Between Worlds

I get really scared sometimes.

Like, the other morning, when my blood pressure dropped suddenly and swiftly, and I couldn't catch my breath. I was struggling to remain conscious, terrified that if I passed out, I could hit my head and bleed to death before anyone found me. I got so scared that I felt paralyzed, unable to mobilize to get myself the help I knew I needed quickly. My breath was coming in short, quick gasps, my hands reflexively turning in on themselves from hyperventilation, my mind sending commands that my body could not execute.

Or, when, a few weeks back, I stayed up for four straight days because my body just wouldn't shut off. It felt as though there were trails of foreign bodies marching around beneath my skin, my eyes and nose itched with a ferocious fire, and electrical shocks were continually bombarding my heart, my brain, my gut. On the fourth night, all I could think was, "Alien invasion." I thought I was losing my mind.

There were whole days spent curled in a ball in my bed, the skin of my entire body engulfed in cold fire, every joint unimaginably stiff, sore to the touch, almost immobile, my head gripped by a migraine so powerful and miserable that simply drawing breath was indescribable agony. Moments when I suddenly realized that I was walking in circles in my apartment, unable to remember my particular mission. Long hours of simply not knowing if the pain was ever going to pass, if I was ever going to be able to think clearly again, if the itching and the voices and the delirium would ever let me go.

I was absolutely terrified. And, alone.

When being in your body is agony, it is very hard to want to remain in it. I have felt myself hovering outside myself much of the time these past many weeks, my thoughts far away from my body, my mind drifting through time. I wanted to go back, back to the moment before the insect bit me and injected its sewage into my bloodstream. I have cried, and wailed, and paced, and lost a great deal of sleep clinging to this desire, trying to will time to take me back to that very moment right before the bite, so that I could find that bug and kill it, and narrowly escape this hell. But, I can only be here, cultivating acceptance while concentrating all of my strength for the fight of my life, so far. I want my health back. I want my life back. I want the me that I have known and loved back. But, that is all an illusion. There is no back. There is only this life right now, whatever it brings.

I told a friend the other day that I feel like I am between worlds, but I don't have a shaman to help usher me where I need to go. "I guess I'm going to have to be my own shaman," I said. She affirmed that I am that. And, I think I always have been: only I know how to get me where I need to be.

I said, "I am struggling. I am trying desperately to hold on to the life that I have had, but I know that I can't, because it doesn't exist anymore, it is just an illusion. But, I am really scared to let it go, and surrender to the unknown, even though I know that I have to, because now it is weighing me down."

Today, an assuring voice- my own inner voice- instructed me, "Let go." I am ready to be whatever this time has wrought of me. However broken, bent, fragile, and frightened I may feel, there is a spring of courage welling up within me that gives me direction, and I trust that I will know my way.