There is a Serious Crack in My Foundation

  
and I don’t like it one fucking bit.  I’m feeling something I almost can’t even talk about.  It’s so awful I literally found myself completely at a loss for what the hell to do.  I’m a fucking little, innocent baby deer in headlights.  What (I asked myself since I’m the only one here…) in the SAM HELL is going on????   What’s wrong with me?  The synapses in my brain (due to fight or flight primal reaction) are firing and it hits me like a Mack truck..a Mack truck straight out of Mad Max, people – I’m feeling..accckkk….vulnerable.  Really vulnerable.  

Living Dilbert is rarely vulnerable and sure as hell doesn’t discuss it (except with Life-Saving Therapist who helped me figure this out – again), yet here I am filled with angst.  I fight deep feelings more often than I care to admit. Good news (I guess) is that apparently I am actually human and not always the superhero I project.  First, Main Squeeze is out of town for 8 days and being home alone all day AND night is new.  We haven’t been apart that long, but God knows MS needed a break and so deserves this vacation.  Today my sandal got caught on a rug while I was watering some plants and I almost seriously busted my ass.  Based on my knowledge of geometry and physics, it would have been REALLY BAD.  I most likely would have broken several ribs and I doubt my still healing neck would have had a party either.  It was so damn close, but I managed to save my ass.  Fine, it shook me up.  There, I said it again.   Please keep reading…

Ok, the real reason for this unsettling crack in my foundation?   I got some rather unsettling news the other day that dropped my jaw to the floor because I let myself get all comfortable with life and it’s been a few months since I’ve had a bone-jarring crisis.  I need another spinal surgery…my 4th, if anyone other than me is keeping count and my 3rd in a year.  I went through the five alleged stages of grief in 24 hours.  I cried all the way home (which kind of sucked because I was by myself and driving), I bargained with God, I denied it, then I was furious and the next day came acceptance.  I even wondered if God is testing me, but then thought that was selfish of me.  In plain English, it is what it is.  It is life, which can be so messy, yet wonderful too. My surgeon apologized and said she REALLY does not want to operate on me again and told me it’ll hurt like “last time.”  At least she’s honest and she’s compassionate and I do love and trust her.  She’s a damn rock star to me, yet so humble – a rare combination in a surgeon. I’ll admit the last one (posterior cervical disc fusion) hurt like a mother fucker. I cried, I nearly puked, gritting my teeth and the morphine pump didn’t cut it.  I had to really work to get through the days without losing my shit (figuratively, not literally).  Living Dilbert does not poo in hospitals.  I’ve learned that when they dissect through really important muscles, it really hurts to relearn to do stuff like, uh, USE YOUR ARMS.  I guess they’ll take part of my right pelvis out this time since they used left last time.  My back/neck are starting to look like a 3 year old on an Etch-A-Sketch. Frankly, I’m weary.  I am just healing from the last two and I’ll have to start all over and it’s scary.  There…I’m having feelings.  I lost my career. Life is very different now (but great in some new ways, like making a special new friend in all this). Stuff I never imagined.  I know there are others out there too.  Talk to me.  Tell me your story.  I’m actually considering a group therapy thing, but for this…I think I’d need to start it myself because there isn’t a “scoliosis survivors group” – I’ll have to come up with a better name than that.  I wonder if they’d mind if I said Mother Fucker a lot?

So, there it is. A touchy feely, yet painfully honest post from me to you. I just had to get it out, but damn if I didn’t fight this realization like an animal caught in a trap – kicking and screaming, but the more you fight it, the worse the pain. LST has worked hard to teach me my feelings won’t kill me and she is right, but sometimes it feels they will. Thanks for reading this one…it’s a bit long. I don’t want to lose more readers. I want to awe and delight, but be honest too.

I do feel I’m being led in a direction I don’t quite understand yet and I don’t like not knowing.  All this is causing a shift in me…I can feel it.  I think with great loss, comes the opportunity for great growth.  So, even though I seem to get shorter with each damn surgery, I’ll grow on the inside. 

Love – LD

Living Dilbert Has a Crush

Since I’m back in the fold AND have lots of blog post ideas jotted down all over, it feels damn good to be writing again. I have this whole new life I’m living and just starting to “get.”   I’ve gone from working 12 hour days under unimaginable stress due to working for 4 attorneys at a high-end firm, then to a “team” environment that I knew would ultimately fail, but was told to zip it, in which I was working for 9 attorneys at a time.  Attorneys are not dumb (one of the things I actually love about them) and they quickly realized there were only two of us that actually genuinely gave a shit about our work and continued doing the best job we could.  For a year, it was like working in a pressure cooker and you never knew how bad it’d be.  There was many a day with lunch (if any) at my desk and I wouldn’t even pee until 5!  I literally did not have time to even think – I was a machine and a damn good one too.  Well, we know my neck finally broke down.  I’m a believer that if you are constantly under unbelievable stress, your body will find some way to let it out whether you like it or not and I wound up with four bulging discs in my neck resulting in quite a LOT of pain and nearly losing the use of my left arm.   Ok, sorry…you get it.  So, I’ve now moved to being thrilled to now be on what I like to call “a sabbatical” while I heal from not one, but two spinal neck surgeries 8 weeks apart.  We all know I’m a bad ass, but they kicked my ass!

