This, I must admit, was my day today...

Otherwise, looking back on it, I must otherwise remain, speechless.....rp

It's Possible...

Two years ago today was the first day after my "honeymoon" which followed the two year anniversary of my marriage on August 1, 2009.  In just a couple of weeks it will be the one year anniversary of my divorce.
The details no longer matter, neither did the marriage, or the four year commitment that led to it.  what mattered was the aftermath, the mess he left me to clean up, and the effects that had on my children and I.
Gathering the fortitude to fix this one exhausted me, depleted me and pushed me face down on the floor sucking the carpet fibers of rock bottom.  Looking UP was easy. Reading the sign on the door of  UP saying it was closed for rennovations was not.

In my life I have had other disappointments and difficulties but never one this intense or mentally, physically and emotionally harmful. Never one this intentional. Never one that was shared with others in such a way that in order for him to service them, he intentionally harmed me and made me feel worse. He said it would just be a quiet thing, that he "sucked as a husband" and could or would not keep his promises. I never expected my life to then be hijacked to Neverland, where the little boys play with fire thinking they are kings of men.  I never expected to become a soccerball among his imaginary playthings, and for so much time be required to act as if it were all simply okay.

It was never okay.   There was unfortunately going to have to be time spent at the bottom, my reward for temporary insanity.  There was only one big problem. I didn't like it there, but I knew the piper had to be paid.  At first it was lonely there. Then I got up the guts to look around, and choose some reasonably friendly faces to reach out to.  I was surprised to find so many decent and kind people at the bottom. I began to listen to the stories, and realized that in fact I was not all alone and that no matter how bad you might think a thing is, there is always something out there that is worse.  The common theme at the bottom is loss. Not just the loss of petty objects such as keys or glasses, but loss of magnitude unimaginable. For some at bottom, loss seems to just lead to more loss.  In nursing school I never paid much attention to grief and its associated stages, (thank you Elizabeth Kubler Ross), but there, face down on the carpet at the bottom, I had my first real lesson.

The bottom is full of mirrors. You can try to avoid looking in them but sooner or later you are blind. No matter who you are, unless you truly die, you have to look. I learned at bottom that each mirror had a different story to tell, and a different lesson to learn. I learned at bottom that until you conquered the mirrors, you stay where you are. Now and again, someone at bottom scores big and a ladder drops down for them. If they are not timid, and are willing to risk what little might be left to them, they make the ascent to climb out. If they are scared, they remain at bottom, safe, trapped as before only with that much more regret. I was living in a house of mirrors. I did not like opening my eyes very much.

The first person I met at the bottom was a man named David. He had a colorful history and a collection of incredible talents. I did not think this man would give me the time of day because I could not see the value I could have for him.  I decided that rejection would not be as bad as never knowing. I reached out. He reached back. I had no idea what to do or how to behave. I think he found that amusing.  Looking back I think it was kind of funny too. He taught me quickly that there was no way around the mess I was in. He taught me that most of my mess was my own only added to by the one left by my former. He was lighthearted and kept a healthy distance but in his own way he grabbed up my hair and pulled up my head to look at the mirror that he stood beside. It was the mirror of the physical. "You are what you eat".   My heart sank at what I saw. I expressed my frustration and he just looked back at me and into the mirror and said..."Na, don't worry, this isn't horrible, I can help you with this." He was not joking, he laughed and smiled when he said it but he was very serious in his tone. "So much has to change, starting now, this second, there is no time to spare  for your life." I looked up at this man, who sort of looked like he could be my brother in another dimension, and instead of my usual nonsense talk, I said softly "okay". The changes he demanded were not personal they simply had to be. It was easier to swallow and be honorable to the agreement. Somehow at bottom, angry and lonely, change was less difficult to make. I did not see much of David, he seemed to have a passport to bottom that allowed him to float up and down sort of like an angel. He was never far away, and still even now, whenever I reach out, he is there. There is nothing like his smile, because you only get it when you know he likes what is in front of him. It is infectious, its delicious and when he becomes dark is not so difficult to become dark beside him. He met me at every level on the way up, and I now know I have a friend forever who will always be there when I need him to save my life. He knows the same is true of me.

Somewhere during the food wars, two other men joined David at that mirror. Ralph came first. He came and challenged my broken body to move again. I was terrified, but Ralph, while demanding and insistent on my trying, stayed close by to protect me from falling. Still, I looked at the floor every day. One day, Ralph grabbed my hair, and pulled my head up and said "Look at you. Look at what you have become." I opened my eyes and I really was not sure who was there.  Then I met Robert. Robert was there to look into the core of things. Not just the physical but the spiritual and the emotional. Robert put on pads and let me hit him. I hit him hard and for what seemed like forever. I started to cry. He said, "good". I wasn't sure about this road but I knew one thing, I was doing everything that man told me to do. He was unyielding. He was unwavering, and had a great sense of humor while he tortured me. Still, I pouted all around this way and that, and one day he grabbed hold of my hair and forced me to look at myself in the mirror. "Do you see what you have done?"

