain and sadness leaving the body. There is no divine retribution, sometimes things just happen. Life has knocked you down before, the secret is ‘get knocked down 10 times, get back up 10 times.’ Athena is not through with you, for good or bad and neither are we.
Satch
Glad to hear that the painkillers are helping. Hoping that they pin down the cause soon.
You know, don’t you, that if it turns out that you have a GI proplem that could be helped by a fecal transplant, you’ll have a board-ful of volunteers, right?
Death is counterproductive. No dead person ever did anything! Well, OK. There was ‘Major William Martin’ in Operation Mincemeat. And the dead passengers helped out after that soccer team crashed in the Andes back in '72. But the point stands. So you’d be making a grave mistake if you died!
Skald, my dear friend in crime, I am sending hugs and healing energy. As others have said, regardless of what you think, you are a kind, compassionate, funny, caring man who loves his wife and family and who has positively touched many people’s lives. Many of us have pasts we are not proud of. You have worked so hard to rise beyond yours. Please be gentle with yourself, my friend. You are not being punished. You are tired, and ill, and scared, but you are NOT being punished.
