It’s odd, our friends now fall into one of two categories: those who “know” and those who “don’t know.” What a bother. I hate catogorizing people, but I seem to be such a private person that I’m not willing to stand on a mountain top and announce my illness. And yet that is exactly what I’m doing with this blog. I’ll tell a world full of strangers how I’m feeling, what I’m thinking, and I have yet to tell anyone I work with other than my immediate bosses.
I guess part of it is that I don’t want to see the change in the way people will look at me. PKD is not catching, it’s not leprosy, it’s just something I have to live with. But it will change the way my coworkers see me. And I’m in such a small community, that word will quickly spread to my students. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be anything other than the crabby/odd/occasionally funny teacher who barks at them when they misbehave and applauds them when they succeed.
We went out with friends-who-know last night and had a wonderful time. We laughed and talked, swapped stories about kids and grandkids, discussed religion and politics, and told old jokes. It was so much fun! As I reflected on the evening though, I realized a great deal of attention had been paid to me; I was asked all sorts of questions about my past by friends we’ve known for several years. Never before have they asked about my childhood, about my college studies. Was the interest just something that popped up, or were they trying to know more about me because they fear I won’t be around to answer questions in the future? I know, I’m over-analyzing. But if you’d been there, I think you would have noticed it as well.
So where am I going with this post? I wish I knew. I think I’ll go ahead and publish this, and come back to it when the ideas in the back of my head have percolated a bit more.
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