I did not quite see yet, because other matters were crushing me. One day I was dozing at bottom, when a man named Albert came up and said, "Why are you sleeping?  "Because my hands are tied and I am trapped". He was in his own world of hurting, but still he took the time to listen. I was broke and in unbelievable debt from the prior relational failure. More mess, with no way in sight to clean up. While I remained faithful to my physical changes, the ropes were squeezing me tighter than ever. I looked at the floor. Albert was a man faithful to God so he kept his hands out of my hair and simply said.."Mary, look at the mirror." I did not want to because the picture of my finances was ugly and embarassing. I cried like a baby in front of Albert. To this day I think he is an angel. He said. " I can help you fix this, but you are going to have to make many changes." Gee, what else is new?  I thought. I had begun to pride myself on openmindedness so  I listened to what he had to say. I never realized how many inappropriate things we can tie to our money. Albert taught me, along with Suze Orman, that money is not love, its not emotions, its not going to satisfy inner cravings. Money is money. Managing it correctly is the only path to freedom for most people. Albert created a budget for me, which I thought would be impossible to manage. It turns out he was right and I was wrong. There is something good about looking before I leap. Something wonderful about reaping the reward of self control and proper planning. Funny, the financial mirror started to postively impact the physical mirror, I never saw that one coming. Still, I looked at the floor, because I was internally angry. No, I was furious.

I kept hearing things, and finding out things, that I did not want to know. It kept my head focused on my losses instead of my gains and I was unable to see the balance sheet clearly. All  I could do was to keep up the juggle, keep the balls in the air, so when my ladder finally dropped down for me, I almost missed it. Along came Jim.  I really did not know much about him. He was only around a short time and said surprisingly little. It turns out he was only there to show me the last thing I needed to climb out. He had to drag me to that last mirror though, because I would not dare to look at it. He held me in his arms and stood in front of it. He was a man of demand and patience. He stood me in front of the mirror for what seemed like hours until I finally looked.  He told me that we would stand there until I told him I could see the pretty woman staring back at me. I was stubborn, he just thought it was funny. There we stood. The next day he dragged me there again.  I thought it over since I was hungry and so I finally lifted my head all by myself and took a look. There was a lovely woman in the mirror in Jim's arms. I squinted, because ...no..whoa...really??? He nodded and whispered, "really". "What do you see? We will stay here until you tell me." he said.  " I see me." I said. "Not good enough." he said. I looked harder and looked at him and said "I see a beautiful lady, and she is me." "Very good" he said. When he disappeared I realized how far up that ladder I had climbed. UP no longer seemed out of reach. UP, was finally once again open for business, and I was going dressed in a pretty outfit.

I realized what a lucky girl I am to have been sent four fairy godfathers. I probably could call them hairy godfathers and they would like it better. Every girl wants to be Cinderella and experience the impossible but if you ask me to do it again I will tell you I pass. Now and again even though I officially live in UP, I feel compelled to visit the bottom, because I let my guard down and am impossible to manage or deal with.  When I wallow on the bottom its because my prince has not shown up yet. Sometimes I think that is the fairy tale to begin with. The godfathers told me that I never needed a prince to begin with, and if one did come along, I should be for damn sure that he had what it took to take care of and manage me.

Yesterday a beautiful and brilliant best friend and I were talking about these things. She was the first person I met when I stepped off the ladder into UP. This is the kind of friend that everyone should have one of. One who mirrors you, and can be there, and often a step ahead. One who actually cares and thinks ahead to do the right thing on your behalf sometimes at the expense of herself.  This is not an easy friend to have. Loving her is a workout sometimes and that is what makes me think she is worthwhile.  This one makes it unnecessary for me to visit the bottom ever again because the mirror I need to look at lives in her. I treasure her, I cherish her. I love her. If it were not for the work of the hairy fairy godfathers, I would not have known how to notice her. One of these days, I have to thank the hairy fairy godfathers for bringing me to the place where I could recognize that happiness could come to me through a girl who would become my sister, and I could never be happier.

Don't Look Back

Don’t Look Back

Often in times in my life where I have encountered great change, or a negative event I stumble and trip myself up by looking back. I seem to want to process, to understand or to correct, when really there is nothing there worth my consideration. I am routinely not aware that I am doing it, and often have to have the lights knocked out of me in order to realize that what I have engaged in only serves to harm myself and to further impede my progress toward a better life. Generally, ruminating over past negative events is counterproductive and harmful to the whole person.  Also, looking back and longing for what is no longer ever going to be the natural order of things is inherently dangerous. 

