miércoles, octubre 31, 2007

you know you are ruined when...

Your entire life is filtered through a literary-academic filter.

Example: Inability to experience any life event fully until such time as it has been narrated and objectified to a greater or lesser degree. Hence, this post.

One week ago I sat trying to read for a class, waiting to meet some friends for lunch, when I was overcome with a wave of nausea too strong to ignore. I ascribed it to emotional fallout, having thought I had made some sort of decisive action, which was laughed off by the other parties involved. It turns out, it was something more. The nausea, I mean.

Late night. Nagging pain. Sleep. Another day passes without incident. Wednesday morning comes, I am still groggy from sleep, curled next to my growing pile of books, perused and set aside, organized in neat bibliographical files, dissertation proposal guilt lingering as I get another message on my sit-on-my-face-book, or as one friend and I coined it - my face... (we won't go into the silly social-networking and on-line interaction non-sense, I swore I would never get sucked in to anything again, and yet, it is so convenient, but I digress). My mother hasn't called, though she often does at this ungodly hour, forgetting the three hour time difference, or thinking that by 8:30 I should be up, which I mostly am, if sitting semi-clothed in front of a monitor can be considered "up," that is.

Ow. I lean forward and lick my dry, cracking lips. Something is decidedly not right. There is a pain, a sort of constriction that begins just below my ribs, on my back. I breathe in and the pain does not modulate. Exhale. It isn't sharp, but it seems to be increasing in intensity in micro-increments, asymptotically approaching a line that I have yet to discover. Inhale. "Mom?"
I have dialed my mom's number and she answers in a hushed "yeah, what is it? I'm in court, but I stepped out to take this." She doesn't usually answer, but she must have known.
"What do kidney stones feel like?"
"They hurt! Alot. Why, do you think you have one?"
"Maybe..." I whimper. My mother being one of the few people that gets to see me cry. My dad does, too, but he isn't good at dealing with me, preferring logic and planning to comforting me in my illogic. Not that he is unsympathetic, just that he hasn't mastered the art of long-distance verbal embracing.
"Go to the doctor." She instructs.
"I have class."
"Go to the doctor. Skip class."
"I can't skip class. It is only an hour. I'll go to the doctor then."
"Just go, Ilana. Listen, I have to go. Take care of yourself."
"Ok, bye mom. Love you."

