Category: Uncategorised

This tune right here takes me back to the 80s,
complete with memories of childhood antics,
what follows is one of the earliest I can recall,
one of the craziest, too, that boy had no sense at all.

 

A few years ago, I had a conversation with a friend who, at the time, I hadn’t seen for a few months. We updated each other with the usual things like work, family, places visited or events attended and all that before the conversation shifted over to music and then somehow ended up being about the earliest memories that we can recall from our respective lives. We both agreed that the earliest memories that one can recall in general are those from when they were three or four years of age and for me there’s one particular early memory that comes to mind, mainly because my father often reminds me of it whenever we have one of our little trips back to memory lane – and because it was a perfect reminder of just how silly and destructive children can be when left to their own devices and I was not immune. If I were to compile a list of the crazy things I did as a child this would be in the top three.

 

It was a Saturday morning and I was three or four years of age. My father and mother decided to go for a drive in my dad’s brown Mitsubishi to go grocery shopping. My sister and I were supposed to stay home with the sitter but after I had begged and cajoled them endlessly they allowed me to tag along. My sister, still very young at the time, stayed in and most likely went back to sleep following a light breakfast.
We pulled up into a marketplace and found a vacant spot in the parking lot. It was still quite early so there weren’t too many cars in the lot. We found a spot not too far from the shops.
‘I’ll be quick,’ Mom said, ‘wait for me here.’
And so off she went, leaving the boys to chill in that brown car.

Being a very young child it wasn’t long before I got bored. I guess I should have stayed home. My father did too although at times I think he was happy to just sit down, close his eyes and relax. We talked for a little while, which wasn’t very easy since he was seated on the driver’s seat in front while I was in the back seat and so I was essentially having a conversation with the back of his head. I’ll bet he felt like a chauffeur or taxi driver trying to make small talk with his client.
But after a while Dad decided that he needed some fresh air and a chance to stretch his legs. I opted to stay inside the car so he rolled down his car window to let in the air before stepping outside to stretch and clear his head.

 

Little did he know that the little knucklehead inside the car was about to shatter his calm and something else into smithereens. Get ready to pay for what was seemingly an innocuous mistake, Pops!

 

You see, my father had accidentally left a small screwdriver on the floor in the back and yours truly had gotten his little paws on it. I began playing with the little thing, wondering what its purpose was. As a fan of superheroes and cartoons I quickly decided that it was a weapon and so began to engage in a fencing match with an imaginary opponent. If only my father could have taken a peek through the windscreen, he would have seen his crazy kid swinging at air and spitting all over the back of the passenger seat, imitating the sounds of swords cutting through the air and the blade piercing through flesh and armor in between punctuating each strike with grunts and screams that would have made Bruce Lee face palm himself.

But that got boring after a while. So I decided that it was time for an epic drum solo to shake things up. Others would have used the soft, cushy seat as drums but nope, this kid right here had other ideas.
Let’s use the window!
While Dad continued to daydream outside I pointed the screwdriver towards the window and then did my best Travis Barker imitation.

 

Rat-ta-tat-tat……SMASH!!!!!

 

My father immediately spun around and his eyes grew wide as saucers in shock at what I had just done. There were shards of glass on the cement right next to the car’s back door on the right side where I was sitting and a gaping hole on the window. What remained of that window glass was sprinkled with cracks, giving the window the appearance of being snowed on.
Luckily, I suffered no cuts since the shards of glass had fallen outside. Perhaps unsure whether to be worried or angry, my father immediately stormed towards the back door, opened it up and lifted me out to dust me off in case there were pieces of glass on me. He then snatched the screwdriver from my hands and shook his head in disbelief.

“Why did you do that!?” he asked, rather irate.

If I remember correctly I just stared back at him with a mixture of fear and anticipation, knowing that I’d broken a part of his ‘favorite toy’. I knew that some type of big punishment was sure to come my way but at the same time I was bemused at how such an inanimate object could cause such mayhem. I don’t even remember hitting the window that hard! He then proceeded to reprimand me for my little demolition job and if I recall, I think he might have given me three light taps on my right hand, the one that carried my weapon of choice. They weren’t particularly hard taps and Dad didn’t lose his temper but I got the message loud and clear and tears welled up from my eyes. Some feisty little tough guy I turned out to be, I surrendered after a stern tone and three light taps on the hand.