I am sure by now a few of my readers will be chuckling, and one will be enjoying a belly buster. Fine then, that makes me a success. I would hope that one in particular might beam with pride that I finally get “it”.  It all brings to mind a time from my glory days, which, being a positive memory, I believe is profitable to dwell on.  I was practicing nursing on a neuroscience unit, new and fresh and immersed in what I was learning and doing each day. I was discussing negative current relational events with a lovely mentor nurse from India who embraced her own world of troubles and relational hurt  and simply stated: “Dear girl, when you put the garbage can on the corner each week, do you ever go outside and drag it back into the house again?”  It is wisdom I have never forgotten, and yet recently I realized that I never completely understood it. I immediately understood it to mean that of course you purge, eliminate or discard the “thing” or the “person” but I never realized until these past weeks that alongside that goes the rest of “it”.  Defining “it” , the waste, the damage, the hurt feelings and powerful assumptions made, all of these things should make it to the corner with the garbage.  There is no good thing to come from looking back.   I think it is the greatest paralyzer.  

These conclusions brought me a memory of a story from the Bible. It is the story of Lot and his family, who were living in Sodom and Gomorrah.  You can imagine by God’s perspective there was no good thing to come out of this entire city. I am sure the people living within its walls with no boundaries and with no limits could ever agree.  As the story goes, in simplest fashion there was by God’s perspective one good man in the city. One man worth the saving, a man called Lot, and by grace and command, his family was included in the one time offer for a ticket out of hellfire with just one irrevocable demand and command.  “Do NOT look back.”  One does not have to be a Bible scholar to realize that violating such a command would bring about an unlivable consequence.   It was not as if Lot did not prepare his family.  It was not as if as leader of his house he chose to leave out that information and leave it to chance . Lot was clear on the concept and clear in communicating it.  The line was drawn in the sand. Something bad is happening here, and it was time for this family to go.  From God’s perspective this must have been one of the greatest planned dramas in all of Bible history.  God had done it before with a flood, so it seems that Einstein’s definition of insanity may not apply here. One family was allowed out to head for the hills while the entire city locked down and imploded with great balls of fire to consume the sinners and scourge the land of their sin.  What a party town that must have been!   

So let us review the command. “DO NOT LOOK BACK.”  As it turns out, this is easier said than done for some.   Lot was the one good man chosen by God to be spared this horrible event, and since Lot was from a strong and vital bloodline, the bloodline that eventually leading to Jesus, it was imperative that he be spared to lead his children out of danger. 

Sodom and Gomorrah was burning. Fireballs were coming from the sky and Lot took the hand of his wife and commanded his children to follow him. They fled on foot towards the hills, all the while Lot reminding his beloved family of God’s one demand/command:   “DO NOT LOOK BACK.”

I always wondered what it was that compelled the woman to look back. Known infamously through the rest of history only as “Lot’s wife”, what happened next burned itself into the minds of every innocent Sunday school student in all of Christianity.  The common teaching is that she was simply a disobedient wife. Well, she was that.  I just wondered what made her do it.  Many people would argue that it might be Satan’s shot at trying to make the daughter look back, who God needed to continue the bloodline, others say that she was stuck to some behavior or relationship in the past. For whatever reason, probably a tangle of them, Lot’s wife stopped, and was compelled, and looked back.  The Biblical report is that she immediately turned into “a pillar of salt”.  Those that take things literally may see that as a pile of salt, or something like the picture here.

                                    

                                      

That is too pretty. It does not depict the self-destruction that happens as a result of looking back on the past against all better judgment and command.  Lot’s wife, harmed herself irreparably, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.  I do not think it makes sense to take this accounting literally. I think it makes better sense with more appropriate definitions.  I see Lot’s wife as having the need to stop and look back at a former life, one she liked, one she was happy in, and one she was attached to the relationships in. Lot’s wife did not realize that looking back on what was taken from her would be her undoing. I read where the Phoenicians used the phrase “pillar of salt” to define paralysis, as a physical one, being unable to move, as in a stroke or spinal cord injury. All we know is that she died unable to move and unable to participate in real living. She became someone benign, dead or not dead, it clearly never mattered. The lesson for me is that life can end as a result of looking back. It can stick you in a place, paralyzed and useless for living.  If the same God had intended for us to look back as a habit, our heads would turn all the way around and our eyes would not have peripheral limits. The limits are there for a reason, and heads and eyes are meant to face forward.

A dear friend of mine taught me recently and passionately that the past is never in the equation of real living. When we travel in any direction, the road signs always tell us how far we are from the place we are going, not how much ground we have covered since the place we left.                         

                               

Does knowing this make me NEVER want to look back? It is certainly compelling.  What I do know is that there is real consequence for doing it and the punishment is a loss of freedom.  I am not willing to accept or tolerate a fixed position at any point of my life so I just cannot look back again.  I will choose pillar of wellness over a pillar of salt any day. 

