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It continues to be the ten year anniversary of a near death experience for me. I was hospitalized for just under a month, and so the anniversary spans this length of time as well. It’s probably close to the date within those 3-4 weeks when I was at my worst.
I woke up with some physical symptoms yesterday and automatically interpreted them as life-threatening. I’ve also been worried about the health of another person in my life these days. As I’ve been told often, my tendency is to minimize and even ignore symptoms, pain, and discomfort. I’m not a worrier. I try to keep the chronic illness I live with and everything else associated with it in the background. I wish to lead as “normal” a life as possible. It is interesting to me that I have chosen now—this anniversary—to overact.
I think that something deep inside of me believes that I should not be alive. I wasn’t supposed to make it ten more years. My doctors never said this to me, but I felt it. I’ve allowed myself to hang out in the sun and eat whatever I want and not eat whatever I don’t want because somehow I didn’t think I’d make it long enough for these things to matter. As the day went on yesterday, and I imagined myself lying in a hospital bed with a life-threatening infection, I felt a lot of grief. I didn’t want my life to end, even though somewhere within me I thought maybe that’s how it should be.
As a psychologist, it never ceases to amaze me how our psyches work. Almost dying is not something I usually carry with me. It didn’t leave a permanent, significant mark on me. I never denied it or the impact of having gone through something like this, but neither did it play an extraordinarily transformative role in my life. Like most others, for the past ten years I’ve been living my life as well as I know how and striving to be better. Still, ten years comes along and not only do I know that I was hospitalized ten years ago to the day, but I am stirred up. It’s just some arbitrary amount of time passing and yet it stirs me up. Most of the time I have no idea what time or day or month it is, and now I seem utterly attuned to all of this.
Saturn is currently transiting my South Node, possibly calling for a break with the past, a reevaluation of what really matters in life, and a push to be more conscious (aware of and responsible for) where I am heading. When we’re called to take a really deep look into ourselves and our lives, the whole question of death and the limits of life and it’s eventual finality is inescapable. This is one of the tasks of Saturn, which transited my natal Saturn exactly ten years ago.
I’ve been hospitalized a few times in my life. Each time, there has been a sense of peace that comes from a timeout in life—time away from the many obligations I don’t really want. Maybe it’s time for me to let go of these without needing to be hospitalized in order to do so. Maybe that’s what the fantasies of life-threatening symptoms and Saturn’s position in the sky is all about. Or perhaps I’m just sad and scared in the face of the passage of time.
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2 comments:
I only vaguely remember what it was like not to have a chronic illness. But I do remember, quite vividly, when I found out. I don't think about it much anymore, thankfully. It was scary. But your thoughts lead me to thinking about this issue of chronic illness and time, and change, and well - everything else it touches- which is about everything, to some degree or another.
For me, the news did not come with any particular medical crisis. It did come with the expected emotional and mental turmoil. At the time, I used to say -- everything changed, and nothing changed at all. I had to go to work. Bills came as usual. Laundry had to be done. I had to buy food. Calls had to be returned. Everything and everyone around me stayed the same - except perhaps those very few close friends I told. And then they too had to get back to work, to the laundry, and all the other regular activities of their lives. In retrospect, how lucky I was. At the time, it was confusing. Wasn't something supposed to change? I was uninformed, and suffered more than I probably needed to that first year.
I do think about and experience time differently than I did - and than I think others do. I'm impatient to finish things I start, and impatient to start things I think should be finished. I want the house done now, yesterday. If we need toilets, lets go buy them. If we want art, buy it. Here too, the other world doesn't really cooperate with my impatience sometimes. Getting things done runs up against the realities everyone else has - particularly as to the financial ability to do whatever I want and thing I should do now. I find I'm increasingly liberated and vocal about my time, and not as guilty when I am. I dn't have to answer the phone just because its ringing. I'm impatient with blabbermouths at work. How can they have so much time to go on about the same things. I don't like manipulations and posturing. I don't like to spend more time than necessary doing things that aren't important to me. And I do like deciding what's important to without having to justify it to anyone else. Why should I? And here I come up to a tension. Why shouldn't I? Who do I think I am? What rights or perogatives does my condition give me. What extra room do I expect people around me to give. Well, some extra room I think - yes, some extra room.
I love these comments, which echo much of how I feel much of the time. In response to the question Who do I think I am? You are the "liver" of the your life, the one in charge and the only one who should be in charge of this particular life-- your life. And the condition that gives you this perogative is the human condition. Each of us has not only the right but the responsibility to live our lives knowing they are short.
Thanks for reminding me of the things that have changed about me as a result of living with illness.
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