 

Yeah, that’s probably the earliest memory that I can recall. And my father still recalls it vividly to this day and would often remind me of it whenever we reminisced about the ‘good ol’ days’. In fact, he reminded me of it again recently when I told him about my blog.

“Are you going to include the glass story?” he inquired.

“Of course!” I replied.

Then we both laughed.

April & May, 2018

Heard this song during a road trip to Melbourne,
for my nephew’s first birthday, my cousin’s son, yeah it was a lot of fun,
But days prior something had triggered alarm bells,
Didn’t know it then but I was about to enter the pits of hell,
I fought that secret battle, almost broken, but came up triumphant,
Victory was mine, I’m da man, but the war had just begun.

 

It started one day, out of the blue. Something seemed odd one morning when I went into the bathroom and did my business.

Heh……that doesn’t look normal. Is that blood?

I dismissed it as a one-time thing as I cleaned myself up and then went about my life as though everything was normal and for a while it was – until it wasn’t.
Over the next few weeks one-time became once in a while. And then it became a few times a week. Then it became almost every day. Sure, I had ‘good days’ but the ‘bad days’ began to add up and and alarm bells rang in my head. But like most men I was reluctant to come clean to a medical practitioner and went straight to Dr Google instead. I typed up my symptoms in the search bar and hoped for a not-too-drastic-diagnosis.
Hopes were dashed.
I read all the possible ailments that could be manifesting within me based on my symptoms and melted in my seat. Damn near all of them sounded serious and could potentially lead to something more life-threatening if I didn’t take immediate action. Over the next few days anxiety set up camp in my mind and was soon joined by its good friends disbelief and rage as I struggled to come to terms with what was happening to me.

Shoot, just the act of going to the toilet began to fill me with dread! It became a cruel game of hit or miss, wondering if there would be blood today or not. It certainly threw my emotions into a spin, on good days I’d breathe a sigh of relief only to then have that feeling obliterated by the presence of blood during the bad days. To make matters worse my appetite deteriorated to the point where I often had to force myself to eat. This was not good. In addition to bloody stools a loss of appetite was also a possible symptom of inflammatory bowel disease and of that hideous monster known as bowel cancer.

Great. I guess I’m doomed.

Man, I sure hoped that this loss of appetite was merely a byproduct of the stress that I was under but given my additional symptoms it could very well have been something much worse. I’d become paranoid quicker than I could believe and any ache or pain that I experienced, however minor, had me in a state of panic.
Going to sleep at night also became an ordeal. I would spend half an hour lying in the dark while my mind tormented me before I finally drifted off, screaming internally at my inner demons to return to the depths of hell and leave me alone.

 

I remember one particular day towards the end of April where I was in my room, sitting on my bed and trying to keep myself together. I kept these symptoms to myself, presenting a strong, relaxed front for my family and friends, but inside I was suffering. Whatever it was inside me, I felt that it was becoming serious and I contemplated speaking to a doctor but fear and pride prevented me from doing so. I was not prepared to confess lest my worst fears were realized and so like a sick coward I chose to live in ignorance and denial rather than face the music. I could practically see the words ‘COWARD’ scrawled in blood-red letters across my forehead whenever I looked at my reflection on the mirror.

As I sat on my bed I thought about how keeping my mouth shut could potentially come at the expense of my livelihood, perhaps even my life. Imagine that, life as I knew it taken away from me because I was too much of a chicken shit to speak up. And the more I thought about it the more I got pissed off at myself for not having the balls to just tell someone!

God dammit!!!! Your life could be on the line here and you’re not gonna do anything about it? What the hell is wrong with you!!??

AAAAARRGGGHHH!!!! I was wracking my brains out to hair-pulling levels over this shit! This must be what a nervous breakdown feels like.

I tried to distract myself with a good book and music, which had long been my winning remedy for stress, but this time it was useless. The raging storm within drowned out the beats and tunes from my ipod. And when I finally found my legs again I paced back and forth around the room while my emotions ran around in circles like a fucking carousel.
In addition to the fear I was angry. I don’t have a family or personal history of serious health problems, let alone bowel problems, I’ve never abused drugs, I don’t drink, I tried not to stress over little things, I was active and ate healthily. In other words, I did everything that the ‘experts’ recommended for a healthy life.
And this is my fucking reward!?
Seriously!?
What kind of bullshit was that!?
It made me so mad! I could have put my fists through my bedroom walls multiple times. I hate to sound like a petulant child but I did ask myself ‘why me!?’ a few times on a given day. That was my anger, stress and shame talking right there.