I am going to go out on a limb and say that looking back on the glory days and the good times can be very healthy. I was driving yesterday in unseasonably warm temperatures with the top down on my convertible, listening to music while soaking up the sunlight and much coveted Vitamin D.  I remembered the way the springtime felt in my younger days at the University of Rhode Island and all I could hear was music being blasted out an open dormitory window. The band was Boston and the song was:

Don’t Look Back

Don't look back
A new day is breakin'
It's been too long since I felt this way
I don't mind where I get taken
The road is callin'
Today is the day

I can see
It took so long just to realize
I'm much too strong
Not to compromise
Now I see what I am is holding me down
I'll turn it around, oh yes I will

I finally see the dawn arrivin'
I see beyond the road I'm drivin'

It's a bright horizon and I'm awakin' now
Oh I see myself in a brand new way
The sun is shinin'
The clouds are breakin'
'Cause I can't lose now, there's no game to play

I can tell
There's no more time left to criticize
I've seen what I could not recognize
Everthing in my life was leading me on
But I can be strong, oh yes i can

I finally see the dawn arrivin'
I see beyond the road I'm drivin'
Far away and left behind, left behind

Oh the sun is shinin' *and I wanna go*

Don't look back
A new day is breakin'
It's been too long since I felt this way
I don't mind where I get taken
The road is callin'
Today is the day

I can see
It took so long just to realize
I'm much too strong
Not to compromise
Now I see what I am is holding me down
I'll turn it around, oh yes I will

I finally see the dawn arriving
I see beyond the road I'm driving
Far away and left behind
Don't look back

I hope you enjoy the song as much as I always did and still do today. I carry with me the determination to avoid looking back on negative events  and to retain my focus on what is positive and important. For health and wellness, it is a vital and necessary change.

Resonant Partner   

Lesson From Londo

                                    

                          
                                    

Autumn 2010


I look back fondly at a time not that long ago when I was greatly satisfied and happy with the man I had chosen for a partner. We spent our quiet moments doing many things, and one of the best for me was watching our way through the entire series of Babylon 5 on DVD. What I remember most was looking forward to going upstairs together and watching an episode in bed before we slept. I remember the warm feeling I would get each time I crawled into bed beside him and how it felt back then to be together enjoying that time together. I remember it being peaceful, I thought it was honest and I believed it to be complete.  

Sometimes when I see something on TV or in a movie, it resonates with me and I never seem to be able to forget it.  It happened in the 16th episode of the 3rd season. One of my favorite characters was an ambassador named Londo Mollari.  Londo was a colorful fellow, sometimes hot and sometimes cold, bred to be unscrupulous but with a sense of justice. Londo was obnoxious and while it was always veiled in deep sadness he also had a great capacity to love.  I loved watching Londo grow and change, and sometimes retreat into past bad behavior. He was always forgiven. I always believed Londo would eventually do the right thing.   

In this particular scene,  Londo was telling Captain Sheridan who had travelled 17 years forward in time how the capital city of his planet, Centauri Prime came to be in ruins, and while it was a short statement it stayed with me ever since I heard it for the first time. 

 "During your little war, you drove away the shadows. Oh yes. But you did not think to clean up your mess! If a few of their minions, their dark servants, came to Centauri Prime, well. Where is the harm in that? Yes?" Londo Mollari

Recently I found myself spinning in all directions as my newlywed husband, that same loving partner, checked out of my life first emotionally, then mentally, then physically. Each step he chose felt as though I was being thrown into a shredder, and nothing that came out the other side even remotely resembled the me that was there when he threw me in. At that time I had come to the conclusion that I had no choice but to lay it all out in front of him and hope he would come to a place where he could see what our lives had become. It was my hope that he would consider the truth and seek to save us but instead  I was blindsided by things that later I realized I should have seen coming.  There was one huge outburst of anger from him, that frightened me terribly.  I really had no idea that our relationship was so fragile on his side that one burst of anger would end it all for us.  For many months I processed this but could never remotely understand what had happened. He announced that he was going to "own" the fact that he was a horrible husband.   He said it was nothing I had done. He said it was all him. He said there was no one else. He said and did a lot of things, none of which I have bothered to believe or accept and none that to this day come close to paying for the overall damage I have been abandoned to repair.  All that mattered was that for whatever reason he chose to seek his own, and that meant I had to do the same.

A number of years ago a friend of mine sat me down and gave me a direct and brutal awakening.  I was fighting for my life on so many levels that I could no longer keep up or keep track. I was living and going through the motions trying to avoid a head on collision but the daily damage control was about all I could do to keep my head above water. The lecture my friend gave me boiled down to this: The only way through a difficult time is through it. You cannot go around it, or over or under it, you have to go through it.  The path is rarely left clear in times such as these, there has usually been a war filled with bloody battles and there is always destruction, there is always rubble. It makes a mess of people, it makes a mess of their lives.

