Rush of my Heart

The house is silent.
I sit here in the semi-darkness squinting at my blaring computer screen, thinking about how just a few hours ago my mom mentioned that I had no white in my eyes, only red. That’s gross. And just another reason to avoid a mirror at the end of this long day.

I know I should sleep. How many hours until I stand before a class, parroting off spelling words and asking students to write legibly? Too few.
How many hours until I roam a small playground, bandaging scrapes and hugging the new kindergarten children who still miss their mothers as the jump ropes lie abandoned on the asphalt? Too few.

I started a new round of Physical Therapy this afternoon, being recently told by a new doctor to see a CRPS PT specialist. Apparently, those exist. Today I met with the man for the first time. As I sat in his too warm office in the late afternoon letting him bend my leg in directions it hasn’t willingly gone in years, I listened to the rain on the roof and fought my desire to be anywhere else but beneath his florescent lights, hearing the paper beneath me crinkle loudly each time I shifted uncomfortably beneath his hands.
“This isn’t going to be pretty,” he said, “your nerves are broken, and the only way to attempt to manage the pain is to increase the signals that are indicating danger to hopefully show them how wrong they are..in the long-run.” I sucked in my breath and tried to force my lips back over my teeth in some kind of socially acceptable sign of consent.

I felt the eyes of the other therapists and patients on me with professional and general curiosity when this new man made me walk out of the examination room and through the open style gym so that he could watch my movements. My cheeks suddenly flamed to life, and I felt humiliation wash over me in a nauseating wave as I looked down at my exposed and awkward legs.
“Duck footed, knock kneed, pigeon toed, flat feet, and an unbalanced favoritism of the left leg” the therapist announced after I’d taken one painful turn around the room. “Let’s see you do it again.”

On the dreary drive home through the rain slicked evening streets, I thought about my new therapist’s request to see me 3 times a week for treatments. I laid my head against the window and let it cool down my still warm skin as I kept telling my heart to be thankful. Sometimes the heart is stubborn.

My eyes are watery with sleep, but what is there to distract you when you can’t defend your mind against the night-time plunderers? In my eyes, sleep is as close as you can come in everyday life to a situation such as leaving your car door unlocked in a bad neighborhood with your purse on the front seat. It’s an open invitation with no real defense system against intrusions of any kind. I suppose by writing about it in my waking hours, I’m not really distracting myself while I am able anyway, so what’s the point?

I’m not sure if I’m making sense anymore. All I know is I used to have an escape. I used to have my music. But somehow, somewhere, it was lost along the way, and no matter how I try to retrace my steps – I just can’t find the spot where it fell off the wagon. So many times I’ve picked up my guitar and rubbed my unblemished fingers on my old guitar strings just to hear them sing again. And though my fingers can move for a time, they fall back into old patterns, worn out tracks, and my mouth won’t open. My beautiful guitar seems to mock me every time I enter my bedroom from its stand at the foot of my bed. I avoid eye contact as best I can, pretending not to hear the silent cries, the ghosts of songs long dead and past.

You may think I am being a bit dramatic about such a silly think as a guitar, and honestly, I’m not so arrogant as to believe that I’m definitely not. But to me, once upon a time not so very long ago, it was my heart. Without that comforting, dependable and musical friend, and without those who used to surround me, I’m not sure where it went anymore.
I relied on its constancy the way a girl does on her father, and I wonder if I’ll ever find it on that old beaten track.

I’m not so sure what I’m talking about anymore, or even what I meant to say when I opened up my laptop and typed in the URL that would bring me here. All I knew was that I wanted to see how long it would take for sleep to claim me this night, and to blend today in with tomorrow.
I guess it’s this long.