The Monster That Lives Inside of Me

Once again I have completely sunk back into the hole where the monster lives. . I’ll have one or two days of feeling almost human, almost normal, and I’ll think,

            “Maybe I can do something.”

            “Maybe I can go somewhere.”

            “Maybe I can clean out that closet today.”

            “Maybe my brain is clear enough to actually write a short story.”

            “Maybe I’m getting well.”

            And then I feel it.

           

            Slowly, like a sharp claw reaching underneath my rib cage and sternum, drawing its talons down against my muscle, my tendons, and my bones, it travels quickly. The claw closes and rips at me. It tightens its grip and my body drips into weakness like someone has encased me in concrete, and then I begin to tremble like the last fall leaf on a tree. 

          Try to take shallow breathes because it hurts too much when my rib cage expands. Little sips of air. 

          Tiptoe into the back yard at night, slip down into the dew grass, and cry where no one can see me. 

          Curl up into a tiny ball and rock myself in time with the pain that pulses with every beat like a toothache in my body. 

          Tell myself I’ll feel better tomorrow. That the doctors will call me and shout, “Eureka! We know how to treat you and give you your life back!”

            One day I’ll go back into a classroom. I’ll teach again. I’ll stay late after everyone has gone home, creating lesson plans that will turn literature into magic for my kids. After we read Of Mice and Men one kid will take his time gathering his books when the bell rings and then shyly come up and ask me why, with tears in his eyes, Lenny had to die, or her eyes will flash when she howls  her anger after Jack has killed Piggy, or he will pretend to be Mercutio sword fighting Tybalt.

            But none of that is ever going to happen again, and I open my eyes. I am in the backyard alone. The moon is a slice of a fingernail and the stars are teasing me with their sparkle. They mock me. The night air smells of tea olive flowers and the world is still and beautiful, and I am trapped in my own pain. It is wrapped around me like a thick quilt that suffocates. I want to breathe in the tea olive. I want to swim in the white beauty of the stars against the inky sky. Star light, start bright, take my pain away tonight. But I can’t unwrap myself from it. The pain beats like dead drums. Thump! Thump! Thump! The pain encapsulates. My brain is one entity. My body another. They are forever battling for control. Little sips of air, always tinier sips of air.

            Years and years of internal cuts and slices that lap over one another like waves on a shore, a nightmare time-stumble that is circuitous. One year bleeding into the next. Doctors. Xrays, MRIs, injections, infusions, toxic medications. Hopes raised, hopes dashed. Family and friends:

            “But you don’t look sick.”

            “I saw you yesterday and you were fine.”

            “Aren't you well yet?”

             Fuck them. Fuck them all.

            I want them to slither their brain into my body and tell me how to live, how to continue, how to open my eyes each morning.  I want them to show me how to not feel the pain, how to ignore it, how to get my life back. Against all odds, against all I think I can do, I somehow wake up. Each morning I am ripped from my dreams where there is no pain and where I am able to breathe deeply and run among wild colors and clouds and I can hop off deep cliffs like an astronaut on the moon. I am free.. until I open my eyes and then my body engulfs me and my brain screams as it registers the sharp pulses under my skin.

            Another day. Another day trapped.

            The pain and exhaustion and trembling and weakness will not kill my body like cancer or leukemia or any other number of fatal illnesses, but it chips away at my brain. It clouds my thinking and makes me sink into deep chairs and stare out the window for hours. It saddens me. It angers me. But there is not one damned thing I can do to control any of it. Maybe pain is supposed to be my life lesson. Maybe pain will bring me to some sort of enlightenment or actualization. Then again, maybe it will just chip away at me until there is nothing left but a sliver of bone with a bit of rotten tissue attached.