I Didn't Just Wake Up This Morning With A Craving
I Write To Understand. I Write To Stop Time
Who doesn’t like music, right? And some songs a little more than others. Then it happens that the song that was so awesome and catchy just becomes… tired. Then sometimes, it moves from tired to eye-rolling. Finally, from eye-rolling to “Dear God, not again!” (Oh yeah, sorry this is late. Life with a baby)
I didn’t have anyone close to me who passed away as a child, and I think the first time I became painfully aware of life’s fragility was coming out of a coma.
For this Thanksgiving day in the U.S., I take the time to thank someone I’ve never met, someone without whom nothing of the past 17 years would have been possible.
Dear Angel –
That’s your name, right? That was the name you had in the police report, according to the young officer who spoke with my mother.
Continue reading “A True Story of Thanks: Pay It Forward – Never Too Late”
I may be cheating with today’s Daily Prompt, but I have recently decided to blog about things a little closer to my heart, as I think they make for better reading, so I feel empowered to take some liberties. The prompt was to take a story I had heard and embellish it for the sake of story telling, but this is going to be a little different:
I am going to take a story in my memory, a true story, embellish it with another, equally true story, and then just go on from there. 🙂
Continue reading “Not Just A Warm August Nap – A Bionic Hip!”
This is a true story, and it was something I entered for a Writing Contest.
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, 1929
I don’t remember much of that time in ’97, but I do remember when my doctor told me I couldn’t have children. The pins holding the bones of my shattered pelvis together would puncture my uterus as a child grew.
After lunch at work the other day, I escorting a a man in a wheelchair out of the building. During our trek, he was talking about the injury to his spine, but mentioned he could still walk “because I was an athlete and a Marine.” Since then, I’ve been marveling at how remarkable the human body is and especially what exercise does for someone.
Which makes me think of my hip. After the accident, my pelvis was shattered and reconstructed in a feat of orthopedic-magic. Seriously. Today, my ex-rays bring a crowd of nurses and doctors, because they can’t believe the work they did inside me. It’s like a museum in my pelvis.
This week, there is a prompt about a song that really affects us, and while I don’t have the obsession over music that some people have, I do have one song that… I don’t know. I have a visceral reaction to it. The first 20 seconds of Pearl Jam’s “Nothingman,” affects me like I didn’t know a song could. Even as I listen right now, as I sit here and write this… My heart clutches and it’s hard to breathe. I close my eyes and shudder a bit. I feel like a balloon with the air suddenly sucked out.
No matter where I am or what I’m doing, when I hear this song, I’m immediately back in a darkened house in the dark wee hours of the morning. I was a different person that night and at that point in my life. Though I didn’t know it then, it was the lowest I would ever be – the night before the accident. The accident that nearly killed me. The accident I would give anything to have not had.
Okay, so the response to this prompt about not being able to verbally express yourself is kind of a gimme.
After my car accident and the coma, I had word finding problems, which is common for head injury. That didn’t make it more manageable at the time. It took me sooo long to get a sentence out, because I was trying to remember what I wanted to say! I felt so awkward with my friends because I felt so damaged and inadequate. My friend Darren from rehab was such a blessing for me during that time, ’cause we both spoke slowly, so I didn’t feel inadequate around him. I also remember the frustration I felt at not being able to communicate with others, and fearing that I wouldn’t get better; that I’d be trapped inside myself.
Continue reading “Express yourself to respect yourself (TM Madonna)”
Hey.
Hey you.
Obstinance.
Stubbornness.
You need to get out.
No, really. You need to bug off, and get out of here, now.
No, you can’t stay. You cause me trouble at work, trouble with my clients, trouble with my family, trouble with Cohiba, even. You bring out the worst in me.
Plus, Obstinance, you’re a bully. You choke up creativity and you stifle kindness. You completely abandon love and even responsibility.
While you did help after the accident, Tenacity and Determination and I could have done it without you. Actually, come to think of it, we did do it without you – you just tripped over our feet from time to time. If you hadn’t helped, I wouldn’t have cussed out my nurses. I wouldn’t have unlocked myself from the wheelchair and pulled myself back into bed (which was really dangerous, by the by). There’s a lot of stupid stuff I’ve done that I don’t like; I just did it because of you.
So, listen, it’s not me, it’s you, and it’s just not gonna work. Smell ya later.
(This break-up brought to you courtesy of the Daily prompt)
In response to the Daily Prompt in which we are asked to : Describe a memory or encounter in which you considered your faith, religion, spirituality — or lack of — for the first time.
I love this prompt. I love this topic and I love God, a loving God who has always been with me, no matter what I did or railed against them.
Like anyone, I imagine, I’ve had a twisted path to this God.
I Didn't Just Wake Up This Morning With A Craving 