A Resilient Perpetuity: Ending the Uncomfortable

To perpetuate something is to make a typically undesirable situation or unfounded belief continue indefinitely.

Failing to upgrade my computer perpetuates my impatience and the risk of losing words.

The risk is worse. How long will Spirit trust me with the download if I don’t keep my end of the bargain by being ready when she is?

Ending the uncomfortable risk begins today. I promise my boss, the Universe, and Mother Nature, the mother of all, that I will be better prepared. Please don’t fire me -I’m getting on with the words.

I have a different understanding of cancer than traditional medicine.

I believe that cancer is a result of not being able to process or deal with something, but to perpetuate the discomfort of whatever it is that you are thinking or believing. Healing is a matter of ending the uncomfortable thought.

This polluted thought sits unquestioned as stress, feeding on sugar, for about seven years, which is about the lifecycle of most cells. When the message gets loud enough to notice, you go to a doctor.

Again, I am not a doctor, but with your diagnosis, maybe you want to deeply reflect on whatever started seven or eight years ago and has perpetuated.

When my partner had almost crippling stomach problems that his doctor was unable to alleviate, ending the uncomfortable pain required answering, “What is it that you cannot stomach?”

He realized, “I can’t stomach that my best friend betrayed me.”

Now, stop referring to him as a “friend.”

Maybe the sentence saved him. Ending the uncomfortable stomach issues began that day.

Beyond Your Boundaries

Years ago, a friend asked me if I would ever date the man who is now my partner of twenty-plus years. My eyes widened with fear at the idea, “No, that’s a scary man,” I replied.

Today, I know that love and fear are opposites, and I’m not the only one capable of confusing emotions.

Imagine my surprise when we arrived at my partner’s hunting camp, ready to enjoy all my hard work and preparation, only to see the parking lot loaded with vehicles, a huge bag of empties, and several people loitering about.

Anger boiled in me then, and I still feel it now as I type the words, but it doesn’t carry the same motivational energy it used to. I’ve put that situation to bed, but you won’t believe the work it took. Let me tell you all about it, if you have upside-down emotions yourself.

I would have jumped out of my truck with confrontational questions. Instead, my partner drove past, as if he was embarrassed to have caught them.

Okay, I calmed down a bit and thought maybe they were all armed. Two against that many is not swell odds.

When most vehicles had left, we approached.

To my shock and anger, his first words were cordial.

Ending the uncomfortable anger, I headed inside to lie on my bed and breathe as many deep breaths as I could.

On my way in, I noted that the floors I’d scrubbed on my hands and knees like a fifties-style housewife were covered in spills and caked with dirt and dog hair.

Past Your Perception

I headed to my bunk, trying not to notice anything further. Lying on my back, I tried to slow my breath, but I felt used. I hadn’t spent three days cleaning for them.

Instead of coming into the camp to go bow hunting, my stuff would smell of dog, which means a deer isn’t going to come close enough by the smarts of his nose. Gun hunters don’t get it, and why would they?

Not only that, but I’d seen four-wheelers on my game cams, and that’s enough to make a deer head for quieter pastures. My pre-season was a complete waste of time and effort, no matter how I felt about it.

With a year’s worth of work blown away, and more than that to go before I’d get another chance, I decided to head out on foot straight up hill to collect my game cams. Good thing it’s a long, long walk up a very steep hill because I had more anger to burn.

On my way out, I opened the lid of my new BBQ I’d spent four hours assembling and never used, only to be disgusted. It looked like someone barfed on it and then burned it to a crisp. A thick coat of black on every surface.

I would have said, “Get out, and you owe me a BBQ. Don’t come back without one.”

Heavy with History

When we got home after the hunt the previous year, my partner asked what I had been doing.

I filled my tag, earning First and Biggest Buck. As such, I was celebrating, but I didn’t know what else everyone else was doing.

The cook wasn’t cooking, the hunters weren’t hunting, but were running four-wheelers and boom boxes all night.

The rule is that anyone participating in the hunt shares in the meat. I spent two weeks quietly asking how the meat was going to be divided, but no one answered.

When I filled my tag, I was the only one hunting. Two people in the camp stayed because it was raining, and my partner was shopping for feed because he believed bait was required. No one else had yet arrived.

