Springtime of my Soul, or, Glad to Be Alive

Last week I had some of the worst pain that I've ever experienced in my life.

Having lived with Lyme disease for as long as I can remember, I have a high pain tolerance--I can handle a lot. In fact sometimes I'm not even sure how to rate pain severity, because I'm so used to it that I don't even know what's normal and what's not anymore.

But there have been a few times in my life when the pain has been so strong that cutting my own head off actually seemed like a logical solution... for a moment at least.

Last week I was suffering from TMJ--Temporomandibular joint dysfunction. Basically it's when the joint where your jaw attaches to your skull is out of place.

I had gone to the dentist the week before and gotten a couple of fillings, and apparently they made my bite uneven, which threw off the whole equilibrium of my face.

That's what the doctor told me, when I came home early from work thinking I had an ear infection, like the one I had last year that landed me in the hospital.

I couldn't tell whether the pain in my teeth was causing the pain in my ear or vice versa, but I had felt that my bite was wrong since I'd come home from the dentist, so what he said made sense.

I came home and took the pill he'd prescribed me, cushioning it with some food.

And then the red waves of pain and dizziness washed over me again, roaring, crushing, smashing my existence. I sank to my knees beside my bed (why does great pain physically force you to your knees?), holding the cool aluminum of my laptop against my face, and breathing with every breath, Oh God, oh God...

I imagined what life would be, trapped inside this tortuous prison, if the pain didn't stop. I prayed to die, that God would take me. I didn't want to live like this.

And then slowly I realized that the pain was letting up, that I could handle it again.

I don't remember the next few hours clearly. I know I went and found a different dentist and made an appointment for later in the day.

As the appointment was drawing closer, I started getting really worried, because the medication would run out about an hour after I got there, and I didn't want to be lying helpless on the dentist chair with that kind of pain roaring through me again.

I decided to risk it rather than taking the dose early though. The dentist took some X-rays and then filed the fillings down. She said that maybe I was clenching my teeth at night and needed to wear a big plastic thing to keep my teeth apart while I slept. I didn't really believe that was the problem, because I never wake up with clenched teeth.

"But why is this happening now?" I asked. "I never had this problem before."

"Well, you know," she said, "you're getting older..."

And I was like...

Later, looking more closely at the X-ray, she said that the pain could have been from the fact that one of the fillings was super close to my nerve, and that I might need a root canal.

I agreed to come back in one week, hoping that no further work would be necessary.

And then I realized that even though it was time to take another pill, I wasn't feeling the pain again. I didn't take it and I went to bed, wondering if the pain would wake me.

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The next morning I woke up and realized I had slept through the night, and that the pain was gone!

I felt so immensely grateful to be alive, so glad that my body was holding itself together, no matter how feebly and imperfectly, to sustain this existence called life.

I felt cleansed, like all the stuff I'd been worrying about lately didn't matter. That I could see clearly what mattered and what didn't, at least.

I got up and went outside, and the world wore a new face...

That white-speckled pigeon that looked at me sideways and made me laugh. The beads of condensation shimmering on the tap in an open-doored bar I passed. The resident gypsy (?) musician outside the park, belting his ancient harmonies as his fingers flew across the guitar strings. The passer-by who, perhaps absently, snapped his fingers to fill in for the castanets. The heady smell of new leaf growing...

It was mine, and I was part of it, all this beauty. Because I was still alive in this world.

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On Monday when I went back to work, a coworker or two asked me how I was doing, since I had taken a sick day.

I knew they wouldn't believe me when I told them I had prayed to die, and they didn't. They laughed, because don't people always say such things? Don't we always exaggerate?

But I knew I had really meant it. And I knew furthermore that I had received a kind of baptism through this experience.

There have been so many times in my life when I have wanted to die, when life didn't seem worth living, even when I was a child. When I was young, I used to wake up in the morning and quickly try to think of a reason to be glad for that day, something particular about it that made it different from the rest, so that I would want to get up and live it.

Then the dark days came, where there was just nothing, when the only relief from the darkness was sleep itself.

And even later, when things got better, I would struggle against that black hole, depression, as it sucked me into its depths. I would hold on to that one thing that made me happy without trying, treasure those moments when I felt beauty, because they were so rare and far between.

But to actually feel glad to be alive, not that I'm just finding a moment of happiness to block out the darkness for a moment, but welcoming the light as it shines in, that was new, and it was important.

I'm glad to feel glad to be alive.

The face of all the world is changed, I think,
Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul
Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole
Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink
Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink,
Was caught up into love, and taught the whole
Of life in a new rhythm. The cup of dole
God gave for baptism, I am fain to drink,
And praise its sweetness...

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese, 7