Part 3 of The Facts, The Future, and The Feelings
This is a bat, he is very small and very wet. More than once since Dr J called, I have felt like this bat.
My mom discovered him cleaning after our stay at a forest service cabin. Thinking he was a leaf she rinsed him off a mop into the tub to throw away later. After thoroughly drenching him multiple times, she realized he wasn’t a leaf when he tried to crawl away.
This less-than-2-inch bat probably climbed into the mop to escape the previous night’s mini-monsoon. Now he’d been put through the “wringer”, if you will. His tiny hairless body was beaten. His little heart was almost beating out his chest.
After realizing the leaf was not so leafy, someone scooped him up in a dustpan, took him out in the warm sun, and set him in a woodshed. There he crawled onto a knot, and hung upside down, to go to sleep. He looks like a resilient sucker, I think he’ll be alright.
Three weeks ago, I was the bat in the dry mop, not in my regular place but safe and surviving. Last week, somebody started mopping, and things got soggy. At our house, were getting a healthy sampling of the full range of human emotion, there have been good cries and big sighs, screams out into the universe, and at least one night of Chinese takeout instead of cooking dinner.
One word that’s bounced around is grief. I have had through some losses to mourn this whole ordeal. Greif isn’t something I’m well-versed in. It can beat you up and throw you around. It shows up in many ways, comes and goes as it pleases, and unlike misery, doesn’t like company, but probably needs it. Grief is the rinse water, pounding over my fragile bat body.
The uncertainty isn’t great either. If being battered around by grief isn’t enough, try it when you don’t know what’s coming next, try it when you’re 25 and you might be in for an implant defibrillator. (That’s still a long shot, but it’s a lot shorter than it was 3 weeks ago). The wet bathtub is slippery, I didn’t realize how safe the mop felt.
But like the little bat, I’m also blessed enough to have people reaching out with proverbial dustpans to scoop me out of this bathtub. I’m a little bigger than a baby bat so it’s taking some time, but it seems to be helping.
Part of what Dr. J recommended was I try not to exercise alone, most of the time I run with Emily, but when she wants to go further than is probably good for me, I text my dad. We haven’t run together since I was 13, but sometime in May or June, he picked up running again, just in time to be there for me. I hope this is the streak that lasts.
At the urging of the surgeon who placed my stent, I found a therapist. Going to therapy has been like having a guide through uncharted emotional territory. It also keeps me honest. Emotional work isn’t always my highest priority, but being prepared for my next appointment moves it up the list.
I don’t know if little bats ever get frustrated, but I sometimes do. I get frustrated with restrictions. I get frustrated when the heart attack and all its fallout, conflict with the expectations I have for myself. I get frustrated with the people who love me enough to keep me within my limits, then I get frustrated with myself for getting frustrated with them.
Recently, I started reading a book recommended by my therapist. I know nothing about the book except that it begins with a quote from Teddy Roosevelt’s “The man in the Arena”:
“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again,
Because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; […]
Who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly…”
I have decided life since hearing from the doctor, and really life since a heart attack, is a proverbial arena. I’ll admit that realization took some time. For me, the feelings that come, the emotional, or real, sweat, blood, dust, tears, and bruises can feel a lot like error and shortcoming, a lost fight. I take comfort knowing everyone that enters the ring, regardless of who comes up victorious, leaves as fighters.
Come to the next fight?
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