On the Mend

I am on the mend. This means I am better. This means I am halfway back in the world. This means some days are better than others. This does not mean that I have energy or that there isn't pain. I took an eighteen minute walk last Saturday and vertigo plagued me for two days. I exercised yesterday because my addicted to the gym brother told me to "keep pushing it." It felt good until my life force drained, my insides shook, and I could see the world is really spinning with me on it.  This also means that I still think too much about me. I am so sick of me and this body. I am angry at my body. Angry at my mind and the words that come out of my mouth when I complain, or even when I merely speak up for my needs. People don't like sick people unless we're dying. Even then, some stay distant. I have always stayed distant from the sick which may be why I am not handling this summer of my sickness well. I don't know how to detach from my body. I am stuck in it. This summer has showed me the importance of compassion. Without it, I would be much worse and still in the dark place I fell into weeks ago (me in the bathtub, praying for Armageddon).  Those people know who they are...thank you.

I haven't been able to focus to read fiction. The other day, I told my friend that this suffering, this trapped inside a body swollen with pain and a maddening mind, has reconnected me to the suffering of others, and this broken body is this fallen world. She sent me a link of Eve Ensler's  Ted Talk.
http://www.ted.com/talks/eve_ensler.html

I am now almost done with her latest memoir, In the Body of the World. It makes me think of the sharp humor and listening skills of my Aunt Sue, of the good woman of Ashley (even if she never knew it), of Laura (who impacted my life more than she knew or will know unless we meet again in the next dimension), the activism of my sister and her fearlessness to love her friends, and the activism and art of Chere and the warm energy she generates, of Missy who lived in crack houses and sold herself but protected me from that man, of my mother and her desire to dance, of my father and brother who have passed but told Heather "We don't worry about that one. She is strong."  Of my Mimi and her lost mind and my other Aunt who takes care of her day in and out, and of how there is a world full of people that I have never met. I want to live. I want to be in this fallen world. I try to will my body to heal and it mocks me. I am convinced that I need the ocean. The salt, the cold, and the pull of God in the water is all my legs need to be strong again. And lastly, I am obsessed with memoirs now, with real people, with intimacy, with confession and suffering, with healing, with questioning, with human rights...Next I am reading Full Body Burden by Kristen Iversen, and then Ghostbread by Sonja Livingston (both professors at the University of Memphis).  I even dropped one of my fall semester fiction classes and replaced it with a Creative Non Fiction Workshop. It's a whim. I like whims. Whims belong to the living.