Suffering

Be aware of your suffering May 19, 2014

What exactly does the word "suffering" point to in your actual experience? Observe the sensations and thoughts associated with this. Is suffering real or imagined?


suffering is real. when you experience it you will know. if you want to call suffering imagined, just ask anyone who has a serious illness or injury or is dying. ask anyone who is starving to death. ask anyone who is beaten tortured and killed by any number of ways, such as war, pure evilness, false religious ideals, control by fear and power, etc. if that is all imaginary then all of life is imaginary. suffering is a part of life on earth and it probably happens to some extent to all land animals and ocean creatures. I'm not so sure about plants and non mammalian and snake/lizard creatures like one celled or multicelled organisms, but I think I have read that studies show that plants react positively or negatively to surprising actions. suffering may not be how YOU would experience it as a human being, but i believe that it exists on all levels. most people know the yin yan thinking and for there to be one thing, there has to be another. it would be wonderful and a dream to think that there could be no suffering, but its never going to happen. the best that we can do is lessen it to the best of our abilities, but alas we are not even good at that. humans are good at making other humans, creatures of all sorts, even our entire planet earth, suffer. and I am all too aware of my own suffering, as I am being killed by cancer. I believe we would have come up with a fix for cancer already if it were not for some peoples' and or entities/institutions greed for the almighty dollar (or any other currency or form of financial wealth and power) . suffering is too real. it is too common. it is too sad. 

Accept

I have not been writing any haiku lately. I seem to have lost that for now.

I guess it is called writers block. But I have still been writing, just not haiku.

These days my writing is based on an app that I have, called Conscious.

I will be posting these write ups here.

Accept May 20, 2014

Direct some love towards yourself and towards others today. Be understanding with your mistakes and others'. Accept yourself as you are right now and accept everyone else as they are right now. Non-acceptance is suffering.

hogwash. the exercise is a very good one up until the statement that not accepting is suffering. that is just a ridiculous statement. it is a statement made by someone who does not know the real state of suffering and has never really suffered. let me tell you. I have cancer which is killing me. i lived a healthier life than most so you cant even point your finger and try to blame me for cancer getting me. last night I was very scared and still am. I will list some of the things that are going on in my body right now. I have a huge sore on the roof of my mouth the hard palate that is very painful and makes eating very uncomfortable. I dont have any appetite but have to make myself eat. the mouth pain is referring to my throat and left ear. I have weird red bumps on my skin that look like tiny blood blisters. my toes constantly get irritations and I have to bandage them to protect them and slather thick body cream on them. other parts of my skin get weird irritations. the crease where your leg meets the body in the front is cracked and irritated and makes it feel like something is digging in to me like a pressure. i can't see as well particularly in one eye and my eyes get dry and irritated. I have an almost permanent sniffle. sometimes my lungs get a burny feeling. I have acid reflux. currently my most worrisome problem is my legs. last night I noticed that my left knee above the kneecap had developed a pain and the area behind my knees were feeling bad as well. it appears as though my knee area may be swollen. all I know is that my knees used to have a shape and now they look puffy and you cant see the kneecap. my legs ache and feel weird and wrong. the pressure of sitting on them is uncomfortable. but when I walk they feel like they are asleep minus the pins and needles so walking is kind of scary and i end up shuffling and walking like I have wooden legs. last night I had an extreme sensation of coldness of my legs although my legs were not cold to the touch. it was like deep freezer air was surrounding them and I was very chilled. I had to put two extra blankets on even though it isn't cold here. and no I dont have a fever. so tell me not to be attached to the things that are happening to my body. tell me not to worry and fret and be afraid because you think detachment will cure all suffering. the acceptance part, I have no choice in that matter. but love it? you have got to be kidding me. I am f'ing dying and I'm supposed to be detached and love it. what a bunch of crock. I am physically suffering which in turn creates emotional suffering and you just dont know. you just dont know. I AM attached to my body. I AM attached to living. I AM attached to my possessions and I believe this is all perfectly natural and normal. we are human animals and this is what we do. without attachment there would be nothing. no love no compassion no altruism. YIN YAN. the circle. the two sides. yes it should balance but there cant be one without the other. I love this app and have enjoyed it for a year but sometimes I feel a need to express myself in response to a challenge and the bizarre nature of being supposed to think and act in a certain way. the two words detachment and love just don't mesh. but as part of the app I will close by saying I accept you who have bizarre thought processes and I love you as human animals anyway. 

