I started an unusual ritual sometime in my teens where, on my birthday, I would write a letter to myself reflecting on the year that I’d had and my hopes for the future. I would then file the letter away, not to be read until next year, during the production of the next letter. Those worn, folded pieces of myself were intimate snapshots of myself in time, and reading them a year or two or three later was like having a conversation with a brother I didn’t have. Sometimes humbling, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, but always an insightful reminder of who I was and how far I had come. When I reflect on the journey that I’ve been on, I often think of myself as different people; I was a different man in ITU, I was a different man before my injury. Reading my letters from years ago is like reaching back through time to shake hands with a man who is almost, but not quite, me. In a strange way it’s the only way I can talk to someone who really understands where I’ve been. What I write now is a letter for those past iterations who took me, year by year, to where I am now, and a letter to the future to remind me who and where I’ve been. This is a way of giving back, to help me move forward. I’ve had a new beginning, a new circle for my life to run around; it is time to restart my tradition and to shake hands again.
To me
Okay man, here we go. Writing this has been much harder than it has been in previous years, like playing whack-a-mole but with my thoughts; maybe that’s the way it’s meant to be. It’s fractured, it’s messy, and frankly I’m sick of looking at it; so here it is.
In February I was sat sunbathing at a very nice hotel in Tenerife. It was 25°, not a cloud in the sky, I had somehow managed to dodge the coronavirus which has been dominating both the respiratory tracts and news outlets of most of the world, and things could not be more different than two years ago. At the same time, some things remain the same.
Intensive care. My new voyage had begun, and I hadn’t even realised. All I could do was look back. Looking forward was so blurry; my world was so small, and time was so short. My hand was off the tiller. I could only move forward one hour at a time, and my world had shrunk to the size of a hospital bed. I remember how two-dimensional everything felt; I couldn’t move, I couldn’t change perspective- I couldn’t bring anything closer, I couldn’t move anything further away. My surroundings might as well have been a TV screen playing an endless loop of doctors and plastic. I was a helpless passenger. I remember how tired I was. Looking back was so intoxicating. It still is. The shore was still so close, vibrant, full of potential, full of life. It stretched out and away for long, beautiful years, years without the worries I have now. I could get lost in it.
I blamed myself for a long time. I think I still do on some level. Running the evening back in my mind, every angle, every motion. Thinking that a better man would have seen it coming. That somehow, I should have seen the ripples in the water and known how the stone was cast. That this is punishment. That I wasn’t good enough. The agony of “what if…?”. What if I had left the house 30 seconds later, 30 seconds earlier. Why wasn’t I a little bit faster, a little bit smarter, a little bit better? After all, it seems like everyone else has managed to crack on and avoid a life changing injury with relative ease; it was me that had failed. Who would have known that those few seconds, of all of the millions of seconds, those decisions, of all of the millions of decisions, would be the most scrutinised of my entire life?
“So it is for us- each person’s life is a kind of battle, and a long and varied one too. You must keep watch like a soldier and do everything commanded. You have been stationed in a key post, not some lowly place, and not for a short time but for life.”
Discourses– Epictetus
Funny how moving forwards feels like going back. Sometimes I’m desperate to turn around and head home, but I can’t; this is a voyage for life now. I’ve found this is an unavoidable part of rehabilitation and life after injury, but funnily enough I never seem to hear it mentioned; doing new things, making progress, hurts. Even years later. It seems stupid, right? You would think after not going outside of your own volition for a year that that first trip outside would be impossibly sweet, a glorious taste of freedom and a harbinger of future good. Finally, something is happening. You are acting, you are part of the world. But when I reached that first curb and realised that small step of concrete once so insignificant I would have paid it no mind (and indeed still did not until reality reared its ugly head) had now loomed to become insurmountable, and so memories of nimble limbs and languid strides forced themselves unbidden into my mind with waves of self-loathing and frustration. Suddenly the gap between what was and what is opened so wide and I could not look away. What I thought would be an emboldened charge forward into the realm of the living was already tattered and in disarray; how useless I felt, how pitiable. Defeated by something so insignificant an ant could crawl over it. Progress had changed, metamorphosed. It wasn’t a friend. Instead it was a herald of further obstacles to surmount.
But with familiarity and time the gap between now and then gets less noticeable; after a few more curbs and a few more challenges they start to feel less insulting, until they don’t feel like anything at all. It was-and is- difficult to keep chipping away at life like this; having to rip off an uncomfortable top layer before being able to get to experiences I want to enjoy. Sometimes I don’t want to. But kind of like taxes, I don’t really have a choice; I have to pay. I’m in a higher emotional and physical tax bracket for life now. It is what it is.
It comes to this; what do I want to say to you, my brother of next year? My brother of time and blood? O’ Captain my Captain? We live a life that is out of rotation. There is the past, on a steady trajectory, a common and well observed circumnavigation. We lived there for a time. Now we do not. Knocked off course. A new route, more perilous, less envious, lonely; this voyage is one for us and us alone and I know that I have given up searching the ship for other passengers. Hell, that’s why I’m talking to you. Some days I think it’s better this way; calling out for companions just makes the silence more obvious, it gives it power. I think we have a sort of tinnitus of the heart, you and I; some days we’re blessed by our fleeting distractibility and some days that grating whine is all you can feel, deep in your bones. And just like tinnitus we both know it never really goes away.
Our heartache straddles a line. It bisects the world. On one side is all that luggage we keep buried in the hold, each suitcase a memento mori. Words: invalid, wasted, mutilated, useless, emasculated. We know they are there but we don’t like to look. To move forward I have begun to acknowledge those boxes and cases, to give them their time, to dust them off and see them as they are; just baggage. Some of them can be cast overboard, some of them are inescapable and must be kept, but regardless they are just things to sort through and come to terms with. Anyone on any journey has to pack such things, and yes, we do have more than most, but to not come to peace with them is to let them control you.
On the other side resides our captaincy of this foreign vessel. My hands- and in time yours- are on the wheel now. The sails are unfurled. Life is hard and it will continue to be. I may be the only man who can say that to you that you know understands. Maybe I can reach out my arms to you and you can reach out yours and you can hold me as the only one who can, and in that embrace, we can tell each other tales of walking and running and solid ground. In the meantime, I must set a course to you and in a year we will see the fruits of my navigation. There’s an adventure out there somewhere.
“But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
“Water water everywhere, nor any drop to drink”.
But YOUR words are a fresh spring of profoundly moving poetry.
Great post as always, thank you Ed for sharing your thoughts with us.
Great read as always, happy you are posting again. Hope to see you soon
Enjoy everything you write, thank you.
I think of you often after you looked after my gran. Your words are inspiring and they are read. Writing a letter each year, I love that idea. I’ll be back, please keep blogging.
Profoundly moving poetry. From one Hudson to another, absolutely nailed it.
Your attitude should be seen as the standard when discussing this topic.
When I read your words, I cry, every time. Why? Am I crying for the Ed that was, the Ed that is? No, I cry because you write from such a deep and honest place that it can’t be ‘glossed over’ or avoided like so much in each of our days. Your writings matter and should, will, get a wide audience.
I talk of you often to my friends. Not as a man to whom fate dealt a lousy hand but as my hero, an incredible example of the strength of the human spirit. You probably don’t feel you deserve admiration, that you feel crap so often but your words convey a wholly uplifting and steely determination to not let ‘this thing’ get you. Your mind is stronger than any body and while it’s pretty useful to be able to wave things about, those that lose their minds, lose themselves, lose everything.
Sorry for being a distant uncle, I usually don’t know what to say! Just know that you are loved and admired.