I need to be sedated

Tis the season during which the residents of the mobile home park dress up in costumes and shuffle over to the clubhouse to drink strawberry lemonade witches brew and eat candy corn and tootsie rolls. Or whatever they were doing in the clubhouse last night. As I limped around the park in the gloaming, I passed a geriatric couple wearing orange T-shirts decorated with pumpkin faces. I took my earplugs out of my ears and said, "Nice pumpkins." I waited for a response but they looked at me with blank expressions, which indicated to me either they hadn't seen me walking around the park at dusk almost every night for the past year and were wondering if they should call security or they had left their hearing aids at home in anticipation of loud music at the monster mash and couldn't hear a word I said.

I passed another person just getting out of a little blue car. I could just see the top of their head, which sported a colorful jester hat, complete with bells. I didn't see the rest of their costume before I had moved on by. Something glittery, dangly, noisy, and backless, probably. One can hope.

Under clear skies and a bright moon, the old folks beelined to the clubhouse, via foot, walker, golf cart, and SUV. I briefly contemplated poking my head in the door for a looksee. Having once been in the costume industry, I have a great love of self-expression through apparel, as long as it is everyone else looking stupid, not me. Been there, done that, a lot, to the everlasting chagrin of my father. Last night, however, I didn't stick around to see what was going down at the Halloween hoedown. My party animal days are long past.

In fact, I am morphing into the opposite of a party animal. My sister gave me a word to describe what I am, which I will share with you and write more about in a future blogpost, if I remember. I am an apanthropist. Go ahead, look it up. I'll wait.

I complain a lot but I can adapt to almost anything, it seems. I was looking at some photos of the room I rent in this mobile home, which I fondly refer to as the Barbie Dreamhouse Without the Dream. I'd forgotten that just last year, I lived a life of abundance. I had two desks and two computers, and a fabulous chair on wheels, which I could drag between the two desks, as if I were two different people. An artist and a writer. What a creative life I had! And how quickly I have adapted to a life with less of everything, in anticipation of living a life with almost nothing.

I felt a twinge of sadness, which I do frequently these days, well, all the time for my entire life, if I'm being honest. I'm just a sad chronically malcontented whiner with a strangely optimistic streak of hope that I will find my creativity no matter what circumstances fall on my head. And so far I think I have. I keep writing, blogging, drawing, mentoring, hoping I'll stumble across the conditions in which I can thrive. Meanwhile, I adapt.

For instance, I'm adapting to the new revelation that my PCP has suddenly retired (or died) and now I have a new PCP, who like most healthcare providers in this system, is booked out until February of 2024. In a new round of righteous indignation, my well-meaning friends and family are berating me to "be my own advocate" and demand what I need. Ha. As if I knew what that was. I am showing up with persistence, patience, and pluck, but I wish they would say something less like "You need to push harder at the healthcare system" and more along the lines of "Gosh, Carol, that sounds stressful and frustrating."

Maybe I am too much of a fatalist. Maybe besides being an optimistic apanthropist, I am also a bit of a nihilist. What is the point of pushing? As if life were so precious. There is no meaning or purpose to existence. The meaning I attach to events is arbitrary and pointless. As if I had any control over reality. Is it a basic philosophical difference? I like living okay, usually, but sometimes isn't it okay to let the Universe have a say in how events unfold? People who tell me I need to fight harder are the ones who are most afraid of losing what they have. Maybe they need to do a little Swedish death cleaning to gain some perspective.

I think I just need to be sedated until conditions are optimal for success. Like, just let me sleep. Put me in a crystal cave and fill the door with a boulder on a timer and post a sign outside: open this tomb when conditions for this creative hothouse heirloom tomato of a person are likely to foster happiness. I haven't figured out all my specifications, yet, but for sure, when I wake up from my long slumber, I want all guns to have been melted down and beaten into ploughshares and windmills.