 

The timing of these symptoms also could not have been worse. You see, I was weeks away from a family holiday to the USA and Canada when they intensified and I guess part of the reason why I didn’t take action was that I was afraid it would cancel our trip. It was stupid of me to put it off like that but I was really looking forward to this holiday and would have been damned if these pesky symptoms denied my parents and I of it. When I thought of it that way fear and anxiety gave way to serious denial disguised as defiance and false-bravado.

Fuck this. I’ll see a doctor after the trip.

What an idiot. It’s amazing, what the ego can do. On one hand, it can propel one to achieve goals and dreams that once seemed out of reach but on the other hand, it can drag one into awkward, dangerous and even fatal situations. My new line of thinking convinced me that two weeks was not a long time and that I wasn’t seeing symptoms every single day and every single time I went. I also wasn’t physically incapacitated and didn’t feel any serious aches and pains so whatever this is, it couldn’t be something too drastic. I thought that it would get worse before it got better and then fade away.
But I wasn’t dumb. Not completely, anyway. In the back of my mind I knew that I was taking a potentially dangerous and foolish risk but I also thought that sheer strength of mind could overcome anything. I just had to tough it out for the next two weeks.
And so After a few weeks of on-and-off symptoms and with feelings of uncertainty hanging over my head I packed my bags and boarded a plane bound for our holiday. My health aside, I was also uneasy about the long flight. I hate flying and let me tell you, the thought of flying from Australia to Canada made me nauseous. But I accepted that it came with the territory. Once I endure the flight and my feet hit the ground and my lungs take in the fresh air I’ll be excited.
There was also some good news before we left – I showed no symptoms the day before the flight. It was a massive confidence booster and I slept soundly that night but at the same time I wondered if this was permanent or temporary.

I got my answer soon enough. After we had endured a non-stop flight from Australia to Toronto we had a few hours’ of respite in Toronto before another shorter flight towards Calgary (we would return to Toronto during the second week of our trip). I was exhausted from the long distance flight when I boarded this flight and was seated next to a total stranger, who looked rather weary but probably not as worse for wear as I was.
About an hour or two before the plane landed in Calgary, nature came calling. I trudged towards the toilet, hoping that there would be no more symptoms. I sat down and fired away and then slowly looked at the result.

AW HELL NO!!!!

The blood had returned yet again! Talk about the floor opening up beneath me, my heart rate and stress levels once again shot up as I buried my face in my hands in disbelief.

This can’t be happening!

I cleaned myself up before returning to my seat where I collapsed like a sack of rocks, totally dejected. I was in a fog for the rest of the day and once the plane landed and we took a cab to the hotel I was just going through the motions. A walk around the city of Calgary in the afternoon after checking into our hotel provided some relief, as I was able to shake off that long flight and get my body moving again. But my mind was still a mess, unbeknownst to my parents. They probably thought that any distracted and zombie-like behavior on my part was due to the long flight and the broken and uncomfortable sleep patterns that came with it. They were aware of my dislike of long flights but thankfully they didn’t seem to notice anything.
Had I not been tired from the long flight I probably would have stayed up for half the night with worry, if not all night. But I was out like a light as soon as my head touched the pillow, fatigue thankfully having overcome anxiety and serious disappointment.

 

But you know what? Something miraculous happened the following day. The next morning, after an unusually refreshing deep sleep all things being considered, we checked out of our hotel in Calgary and made our way towards Banff via tour bus. After spending most of the morning and mid-day exploring Banff’s beautiful city we ducked into a restaurant for lunch. Shortly before the food arrived I felt that urge once again and so like a condemned prisoner headed for the gallows I trudged over to the restrooms to do my business. I felt like John Coffey from that movie The Green Mile, taking that long walk to the electric chair. But I wasn’t optimistic and laughing about watching Mr. Jingle do his thing in Mouseville. I was riding waves of emotions ranging from fear to bitter acceptance of my fate. The disappointment that I had experienced during the flight had sapped me of my optimism and so I was expecting the worse. If there was blood, so be it. I’ll take it on the chin and try to enjoy the rest of the trip before booking a trip to the doctor once we got home.

