Reflections on an awful day

Looking back on it, today was a strange day. I went to work as usual around 7:00am. At 9:20am I had a check up with my doctor for the back problem I had over Christmas. It went ok I suppose. Let's put it this way. Two weeks ago I didn't even know this doctor. After today, I feel like he knows a great deal about me. Two weeks ago, we were dealing with the immediate problem of my back pain. Now that is out of the way, we talked about other things. He looked in my chart and said "I see you are homosexual". I had no idea they put that stuff in the charts and I told him that. He said it was important because there are issues that relate to gay people that others apparently don't have. I suppose I can see that, with bigotry, etc. He said that his belief is that we are all born bisexual. We become heterosexual or homosexual sometime during are growth, but he believes it is more in the development of the child and the circumstances the child grew up in. That's open to debate. I don't happen to totally agree with that, but that's another topic that I really don't want to delve into now. The really strange thing was that he thought that my leg was still numb (from the pinched nerve in my back), because I was full of anger and not channeling my feelings out. With that, we proceeded to beat the hell out of a chair with a towel. I know what you are thinking.... Bill is pulling our leg. Well, I'm not! Maybe there's something to it, but my leg is still numb. And, I don't really buy the notion that my leg is still numb because I'm gay. Am I wrong here??? At any rate, it's nice to know that my doctor knows now, and he really wasn't judgmental at all.

Later on in the day, we had a couple of personal tragedies happen at the company I work for. There was a death and another friend of mine is in the intensive care unit at a local hospital. Tragically, the death was a one and a half year old baby girl. I feel terrible for the parents. What do you say to them at a time like this? There is nothing to be said. Nothing that can be said would help. Suddenly, I feel stupid and shallow for complaining about the problems in my life. I mean, I'm alive, and I have so much to be thankful for. Sure, there are things that could be better, such as equality for ALL of our citizens, but when you are talking about life and death, that really doesn't seem like such a big issue anymore. I guess that is a trait of most of us. Our problems seem bigger because we are so close to them. Then, when something horrific happens to someone else, it really does put life into perspective.

I was tempted to pull my entry of 1/8/2003 entitled "Tidbits" where I'm complaining about my life issues. But, I made a self-imposed policy when I established this web log that whatever gets posted, stays! The reason I made that policy was because an entry in the log shows where I'm at at that point in time. I may later regret saying something and want to pull it. But, that doesn't make it go away. For better or worse, I have to stand by what I say.