Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 4/15/22

One For You, Nineteen For Me Edition

I’d like to start out by acknowledging what a fantastic job the whole Administration staff is doing; their tasks are numerous and seemingly eternal, and yet they somehow manage to get it all done. That they are sorely behind in all of their paperwork is not their fault; instead, we must place the blame squarely on the broad and slightly rounded shoulders of Bunker leadership. I’m sure we’ll all get quite a kick out of his latest “episode” at the doctor’s office, but the fact remains: he’s not getting it all done. But let’s go right ahead and read his latest litany of excuses.

---

N.T.A.B. B.E.S.T. News

I’m a little behind in all of the cool things I wanted to get started here, like Project: Literary Repatriation, your B.E.S.T. Welcome packet, and so on. I’ve been focused like a laser on hitting some goals for the upcoming surgery, and so it looks like I won’t be kicking things off until May, post-surgery. Doing some envelope stuffing and mailing out stickers and what-all will be a pleasant distraction from the surgical site maintenance that I will try like hell not to share with you. Just know this: I’m buying a LOT of stickers. All of the B.E.S.T.ies get one.

---

Countdown to Surgery: T-Minus Four Weeks

This week was rough. I was supposed to get all of my pre-operation shenanigans out of the way; blood draws, physical check-up, sign all of the papers that say you won’t sue if something goes wrong, and so on. See if you can figure out what in that last sentence gave me the most problems.

I knew I needed to have blood drawn. They do it all the time; it’s S.O.P. I know in my head that it’s no big deal, and yet...I get in the chair, and they start poking the crease of my arm, and suddenly, my latent mutant powers manifest and I turn into Bobby Drake, Iceman. It’s the literal definition of a cold sweat. My body goes into the most amazing (and fascinating, if it were happening to someone else) defense mechanisms to avoid having blood drawn.

This time, unfortunately, was no different, but I was able to better deal with it...oh, who am I kidding? I lost a day trying to recover. I put my body into shock, made myself good and sick, and it took food and sleep and extra serotonin to knock me out enough that I could let go of the anxiety. And the rest of the week has been no real picnic, either.

I know what’s going on, or at least, I have a pretty good working theory. This gets a little “Woo” so if you’re not gonna bend in the wind like reed in the river with me, skip down to the end of the piece.

Proof of Life selfie, 4/15/22/, submitted for your approval. On the plus side, my bear care is coming back around again.

I don’t think all memory is stored in the brain. I think some parts of it live all over in the cells of our body. After all, our cells are mostly water, which conducts electricity, which is what our nerve impulses are, and I think that sometimes what you were doing or thinking or saying while cells were forming or dying, or I don’t know, being used...I think some memory gets wired into you. Have you ever been working out, really hard, or doing hard labor, and suddenly, some memory or feeling or thought pops up out of the blue? Anger, fear, some strong emotion? I think that’s because your body just made use of that cellular energy in some way, burning it for fuel.

I think some people, and I know that I do this, we carry our problems with us, physically. Our damage, the things that have hurt us, it collects in the body and without some means of expelling it, it sets up camp there. The brain learns to route all anger issues about your family into that storage locker there, and depression- triggered lashing outs that destroy relationships into another storage locker, over there, and in my particular case, I think I may have poisoned myself by not dealing with my problems until my storage locker was overflowing with crap.

When Cathy’s cancer diagnosis happened in 2018, I think my stomach, my abdomen, my groin, everywhere the panniculitis is, that’s where all of my negative thoughts went, because, you see, they were already doing the Lord’s work, holding onto all of my old baggage. I’m Dewey Oxburger from Stripes. “I went to this doctor, he told me I swallowed a lot of aggression...along with a lot of pizzas.” I think it’s why I’ve had so much anger well up in me as I have lost the weight, increased my exercise, etc. I’m burning those feelings off. I’ve still got the core memories, of course; they just don’t hurt as much.

As the Surgical Date creeps ever closer, I find myself in the paradoxical position of wanting this physical burden taken off of me, and mourning a part of myself that is going away. I can tell you that when I had my partial panniculectomy in 2019, some things cleared up in my head. Some old pains, old regrets just sorta popped in my brain like soap bubbles. I even looked a few folks up from the distant past and made some amends.

What’s left hanging off of me and trapped inside of me represents the accumulated psychic toll I’ve taken on myself since 2007. It’s the last of the weight gain, the stress eating, the emotional eating, the eating eating, along with all of the negative emotions, thoughts and feelings I swallowed, didn’t give any voice to, ignored until the stabbing pains in my spleen went away.

On May the 4th, that all gets cut out of me. I will wake up on the table in a new head space. I don’t think I’m going to be a “new man,” or, hell, I don’t know, maybe I will. But I don’t think so. I will certainly have a new outlook. And that scares me a little bit. After all, my depression is the devil I know, right? As problematic as it is, I have extensive experience dealing with it. I know what to do when it sends me into a rage spiral (feed it), and I know what to do when it robs me of all my creative energy (feed it), and I know what to do when I need to self-sabotage and shame myself (feed it) …hmmm, there’s a pattern developing here.

To combat all of this shit, I am focusing on the positive now. Staying optimistic. There’s a lot in my life to be thankful for right now, right up to and including this expensive surgery I just paid for (that sucking sound you heard this morning was my wallet imploding).

So much to be grateful for. So much to look forward to experiencing. Focus. Breathe. Focus.

Voice in the back of my head: What if you turn into an asshole?

(La La La La I’m not listening La La La La La)

Focus. Breathe. Focus.