Despair

I am not someone prone to depression or despair. While I do get angry, hurt or sad, it does not take me long to shed those emotions and become re-balanced. Recently my mother used my back injury as a metaphor for when we become spiritually unbalanced and the harm that comes of it. The metaphor was apt, but it also pertains to how physical ills can quickly make us feel emotionally ill as well.

For two weeks I woke up every hour or two in devastating pain. Normally a back sleeper, my muscles were so locked up I had to sleep on my sides. However, every hour or so the side I was sleeping on would lock up and spasm, the electric heat forcing me to wake up and get out of bed. Hunched over I would shuffle to my husband's office across the hall so I wouldn't wake him (fruitless, really...he always woke when I did). Once there I would carefully get onto my hands and knees and sob. Eventually I could get onto the floor completely and stretch those aching joints and muscles enough to get back up and go to bed. Switching sides I would fall asleep only to rinse and repeat...all night.

There is something very bleak and dismal about being on the cold floor at 4 in the morning, body and muscles haywire, mind exhausted. It is so quiet at 4AM. And dark. The loneliness, the exhaustion and the pain are overwhelming. For the first time since some melodramatic teen years I began to yearn for death. This was terrifying. I want to clarify that I don't think I felt suicidal--I wasn't interested in ending my own life. It was just that the relief of death seemed so beautiful and desirable that all I could think of was how much better death would be than living in pain.

My back was so unbalanced I walked like Quasimodo, hunched and side-ways, feet shuffling. Emotionally I felt the same: unable to become centered, I veered headfirst into depression. Painkillers muffled my physical pain but amplified my despair. I was tired and I was sick in my heart.

I wish I had some great advice about how I pulled myself up and out of that cold and dark place. After a few epidurals (steroids) and some heavier painkillers I was, eventually, able to sleep for 2-4 hours at a time. It is weird when that little sleep still feels like a blessing. Sleeping helped a little. Friends would come and visit me and that helped a little. However, it really wasn't until my surgery that I felt the true beginnings of release from the despair I had been carrying for months. I can't explain what it was like to wake up with no pain. Overwhelming. Miraculous, maybe? I'm not sure. I know that there was a moment before surgery when I thought "if this doesn't work, I might have to consider suicide, because I simply can't live like this anymore."

There are people who live everyday with pain. Probably a good many of them with more pain than I was experiencing. They have talent, maybe, or some acceptance that allows them to remain balanced in their hearts even as their bodies are breaking down. I didn't have that strength and I am not ashamed of my weakness. The link between the physical body and the metaphorical heart is strong, though. So when things are physically tough the mental anguish can be overwhelming.

To anyone who has experienced something similar...I'm so sorry. For anyone currently experiencing it, I hope it gets better, from the bottom of my now-balanced heart.