i am waking up this morning. if my body is under me, or on top of me, hard to tell. then i am standing. and the slant in this old floor pitches me sideways more than usual. that is a clue.
there are thousands of clues.
the feeling of ten feet tall is a clue. my head a distant afterthought satellite.
i hear myself self say- weak. my body is weak. and i try to remember feeling strong. but i can’t imagine the energy that would require. to rush up a hill. to pick up something heavy and force it high. every movement feels a bit like casting, falling, landing, pulling slowly forward.
and i wonder if this is what dying feels like. and i imagine that it is. but i am not dying, i don’t think. and my mind and the loving people that hover over me remind me that is is temporary. i will return. will feel strong again. in 6 days, 4 days, 2 days. tomorrow night is my scheduled return. when these drugs release me. back into a semi-addled haze. a more functional place. stronger.
and in months. 3 more months. i think. i hope. they will stop filling my veins with this acrid stuff. they will let me return to a new way of being. i will learn or remember how to move again. and maybe the growing things in my lungs and neck will keep not growing for a bit longer. and there will be more surprising life again. like there has been. surprises.
but i want you to know, it is not all misery. it is a disentangling from self. and there is so little i can do about it. it is a lot like being adrift. being somewhere else and being someone else. i am bald and puffy. my eyebrows and eyelashes thinning. i do not recognize this self so easily. it is some other version. who knew a self is so easily lost?
so i listen for my body. what will soothe my stomach. if i can move or go for a walk. where it would like to sit.
and in all of it i feel so loved and taken care of. have never needed more care than now. and i am getting handed gently from kind person to kind person. this is a new territory to explore. it is nothing you can imagine. maybe you can. what do i know?
the worst of it is, i miss my mind. flowers for algernon- style. this has me in momentary panics. i am behind and under haze. glass, or fog. am away from the world and the people i want to connect with, understand. the people i miss. feel so dim. i cannot write what i feel. what i am experiencing. but i get a hand on the head. i get a good easy smile. and am okay again. they seem to recognize me even if i don’t.
i do not have the wherewithal to organize my self. to write on this wall. to exchange ideas. and i am forgetful. lost forgetful. and it is these lovely people who are reminding me that it will come back. and i hope they are right.
it is all a brand new day. here. i do not feel tethered in the timeline of the reliable “way things go.” it all feels possible and impossible.
i hesitate to write any of it. but this is the visibility. the vulnerability. this is where i have gone. ah well.
i want out into the hillside. out into the flowers. the real dirt paths. i want out into the uphill. vistas. my bicycle. the wind. pushing hard. light and air.