I am going through physical therapy for a right biceps tendonitis. I have to pay attention not to make it worse, all that automatic reaching for things. I wrote this thinking about the word disarmed.
Qia wants help. She is scared of the monster, FEAR, the giant monster, but her father won’t listen. She sniffles and tries, but she can’t stop crying. She goes to her room, because her father has turned his back. Her mother is drawing. They are busy. They don’t like it when she is scared.
FEAR is enormous and pushes into the room with her. She cries harder in her room with the door closed. No one can hear her now except FEAR. FEAR is large and has horrible drippy teeth and too many arms and keeps swatting at her. Qia gives up and lets FEAR swat her. She sits on the bed with her knees up and puts her head on her arms.
FEAR rages around her room.
After a while Qia is tired of crying. She lifts her head off her arms.
FEAR is smaller. Still bigger than her father, bigger than her mother, but just standing and looking at her. FEAR looks tired too.
Qia pats the bed beside her. FEAR hesitates and looks scared. Qia waits. FEAR shuffles over and sits beside her on the bed.
The room is very quiet. Qia finds a scrap of tissue and blows her nose. She looks sideways at FEAR.
FEAR’s head is down and FEAR seems to be crying. Qia reaches out and takes FEAR’s paw. One of the paws. There are a lot.
FEAR holds her hand tightly and then leans against her. Qia wiggles over a bit more to give FEAR room. FEAR sighs and then snuggles down onto the bed, massive drippy toothy head in Qia’s lap.
Qia strokes FEAR’s fur. It is very soft and dark purple.
FEAR is the first monster that Qia makes friends with. There are many more.
_________________
I was thinking about this story even before the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bugbear.
I am watching a four part video from the UK about illness and trauma.
The first part is about how trauma memories are stored differently from regular memories. Regular memories are stored in files, like stories in a book or a library.
Trauma memories are stored in the amygdala and often are disjointed and broken up and have all of the sensory input from the worst parts, including the emotions.
The therapist is talking about healing: that our tendency is to turn away from the trauma, smooth it over and try to ignore it.
However, the amygdala will not allow this. It will keep bringing the trauma up. And that is actually its’ job, to try to warn and protect us from danger!
The therapist counsels finding a safe time and place and safe person (if you have one) and then making space for the trauma to come back up. One approach is to write out the story, going through that most traumatic part, but not stopping there. What happened next? Writing the story and then putting it aside. Writing it again the next day and doing this for four days. As the story is rewritten and has an ending, even if it is not a happy ending, the story is eventually moved from the amygdala to the regular files. People can and do heal. They may need a lot of time and help, but they can heal.
I am not saying that four days of writing stories is enough. That is one approach, but nothing works for everyone and people need different sorts of help. There are all sorts of paths to healing.
In my Family Practice clinic I would see people in distress. With some gentle prompting and offering space, they would tell me about trauma and things happening in their personal life or work life. Things that were feeling so overwhelming that they could not tell their families or friends and they just could not seem to process the feelings about it. I would keep asking what was happening and give them the space to tell the story. Many times when they reached the present they would stop. There would be a silence. Then I would say, “It seems perfectly reasonable that you feel terrible, frightened, horrified, grieved, whatever they were feeling, with that going on.” And there was often a moment where the person looked inwards, at the arc of the story, and they too felt that their feelings were reasonable.
I would offer a referral to a counselor. “Or you can come back. Do you want to come back and talk about it if you need to?”
Sometimes they would take the referral. Sometimes they would schedule to come back. But nearly half the time they would say, “Let me wait and see. I think I am ok. I will call if I need to. Let me see what happens.”
When a person goes through trauma, many people cut them off. They don’t want to hear about it. They say let it go. They may avoid you. You will find out who your true friends are, who can stand by you when you are suffering. I have trouble when someone tries to show up in my life and wants to just pretend that nothing happened. “Let’s just start from now and go forward.” A family member said that to me recently. Um, no. You do not get to pretend nothing happened or say, “I wanted to stay out of it.” and now show back up. No. No. You are not my friend and will not be. And I am completely unwilling to trade silence about my trauma for your false friendship.
Yet rather than anger, I feel grief and pity. Because this family member can’t process his own trauma and therefore can’t be present for mine. Stunted growth.
People can heal but they need help and they need to choose to do the work of healing.
This song is a darkly funny illustration: she may be trying to process past trauma, but the narrator doesn’t want anything to do with it. And he may not have the capacity to handle it. He may have his own issues that he has not dealt with. And maybe they both need professionals.
I spend a long day wrestling with love arguing with myself back and forth I am no angel descended from above Those undeserving of my love make me wroth yet my core argues that it still loves them and agrees their cruelty’s beyond the pale I snarl and cough and choke on bitter phlegm Defend my self staying far away and hale My core agrees I shall not tolerate abuse Forgive yet we despair we’ll ever reconcile They show no guilt nor shame for their misuse My core says let them be: she is so mild Negotiation done: Agreed. I may love those who I love But I leave contact with them to the angels and Beloved.
Heart of wood, by the sea
What do the spirits say to me?
His heart is stone not wood you see
And he’ll never come back, never come back, never come back to me
Tree torn from land by flooding water
bark and branches torn asunder
thrown back to the beach stripped and bare
bleached and dried lying there
grass and sand and stones on strand
I wonder how much a heart can stand
This doesn’t really fit today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt. I was looking for another photograph which fits and found this one.
I chose measly for the Ragtag Daily Prompt because there is a measles outbreak. Great. Another outbreak? Yes. Parents are behind on bringing kids in for Well Child Checks and kids are behind on immunizations, so measles.
