Phantom Pain

R

richardallen

Joined
Oct 15, 2002
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I wanted to share a story I recently wrote. Maybe its a kind of therapy for me, I don't know. I know I am not munk ;) so please bear with me. Hope you enjoy it, and thanks for reading. Comments appreciated.

...............

I woke up this morning, and I could smell you. You were there, lying next to me in bed. I couldn’t be mistaken, I could scent you so clearly, it had to be you.

I wanted to turn around, kiss you. Wanted to get out of bed, and turn on the little espresso machine my parents gave me. It would fill the whole apartment with coffee smell. Fill two cups, yours with milk and sugar, mine black. We would enjoy them, and then maybe stay in bed a little longer.

I turned around – the scent was gone, and you were not lying next to me – just an empty space between me and the picture-plastered wall. How could it be? I turned back over, and there you were again. I could not see you, but your aura was everywhere. Once again, I turned around to see you – nothing. I was wrong yet another time. I started to wonder if this is what phantom pain is like. Phantom pain means you continue to feel pain after losing a part of your body. The nerves that were severed still report sensations, and the brain cannot distinguish were the signals are coming from – you feel something that is long gone. For some patients it gets better over time, for others managing the pain can be very challenging.

It took me a while to figure it out. The rubber bracelet you gave me, it once belonged to you. And it still smelled like you. I am wearing it on my right arm, and every time I laid on my left side, I was close enough to smell it. When I turned around, it was gone again.

I laughed for 5 minutes. Laughed, because it meant I was not insane yet. Laughed, ‘cause crying wouldn’t change a damn thing either.

I hope that sometime in the future, I will turn around to find you lying next to me again, and not just an empty space between me and that picture-plastered wall.



phantompainstory.jpg


Keno
 
It's a good analogy (or metaphor). Loss is loss, be it a loved one or a limb.

Hoping it's fiction. :(

and if it's therapy, Keep Writing. :thumbup:


Mike
 
I'm not munk either. I like the ending where you broke with expectations. I also think there is charm and ease about your writing.



munk
 
I like the ending where you broke with expectations.
Click to expand...

I wish I did. The last sentence indicates otherwise.

It's weird, I cant let go of the last glimpse of hope yet.

Thanks.

Edit - No new twist. Sometimes, the paranoid ones are not right.
 
I used to think things like this were melodramatic and sappy, until I went through it.

It can tear your life and self apart as surely as a cannonball ripping off a limb.

Best wishes, Keno.
 
Some things you don't get over Keno...just through.
 
Does any of you guys listen to Ani di Franco? "I used to be a superhero, no one could hurt me."

Howard, that is exactly what I used to think. I was always the one to say "why fight for it?"

Strange how we as humans always need to experience things before we can learn from them. You always have to touch the hot plate before you learn that it hurts. It doesn't matter how many times you've been told before that it's hot, you still have to see for yourself. Weird how we can only learn from our own mistakes, not from those others made.
 
So what do you do when you know she's not coming back because you went to the funeral home and you kissed her cold forehead goodbye. And you took her box of ashes to the mountain on your motorcycle and a black moth came out of nowhere and lit on it at the rest stop. And you and your/her friends threw the ashes into the Nantahala. What do you do then?

--Mike L.
 
Again...some things you can only get through...
 
Nice.

and thank you for sharing that.

I don't care too much about form and perfection in writing like this, just the feeling it gives me. I felt the loss and longing. I think I get the laughing, but if it were me it would be a laugh that would leave me feeling hollow.

Scent is powerful. Muscle memory is too. For anyone whose never had massage therapy work done you should if only to experience the powerful stored memories that your body keeps in its tissues. I relived things I'd never thought of since they happened 30yrs ago.

So what do you do when you know she's not coming back because you went to the funeral home and you kissed her cold forehead goodbye. And you took her box of ashes to the mountain on your motorcycle and a black moth came out of nowhere and lit on it at the rest stop. And you and your/her friends threw the ashes into the Nantahala. What do you do then?
Click to expand...

