Saturday, we went boating on the Chesapeake Bay. Close friends of our close friends grew up on Kent Island, a rather idyllic community on the Eastern shore. Other than narrowly missing our chance to have crabs for dinner, it was a wonderful day. Some of our best friends, plus new (to me) friends, beautiful weather, beautiful water, even a huge flotilla gathering called AquaPalooza with the Beatles blaring across deck after deck of rafted-up pleasure boats, folks happily paddling or floating between them, cocktails in hand. I laughed really, really hard a few times. I made other people laugh a few times. That's all you really need, right?
And yet, part of the way through our cruise along the water, I started to cry. Maybe it all started before the day even began, when I had to consult my internist and my neurosurgeon to find out if it would be safe for my spine to spend all day on the water. Do other people have to consult their neurosurgeons about their weekend recreation?
Maybe it worsened a bit when I watched everyone else go swimming because I know that I can't climb a ladder in and out of the water and I can't tread water any more, much less swim. I knew in advance that would be the case and yet I wasn't prepared for how lonely it made me feel.
It went downhill a bit more on the boat in the sun when I realized that my Marylander husband was as happy as a dog with its head out the window, tooling around the Bay like this -- and in my head I'm hearing the neurosurgeon's answer to my question about my ability to safely go boating: "Well, it's not the best thing for ya. You know, it's not the fusion we're worried about, but those two levels above it, the C3-4 and 4-5, we just have to try to protect those as long as we can. You're not going to do this every weekend, right?" And I begin wondering how many years it will be, if that, before I need surgery again, and suddenly the rum punch doesn't interest me and I just start to hurt-- inside.
Then my dear friend DM starts telling me, in that loving way she has, about how good my husband and I seem together, and I couldn't help but start talking about how I really feel. It was like those moments I have (too often) when someone says, "How're you doing?" and anyone polite would just say "Fine, thanks," but I find myself saying, "Well, my allergies are acting up" or "I have this weird sunburn spot right here," etc. So I very frankly explain to DM that I agree that he's unique, that I feel almost that God knew that some tough times were ahead and decided to give me a wonderful husband to help me through it -- and that I wish the benefit were mutual. I tell her that I feel like a burden and like I don't have anything to offer him. I say thank God for the baby because at least I can feel like I gave him something. And I mean it.
Later, I ride alone in the back of the boat (where the ride is not as jarring, where I rode all day) and look down at the deck. That is when I start to cry. My husband stands along the port side, where he can keep an eye on me. But everyone else is up front, dancing and playing to the loud 80's music (I think I heard the Tubes, but you can't hear the music too well behind the captain). Plastic cups are being raised, and pictures are being snapped; more than once someone says something like, "There are worse ways to spend a day than this" and the sun glints off the water like gems on velvet as the day finally cools off. And I cry. I try to keep my face under control, but tears roll down. I am thinking that my friends are having one of the best days they've ever had together, which they'll remember for a long time, and I am sitting in the back, on the sidelines, in pain, with my husband stuck half-way between.
I cry because at that moment I feel that this will always be the way it is -- that my fate is to watch others enjoy themselves, to sit on the sideline, to be fighting pain and physical limits and to have nothing to offer the group besides someone to talk to when they feel the need to sit down somewhere quiet and take a break from the action. Don't get me wrong -- everyone was very solicitous. Our friend the Captain was a very gentle and careful driver, always considering my condition and checking on me frequently to make sure I was okay. My girlfriends took turns coming aft to see me and certainly my husband voluntarily reduced his enjoyment of the day by at least 40% in keeping an eye on me and making sure I was safe and relatively happy. But there it is.
It was a rough day. And yet, also beautiful and also wonderful to see our friends. Like life.
I think my attitude needs adjusting. I try to keep my inner dialogue positive, but Saturday I just couldn't do it. Or wouldn't. Was I feeling sorry for myself? Absolutely. Am I entitled to that, once in a while? I think so. But the problem is, I mostly feel sorry for myself when otherwise fun things are going on around me, because that's what makes me think about the fact that there is so much I can't do, and that what I do often hurts so much or is so hard, and it just feels so unfair. Yet, I'm with a man I adore, I have kids I fiercely love, I enjoy my work (at least some of the time), I love my house, I love my family, I can read and write and care for people and even go to the mall sometimes (although no more 4-hour marathon shopping sessions, but that's another story). But I'm going to miss out on so many enjoyable things if I can't find a way to live in the moment of pleasure and to put aside my feelings of incapacity and loss. Not to mention to stop feeling guilty for being who I am.
Yet, when does one stop grieving? Or maybe the better question is, how does one know when to start grieving, so that the process can finish, when one never knows if there's really anything to grieve? We're in this limbo: maybe I'm going to get completely better. Maybe I won't get any better than I am right now. At some point, I'll need more back surgery. Is that going to make it better, or worse? How many more surgeries? When? It's all a big, black hole of uncertainty, and to allow myself to grieve the loss and get through to the other side seems like giving up, and I'm not ready to give up on the chance that I'll actually recover. So instead, I feel sorry for myself and try to limit my complaining about the pain and inconvenience to the 18 hours a day I'm awake and do what I can to squeeze in physical therapy among all the other demands of our hectic and overwhelming life.
In the end, my boat ride did not put me back in the emergency room, but it wasn't great for my body. All the core muscles that your body uses to hold yourself upright, the ones you never notice unless you do a hard Pilates workout, are the muscles in me that are the weakest and don't work at all. And those are the muscles you use when try not to fall over on a boat. So they hurt a lot that night. As for my neck? The image I have of my vertebrae is of a stack of Girl Scout Trefoil cookies just starting to crumble around the edges. I'm pretty sure none of them broke that day. But have you ever stoved your finger? Where it feels swollen and stiff and it won't bend quite right for a while? That's how my neck felt yesterday. I woke up at 4 a.m. with the baby on Sunday, and felt that stoved-in feeling in my neck, and after she went to sleep I lay awake worrying. How much sooner would my next operation be, because of the strain I had put on my neck that day? Today, it feels better, the pain centered in my rib cage and abs once again, where "it belongs." So, hurrah, back to normal, I guess. This afternoon I have to pick Abby up from school, because I don't feel entirely comfortable with the new sitter and I haven't had a chance to try out another one yet. We'll see what she and her car seat do to my neck. But for now, I'm going to go soak in a hot shower and try to run through a mental list of all the things for which I am grateful. And I'm going to try to mean it.
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