Measles is way more infectious than Covid-19 and is spread by coughing and droplets. Per the CDC: “Measles is one of the most contagious diseases. Measles is so contagious that if one person has it, up to 90% of the people close to that person who are not immune will also become infected.” Read here. Immunizations are at 18 months and age 4-6, two shots. That will make the vast majority of children immune but not quite all. No immunization reaches quite 100%. Measles unfortunately can have some awful and serious complications including death. If your child is behind, get them immunized as soon as possible!
If some has the measles, the rash, they are measly. That is one of the definitions of measly.
Measly weasely You are so teasely Your heart has a rash Our friendship is hash You toss me like trash Your heart just smashed You are so measly Weasely teasely
___________________
I keep wondering if the earth is annoyed at the way people are behaving. Perhaps she has said, βRelease the Kraken!β But the most efficient Kraken turns out not to be a giant monster attacking New York City, but Covid-19, influenza, measles and strep A. Invasive strep A is out there too. Having had strep A pneumonia and borderline sepsis twice, I very much do not want invasive strep A.
Itβs the little things that get us, right? Viruses, bacteria. Measles is a virus, like influenza and Covid-19. Strep A is a bacteria. I had very bad influenza in 2003 that put me out for two months. I read about influenza and thought, oh, we will have another pandemic and in fact we were overdue. They come about every fifty years. My children heard quite a bit about it. My daughter said she wondered if I was a little nuts until the ebola outbreak and then she decided that I was probably and unfortunately correct. The only surprise for me was that it was a coronavirus instead of influenza. That and that humans behave in very interesting and often dysfunctional ways when they are stressed: and the same ways as in the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic. Logic flies out the window replaced by panic, magical thinking and rumors and people happy to take advantage of others. Selling fake cures, refusing masks, refusing immunizations and denying that it is happening at all.
I miss people at this time of year, only sometimes then I remember things that make me not miss them after all. That ambivalence. Love can be pretty complicated. Then I started thinking about what specifically I miss and then it morphed into this poem.
I really miss your hands: send them to me. Send your heart too since you don’t use it. You don’t see me or even look. I’ll take those eyes. I miss your voice: send your tongue and larynx. Bellows to mend, better add your lungs. You eat too much protein, I’d care for those kidneys. That brain is not too bad, I’ll admit. Ok, I’ll take it too. Those feet and ankles and shins and legs are nice to walk with. You really aren’t kind to your liver: I would be. You can’t stomach me. Hand it over. Most people don’t value their intestines nearly enough: I will. You chose not to listen to me: abandoned ears, finder’s keepers. You surely won’t use the bits that are left. Give them to me. I may not reassemble you correctly but it will keep me entertained. Piece meal.
_______
The photograph is from January 2022, on the east coast.
“The band is invited to Arizona. We’ll be on the radio. And I am trying to set up a recording.”
She keeps her eyes down. Tries not to hope. She has time, she could take time off. She has saved so much vacation, hoping. They would have to have someone stay with the kids.
“It’s going to be a great trip. I haven’t spent anything from the last big sale yet, been saving it for something like this. I was hoping we could record.”
She is wiping the counter slowly, over and over.
“That sale was amazing, just when I needed it. Debts paid and caught up.”
She works in the local government. Steady. It gives them health insurance. Secure retirement. Nothing spectacular. She turns to the sink, to rinse the cloth. The counter is clean enough. She isn’t going to think about it any more.
“That is great.” She tries not to hate the band. “At work–“
He is behind her and hugs her. “You are so great, here for me. We are going in three weeks. February. Perfect time for Arizona, I can’t wait for some sun.”
She tries to feel comforted by his hug and yields to it, as always. She is silent.
“Now make sure you don’t let the kids talk you into giving them too many things while we’re gone.”
She nods.
He kisses her head. He lets go and gets his guitar and coat. “Have a good weekend. I have to practice.” He is headed for the trailer, in the next county, alone for the weekend, to immerse in music.
I am reinventing myself now. After my fourth pneumonia, oxygen continuously for a year and now my fifth pulmonologist since 2012. He did not have much to offer. An inhaler but “We can’t be sure that it will keep you from getting pneumonia.”
Well. So with ME-CFS, myalgic encephalopathy chronic fatigue syndrome, now what?
I am at a fork in the path. At least three forks.
Try to do a micropractice, working with Long Covid people. Who either wear masks or I do not see them. I would have to convince the hospital district that it needs me.
Write. I am doing that, but really focus on it and work on publishing. I have so much art from my mother. She did not really enjoy selling it though she loved having shows and would dress up.
I could focus on publicizing and selling my mother’s art.
There is a trunk from my grandfather. I could focus on that. He states that he wants it published. Grandfather, you were a piece of work.
I could just lie around and travel and play with the cats and make music.
Focus on music. I have written a number of songs. Apparently being hypoxic makes me write songs. I think they are peculiar and wonderful too. Flute, voice, guitar, piano, bass. Hmmmm.
Something else. Who knows what will appear? I am doing art too, the two large sculptural pieces in my yard. A fellow doctor scolded me about one. It’s the one with a logging chain and an oxygen tank, attached to a tree. The title is “Tethered”. Now, why would a local doctor object to that? I have some small pieces too that involve found objects and especially feathers and small stemmed glassware.
Many forks! Now I just need more spoons of energy!
I have neither roots nor wings nor love. I lie: friends gather round to talk each day. The early dark slides over from above. No one to warm my bed, for no one stays. The dark creeps up a sickening horrid thief. I have no heart to stay awake at night. It’s barely five; why this flood of grief? It’s only in the morning I’m alight before the morning is even close to dawn. Wide awake I clamber from my bed. I stretch, the teapot sings and I just yawn and wonder why the night brings on such dread. I tell my friends that now I’ll date a tree. He never leaves and he will stay with me.
Discover and re-discover Mexicoβs cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - FlΓΌchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflΓΌchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
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