I don't know what I can attribute that lack of productivity to. I'm not short on motivation--believe me, I have plenty to say. I suppose my mind just isn't working the way it used to. The articulation is what I've struggled with.
When I returned home from my hospital stay, things were really jumbled. That, I'm fairly certain, came from taking about 8 oxycodone per day. Before I went under the knife, I bought a small library of books that I'd been meaning to read and was really looking forward to several weeks off with nothing to do but dive into them headfirst. But that didn't happen. Each time I opened one and tried to read, my mind wandered off into some very strange places...places I didn't know existed.
I'm sure it was the narcotics, but I was experiencing a very real kind of lucidity. It wasn't exactly a stream of consciousness or an epiphany. It was more of an out-of-body experience, like living in another world. Let me explain as best I can...
Ever had deja vu? Well, I was having that sensation several times per hour. I was remembering (vividly), dreams I had a decade earlier, dreams my mind had buried somewhere. As Sam Kinison would say, "I was seeing Aztec temples."
I mention the narcotics, but then there was the insomnia.
Until last week, I moved around in a small, painful world between my bed, a leather recliner and the bathroom. The soreness in my chest - stemming of course from whatever they did to pry me open (I don't even want to know) and replace the valve and section of my aorta - prevented me from getting comfortable in most positions in which I was used to being comfortable. For lack of a better phrase, I was WAY out of my comfort zone, forced to sleep on my back, something I had never been able to do, and to sleep in a recliner for several hours per night, just because the two jagged holes in my abdomen caused excruciating pain (yes, you read that correctly: EXCRUCIATING. Ever had holes cut into your abdomen?) whenever I tried to get out of bed. I would sleep in my bed for an hour or two, nut-up to the pain and get out, then climb into the recliner wrapped in a blanket. There I would sleep for another hour or two before waking up and watching TV until I fell asleep again. That would last until about 4:30 a.m. The rest of the day would drift by in a fog of pills, naps, whatever.
In the dark depths of many of those rough nights, I'd sit in that chair and really struggle to rid myself of disturbing thoughts.
I never thought I was really over losing my dog, Flower. She was my best friend. But for a week or two, I didn't think about her. For the most part, my recovery and everything that went along with it consumed me. But as my mind idled, memories of that horrible night flashed in and out. It's like the faucet that leaks one drop at a time and drives you crazy. Or a street light that casts its orange glow into your window at night, keeping you awake. Sometimes it consumed me and the tears would flow. No matter how hard I tried, the images would not go away; her last breaths...how I felt when I knew she was gone, that drive I took to clear my head, but couldn't hardly see straight for the tears that blinded me. It's difficult now to even write these words...
Flower was everything to me. Losing her was like losing a child.To this day, I can't really talk about her death or look at pictures of her. I want my Flower back. I want to look out in the hall in front of my bedroom and see her sitting there, waiting for me. Just the other day, I sat on the step in the hall to tie my shoes and half-expected her to climb up there with me, her white, speckled paws resting on the tile, kissing me goodbye when she knew I was leaving for work. I even miss waking her from bad dreams in the middle of the night. I'd often hear her whimpering in her sleep and gently wake her, as if I were protecting her from something. But in the end I couldn't do anything for her, and that kills me. It really hurts. Recently, a decree from Pope Francis that all animals go to heaven brought back all the pain. I don't want Flower to be in heaven. I want her with me, damn it. Is that selfish?
What I've endured during my surgery and recovery pales in comparison to the pain of losing Flower. I just wish I could think back of the many great memories with her and smile...but I'm so far from that. And it scares me.
I do have a bright future to look forward to, with some possible career opportunities (one in particular that I can't really talk about yet, partly because I don't want to jinx it and partly because it's still very unofficial) on the horizon and a beautiful, amazing woman who cares about me. So things are looking up.
All the "woe is me" crap that I've spilled out in this post isn't intended to make anyone feel sorry for me, because if a majority of people had my life, they'd have nothing to complain about. I have what people are now referring to as "first-world problems". It's only intended as therapy. Maybe some of my friends and acquaintances will read this and glean a little bit of understanding of who I am...but now I'm rambling.
“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”
-Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye
And I can't use the narcotics as an excuse anymore...they're all gone.
I will end with these parting words: GO NAVY...BEAT ARMY!
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