Dying young

As I have mentioned several times before on this blog, my lifestyle has changed quite a bit since my relationship of almost seven years ended. More than a year has passed since then and in that time I have felt more and more that I have to follow my urges and do the things I crave, and not postpone them any longer than necessary (e.g. to save money, or to wait for good weather).

Most of the time I used to focus on what was best for the future, so I was usually thinking long term, not indulging as much as I would have liked. My ex constantly discouraged me of doing things that could have been risky. I think in part as a result of restraining myself and not undertaking the activities I would have liked to, I sometimes got depressed. In retrospect I am not very amazed by this, as not indulging yourself every once in a while will make your life as stale as a forgotten glass of coke.

So this summer I am going parachuting and sometime this week I am going to eat a monster load of eggs, just because I want to. Obviously, the latter isn't all that exciting or dangerous, whereas the former is a huge thrill and something that could kill me if something went terribly wrong. However, immediately after announcing to someone I was going to boil and eat lots of eggs I was warned that my gall bladder would not like that. And when telling someone I was going parachuting, I was told of something that was in the news about a parachute being sabotaged and a girl dying. Warnings, and more warnings. Much more rarely do people say "Oh cool, enjoy!" or "Wow, can I join you?"
This tells me that people have a tendency to think long term and not take too many risks or do things that could have adverse consequences in the short term. Sure, overindulging, like eating at McDonalds five days a week just because you like it so much, is not good for you. And taking immense risks like some thrill-seekers do, striving to climb the highest peaks and bungee jumping off towers, is extreme and is almost completely focused on the short term, as it provides a huge thrill but is dangerous and in some cases even illegal. But occasonally giving in to your cravings, be it risky or bad for your health, will make you feel alive.

Undertaking more risky activities got me thinking about death. In another blog I mentioned that I didn't want to die in bed, as coughing my emaciated, frail form to death and being pathetic doesn't appeal to me at all. Instead, I would want to die parachuting, "forgetting" to open my chute. But in this scenario I am old. What if I get cancer or something in a few years? Suppose doctors tell me I have only three months to live and I will perhaps even be too weak during those three months to do many exciting things in that time? In that case I want to be able to say to myself that I have done everything in my power to have lived my life to the full, even if it ends prematurely.
Therefore I am now living every year of my life as if it is my last. The summers especially will be as full of cool activities as possible, taking into account monetary restrictions and people's desire to come with me. In the relatively boring winters I will save up as much money as possible to get the excitement going in summers.

This lifestyle acts a comfort to me as well. I have never been particularly afraid to die, but I do realise that even if I grow to be eighty years old, I will not have done everything I would have liked in life, as I have too many interests, wishes and dreams. As such, dying young should be terrible, inevitably missing out on a lot of cool things. The thought of dying before I can write a masterpiece book, for instance, is not a pleasant one. But doing everything I can to live my life to the full, year in, year out, makes me unafraid to die. If my parachute doesn't open this summer... so be it.

Not trusting your own body

I'm not the greatest fan of my own body. For about a decade now, my back has been giving me (a lot of) problems, some days more than others. A few years ago, when the pain got so severe I could hardly function properly (not being able to sit or concentrate), I went to see a number of doctors, but their 'guesswork treatment' (as the causes for back pain are often very difficult to determine) only made things worse. And I mean this literally: some electric shock machine gave me a 'permanent electric twitch' (for lack of a better description) by my left shoulder blade, which comes and goes, but which has been there for over 2 years now; and some treatment which passed radio waves through my back muscles made the pain a lot worse. (And when I told the doctors they dismissed this and even refused to see me about it, so I switched hospitals.) The other attempted treatments 'just' failed, at least not providing side effects.

Finally I just gave up (after the electric shock thing failed) and set my mind to accepting my back pains as an inevitable and uncurable part of my life. At the time I had already been doing exercises to strengthen my back and make/keep it flexible - the only thing that has helped me get through the day, since painkillers don't work at all - so I just started each day by doing these exercises for half an hour and tried to accept my predicament. After a while I managed to accept this, and it didn't limit me that much, as I could still do almost anything, physically, including all kinds of sports, so it could have been worse.

However, a few months ago I incurred a severe knee injury playing football, and I needed an operation to even be able to stretch my leg. After that was done, I started rebuilding my leg muscles and all that, but now, two and a half months later, my knee is still giving me problems. It is supporting my weight again, and I can even run once more, which feels great after being as good as immobile for two months. However, turning (quickly) often sends a shooting pain up my leg, and I cannot trust it to support me when jumping off a ledge or something, or making any 'uncommon' movements for that matter. This makes me feel like a grandpa who has to be careful doing all kinds of stuff in order not to hurt himself, instead of like a 25-year-old guy in his prime.
I love action: I delight in running and climbing onto and jumping off of things, and I'm going to go parachuting this summer, regardless of my knee. Therefore not being as mobile or flexible as I used to be is a nightmare for me. I think that if my knee doesn't get a lot stronger in the coming months, I will even call this injury the worst thing that ever happened to me, as becoming 'crippled' or physically limited is truly my nightmare.

In addition to my back and knee problems, there are some other physical unpleasantries, most likely related to my back problems. In short, however undiagnosed, it is probably a mild form of hypermobility syndrome, allowing joints to stretch farther than normal and such. Example: when doing archery, when I pull back the string to its full extent, my shoulder gives me some problems, like it is almost unable to handle the pressure on it. Things like that. A current concern is my neck, which seems to crack more severely by the day (and when I twist it, it sounds like there is sand in it). I wonder if I should stop headbanging at concerts. I thought about seeing a doctor about it, but as he will not understand why headbanging is so awesome, and dear to me, he will undoubtedly advise against continuing to do so, 'just to be safe', so why even bother going? (Safety isn't everything, as it makes your life dull and stagnant as shit.) Anyway, most likely my physical problems will get (much?) worse as I grow older. Which sucks.

So, you will understand I am definitely not the greatest fan of my body. I feel like I cannot trust it, that it will fail me; I feel it is getting worse in various places, like my neck, at the moment; I feel I need to do cool, active things right now instead of postponing them for various reasons, before my body fails me and I cannot undertake such things anymore. It makes me live in the now all the more, without as much regard for the future as I used to. So if I take risks now, resulting in fun or even incredible experiences, but running the risk or hurting myself (even more), I consider this worth it. If I played the part of the wounded animal just waiting for things to get better, not taking any chances, and thus not further damaging my body, but not going through wonderful experiences either, I may get to lead a 'normal' life longer, but I would feel like a scared little girl, living in fear. I would rather feel alive for a relatively short time than like a zombie not going out and doing cool things but staying at home and watching TV or something. (I would watch Night of the Living Dead.)

What I will do is train my injured leg and hope for the best, but I will not cower from potential harm to come to me. Perhaps playing football will be out of the question for the rest of my life, I don't know, but I will be damned if I just throw in the towel. So I will go parachuting, and do tons of other cool stuff in the coming years, before my rotten body decides it will disallow me to continue doing what I love. After that, if my body indeed fails me, I guess I will have plenty of time for the other things I have always wanted to do but never have time for, like writing a book or something. But I suppose that will have to wait as long as my body will still work with me.

And when I am old and I can't do active stuff worth shit, I will go parachuting again, but just fail to open the damn thing. Go out with a bang instead of coughing my sick ass to death in a bed with grieving family and friends next to me. No, I will not be pathetic and let my body rule over me. Life should be fun, and if it is no longer, with no hope of recovery any time soon, it should be terminated in the coolest way possible. At least then I will show my body it will never take my balls!