In Sickness & in Health
How I went from being an asshole to being less of an asshole
Hello, You Heaven-sent Henry’s! Good day you Earth Loving Brenda’s!
Another instalment of ‘What it’s like to be that guy called David Venus’.
As ever, I talk about weighty themes and try not to shy away from difficult subjects. Your consciousness may or may not be in a position to hold a container for these conversations today, and that’s more than OK.
My intent is to give hope and my overarching theme, to take hold of Julian of Norwich’s lifebuoy, is that ultimately everything is going to be OK.
I also make sure to inject humour to bring lightness with us as we walk.
“All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” —Julian of Norwich
And of course, the nice thing about Substack, as my wife
points out, is that 'it’s a slow enough medium to be able to take a pause and say, “No I don’t need this message today” or “Yes I’m steady. Let’s go!”. Unlike social media where messages are full throttle rammed down our throats wether we like them or not.With all that said, I’d invite you to take a conscious breath. In fact, take as many of those breaths as you need to soften, settle and check in with yourself.
Here we go!
Out with the Old
I used to be really fit.
Like, really, really fit.
It made me really arrogant if I’m honest.
I did all the things fit people do, like telling other people how to live their lives. What to eat, how to exercise.
With a sports & exercise science degree and a bunch of certificates I was at least qualified in some sense. But whichever way you look at it, it’s ridiculously arrogant to assume that I knew enough about the world to guide people to make the best of their lives.
I mean, I wasn’t a complete arsehole. I was trying to help people, but ultimately it came from a place of me thinking I had the ‘game of life’ figured out and somehow, knew better than everyone else.
Then one day I got sick.
Like, really sick.
Like really, really, sick.
In Sickness & in Health
Apart from being born in one, I’d never been in a hospital my whole, entire life.
Suddenly in my mid-forties I was in and out of the doctor’s office getting all sorts of blood tests and someone had to shove a camera up my arse, and down my throat to see what was going on.
*Yeah I’m hoping they were different cameras…and yeah those guys deserve a pay rise.
~~~ Enjoy the Interval 🍿~~~
~~~ OK back to the show ~~~
Ultimately, apart from some inflammation and an H. pylori infection there wasn’t much they could pin it on. I took some antibiotics (which I had a reaction to) and was left to get on with my own healing.
To give you an idea of how poorly I was. I really thought I was going to die. I told my wife she’d have to figure out how to do this parenting thing without me.
I hadn’t given up, but the reality was I had to lie down after eating a meal or after going to the bathroom. I’d read my little lad a bedtime story and have to catch my breath at the end of each sentence.
I stopped tracking my blood oxygen saturation because it was freaking me out. I’d lie in bed feeling like I was being buried alive. It felt like someone had pulled all the oxygen out of the known universe.
I went from throwing sandbags around in the garden for a bit of fun, to being absolutely poleaxed by anything and everything.
Fading Away
My standing meditation practice became too heavy on the body, and eventually, even my lying meditation went out the window because all I could hear was the distressed thump of my heart and the breath with it’s fits and it’s starts.
Rest in Peace
Rest was no longer restful.
It didn’t matter if I was sitting or lying down, it always felt like my body was running a marathon or climbing at 20, 000ft.
There’s only so long the heart can maintain that sort of effort and I had to accept this could be the end of the road.
Knock Knock Knocking on Heaven’s Door
I’m beyond explaining myself to anyone.
I’ve done my best trying to communicate my struggles and symptoms with know-it-all doctors, dismissive nurses perplexed friends, and the odd curious stranger who can’t find a pigeon hole to put me in.
So this article isn’t here to convince you of anything, but I know if I were reading this, I’d be thinking something doesn’t add up. You don’t just go from being fit and healthy to being on death’s door without an explanation.
Well it turns out you do, and you can. Sometimes God just needs you to get sick.
I think it says a lot about how much we take the security of life for granted. There are people who will go to sleep tonight and not wake up in the morning but we’re reluctant to imagine we might be one of them.
