I’m gonna jump the shark tonight and confess that I’m pretty friggin down about this surgery I’ll be having in a couple of hours. It’s not that I’m scared. I’m not scared one bit, to the extreme of just about not caring if something does go horribly wrong.

Ultimately, it is not that I am sick, that I’ll have had four surgeries in a year, that defines me. Well, that’s good, right? Unfortunately, for me, what defines my life is that I know when I float away under anesthesia, there’s no one waiting for me to wake up. I do have friends who will drive me to the hospital and wait around for hours…well, actually, I don’t really know how many friends I have who’ll do that. I have at least one, but each time I have to ask this friend, it’s a greater and greater imposition, to the point that I have not insisted on it for today. I have a family member who could’ve come here today, but I knew the imposition outweighed the necessity.

I have a neighbor dropping me off, and then I’m on my own.

I have struggled with the question of whether it really makes sense to make this such a big deal…so no one’s with you when you have surgery, so what?

Well, even if I discount the need for emotional support–they’re low-risk procedures, after all–there’s still the question of needing someone to tell me what the heck is going on and where the heck my stuff is. I know better than to expect the hospital staff to cater to my whims. They’re not going to fetch me my glasses or my phone from my bag. You’re helpless when you’re on one of those gurneys. With any luck, I will be too drugged up to care, but what if I’m not? I am going to feel absolutely alone.

And that gets me to why I’m not going to be anxious to wake up from my surgery or any drug-induced hazes I may find myself in today.

I should have more connections in my life, strong connections, people I don’t need to hesitate to ask for help. I don’t

Sorry. I’m the eternal-downer, I guess. And while I’m on this path, I’ll confess I do not look forward to 2009. I try to fool myself into thinking this can be some transcendent year. There’s a fat chance of that. My body is breaking down. There’s no joy to look forward to. I am engaged in lots of battles in my life, and I am losing them all. People have no idea how much I fight them or how much it takes out of me to fight them.

I know giving up is not a viable option. Truly, I do. So I suppose I’ll be fighting whether I like it or not.

But I am spent.

I realize this attitude boxes me into a corner. This is what I’m feeling right now. Even if I have second thoughts about this later on today or tomorrow, I won’t be in much of a position to censor it.