Why this blog?
In the myth of Prometheus, the
Greek Titan is found guilty by the god Zeus of giving the gift of fire and the
skill of metal work to his human creation. For his kindness to humanity and his
defiance toward Zeus, his punishment was cruel and long suffering. Day in and
day out, an rapacious eagle would perch beside him on the cliff where he was
chained to peck out and then ravenously devour his liver, only to have it grow
back each night due to his immortality. This image of unceasing agonizing
suffering has long fascinated the imagination of poets and paupers alike. And
for those like myself who live with the inevitable reality of a life of unrelenting
chronic pain, it presents an enigma. How should we live in our own reality of unremitting
pain, diminishing pleasure, profound loneliness, guilty remorse, and abiding
hopelessness while still maintaining our humanity and learning how to thrive in
a world that really is beautiful, loving, and glorious?
This blog will not be my attempt
at banal self-help – one of the most domesticated and facile literary genres to
haunt the Western world. This blog will not be my attempt at redemption or some
cathartic self-realization. I am not on a humanitarian crusade trying to change
the world. This blog is simply stories from my small sliver of life on the side
of that bloody cliff. These are my life experiences as a chronic sufferer. Like
my real life, when you cross my path on this page you will get the Tyler that happened
to punch into work and write his thoughts that day – sometimes depressed and
gloomy, often irked and snarky. I may be whimsical one day, able to find humor
in an awkaward situation, or I may be pensive, and in a rare moment of mental
clarity outside of the stinging fog, possibly connecting the dots of my pain,
my family, my career, my hopes, my faith, my religion, my God, myself, and you.
This is a blog for those on the
inside, suffering with me. If you are not a chronic sufferer, I welcome you
aboard but with a warning that any benefit you receive is a side effect – the second
hand afterbirth of our lives. What you see and hear here may hurt you, help
you, humor you, or humiliate you. But hopefully when you look around the corpse
strewn mountainside where we sit, and hear our stories in moments of
unadulterated honesty, in vibrant and voracious color, you may learn to sit
with us. I hope that this in some way will be an aid to you to realize that
your husband or wife, mother or father, brother or sister, coworker or
neighbor, who can be smiling and laughing one moment then squinting at the
light and sulking in silence another, is not manic or mean, but may have turned
a corner after lunch only to be pecked at and torn by talons of unimaginable
depth – that sink past out fleshly livers and into our souls. I hope that as we
sit together, you can learn that we may not always want help, we often may not
want to talk about it, we may not even want your sympathetic pat on the head because
it reminds us that the eagle is guaranteed to return again with the sunrise. We
may not even want you there to be honest; but that does not mean we do not love
you deeply or appreciate the love you give to us. Believe it or not, we are a mystery
to ourselves even more than we are to you.
However, as I said, this blog is
not for you. This blog is for myself and my brothers and sisters on the face of
the rock as we linger together at the end of the day’s evisceration waiting for
our livers to rebuild, or maybe, just maybe, to finally fortify into livers of
iron and finally break the beak of the wretched eagle which torments us. This may
come about either by the effects of a new pill or a treatment, by the strength of
our resolve and the grace of our Creator, or by the final snipping of the golden
strands of life at the end – hope is always around the corner. As you walk your
way through the trenches between the cubicles, around the dinner table, at the
restaurant, this blog is meant to give you windows into another world, another
body, another life. Not glimpses of what your life could be like without the
throbbing pain, but glimpses back into your own world, just as lived by someone
else – a world very much like your own.
You are not alone.
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