I'm sorry Mike:( No answers from here, just sympathy and well wishes for less pain in your heart.
 
I should not have dumped that here...my apologies.

A glimpse of Mike's world...and it's not always a nice place.

Again, my apologies.


--Mike L.
 
Mr. Mike L., that was some vivid writing and imagery. I have been thinking about your post all day since reading it this morning.

My sincere condolences. :( I don't like remembering how many people I've said goodbye to like that. Every death makes you re-live all of them.

You have happy memories of her too. Ashes in a river seems like a pretty good idea, really. Life is a one way trip, like that river.


Mike
 
I was day hiking in the Cactus park outside Tuscon. Came to a grave. Farther off than most slobs, and off the beaten track, but I still found it.

Ashes bone, ashes bone on a mound of...love. A few photographs, a stuffed animal, a small bottle of his favorite drink, cards, letters, ....

Illegal as hell. Can't bury on Federal park land.

A real site, too, not disguised in any way.

My hand went in, touched a little dried bone, and withdrew.

He had a good place, and was loved.

I could pitch a tent next to that.





munk
 
Mike, I dont see any reason for an apology. If it weren't for real, I'd have said that was some pretty morbid writing. Seems that life can be worse than fiction.

Made me realize there's worse stuff to go through. Still, the fact that there is someone somewhere in this world who is hurting more, doesnt make any of your or my pain go away.

.......................


She can go to hell as far as I am concerned. Falling in love again two weeks after we layed arm in arm, kissing and talking.

Can't tell love to disappear, but it gets replaced with bitterness.

I'm through. Not over, through.
 
It happens to everyone. We're all screwed up in the head, save the lucky few who ended up marrying and living out a happy life with their first crushes or girlfriends. Your friends and family try to console you, saying how you'll get over it and be better off. But the truth is, people don't get over things. People don't get over sh*t. People just learn to deal with it better and of course, that changes you. Maybe you can be better off. But you never just go back like you never knew her.

I'm only 21. It's been 4 years, and hundreds of women later, and I'm still messed up in the head. The only time I can forget is when I'm with another girl. I'm still in college, so that's easy enough. I've been taking home girls from clubs and parties every weekend for the last 9 months. But this stuff depresses me, and I don't know if I'm coming back to this thread again.
 
The profound loss following the death of his greatest love and wife, Joy Lewis.

The first sentence of the book sent sharp razors of memory through me. "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."

And

"Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything." He speaks of how her face is becoming blurred in his memory, while her voice is still vivid.

"The remembered voice - that can turn me at any moment to a whimpering child."

"God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. He only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down."

The lesson, for me, is that our ideas of how things "ought to be" are illusions of the truth that really is. God, through the natural process of death and grieving shatters our illusions and causes us to come face to face with truth. This is often extraordinarily painful.

Says Lewis, "My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence?"

An incredible book. It will take you through the grief.....
 
Back on the streets

I’m not sure if I knew it back then. It’s always easy to tell with hindsight, everyone can tell you they were happy, few can tell when they are happy.

Friends of mine where looking through pictures they took back in May, and they told me they found lots that captured me smiling. Surprised the heck out of them, and they told me so. I used to be happy.

I am back to my old self again, you won’t find me truly smiling anymore. Back like I used to be, walking the streets at night, alone, looking for company that only lasts a couple of hours and then disappears again. Something has changed though, I do know now how losing a loved one feels. I have learned that never trusting anyone really is the way to go, it hurts less in the end. Never let anyone get close, never let anyone in. You are the best proof for that. It never hurt you much.

Every girl I meet pales in comparison with you. In every aspect. I don’t know what else to do -

I tried to starve you, but it only made me weak.
I tried to drown you, but it only made my head hurt.
I tried to make you go up in smoke, but it only made me cough.

I think I will stop trying.

Yeah, I am back to my old self. Never let anyone in. If it can work out for you, I am sure it’ll work out for me as well.

I’ll be alright. Everything will be alright.


..............

Thanks for all the kind words and the advice that has been given. It really helped. I hope these are the last lines that I will dedicate to this topic.

Keno
 
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