 Dusty:Starlight:Culture
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pain with no suffering
2003-06-04 1:06 a.m. Migraines are strange. Painful and liberating. Victims suddenly become aware of their brain's inability to function properly. One little trigger, one small misfire, and blood vessels and veins squeeze together, cutting off vital chemical reactions. First, dizziness, then, sight loss - always a particular point. What will it be today? Something peripheral? Or perhaps something straight ahead? Left helpless, fearing the coming pain, victims panic. But, in a curious moment of heightened awareness, we're able to marvel at the wonders and intricacies of the brain - how, every second, on a daily basis, it unscrambles images, produces beauty for us - helps pleasure be sought. Then, like most other enlightening thoughts, the visceral is gone, and the pain is back - all you're able to think about is the western medicine you need to fix your broken head. Perhaps all the pain is the price we pay for being allowed such an awareness - however fleeting it may be. Perhaps rather than cursing my brain's dysfunction, considering myself broken all these years, I'll begin to think I have a gift; an ability that very few people are allowed to. Picasso had migraines and created art. Maybe that's my motivation here - to see things from a different perspective, to allow myself the ability to search and search until things become something more complex and beautiful than I could ever understand at first glance. And who am I to think I understand everything? Who am I to decide the way the world works - even the way my world works - and declare it x or y? I would be a fool to do so. I have no right to do so, and I am well aware of that now - I only wish others could recognize the same; we'd all be a lot calmer. Sometimes I wonder exactly who Steve is. I'd like to say I didn't think much of him when we first met, that I was cool and had everything under control, but that would be a lie. I was scared of him; I tried to pass him off as a very smooth, fast talker; a model type with some time to kill. Men like that rarely paid attention to me, and if they did, I had better things to do than to play games with them. But something about him stuck. I was fascinated and obsessed. He was everything I was always afraid I couldn't have, and didn't dare wish for. Months went on, and his facade slipped away. I saw tender vulnerability, and strength unlike I'd ever known. He was so far beyond anything and anyone - I was touched when he told me he never trusted anyone like he trusted me. I felt some sort of accomplishment because of that statement - I imagined all the people who tried to know him but might have failed, because they were careless or met him at the wrong time in his life. There was something still dark and brooding about him - something I still wanted to get at. I wanted to be in his thoughts, and live through his past experiences with him. I'd never known anyone so independent and fearless. I wanted to know what he was thinking, all the time, through every mundane and near death experience he'd ever had. I remember telling him a few months before we went to Ghana that I felt like he turned a key in me - something that opened up my senses and helped me to understand that things weren't always what they seemed, or that they didn't have to be, if you didn't want them to. Steve always seemed incredibly fortunate to me. He would tell me story after story about surviving something by the skin of his teeth - everything from the stealing cookies variety to evading the cops to pulling out of a caved in building after an earthquake. At first, I thought, who is this lucky s.o.b.? Who does he think he is? He can take his sense of entitlement and shove it. But then I realized that what I mistook for entitlement was humility - it was an almost divine sense of understanding about his place in the world, and a genuine curiosity to explore that place. And those people in it. Including me. And that his "luck" was simply a sense of understanding, and pure faith that he would be taken care of somehow, like he always was in those situations, because he was and is a good person. Or at least, tries to be at every opportunity afforded him. So with an inspiration like that to constantly challenge my perspective, I can be honest in saying that life has yet to be boring here, even in our little apartment in Clifton, NJ. I've never felt this alive; I've never experienced even the cerebral this integrally. Who Steve is, though I have a better understanding of at this point, I still don't quite know. Is that a bad thing? I don't know for sure, but I don't think so. How well can we ever know someone, really? We can go on for years and years and be lying to each other, but we can't begrudge others that. Sometimes they don't even realize they were lying, because who they had been deceiving most all along was themselves. This is the most exciting part of my marriage, to me - understanding and getting closer to this mysterious man I've chosen to lie next to for the rest of my life. I was thinking about all of these things last night, in a flash, as the pain from my headache slowly started increasing, and I began to lose sensation in my lips. "What can I do for you?" Steve asked, sitting up in bed. "Should I take you to the hospital?" I shook my head, and tried not to cry. I couldn't even concentrate enough to understand what he was saying - the words just swirled around the pain and the thoughts crashing into each other like lightning in my head. Funny thing is, Steve seemed to understand me even though I couldn't talk much. He leaned in closer to me and reached out, pulling me into him like he's only done on two other occasions. It is a hug that penetrates and rips through my entire body. At first it's too tight and feels almost destructive but then becomes warm and insulating in the most impossible way, making my body feel bigger and warmer than it could ever be. I suddenly feel things -taste, sight, smell - that are impossible to feel. The peace, the vision, the energy that comes from him and into me is overwhelming - I don't want it to end. I feel like as long as we stay that way, the whole world can be anything I want it to be. That, I received last night - is it any wonder that I feel strange today? Of the many things I still have yet to learn about Steve, I've discovered just early this morning that he is a healer. Steve hugged me like that once in Africa, and once after the first few times we'd gone out together. Both times, and this last one - there was an incredible sense of familiarity in his hugs. I think this lifetime, I've finally found what I'd worked so long to get. Perhaps I'm the lucky s.o.b., huh? Will be less philosophical soon, i promise. bonne nuit, Theresa
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