Can you Feel it?

I stayed up kind of late last night, in some households three a.m. is late, or coincidentally early I guess too if you think about it.  But saying I stayed up early sounds strange and confusing, even though it really makes perfect sense.

I had my surgery on January 29th, and it's not at all like I had imagined it would go.  Not that anyone can really wrap their brain around the idea that someone is going to cut them open, cut out a section of their large intestine, reattach the healthy sections with tons of tiny little staples, and then call them good as new.  Don't get me wrong, I think the "idea" of surgery is fantastic, how progressive, how revolutionary....but when that surgery is done on you, it feels so strange and you find yourself in your own body feeling very much like the three bears when they come home and are perplexed by the fact that someone had been eating their porridge, someone had slept in their beds....

I have a lot of random visual images that fly into my head at inopportune moments, things like me laying naked on a table with a tube down my throat.  Images of my insides, being outside my body.  I have to tell you, these images mess with my head.

And don't even get me started on what anesthetics did to me.  I cannot for the life of me remember anything about my surgery, the people who visited me, the conversations I had,..it's frightening to think that there was this "me" that I don't know/understand/or recognize that was talking to my family and friends, cracking jokes and eating Popsicles,..this strange me read and posted on my facebook, it made decisions for me and I have lost an entire week of my life, that I'm certain I will never get back....even though there are portions of the week that I clearly am happy to lose, like when I got an infection after surgery, after going home, that made me so deathly ill that I couldn't pick myself up off the bathroom floor and seriously thought I was going to die....Yeah that was fun.....NOT!  Or when I was in the Emergency room waiting area in a wheel chair, barfing into a barf bag uncontrollably only to have to answer 20 questions about NOT being exposed to the EBOLA virus, even though I had only been gone from their for less than 48 hours.  When did I have time to go out and get EBOLA?!  I'm not a control freak, but my friends, it's truly truly scary when you cannot control your body, and your body seemingly turns against you and tries to kill you.

Since my discharge the second time from the hospital, "feeling human" and finding ways to nourish myself mentally and physically has been a main goal.  I have had to find ways to counteract all the graphic flashes of images, a way to repair what entire nights of nightmares of the worst caliber take away from one's mental state.

I bought banana bread, because my mom used to always have it when we were growing up as a special treat.  I rented movies that I've already seen, but knew were those really good "feel good" movies that warm your soul like someone had lit a candle under it.  I cooked Jerimy a meal made WITH LOVE yesterday from scratch.  A recipe that required peeling and dicing, stirring and simmering, a meal so warm and comforting that I was certain that when Jerimy arrived home from work, this meal would be the equivalent of being wrapped up in a fuzzy blanket just out of the dryer.  I love him so much, and he's been working so hard, and I've been someone else, a paler, sicker, weak and projectile vomiting version of myself, he deserves more than a good meal at the end of the day, but we all give what we can when we have to give it, I wish I could give him more, but for now, sustenance is all I can provide.  On a side note, I now know why people on prescribed narcotics are told to "take it easy"....wielding a "peeler", a "knife" and a stove while on them, can prove to be a little more haphazard than people who are not.

Today, I went outside to let my chickens out.  I was excited to see them, they are kind of my friends that live in the back yard. I know a grown ass woman calling a motley crew of 19 dirty multicolored mixed breed chickens her friends seems like an odd statement.....but this is me guys, I'm kinda odd, just this morning, I was thinking about finding someone who could knit them all sweaters to wear, and how colorful the back yard would be to see them all out there in their fuzzy colorful sweaters.  You see what Jerimy has to put up with with me?!  I'm really quite insane sometimes.

Anyway, while going out to let the chickens out of the coop, wearing Jerimy's "mucking boots", a coat so big and warm that I looked like this:

I couldn't help but to smile, something that has NOT came as natural to me as usual.  As I made my way across the crusty snow and ice between my house and theirs, I heard all throughout the woods behind my house, birds chirping.  

Lots of them, and some were really putting some effort into it, they were singing.  They were feeling like I was, warmer than usual, optimistic about the future of the seasons and winter's leave....there was just something in the air out there today.  It was as if Mother nature gave me mouth to mouth resuscitation.  Breathed new life into my soon to be 37 year OLD body....and I cannot tell you how much I needed it.

Winter is leaving us....it's just a matter of time.  Soon we're going to feel the summer sun upon our faces.  We're going to swim in sparkling blue water.  We are going to lay on beach towels, and watch the grass grow and then bitch about having to mow it.  Our flowers are going to pop out of the ground.  The trees are going to wake from hibernation.  I'm going to bury my face in a blanket that dried on the clothes line and smells like heaven on earth.  My Owls will hoot in the backyard, while the little frogs chirp their hearts out and Jeirmy and I sit on our swing and we'll stare at the stars and flickers from the campfire as it makes the old tall trees overhead glow orange and yellow.

THAT....is something worth waiting for!

~HeatherLynn~