Misery Abounds

The misery continues. I’m feeling like Paul Sheldon, the James Caan character in the 1990 movie version of Stephen King’s novel, Misery – with one very big difference. Annie Wilkes is not taking a sledge hammer to my legs; oh, lord, if only that were the case. She’s hammering me elsewhere. One more day of this and I’ll be seeing the face of Kathy Bates standing over me in my sleep for a month.

Our distant and uncaring God, to whom I’ve now made many promises that I cannot keep, has decided that s/he will not intervene in my behalf. Either that or this is another version of the old story, “Hey, I tried to help you on Saturday and Sunday by urging you to go to urgent care, but you knew better wise guy. Well, let me introduce you to my friend, Annie.”

I have a new strategy, which, I confess, may have been sent by God: I’m going “down the hall” every six minutes today. This is based on the theory that the build up of pain is cumulative and not much can accumulate in six minutes. An ungodly amount can build up in an hour or two; so I’m breaking this trek into baby steps.

Sorry for the tortured segue, but I actually got some help from Dick Cheney yesterday. He often fills in for God. He altered my perspective and put my pain on a relative scale by suggesting that the pain we might inflict on Iran is real pain. He threatened “meaningful consequences” and said that “all options” remain on the table if Iran continues its uranium enrichment program. In return, Iran threatened us with, you guessed it, “harm and pain”. So, we’re talking about pain on a global scale here, which dramatically reduces my hopefully transitory pain to a mere nuisance. I mean, after all, I don’t fear meaningful consequences, nor do I fear the double hammer blow of harm and pain.

This development also makes me feel better about God not making a house call in my neighborhood. S/he is attending to these bad-ass threats and consequences. In fact, s/he is working double time because it appears pretty clear that s/he is on both sides of this gang fight. Both sides seem to know with certainty that God is in their camp; that they are each engaged in a holy endeavor to free the world of the unholy idiots on the other side. What if they’re both right – maybe there are idiots on both sides and God would like the world to be free of them all. Like I said, that pretty much explains the absence of God in my silly little problem.

All of this has an eerily familiar ring to it. As Yogi would say, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” America and a Mideast country foaming at the mouth and trading threats of harm; the international community being called upon to intervene in a matter that involves the potential development of weapons of mass destruction; denials abound; sanctions are being discussed; inspections and full disclosure may be required. All we’re waiting on are the intelligence reports and the preparation of a really snappy PowerPoint presentation for the U.N. Security Council. Well, I’ve seen another movie just like this one and it’s filled with real pain and misery. I, for one, am not ready for a sequel.

Everyone needs to go down the hall every six minutes and pass some of the necrotic waste in their system. Everyone needs an antibiotic that combats their specific infection. Everyone needs to consume more water and less firewater. Everyone needs to take some baby steps for a while. Everyone needs to stop thinking that their pain is the most important thing in the world. Everyone needs to stop assuming that God is ready to intervene to make life work the way they think it should work.

If this doesn’t happen, everyone is going to hear God say, loud and clear, “Let me introduce you to my friend, Annie.” And, let me assure you that none of us wants to wake up and find her looking down on us.