Pain

Sometime in the fall of 2007, just before my 44th birthday, my headaches came back with a vengeance. I ended up in the emergency room. The pain was so bad I was vomiting. In the ER they gave me a morphine drip that didn't even put a dent in the pain. Finally they dripped enough to knock me out.

In the month between the onset of the headaches and getting in to see a neurologist and getting the right meds prescribed I was laid up in my bed. If I lifted my head I had excruciating pain so I didn't lift it. My 44th birthday cake was brought to me in bed and somehow I enjoyed it from a prone position.

But during that month of being bed-ridden and watching the fall days drift by my window I started to change in some small, but perceptible way. And to my amazement I was able to thank my pain for being there. I said that. "Thank you headaches. Thank you pain. I know that you are serving a purpose, one that is going to teach me something that I need to learn, and so I thank you!"

I re-read some of the self-help books that had been on my bookshelves for the past 25 years. My mom lovingly gave me this for my birthday. I bought this book which I thought was really helpful in keeping me focused and dreaming big. I made kind of a guided imagery audio tape for what I wanted my life to be and I listened to it religiously each night as I drifted off to sleep.

I valued the following passage from W.H. Murray's The Scottish Himalayan Expedition:

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation. There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen events, meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would have come their way.

I had spent so many years listening to the voice inside of me just berating me about so much in my life: what I did or didn't do, what I said or didn't say, why I was or wasn't this way or that, finally I said back, "Enough is enough!" And I took control.