I taught myself to read when I was four and have read fairly easily and happily ever since- until the last few months that is. It’s been hurting a lot to read just lately. I often have pain after reading one page. War and Peace and numerous other books don’t read well that way. That put me in a bind with several of my projects. It’s likely that it will only get harder for me to read as time goes on. That is difficult. It makes me want to push and use what I have before I lose it, but being sick for so long I understand something else too.
Lots of movies that depict people who are seriously ill portray them living full days for the first time in their lives. You can live a filled-to-the-brim day here and there, but I don’t know of anyone, especially someone who is sick, who can keep that pace up for any length of time.
In the movie that best portrays what it really feels like to be seriously sick in life altering ways, The Doctor, one of the characters who is dying from cancer stops the man who is trying to help her get her “full day, crossing-off-the-list-of-something-she-wanted-to-do”. It turns out that she is tired of racing and pursuing. She just wants to enjoy where she is, now.
One of my biggest regrets is how I treated myself my senior year of college. I had been bleeding internally for nine months. I had surgical cancer tests over my Christmas break. I came back to finish my degree as organ after organ stopped working properly. My heart meds stopped working. I didn’t appreciate at the time just how sick I truly was, but I was consumed with grief and frustration that after so many years of working and planning I was not turning in work at the level I wanted to. I was not living up to my potential.
I rode myself so hard those last few months in ways I never would have dreamed of doing to anyone else. I finished, but at a high cost to myself both physically and emotionally. This last bout of really sick I realized I had an opportunity. Fun as it may be to watch people in movies get a chance to relive a pivotal moment in their life, this time getting it right, we don’t get that opportunity in real life. But we do get the chance to learn from those moments and alter how we live now. This time, I’ve tried to treat myself the way I wish I had treated my college senior self- with patience, gentleness, and compassion. It required changing some expectations I’ve had for myself.
I’ve come to the conclusion that for books with audiobooks available, I will listen to the audio versions of them and call those books read. I’m saving my eye time for ones I won’t be able to experience any other way but reading them slowly myself. I’ve also reached a point where I can appreciate that being able to read in short spurts can actually be a blessing. I absorb the ideas sometimes better that way. I think about them more deeply while I wait for my eyes to be up for the next reading of a page or a paragraph.
I’ve also had to come to terms with the fact that I am a woman who deludes and disillusions herself cyclically. I can beat myself and be beaten with a reality stick regularly and the dreams and delusions still manage to find a way up and out. And I cling to them willingly, knowing that they help me forward, even if it is only for a few hours or a few weeks. I go into it knowing full well that there will be disappointment later on. When it comes I struggle and cry it out, then, after a few days or a few weeks depending on the circumstance, dream and lead myself on yet again. And fail yet again. And try yet again. Because I’m still living and quitting is like killing yourself before your time.
I realized much of this consciously this afternoon, in front of a bookcase in a thrift shop. The disease that could blind me and that is making it hard for me to read should, realistically, make me stop looking at books. But my love for them is too deep. So there I was, waiting for my mom to finish, looking at the titles and dreaming of the possibilities. I grabbed one and held it. This is my shopping test. If holding an item while I shop makes me feel tired or iffy about it, I put it back. Then there was another one. Simplified Russian Method. The last few weeks I’ve been playing from Russian piano methods. The music I can read; the rest has been a closed book to me. I don’t like not being able to read a book about something that interests me. This is why I started studying German. This is why even as I struggle to read in English, I bought the book that would help me read Russian- because I’m crazy optimistic like that.
As a child, I was fascinated and concerned about what went on behind the Iron Curtain. I marvel and rejoice when I’ve had the chances to learn about, talk, and interact with people from countries like Estonia, Bulgaria, Russia, Poland, and Moldova- countries that once fell under the heading of the Soviet Union. Having access to them, their talents, their books, and their learning- what a blessing! Which is why I’ve added Russian to my languages that I want to be learning, and why I will be saving up for ice dance lesson DVDs from a Russian woman who coached the skaters I want to skate like, even though I’ve just recently been able to start walking again, and won’t have access to an ice rink for who knows how long. These things spark my soul, make me want to reach higher and try harder- but even if I never reach the heights to which I aspire, I am finally reaching a place where, like the woman with a brain tumor in The Doctor, I can also enjoy not chasing, but appreciating and enjoying and sharing what I have been given right now. And this time around, because of what I learned, there’s a lot less suffering and a lot more happy.
The post A Bit of Happy #10: Reading, Russian, and the Soviet Union appeared first on Melanie Boudwin.