From the Thailand Diaries . . .

With the Darkness

Alone in the darkness I lay in a narrow hospital bed unable to move very much for the drains, catheters and intravenous drips that protruded from various parts of my body, I considered that it’s been two days since the series of surgeries that have altered my life forever.

“It’s so dark . . . and cold”. The air is moist in the way that the air is always moist in Thailand. “This cold is eating at me,” I thought. My body lacked almost completely the ability to regulate its temperature efficiently.

It’s late, maybe 2:00 am and I’m left with only my thoughts . . .

“So I’ve come through it . . . to this dark night that is”. In fact, it would be several long hours before the day and its distractions would rescue me from the darkness that I now inhabited. I lay in this bed and willed my broken body – cell by cell - to heal itself. At that moment, I felt no better nor more important than this myriad profusion of tiny particles that made up who and what I was.

“Ok people, everyone listen up. This is the first time that I’ve called all of you to the shop floor. So here’s the deal – I need each one of you to do your part – to pull hard. We’ve all got one hellofa lot of work to do if we’re ever gonna get up outta this miserable bed.”

Was I begging, or praying? I’m still not sure if the entire enterprise was at best foolish and at worst futile. I was physically insulted in a way that I didn’t think I could come back from. But I wanted very badly to come back. I thought of Janet and Michael and what I had done to them through the course of this seemingly insane undertaking. My thoughts lingered upon my children “I wanted to see them again”. It was ALL I could THINK – but I had to shut it from my mind.

I’d be swallowed up in my guilt and sense of loss if I failed to do so. My decision to become whole was going to rip them apart and perhaps separate them from me forever. I wanted them to accept me - the whole me. But how could they? They could barely understand the forces that had taken their father from them in the first place.

And then this, the most selfish and ridiculous demand that I could utter;

“Lead me back from this edge – let me forget this – give me back my body – give me back my children – I was so terribly wrong!”

These thoughts assaulted me in rapid-fire succession, one stepping in front of the other and swirling all around me. I felt my throat rapidly tighten and my eyes begin to sting with the hot tears that tracked my face. I recoiled from the riot in my mind while my body lay broken. I willed myself to flee it. This was the guilt that licked at my soul. I put it off only to invite it back over and over. I felt a brief, and I knew only temporary, sense of release that was precisely counterbalanced by the recrimination that would always be my companion . . . and would always be waiting for me in the darkness.

To achieve my dream of over 40 years I had to preclude the dreams of my children. Can you number them? I can – every one of them. Worse, I had to deny them their dreams as yet undreamt.

And from the darkness came my answer, “ah there, there now, it’s much, much too late for all that. You've made your bed and for all those who once held you dear . . . you've made theirs too.”

© 2009 Renée Thomas all rights reserved