It’s surreal being really sick. I had been swimming before I got this sick, for a frozen shoulder, and I carried it on after getting sick. If I go after the mornings it actually helps to float in warm water. I can’t ‘swim’ per say as I have little energy because I’m not able to eat solids, but I can float. Floating helps with many things including state of mind.
Luckily it’s inexpensive and near where I live. I go as often as my health allows me. I have met some fascinating people whilst ‘swimming.’ Most are older than me because it’s a PT warm therapy pool and the average age is probably over 50 but they’re just such an interesting group of people. I wish I were feeling better so I spend more time listening to their stories. People of those generations like to spin a story and they are good story tellers. It also helps remind us how much those generations actually DID compared to how our lives are now.
I’m grateful for any company because it’s very isolating being sick and waiting in limbo to see if someone (the Mayo hopefully) can help improve on this daily feeling. It is like Groundhog Day. Every day wake up feeling awful, repeat. I try to be optimistic it has helped a lot to hear from others and have that hopefulness. I realize others go through far worse so I’m not complaining. I’m fragile and I just try to get through a day to the next day. It doesn’t feel like I am alive, it feels like I’m licking the periphery of life.
Licking the periphery of life:
A lotus; one not seen in many moons
spreads her chalky whiteness and thick blossom
floating without effort, her perfume, her grace
by the muted dirty windows of the swimming pool
casting no shadows, lending no reduction, outside
the day could be a lotus, nobody really knows
the splayed dream of a sleeping cat in sun.
I know days count down, tired hands without gloves
spinning some surreal dream where I am lost
licking the periphery of life
memories are adders in tall grass
intrusive, poisoned by want
sometimes smooth like a record left to catch
on its fine fragile needle.
I neither belong nor exist
still the music plays like treacle
women who are 80 but look 60
with small shoulders and 50’s bathing suits
red nails and white piled hair, smile serenely
one tells me she has a boyfriend
my heart winces and its clasp trembles
a world I have left behind, as I grow roots to nothing
save what the light cannot capture.
Is it possible for a fire bird
to be reborn from water? Even as
flame coils its essence?
Can despite itself, something form in the loss?
An urge of peace glimmering
rebirth what was mislaid and flying
from knotted depths come whole once more.
What would I do if I were made whole again?
What would I do if I were given another chance?
All the days I wished to not wake up
will they be held as chalk marks against me?
The murky depths of despair when only
a tempest and sickness flay in drowsy cloud
or the terrible loneliness of being
caught in limbo, nobody knowing what to say
words leaking water, blurring, indistinct.
I want to tell the 80 year old that I once loved
a girl who was cruel in every way and flayed
people for lunch. I want to ask her if she
ever knew of people like that, and what
caused me to sit by that river so long
staring into the rings made by fish
dwelling beneath false surface.
Was I brought up to believe I wasn’t worth
more than fish-food? To be tossed to tigers
pretending to be women, pretending to
be whole when they were rotted fruit
leaking into the earth. I spent too long
listening to the Siren call of such
wasted years betrothed to cruelty
when I could have been diving
deep into the heart of a pearl
for surely anything is improvement
than an arrow seeking tender heart.
One day I may return here; whole
unrecognizable, perhaps the swimmers
will have changed, died, or become reborn
they may not remember me, they may
touch my arm and say; “weren’t you that girl?”
And I will reply; I am not a girl. I am a sea pearl
born from no light, drowned before breakfast
unable to swallow myself whole.
See that wan sun coming in through the cheap
plastic windows? I am that sun, the fire
of me extinguished by heart ache
by pain, by sickness, and when nothing
was left, ashes built themselves a pyre
and we burned and burned and burned
till water itself grew flame
till nothing remained
but the outline of what had
and what will
now become
reincarnate.
My GoFundMe is slowly inching its way to a number that will help me stay up there for 10 days and not be drowning in debt. I so appreciate all the kind donations that have made this possible and I am trying my best to reach a middle ground where I can afford a payment plan for the remainder I will owe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-candice-daquin-reach-mayo-clinic