It helped me quite a bit when I recently realized that what was required of me was that I have the courage to follow the steps that were laid out in front of me logistically so that I could pass through. I did not have to "live up " to him or anyone else or anything. I did not have to remain attached, despite his financial obligation to me.   It also helped me to realize that I was no one special in this equation, I was just like the others, passed through, used up and finally thrown away. I am certain I will not be the last.  When I finally got it in my head that he was nothing special either, it all became easier to negotiate. I had to move on.  I had to stop thinking of myself as anything to him.  The truth is that in order for any of us to truly "own" a problem or situation, we have to take responsibility for what we have done.  We have to accept our part in things and act accordingly.  The forms have to be filed, the debts have to be to be paid, and the innocent one's have to be healed.  We have to take the time and be careful to clean up our mess before we dare to drag it all behind us into the next inevitable relationship.  I knew he would have one before me. I knew what he would do before  he did it because he had done it all before, and never, ever, bothered to clean up his mess.

Recently a respected new friend taught me that going forward and really living demands focus and attention towards the direction I intend to go. He told me that I had to keep my mind on the things important and work on them one at a time until I get to where I need to be to be truly free. There is really no other way to be ready for the next chapter of my life.  I had to take the time to clean up the mess. This is real wisdom for reality, not playtime games in fantasyland.  My life is at stake, and I intend to prevail.  I appreciate this man, this protector, this willing friend and guide.  It has been a long time since anyone made this much sense to me, and with such good feeling. 

Yes, there was someone who was applauded in a certain realm for battling his demons which he laid out upon the table for all to see, and yes he fought his little war, not bothering to close the door when he fled and not bothering to clean up his mess.  Will I be like Londo Mollari, living out my existance with a Keeper around my neck choking me into submission in hopes of saving my world? I don't think so.  It is a better choice to take the time to clean up my mess, take stock of all I truly own, and close that door behind me.

Thank you Londo Mollari..for the reminder.  

 
                              

Detoxing

Winter 2005

I am told that during that time I was a bit of a zombie. I was using a medication created for people who have seizures for the management of the neuropathic pain that was de-railing my life. It was an uncomfortable feeling knowing that I could not just stop taking it. While I was assured that it was a physiological addiction and not a psychological addiction, it seemed to not make much difference to me since I had no control over how I was able to stop taking it.

I made the effort to do some reading and I found a message board that included people sharing their experiences with taking this certain medication. I did find one person's posting about his adverse reaction to the same medication that I was struggling with.  I was gratified to find that I was not the only person in the world who experienced these difficulties with this drug. When I read what the people were writing about what had happened to them it made me feel validated. When I read the horrible experiences people were reporting, all things they chose to attribute to changes in them as a result of the drug, I began to see that I was falling into similar patterns of behavior and that it would only be a matter of time before my choices could potentially become my undoing. I had no choice, I had to figure a way to get off this medicine.

As it has come to be the way with me, traditional pathways of seeking care seemed to never work well. I found myself talking to my dear friend, a doctor who suffered the hard way on a path to discovering a new focus of practice for people with addictions, about my situation. I found it amazing that in order for someone practicing medicine to actually pay attention to my pleas for help with my problem, I had to gather information from a doctor who currently could not practice medicine, learn all I could from him, and change a doctor's mind before anyone would hear what I wanted to propose in order to withdraw from the drug. I was finally hopeful when I found a new doctor and she began to write prescriptions that made sense for a more subtle tapering. I can remember taking smaller doses over the weeks while I had no choice but to endure detox. My body held on to this drug as a toxin and while I was tapering down with doses delivered by an eyedropper onto my tongue all I could think of was being free from it.  I tried hard to keep this end in mind while I suffered through the weeks of low level neurological torture. I had issues with memory, cognition and word finding. I had issues with reasoning and logic and decision-making. I was feeling relentless low-level electro-neurological torture as my entire body tingled, buzzed and crackled with no relief or end in sight. The pain was unreal. The confusion was worse.

I admit this was a shaky time for me. I clung to my Dr. Steve who never once took his mind or attention off of me. I remember now asking him when all of this was going to stop. He said. "When it does". My body burned for weeks after my last dose of the medication. Finally, one morning I noticed a calm in my body that I did not recognize. I had finally done it.  The experience had taken its toll though, and I would not realize for years just how difficult the rebuilding was going to be. I met my second former husband while I was taking  then detoxing from that drug. Looking back I think that may truly explain how the whole thing worked out.

Looking back I realized that I had no idea anymore who I really was because I could not remember anything of my self from my past.  Getting rid of that toxin was only the first step.  I was an exhausted, defeated woman in pain. I chose that time in life to begin a serious relationship with a man. That turned out to be the third biggest mistake I ever made.

Alone

Spring-2005

I was alone. I was sharing custody so half the time, I was truly alone. I really never understood why the complete details of my accident and injury escaped my family. I always assumed they had other things that were more pressing in their minds but in reality I think I just never remembered to tell them. 

 I was alone.

I am remembering the day that I saw his profile on Yahoo. I had to read it several times and for some oddball reason, despite the fact that I was nothing like what he said he was looking for that I would say hello.  If anything, it would make a good story.  I took the plunge and said something clunky like “Excuse me”, or “Hello there”. Whatever it was it was tenuous because the non-clinical on-line world was still foreign to me. I was happy when he answered me back.  He was a doctor caught up in his own world of hurt, who despite dodging his own shit-storm, saw seeing to me something worthy of his energy and time. For that I will be grateful until they day we die.  He had a hand in saving my life.

