Of the things I appreciate in my life, one of them is having friends who’ll occasionally indulge my rambling episodes of existential angst. Jim is one such friend, who’s been in my life for more than 10 years now (between him and Scott, they can piece together most of my life from the college years up ’til now), and has put up with a few such episodes in that time. In the middle of one conducted yesterday via IM, he asked me a pointed, but pertinent question.
Have you noticed how many times you have written your narrative as dealing with opportunities missed?
How much of it was opportunties missed as much as, in the process of your growth, you were not ready. Your story is not over yet.
I’ve written before about feeling like the time before my ADD diagnosis and treatment was “lost time,” time during which I could have accomplished a lot more and gotten further in some areas than I am now, if I’d had the help I needed sooner. (Like, before the age of 33 or 34.) I always feel I’d like to have about 10 of those years back now.
Jim’s response?
Isn’t that like saying that the tree or flower saying that it wants the time it was in the ground back?
You’re thinking physics (you can’t gain time back); I’m thinking development (it wasn’t your time yet).
Maybe it is. I tend to think of myself as something of a “late bloomer,” though late according to what schedule is a question I can’t answer. Maybe it wasn’t my time yet, then, and maybe it is now. In some ways, I do feel like I’m starting to come into my own a bit. But I wonder sometimes what all that time before was for.
To borrow Jim’s analogy, maybe it was time “in the ground,”growing and developing. Maybe there are benefits to having had that time that I just can’t see yet. I’m not sure what I gained from it. What I know is that I’m fine when I just focus on where I am right now, but when I look around sometimes it seems like I’m just starting out and I’m already behind.
Terrance, sometimes I have similar feelings although about the future. I was diagnosed with MS almost 3 years ago and at the time it felt like a death sentence. Of course it hasn’t been, but there are days that I have no energy and I feel like crap… I never thought at the age of 34 I would feel like this. I was on track to go to grad school at the time of my diagnosis and now I have to decide between having affordable healthcare courtesy of health insurance provided by my full-time job or attending grad school full-time and wondering how I would pay for my healthcare, among other things. Some days I feel like I’ve lost my future but you know, I try to accept and and play the hand I’ve been dealt and I try to be grateful for the time I have.
Well mate, let me say first off, I really, really enjoy your blog……. you cover so much ground, and so much resonates with me….. it’s not just about being Gay, but also everything else that affects our being Gay as well as vice versa…. it’s bonza!
I don’t like using the word “disabled” [and I won't dignify it by capitalising the D, too many negatives], but just to give background, I am hearing impaired, though I identify socially and culturally as Deaf [with a capital D]… anyway, while deafness per se is not a particularly debilitating “disability”, it still puts you at odds with the world…. one that is constructed around the aural sense: hearing [if you really think about it, it's true - sound is the dominant sense upon which all is else is built]
As a consequence, I feel cut off, alienated, not part of what’s going down, outside looking in, sitting in a room with a view, watching the world pass by…. I have this talent that remains largely unrealised [writer/ artist/ producer]….. I’m loathe to admit this [who does], I don’t have a circle of friends with whom I can socialise and be myself with…..and at the grand age of 43, I look back at the sum total of my life and think, “is this what people go to war for?” “Is this what people fight so hard for, when defining the sanctity of life?” “Is this what they [insert your favourite "persons"] really wanna curse us with, all the time trying to convince us of their love for us?”
All in all, obstacles are just that, obstacles… and we all deal with them according to our personal strengths and talents… and the defining moment comes when we can say, “Well Fuck You, I am Happy As Is” or “I’m gonna do it anyway..”
So, Mr T, the question is, whose terms are you using as the benchmark for judging your life when you say “…sometimes it seems like I’m just starting out and I’m already behind.”