Ok, let’s get this over with.

Much to my surprise, everything looked normal.

Are my eyes playing tricks on me!?

Man, I didn’t try to debate it in my mind for long. Relief washed over me and I nearly cried tears of joy. I felt as though I had won the lottery! I could have done cartwheels in that restroom had there been enough space and if I didn’t care about personal hygiene. I cleaned up before strutting back to my seat to re-join my parents, suddenly rejuvenated.

I enjoyed a delicious lunch and dinner that day and slept soundly at night. For the rest of the week we explored various parts of Canada, from small towns to mountains and woodlands and even snow and ice. Trekking around a glacier of solid ice without snow boots on was memorable, my leg strength and balance were definitely tested. Seeing deer, mountain goats and other various animals on the roads was also pretty cool.
We then spent the next week chilling (literally!) in Alaska via cruise ship, where the weather veered between sunshine and rain but always with a persistent cold wind in the air. It was a nice place where lumberjacking and fishing was the life plus the people were nice and laid-back.
We returned the following week back to Canada for a few days to explore the Rocky Mountains by train and then hung around the city of Toronto before flying back home, non-stop (ugh!).

I had a big smile on my face for the duration of that trip. Why? For the remainder of the trip I experienced zero symptoms. That’s right, ZERO! Everything seemed to be normal again and as the days went by I calmed down and really began to enjoy the holiday, no longer troubled by nervous feelings whenever I had to ‘go’.

 ‘See? You were freaking out over nothing. Told you this thing would pass.’

Indeed. I guess that whatever it was that had driven me to insanity was just temporary after all. Life was great again, and more to the point, my sheer strength of will had carried me through. I was really proud of myself and even allowed my ego to come out and play for a bit.

I overcame the beast within. Damn, I’m awesome!

I kept such thoughts to myself but I was grinning from ear-to-ear for the remainder of the trip.

Although the flight home was still every bit as uncomfortable as other long-distance flights from years past my demeanor was far more relaxed. I sat on my seat watching comedy films on the in-flight entertainment, satisfied with my little victory. Everything was good in the world again.

Or so I thought…….

 

 

 

 

 

A ballad by Simply Red sparked this memory,
Of a time not long after I was just a baby,
Sometimes we must learn things the hard way,
No sugarcoating or soft landing, much to our dismay.

 

It was a typical Saturday morning in the suburbs. The streets, normally chaotic on an average weekday morning, was empty and barren and homes were closed shut while their inhabitants caught up on much-needed sleep, that precious and necessary part of healthy living often taken for granted due to the demands and pressures of working life.
I was very much a member of the weekend sleep-in brigade. I could more than hold my own with the best of them but in my defense I was a four-year old child. The need to get up and make money wouldn’t apply to me for many years to come and my young body needed all the sleep it could get. Saturdays for me were spent in the playroom acting as a one-man instigator of traffic chaos and endless violent car crashes for my toy vehicles and the promoter of some rather crude yet epic battles between Batman, Superman and the other superheroes that resided in my toy box before my younger sister and I summoned our inner Leonardo DaVinci with the playroom walls as our canvas, much to our parents’ chagrin.

I guess you could say that I was your typical playful and spirited child. God I miss that kid!

 

My education was limited at this point to the very basics; the alphabet, counting from one to ten (the number one hundred in my still-limited mind was the biggest number in the world, nigh on impossible to count towards and the end of the numerical system), learning all about shapes, colors and basic grammar, learning how to color in pictures without straying from the lines and all that jazz.
As far as I was concerned, ‘work’ was some mythical place that all adults went to every day, except for my teachers and the parish priest who, for some odd reason, were exempt. I also had an extremely limited grasp of the ageing process and still found it hard to believe that everybody was a child once, too. I believed that all the adults around me never had childhoods and were somehow born as adults.

Nice, huh? Such is the perspective of a young child.

There was also another concept that I still did not completely understand, and that was of life and death. I was aware that people died, that they went to sleep forever before their ghosts headed off to the afterlife or stuck around to play tricks on people. But never in a million years would I have guessed that death was an inevitable part of life that touched everyone.

 

Finding out the truth was a massive blow. And a silly story.

