Resting Place

So I got to hear that the regional vice president is weighing on this center of excellence policy specifically for brain tumors and Duke. The short version is that, I’ve come to learn, it had been handled at an incredibly low level despite me arguing about it for over a year but now if it gets approved then anyone with brain tumors would get to go there. I’d unlikely be eligible for any reimbursement but… it would be precedent and if I stay on Cobra then I could return there. I emailed them and tried to reschedule an appointment today… I am not sure how long I can keep up with that snake in the desert but while I have it, I ought to go for the check up I’m supposed to anyway and because they have a higher capacity MRI than anywhere I’ve been going.

Marathon kids let me know that they chose someone else. They sent a very classy nice email. And the self imposed deadline of July 15^th is now just over a week away… time flies when you’re having whatever you want to call this… There was a call back from only one job so far and it’s not a concrete offer but its looking likely… Monday-Thursday 10-9, decent health benefits, no time with my daughter, probably a slight raise. I tried to talk to my ex about it who was less than reasonable and didn’t seem at all interested in more custody of her child… My resources feel like they are running out if not already exhausted. Taking that job feels a lot like giving up to pay the bills. Having quoted Les Mis here before, it feels like taking a job for that and that alone, as a friend said, “you have to do what you have to do.” And maybe soon it will be that time. I traded some emails with the county attorney and made an offer that would buy me sometime and keep the health benefits immediately in place till September or so. I do my Lumosity tracking and the simple truth is that I do it and the plan is if it ever sinks below a certain level and/or when my doctors or friends thought I should do it for being less than mentally capable, I was going to sign over primary custody. This scenario where it happens primarily so I can hold a job down, like so many of the last 18 months, I just didn’t expect. If that’s where we go, I think I’m done running and training because that will kill the fire that keeps me going… (On a related note, there’s a level where I’ll disappear off this blog as well because I don’t want to be writing if and when my brain isn’t something I trust at all. ) Interestingly enough, daring to dream, I was able to also swap the weekend of the Odessa half marathon that my mom signed up so that Kiana and I can be sure to be there for it.

I applied for a few more jobs today but there comes a time soon to call it, to sell the house, to take the job, to sign the papers. So many things have hung up in the air for so long… there’s a reason we like the scenes in movies where someone lies suspended, they are exciting but there’s only so long you can hold that, right? In my rear mirror still lies that infinity necklace, in that safe place still lies that “hope” ring but I want to make a decision somewhere soon that I am either open or closed to the possibility of someone else in the future and live accordingly. And the guy who never watches movies twice, never goes places twice, never reads books twice,  just signed up again for Livestrong’s cancer and relationship class to sit and process whether or not that’s something I’m going to do twice. This won’t be a decision to necessarily get into a relationship but just whether that gate is open or closed anywhere in the future. As an old saying goes, relationships are like glass.  Sometimes it’s better to leave them broken than to hurt yourself putting it back together.

It’s midnight and I have to get up in 5 hours to coach a marathon group but I can’t sleep even as I yawn writing this… I need a rest and I’d pay serious money to know what that would look like. Someone pointed out that maybe I should have used that at some point and I gave my answer of no one says on their deathbed they wish they’d slept more  but the kid who grew up Seventh-day Adventist and exercised every day until marathon training made him include a rest day… is feeling worn out. I know that my default happy position and keeping going has moved some people and I want to get back to it but there are days where I remember the old indian saying: To carry his load without resting, not to be bothered by heat or cold and always be content: these three things we can learn from a donkey. The problem is I just don’t know how to do it and especially how to do it under these circumstances…

I hope and will be comforted, even if it’s not personally helpful that access to Duke, the money for brain cancer research, the money for Livestrong will help the future of others and that of Kiana. Somehow on those laurels and having tried to be a good dad are the only laurels on which I’d like to rest.