Then It’s difficult. Difficult to never know, to have
limitations and risks.
I’d never thought I’d be that close to dying. It’s hard to imagine the world, so suddenly, falling, disappearing around me. Yet it happened. In March, who knows what day for I have no desire to know, it got worse. A few days ago I paid no attention to the pain, it came and went, and mild, so no fear rested within me. But that day in March, the pain did not leave. Feeling light-headed I sat down on the bench at the store. At first I thought it was just my weak legs that cause me to feel that way. Resting, suddenly my face, my whole body began to gain heat. I was sweating my face turning as read as a tomato. Pinpricks along my fingertips and toes made me realize something was wrong. My chest pounding, I thought the pain from years ago had come back. It will go away in a while... I was shaking, I realized. Looking upon my body it didn’t feel the same as it had twenty minutes ago. Why has it not gone away? At this moment everything went downhill. It was
3 P.M. then.
My chest started to feel a piercing sharp pain when I breathed. My heart slowed down and accelerates at the same time. The world around me went by slowly. my face flushed, shaking, and breathing, in and out, slowly, heavily, the world seemed oblivious and all I could hear was the pulse of my heart. People stared, stared at me, the girl who appeared to be breaking down piece by piece right in front of them... As my parents and siblings came back from the store's’ checkout, they took one look at me and instantly knew it was happening again. They walked me slowly back to my father's’ pickup truck and took me home hoping that the pain would leave. Back home the pain did not subside. It persisted long into the night. The pain never left and it grew more and more. As I sat on the floor, not able to stand from being too weak, I thought of him. I was resisting death only for HIM.
Him who has always stood by me, him who understands, him who is my greatest strength, and him, my strongest cure. I talked to him in hopes that I would feel better. He told words of comfort, the kind that made the pain feel unimportant. The words I needed to hear from him at that very moment, made all the difference. He calmed me down, he soothed my anxiousness. That
day my life was saved and to him I will be forever grateful.
Afterwards I didn’t worry about the pain because it no longer mattered to me if I died or not. Perhaps it was because if I died I would die willingly, happily, knowing that the last person I talked to was him. Even though I was ready to go to whatever place it is that people went to when they died, the pain didn’t allow it. After he left I felt the slightest bit better, but it came back even harder just like a wave. Yes, a wave that crashes over me hitting me with every single ounce of force that it had, crushing me with its weight. Why? Alone I was, left in my despair and excruciating pain as I insisted to my parents that I was okay and that the pain would go away. Perhaps I was only trying to convince myself of this. Sitting on that floor, I was not able to move, nor able to breath. Every breathe I took I suffered, as the screwdriver was jabed underneath and up into my heart. My lungs begged, begged for air, roared and ached for it. I did not have the strength in me to take deep breaths nor the energy to live anymore. I took short breaths in order to minimize the amount of pain in was in. Suddenly I was crying tears that streaked my cheeks as they slowly fell just as my soul, the very essence of my life was leaving me. Who was I crying for? For what? Didn’t I want to end this unbearable pain? I didn’t know the answer to this. It was 12 A.M. then. I still sat there, in the dark, listening to my sharp intakes of breath. I struggled to live, to breathe, to die. How long would I stand for this? My father found me then. He yelled for my mother to wake up. I was forced to go to the hospital. I did not speak, I did not have the life in me to speak a word, only gasp. A blanket was wrapped around me and I sat carefully inside the car, being careful that the screwdriver was not driven more into my heart. This was when I plunged, and when I survived. She drove fast,my mom. At this time the pain came like never before. The screwdriver thrusted into the very center of my heart and straight threw it. I clutched the blanket holding on to it as if it were the only thing protecting me. I held it so tight that my fingertips turned white. The car jolted. A second screwdriver went through my heart, withdrawing and inserting itself again and again. The car jolted again, and again, and again, and again. Let me go already… My eyes blinked rapidly, and from somewhere
inside me I managed to breathe in deeper and faster, or maybe I was forced to, I do not know which.
I managed to stay alive then.
A chill ran through the Earth that day. Such that it wrapped itself around my legs and weighed them down as if it wanted to prevent me from reaching the hospital doors. I reached them nonetheless. I sat in front of the woman and her assistant as I was admitted into the Emergency Room. I was forced to talk, to explain what was wrong with me, and it took everything I had left in me. I no longer fought. She took no notice of me, nor do I think she cared. I walked at a standing crawl through the Waiting Room. Nobody looked up, it was strange the patients acted as if they themselves were used to seeing such caos.
I waited for two hours. Two hours to think. Why is this happening to me? What did I do wrong? Why does such a pain exist?
What God would do this to me? I sat next to my mother thinking all of these things, and I thought of all the things
didn’t get to experience. I thought of my first child, to hold something so small, so innocent not knowing any bad in the world. They are our future and they have no fault in anything. I thought of all the people that I have met, admired, looked up to,and those who had hurt me. These were my reasons to live, these thoughts that fought my body, my weak body that no longer wanted to go on. Gasping loudly, not giving a care in the world if people stared at me or were bothered by it, I resisted one again. My legs were shaking, my face and fingertips filled with pinpricks, and I was losing my battle. My mother then looked at me, and her eyes filled with tears and she stood up. Walking across the room she spoke to the woman with the assistant and I was escorted to my room. X-rays were taken of my chest, I was told to drink a disgusting grasshopper solution that numbed my throat and then the pain in my chest. I was given two different prescriptions for pills and an inhaler. They scheduled a follow up with a Cardiologist and I was allowed to go home. It was 4 A.M. then.
The next following days the pain continued, as it has to this very day. The pain has yet to surpass that of the day when I realized. Perhaps this pain was shared with ever mother in labor, every person rushed to the emergency room, and every heartbroken adolescent, but that is a thought as well. What stays with me to this day is the memories that flashed before my eyes as I was ready to give up. Every
smile, every tear, and every hardship that I have
lived through are not a waste. Now, life is worth living.