Catch a Falling Star

But no man is an island. One needs a community to survive.

Still, it never hurts to know how to take care of yourself.

Mickey was a child who suffered a secret trauma that he wouldn’t even let himself know about and remember. It was a strongly repressed memory. And it made Mickey hurt himself constantly… on purpose. He burned himself on his lower back and the back of his legs purposely to tamp down thoughts about sex and sexual urges. He refused to be seen naked by non-family members. Except that, starting in fifth grade, he had to take showers with other boys after PE classes. And he was even afraid to go into a school bathroom during class because he might be caught in there alone by a bigger and older boy… while alone and defenseless.

The coach noticed athletic skills in Mickey during PE class and talked him into going out for football in the ninth grade. This Mickey did. He learned how to hit and be hit and survive with minimal injuries. He learned how to tackle, to take and give blows. He developed some power and skill at physical confrontation. He only ever got into two fights. The one where Danny knocked him off his bike from behind, he lost, because that was before the trauma and before football. But when stupid, angry Dickie attacked him after freshman year, he won that fight, throwing Dickie to the ground without hurting him about three times. Dickie gave up from embarrassment more than injury.

So, how does a Mickey heal himself when he won’t even admit to himself what the matter really was?

Well, being physically fit doesn’t hurt. But you can’t solve every problem by throwing it to the ground. And hating yourself and hurting yourself does not go away by throwing yourself on the ground. Mickey knows this because he tried.

You have to learn to talk to real people. And it didn’t hurt that Mickey practiced a lot by talking to imaginary people. There was a faun. There was an imaginary girlfriend from Canada who communicated in dreams and by psychic messages delivered through telepathy.

But there came an incident in PE class that might’ve resulted in a Mickey meltdown. The boys were supposed to be watching a wrestling demonstration, gathered around the champion lightweight wrestler and a hapless sacrificial opponent in the center of the circle on the wrestling mat. The girls were sitting in the bleachers listening to the girls coach talk about girls’ stuff.

You know what happened. A bully, one of many in the boys’ class, sneaked up behind Mickey, grabbed the legs of Mickey’s gym shorts, and pulled them down. It revealed all. And girls were watching. Mickey should’ve died right there and then. But he didn’t. He smiled at the girls who were giggling, gave them a little wave, and only then did he pull the shorts back on.

The coach caught the perp. And the bully was far more embarrassed than his victim.

That is when Mickey learned that humor is good medicine.

And facts are also good for healing terrible ills. Truly, the sex education Mickey got from the Methodist minister helped save his life. And later in college he learned more about sex and battling depression and overcoming trauma that helped him solve the problems of self hatred, self harm, and guilt. And what his friend told him over the phone that Saturday when he was actually contemplating suicide, that his friend thought Mickey was a good person, not bad… That was a fact that allowed Mickey to be here now writing these words.

So, the truth is, there are things you can do to help yourself even if your illness is depression, self hatred, suicidal ideation, or PTSD.

Humor helps.

Talking about it with someone who cares helps more.

Eat something chocolate.

Eating healthy for an extended period of time helps even more.

Get a good night’s sleep without sleeping too much.

Remember that LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL and you deserve to live it. Nobody has the right to take that away from you.

If Mickey can do it… anybody can.

Today I had to return to the dermatologist to see if the skin cancer she treated three weeks ago would have to be biopsied for malignancy. It turns out that the treatment, freezing the cancerous cells, worked perfectly. The threat was completely gone.

But going to the doctor for cancer treatment got a scammer off my back. They do all sorts of things to rob you by phone, or by deceptive emails representing what seem to be real companies I deal with daily. Telling a scammer I have to go and get cancer treatment tends to shut them up quicker. And I wasn’t even lying.

I continue taking and trying to adjust to four new meds. Two for diabetes. One for cholesterol. And one for blood pressure control.

The chance for future improved health is looking good.

I have been enjoying my time playing with digital art tools. I bought a stylus to use on my Chromebook computer with the touch screen. My daughter downloaded a Krita digital art program. And my Chromebook summarily broke down. So, everything I am doing now has to be done on my HP laptop with no touch screen. The stylus works on the mouse pad, but not well. And I found another program that will take a drawing that I have done and photographed or scanned and turn that into digital art, refining the lines, color blending, and detail work. I like it, but it is like rolling the dice to get the percentages right for the danged AI painter in the program to accurately recognize anything in my picture.

But the computer art thing is a good thing. There are more than enough bad things this week to fill my baggage. I am alone with the dog at home while the rest of the family is in San Antonio. Grandma (my mother-in-law) was very ill, almost went into hospice care, and then recovered well enough to return home, out of the hospital. They are all visiting her. But I’m not in good enough health to make that trip.

Arthritis, diabetes, and my doctor’s appointment tomorrow for potential skin cancer made it impossible for me to ride in a car in which five people were already travelling. And no room for the dog who loves grandma too, but is not welcome in a car travelling that far.

I have had time to write too, which has been difficult to do with hot weather and arthritis pain in the way. But that hasn’t helped my readership. Viewing of WordPress posts is way down this summer. I have had an uptick in selling e-books, but I am still earning less than ten dollars a month in royalties.

And I have been sleeping poorly at night due to pain and heat. Imaginary granddaughters playing guitar music is not enough to help since it is entirely imaginary.

Does this one look like Shirley Temple? I tried. But not quite.

I am impressed by digital art programs. I had my Chromebook set up for making digital pictures. I learned how much easier it is to lay out light and shadow patterns on your original drawing. Blending colors is so much easier with a stylus on a touch screen. And a stylus is easier to maneuver with arthritic fingers than a colored pencil is. And no amount of eraser curds flying in the air fixes a mistake better than a simple back-up click and redo. But of course, before I could make the process start to fly, my Chromebook decided for whatever reason to commit ritual computer suicide, apparently shorting out during a long walk with the dog.

So, I bought an AI-assistant program to help me convert my colored-pencil drawings into digital pictures. But you don’t have control over details to the degree that you would if you were drawing the whole thing with a stylus. The AI has to interpret everything it sees and render it with properly lit and blended colors trying to mimic the patterns you have presented it with. Of course, the AI is stupid and has to be trained. You can’t just edit the details like the finger damage you see above. You have to adjust the amount of control it has to interpret things the way it thinks is stupidly correct. You adjust from 1% to 90%. O% is the same picture you gave it. 91% and above looks nothing like your drawing. And then you re-create the entire picture again with the new percentage and whatever the AI has learned from your picture.

This one looks more like my version of Valerie, but the AI still has work to do on the background, the box of quilt pieces, and making the girl less anime-cartoony.

This is better. Still not there. But better.

I really like the face and hair on this one. Colored rocks in the box? And I would have to remove the writing on the box with a paint program from HP. In other words, a pixel edit.

This one is the best one so far. That almost looks like quilt blocks in the box. The expression on Val’s face is right for the Snow Babies story.

So, I almost think I need to rush out and buy a new Chromebook with touch screen. I can’t wait to have more control over this whole process. Still, I enjoy noodling with this stupid AI.