January passes by in a blur of broken promises and let downs - hopes shattered like angry bottles across a filthy floor. The first month is often a hard one, but this seems particularly rough. I feel storm-battered: tossed around by waves of unpredictability and lost at sea. Every lighthouse in the distance turns out to be a mirage - a case of mistaken identity; 'hope' a trick of the light that vanishes in the blink of a tear-stained eye - a smoke screen that dissolves before outstretched arms, left clutching helplessly at the void that remains.
Being in hospital is 70% waiting game and I'm worn down from patiently playing it out; inevitably disappointed by the result. I've lost track of the weeks I've been here now - the lack of forward momentum merging one indiscernible day into the next. Nothing has changed in all these months - except my body, of course: the stagnant pool of inactivity making mythical creatures of my cheek bones and my hips. I barely know who I am any more - neither in the mirror nor in my head.
Hospital makes a roller-coaster out of anything. This month there are peaks packed with family and highs resounding with the laughter of my oldest, closest friends. There are troughs of constant observation; hanging on the edge, watched over, my life at imminent risk. Often there is nothing in between - lurching from one extreme to the next with barely a moment to breathe.
This month I reconnect with church friends, reaching out to chaplaincy in an effort to rekindle the embers of my faith. I cry almost endlessly - tears sneaking up on me in supermarkets; sobs
catching in my throat mid-sentence, their reality illuminated by the
artificial glow of some late-night fast-food place. I cut my hair short again and feel light for a moment; eat uncontrollably and feel the heaviness suffocating me. We have a movie night at my parents' and I fight my nephew in the park with swords made of sticks. A stranger leaves a gift for me at reception, their generosity a sucker-punch of kindness that leaves me breathless. I go a week unable to walk and talk at once without gasping for air, the toll beginning to tell on a body repeatedly drained.
January leaves me feeling empty, though they do their best to fill me, on repeat. I am emptied and refilled; emptied and refilled; emptied out, ad infinitum, and refilled. Emptied of one substance, I am filled back up with something close-enough but not at all the same and, as the month draws to a close, I find myself wishing for a way to do the same about the thoughts inside my brain. The scene closes on a moment of deceptive calm before the storm clouds roll inevitably in and I brace myself for another battering; the wind's direction decidedly unchanged.
xo
1 Comments
No words. Just admiration for your wonderful writing, as ever.
ReplyDeleteLis / last year's girl x