Ramblings

 I’ve come a long way, baby!

I spent the thirty years leading up to my breakdown stoned from morning to night. Dr. Shoja says this is common with people with C-PTSD and PTSD, as is a penchant for alcohol and hard drugs in sufferers. I was ashamed of myself, and I felt weak. Dr. Shoja doesn’t call it addiction, she calls it self-medicating. Me, with “severe” asthma, smoking dope all day every day. What a jerk.

I immediately quit cold turkey and with absolute ease when I had my breakdown. But when the (legal) dispensary opened here on Gabriola, I went in to see all the new products that enabled one to consume marijuana without smoking it, and I bought some capsules of Sativa. It’s such a safe way to consume marijuana.

The capsules come in 4, 7 and 10 mgs of THC, so you can consume combinations of the capsules to exactly the right amount of THC that suits you. I started by trying 10 mgs and felt nothing, so each time I wanted to have some, I added 5 more milligrams until I found a level that was very satisfying 

Last week, after the disappointing visit with Dr. Chen, l thought to have some marijuana in the evening. That was Monday. As of Thursday I still hadn’t remembered to take some. What a huge change. My dependency is totally gone and I’m very glad.

Another thing that’s gone is my lack of confidence in Sheba. All day Wednesday, her first day without bandages, I was monitoring her. I could do little else. Even when I was on the computer, every 5 minutes I was getting up to check on her. We got through the day without any damage to her feet. Consequently, yesterday I was checking in with her and looking at each foot, every half hour, but she never did damage to herself and so my confidence in her is restored.

So, we’re back to our normal habits. We had two wonderful walks, the morning one in 6° air, the afternoon one in gorgeous 12° sunshine. And I’m developing a ‘what the hell’ attitude to my breathing problem. I’d be a fool not to keep pursuing a diagnosis, but I’m busy enjoying life by not doing things that will leave me gasping for air.  I now wear a sling under my jaw at nights too, because without it I fall into mouth breathing while I’m sleeping, and I awaken with a horridly dry mouth. The sling has ended that.

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I want to see this film!

Alerted by a friend, I learned about an article in the New York Times detailed how "fans of good grammar" were flocking to a movie on that topic entitled, Rebel With a Clause. It’s a documentary about a woman who set up a “grammar table” in all 50 American states for passers-by to stop and ask her about punctuation and past participles.

Before and after the screening, filmgoers had the opportunity to choose whether to place a comma after the penultimate item in a list, to discuss the appropriate usage of “lie” and “lay,” and they bonded in a shared reverence for language, ideas and grammar.

The film also offers some surprises: On several occasions, Ms. Jovin clarifies a misconception about ending a sentence with a preposition. “To do so is actually perfectly correct,” Ms. Jovin said. “It is a grammatical myth that made its way into English via Latin, but English is a Germanic language,” she tells one table visitor who responds by saying “Shut up!” (Note the last word in that sentence!)

I had no focus in college. At UBC, 99% of students took courses that, in total, gave them fifteen academic credits for the year—three credits per course. I got 21 credits for my academic years, but I had no focus. I took courses that interested me. I had no goals in life or in academia.

One fabulous set of courses that I took concerned linguistics. We studied the structure of language and often, on exams, I had to identify the function of words in sentences of a foreign language and explain why I was choosing the chosen identifier. It was incredible because I was learning the fundamental similarities of languages all over the world. 

I took to grammar; I was learning about the structure of my language. Grammar is just a book of rules for those who wish to present as educated, socially acceptable … whatever. Because I was alone all the time at home, I read books, drew and kept elaborate illustrated diaries. I really liked drawing and writing, and in both fields there were rules of composition. Rules that would soon come crashing down.

Linguistics’ greatest gift to me was to vividly reveal that all languages are fluid, and most are split into numerous dialects, all of which were evolving and localizing. And when the sixties/seventies hit, and an enormous change was forced on societal norms, and each movement (black power, women’s liberation, gay liberation, etc.) brought new vocabulary. I lived through that social shift and was always thinking about the lessons I learned in my linguistics class.

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One wonderful, serendipitous aspect of my life has been going, by choice, to an experience with great expectations, only to return to remember, and remember very often and for the rest of my life with great fondness, some completely insignificant moment of that experience.

For example: The summer when I was nineteen. My friend Mike wrote to me from Europe where he was traveling, and he invited me to join him. I jumped at the chance and acted quickly, but Mike came back to Vancouver the day before I left and called me to wish me a good time.

I went to Europe, but I hated travelling alone. As the plane came through the clouds on descent, I felt something start taking over me. I managed to get off the plane and fetch my luggage, and I went into the lobby to calm myself on a chair as I struggled to regain functionality. It was my first panic attack. There was a man on the plane, a professor from UBC, and he saw me in distress in the lobby. He invited me to join his family and go to the same hotel. Bless that man!

It would take me three weeks to feel up to leaving London. I had major fears of having to function in other languages. But … while in shock in London, I ran into Cathy C., a former student whom I really liked, and she invited me to join her family the next day to go on a visit to surrounding villages.

At one point during out visit to a stunning little English village and the surrounding area, I left them to go on a wonder along a trail we’d past and that was close by. Then we found each other and carried on, but all my life, a moment alone on that pathway was chosen by my subconscious to be the moment that would come to mind often for the rest of my life, and each recollection put me into a state of wondrous reverie for several moments.

I have lots of these stimulants embedded in the ‘favourites’ folder of my memory. A great many of the most vivid are scents. The selection of these wonderful and powerful stimulants had nothing to do with my brain. All the choices were subconscious and all of them are extremely pleasant to recall. Sometimes when I’m walking in the forest, I’ll smell a fragrance and suddenly I’m walking along 11^th Avenue on my way to grade four at Ridgeview Elementary one September morning.

I didn’t know that my approach to life would mirror my approach to academics. I had no ambition other than to aim to do well at whatever I was doing. I didn’t drive my life. Living was like driving one of the bumper cars at the PNE where you’re forever going in circles and just focusing on not getting hit.

I decided that if I was going to live, I was going to enjoy what I was doing. I wanted to feel good. Feeling became my mantra, not wealth, not work. Now I don’t think I did decide that. I think it was decided for me. This kind of thinking is what happens when Chris talks to Sheila Shoja.

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Trump must be credited in a remarkable resurgence in Canadian patriotism.