So, it was just me, waiting for forty-five minutes for a deer to come out from behind the tree and show me if I was entitled to shoot it. When it finally did, I said in my mind, “You are going to have to turn ninety degrees for me, please.”

And he did, and I shot, perfectly and cleanly, grateful to the Spirit for providing, ending the uncomfortable idea of an empty freezer.

On the last day, they decided that I was entitled to only half a portion.

According to the rules, all of it was mine.

Fool me once, I thought, just like dozens before me, who only ever showed up once.

After being robbed of my meat, my plan was to go hunting before them and fill my tag before they arrived. I dedicated my year to ensuring I’d be prepared.

Exposing Secrets

They foiled my plans without even knowing about them.

Angry? I was not the one with hundreds of thousands invested. That one was my partner—the scary man, the one who was behaving almost normally at the sight of uninvited guests in his hunting camp.

To say “my partner’s hunting camp” is a bit of a mislabel. In truth, he owns the majority stake. While the camp’s history goes back generations, my partner quietly bought everyone out over time until he became the majority shareholder.

The CEO who works in his own business just to see how the employees and customers really have it. Watching that show, I was always surprised to find out that no one knew the face of the person who is fundamentally their boss.

A key came from somewhere. Still, wouldn’t you thank your host? When you are caught squatting, aren’t you at least ashamed? They weren’t even in a rush to leave.

On the front steps that day, one of them asked who had bought out the last known share to be sold.

“He did,” I piped up, eyes locked to watch if appropriate math was being done behind those sunglasses.

“So now we just have to get rid of your brother?” he asked. There wasn’t any math taking place. He didn’t own a share and wasn’t a direct family member of any who did. Who did he think he was? Or, who does he think owns what? Where does he think his permission came from? Certainly, no one entitled to give it.

The more pressing question was what happened to my scary man? Scary only to me? What’s that deal?

The Telling of the Truth

Ending the uncomfortable feeling of being exploited required an apology. Otherwise, remorse will be real; the reasons obvious.

Weeks passed, and November dawned. One of them texted to ask if I was going hunting with them.

I told her, “No,” and proceeded to list the reasons why:

1. The meat division
2. The feeling starved
3. The incessant partying and other practices that ruined post-season bow hunting
4. The ruining of my pre-season bow hunt with their uninvited presence, including dogs
5. The ruining of my clean floors, with nary an attempt of a sweep
6. The destruction of my brand-new BBQ, which no one gave permission to use.

Her reply? “Oh. Oh no.” Then silence. You betcha, she was the cook, after all.

A few days after that text exchange, my partner headed out to hunt with them—without me. While I wondered if he would come home with an apology, he came home with nothing.

It was to be the first year ever that zero tags were filled. Is it a joke when people who’ve never shot anything complain that they didn’t get their share of meat?

A very unfunny joke, just like calling these people “hunters.”

The season ended with a big blowout fight, but I was shocked by how it went down and by the nature of the subject.

No apologies were discussed in relation to these events, but rather because two of them rearranged the furniture and demanded to know if it bugged him—every day, for two weeks.

Two weeks of blaring music, nightly four-wheeling, and no food culminated on the last day, when there was nothing to show for the season but spills, stains, bags of empties, trash, disorder, and broken appliances.

The Big Bad Wolf

Yes, it did bug him. Ending the uncomfortable situation, he said, “I’ll be hunting here alone next year.”

Without my apology, I let loose and blew up phones. Truths were told, and even though “It never should have had to have been said,” apparently it did. Mine may have been the harshest words they’ve ever heard in their lives.

Cooks should cook. Hunters should hunt. Rules should be followed. If not, I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow it all down.

I let them know that they were never welcome again and that I had no authority to kick them out, but I’d do everything in my power to ensure it.

Imagine my surprise when I heard that one of the minority stakeholders had asked if they were coming back.

Why? I wanted to know.

You don’t leave someone hanging, I was told.

Don’t ask. Tell. Your decision, not theirs. What would he have done if they had said yes?

Luckily, the reply was a long line of hahaha’s.

Finally, that answer burnt the bridge. The relief of a burden no one realized was so heavy, but now that it was gone, I heard many more, “At least there will be no more…” The list continues.

“Well, now I hope they never come back,” he said.