It’s amazing that we feel so secure at all, given the tiny blue strip of atmosphere that we can survive in, compared with the infinite space we can’t.
Time to Pay the Piper
I’ve lived a pretty full and exciting life and I wasn’t opposed to dying in that sense. I had more than enough to be thankful for.
On one occasion, the acceptance of dying was the difference between phoning for a paramedic and not. That and the fact they’d take at least 20mins to get to me and probably a lot longer in reality.
Ultimately, I couldn’t stand the thought of my kids being without a father. I knew how much I had appreciated my father at difficult junctions in my life even in my 40’s and I wanted to be there for them as much as I could possibly help it.
It was funny because coinciding with my own sickness, my old man was dying in a hospice and we had similar stories to share. We both spoke of the experience of suffocation through the night and waking up in blind panic.
Sick Boi
If there was a physiological explanation I’d put some money on mitochondrial dysfunction. My body was all puffy and full of fluid, as was my father’s. Mine was more generalised throughout the body but noticeable around my neck armpits and back of my knees. Whilst his lower leg looked like it could burst.
I learned how to do gentle lymph massage for the both of us, because whatever was going on, both our lymphatic systems were clearly overwhelmed by cellular waste products.
One night I slept in the bed beside him so I could be there to comfort him during his night terrors.
Not sure how I was coping with life, and how he was coping with death, I watched myself, watching him.
Like a double haunting, both our fears materialised in that hospice ward.
I’ve written about my fathers passing previously; here and here. It was paradoxically both heart-achingly beautiful and heart-breakingly sad.
In a way, it was easy for me to counsel him. His only job, big though it was, was to surrender.
As a father of an 8yr old and an 18mnth old, I couldn’t surrender just yet.
My job was to accept my reality whilst hold true to the belief that I could heal and hopefully, one day, become a grandfather myself.
“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”
~ Helen Keller
Acceptance
Through the acceptance, I learned that I wasn’t invincible, like I had imagined I was.
I remember a significant moment for me. One of my students loading half a tonne of firewood into my log store, because I couldn’t. She’d come straight off a 14hr shift as a nurse during peak covid and after finishing my logs would be going home to make dinner for her kids.
I couldn’t even stand and watch her let alone help out.
No longer a teacher. No longer a provider for my family. I barely had strength enough to be a bystander.
I wasn’t just humbled, but humiliated into seeing just how needy I was in life.
It confronted me to deepen my understanding of myself and to truly appreciate the people I was lucky enough to have in my life.
Less of an Arsehole
I know we live in an era of bad assery, manifesting your worth, self promotion and ‘backing yourself’, but it feels more honest for me to just wake up to myself in my everyday ordinariness.
To take a dustpan and brush and collect all the discarded debris of who I am. The grimy dirty bits we’d rather not look at and certainly don’t want to taste and swallow.
I’ve been a bad-ass and it doesn’t live up to the hype.
So here’s to a continuous path of letting go of who I think I am and, in the process, becoming slightly less of an arsehole! 🍻
Postscript
The more conversations I have the more people I find suffering from some form of chronic illness or other. Often in silence. Often without answers.
I’d be open to do some kind of Chronic sickness ‘ask me anything’ forum. Probably for my paid subscribers as a thank you for your support during this time.
Let me know if that sounds helpful or any other ideas you may have.
I’ve been down a lot of rabbit holes in the quest for regaining my health. Some stuff complete red herrings other stuff partially helpful. And some key things that certainly helped.
Has anyone done an ask me anything? How does it work? 😆
That "I learned I wasn't invincible" part. That's what hit me in 2020. I'd always just ignored my own needs and barreled on. Turns out I had an actual limit and I'd suddenly reached it. Huge eye opener for me and suddenly had loads more empathy for other people. (Also I am kind of glad the AI got it wrong in this instance.) 😂
Good to 'meet' you - I have bumped into Claire's lovely writing previously here. This is a brave and good piece - there's something very counter-cultural about acknowledging our frailty, may esp. as men. Good to hear a mention of God too - I'm a Buddhist minister, but am so inspired by Christian teachings. Have a great weekend!