ANSWER – MONOLOGUE

12.05.04

I am especially happy, because I read the wishes of friends and I am glad that they prove in this way that this blog might concern everybody. For this reason, I try not to overdo it with disability stuff. What’s eating me is last night’s (ultimately positive, of course) comment by Nikos, a comment that I hear from many people from time to time and that concerns me.

Well, Nikos mentioned somewhere that he admires our emotional strength (and good for him). Nikos, my friend, I don’t understand why you should admire me or anybody else just because I try to live a normal life despite my problem. Maybe you –and anybody else- say this because you know that our daily routine is not always pleasant, since we truly have a lot of obstacles to overcome and must prove all the time that we are equally capable with the ‘able-bodied’ people and all those things that I am sick of mentioning.

Nonetheless, things can even be quite simpler, I think. If you are lucky enough to have a good family and enough money for the physiotherapists and the surgeons (luckily, I had this luck), then you can accomplish a lot anyway. You’re going to ask me, doesn’t the personality play a part here? Of course it does. This is why I loathe the lazy people and the cry-babies, who take refuge in their own problem and do not make the most of what their family offers them.

Personally, I can’t imagine myself on a road other than the one on which I am. Of course I made mistakes too at my own peril; and the times when I denied everything were not few. Even my music, which I love so much. I used to look at myself in the mirror and wished to be somebody else. I used to see in my dreams that I rode motorcycles and left the dust avert my fears and insecurities. If someone tried to wake me up, I called him crazy or stupid, because I could not put up with admitting that I will never be able to do some things.

On the other hand, I try to avoid this word (= ‘never’), since I think it is unfair to condemn myself. Some times, I still dream that I ride motorcycles or that I wander from city to city and from land to land but now I know that some things might never happen to me, even if I reach the age of 100. I accept that; not in the way that a fatalist accepts destiny but with the maturity of a person who reckons that it is impossible to have all that we want in our life, regardless of the factors that keep us far from everything that is desirable…

I don’t back down. I always have in mind what I want, I see it in front of my eyes like a vision and I try to reach it, because I am a dirty pigheaded guy. I play a song and I take strength for a week or a month. I have B. B. King, John Lee Hooker and the other blues men in front of me, singing for all the small and meaningless things and teaching me how to put up with my being different. I don’t believe in God but, if God exists, I would like to meet him one day and talk together like friends. I would really like to believe in God but I can’t. I have become my own God and keep going. Don’t admire me. I do what I can. Luckily or not, I can do much.