Wednesday, September 26, 2012

The Pain and the Comfort

“Wake up!” The pain yells from far away. A knife exiting my stomach cutting through my organs slowly like an ice burg creating new terrain. My gut yells again, I grab it full handed feeling it screech through my fingers, tense it pushes back. My voice comes into the world moaning as I dart up now suddenly sitting bent over my stomach. I cannot contain my voice, my moans so loud, in the waking world now.
    My voice wakes Patrick and he rolls over “Baby what wrong?” He darts up to wrap around me, the sound of sleep still in his concerned voice. The sheets grab me warmly as his hand comes to grab my waist and hold me, his hand warmer in there place. I am reluctant to answer, I have not revealed to him the pain that I have been habitually dealing with every morning.
    This pain. I have consulted so many people, friends, acquaintances, my parents and my gynecologist about the pain. No one has had any suggestions. I wouldn’t have said anything to Patrick if I could have contained my voice. I was screaming in my sleep he told me later, “Babe, what’s going on? Are you o.k.?” Patrick comforted me insisting I share.
    “I feel awful, this is not new, but this is bad. More painful then it’s ever been. I’m in such pain,” I darted out my words between deep breaths. “It’s been like this every morning for a year or so.” I moaned through what seemed like a monologue. 
    “Why don’t you stop eating wheat and fat, see what happens?” His words of wisdom dropping on me like a cold bucket of water. Waking me up to the reality of the situation.
    “Why has no one told me anything like that,” I reacted after I had let it wash over me. “Why didn’t I think of that? Of course,” a moment of true enlightenment.
    You are what you eat has proved to be an undeniable truth. The difference between healthy and the very distinct un-healthy me. I have been sick all my life. I had all sorts of sinus headaches and congestion. I was prone to the flu and whatever else was around. I would sleep for a full twenty four hours but more often fourteen to sixteen. That was regular. My Parents and my friends response to my over sleeping was,” I guess you just need it.” Turns out I did.
    I am 23 years old and this is the first time I have felt like a healthy human being, functional and productive. It will be a year since the day I woke up with Patrick Screaming in about two weeks from now. I was twenty two in October 2011, when I learned I had been very sick for a long time. It marked a new era. A new beginning and an avenue to see things differently. Pizza, bread and butter, pasta are weapons of mass destruction blowing up my insides and dragging me down to the depths of pain and un-comfort. I have to check and re check ingredients. I know a great deal about what I put into my body now. It is important because it is directly related to my function.
    Patrick has been there, this new discovery drastically changed my life. First effecting my habits and so everything else. He has been by me, holding my waist through it all. His green eyes asking me to look into his for the comfort I need. His soft, computing hands taking a break from the mouse and the key board to support me. They glide over my spine again and again. Feeling my shoulders and neck while I puke in the garbage can next to our bed. Letting out the whole night of fun with food and drink with his Family. Turns out it’s not just wheat, rye and barley but dairy too. His long hair resting on my flesh as he leans in to kiss my shoulders over and over. “It’s alright babe. Everything’s going to be fine. Just let it out.”

Daddy


Dale Earnhardt is looking down at me, his arms crossed. He wears a slight smirk beneath his iconic mustache, my father wears one just the same. Dale’s sunglasses are gleaming with the checker flag. He moves with my daddy’s back the creases of the black shirt he is printed on.
    My Daddy stands upright on both his feet equally weighted about shoulder width apart. “Come here, I’ve got to show you something,” his thick, grease imbued hand waving me over, welcoming me to stand at his side and look down into the front of the hood he is standing over. Flash light in hand, he points his light to another piece of machinery in front of me, “this baby, now listen because you will need to know someday.” He says this before telling me how anything works.
    He whipped his hand on a red shop rag, already spotted with grease. He smells the way he always smells, he’s been wearing the same cologne as long as I can remember paired with the heavy smell of cigarettes, motor oil, and the OrangeOff used to clean it. He smiles at me, the tips of his mustache lifting at each corner, revealing his lips a bit more as they stretch across his teeth, opening wide I can see his bottom teeth too. His cheeks jolly and pink as you might think of Santa Claus. He’s laughing at the joke he just made. He knows about the world, I can see it in the waves of his dark brown shinning hair and the way he wear’s his washed out Levi work jeans. There are many things I have not seen but I know about them somehow in his deep blue eyes.