The following article is reprinted from the Aug. 9 2026 edition of Atlas Rising, the weekly newsletter of MDI’s Atlas region, compiled by Craig Rempel.
A year and a half ago I had a second knee replacement done to alleviate my arthritis. At the time, the determination to regain my strength and walk again after surgery, was a defining moment in my life.
Since then, I have kept that commitment to my health by walking every day: it’s the minimum standard I adhere to. I have an exercise routine that regularly has me swimming, lifting, and pedalling.
What I have not been doing during this time is working: I’ve been recuperating at my parents’ house, a kindness I am grateful for.
All of this exercise is great and regaining my strength has made me feel useful again. But it’s time for a reality check. Both my knees have been replaced, and there’s a twenty-year lifespan for these prosthetics, meaning I will have to get them replaced again. ‘Wear and tear’ is a real concern for me, and with that understanding, I know that I’ll never be able to return to the job I once had as a dock worker.
To be perfectly honest, I’m glad of it. I’d already made efforts to further my education so I could get off the shipping dock, but nothing took.
Yet, I’d be lying if I didn’t mention other factors that held me back, and particularly destructive among these was a mindset of defeat. As my knees got worse and worse, it seemed that I was nonetheless going to be stuck on that dock until, one day, I caught a glimpse of the future in my mind’s eye and it looked dismal. It was a future I simply would not accept.
Within two weeks of having that vision, I managed to get myself fired and with that, I turned my thoughts away from the mundane activities of the dock and set myself to the task of finding a future that I could be happy living.
And yet, I was plagued by doubt. What was I going to do now? A longshoreman no more, what could I do? I needed help and, long story short, I got lots of advice and help, and it was during this time that I found MDI. That allowed me to survive the ordeal to come. Not the knee replacement, I knew I could manage that: it was living at my parents’ house.
The first few months there were impossible. My mother is infuriating: she was critical of everything I did at that time. Nothing I did was right. Oh wait, oh wait, oh wait!
At this point, I need to explain to you that my ex-girlfriend lives in the basement apartment of my parents’ home. Yeah, I know it’s weird. I could go on to explain how she ended up there, and why she stayed after we split, but let’s save that for another day.
All of my mother’s harassment was compounded by my ex-girlfriend’s actions. Her fears and her need to play one-upmanship had me double-checking everything I did so I wouldn’t get yelled at.
It was my intention, when I came to their home to rest, to have my knees replaced and to plot a trajectory for my future. But all I could see all around me was hostility. In my frustration, I fought back. Why would you invite me into your home only to insult me and to turn everything into a competition?
If you knew my mother and my ex, you would understand how stupid a question that was. For them, I think, this came down to a simple ‘I was right, and I told you so’ moment. After being manipulated, harassed, and gaslit for almost a year, I wrote a CPR and put an end to the emotional roller coaster. That’s the short version.
But I want to mention something that got me thinking before I wrote the CPR, while I was trying to figure out the dynamics among the members of this household: Fight only honourable battles.
This got me curious and less defensive. What did I have against them? What did they have against me? It is difficult to be honourable when we’re angry; righteous indignation prevents us from being reasonable. I realized that my mother and my ex were holding resentments against me that were unresolved.
Fight Only Honorable Battles
Gandalf confronts the balrog on Durin’s bridge in Khazad-dûm.
Image by Aleksandr Vladimirovich Korotich.
Every interaction I had with them when I moved back was influenced by those resentments. They simply were not able to remove this bias from how they saw me. They were unable to see how much time and effort I had put into my personal development. They could not understand how much hurt I’d endured, and the challenges I’d faced, since I last saw them.
So it follows that any interaction we had would cause them pain. It was not within my power to change how they felt. It was better that I did not talk to them. When they figured out how to resolve their resentments, we were able to resume some kind of relationship. Simple, uncomplicated, and peaceful. No happy endings, I’m afraid. Just a firm resolution to keep doing the work. I can live with that.
About the Author
Mark Dwyer is a (relatively) recent arrival to MDI.
With a keen desire to learn all he can, he is pushing his boundaries ever further.
He currently resides in Brampton, Ontario, Canada.
A Word on the images...
The frontispiece is an “anteroposterior X-ray view of a total knee prosthesis.” Photo of original radiostat by fpjacquot via Wikimedia Commons.
The bio image of Brampton, Ontario, is an original photo by Sree Nadh.
The background image is an original photo by Sergey Babenkov
