Learn, learning, learned

I have just re-visited Freud's 'On Narcissism' on advice from H. After reading it in my formative years, I recall it explaining pretty much everything about my first boyfriend, who was at his very core, a narcissist. As hard as it was for my most recent ex (let's call him REX) to cope with the fact that I am good friends with most of my ex-boys (don't get too excited - I'm no Annabel Chong), I was always going to spend time with them and dearly love 'the good ones'. Two of my 'good ones' both have the same initial - L - and they are still sweet hearts. In early May I attended the wedding of the boy who was with me before, during and after my transplant. I'm lucky enough to still have him in my life and as my friend. It was a wonderful reunion of friends and family from across Australia and the world. I posted a photograph of Lachie and Sooz's wedding in one of my August entries.

The other mannish-boy who I am still good friends with has just returned from travelling around the UK and Europe with his lovely lady, and we're having dinner on Tuesday night.

Yes, people, it is possible to be friends with people who were at one time or another, much more. Lachie and Luke are a part of who I am because they're an indelible part of my history and therefore my memory. So while REX may find it hard to grasp the fact that people can be friends after they have been lovers (cue: face of shock! horror!), I find it quite endearing and remarkably healthy.

On the other hand, ego, libido and cathexis are not. Oh, did I hear you say 'Oedipus complex'? You know, the stage in a child's development in which the child experiences an erotic attachment to one parent and hostility toward the other? Hmmmm. Having a close relationship with a parent is a very special connection, but when a relationship becomes tantamount to wanting (read: needing) to please one's mother or father by excessive means, everything from work to relationships to sense of self and beyond, is tainted.

I certainly make no bones about the fact that I am very close to my mother, which is another thing REX had an issue with, but my mother has effectively been my carer for my entire life. When I would be in hospital as a baby, a child, an adolescent and an adult, I have needed her support and she has been wonderful enough to lend me her strength, hope, beauty and love while being as gracious as any person could possibly be while under such a profundity of pressure - not to mention obligation.

I hazard a guess that if anything happened to either of my parents, I would stop breathing; my world would spin off it's hinges and I'd be in no man's land. I'm no astronomer, but I'm guessing that an axial obliquity would be disastrous for any single 'thing' that depends on an axial tilt, and though I've lost fifty-eight friends at last count, nothing can prepare you for the loss of a parent.

After my transplant, I was hoping that my Mum would get a well-deserved break after twenty-one years of nursing me, but this was not to be. While transplant saved my life (I literally had less than a week to live), it did not absolve me of other problems that are synonymous with being immunosuppressed.

The recovery was extremely painful and arduous, and while most transplant recipients are on paracetamol after a couple of weeks and have quite a fast turnaround in their quality of life, I was on morphine for at least six months for unexplained pain. I was eventually given a bone density scan - a routine test for transplant assessment which they failed to do. The scan I had six months post-transplant revealed osteoporosis so advanced that my results were compared to those of a seventy year old who had never had a glass of milk, and that is why my chest bones would crack whenever I moved after prolonged periods of time. Turning over in bed was a manoeuvre I mastered early on because when I did, I was met with chest pain similar to that of a blown lung. I would have to roll from the side I was laying on, slowly and gently onto my back, wait for all of my crap bones and muscles to crack and re-align, then slowly turn onto my other side and again wait for my crap bones to crackle and pop. The process usually took around four minutes.

I would wake of a morning in such pain that I would swig morphine out of the bottle - I didn't bother to measure it - and only then, once the pain relief had kicked in, could I actually get myself out of bed. After five years on thrice monthly infusions of Pemidronate, a drug used to re-build bone density, particularly with women after treatment for breast cancer, my life changed and the majority of my bone density scans from then on have been of an 'acceptable level' of osteoporosis. Whatever that means. And no - all the dairy and Caltrate tablets in the world are not going to help me because calcium does not have the ability to re-build lost bone density, but thank-you to everyone for their suggestions.

Being the tangent queen I am, I have digressed from the initial point of this post, so I shan't bore you with other medical miscellany post-transplant (for now), but shall return to narcissism, specifically narcissistic males.

REX smacks of being an archetypal narcissistic male and I don't say that with a bitter tongue. I say it with pity because he is never going to be consistently happy. Seeking perfection in everything and everyone is setting yourself up for disappointment and while I'm a big believer in both having and achieving goals, as well as having something to look forward to for the betterment of not only our own lives, but the lives of others, being so fanatically idealistic is going to be any one's undoing. I liken it to the ultimate betrayal of one's authentic self. I'm just relieved that I had the foresight to end it before I had made any real commitment. Yes, I made emotional investments, but I've shed a skin and learnt from it. I couldn't ask for more than that.

One final Freudian slip, Sigmund writes that all humans start out as narcissists, because human infants are exclusively focused on their own bodies and needs. From this original narcissism, expressions of narcissism in adult life are born, and this is where it becomes a slippery slope of retrogression which refers to a return to an earlier stage of psychological development sometimes occurring in response to external stimuli, in particular, trauma which causes individuals to return to behaviours and emotional patterns of a much younger age, such as an extreme dependency on others.

I must emphasise that this is not a bitter spray directed at REX, but revisiting Freud has helped me understand and acknowledge the sadness and perhaps even the blackness in his heart.

Post script - I am delighted to report that Mum has recently returned from five weeks in the U.S with one of her besties, a la Thelma and Louise. Thankfully, they decided against driving a Mustang over a cliff. What a waste of a beautiful automobile, I mean, hell I would miss her :)