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Uhuru It’s like waking up in a dream. The phone ringing somewhere a few doors down, a machine beeping softly from the counter on the right, my mother turning the pages of her latest time-passer; it’s like waking up in a dream and realizing your life has come back to you. Nothing is packed up yet, we know this could just as easily not be over, and I’m grateful that here no one pushes you for more than you can give. I can stay or go now that I can speak. I’m human again. Everything smells like steel and linen. The nurses smile and treat me like their child. They’re glad when I can sit up again too. No one is sure if I should drink yet: they remember better than I do what happened in this teal and pink room, but I want scrambled eggs. Now. And they smile like it made their day. So do I. I watch Jenny Jones while I wait. It’s on at 8:00am and 1:00pm. It’s 8:15, but I think I can catch up. I try for the remote control but its weight slips from my fingers and smacks against the floor. "Oh," says my mother, diving from her couch-bed to deliver it to me, "here." But it never works anyway. She turns on the TV for me and then re-crosses her arms tightly in some sort of reassurance and sits down. People in this world are dressing too sexy for their age, doing drugs, and stripping their clothes off for money. The most theatrical of these street crawlers make it to the Jenny Jones stage, and it is a beautiful, colorful world. I guess in a way I’m lucky: I get to see the world for the first time every month or so. The light of day is drifting through the blinds like smoke and we keep them shut. It’s cold out there, full of homework and people I’ve hurt or inconvenienced again by being here. I can’t look at the window so I look at the TV and wait for eggs. My mother is looking at me, then the TV, then the door, then her magazine. She can’t believe that I’m up again, that I can smile, that I love this show, and that maybe it’s over. *~* The wrong doctor is on call. I can’t get Direct Admittance this time so I have to sit with the lucky, beautiful people with broken legs, asthma and bleeding noses. I try not to sit by them. No one wants to hear the noises I’m making or the condition I’ve got. No one looks at me. It’s an eternity until my name is called. It’s one step closer to the third floor, but it’s still hours away. I’m just sleeping or living my Torment in the Little Room, and what voice I can find is used to beg for an IV. It takes hours. The doctor comes asking the usual questions. My mother can answer all except for one. It’s the most pointless one. "How much pain are you in?" I hold up ten fingers. Finally the IV Team comes. When they take my hand they warn me to prepare for a prick, and I’m not impressed, but can’t speak. I pass out again once I’m sure they got it in. ‘My room’ is ready upstairs. They wheel me to it, and I roll from one bed to the other, but still… it’s safer here. The meditative blur continues for days. I come to again. It’s morning. I slept through Jenny Jones so roll over and drift again. *~* My girls and I were all going to go to dinner on Friday night. I’m not sure, but I think it’s Tuesday. I wonder where they ended up going, probably somewhere good. I wonder who drove. I bet they listened to a really good song right before they got to the restaurant and waited in the parking lot for it to finish. I smile, but I can’t think about that right now. A nurse comes in with a tray. Jello, apple juice and a plastic spoon. This is my life. But I can’t think about that right now. "Is there anything else you think you can eat?" my mother asks, stroking my forehead, and even though she needs to be stroked my IV wouldn’t let me reach that far if I tried. "Matunda," I mutter, my unused vocal chords scraping inside of me. I know I said it in Swahili, and I try to laugh at my own inside joke. "What, honey?" "Fruit. From the cafeteria. With the melon in it." Again there is doubt, but joy. Maybe this is over. There are so many other places to be. She leaves the room and my eyes stay open, if only to remind myself that I’m awake. I see the tray out of the corner of my eye and decide to go to the Amazon. There are monkeys in the trees, pink dolphins and people that have remained untouched by time and industrialization. I don’t have to make these things up, because they’re really out there, and that’s enough. Someone on my boat yells something about anacondas, and I decide then to go to Kenya. The sand is warm on my feet, and a Masai warrior steps up to me. His red robes flap with the wind, and the yellow paint on his face has dried like the rivers. He asks me what I am looking for. "Nyumba yangu," I reply. My home. There are so many other places to be. *~* Maybe it’s the weeklong meditation. Maybe it’s the fact that the colors are brighter after your eyes have been shut for so long. Maybe it’s the Hospital Drugs, I don’t know. But this world has something inside of it that I can’t wait to crack open. I can’t look at windows from the inside looking out anymore. That isn’t who I am, and that’s no way to see this world. Watching the traffic pass you by is no way to live. There is a new sun every morning. The next day I could be with my friends and Counting Crows, falling in love with dark-eyed boys, or in the hospital with machines adding me up to a digital equation on a screen. But I’ve found one thing for sure in this world to wake up for, and I taste it every time I am wheeled out to the car to go home. Uhuru. Freedom. |
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Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome Association (CVSA) |
