I sleep better now, when work allows me to sleep. But I have been restless, and it took until today to figure out why. I lost my left arm. Well, that's how it feels anyway. My life had developed a pattern, and now that pattern is not there anymore.
I actually have gone the past two days without my phone. I just kinda of left it in my car. And guess what I missed. In 2 days. One phone call. For someone that used to have a running conversation for over a year that lasted from waking until bedtime, this tells me a lot. No wonder I feel like I am missing my left arm. I miss my left arm, and I wish I had it back.
I used to talk to my left arm about everything. When I was having a bad day, my left arm could make me laugh. My left arm used to know when I needed cheering up, and when I needed to vent, and when it was best to just hang out there quietly on my side. I used to be there for my left arm too. If my left arm had a bad day, I would stop what I was doing and listen. We laughed together a lot, dreamed together, and shared a lot of the same passions and interests. But then my left arm got this tiny little scratch.
That little scratch wound up getting infected. It was a minor infection at first, nothing a little Neosporin couldn't have handled. But my left arm didn't want anything for it. I don't know if lefty thought it would just heal up on its own, or didn't care. The infection grew worse and worse. Finally I was forced to administer a massive antibiotic dose to my left arm, and it looked like things were slowly improving. My left arm and I were nowhere near what we used to be together, but I had confidence that with time, things would work out well. Of course, I was wrong.
My left arm and I suffered a relapse. It was awful, untreatable, and I wound up losing my left arm to gangrene. It was a very painful loss for me. It still is. I think they call them phantom pains, where you lose a limb, but still think you can feel it. I still feel my left arm, every day. And because I feel it, I keep looking for it, and am always shocked a little bit when it's not there. Maybe my left arm decided that it was better off without me. Maybe my left arm actually IS better off without me. I don't know. Because my left arm is unquestionably and irrevocably gone. But it doesn't stop my right arm from reaching for the phone, just to check and see....
I've been told that maybe I can get my left arm back, and while it will never be the same, maybe it will be better. Sort of like a bionic left arm. But I don't want that. I want my plain old left arm, that knows me better than I know myself, laughs with me, looks forward to hanging out with me, dreams of thunderstorms, deserted islands, and ways to torture my boss (which my left arm was absolutely grand at)and lets me know in a million little ways that hanging out there on my side is the place it wants to be. I don't want a new and improved left arm. No bionics for me.
My left arm really is gone. And I miss it.
No comments:
Post a Comment