I’m late on my post.
Not even a week into the challenge and I’m already late. A few years ago, this would have tied me in knots. I’d have struggled through the evening to write this before the midnight hour.
Not now. I’ve grown comfortable enough with the fluidity of life to understand that sometimes deadlines pass without accomplishment. That doesn’t mean stop moving forward. Just the opposite. It means I continue forward even when the arbitrary spacetime marker has been passed.
I’m okay with my new-found freedom. It’s taken some getting used to, but frankly much of my life has taken getting used to. If I can get used to moving through the world sober, surely I can get used to moving through the spacetime stream with some flexibility.
***
I expect that my death will come suddenly and without much explanation. I have no scientific reason to believe this. No doctor has mentioned it to me. I’ve not done any particular research on the subject. It’s just a feeling based upon some observations.
A few years ago, my heart began to ache. Regularly. As if someone wrapped their hands around it and squeezed. Tightly. It was an (is) an uncomfortable feeling. This is the kind of event that sends you to doctor’s office in search of answers.
My general physician followed by specialists. Running all manners of tests. Poking and prodding in ways that I was promised wouldn’t happen until I was older. After weeks of tests, of my aching heart, one of the specialists finally said this: we test you for the things that will kill you before you’re 70 and you don’t seem to have any of those.
It’s unnerving to hear a doctor tell you “I don’t know” and be good with it. But they did find some problems with my blood flow and other minor inconveniences.
I have – rightly or wrongly – associated all of these symptoms together:
Aneurism.
***
My father suffered horrible migraines when I was a child, although I am sure they were not related to me.
I should tell you that I knew how awful those migraines were because he would come home, lock himself in a dark room and not come back out. This was entirely out of the ordinary for my dad. When he’d come home, we always did something. Watch television. Play catch. Play ping pong. Do something in the yard. Something.
Every day. When I think back on my childhood, I remember my mom in the kitchen making some manner of food we would eat in about 10 seconds and my dad in the backyard playing catch.
So when he was moved to not move, I figured it must be bad.
Now that I’m older and have recurring migraines, I understand exactly how bad they are. I oftentimes lose sight. I almost always throw up. I can’t handle any light or sound. I am completely incapacitated.
The worst part: I can feel them coming on. There are triggers that happen with my head and my eyes that let me know when the big event will start. I take medication, but it only dulls the roar.
I have learned how to work right up to the point when I lose the ability to function completely.
***
The things that fail in my life have taught me how to be more flexible. Maybe that’s why my body falls apart in the ways that it does, to guide me towards a better, longer life. To teach me that my way isn’t the only way. That I can exist for moments without going full tilt.
Not that I ascribe meaning to the pain. I don’t believe in divine intervention (or divinity, truth be told). Simply that if I pay attention to the world around me, and the body I inhabit, there are lessons to be learned.
Sometimes it just takes the blinding pain.
