I feel like I’ve just been put through the ringer, but there’s no ringer.  I feel shocked.  Tired, you name it.  Been thinking all morning and doesn’t feel like I’ll be able to articulate.  Just a million questions, analogies going through my mind.  Like how come I’ve chosen this mellowness when I’m an intense person.  Or maybe that sentence would be more accurately phrased the other way.  Whatever.  Whatever will be will be.  I’m like a rock with water flowing over me, the weather, the waves they all change but me – well I take along time to change.  And I realize this intenseness that is me, that is either/or, a qualitative not quantitative difference can only go on being this intense if I let it go, if I realize variety is the spice of life.  And this is sheerly liberating.  It’s like all this time I’ve been ensnared in this paradigm of ‘what’s the point of having a fit heart if it doesn’t pump blood’ when the analogy does not exist in real life.  Steven a wonderful, eccentric guy that supposedly has a developmental disorder really got me thinking.  Forever, he’s been telling me to smile as he smiles, grimaces and looks bitter.  For all this time, I thought it odd, but it never hit me.  He’s a humor king!  A commentator, a teacher, an entertainer.  Last night he was Jesus.  He even looks like Jesus!  And his brother must be one of the disciples.  He usually watches hockey or some kind of sports show and inevitably there will be his commentary:  ‘Ruckason skates, swings around Opal, he shoots the puck, he scores.  Two for the Colarado Wings one for the Flyers.  First place Tiffany Ruckason, second Steven Mondor, and third Kali Dyck!  Of course, Steven somehow always manages me to fit first place.  The other thing is this guy once he knows your name, he’ll keep track of it.  Last night, alone in his room as he methodically and solemnly went over a bunch of names in his reportoire I imagined him as God keeping track of all his children.  This, as was his instruction for me to smile, grimace falling through, was after I was in the washroom crying about my heart.  Yeah, I know sounds dramatic, but that’s what happen when your not used to having caffeine two days in a row.  And in lee of thoroughness this was also after Richard’s (Steven’s wouldn’t hurt a soul brother) cursing cries about his bladder.  When Richard saw me looking concerned, he told me he’d be fine.  Still I couldn’t help this.  This was a guy who’s had respiratory infections, blood in his urine, not to mention cries loud enough for me to think that perhaps he has gallstones.  He’s also very quiet with a tendency to keep to himself.  Anyways these guys are special, mean a lot to me; I’m not worried about them, as they are not about me (last night Steven told me I was doing good), but this sticky thought about having a fit heart that doesn’t pump blood still remains.  These guys, like me, are leisurley fellows (Okay, except for their pains – last night Steven was stomping and yelling and I’ve already spoken for Richard) not so much like how others sometimes treat us.  (As prisoners or inmates, with the goal of shuffling us from A to B as quickly as possible.  Of course, any mention that we are prisoners or inmates and we’ll be redirected that ‘No!  All we want for you is freedom, happiness, independence.’)  To some – and even to ourselves sometimes – we are not leisurly fellows, but to the contrary a stubborn lot.  What these guys have taught me, though is that we are who we are, that we don’t need something or someone to contrast ourselves with to know who we are.

Kali