Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Oh noes I haz a meme infection!

So to take my mind off my bad hair day and the stinging scratch from playing with my cat I'm going to take 'the Slavoj Test' a meme which I got infected with from here:

http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/08/slavoj-test.html

1. When were you happiest?
I really can't say, each high point of happiness seems to be of a different flavour.

2. What is your greatest fear?
Not much scares me. But the deaths and sufferings of those close to me are growing ones. My CFS has striped me of so much in life that losing what little I managed to hold on to or never getting better enough to really make my life count might well top my few fears.

3. What is your earliest memory?
Lying in my cot wondering what would be for my next meal. It was before I had picked up language as I reviewed the possibilities by deliberatly remembering the flavours. I started speaking quite early and when I did I used complete sentences so I must have been very young indeed.

4. Which living person do you most admire, and why?
I guess my friend Rob. For his intellect, his insight and his stubborn refusal to conform.

5. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
I have a tendency to be harsh on myself for what is really the symptoms of my illness. I haunt myself with regrets of unethical things I did in my childhood which I learned from long ago and really should forgive myself over by now. I guess I deplore of myself the wrong aspects lol.

6. What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Willfull Ignorance. The refusal to allow new information or ideas to shift opinions.

7. What was your most embarrassing moment?
Hmm.. there's been a few. Stupid/insensitive statements, obvious mistakes etc. Realising how overblown my fears at coming out to most of my family and friends were was probably the most embarassing though.

8. Aside from a property, what’s the most expensive thing you’ve bought?
Just a computer at about a thousand bucks.

9. What is your most treasured possession?
Lying on my back a number of years ago, feeling upset and alone I started to cry. I wiped my eye and dislodged and removed a hard piece of something from my eye thinking it a normal bit of the kind of encrustation one gets in ones eyes till I realised just how large and hard it was. Examining it i found it was a weird shaped sharp shard of glass that heatly would have sat in the corner of my eye. How it got there I have no idea. I put it safely away in a small box with other keepsakes. The oddness of the moment makes it more treasured than my metal ruler that bent inexplicably while I was making disparaging remarks about spoon bending and only just sits above an antique box given to me by my grandmother. It's tough to draw the lines on these things though.


10. What makes you depressed?
Lots. Injustice, hatred, inequaility. Also just struggling with day to day existence and the realities of CFS. Especially whenever I'm reminded of all the things I wanted to study and do, what I used to be capable of.

11. What do you most dislike about your appearance?
Most? The amount my hairline has receded in the last 7 years! I've had my hair varying between shoulder length and the base of my tailbone since I was in my teens with only a couple of very brief exceptions. I loved the grey streaks that started through it when i was eight and didn't mind too much when the last of the coppery red streaks went grey. But slowly over the last 7 or so years the witches peak has been growing more and more severe and I can't afford to do anything about it which I hate.

12. What is your most unappealing habit?
I talk to much.

13. What would be your fancy dress costume of choice?
Morticia Addams from the Addams Family

14. What is your guiltiest pleasure?
Hmmm... I'm unapologetic about 50's scifi and B movies so that doesn't count. Same with most old cartoons. ok. I expect it's watching old episodes of Jem (a pretty bad 'girls' cartoon I watched as a kid pretending to just 'leave on' while waiting for the 'boy' cartoons of an afternoon) with a big mug of instant latte coffee with a star pattern of chocolate I template onto the broth and half a packet of mud-chocolate Tim Tams That I shouldn't eat in one sitting but invariably do.

15. What do you owe your parents?
Despite their flaws and the early break up and such how could I possible calculate it? Mum gave me a safe place, support, advice, helped me in incalculable ways. Dad has done so much to try and make up for the past. Both accepted me when I came out instantaneously. My qualities are theirs, my flaws are theirs too. I've just got a mix of each.

16. To whom would you most like to say sorry, and why?
Again there's a few. People I hurt without knowing it at the time mostly.

17. What does love feel like?
What kind of love? There are so many types. The warm comforting one that feels like being hugged. The wild dangerous one that feels like stepping up to a martial arts contest or fencing match. The altruistic one where your ready to sacrifice much for the others smile or the lighting up of their eyes. The passionate one where the mind stops functioning and you crash together like opposing waves. The insightful one where the whole world sparkles with clarity and sense. The craving selfish one where your every breath seems to rely on your catching their eye. The love of a friend which whells up in your chest like a rising tide. The love of a family member, unjudging and caring and protecting. The unconcious love where you feel good for days and then it suddenly occurs to you that you've fallen for someone. I could go on for ages.

18. What or who is the love of your life?
I'm still trying to recover from my last relationships inevitable collapse last year. So the answer is one I just don't know.

19. What is your favourite smell?
Right now it's lavender and Sandalwood

20. Have you ever said ‘I love you’ and not meant it?
No but i've said it when my feelings towards that someone at the time mixed love with anger and hurt and lots more besides.

