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.
I love you Val. The get out into the uphill, or at least as high onto the roof of my apartment building as you can climb. Am back from endless hours of flying, trip and then another trip, back home. Soon to fly in your direction, less than a month. Then will call you and come find you, or take you somewhere else, remind you, bring a bit of noisy Argentina into your world. Love love love you, Rozzy
This writing of yours is so beautiful, striking really and I am thinking of you….it is a window…that which is larger and unexplainable and at the same time tangible and aching…..be well be well be well
Love. Love. Love.