So I go downstairs, and I can't eat anything because I feel a wave of nausea settle over me. I start to walk towards my bike but think better of it, because I don't know if I can make it all the way to campus (less than a mile) on bike. This reticence, in and of itself, should have been enough to make me go straight to the doctor, but, no, stubborn as an ox, and unwilling to let my misbehaving body dictate what I do with my day. I walk slowly, not quite limping yet, but more gingerly placing one foot in front of the other, across the parking lot to my ash-covered car. I manage to arrive and park without incident, 10 minutes to spare. I drove past the health center, and a tiny voice in my head had said, "stop... don't go to class, just come here..." but I managed to studiously ignore that voice, that self-same one that as I passed each possible turn-around said, "it's not too late, you can still miss class, you can still go there..." and moved, ever more slowly, like a gnat moving through molasses, towards my class.
"Breathe through the pain..." I heard my inner monologue say to me. "Breathe in..." "Fuck! this is more painful than childbearing labor pangs!" the other, conscious voice says to me. But I keep walking, a diagonal line halfway across campus, really, on a good day, a three minute walk. It takes me 15 minutes. "Ciao, Ilana!" says my Italian instructor, cheery until she sees my green face. "Stai bene?" she asks hopefully..."Sto..." I manage to gasp, "male... I think I have a kidney stone... una roccia? pietra? renale?" I stumble around for words to convey my meaning, of course English would be much more efficient, but I am stubborn, damnit, we have already established this fact, and I am trying to push myself. Always. She makes a sympathetic face, though I don't seem to have conveyed the gravity of my pain. "Mi dispiace..." she offers. I don't like it either, but she suggests I try to come into the class, and my rational apparatus has now been shattered by the unrelenting unidirectional pain that is eviscerating me as if it was a sewing needle with a mildly blunt end that had pierced me from behind only to turn around and poke back in the same hole, causing a burning sting on the re-entry. "Might as well try..." I hear myself saying, instead of the other voice which is screaming at me, "no! no! no! tell her you need to go. Make her understand that you are NOT ok." "But I am ok..." argues the other voice, the voice that speaks for the part of me that won't allow others to see me in a weakened state, ever. "It is only pain," says that voice, "you can just sit... and then go to the doctor, but don't forget to breathe, breathe into the pain..." it turns into a coaching voice as I am sitting, I try to focus for a few moments as there is a reviewing of the minimal information that has been covered in the week. "I can't do this. I can't sit through this. I could be teaching this, and I can't make myself sit through this because I might die right here. I might melt into a puddle on the floor. GET up! Ilana... go... now..." I mumble apologetically "non posso" but it sounds more like a labored grunt and a roomful of surprised undergraduates look over at me in perplexed sympathy. I get out into the sunlight and the violent nausea isn't so much present as it is now a pervasive woozy sensation. I think my blood sugar is low. "I shouldn't have run for and hour and a half last night," the real me voice chides. I am still trying desperately to sip the large cup of water that I don't know how I managed to procure, but am still clutching as I limp and breathe my way back towards my car, or towards my office building, or anything really that makes a little sense. Which nothing does. But the water makes me want to vomit, and I get less than 500 feet and sit on a bench, and try not to cry, curled into a huddle I call my friend T. the one male stand-in that does all the boyfriendy duties like picking me up and dropping me off at the airport, and letting me cook for him, and even staying up late into the night arguing about word etymology, without actually being one (he has a gf, which makes me feel guilt free). But he doesn't answer the call, and I don't leave a message.
Nope. No one else. Can't call anyone else. Why? Don't ask! screams the voice. 911? No the humiliation would be too complete. I ponder, or, not really ponder, as that implies some sort of detached distance, and I am most certainly not detached but rather absolutely animally present in my own pain. "Oh... mommmy...." I whisper, and then stop to wonder what it is in the essence of motherness that makes us invoke them at our worst moments. "I am going to faint right here, in the middle of campus, I can't even ask for help..." the voice berates me. There is another woman at the other end of the bench talking on her cell, she is oblivious to my universe of pain. I didn't want to disabuse her of her ignorance. I pick myself up, shuffle slowly, slowly, slowly, my bag feeling heavier with each step and each breath. Step. Breathe. Step. Breathe. "Come on, Ilana, don't stop. You are almost there. You have to control your breathing." I hear my mother's voice, those times that I have had melt downs, in Morelos, when I thought I wasn't going to be able to get us a flight to go see them, slumped on the cold scorpion-threatening floor. Sobbing uncontrollably, because it wasn't really about the flight at all, but everything else. Or the time when we had just moved to California and I realized that I was 1000$ overdrawn and had no way of getting paid for two months, and I called her at 3 am eastern standard time. It was her voice that coaxed breaths out of me, oxygen into me, it was her hand that I held when after 18 hours of labor they jabbed a needle into my spine. And my mind begins to wander, and I am watching people, totally unable to see me, astonished that I am so capable of appearing normal, or others are so willing to accept all that which is external to them as completely normal so as not to be implicated in any emotional uncomfortable confrontations, and I keep thinking about Susan Sontag, and "Regarding the Pain of Others" and wasn't it María Luisa Puga that wrote that book about pain and its effect on the human psyche, and oh my god I can't make it, I am not going to make it. And in that moment I make eye contact with a youngish professor exiting Ellison, and I see that he sees me, and see that he sees that something is wrong, and his eyes flicker the beginning of a question, but he thinks better of it, and I don't press the issue with my gaze, whimper, breathe, shuffle, whimper, exhale, bite lip. Almost there.

