In class yesterday, we were talking about how we block the memory of pain. Not only does the mind have a mechanism to deal with extreme pain of the body, but the whole point of anesthesiology is to help us to forget the ordeal. Still, the residue remains.
It has come to my attention how I favor one side of my body over another. I lean my head slightly to the left, my chin does not hang center but to the left ( I found this laying on a bench in a supported bridge pose with my head hanging off; I'm loving Iyengar yoga.), I lean my weight to the left and jut the left hip out. All of these things are my body speaking, and I think they speak of protecting the left side, which has been injured repeatedly.
When I was about eleven, I was riding my bike in our neighborhood. We lived in a condo neighborhood on the Dickinson Bayou. There was a circle that the housing was arranged around and a rode that came off of the circle that led to the bayou where there was a boat ramp. I liked to ride my bike down the hill toward the boat ramp. It felt like I was flying and could take off over the water. At the last minute, I would turn to the left and take the road that ran behind the condo building.
On this particular day, there was a car coming from the left. My bicycle collided with the Jeep and it ran over my left arm crushing the joint. The pain must have been excrutiating. I don't know. I passed out. I came to fleetingly when my mom showed up. I remember how scared she was that my arm had been over my head. They hadn't moved me yet. It must have been a mess. The people who were in the Jeep were our next door neighbors. They would have known where to find her quickly.
I vaguely remember the emergency room. They put me in surgery. This one blurs with another that came soon after. Another bicycle accident, another trauma. They slide together. In the second case, I knocked my front teeth out, had a head trauma, and surgery on my nose that was broken. I remember going to the bathroom and seeing a monster in the mirror; that monster was me.
When I woke up my arm was in sling over my head, and I was flat on my back. They had put my elbow back together and held the pieces together with a pin. I was to be in traction for at least a month. I went from freedom to immobilization and isolation.
I spent almost 6 weeks like that. My father spent every night sleeping on a cot in my room. He kept on lawyering and spent his nights with me.
They finally took me down and released me. The pin had been a corkscrew that came in from the bottom of the elbow; what would have been the top when attached to the traction pulley. When they took it out, it hung over my head dripping blood like a scene from a horror movie.
The real horror was that another surgery was necessary. Another pin was put in from side-to-side and my arm was hoisted over my head again. I had several hours of release and freedom to move from the bed and it was right back where I was. I remember being devastated.
I healed. I went to physical therapy. I don't remember the pain so much.
I do remember the feeling of being trapped, immobilized, helpless.
And my body has been affected ever since, partly by the sense memory and partly by the adjustments it had to make to the injury. My arm still does not straighten and won't really support me. Handstand evades me as a pose; in fact it terrifies me.
That's why hanging from the wall yesterday was so blissful. I was able to experience the feeling of inversion without stress and fear.
I felt that freedom that I used to feel when I rode my bike down the hill.
I've had other attacks to the left: When I was pregnant with Sarah, I was T-boned by a car coming from my left. My lower back bears that scar in a vertebrate that gets inflamed periodically. A man caught me with a right hook to the left side of my face, causing me to lose another tooth. And most recently, the car accident a little over a year ago where a car took out the left side of my little red car from behind. http://ruthiengelke.blogspot.com/2013/12/car-wreck-gratitude.html
These traumas to my body have done something to me. I have tried to push them under and ignore them. It seems the natural thing to do. But the cost is a lack of awareness. The fear comes out somehow. The examined life is no picnic, but the cost of not examining is high. We lose other things.
I don't want to run on fear anymore. I have for quite some time. I had a reason to look for safety.
If I do not dare to fly (because I am afraid of being hit by a small truck), I cannot fall.
I think it is important to note that the left side of the body is traditionally seen as the female and emotional side of the body. So it is significant to me that my injuries are on this side. I have felt attacked and vulnerable on my feminine side and have learned to protect it.
Another story.
Namaste' y'all!
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