P.S. I'd also like to toss out the idea of writing an anthology about
all our stories. My story alone is very ordinary but if anyone is
interested, I'd be happy to discuss us going in on writing an anthology
and put TM on the book store shelves!!!
Nora in Chicago
TEARS OF BLOOD
Eleven weeks into my illness, and exactly eight days after being
released from the hospital, there came a time when I could not see the
"silver lining" everyone says is in every dark cloud or, see the "light
at the end of the tunnel." While in the hospital, mandatorily seeing
the psychologist one hour per day, four days a week, I often wondered
and asked her why I was not experiencing depression. Intellectually I
knew it was part of the natural healing process of grief. I was
grieving the loss of my ability to walk and knew it was not good to hold
negative emotions inside. I believed in holistic medicine and knew that
stifled emotions eat away at your being and cause all sorts of havoc
such as ulcers, cancer and other diseases.
After the initial shock wore off and I realized the hospital
staff knew what they were doing, I sat back and let them teach me what I
needed to know to walk again. Each day was like a new adventure. Each
day there was a new challenge to conquer. I kept waiting for the
depression to hit me but I never felt the official
"drag-me-down-in-the-dumps-cry-and-feel-sorry-for-myself-depression."
The paralysis itself did not take me down. The inability to
walk and the struggle to relearn walking did not take me down. It was
the pain. When I drew "Tears of Blood," I had been in continuous pain
for 74 days -January 31 through April 14, 1997. My pain was intense.
There was the original pain to the right at the base of my spine.
Sometimes it was dull, sometimes sharp and at other times it emitted a
burning sensation. It stayed in the same spot with the only change
occurring in its intensity. I had grown used to this pain and even knew
how to move my body to decrease its severity.
My body started registering different sensations in different
places. The nerves on the right side had been damaged by the transverse
myelitis causing my skin to be acutely sensitive to touch and clothing
-- even sensitive when I inhaled and exhaled. My torso felt as if some
invisible being were sticking sharp needles in me, not missing one
micro-inch of skin. The pain radiated from the inside out. Even in my
sleep, I floated over myself in a cloud of awareness of the anguish in
my torso. This pain surrounded me, touched me, penetrated my skin,
muscles, bones, soul, my entire existence. It was always there -- my
constant companion -- an abusive lover.
The depression I had been looking for finally arrived. It
landed heavy in my soul; like a cast iron weight. Well meaning friends
and relatives kept shouting, louder and louder, "Don't be depressed.
Cheer up. Things could always be worse!" I wanted to tell them all,
"Go to hell! Shut up! You have no idea where I am or what I feel.
This is the infamous 'worse.' It has caught up with me and is twisting
me any which way as if I were mere clay or putty."
As I fall deeper and deeper into the abyss of self-pity, I think
that life is so unfair. Nothing is right with the world -- at least not
in my world. I don't even know what world I am in. My mind is still in
one world; my body in another. I don't fit into the world I knew for
almost one-half century no matter how hard I try to adjust. I am no
longer a bi-ped. I am now a paraplegic. Only half of my body works
normally. The lower half is hanging on to my upper half but all I can
feel is the pain in my torso and back, the numbness from my waist to my
soles, and the tight band squeezing my lower body like a tight
tourniquet. I am trapped in a strange body that puts me in a strange
place and I cannot and do not know how to escape.
I kept asking myself, "Why me?" But, no matter how sorry I felt
for myself that this tragedy happened to me and not the anonymous
"someone else," I could not wish it on my worst enemy.
"Why am I in this chair?" nags at me day and night; again, even
in my sleep. At first, I did not see myself as crippled in my dreams.
I actually walked in my dreams and was surprised when I woke up and
realized that I could not walk. As each day passed, it began to
register that I was really crippled and, after awhile, I no longer
walked in my dreams.
Each day as I sat smiling at work or sat smiling around
strangers on the bus, in restaurants or wherever I went, I wondered,
"Did I do something wrong in this life?" I begin to doubt the existence
of my Spiritual Guides -- the existence of a Universal Force -- the
existence of anything out there that might have had the power to control
the activities of this world. As I sat in my wheelchair, day after day,
I asked again and again, "Am I being punished by some supreme being for
some horrendous misdeed -- conscious or unconscious?" "Was I
reincarnated with a lot of bad karma I'm now paying off?" "Did I
cripple someone in another life?" Or, "Am I just a victim of natural
selection as postulated by Darwin?" "Could something that has changed
my life so tremendously be so simple as natural selection?" "Could a
mere microscopic virus have taken me down? just like that? without any
warning? without any time to defend myself?"
I was drowning in the sea of self-pity but I did not want to
drown. I wanted to see the light again but everything remained dark.
In all of my years, I had never seen such darkness. Always, always, I
saw the least sliver of light in any dark situation. This time, I had
no answers. Nothing to hang on to. No light whatsoever. I kept
asking, "Where are the answers?" "Maybe there are no answers," my inner
voice replied. "I don't know."
I kept falling deeper and deeper into the abyss of my soul. I
had never gone this deep into my self before. I was somewhere inside my
viscera and I sensed there was a lesson in this experience. I just did
not know what the lesson was. The only thing I could do was just let
the tears flow. My tears were tears of blood because they flowed from
every fiber of my being -- from the depths of my soul, from my veins,
bones, muscles, skin, teeth, nails and hair. The wound was deep. I had
been hurt to the very core -- hurt beyond my imagination or
comprehension. I bled profusely.
I could not hold whatever was in me in any longer. I could not
pretend to be strong as others wished me to be so that I would not
remind them of their own vulnerability. I isolated myself in my
apartment, locked the door and unplugged the phone. That was the only
way I knew how to tell the world to leave me alone. I did not want
people to stare at me anymore and I did not want to speak to them.
Neither did I know who I needed to speak to or who could understand what
I needed to say. My story was too intense for people to understand who
had not been suddenly crippled, suddenly ripped apart. There was no one
to speak to but I knew I could not be silenced. The pain was too
intense.
Inside my being, I exploded. I erupted more forcefully than any
volcano. Finally, the pressure from the explosion forced me to open my
mouth, mind, body and soul and I cried out to I know not where.
Screaming to the farthest universe, my tears of blood caressed my
essence. I let go of the pain. I regurgitated the frustration, anger,
feelings of helplessness and self-pity. I just let go because there was
nothing else I could do. I could only sit in that wheelchair and
actually feel where I was. Running away from my feelings was impossible
because I had no legs with which to run.
In being forced to feel my pain, unhappiness, frustrations,
anger and helplessness just as they were, in their full intensity, I
noticed a strange thing happening to me. At some point, I don't exactly
know where or when, I accepted my wheelchair, my altered body and my new
position in life. Simultaneously, I felt a peace engulf me and all the
pain that had been so intense was no longer pain. All I felt were
intense sensations and rhythmic vibrations pulling me into a oneness
with all of creation. I was nothing and simultaneously I was
everything. All of me turned to just being. No more resistance. No
more struggle. Just being. Just existing. And, as the tears washed
over my being -- my quieted, still being -- I begin to heal.
(1,539 words)