Trying to Explain

It is when the pain is gone or less present than usual when the truly traumatic experiences occur. How can this be explained in words?

Eloise sits down to take a sip of her morning coffee but today it does not taste like coffee. She cannot exactly say what it tastes like, only that it is not a coffee taste, though it is coffee that touches her tongue so familiar with that flavor. Frowning at the strangeness of it all, she opens her refrigerator to take out some orange juice. She notices then that the light bulb in the refrigerator has been removed and now sits comfortably atop an egg carton. When was this light bulb taken from its rightful place? And why? What nonsense! She closes the fridge door and finds herself jumping at the noise. How peculiar, she thinks, to be surprised at something I myself brought about. How could the small sound of such a normal thing have appeared so large and painful in her brain? What has happened to bring about this odd day?

When I have come out of a particularly horrendous bout of pain, the world is changed. Terrible pain is like a near death experience. For me, these two are linked, as one irrevocably caused the other to come about.

I will try, very soon, to explain the moment I was to die, but I can't think to do it now. To return to that moment is to delve into the mystical, and I haven't the stomach just yet. You'll have to forgive my procrastination-- I'm only human, after all, unless I really have died and am ghost or couldn't die and am godly.

When I saw that truck come toward me, my brain sped up. People like to say that the world slows but no, it is our clever minds that play tricks on us. They really do have their self-interest in "mind." Tobias Wolfe explained it so well in "Bullet in the Brain":

The bullet is already in the brain; it won’t be outrun forever, or charmed to a halt. In the end it will do its work and leave the troubled skull behind, dragging its comet’s tail of memory and hope and talent and love into the marble hall of commerce. That can’t be helped. But for now Anders can still make time. Time for the shadows to lengthen on the grass, time for the tethered dog to bark at the flying ball, time for the boy in right field to smack his sweat-blackened mitt and softly chant, They is, they is, they is.

Our minds recognize what a great events their deaths shall be and our to the entirety of our beings. While our muscles contract and our eyes secrete salty waters and our lungs panic into silence, our brains bring us through an infinite number of thoughts and feelings and memories. Our entire lives do not "flash before our eyes"-- how boring would that be? The mundane is abandoned. Our brains are not idiots, they choose the most profound moments and mix them in with thoughts of our approaching deaths and feelings about what might lie beyond.

In that moment, which lasted such an eternity, I came to terms with my death at the age of 18. I'm young, I thought, but some are younger when they go. It was... I think it was a good life, after all. At least mom can take some comfort in it being quick.

It is only afterwards, when the reality of my still living, that the pain and the horror and all the bad things set in. Having given in to the insane but self-preserving notion that death was an acceptable end to the day, how was I to return to sanity?

After going about shrieking at the slightest noise, feeling the darkness thrust a thousand objects beneath my skin, from tiny needles to cleavers, thanking god that death was eminent- rest was just on the horizon, how are we supposed to go back to a "normal" life? What was the sane seems crazy because you have forced your mind to accept the impossible as true.