Wednesday, January 22, 2014

908 NGUOUY Part 72 WHY CAN'T I EAT BREATHE TALK WRITE

September 2013
Our support system widens as friends and neighbors
Bring dinners and college friends call and fly in to bolster us
And friends from med school and our Air Force years suggest that
We let them know when we feel ready for house guests, because
Reality suggests that our generation is entering into
The winter of our lives, which
Highlights the importance of this fact:
As life races by, it's wise to offer each other
The comfort of one another's company while
Good health allows us to travel back and forth
And thus does it make sense to re prioritize
Time spent with loved ones who live far away

If you surmise that emotional support as loving as that
Should strengthen me... In many ways that's true and yet
Please think again ... because this is true, as well ...
I drop ten pounds in ten days
What is eating at my strengths, I ask?
Why can't I eat?
Or breathe?
Or talk?
Or write?
All I could tell my family and friends at that time was this:
I've never been so scared in my life!
Not when I awoke after the head on collision in intensive care
Not when, years later, I listened to a neurologist say brain surgery
Not when the maxiofacial surgeon described the intricate details by which
He and the neurosurgeon would attempt to extract
This life threatening tumor by way of removing my upper palate after 
Rearranging the lower portion of my face
Not when Mom had a bowel resection followed by a quintuple by-pass
Not when Dad had a triple by-pass
Not when a brain embolism took my beloved  Dad within a matter of hours
Not when Will and I'd separated and I lived alone ...
Not when Will was hospitalized with a serious case of pneumonia
So, what devil is tormenting my mind as Will's surgery draws near????
What is scaring me half to death
All I know is this:
I can barely eat or breathe or talk or write  
I'm tense to the point of every muscle in my body being
Painfully clenched, twenty four hours of each day
Childhood trauma, seeping out of subconscious pockets, does not
Occur to me or to my therapist or to my internist
I mean why would anyone link Will's cancer to triggering PTSD? …

January 2014
Do you realize that you already know more than I did at that time?
See what I mean about the importance of diving into
The depths of one's mind in
Hopes of retrieving one missing detail, which
Upon being revealed, may actually float a sinking ship, safely to shore
Like what if the captain had spied the iceberg in time to
Make a U turn ... no need for a movie to memorialize that tragedy, right?
If I am the captain of my ship, then during life's most confounding times
Isn't it my responsibility to dive into the deep end of my mind and
Spy the iceberg in time to save my spirit from drowning, unnecessarily?
As diving into the deep end is exactly what I did every time
Emotional confusion produced tension that proved  unbearable
Reflection suggests that I was not a mess as I'd been told ... by whom?
Yep, by 'those' who'd misjudged the little they could see on the surface
In fact ... In addition to judging me fragile
'Those' very same people had declared me to be too deep
Hmmm... Had I listened to 'those' people instead of
Forging my own path guess where I'd be, today?
I'd be weaving baskets in the shady rest home instead of
Penning this post, concerning making good use of my noggin by
Diving into the deep end of my think tank in hopes of extracting
Detail after detail, until the magic spell, which Mother Nature had
Cast over the mind of a deeply confounded child is broken, at last
And once this particular, 'forgotten' memory has been fully revealed
The terrifying nature of this 'secret', which I've kept from myself for
Most of my life, will no longer have the power to
Torment the mind of the woman the confounded child grew to be ...


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