 

We had just finished dinner as a family and afterwards I sat on the living room sofa with my father where I proceeded to bombard him with an endless fuselage of questions in addition to anecdotes about the little adventures that my sister and I got up to in the play room during the day. My mother washed dishes in the kitchen while my sister, seated to me, played with her toys, totally uninterested in my conversation with Dad.

Somewhere in between questions and my own brand of storytelling, the subject of one of our deceased relatives found its way into the conversation. Having assaulted him at all angles with my inane chatter the topic of conversation was bound to wind up in a weird place eventually. My father went on to gently explain my late uncle’s cause of death, eschewing the graphic details in favor of keeping it short and concise. I don’t remember my follow-up question word-for-word but it did involve being amazed that so many ‘famous people’ were dead and wondering if it would happen to me. Like I said, I didn’t think of death as inevitable and was hopeful that I would be spared from it. It probably would have been better for me not to dig too deep but alas, youthful curiosity killed the damn cat and then some.
I’m pretty sure that my father was dreading the day that he would have to explain this to me but knew that it would happen eventually. There was no easy way to do it, so he opted for keeping it honest and and straight to the point.
“Everybody dies, Son,” he replied, “It’s a part of life.”
My eyes widened with disbelief.
“So does that mean you and Mom will die?”
“Yes.”
Wide eyes were now accompanied by a knot in my throat.
“Does that mean me and my sister will die!?”
“Yes.”
Sensing the fear on my face he added, “but not for a long time if you’re careful.”
Yeah, that didn’t help at all. Me and my big mouth!

 

Once my mother had finished up in the kitchen we as a family climbed upstairs where the sprawling bedroom and play room were located. Man, I can still remember that bedroom, it was the biggest room in the home and housed two beds. My sister and I slept on the bigger bed while my parents shared a bed nearby. A television set sat in front of the room, next to the wardrobe. A massive shelf along one of the walls housed photo albums, books, my parents’ cassette collection (it was the 1980’s, baby! Retro, huh?) and one of those old-school stereos that you would often see in early 1990s hip hop music videos.

Our parents helped us wash up before bedtime. My sister promptly fell asleep but I stayed awake for a while, still reeling from the conversation that I had with my father. As my parents laughed intermittently at the TV program they were watching, I reflected on the concept of death and how one day it would come for me. I was still in disbelief when I finally nodded off.

 

I would be dead one day, just like the others, huh? Wonderful.

 

But it was an important and necessary thing to learn, I guess. Had to happen sooner or later.

 

 

 

 

‘The Wonder of you,’ recorded and covered by many,
But made famous by some guy called Elvis Presley,
The Conor O’Brien version is the focus for this entry,
Though the story is anything but rosy,
So read on, my friend, and you will see,
The toughest battle of my 2018.

 

August 6, 2018

I sat on the queen-sized bed in my parents’ bedroom, trying to make sense of it all without giving in to my emotions. It was easier said than done, as I had felt as though I was kicked hard in the guts and was now trying to resist the urge to regurgitate what little food was inside of me.
I tried the good ol’ ‘take deep breaths’ routine, hoping that it would restore my sanity. It’s a tried and tested method that worked in the past, surely it would bail me out again, right?

Wrong.

Stay strong, kid. Don’t cry!

The room smelled like a typical older person’s room, that mixture of linen sheets, vicks vapor rub, lotions and soaps, the type of atmosphere that invites calm and serenity. The blinds were almost lowered shut, rendering the room rather dark and gloomy in stark contrast to the sunshine outside.
The darkness matched my mood, however. As for that calming atmosphere? Forget it. The cacophony of emotions within had overcome all but the sturdiest chunks of my armor and even those were beginning to disintegrate.

Earlier during the day I had undergone a colonoscopy following months of worsening symptoms, culminating in a short hospital stay during the previous week. Call it insanity or perhaps complete denial, but despite the health dramas I was hopeful that there was nothing seriously wrong with me. Whatever it was, I thought it could be healed quickly and painlessly and I’d be good as new again in a matter of days or weeks at most. I’d never had any serious health issues before and I felt that this would be no different.
Shoot, I even exchanged jokes with the specialist and his team as I was escorted to the large screening room that would seal my fate, populated with hospital beds and viewing monitors and the walls painted an austere white. In such a serious atmosphere I guess I wanted to lighten the mood a little and it kinda worked, I did get a few chuckles out of my lame jokes. Wearing nothing but a hospital gown and plastic covering my head and feet, I was quite a sight yet totally prepared for what lay ahead.

