These days, I think I can sum up my emotional state as:
"I'm still not proud of how I got there, but I am proud of how I got out of it. I'm still somewhat ashamed of how diminished I had allowed myself to become at that point in my life, but I'm intensely proud of- even moved by- the strength, hard work and determination I somehow drew from in order to not only beat the odds, but to break medical statistics and records."
In this entire process, this 10 month ordeal, it is these two spectrums of thought that make me the most emotional.
Shame and triumph.
Let me elaborate a little.
When I injured myself so greatly, and when I think about the possibility of how much worse it could have been, I just honestly and simply feel like I really failed myself. I feel like I really let myself down. A part of me really believes that I never would have gotten injured if I hadn't lost myself to such a degree, if I hadn't allowed myself to become so diminished. I could just have easily hit my head or back in my fall that could have paralyzed me, even killed me. So, even though I recovered way beyond what anyone predicted, I still feel like I failed myself by getting hurt in the first place.
However, with the same intensity of emotion with which I hold myself responsible for how miserable I'd become, for how lost and crushed I'd become- and I've always been a person with an intensely rich inner life and emotional landscape- I found equal, if not greater, determination and belief in myself.
Somehow, maybe out of nowhere?, there was a fire that began to burn in me again. Maybe it was my survival instinct. Maybe I was just so sick of feeling like crap. Maybe I just wouldn't stand for it any longer and so I sure as hell wasn't going to let this accident keep me from realizing parts of my life I dearly loved. Maybe it's *because* I was in such a low- and frankly, shitty- place in life, that I was finally able to say, "That's it. I'm not staying in this place. It's only going to be uphill from here, I don't care what they say."
However, it certainly wasn't as simple as just setting my mind to success and everything after that was a bowl full of cherries. Not only did I have serious physical healing and rehab ahead of me, but I had unprecedented emotional healing to do as well. The process was arduous, physically and emotionally-painful and it tried every ounce of resolve and patience in my being.
But, as I've come to see it, the magical thing this predicament did do for me was to turn my attention completely towards myself. Suddenly, my body needed every shred of care, love, attention, patience, compassion and understanding I could muster. These were precisely the sentiments I could not summon for myself previously.
So maybe my arm is what showed me how to love myself again. Perhaps it was shattering my left elbow that allowed me to put my heart back together.
And it was a long, long road with lots of tears and reflection. But cradled by love, love from family and friends and love- finally- for myself, I was able to slowly crawl out from my dark hole and into the light.
...which brings me to a metaphor that hit me awhile ago....
When you hit bottom, say like the bottom of a swimming pool, then you have something to kick off from... you've got that solid surface under your feet, because you sure as hell can't go any lower. From that solid surface (of hell) under your feet, you squat down and take one giant leap- like a springboard. From the bottom of the pool, you can only go up.
So that's what I did.
No comments:
Post a Comment