I’m working on getting him to say, “Well, now they can never come back.” Choice, not fate.

Power, not hope. Ending the uncomfortable while facing cancer, you need all the power you can get.

How often were they in there without an invitation? With game cams in place this year, it was the first year that nothing was stolen or went missing.

It was the end of an era, previously ruled by the person who’d handed out keys.

The Fairy Godfather

With each key comes implicit permission to access.

While I railed on about how dumb that was, it was laziness at work. Based on my research, I know that people are lazy, then dumb, and finally mean. Still, being the big bad wolf I was, I jumped to stupidity as the explanation.

A calmer me investigated the source of the laziness.

As I drove this stakeholder to and from his appointments with his cancer doctor, I connected his gut cancer to his lack of guts to deal with it and his intuition of impending doom. Fear and misery.

Eight years ago, this gang came aboard. The other two owners stopped going hunting there themselves because they didn’t want to deal with them. Then comes a woman who tags the first and biggest buck, and she’s the one who tells you all to go to 11:34. Your time is up. Read that upside down, you hanged man, you are done.

Fear underlies laziness. When you’ve seen the authentic man, you forget that he wears a mask in public that is more polite, easygoing and akin to a doormat than the one you know to be living and breathing behind it.

A fear of burning bridges, of being cast out of the family tree, of people saying harsh words in your direction.

Masks will fall. In the meantime, no problem, I’ll do it for you.

Standing up for yourself should not be scary. But yes, I know it is. I can’t stop myself from doing it, but my pulse still races, my stomach knots, and I’m ready to run as my mouth lets loose.

Today, it feels the same as it did when I stood up to my mother and her enormous size, power, and presence. Label it exhilarating, not scary.

It was a good lesson to learn early. It won’t kill you – it makes you stronger. Having survived once, you know you can do it again. I learned that when flung down stairs, I can land on concrete with mere bruises to show for it. That’s flexible enough for me!

For my fairy godfather and the scary man, I offered to buy every bed in the place to keep out the bad renters, the boundary-less guests, the family who weren’t. They said they should have done it years ago. Better now than never, I said.

It’s worth the price, and I’m able to pay it. On the contrary, I was aware that a financial loss might be at hand, and I didn’t want those I was acting to protect to feel punishment of any form.

It would be like charging for my services, and I’m retired.

I thought peace was priceless, but now I know that it can be had for the price of a luxury vacation. In fact, it will be a luxury vacation—the first one where my partner isn’t secretly working.

That’s how you cure cancer.

We are still facing six months of driving back and forth for treatment. It seems I may have time to slip in some lessons about acting contrary to your intuition.

He surprised me by buying a dream vehicle in which to do all the driving.

“Did he know I was researching them?” I asked.

He did not.

Just like he didn’t know I wished for a shotgun out of the blue, and he gave me one that very day. A family heirloom, and just like that, I felt like I belonged. A long-held wish, finally granted.

And people think guns couldn’t possibly be messages about love and safety.

With Grace and Ease

You bet I can commit to six months of chauffeuring for a fairy godfather. I’m looking forward to the conversations and the long stretches of comfortable silence.

My fairy godfather thinks I’m an angel because no one else is available. However, that’s what capacity means to me – being available when the Universe is looking for a volunteer.

I’ll make sure I’m ready to catch those words. I’ll show up daily, ready to carve out the white space as your ready, willing and able pair of hands. At your service, all the days forward.

To cure cancer or whatever dis-ease has manifested in your body, get to the source of your stress, and flip it around. If you need help decoding your diagnosis, start with You Can Heal Your Life by Louise L. Hay.

Drop the mask you wear, nip criticism in the bud, and outsource whatever needs to be done to the person most capable of doing it. Get help while you grow into the new you being called forward.

If you met me, I might not strike you as a big bad wolf. That’s what happens when you trust in your limited perceptions. On the internet, no one knows you are a dog – so said Peter Steiner.

One day, I will be shaking hands, pointing out the tarnish on my halo, and listening to your incredible stories of resilience that minimize my own.

Until then, duty calls. I’ve a chariot to chauffeur, and I’m driving it home from the dealership today! Please God, help me keep it spotless, but don’t stress about it.

Oh, the things I get to do because I can still see!