Gentle Fear
In December 2001 I got pneumonia. I was misdiagnosed as having a sort of bacterial infection and given either vicodin or codeine spray (I don't remember which). Over the course of the next three days symptoms worsened and my fever rose. The particular strain of pneumonia I had affected mental and emotional functioning, leading to borderline hallucinations, an inability to do my tone based meditation called spiritual excercises. When I was running a fever of 105 degrees fahrenheit, my father took me back to the doctor, who found it neccesary to repeat such tests as a painful throat culture in order to find that, yes I pneumonia and I needed to be taken to the emergency room.
As my father drove me to the emergency room, the combination of the physical, mental and emotional stress, aggravated by the nereuological affects of the pneumonia, combined with my extreme pre-existing fear of shots. Thus it was that my father found himself caring for me as I completely broke down crying and sreaming in hysterics as I was overcome by fear and resistance. I don't remember much about what happend while I was in the waiting room before I got treated (which wasn't long) but I do remember what came next.
As I was layed down upon the stretcher, surrounded by doctors, having moments earlier been aghast with fear at the thought of the needle that would soon bring metal INTO my body, metal that I would have to leave there and not remove as I dealt with the psychological violation I had found myself neurotically resisting time and again to the point where it was hard for me to watch injection even in movies... EVERYTHING changed. Laying there, on my back, on that stretcher, everything relaxed as my body filled peace, trust and calm and I looked up and saw my spiritual teacher as a form of light to my right, and I relinquished my need for control, my thoughts that I new better and gave myself over completely to trust. The trust was complete, and I relaxed. I trusted in God, in my spiritual teacher and in that everything was going to be alright. It was all thoes things and yet none of them. It was simply a relaxation of will and a calm.
In the time that followed, as they took care of me, wheeled me away and brought me to my bed, I found out that both my lungs had filled 70% with liquid. I wasn't scared when I heard that. I knew I was out of danger. And though the therapy to remove the liquid from my lungs was often uncomfortable and sometimes a tad disconcerting, I did not experience fear like I had in thoese moments before I eneted the emergency room, or whatever label it is that people use these days.
Now, I find myself past the 4 month mark of mono, having developed a sore throat in recent days but far more troubled by a pain in my chest. If I were coughing, I would guess pneumonia but all I have is a pain that experience has led me to associate with it. I have no fever. I have had maybe one or two coughing fits in the last 48 hours with no singular coughs between. And I think that it may be the very combination of the pain I associate with that traumatic experience and the tension of the unknown as my symptoms confuse me, brings me my fear, that brings that memory of hysteria back to me so clearly. I am not hysterical, or crying or feverish now. I just feel fear's gentle touch, and I am scared, without logic, without reason I am scared. And I am glad that I will not have to wait long for answers, as my Dr.'s appointment is tommorrow at 11:30. I am humiliated by my fear. It is so VERY likely that this is nothing, or something very, very minor... but I am scared. And even if physically, I am experiencing an unreality, the fact remains that what my fear brings upon my mind, my mind has to go through. And thus I shall seek sleep, and hopefully wake-up a new man.
I say these things, because sometimes the intensity of an experience compels expression. I don't know why I'm writing in any greater sense, only that I feel compelled to write and to release. I hope tommorrow I will be proven the fool, and that the tears I may shed in bed tonight will seem a great folly. But it is not tommorrow yet.
As my father drove me to the emergency room, the combination of the physical, mental and emotional stress, aggravated by the nereuological affects of the pneumonia, combined with my extreme pre-existing fear of shots. Thus it was that my father found himself caring for me as I completely broke down crying and sreaming in hysterics as I was overcome by fear and resistance. I don't remember much about what happend while I was in the waiting room before I got treated (which wasn't long) but I do remember what came next.
As I was layed down upon the stretcher, surrounded by doctors, having moments earlier been aghast with fear at the thought of the needle that would soon bring metal INTO my body, metal that I would have to leave there and not remove as I dealt with the psychological violation I had found myself neurotically resisting time and again to the point where it was hard for me to watch injection even in movies... EVERYTHING changed. Laying there, on my back, on that stretcher, everything relaxed as my body filled peace, trust and calm and I looked up and saw my spiritual teacher as a form of light to my right, and I relinquished my need for control, my thoughts that I new better and gave myself over completely to trust. The trust was complete, and I relaxed. I trusted in God, in my spiritual teacher and in that everything was going to be alright. It was all thoes things and yet none of them. It was simply a relaxation of will and a calm.
In the time that followed, as they took care of me, wheeled me away and brought me to my bed, I found out that both my lungs had filled 70% with liquid. I wasn't scared when I heard that. I knew I was out of danger. And though the therapy to remove the liquid from my lungs was often uncomfortable and sometimes a tad disconcerting, I did not experience fear like I had in thoese moments before I eneted the emergency room, or whatever label it is that people use these days.
Now, I find myself past the 4 month mark of mono, having developed a sore throat in recent days but far more troubled by a pain in my chest. If I were coughing, I would guess pneumonia but all I have is a pain that experience has led me to associate with it. I have no fever. I have had maybe one or two coughing fits in the last 48 hours with no singular coughs between. And I think that it may be the very combination of the pain I associate with that traumatic experience and the tension of the unknown as my symptoms confuse me, brings me my fear, that brings that memory of hysteria back to me so clearly. I am not hysterical, or crying or feverish now. I just feel fear's gentle touch, and I am scared, without logic, without reason I am scared. And I am glad that I will not have to wait long for answers, as my Dr.'s appointment is tommorrow at 11:30. I am humiliated by my fear. It is so VERY likely that this is nothing, or something very, very minor... but I am scared. And even if physically, I am experiencing an unreality, the fact remains that what my fear brings upon my mind, my mind has to go through. And thus I shall seek sleep, and hopefully wake-up a new man.
I say these things, because sometimes the intensity of an experience compels expression. I don't know why I'm writing in any greater sense, only that I feel compelled to write and to release. I hope tommorrow I will be proven the fool, and that the tears I may shed in bed tonight will seem a great folly. But it is not tommorrow yet.