fears and dreams

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Monday morning blues. Let them be brief...

--My son turned18 yesterday. He and his girlfriend and their babygirl came over for bagels and chocolate pudding pie. We gave him four new tires, how’s that for symbolic? See ya. Stay safe.
--I have a disappointing resurgence of an irritating and mildly debilitating injury. I have nursed it along, including thrice weekly rehab, since January.
--This past weekend I retreated with other faculty from my family medicine residency program. Our annual event. The group has been stable for over 15 years. We’ve recently lost two to retirement and by next fall will have two new members.
--My mother’s cancer chemical number is rising, ovarian. I just loved every minute (even the hard minutes) that I spent with her on her recent two-week visit here.
--I am heavily involved, hours a day, in writing my final for Memoir Class. I am trying to show how it was to be me during the early reaction phase from an indecent sexual assault that occurred in 2007. Not to tell, mind you, and not to summarize! for god’s sake, but to show my life in reaction, acutely and realistically – so the reader can live it on the page. Again and again, until I get it right.
--I have a card sitting on my kitchen table. It tells me I missed certified mail and need to pick it up. It’s hot. Scary. It is from the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Body Work, NCBTMB. I sent in a formal complaint about the sexual assault in late 2007. They took my statement by conference call six months ago. I’ve been waiting for the determination. It’s here; I just need to take that card to the post office this morning to find out whom they believe in this ongoing He said-She said saga.

Is it any wonder then, that I had a dream last night that I was under dark murky water, alone and scared? Or that once my feet hit bottom it was heaped up with dead bodies? Men mostly, middle aged and bald, or shaved with growing stubble, naked and muscular, buoyant somehow when I had to kick off of them to get back to the surface. I woke up in a start with palpitations and a long and intense hot flash.

I took an antacid and wandered reluctantly back to dreamland as the trees outside swayed noisily in the wind and the rain dripped down my window.

Memoir.
My goal over the next few months is to write a memoir. I already have thirty pages in rough draft. This morning, after reading "Writing True" by S. Perl and M. Schwartz, I decided to do this prompt: "Finish the line "I want to tell you that ..."" Here is my response:

I want to tell you that something bad happened to me. To which I hear, “So?”

I want to tell you that I reacted to it in a way that would have been unfathomable to me prior to the fact of my reacting in that way. And that it is unfathomable to most people when they hear how I reacted, especially people whose job it is to sit in judgment of others.

The reaction felt as if it had an infinite number of layers, like mirroring a mirror, like stop sign ahead signs (stop sign ahead sign ahead…). There was, of course, the initial reaction, or lack of reaction, in the moment of the incident, then the reaction to that lack of reaction, then the reaction to the reaction to the lack of reaction, and so on.

I want to tell you that it is not at all uncommon for humans (especially, I suspect, women) to react in the same way. And this is what needs the light of day shown upon it.

And, for me, this ‘something bad’ was major enough to completely knock me off course… but minor enough for me to remain mindful of, and, in fact, record through daily writings, the mental decline and subsequent (complete?) recovery.

So, I believe that if the emotional/spiritual/physical reactions to this type of life-changing event are played well, are allowed to exist in full, with reasonable support, then human growth - incredible, unforeseen, deliciously rich, I-wouldn’t-trade-this-part-for-the-world, growth can happen as a result.

And that’s the story I’d like to tell.


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