I don't deserve this either

Shortly after my awesome physical therapist had come over and fixed my wheelchair the day after my accident a few weeks ago, Mom asked me what I had done to surround myself with such good people.

I don't know.

It isn't just my PT. Friends, and sometimes strangers, pick me up when I fall in the bathroom at work. When I get stuck or can't reach Fame's poop, I have a phone full of contacts who will help.

I have my friends who put my hearing aids back.

It was no different at other jobs either. People help me with Claren or pulled up my pants or gave me the key to the building so I could use the elevator.

And of course, there's my family.

It's not me.

I don't mean I am a jerk, but it is them, not me.

Bitter? Happy?

Mom assures me that I would be happier if I weren't bitter. She says others would, too.

I can't say on others, though I will say I don't think I exude bitterness, certainly not in public. I may give into funks more frequently when I am home, but for the most part when home, I am alone in my room, reading, writing, watching TV or napping.

I am unsure if I would be happier.

I do not expect God to come a-knockin' and say: "I am so sorry for the unfairness present in this world I created. I totally could have done better. And all that stuff about 'ask and it shall be given,' that was just stupid. Surely I am not going to answer every prayer as people want."

However, I do not feel like letting God off the hook either, even if it doesn't matter to him.

I am not alone in hating unfairness. I am not anywhere near the most put-upon person I know. But God has to know that I am not happy with him. And bitterness is a way to show him.

Bitter?

I was reading the remembrances of a woman who was friends with a guy I knew in college. From what I could tell he had cancer, but it didn't just kill him. It took his eyesight and other things.

The woman said that he did not complain about the unfairness of it all, just sought to deal with it.

What, I wondered, is that like?

I'm not sure that I'd want to not be bitter. I mean, I'm not mad about it all day, every day. And I don't talk about fairness to friends a lot, but I suspect most of my friends know.

Uh ... nevermind

I fell today -- nothing major -- but I am surprisingly disappointed.

I hadn't said anything, but I hadn't fallen in a while, like maybe 10 days.  (I thought it was longer when I started to write this; 10 days is not too impressive.)

What Have I Done to Deserve This?

Once during my career as a Pet Shop Boy (really, I was a boy who worked in a local pet shop), I lost the key to the cash register. I felt sick, not just because it was on an awesome Fender Stratocaster keychain. I know people lose things, but I had betrayed a trust.

I told my boss, who must have seen how bad I felt. His response: He put one arm around my neck, said "OK" and pretended to punch me in the stomach with the other arm.

He then told me it was OK, blah, blah, blah.

Now, close to 30 years later, I feel the same way for losing a remote control to a door and my key card. Worse, their lose was a result of my bad wheelchair driving and the "Unsafe at any speed" issue I had recently pointed out.

I was trying to find the elevator that had binged, so I was driving around with my eyes on the elevator lights when BAM. I hit a wall.

I suspect my stuff fell off my lap then, but I did not notice and it wasn't there when I returned. But I re-walked my trip twice and didn't find it.

I hate being disabled.

The title is a real Pet Shop Boys' song.

Questions

As any Catholic school veteran, Holy Week makes me think. It does not make me think good things, though.

How could God allow that to happen to his son?

What hope to any of us have in light of that? Maybe we'll be fine when we die, but we need help now.

Why are those of us who suffer told that one day (in some vague distant future) we'll be happy?

Why do we have to rely on other people, not an all-powerful God who supposedly loves us enough to  sacrifice his own son, which leads back to the first question?

Unsafe at any speed

I realized today that if I go slow enough to maneuver through doors and elevators, the doors and elevators close on me. But if I drive fast enough to get through, I crash into the doorframe.

Other  than mandating super wide doors, I am not sure of my options.

The Spirit lives on

It's a sign of something, not sure what, but I was sure I  wrote  about the Spirit story "10 minutes," which is tagged "What's 10 minutes in a man's life?" In the story, a guy's bad choices over 10 minutes kill him.  It's pretty powerful, especially because the Spirit is only in a few panels at the end. The rest is just the guy's life crumbling. The answer to the tag line then is "a lot."

I was thinking of a sequel: "What's one inch in a doorway's width?

In it, someone puts a trashcan so it sticks into a doorway very slightly. But it winds up rendering the way impassable for someone in a wheelchair.

Nothing normal

Every so often, I pretend my body is normal. It never ends well.

On Monday I woke up at 6:05 a.m. and went to the bathroom. Then I closed my eyes till my alarm went off 15 minutes later, got dressed, got up, took Fame out  and fed her, and then started to brush my teeth.

As I started, I got a tiny indication that my bladder might need further emptying. "Surely," I said to myself, "that can't be. And why are you calling yourself Shirley?"

So I kept up the tooth brushing ... until the tiny indication became a surging river at which point it was all over. My sister was called. Things were changed. Unfortunately, my body was not one of those things.