B57) The Accident Part 4

I was oblivious as to how I looked. When I got home from the hospital and had a chance to see myself in the mirror I found it disturbing. I looked like death warmed over. Green, yellow and pale are words that best describe my appearance. Worst of all the thousand yard stare was back. It’s the look of terror in my eyes. This look more commonly found in the eyes of those on the front line of the battle field during war. I remember the look and I hate seeing it again.

They put radiated dye in my bloodstream the morning of the accident. This was for the CT scanner. Normally you are in there for thirty minutes or more. They shoot the radioactive dye into me and the images can be captured in just a few minutes.

I remember being in the CT scanner. I remember talking to the nurses. Telling them about my pain and the seemingly ineffectiveness of the pain meds I have been given.

I cannot go into that scanner again without the aid of a zanax. The memory and horror are too powerful. The CT scanner is the worst but every visit to the doctor brings back more of a memory I want gone. Sitting in the waiting room, smelling the smells, seeing doctors, nurses and support staff remind me of what I am trying to forget.

"Please go away" I tell the memory.

I close my eyes. With all my might I wish the memory gone ................... to no avail.

I shake and tremble on the inside. Nobody can see it. It’s a curse. Residue from the accident.

The pain and agony was there when I woke. The pain was with me all day. The pain was with me when I went to bed and the pain woke me every night. Every single night without exception I wake up to a terror induced pain. I’m soaked. My hair, my pillow and the sheets. This is the new normal.

There’s nothing normal about the new normal.  Waking up every night soaked, consumed with terror and pursued by agony. I cannot escape it.

"Go away. god damn it"

Pain cannot be reasoned with. You cannot negotiate with terror. The words fall on deaf ears. Pain is a cruel master. Unforgiving. Unrelenting. When I close my eyes I can feel the impact. The memory of slamming into the car and being catapulted off the bike. I’m flying. God help me. I don’t want to be flying. Not like this.

I relive hitting the ground and remember sliding and tumbling down the street. I felt like a rag doll. I recall thinking during the accident, I need to stop. I need to stop tumbling and sliding but I had no control.I could not stop myself.

I remember it all. The memory feels like a fucking curse. I don't want to remember. I don't need to remember. It serves no purpose. Only torment. I wish I could have these memories taken away. Surgically. Methodically. I've spoken with others having had similar accidents. They have no memory of their accident. What a gift. I wonder, why me? Why do I get to remember? why do I have to remember?

4:00am. It's always 4:00am. This seems to be the bewitching hour for me.

I wake up. again. I’m shaking. Hyperventilating. Soaked in sweat. Completely covered in terror. I feel incapable of calming myself down. All I can do is lay there alone in the dark, remembering, trembling with a steady stream of tear falling off my cheeks.

It feels like prison all over again. No longer am I constrained by walls and shackles. Now I am a prisoner of pain. I'm being held against my will by something I cannot touch. I cannot get my arms around it. I'm a captive of pain and terror.

I don't know how to fight this?

I am blessed in having someone in the guestroom down the hall but when I wake in the middle of the night it’s such a lonely experience. I want to call out

“Help. Please. Someone. Anyone".

but I don't call out. Why interrupt their sleep because of my pain? It would be a month before I experienced my first glimpse of life without pain. There's a desperation in wanting to feel normal again. I want to go for a walk. I want to go for a run. I want to get up and leave my pain behind.

The pain rejects that notion without discussion.

Whatever life I had before the accident is gone. Ten years of work gone. Everything was taken and in its place was pain and terror. It doesn’t seem equitable.

There’s nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Where ever I go the pain is sure to follow. All I could do was lay there and twist in the wind of agony and pain.

I learned things about pain that I never knew. Pain is insidious in nature. Pain does not make requests. Pain makes only demands. When those demands fail to be headed, pain punishes. sometimes more severely than others.

Pain is such a cruel master. Pain wants you to think it’s giving but it’s not. Its an illusion. Pain not giving. Pain is selfish. It’s a taker. It wont give and inch. It wont give a penny. It’s interest only in taking. Please believe me, what pain has to give, you do not want. Once you have it, it’s too late.

Pain takes and it takes and it takes. It takes a little more from you every minute of every day. When you think you have nothing left to give the pain will demand more. Even more. Even when you are running on empty the pain will take. This is the danger zone, when pain takes after you have given all you  have to give. Now you are running a  deficite. This is what pain really wants, for you to owe.

I felt relief when the pain began to subside. The first morning I woke up and realized I was not in agony,  It felt like a miracle. ---- then I moved. slightest movement sent me tumbling back into the arms of agony.

The constant agony began to ebb and flow like the tide. But the pain, unlike the ocean, would stay gone a little longer each time the tide went out. I was moving in the right direction. A little more. A little more. A little more. A little more relief each and every day from the constant agony. Even if it was only another minute added to the time I was agony free, it felt like progress. It was progress.

The pain would go but, much to my  chagrin, it left in its place trembling. I was trembling but only on the inside. One of my first thoughts about the trembling, I’d rather have the pain.

Who am I now?