We were chat friends for a few months before we met. We spent concentrated time together that first encounter which was for me a once in a lifetime experience.  Little did I know there was a method to his madness, and I expect that when he reads this he will smile that I finally figured it out.  I was nervous and jumpy when I met him.  I did not understand myself well, because I did not know that the medication I was taking had made a zombie out of me.  It was the most lovely four days of my life but when it was over, we both knew we would not be lovers.  I still remember what the three weeks with no contact felt like, and finally I could not take the “Steve-less-ness” any longer and I asked to see him.

When I visited him for the first time since our “break-up”, I realized that I had been given a far greater gift by the Universe, God or whatever power controls us, than ever before. He was living in sober housing, a place where men in recovery from substance abuse and alcoholism live. He was a non-practicing physician deeply entrenched in his own quest for survival. He had lost everything and while trying to reconcile his life, in the midst of all of that, he took me under his wing and led me safely through the valley of the shadow of death as I faced down one of the biggest physiological demons of my life.  Addiction.

It took two months to safely withdraw me from the medicine that had already stolen so much from my life.  I de-toxed in his arms and throughout my withdrawal he was never far away. For the first time since my accident, I was finally able to sleep soundly without fear. In the aftermath, there were cognitive deficits that he addressed with me. I could not read clearly, and I could not write clearly. I certainly could not think clearly.  He graciously helped me to progress in my graduate education while I was healing.
He did all of this without “practicing medicine”. I will never let him forget that.  I owe Dr. Steve my life. I can never repay what he has brought into it.

In the five years since, he and I have become regulars at a favorite Chinese restaurant, where we ALWAYS eat eggplant, and where the staff think we are a couple. Often, we nap together,  and me, safe and secure,  always happy and satisfied in the knowledge that he watches over me, can finally rest.  
 
Watching him now, poised at the starting line of a brand new and satisfying life for him, I could not be more honored than to be the one allowed to partner with him in the final professional “push” in the direction of his wildest dreams.

I feel a little eggplant coming on ….and a nap. Aren’t we the lucky ones?

Addiction

Spring-2005

I was adrift. After what happened I was afraid to take the medicine that managed my pain but more than that I was afraid NOT to take it. I settled on half the original dose and after some days I realized that I had created some major problems in the short time I had been living as a zombie on twice that dosage. I could not remember what had gotten me to that place so I had to rely on papers around my house and receipts and what I discovered was that this drug had robbed me of a once profitable and principled lifestyle and replaced it with behaviors that were unmanaged and simply out of control. On the original dose I lived life as a zombie.

The first thing I did was get a physical exam and run every blood test to be sure I had not done anything that would adversely affect my health and the future of myself and my children. All was fine. The second thing I did was go over my business and finances and in that respect I did not fare so well at all.

I owed thousands in all directions and to this day have no idea how I could have spent it. I only knew that it appeared that my income would in no way conquer it. I was financially and emotionally screwed. I remember looking up from the kitchen table, weeping, in all kinds of pain and reaching for another dose. I was addicted.

Lost

Spring-2005  

Most people do not begin a story in the middle but I have no choice, its the only way I am able to tell it. I did not know about that drug. I am told I knew a lot about most drugs but this one was new and this one was prescribed for me and this one I did not know. All I knew was that I was unhappy with what it was doing to me and did not want to take it anymore. I stopped the day before. I went to bed that night sleeping as usual, at attention on the end of my king-sized bed. I do not know what happened to me in the night but I woke up wrapped up in the sheet at the opposite corner and I was wet. (Not in a good way) I remember feeling at odds with myself but not much more than that. What I came to know as normal after that day was nothing but normal. I lost my bearings that day, I lost my sense of being and self because I looked up at the pictures on the walls of my home and I could not remember those days and times. I knew who the people mostly were...but the memories of my life before were gone. I vividly remember standing in my kitchen not really recognizing anything and the knowledge of anything about me or my life had been reduced to a two dimensional image in my mind, in black and white. I was lost.

Everybody Says Don't

It was in January of 2004 and I was sitting pretty in the nurses station on the Neuroscience Unit where I was happily about two hours ahead and on the downward end of a satisfying day of not very complicated neuro patient care. I was in a particularly good mood that day, since I realized for the first time in my post-divorce finances the first positive cash flow since the whole nasty thing had begun two-years before. It was honestly this selfish moment of reflection on my life that kept me from responding to the tech's request for help in transferring that patient the first two times she came through the crowd of us, but finally by the third pass through, I felt my normal irritation at the common laziness that seemed to have settled across the unit  and got up and went to help the poor girl move her patient.

That was the biggest mistake I have ever made in my life.

It appeared completely straightforward and non-complicated. The man was sitting in the wheelchair perpendicular to his bed. I took the strong side of the man and she took the weaker side. I felt confident that this transfer was set up and ready to go, because it was what the tech assured me to be true, and because it was not my patient, I had no reason to not count on it.

