I struggled to think of somewhere I could go for this assignment, a few minutes without other people around, somewhere I could observe for just a moment. The first place I thought of was this spot on Mill Mountain beyond the exit for the touristy spots, this vista point that I took my mother and grandmother with a former roommate to see the valley. My grandmother hates mountains and kept requesting that we not get out of the car, that we drive back down and get some snacks instead.
I didn’t get to go to that spot before I found something else to write about. This moment was maybe stretching the assignment, since there WERE people involved eventually, I just had about a 20 minute stretch where I was completely isolated. Last night I had a quick hospital stay, the first one since I was younger and having my eye muscles strengthened (what bullshit that was, my eyes still drift in and out of direct focus when I’m tired). It wasn’t anything huge, it was a severe migraine coupled with irritated nerves in my arm thanks to a blood test earlier in the day. I freaked out though, I mean, after a routine blood test my arm started going in and out of a state of numbness and tingling, and then I started throwing up uncontrollably, it was a scary prospect. I’m the lady who doesn’t even take aspirin unless she thinks the headache might cause blood to pour out of her ears, going to the hospital was a huge deal for me. I think at the height of it I had myself convinced that I had a fatal infection. Ah, hypochondria, c’est la vie.
So I chose that twenty minute stretch in a stiff-but-giving hospital bed with a cloth gown wrapped around me, encircled by blue cotton dividers. I was completely alone in my room, and yet somewhat aware of the fact that there were other people in the building. For all I knew, there were people right next to me; but all that mattered was that it was silent where I was, alone inside my throbbing head and swollen eyes. There was a low machine hum that blipped and blooped every 8 seconds, some distant hum of bed rollers being trafficked down linoleum hallways, the starched rustle of sheets.
It’s slightly over dramatic to say something like the twenty minutes alone were “finally time to just think about myself and not other obligations,” because, honestly, I don’t really live my life to make other people happy (at least not as much as I like to say that I do.) I can be as selfish and self centered as any human being. But it was a moment of pampering; albeit not one on par with, say, a day at the spa. No spa I know of gives out disgustingly pink bed pans with their beds. But for a moment I wasn’t living life for what assignments were due, what forms needed to be signed, etc. It was calming in it’s florescent way. And despite the inherent difficulties of being physically ill, I really appreciated the silence, the white noise of the place.
