Metaphor

Disclaimer: Forgive this sloppy post. I've been struggling lately, so there are probably misspellings and things that might not make sense. Kanji are Chinese characters, common to both Chinese and Japanese.

I told my subconscious firmly that I was bored with my dreams. I was bored of what they meant. I was tired of the train stations with the trains that had a destination for everyone but me.

You can't get there, my dreams say. You can't get there from where you are.

I say shut up. Stupid, boring, agonizing dreams. I know what they mean. But in my unknowing, dreaming mind I still sprint for the plane I know I will miss. I endure Herculean tasks. Riddles, problems that can't be solved. The woman at the ticket counter hands me a pen and demands I write the kanji* for bell.

Damning, because I used to know it.

I KNOW I CAN'T GO BACK.
OKAY?
I KNOW.

Now dream of something else.

Dream of the Orchard.

The Orchard is not a dream. It's not quite an idea either. It's an intrusive little whisper in my mind.

Part of me is in an orchard that goes on forever. It is all seasons simutaneously there. The tree bear both fruit and flowers, while dead brown leaves carpet the ground and snowflakes fall from the sky.

Part of me is trying to get to the orchard. I feel traces of it. Absolutely concrete and absolutely vanishing, as if in my peripheral, the moment I try to focus my thoughts on it it disappears.

It reminds of stargazing, how I'd always have to look for certain stars out of the corner of my eye, because I couldn't perceive them looking dead-on. I'd be looking a patch of black sky, but in my peripheral, I'd be counting the stars of the Pleiades.

From the orchard I get a whiff off flowers, a gust of cold air, the sudden crunch of leaves underfoot. And then it vanishes.

When ideas are too big for my mind, they present as metaphor.

My torturous nine days in a Chicago hospital about a mile from where I lived are discussed metaphorically as an imaginary film starring Kim Novak. You could never guess that the two are the same experience. But that isn't always the point of the metaphor.

Doctor-less, I'm tempted to give up. No one will see me any sooner without a referral from a doctor. In anger, my mother called my former doctor. "She has been discharged from this practice," the secretary says firmly.

The central fact which is that I have a degenerative connective tissue disease, seems to be merely circumstantial to these arguments. It is not the crucial or central in any way to the discussion.

I went to urgent care because I knew I could get crutches and splints from them. I did this because I didn't have a doctor to write a script for them, and lacked the money to pay for them in full.

The pain is always there. Like a static. It occasionally rises in volume, dampening the world with its insistence. I do everything I can to avoid giving into it, becoming tired, irate, spiritless.

I feel I'm merely existing almost. I can't cook for myself at all. Can't do my own laundry. Can't stay on my feet for long enough. My hips click and jam and balk when forced to carry my weight.

I call another doctor and beg, trying to keep the tears out of my voice, but after I hang up, I punch the wall (when's the last I did that? junior high?) and start sobbing in anger.

My mother kneels beside me and hugs me. I try to wriggle away but I'm not strong enough. I'm not stronger than my own mother.

I really despise this body most times.

I got over my case of the 'if onlys' a while ago.

I just hate the way I talk to a friend and the friend tells me I can do all these great things and I just have a mental block.

And I lap it all up and think, totally!

My body reminds me that going out on brunch dates with old school pals is the exception. Being in pain and struggling up the stairs in my own house is the rule. And the new trick thumb on my left hand that led to me spilling hot chocolate all over the floor. This body ("I" had no intention of spilling anything) never tires of dropping and spilling things.

Rubbing Voltaren gel into my hands like lotion before and after typing. Forget writing longhand. I see a form and want to die inside.

The pain soaks my energy right up, like a sponge. I want to sleep forever, trying to get away from it. Even though I know it will make me look suspicious, I can't stand to the look the doctor at the urgent care in the eye, because if I see her face I will know whether or not she believes me.