21. Which living person do you most despise, and why?
I don't despise anyone on principle but I sure despise the choices and actions of a lot. War criminals, advocates of cruel and abusive social/legal/medical practices and those who cause harm to others by their unethical acts or abuse of personal morality improperly extended over others rights.

22. What is the worst job you’ve done?
Being a jobseeker on long-term unemployment benefits!

23. What has been your biggest disappointment?
32 and still suffering CFS! That's more than half my life disabled.

24. If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Edit? Can I only change my choices or can I change anything? If anything I'd get over my CFS after having it just long enough to have gained the increased compassion and understandings it's given me. If it's my choices I'd probably face the reality of being transgender properly back in my teens or even earlier, come out to my family and stopped trying to hide it from myself, though I still don't know exactly why i did in the first place.

25. If you could go back in time, where would you go?
If I could do so without changing time I'd want to vist everywhen! If I could change things I have a favourite fantasy: In the future when the world celebrates difference people travel back in time to all those martyred in hate crimes and swap them with undetectible artifical versions just before the horrible events happen to them and take them to the future where they can live peacefully without changing the past events that may have contributed to making that better world.

Just imagine that! Every victim of hate-murder plucked out of time before it happens and brought to a time of fairness and justice and acceptance!

26. How do you relax?
Violent video games when I have the energy for them, or I put on some Dead Can Dance music and snuggle up in bed with a copy of Fortean Times or a century-old scifi or horror novel.

27. How often do you have sex?
Currently I'm single and still recovering emotionally from my last relationship so not at all.

28. What is the closest you’ve come to death?
Once when severely suffering from brain fog and heat stroke I picked up a deadly shellfish on the beach specifically to point out to someone I was talking to that the critter inside was potentially deadly only to realise what was in my hand just as the critter inside started to move and I hastilly dropped it!

29. What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
A cure for chronic fatigue syndrome. At school one classmate once said after I'd left a long trail of blood (CFS body temperature regulation problems in summer + old bullying injury left me prone to nosebleeds back then) from one end of the school to the sickbay 'god made (Battybattybats) sick cause he didn't want the competition' which really made me smile. If I could be cured I'd launch myself at life like a starving animal and really sink my teeth into it's throat till I'd sucked all that I could from it. I'd get myself a degree, I'd pour massive efforts into the causes that seem to need it most and I'd do everything within my power to make the world better more fair and more just than it is now.

30. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
I really don't know. It's probably going to be some off-the-cuff comment I make or have already made that causes some sort of snowball effect through the world around me unrecognised by anyone last of all myself. If anything I'd say surving through what I have as well as I have. Certainly others have done better but i think I can be proud of doing as well as I have done.

31. What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Reality is often counter-intuitive, often it's like a 'finger trap' the more you struggle the worse it gets, instead you have to use a Yin way rather than a Yang way and use the problem against itself. Oh yeah, and while most disregard it Philosophy is in fact the most important of all subjects because Ethics is covered by it. Every human needs to learn about Ethics because their is no choice or decision that doesn't involve ethics.

32. Tell us a secret.
Nerds, geeks, goths, punks and all those most often cast out or kept at the fringes are much more likely to be good people than those who fit in. Because bad people with even an ounce of intelligence or cunning fit in so they can do bad things whereas being different requires courage and idalism. Sure there are good and bad in both groups but believe me on average the 'weirdos' are more likely to be better people than the 'normals'.

2 comments:

flowta said...

Hi BBB, interesting blog post:) Given your experience with chronic fatigue syndrome, you've probably tried many cures, so I apologise in advance if this is of no use to you. About eight months ago, after a year of lethargy, lack of motivation, and not being able to get out of my own way, I tried something which Sue my wife suggested. I cut back on my gluten intake. I didnt get anal about it, just simply reduced the amount of bread, flower (mostly cereals) etc for about two weeks (lots of stuff on the web about this). It made a huge difference to me. By the end of those two weeks, I was doing things that I'd been planning on doing for the last two years, but never got around too. The improvement continues (but I eat some bread etc now).

Unfortunately this will probably be of no use to you, but you never know. Certainly its easy to try. All the best mate, and keep on blogging (a good sign also :)

flowta (gary)

Battybattybats said...

Hi
Thanks for the suggestion. I've had CFS for over half my life now and have completely lost track of all the things I've tried. I'm pretty sure reducing gluten was one of them.

Still since we figured out about the disruption to my digestive flora I'd been living with since small (which explained my extreme thinness despite very large amounts of food) all manner of things may have changed (certainly I can feel cold more easily in the years since and hot weather effects me less, I gained some weight finally too) and it might be worth another try.

Certainly my diet could do with more well-cooked meals... if only i had the energy. Ah the disability catch-22