What am I even blathering about?  Oh yes, some background of where I am now.  I’m at home these days away from that life and my ONE job is to heal. I’ve never had a job like that!  I feel a bit lost and thrilled at the same time.  I’m finally moving to the more thrilled part!   I can actually do other things like get back to my blog and read other blogs and make new friends!  I still have some great supporters and friends from my early days – Shouts from the Abyss…thank you for your support and I adore you!   Brea’s Air and Notes from a Rumbly Cottage, same to you and I promise to talk about you all!

I must say though, I’ve made an amazing new friend in this one chick – Yay! More Gray!  She’s funny and has heart!   I’m so glad we’ve met and this is my public shout out to her!   She LIKES me!  I feel the same and she’s a really cool person that I genuinely like!  I was NOT expecting to make a new friend, much less one that may be my twin that my mom never told me about.  So, as she calls it, for “Woman Crush Wednesday ” – I bow to you, Yay!   💘. Check out her blog! 

https://yaymoregray.wordpress.com

Sometimes out of some really bad shit, or if I was more Buddhist I’d say, “Even from the deepest mud, the lotus still finds the strength to bloom” or something close to that.  Just as life can turn on a dime to something really hard, it can turn on a dime to something really good too!!  Who knew?! I’m learning a lot living this special life. I’m very lucky.  I’m learning to breathe and actually take care of myself rather than pandering to the whims of several asswipes at once, who are often very unappreciative, critical people…whew.  How’d I do it all those years?  Well, again…at the end of day, I kick ass and have a strong work ethic as many of you do and you must give yourself credit!   I’ll help teach you some tricks to help.

  

I still have oodles of doozies to tell regarding corporate life crazy, don’t you worry!  There are a lot of asshat stories that i hope will make you laugh and yet will be familiar in your own life and you just have to laugh, rather than jab windpipes or kick balls (but, you can pretend!).  

Next:  “5 Signs You Know a Boss Will Get Canned (and You’re Not A Least Bit Sad About It!)”

Peace out – do something for YOU today!  Get that nice coffeemaker, have a chocolate, breathe in deeply and breathe out the bad, picture the people that love you.

LD

Short Shorts: How to buy a PC

This is a typical Bad Boss story a/k/a – they make you do a bunch of stuff for nothing and then don’t listen to you! Some how it’ll end up being my friend Shout’s fault if it causes problems….at least that’s been my experience! Dick.

Shouts from the Abyss

The boss asks for your opinion. “I need a recommendation for a new computer.”

You ask a few questions. Price range? Purpose? Anything special it needs to do?

You take the task seriously. You conduct research. You think outside of the box. You are creative and expend energy. You want to do a good job.

This isn’t your specialty but you try your best. After finding what you think is a pretty good answer, you pass it on.

The next day that boss says, “My spouse told me to buy something else. Something totally different than what you recommended. I’m going with that.”

In a few days the computer shows up. It’s neither. It turns out the boss went for a third option. The very thing you cautioned against way back at the beginning.

The boss now has a stupid piece of shit but it was worth it to put…

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Change Bugs Me

Its finally sinking in that I’ve really experienced a LOT of change in my life in the last few months.  I don’t like change – it actually usually results in me becoming a raving bitch.  The biggest change lately for anyone that has kept up is my new neck – resulting from not 1, but 2 fusions in a 9 week period.  Guess what?  My body didn’t like it either! 

So, I now have 17 discs in my spine fused and I can still kick ass (but, in new ways).  Let’s just say I’m on sabbatical from my delightful life as a big firm legal secretary.  Big change – what the fuck do I do??? Well, my job now is mainly to keep healing!  Huh?  I’ve put others before myself for..uh, since age 4!  

I’m learning to LET GO of control of everything.  It’s a daily battle.  I couldn’t drive for 5 months, so I feel I’m just getting my wings.  Listen people, don’t take shit like driving and your everyday independence for granted!   If I had to paint a picture…it’d be me as a butterfly, but I’m still just about three-fourths out of my cocoon.  I met a friend for coffee yesterday and ran 2 errands blasting my music in the car and I must say, I thought, “Holy shit, this is cool! I’m out and about and listening to music on a beautiful day at 10:30 in the morning! “. I’ve never experienced such freedom  – being free in the day ?  A BIG CHANGE.  At first, I felt lost, but I’m coming around.

Ok, other changes that throw Living Dilbert into a tizz?

• Main Squeeze doing any type of furniture moving or even bringing it up..at all;
• A show I love ends;
• A restaurant or shop I love closes;
• The trend in Atlanta currently to mow everything familiar down and build a mixed-use development (stop it!!!);
• Law firm I love being acquired and turned into a whole new something corporate;
• When friends move away; 
• Rosie Perez’s bittersweet goodbye on The View (stop it, The View!!!); and
• If Life-Saving Therapist EVER tells me she’s retiring!

So, it’s a whole new world out there – did you know that? Life has really changed from 5 years ago and in a way I never expected or planned. Remember, life CAN and WILL sometimes change on a dime.  Put on your damn seatbelt.  Care to join me on my new adventures?  I’ll still have my rants that I hope you can not only identify with, but get a good chuckle as well.  I still promise snark, yet sometimes a glimpse of heart-felt feelings like today.  I’m not totally made of ice!  

Ok, now a nap.  Who AM I??  I guess we’ll find out together.  

Please let me introduce you to my new neck – ain’t it swell?