Fire in the Soul

In the week since postponement of the surgery, I think a lot about the complications of being so stuck in body and its affect on the mind. Having worked so hard to prepare, the let down has left me devastated and in a completely different kind of recovery.

Eight months since the scaffold collapsed, this surgery has been looming. All winter, I was physically exhausted with so little effort I had to learn to take naps and live in the moment. Once more growing healthy in the Spring, the bag and tube became the impediments, and with more energy, the surgery finally scheduled looked like the turning point to move me forward again. On the early hot days, I imagined I might even be swimming by summer’s end and could begin the process of finding a serious job.

Now that has all been dashed and I feel as stuck as ever. My case is on appeal and could be decided within days, a month, or I have to wait until next April when Blue Cross will have to pay for it any way. Currently, I am chasing down doctors for testimonials and scrounging for opportunities to play music since our schedule had been cleared, but I have no idea if I should be looking for work at the same time, or actively preparing myself all over again for that wall of unconsciousness.

Summer finally here, my energy feels as good as pre-accidental, except that I am out of shape. I cannot risk the infection of a swim; a bike seat terrifies me. Tennis is out of the question. My love of the game and lack of schedule allows me to watch every World Cup minute, even as my muscle memory tortures me with the temptation to kick around a soccer ball; more orgasm without ejaculation.

I try to turn this enforced period of inactivity into a time of meditation and soulful retreat. Words flow onto paper and into my journal. I meditate as soon as my mind grows frustrated. I slip into the unconsciousness of sleep whenever my eyes grow heavy, and leap into action or a movie awaking suddenly in the middle of the night.

The world goes on around me and I feel uncomfortable when a friend calls to see how I am doing, but really asks what I am doing. Vague and thin are the answers, large are the questions that plague my mind, constantly comparing shoulds with actualities.

In regular receipt of encouragement to relax and profit emotionally from this time, I constantly pray the answers are coming no matter how invisible. A steady stream of emails and weblinks support the belief that universally this is a powerful time in which momentous changes percolate. Planets are aligned, the Solstice is particularly strong, and the full moon includes a lunar eclipse of special purport. Opportunity for transformation abounds.

So I meditate, contemplate and percolate. Another week goes by. The amount of time I have spent on this couch looms darkly like the months and years after a fire or death where all events are categorized as “pre” or “post” and qualified by the distortion of the one true Event. Time stands still and races by simultaneously. I wake up occasionally to realize how much seems wasted.

Out of the fog, however, comes clarity that I must “suck it up” and move on. A line from one of my own songs rings particularly true: “…take your time, make up your mind…take charge of your life and walk through the door”, but I have been sitting on this couch so long, the one or two doors have blurred into a thousand and I feel overwhelmed.

Finally it occurs to me that if I truly believe in the mind/body connection, no matter which door I choose, it might be better than forever sitting still, waiting for others to make bureaucratic decisions that might decide my fate. The time has come to stand up and charge.

Instead of seeing the blockage in my body as preventing me from a life of health, action and abundance, I consider that attitude (“I can’t work until I get fixed”) must change to action (“I will work and deal with the surgery whenever it comes”). The dam(n) that holds me back is in my own head, not my groin. What if by making decisions and moving forward, the flow of the heart begins to open all doors?

In this second week since suspension of the surgery, I have decided to step into the world and explore life’s passions as if I had no limp, no tube, no spasms, no inability to ejaculate. Perhaps the gratitude that I am alive at all and the willingness to still risk orgasm will be powerful enough to burst all blockages and boundaries, even the physical, bureaucratic and emotional ones, with or without the surgery I so desperately think I need.

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