You don't know

I lost a bit of my thumb on Friday and it made me realize that you don't know what you have until it is gone. I can't touch my thumb to anything because of the pain of exposed nerve endings so I have been learning to do things a different way. At the end of the day, the rest of my hand hurts and there have been times when I have yelled profanities and almost been brought to tears. At the same time, I get a lot of questions on what happened and a few laughs when I tell the story.

It dawned on me that my loss of thumb goes hand in hand with the divorce I went through. I had this part of me that was so much a part of my life, so much a part of my every day being that when it was gone I didn't know what to do. I had to learn to do things a different way from what I was used to. I may have taken parts of my marriage for granted, just thought that things were going to be "right" because we were together, but it wasn't the way things turned out. Over the past few months, I have had to learn to do things differently, for myself, for my kids, in a way that scared the crap out of me, but I could do them because I had to. It was all kind of mental.

Today, I realized that I have gone through a lot of mental things. C'mon, I lose my dad, the rock that I based my life on, the way I wanted to end up, my one and only "go to guy". Add to that a bit of infidelity, remove the family life I had tried to build up, add a dash of "every other weekend" and some other ingredients and my mental stew was fucked and fit for no one. Friends told me that they were surprised that I was still functioning, still alive, after that, but I was. It was mental and it has plagued me. I lop off a bit of my thumb and it becomes physical.

I have to change the way I do things. Sure, they will hurt at the end of the day but they will get done. It will take time but it will get done. I will swear, I will cry, I will remember but maybe I will get by.

camel