"Feed me, Seymour"
I have yet to meet a little girl who
doesn't love mermaids. Of course, I was no exception. I wanted to be
a mermaid, especially after seeing Daryll Hanna in the movie Splash.
Over the years, I've met or heard of countless little girls named
Madison, after her character, and sure enough...the mothers are
always in my age group. There's something about the thought of just
vanishing into the sea, that seems so freeing; like flying under
water.
I used to sit for hours, or sometimes
lie in bed, with my eyes closed but not really sleeping, and I would
imagine what it could be like. The daydream I visited the most,
involved waking up in my own bed, in my own bedroom, but the world
would be covered with water. Everything looked the same, only instead
of a little girl, I was a beautiful creature with a shimmering tail
and flowing hair. I would swim out from under my covers, and instead
of being confined to walking to the bathroom, or the living room, or
the kitchen, I could just swim there...or, I could just swim out the
window, never having to meet the pavement. I could swim over the
house, or around it. I could swim to my school, but not have to go
in. I could swim right over the top of that, too. Even though the
world I knew was still there, being under the ocean made it more
beautiful, more limitless.
I've got about nine or ten radiation
treatments to go, which should only take a couple of weeks. Even
though chemo made me feel worse, this is more exhausting, and the
damage to my skin and muscles has become quite painful. The machine
is large and strange-looking. It can be intimidating, especially when
I'm having to lie perfectly still in a fixed position, as it moves,
and rotates it's enormous head around me, getting way too close for
comfort, much like a dangerous beast sniffing at a helpless creature,
examining it from all sides, while making the decision whether or not
to devour it. I recently named the machine Seymour. It's not as easy
to be intimidated by something named Seymour. But then...Seymour has
had many names.
The bed that I am positioned on,
cushioned by a fitted “pillow”, moves up and down, back and
forward. It moves me closer to the machine, and I stay in that spot
until treatment is done. This takes about fifteen minutes. You can
think about a lot of things over the course of fifteen minutes, or
you can focus on a few. My treatments are in the morning, so often
times, I'm sleepy. Even in my still and tired state, I remain awake,
and sometimes...I drift.
I don't remember how many sessions I'd
had before it happened. Lying there under the machine, I returned to
my mermaid self. I watched Seymour turn and move and hover, and
realized that if the world was covered in water, I could just swim
away. The bed would not have to resume its prior position. It would
not have to move at all. Even with the machine resting right above my
face, I could just swim.
This daydream came to me in the middle
of the afternoon, today. I was coming home from visiting my physical
therapist. We had decided that my burns were too severe to be able to
perform the exercises needed in order to regain full use of my left
arm. On Andresen, as I was pulling forward through a green light,
first in line, an SUV blasted through a red light, right in front of
me. Had I not hit my breaks immediately, it would have been
devastating. I'm sure I would have survived, but not without being
badly hurt. The car would probably have been totaled. Managing to
miss the collision entirely, as the irresponsible SUV driver sped
down the road, I continued my journey, and soon the world was under
the ocean, with beams of light peeking through the clouds, reaching
down. Looking at the glow from above, I found myself somewhere
between ocean and sky, remembering how I used to sit watching the
robins in the back yard. How I had envied them. How I had longed to
fly. It was then that I wondered, if there was much of a difference
between flying and swimming. The freedoms seem the same, after all. I
could dip, dive, twist and soar just as easily under water, as I
could in the sky. Perhaps there is no difference. Maybe the ability
to flow freely is not confined to a specific climate or shape. Maybe
that's where the magic is. So many things happen to our bodies, and
we find ourselves in the strangest of places. No matter where I am, I
suppose there will always be that place behind my eyes, where I'm as
free as a bird, and as graceful as a mermaid.
"I guess I'm an underwater thing,
so I guess I can't take it personally.
I guess I'm an underwater thing,
I'm liquid running.
There's a sea secret in me.
It's plain to see it is rising,
but I must be flowing liquid diamonds"
~Tori Amos
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