I found sanity at the bottom of a saline bottle…
I found sanity at the bottom of a saline bottle, a sensitive nose and a canula stuck in a vein over my wrist bone. The sensation was not great but the result was understood. I needed to get something corrected and it was not a fun process. It was tedious, difficult, uncomfortable and painful. But bearable. In life I have discovered, most things are bearable as long as we brace ourselves for it. When the pain hits, it’s not too bad then. It’s like going to the dentist for a filling or getting an injection or going for a blood sample. Or even running a race. The leadup is always tedious. Once the process is begun it’s bearable. And afterwards is just going through with the motions. Once the ball is set in motion, then it’s a matter of just rolling along. Setting the ball in motion is the key. And often we wait in fear that the ball will spin out of control, will careen into something and will result in disaster. But these are baseless fears. As is life. A series of baseless trials and tribulations which sometimes have no rhyme or reason but some kind of staunch understanding and expectation that it must happen this way. Trust & Obey. Yes, that is what it has come to mean. Coz sometimes you can’t just be thinking through every frigging action in life – certainly not when saline bottles, syringes, resignation letters and uncertain future career paths are all tossed into one big bag of God knows what and you are expected to carry it along like nothing happened and nothing ever will. Like this is all ok. Like it’s all going to work out. Like hell it won’t and you know it but you can’t stop to be analyzing. You just go with the flow. Trusting that things will work out and obeying some inner inclination that tells you life sometimes has a way of making the most absurd things work out. That what you never imagined can happen. And that nothing is predictable. Nothing. And that’s ok. You learn to live with the one thing you can be certain of – uncertainty.
And so I discovered the joys of re-reading old books that were comfort words and not a hindrance to my recovery. Squirting saline water up your nostrils every four hours while spitting out globules of blood clots and phlegm is no great fun but is a must in this instance. Not sneezing or blowing my nose for a sneeze queen is not easy but must be done. It can be endured and I am learning – slowly and painfully – the fruits of endurance. All in good time. But patience must reign supreme.
I entertained brief thoughts of a nether world where someone lives on. Yes but that has to be shelved again coz patience must be endured and life will happen when it does. I must learn to heed the great hands of time and understand that in the grander scheme of the universe, I am but a speck of dust, a blot, a dot not worth even enduring on a starry night gazing up into the heavens and questioning why me along with a billion others who share a similar fate or destiny. Yes time will take its own cool time and I will have to learn to endure. To live yes – not merely exist – but learn the value of endurance.
I ordered food for the next day coz I wanted to eat well. My plans looked to be shaping into the next month so I could afford to spend a bit. A pork knuckle – sheer greed but it looked good and it was worth trying. So dinner would be a pork knuckle. And a long awaited fish curry, kathurumurunga mallun and pumpkin curry would be lunch. From another well know vendor. I wanted to eat well – healthy though – not too much junk. I had already adultered my body with some Double Decker snacks and some chocolate. 2 weeks of indolent rest would result in gained weight. Weight I had so determinedly lost. But I would endure to lose it again. Once gained, I know I am capable of losing it so it can and must be done. But recuperation must happen with good food.
I thought of the messages I had got from my friends. Few who genuinely cared who would ask after me coz honestly no one wants to be at the centre of attention with a saline bottle, a bandage across their nose and a bloody canula stuck in their arm. Not me anyway. So few knew about this procedure. And that was enough. The few who actually cared.
I remembered the doctor pulling out the nose pack – why aren’t you asleep he asked? The pill I took was supposed to put me to sleep. I giggled – in my head I thought – it ain’t so easy to put me to sleep. And so I endured those horrors being pulled out of my nostrils. But it was bearable. And I am now ok. Coz once you have endured something you know you can do it again. I can breathe again but the discomfort will continue for a few weeks.
I wore a face mask and pollinated the passion fruit flowers for like the 100th time. But they refuse to be fertilized. And I refuse to give up. And so it shall continue till one or the other gives up or gives in.
I need to end this story, but my life won’t end here. It has many more chapters to go, many more stories to be lived through and written about perhaps…but it is what it is. This instance a brief interlude in life – a rude awakening and yet a planned correction. Life is what it is and it goes on and endures for those of us who were never meant to be comfortable for too long… I guess in a way it is a blessing and a curse – a blessing coz I will never be bored or left unchallenged and a curse coz I can never escape from the unknown into the mundane.
