TRUTH

    When I first broke my back in 1980, I thought all would be well… It took some time to realize that I had damaged the spinal cord and was paralyzed.  I could bend my legs in bed, but I wasn’t getting the picture.  I had a bag attached to me to urinate… but I still didn’t get it.  I had surgery about 6 days after it happened.  Then it took a few days to heal, and then they put me on a tilt table in therapy to sit up because I had been laying down for so many days.  Gradually they sat me up and would check my blood pressure in case I was about to pass out.  Then they gave me weights for my arms and exercises to strengthen my upper body.  Then finally, they stood me up in between parallel bars and I couldn’t feel the floor or move my legs at all.  I flipped out.. I cried for a few days.  I was so angry at the world.  Then slowly, I started to feel better.  They may have given me drugs for the depression, I don’t remember, but I realized that I would walk again.  Not only walk, but be a hundred percent healed.  I got very happy.  Just peaceful.  Everything was beautiful.  The walls in the hospital.  The wonderful people taking care of me.  Life was perfect.  After 10 weeks, my parents brought me home.  The 3 hour ride felt wonderful after being in the hospital so long.  It was November and the leaves on the trees were changing.  I told myself to remember this anytime I was sad.  It was an adjustment moving back in with my parents but still the peace I felt was great.  This feeling lasted about a year.  I was trying to figure out what changed.  Was it the rods in my back moving and sticking out of my back causing great pain?  I don’t mean, sticking out of my back through the skin, but two bumps in my back.  Was it my father’s anger that was constant?  I really don’t know but I wasn’t as happy.  I saw Martha Beck talking to Oprah last week about this bliss she felt after surgery and realized she could feel it all the time if she told the truth.  She wasn’t cheating on her taxes, it was more the small things like saying she was fine when she wasn’t.    Or just being honest with herself.  She said sometimes she didn’t want to work out at the gym, but really enjoyed roller blading and would do that instead.  I saw a friend yesterday.  I could tell she wasn’t doing great.  She said she was not that good and we chatted briefly.  I have no problem with this.  It makes her very human and approachable so why am I so fake sometimes?  I was at church about a year ago and said hi to someone and he said, “Can you smile?” I did but it was weird.  I went to visit people I used to work with and we all were giggling and I walked up to one supervisor and said “Hello.”, and asked how she was doing and she said, “Can you smile?”  All I wanted to say was, “Why is that so important to you?” Instead I smiled.   

  Maybe I was so peaceful in the hospital because I spent some time feeling all my feelings of hopelessness and despair with the thought of never walking again and the bliss "feeling" was just underneath.  I remember not caring what anyone thought of me as I had my "breakdown".  How freeing.