 

No turning back, it’s go time!

 

While I felt a sense of excitement at finally knowing what it was that was causing me grief, I was understandably nervous. I’d never needed to undergo any medical procedure that involved me being knocked out before so this was all new to me. Nevertheless, I climbed onto one of the beds in that all-white room and lay on my side as the anesthesiologist began to pump drugs through a tube stuck through a vein in my right hand. Before he pumped the drugs I jokingly asked him if I would feel pain. He smiled and reassured me that I wouldn’t feel a thing and that it would all be over before I knew it. He was right. I drifted off almost immediately once the anesthesia kicked in.

I woke up feeling disoriented and hungry, the result of not having had anything to eat or drink since the previous day. I’d never been hungover before but I assumed that it probably felt something like this minus the throbbing headache, nausea and regret. I was escorted into a recovery room for a light meal, which I proceeded to devour while a large television screen in the front of the room flashed the morning news. Not that any of my fellow patients noticed as they were busy eating and/or still trying to shake off their own drug-induced sleep. I felt relieved and liberated that it was over and I’d finally learn what was wrong with me.

I was halfway through my meal when the specialist approached me to give his diagnosis.

“You have a form of ulcerative colitis known as severe pancolitis,” he said solemnly.

In an instant, the confidence I had prior to the procedure was shattered and I felt my blood turn to ice. I suddenly lost my appetite although I still went on to finish my meal. So much for positive thinking, the doc couldn’t have hurt me more had he taken a sledgehammer and smacked me upside the head with it. Once I had finished my meal I was reunited with my parents, who had taken the day off their respective jobs to drive me to and from the clinic. We bought the drugs prescribed for me at the chemist before the drive home.

 

I was pretty much numb during the drive home, answering all of my parents’ questions in short sentences and frantically looking up my diagnosis on goggle on my phone, which in hindsight wasn’t the best idea as it only exacerbated the anxiety and disbelief that I was feeling. I read up on pancolitis and the lifestyle adjustments I might need to make and let me tell you, it was both horrifying and depressing.
And to top it off, there was no cure for this and my chances of developing bowel cancer in later life had shot up. Unless some medical breakthrough happens, this shit was a damn life sentence unless I undergo a surgical procedure to remove my bowel.

 

To quote a certain tennis great, “You CANNOT be serious!!!!”

 

Which brings us back to where this whole story began. Upon arriving home, I went into my parents’ room (it was the closest bedroom to the front door and I was too sickened and wrecked to wander far in order to find a place to rest) and sat on that bed trying to figure out how to move on from this mess. I had great difficulty accepting that this health condition could be with me for the rest of my life unless I resorted to extremely drastic measures. And like I said, my chances of developing bowel cancer had increased.
But what really drove me up the wall was the fact that someone like me, healthy as a horse and with no family history of this shit, could even come down with it in the first place. It’s almost as though I got this shit through sheer bad luck. The thought made me so mad and so sad at the same time! It was, indeed, very difficult to comprehend.

“You have ulcerative colitis,” the specialist’s voice rang in my mind, “the cause is unknown and there is currently no cure other than to place it in remission or to remove your bowel if remission is impossible.”

“This could stay with you for the rest of your life.”

I might as well had been one of those poor bastards standing in the courtroom before a judge and jury of my peers dressed in orange, hands cuffed as the judge slugged me with a life sentence for a crime I didn’t commit.
It all became too overwhelming and I felt tears of frustration and anxiety roll down my face. Even the hardiest of rock formations can be overcome by torrents of raging waters and in this case, my hardened exterior was eventually obliterated by the flood of emotions that I could no longer contain. So there I sat, crying my eyes out like some sort of chump. The taste of defeat was, indeed, extremely bitter.