I have long abandoned any hope of making it back to my car, I think of the minutes ticking off the meter, and I don't care, because I don't ever use them. I have decided that I will go to my office building, take the elevator to 4th floor and collapse. I manage to do just that, almost. The man keeps walking slowly, distancing in a triangular path as our trajectories diverge. He wonders whether I need help, whether he should offer something, say something, do something. He decides not to intrude on my privacy. I suppose I thank him for this, though I had the same sort of dilemma not too long ago, waiting for the bus back from Acapulco to D.F., watching the cleaning ladies swab piles of sawdust around in intricate patterns that confused me terribly until I understood that they were drying the floor that would never dry alone in such tropical humidity, and there was a man, probably my age, sitting just behind me and sobbing quietly, alone. Most of me wanted to reach out and offer some sort of assistance, human warmth, comfort, but I was unable to do so, because I didn't want to shame him. I should have offered. I realized this as I was crossing, 35 minutes after I left class, the courtyard. The man disappeared, or rather, I forgot him for the moment, and in the most dignified way possible, waited for the elevator to descend, its salvation-promising doors to open with a solid metallic crunch.

Alone, in the elevator I double over, nose to my knees, my leather bag falls to the floor with a thud. When the doors open again, I have to will myself to lift it back up. I walk the twenty feet to the graduate assistant's door, knock, quietly. "Hi Carol," I whisper hoarsely. "How are you?" she asks before turning, closing out an email, sees my face contorted in pain, "Are you ok?" "No..." I half-sob as I slump into the chair and settle into a wind-sucking hyperventilation. "I need help..." I manage to meekly beg, I am burning inside with the shame of self-insufficiency, not, mind you because of my own stubborn stupidness, but because I need help. She runs to the CSO's office, he is sweet and warm and rubs my shoulders, runs for paper wet paper towels, mops my brow, listens to me babble about being sorry that I am making a scene. The financial officer silently brings me a box of tissues from across the way. The paramedics are called, I can't fight it, I can't breathe, I can't think... but I am telling stories. STORIES! Why? Because it is the only way for me to order the universe and I am laughing through the gasps for breath, and they are laughing with me, because I am telling jokes, not knock knock-funny jokes (which despite my East-Coast Jew upbringing, I abhor) but self-deprecating ones. I am not a Hegelian subject. I have descended into a hell of dependence on others. My brow is mopped again. We are sharing childbirth stories, and hospital stories, and the paramedics are still not coming, and I am breathing, breathing, breathing. And I am confessing to Craig that I am embarrassed that my response is to be thinking of Susan Sontag instead of myself, and he mops the cold sweat from my forehead and massages my shoulders, and lets me groan about the fact that I have been permanently mentally damaged by the study of literature. They finally come. I am somehow able to give a brief medical history, and when asked to rate the pain on a scale of 1-10, I manage to concede 8.! "You are such a wimp! This is definitely not an 8... maybe a 6... really Ilana, you are just feeling sorry for yourself," hisses the voice at me, while the other one wails in lamentation. "I can't believe that my co-workers know what method of birth control I use!" scolds the inner voice, the one that I don't care, can barely hear, have chosen to ignore. "It matters very little..." the other voice shoots back when I am distracted, "it can't be worse than them seeing you like this, in utter lack of composure." I stand, sit on the gurney, am rolled down the hall, into the elevator, into the back of an ambulance. My friends shoot me quizzical looks as I am carted by them. I cannot offer answers. The pain eases, after a bit, I am freezing, dehydrated, held in the "detaining" room, x-rayed, dispatched. I drive myself to the hospital for a CT scan and drive home before allowing myself to take any narcotics.

