Some Dire Venting
I used to write ideas and opinions, poems and stories, all sorts of stuff in Word, then in OpenOffice, then I wrote a blog and got involved in political debates on other sites as the Web and my confidence grew in tandem. Writing, debating, sticking poems online under one name in one community and blogging as someone else, being excited about turning on my computer. Then from one day to the next I came so close to death, stayed there for so long, and after the immediate danger passed I just couldn't write, it was all gone; even now the posts on this blog (what a crap name that is!) from "before" MRSA seem to have been written by someone else. Looking back, I wonder if I just needed all my energy for the battle at hand, and couldn't afford to waste anything on words, clever or otherwise. But I'm still not "over it", not by a long long way; random misfortune can jolt me back into the pain.
Here's what happened the week before last. The tip of a cone incense fell onto my T-shirt, and burned through. Unfortunately a lot of my chest tissue and wall has been ravaged by high radiation and is full of scar tissue from the gaping wounds of MRSA; I have no feeling, no nerve connections at all in large areas, and the joss burned into me. The first I noticed was a blister about an inch acrosss. I just didn't understand what it was, it was like a perfect shiny hemisphere - believe me it's bizarre and wrong that so much damage had happened and I hadn't felt a thing. I still don't, never will. And it's deep at the centre! The cone tip was small and the heat was concentrated; it had to go down as well as across.
I'd be in agony if it were anywhere else on my body, but even though I've had dressings changed by nurses for over a week and it's healing well, just knowing that makes me feel somehow sickened, reminds me of how much damage was done. I have to keep an eye on the damn thing to make sure I don't knock it open without noticing it, and at first the smell of the dressings made me feel so raw - it took me back to those awful weeks of being stuck to the bed with open wounds, in the summer, when poor Lennie was so little! Smell can be so potent a stimulator; it's much sharper and swifter than a sight or a song. I wish I'd smelled roasting meat a bit quicker when it happened, on the other hand. Must have been the patchouli.
The trouble is, I don't know if I'm over-reacting or if I'm just so traumatised by being as ill as I was for as long as I was; is it normal to be so upset over something which really is pretty horrible in itself and also so closely evokes a dark, dark time? I've been having nightmares, waking up soaked in sweat and full of cold, bone-deep cold. A most oppressive feeling of dread seems to be present in most of my dreams, however bizarrely and even perversely expressed or comprehended by the sleep-self; some nights of pain I found myself Walking without intending to. I've had dreams in which I became completely lucid and yet couldn't wake myself up. I've had sleep paralysis that went on for long, slow, horribly perceptible heartbeats when I knew that if I saw something, anything, the cat jumping on the bed, a flash of light from the road, I'd go insane! For one split second my terrible eyesight and my paralysed terror would conspire to conjure up a demon, and in that moment before I heard the cat purr or the siren wail I'd just lose control of my mind and splinter off into screaming madness. I'm standing on the brink of an abyss, I sometimes think, but I don't know how to step back, or even what exactly might finally push me over.
I see I'm going to have to ease back into this writing business; at the moment I've no detachment, I'm just content to see words forming on the screen and it doesn't matter if it's a subjective rant full of purple prose about how appalling my life is and has been for so long. I'm just getting it out of my system, I'll be up to giving the Tories a verbal kicking in a few days. I feel for it, and I've got righteous anger to spare. As Ismael used to say, "il y a des gifles qui se perdent ici, t'en cherches?"
Onwards and upwards; someone might read this one day and think "Okay, so my life isn't that bad...." Maybe this is just a place I need to go. I didn't specifically ask you to read this, did I? I might be writing for Posterity for all you know. I told you I was venting!
Oh man, I get so sad sometimes!
Here's what happened the week before last. The tip of a cone incense fell onto my T-shirt, and burned through. Unfortunately a lot of my chest tissue and wall has been ravaged by high radiation and is full of scar tissue from the gaping wounds of MRSA; I have no feeling, no nerve connections at all in large areas, and the joss burned into me. The first I noticed was a blister about an inch acrosss. I just didn't understand what it was, it was like a perfect shiny hemisphere - believe me it's bizarre and wrong that so much damage had happened and I hadn't felt a thing. I still don't, never will. And it's deep at the centre! The cone tip was small and the heat was concentrated; it had to go down as well as across.
I'd be in agony if it were anywhere else on my body, but even though I've had dressings changed by nurses for over a week and it's healing well, just knowing that makes me feel somehow sickened, reminds me of how much damage was done. I have to keep an eye on the damn thing to make sure I don't knock it open without noticing it, and at first the smell of the dressings made me feel so raw - it took me back to those awful weeks of being stuck to the bed with open wounds, in the summer, when poor Lennie was so little! Smell can be so potent a stimulator; it's much sharper and swifter than a sight or a song. I wish I'd smelled roasting meat a bit quicker when it happened, on the other hand. Must have been the patchouli.
The trouble is, I don't know if I'm over-reacting or if I'm just so traumatised by being as ill as I was for as long as I was; is it normal to be so upset over something which really is pretty horrible in itself and also so closely evokes a dark, dark time? I've been having nightmares, waking up soaked in sweat and full of cold, bone-deep cold. A most oppressive feeling of dread seems to be present in most of my dreams, however bizarrely and even perversely expressed or comprehended by the sleep-self; some nights of pain I found myself Walking without intending to. I've had dreams in which I became completely lucid and yet couldn't wake myself up. I've had sleep paralysis that went on for long, slow, horribly perceptible heartbeats when I knew that if I saw something, anything, the cat jumping on the bed, a flash of light from the road, I'd go insane! For one split second my terrible eyesight and my paralysed terror would conspire to conjure up a demon, and in that moment before I heard the cat purr or the siren wail I'd just lose control of my mind and splinter off into screaming madness. I'm standing on the brink of an abyss, I sometimes think, but I don't know how to step back, or even what exactly might finally push me over.
I see I'm going to have to ease back into this writing business; at the moment I've no detachment, I'm just content to see words forming on the screen and it doesn't matter if it's a subjective rant full of purple prose about how appalling my life is and has been for so long. I'm just getting it out of my system, I'll be up to giving the Tories a verbal kicking in a few days. I feel for it, and I've got righteous anger to spare. As Ismael used to say, "il y a des gifles qui se perdent ici, t'en cherches?"
Onwards and upwards; someone might read this one day and think "Okay, so my life isn't that bad...." Maybe this is just a place I need to go. I didn't specifically ask you to read this, did I? I might be writing for Posterity for all you know. I told you I was venting!
Oh man, I get so sad sometimes!
posted by holojojo at 6:41 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home