Optimistic

"If things around you crumble, no you don't have to stumble and fall, keep pushing on and don't you look back." - Optimistic

I'm listening to Optmistic by Sounds of Blackness. I made an entire playlist based on this song. Things were going pretty badly for me last summer. I'd come home from the hospital full of tubes, holes, and other people's blood. I couldn't eat. I was subsisting on fingernail-fulls of bread and 2 oz. of broth diluted with water. I was in an interesting place where all the superfluous living stuff becomes just that, superfluous. One thing I didn't have much of was pity for myself. I hardly understood what I was experiencing, but I was determined to survive my series of calamities. My mother had assured me I was too mean to die in my one moment of abject terror and I had to just ride with that.

So, one night, in lieu of crying with the fear I really felt, I downloaded Optimistic. The words came into my brain and I knew I had to hear the song. Art is just a way for us to reach one another, soul to soul, and my soul called out for help no one could offer. It called out for solace and encouragement. I listened to Optimistic every night, every day for 3 months. I added songs to the playlist, songs that would help me ease into sleep so I could get a couple of hours before I had to change dressings or empty bags or rehydrate, but it got me through.

And then, when the tubes were removed and I was allowed to move back home and reintegrate into the world as a pseudo-functional human being, I stopped listening. Utah Phillips has an album titled, "The Past Didn't Go Anywhere" and it's the truth. I thought that if I told myself that the illness never happened, and the struggle never happened, that I could forget they happened. I don't think forgetting serves me well. When I erase the memory, I invite the violence of my psyche to play out some truly demented fantasies. It's easier to acknowledge and manage my life as it really is as opposed to the careful PR campaign I wage out of habit and comfort.

My mentor tells me that I will change, my personality will be fundamentally altered. Thus far, that's the god's honest truth. I'm not as mean, but I'm also less tolerant. I wonder at myself, at my reactions. I watch in third-person shock and mild horror when I cannot dredge up empathy for others who are convinced they are having a crisis. I remember being in recovery after surgery number X and there was a woman a few beds down who was coming out of anesthesia, same as me. I was full of gaping holes and swelling body parts and she was screaming for her mother.

This was no spring chicken, either, it was some older lady hollering herself hoarse. "ohhhh mama, come get me mama!" She was so annoying. I asked the nurse to knock her back out. She was ruining my anesthesia high. That's how I feel about so many things now. People talk to me and they tell me about some small event that their limited life experience has made significant if only because it breaks the monotony of their days and I want to tell them to shut up. I have to resist the urge to encourage recreational drug use in others if only so they will sit down and shut up and leave me alone.

I suspect a lot of people out there in the world have real scars they cover up to look nice for the world. One of the most striking things about the medical work I get to do in the Caribbean is the preponderance of physical scars and disabilities. Ever notice how sanitized our streets are of people with visible physical ailments and scarring? I've seen some doozies, too, folks with half their bodies burned or machete welts across their faces. And I have a typical reaction, I flinch, then I feel really, really good. Because I'm looking at another human being who is carrying their scars and I know what that feels like. So, I relax and I listen and I feel the connection of soul to soul.

I appreciate AA folks who declare how long they've been sober. They wear it right there on their sleeve, fully cognizant that one small slip-up could send them back down the river. I wonder if they have an AA equivalent for the chronically ill. Because I know that one false move could send me back down a path of personal destruction I don't care to ever traverse again. Hi, I'm Camille, and I'm 11 months clean from endometriosis. Every day is a lot of struggle and I still don't know how I'm going to make it to tomorrow, but I'm happy to be here today.

And I can hear a roomful of people with their various histories say back to me, "Hi Camille." It feels good.