Crap

[outlier_lynn]

I feel like a whiny child. But, whine I'm going to do, anyway.

I hate my body. Really hate it. My best body moments are when I don't notice I have one. I've redefined pleasure as the absence of discomfort. The rest of the time, something hurts or eight things are annoyingly uncomfortable or both. And I am sick to death of it.

When I was young, I read and loved Asimov's robot stories. I so wanted to be a robot. Daneel was my favorite. Later that was briefly replaced with wanting to be a Vulcan. That was replaced with years of trying to make peace with my body. "Loving it the way it is and the way it is not." And "Loving it even when it isn't lovable."

That has utterly failed. I really hate my body.

Yes. Other people have bodies that have failed them worse than mine has failed me. Yes, other people live with chronic severe pain while I am merely whining about chronic discomfort punctuated with pain. It's not about who has it better or worse than I have it. And it is NOT about having a positive mental attitude. If this damn body had failed in a slightly more exaggerated way, it might have been better. But the "Almost" of this body makes it VERY hard to have a positive mental attitude.

And yes, there are some ways it hasn't failed. I am rarely sick. Very rarely. I don't suffer from colds. I don't get fevers. I'm just rarely sick. (Viruses and Bacteria must not like it here much.) And I seem to have a better than average brain. :)

But, even with the good stuff, age is making it a little worse and will continue to make it worse. Over time the number of discomforts happening at any given time has been going up. And the weakest links are giving way.

There's one I've been trying to pass off, but I really can't. And this one scares the living shit out of me. My eyesight is failing fast. I don't care much that my focal length is changing more quickly that I would like, but I do mind that it is taking higher and higher contrast for me to see any detail at all. My lenses are fogging up. It worries me a lot.

I'm longing for the days when I longed to have a robot body. Why? Because in those young days I thought it might actually be possible.

I speculate about the time I have left. I extrapolate from my family history. If all goes "well," I have, maybe, twenty years. More likely, though, I have 10. (It's a poor bet to give me "Most likely to be to dong Rocky in ten years" awards.) On both sides of my family, I'm the one with the crappy body. And that has got to alter how it goes toward the end. All I need is to have my sensor systems stay on line and reasonably function for that length of time.

And I will be really pissed if some of the Christians are right and I'll be reunited with this body in some eternal afterlife. Talk about a lousy mental attitude!