Reflections on being contrary.

I'm sixty years old. I'm not rich or famous or even what most consider to be educated. What I am is, simply said, a nobody. I dabble in a lot of things, but have mastered none. In the greater view of the world, I'm nothing. There's not a thing in the world to mark my existence having been a reality after I'm gone. 

Yes, I have Ehlers-Danlos. Nobody cares. Now, not even me. I see people around me every day who also have it—and who aren't diagnosed. Just like I wasn't, for over fifty-eight years. For all of us, the ACA and social services, et al, are largely useless. Particularly in Kentucky. 

I've pretty much given up on finding adequate health care. I'm too exhausted and broke to make it to all the appointments, anyway. Social Security is, to put it mildly, a joke. 

And so I took up a neglected manuscript and began to edit it. I have nothing else to do to keep myself from going bonkers from boredom when I can't get up and move around. I doubt it will ever make it to publishing.

To be honest, I don't know why I've bothered hanging on this long. If it offends anyone or not, my tangle of creativity is no more or less than hobby. Every dime I get from it sets life backwards instead forward, in terms of "disability aid." 

And life goes on. Politics and social values circle the drain. It doesn't matter. 

But I'm still going to finish this novel. And maybe another or three. For myself.

The stories I write tend to be about PTSD, an indirect form of horror. Which explains a lot of things, I guess. 

Hang onto life. It's sometimes all we have. Live it. Respect it.