The Inner Demons (or maybe Aliens?)

As my monthly hospital visit nears each month I always start getting a lot of anxiety.
Will my tumors markers go up or will they stay steady? Will the blood work be ok or
will something bad show up? Here is an account of my last months visit, and now I'm
really anxious as the memory of last months pain is splattering my mind with horror.
Here is the first 5-7-5 verse of my nightmares and the remainder are below my lovely
write up of last month. Happy reading! (insert insane giggling sounds)

Hospital Day

Needle in my arm
Heart pounds. Fear invades my head.
Cancer grow or no?

Last month was hell month in one way but good in another. I really did have a hellish
day. My nurse put my iv in, which is always fun because she has to search my tiny
veins to find one that she thinks she can use. Then comes the fun part of trying to get
it in without blowing the vein. So, we are set, the iv is in and I am sitting in the torture
chair - literally - this chair is meant for a 350 pound 7 foot tall person, and I am barely
5 feet and 120 lbs. My nurse draws tube after tube of blood and before I can have my
infusion, the blood must be analysed to make sure I am ok enough. That usually takes
an hour to an hour and a half at least.

But last month the blood work took more like two hours and when she came back, she
told me that my blood was hemolyzed and they couldn't use it. It wasn't my fault!.
Hemolyzed means that the blood cells were broken, so they couldn't test it. So, she
tried to get blood out of the existing IV and that didn't work but it sure hurt. Guess what!
Another IV in another area so she could draw some more blood. Ok, that is done and
the blood is sent off. Another two hours of waiting in the torture chair. I get up and
stand a lot. The nurse come back around two hours later and she's almost crying. The
blood work came back all weird and she was certain that I was not actually dying as
the blood work was showing and for some reason the samples were bad and she needed
to get yet more blood. So..... yet another IV in yet another precious vein that she always
tries her hardest to preserve to get more blood. I love my nurse. She is a sweetheart and
she was so upset. But I still think it was harder on me! Finally my blood work came back
and the blood chemistry part was all normal enough to go ahead on getting the infusion.
But the tumor markers still had not come back and they had been climbing for the last
two months and I was beside myself sure that the end was near! 

I got my infusion and we ended up having been there for almost 8 hours. I don't even leave
my house to go anywhere because of my exhaustion and the pain trying to do almost
anything causes me, so this thoroughly wiped me out and I never know how many days
it is even going to take me to get back to my usual miserable feeling self. BUT! JOY! Last
thing before we left, the tumor markers came back and they had NOT gone up. This is
VERY joyful news. I feel as if I am once again safe from the monster that is eating me alive
and soon going to kill me.

Well, the monthly visit is coming up and one night I had many dreadful thoughts in my
head and they came out in many dark and disturbing 5-7-5 Haiku style verses.

Here they are if you have gotten this far and want to read dark and disturbing thoughts.


No Escape

No escape from it
Thousands of nasty needles
Slowly killing me


Suffer

Pain and discomfort
Hate life but don't want to die
Nothing to ease it


Cancer

Stable or spreading
Slowly eating my body
Until I am dead


F*** Everything

Didn't do anything
To deserve this nightmare hell
So F*** everything


Can't Sleep

The worry kills too
No sleep for the weary me
Weary worrier

Hell

Die die burn in hell
Oh wait I'm already there
That's what my life is


Death Haiku

Death is awaiting
Nothingness Cease to exist
I don't want to go