The Broken Soldier

I’m paying for yesterday’s activity.  I was pretty sure I would.  But pretty sure and certain are coattail relatives.  I’m thankful, though, to be clearer.  Free, as much as an addict can be, from Miller’s Music.

This new clarity has me thinking.  Perhaps thinking better is more apt.  Thinking about the past, present, and future.  Of things I can change, and of things I can’t.  My body was slowly broken.  My body may be broken now and forever.  But life goes on.  And so must I.

So much of who I was was tied to my physical strength and presence.  Figuring out what to do with the new and discorporated me is a challenge.  This has me thinking a lot about squandered past opportunities.  Of the many chances I threw away, in arrogant unconcern for the status or the accomplishments of my chance-givers, to stand on my mentors’ shoulders.  From jurisprudence to personhood, to the ironically fecund research niche of vagal tone, childhood undernutrition, and adult onset psychopathologies, I pissed them all away.  Never expecting to find myself here.  Never expecting to be rudderless and crippled.

This experience has forced me to reevaluate.  Not the sophomoric black-turtlenecked transvaluations of college.  No, my present concerns are less airy.  Who am I now?  What will I do?  How can I contribute?  I have a lot of thinking to do.  I’m fortunate to be unalone.