My moment of torment was interrupted by the presence of my mother, who had entered her room to change into her pyjamas. I’d venture that she was mildly surprised to see her grown up son sitting on her bed blubbering like a baby and likewise it felt rather embarrassing and awkward for me that she had to witness it.
My pride wouldn’t allow me to say it out loud (yet here I am admitting it online, how about that?) but her presence was a Godsend. Yeah yeah, go ahead and call me egotistical but at the state that I was in it was the last shred of dignity and so-called masculinity that I had left to cling onto. I really needed someone beside me right then to pull me out of the hole I had fallen into and who better than my own parent?
And so my mom sat down beside me and we had one of those heart-to-hearts, during which she went on a motherly lecture about how she and the family would always have my back and that I had to fight on and all that. She ended her sermon with the following words;

 

“Move on from the past and have faith that life can only get better.”

 

With that, she left the room to give me some time to absorb her words. As clichéd as her talk may have seemed at times, it worked. A fire was suddenly lit within me, the tears dried up and I felt as though I’d seen the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. I immediately stopped weeping and looked out the window at the sunshine outside, suddenly rejuvenated. I recalled the words of one of my favorite film characters, Rocky Balboa;

 

‘It aint about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!’

 

And with that I picked myself up off the bed, walked out of the bedroom and into the kitchen for a meal; banana, oatmeal and two boiled eggs, a late breakfast you could say. Don’t forget, I hadn’t had a decent meal since the previous day and the light meal I had after the colonoscopy wasn’t exactly filling.
Unlike my parents’ bedroom the kitchen blinds were open, allowing the sunlight and warm air to put some color and warmth into the room, a reflection of my suddenly-motivated state of mind. The sunlight shone directly into the window and I felt the rays on my skin as I sat by eating, and on this rather cold winter day it was refreshing.
The refrigerator in the kitchen, conspicuous with the collage of fridge magnets plastered onto it, was also in the path of the sunlight and I stared at my mother’s fridge magnet collection, each taken from different parts of the world we had visited, as I ate. Up to now I am still amazed at the number of places that we, as a family, had visited, both at home and abroad.

As I chewed my food I imagined myself inside a boxing ring, my hands encased in red Everlast gloves and wearing bright, still-glossy blue trunks, standing in a neutral corner while the referee hovered over the crumpled form of my opponent, the letters ‘UC’ emblazoned on his once-white trunks, now rendered pink from the blood that leaked freely from his nose and lips. He lay on the canvas barely conscious after having absorbed my final multi-punch salvo that sent him spinning downwards. The referee need not have counted to ten over him, such was the state he was in.
My chest heaved as I stood in my corner. I took a few licks in the heat of battle but escaped relatively unmarked and my heart pounded as I waited for the adrenaline to die down.

“Stay down, dude,” I silently pleaded to my comatose opponent, “stay the fuck down!”

I watched as the referee completed his count and once he waved his arms I leaped triumphantly in the air, my arms aloft, a guttural roar escaping my throat as the audience roared back in appreciation. I then fell to my knees as tears flowed down my face, the adrenaline having given way to emotion. It was of no consequence to me, I had just vanquished some mean monster that was supposed to beat me into submission. I was written off by just about every ‘expert’ out there and believe me, the victory was sweeter than a box of chocolates. I sat there on the canvas, savoring my unexpected victory as the crowd chanted my name.

I snapped back to reality as I followed up my meal with a glass of water accompanied by a couple of those pills prescribed for me to combat my disease. The hopeless, sobbing mess from half an hour ago was long gone, replaced by a determined young man prepared for war. To hell with that whole, doom and gloom bullshit. I was gonna show the lot of them that there was no way in hell this damn disease was going to beat me.

 

Bring it on!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi, everyone and welcome to Musical Memories.

I’m just a normal guy that likes reading, writing, working out and, of course, listening to music.

I am also battling ulcerative colitis, which, at the time of this writing, I was diagnosed with three months ago. The main story line looks at that health battle, the highs, the lows, the lot.
Other posts are based (sometimes loosely) on my past experiences, as well as a few short stories and poems that I’ve come up with. Music usually has a way of drumming up memories and inspiring me to write. Totally gets the creative juices flowing.

Mind you, some of these posts might be the complete opposite of the tone and message of the particular song chosen and so I’ve included a brief intro at the top of each post as to how that song compelled me to write the blog post.

So sit back, relax and read on!

 

Note: Apologies for the coarse language in some posts but I wanted to keep these posts honest and straight-from-the-heart. Stories based on true events have had some names changed to keep people anonymous and events slightly altered based on how much I can recall.