And then the strangest thing happens. My colleagues begin to call, leave messages, texts. People I never would expect to have the slightest interest in me, upset, offering help. "She's human after all," they all must be thinking. Help is offered. I accept very little, but just a little. I bike to work the next day, buy flowers for the people who helped me. I apologize for my need. But it isn't over, and I spend the next five days in various states of drugged stupor.

I. is on the phone with me, "Mommy, oh mommy... I wish I were there to take care of you."
"But baby, I wouldn't be able to drive you to school."
"But then you wouldn't have to go up and down the stairs... and faint, and hit your head and die."
"Well I am in bed," I reassure her, "and I have water, and everything I need."
She is worried because when C. her "sister" came over on Saturday morning because I had promised them apple pancake, I had a low-blood-pressure incident, and nearly fainted with knife in hand. The cold sweats and twitching in my shoulders past, I got back up, finished preparing breakfast, and managed to bake pumpkin bread for the evening's party, and cook salmon with an apricot-mustard sauce. One must eat well, even when one is ill, I always say.
"I love you baby...Mommy will be fine."
"Ohhh... mommy, don't shower tonight, so you won't fall and hurt yourself."
"Ok, baby..."
And my mother tells me that this entire week she has been sleeping in a dress that I left behind because she says it smells like me, which it must, or at least of me mingled with massage oil, because I slept in it after the last massage I got. And I feel loved, and protected, even though I am alone. And I stop taking the pain medication because I hate feeling stoned and out of control, and finally, finally, finally, after I spent a week working assiduously from bed, I am better, and maybe tomorrow even I will go back to my normal routine.

lunes, octubre 22, 2007

words have lost their flavor.
i think I might die now.
but that would be
too, too easy
and I can't
seem to
let it
go.

miércoles, octubre 10, 2007

stumbling but not falling

I have discovered that one of the only problems with working out regularly is that I am subjected to the television programming on the screen that hangs above my head. This shouldn't be a problem, of course, if I had a better filtering apparatus, but alas, I am yet an imperfect human being in so many ways, and as we know, I am fully incapable of seeing words march across a screen without trying to read them.

Why is this a problem, one might ask, and the answer is really that I create a pain-free bubble around myself whenever possible. I avoid yellow journalism, and watch no television. I don't want to see what's HAPPENING NOW, especially if it involves young children shooting each other with guns that their parents have made available to them, either through actual purchase or voting habits that allow the NRA lobbyists to hold sway. I don't want to know about what celebrities have been so annulled by their empty life of stardom and conspicuous consumption, false idolization and absurdity, that they have drunken or drugged themselves into oblivion and landed back in the realm of the mere mortals in jail, or without children, overweight and hurting. I don't care, and I don't want to care, and I don't want to be assaulted by these things when I am trying to exorcise my demons, escaping through my pores and evaporating on my skin.

I try not to look, and be sad. I try not to shudder in empathy for those tiny little girls that are running themselves into nothingness because they have been lead to believe that the less space they take up, the better they are at being women. And still I run, and sweat, rivers, oceans, tears that are not tears pour off of me, I lift my shirt up to my face, I am not even breathing heavily, I am angry, angry, angry.

I am angry because no matter how well I do my job, no matter how much I try to avoid conflict, and dot my i's and cross my t's and organize my time so that I will be where I am supposed to be when I am supposed to be there, there will still be people who want to make things difficult, because they thrive on conflict, where I just shut down.

But I am learning, and setting my boundaries, a little, slowly, still, defending myself, allowing myself to be angry, to seek the help I need, the support. I will not crumble just yet, I think, even if there are children killing each other, and my life means nothing, even if I am drowning in an ocean of eternal solitude. I burn through it, muscles aching, stretching, burn, the pain is physical, not emotional, and I want more.

So I will forgive this minor detail, I will keep running, and singing under my breath, shaking my head to the beat and breathing in shortened breath. There is no finish line, and for a few moments, just a few, I'l enter in illo tempore, to the language and meaning of myth.