That was the second biggest mistake I ever made in my life.

He was not a very tall man but he was a solid, dense old guy, sick from a head bleed, and rightfully frightened at the whole experience.  I introduced myself to the man and his wife, who stood back looking on. I thought I would be in the room no more than three minutes or so. I used the best body mechanics possible to posture myself to support the man in the pivot, yet in the midst of the transfer it became obvious as his bottom hit the edge of the bed that the tech had forgotten to lock the bed down, and the bed took off rolling across the room! The tech was startled and let go of her end of the man in order to retrieve the bed. Not well executed, since in a flash the man had me in a face to chest choke hold around my neck, screaming that he was going to fall. I assured him that he was going to be just fine and that I would not allow him to fall, as I had him in a sound bear hug in a half squat. I told the man that I was going to lower us to the floor to avoid a fall and at that moment he began to thrash and caused my right leg to abduct away from the mid line of my body and I went crashing down in a half- split onto the floor.

I heard the cracking in my back and the popping sounds down my right side and I felt the burn as the muscles all around let go. I held my patient safely in a seated position until help came running, and he was safely lifted back to his bed. It was only seconds before I realized that I was not able to get up off the floor on my own. It was only minutes before I realized holding on to the shredder box in the hallway that I could no longer move like I used to. The pain was blinding and unlike anything I had ever experienced.  All of a sudden hanging over the top of the document shredder box, I thought of the things I had heard from hundreds of patients who have spinal cord injuries and spine and nerve injuries and my thought was: "Oh my God is this what they all keep talking about?"

A lot of things happened in the days, weeks, months and years that followed that day, none of which included me ever being able to take care of patients the way I had specialized and trained myself for again. I could be bitter and angry except that there was as a result also an exceptional experience of triumph amidst the difficulty and suffering and through being a patient I developed into a much better and more creative provider of care.  I have had to find innovative ways to continue to do it. I did try to go back to the bedside for a number of months and my disability grew worse, my pain was intolerable and my mobility was in serious jeopardy.  It was at that time about five years ago that I was told I was "disabled" and unable to do...and the list went on.  For all those years I had no reason to not believe the doctors. We are conditioned to accept these opinions as based on far more knowledge and experience and I have since learned that might not always completely be the case.

There is far more to this story than I want to bother even telling here. I was a woman with a limp, a huge weight problem due to immobility, uncontrolled pain, and a history of injury related co-morbidities. I was "walking" around in a crowd of doctors with my head and brain barely attached to my body, and every aspect of my life was out of balance. Everybody said "just keep going", or "you will be OK" , or "you are going to die from this" or my personal favorite from one limited primary care physician: "weight loss would be prudent". Ha Ha ...having watched my weight climb to 306 lbs...no shit Sherlock...Ya think??  In the course of it all, I managed to work full-time, support and raise my children, maintain (somewhat) my owned home and have a fairly decent lifestyle. None of that mattered one bit because the bottom line for me was that I was finally convinced that if I was ever going to get anywhere with anything and achieve any kind of balance in my life, I was going to have to abandon all my old ways of doing things and find another kind of doctor.

Looking back now it makes perfect sense why the old guard of traditional medical doctors following standards of care built on a framework of clinical trials financed by the pharmaceutical industry raised their eyebrows at me. They get irritated with me when I now tell them "thank you very much" and I am now getting better because I chose a new paradigm of integrative collaborative medical care for myself. It was never enough for me to be told "You can't." It was never enough for me to be told "don't this and don't do that". I wanted to DO.

All I needed was the right doctor and a hefty dose of courage and willingness to change. I went out and found him, and together, he and I put together a team and are saving my life. My children laugh because I listen to show tunes but I don't care, this one makes me feel good! I hope you enjoy it too.

The Finding of the Lost



The events of the past year have brought me to the place where selling my home has become inevitable. I have not been, nor am I even now, happy about feeling as though I have to do it. I have made it as much of a proactive and healthy decision as possible, and my family and friends have been wonderfully supportive and helpful. The task of cleaning out my house to get ready for sale, turned out to be a monster more ferocious than I initially imagined.  Still, the process belongs to no one but me, and I am the one who has to muddle through and make some sense of what goes along with it.

I have been here for nearly eight years. I bought this house after my divorce from my children's father, my husband for nearly twenty years.  In all that time quite a bit of property came into this house and not so much went out. This deck was stacked against me in all directions. It is not that I felt particularly attached to any of these fine items that had residence here, its just that with raising my children, being a girlfriend, then wife, and  building my career and furthering my education I really did not get around to thinking much about what to do with the things in my house.  Because of this, it has now become the order of each day, to go room to room, corner to corner, and into each closet and crawl space, evaluating and examining and sorting what will stay and what will go, some from just my home, and some from my life completely.

