Almost

[Paulette]

I am.

But for some unknown period, I wasn't.

The rubber guard in my mouth. The wide band with metal plates around my head. The leather straps buckling my arms and legs to the table. An injection of sodium pentathol and a fall into blackness as it hits. And then a buzzing noise and . . . nothing.

Nothing is, and I am of it.

I no longer exist. "I" no longer exist. Never have. Never will. Nothing.

Outside of time, self, thought, sensation, emotion.

I am not-one with not-anything.

. . . and then I am, almost.

First a sensation of a self, a consciousness of things outside that self, but none of them myself.

I am standing in a hallway outside a room; I had walked there after getting out of bed, going to the door, opening it and standing in this hall outside this door. I had done these things though there was no recollection of agency, of actually willing or doing them. They had been done and I had observed and now I was here. That was the whole of my universe.

Before that, nothing. Not sleep - there is presence in sleep but there was no presence before this moment, standing here. A not-present recollection of getting to this place in the hallway. I think it's a memory and I am having it, but it isn't necessarily mine - I'm just having it. Maybe it's a reconstruction, a rationalization of what must have happened in that short period before, when I woke but was not yet present.

Now, almost, I am.

Translucent shells of memory flow back, each dimly revealing another translucent layer of place and time where I once . . . was. Not really remembering, but recognizing memories: the shocked neural connections that harbor memories tentatively uncurl, stretch out, and flow back into place; until the thing that thinks these things becomes an I, and I am. Again.

This has happened before!

I don't know how many times, but I've gone through this process of losing, regaining, becoming myself before. I don't know how many times. And each time I'm never really sure that all of me is back, recovered. Some neurons may not have uncurled, some connections not made. And there may be less of me, I fear, less of me each time.

I don't know. And I realize, with not-quite-horror, that I'll never know.

Now I recall why this has been done to me, and realize that it will be done again and again until they are satisfied.

So I make a plan.

Escape is not possible.

So I must make my keepers believe they have succeeded. They must believe me cured, whether I actually am or not. They cannot see into this place that is me, but they think they do. Their need for control and power must be met before they will let me go. So I tell them that I think it's working and that I'd like to try the next electroconvulsive therapy session (their term) awake and without the pentathol. This pleases them.

A few days later I help them with the straps and the band with the metal plates and, terrified but smiling, I submit myself to them and into nothingness one more time, hopeful it will be the last time. Glad for once, that I will not know what it cost or how much is gone forever.

And then I am, again. And I remember. And it has worked!

I'm going home.


My parents are now my keepers, watching me for any return, anything they don't feel comfortable with, anything not "normal." But they must know I watch them too. That makes them a little uncomfortable. But not enough to be afraid or to send me back. So together we pretend that I am "normal" and that they haven't tried to kill me and might try again because, of course, it was the right thing to do.

I must never tell them that I cheated the doctors of my soul, of my complete self, the self they tried to destroy because it upset and embarrassed my parents and it was their job to do so. It was not their fault, of course. None of them. They did the right thing. And if it turns out they didn't, well, they were only following the orders of their profession and the wishes of my parents and society. So it was all right.



~~ Hammond, Louisiana
sixty years later

[Paulette]

Awake through the night,
possessed by desire
for one not there,
who is more real to you
than you are to yourself.

In the morning, exhausted, drained,
having flown a thousand miles,
through a thousand conversations,
and a thousand states of being
as one being into the dawn,

Aware, dazed, complete,
helpless, wholly powerful,
having no power at all,
that you will fly again,
tonight!

That she will come to you
above the earth in the moonlight
to unite again in that joy
which you now know
you cannot live without.

Holding her, tasting her very life.

Giving yours.



~ Saturday, December 18, 2010

[Paulette]

Going On

At our age we have loved many people, and they us.
It is a wonderful and terrible privilege to see loved ones
through the end of their lives.
The grieving process becomes much more
than saying goodbye -- we acquire an obligation
to carry their memories with us
and make their spirit present in the rest of our lives.
The weight of it grounds and centers us,
and the lightness of our love sets our spirits free,
to fly with theirs.