I learned early on in this project that there are all kinds of feelings and emotions tied up in the things we keep so I am writing about that and the process of  discovering, thinking, deciding and in lots of cases letting go. It seemed a perfect time to do this once, living in the moment of the thing in my hands, experiencing all it represents then deciding its fate.  

It seems as though this should be a straightforward endeavor, but in reality it is not. For me, nearly each thing I laid my hand on, conjured up a memory or a feeling and presented me with the challenge of having to evaluate it and decide. I chose that not only would I decide IF something could stay or not but WHERE it would be placed and WHY.  It made sense to begin with the big items and then move to the smaller ones.  Since work was to be done in my basement, I began there, purposing to work my way upward. One of the biggest things in the room was my son's Weider Gym rack.

It looked a bit like this one, and was great fun on more than one level of use, for a few years. As happens with young people, they grow, and change and this piece of equipment did not seem to pass the test of time so it was abandoned and morphed into a lovely laundry rack/ clothes closet. I was remembering fondly how difficult it was to get it in the house when I bought it. My former husband's son brought it in the house alongside his father piece by piece. I remember the grown-man boy and his wife working so well together to assemble it for my son. I remembered making dinner for them and their three children who had become accustomed to spending time in my home back then. Watching it come down was bittersweet in more than one way for me, however I admit now that I am delighted that it no longer sits there. I believe it was recycled and that gratifies me because its parts need a new life and less useless purpose.

Next there were two large pieces of equipment that I bought for my rehabilitation shortly after my accident in 2004. Because my mobility was challenged it was easier for me to accomplish my required activities at home. I would never have considered letting them go until my father pointed out that I had come a long way and certainly did not need to hide in the cellar anymore to continue to progress. He also pointed out that there was no real resale value to them.  Before long people who care about me were volunteering to help me stay safe as I worked out so I called back the junk man and off they went. It felt good to see them go out. It felt good to know that I did not need them anymore and that no one but me understands fully the work it took for me to  graduate from them.   It feels good to move forward towards a positive new life.  I believe they will be donated to charity and  hopefully be used to rehabilitate someone less fortunate. I like that.                                     

  

It amazes me that there was so much junk in my basement. I had fun tossing most of it in a big barrel. I could not even list it off now, but I know I threw away and donated away items in equal measure. I feel good about this. 

One of the hardest things I parted with was the children's table and chairs that my former husband left in my home after he decided that being a husband was too difficult for him and he departed. I was not given one good reason for being abandoned, nor was I really given a choice. Someone else had entered his life to be his confidant, confessor and lover and while not a legitimate nor realistic relationship, this woman made herself available for and enabled him to engage in a closeness with her while he remained living in my house and contributing next to nothing to the running of it.   He cut me out of his life equation with no notice or fault. His connection to her with internet and phone, at that early time all paid for and owned by me, went on behind my back while I foolishly thought that if I remained supportive he would live up to his vows of marriage just a few months before and come back to me. I carried guilt for many months thinking that somehow I was to blame for him emotionally abandoning me on our wedding night and never affecting with me again until much later. For months when I looked at the little table and its two chairs  I felt connected and somehow still trusted but really it was wrong of him to abandon it there just as he had abandoned and split apart our blended family scattering relationships in all directions with a cavalier and selfish whim.  Months later he drew me back in close to him, while confused in his thought processes I reveled in the feelings that flooded back to me until he confessed his confusion over who he really wanted and needed in his life. There was chaos and anger and for me a deeply shocking and emotionally devestating physiologic event. It brought me to my knees and nearly undid me completely, the grief at the loss of what had been conceived in what I believed to be love which in reality was the confusion of two very troubled hearts. As I looked at that table and chairs I knew what I had to do.  I packed it up in my car, brought to the park where he met me, stood in front of him, gathered up my courage and told him the details of what we had made together which I had to suffer the loss of on my own. That is why I cannot treasure that table and chairs anymore. That is why I could not keep them safe for him. He did not keep me safe as he promised me he would. It was his failure and not mine. Had I kept them I would just repeatedly see what was not meant to be or happen, who was swept away in the eleventh hour of our marriage as forgotten as his vows, and that is just too much for me to choose to live with.       

   

Looking around my basement, standing barefooted on brand new carpeting, and looking at the newness and freshness of the room once dim and dark and loaded with remnants of my past life, I cannot help but remind myself of who and where I was and who and where I am now. The floor is new, and the walls are fresh and there is more light in the space than ever before. Looking around there is nothing but potential, promise and the enticement of an exciting future full of possibilities. I stand strong in the place where just a few years ago I struggled to stand at all,  and I smile confidently knowing that for me forward is a one way road, and while I might take look back a bit now and then I will not turn back and abandon the journey laid out ahead of me. Still for a little bit of time nearly every day I think about who might have been, wondering if God somehow works it out so that one day I can see which twinkling star was given to me, if only for that moment, that gave me that delicious feeling just one more time again, of who I know myself to be. I am Mary, blessed, mother of John and Jacqueline, equally blessed and we are our family.