From time to time, in the challenging moments of intense self-reflection, people will look deeply into themselves. They search for evidence of those experiences that may have granted them hope in the past. We naturally scour over our memories, trying to identify and reconnect with those instincts that served to get us through tough times before. Perhaps these strategies, if summoned, could help us again…

Often if we are patient, we can remind ourselves of our personal capacity for these instincts; though other times, someone or something else does the reminding…

 

When my father unexpectedly died of a massive heart attack last year, my mind went blank, despair rolled in, and I surely needed  some reminding. I quickly found myself looking back upon my life for answers to questions that I had not yet built the courage to ask.

At the time of his death,  I was at the tail end of my second year of medical school. By all objective accounts I had been doing well for myself up until that point.  It was this event that triggered my own downward spiral.  The once manically wide-eyed, curious, and energetic version of myself quickly devolved into something much less ideal.  I started  turning inward, isolated, and angry. The world that I had created, full of promise and hope, was suddenly changing.  With my sense of purpose waning, and my illusion of control completely dissolved, I got scared. I was truly terrified.

My initial reaction was to take a temporary (and voluntary) leave of absence from my studies. This was in an attempt to regain mental composure.  During this hiatus, I moved into my father’s house 25 miles north of  Boston – on the North Shore.  It was a modest and appreciated inheritance that revealed itself after the execution of my father’s will.  Without siblings or a living mother, the keys, the deed, a life insurance check, and the remains of a home came sliding across the lawyer’s desk and into my trembling hands.

Within only a few months, this strategy seemed destined to fail… I couldn’t stomach it. Being “home” was nice and all; there was plenty of distraction to help with my anguish, but it just wasn’t the right place for my healing. I desperately needed to approximate the wounds of my now open heart, but my sutures were somewhere just out of reach.

It eventually got tough to breathe. Winter’s chilling winds and pervasive darkness made me want to jump head first into the ocean and keep swimming. I had to get out. I had to see things differently and challenge my mind. Say what you will about the delights of daytime television and cracking a cold beer on a Tuesday afternoon, but the brain that I had just spent two years and a hundred thousand dollars on was slowly beginning to rot, and I could smell it.

My static soul was out of oxygen, and I became desperate for inspiration. I followed my instincts and ran. In an attempt to get some fresh air, and to go looking for something that I knew certainly wasn’t in my past, I planned an extended trip to somewhere I had never been.  I set my sights on Ireland. It was an ancestral homeland that I had always intended to visit with my family, but never did. I thought perhaps my remedy would be found there.  It turned out eventually that I was partially right.

As a creative outlet and coping  mechanism, I have always kept track of my thoughts in writing. Being an only child growing up in a home where the parents didn’t subscribe to  television’s stimulating potential, I had to make quick friends with pen and paper. It was my only reasonable option. Every time I scratched some fleeting thought into one of my notebooks, my sense of isolation and anxiety would slowly diminish.  My imagination and concrete reflections would reliably provide all the company that I needed.

When I take the time to look back at my stories, reflections, rants, and raves  – I am usually amused, always interested, and occasionally horrified.Writing continues to be my preferred energy outlet and my personal vehicle to achieve balance. By journaling about my experiences, I have been able to document, look upon, and make sense of, that certain insanity that drove me from Boston, to where I am today.

Over the course of the eight months that I spent at Altamount Hospice in the U.S. Virgin Islands, I wrote with more purpose than ever before. It was here that I came to realize that this, once upon a time, mechanism for connecting to something outside of myself was now my strongest, and most reliable ally.  I have been able to capture some very important lessons that were granted there…

They were lessons of love, and of love lost…

They were lessons of the timeless and endless nature of this life…

They were the important lessons; but they were also not the easy ones…

I could not have imagined that what started in December 2007, as a grief and a chemically induced numbing of my senses, would lead to something so profound. It has lead me back to stable ground upon which I once again was able to regain my footing.  The experience allowed me to return to my studies with more purpose, inertia, and understanding than ever before .

 

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Heaven is eternal, earth everlasting.
They endure this way because they
Do not live for themselves.

In the same way, the wise person
Puts himself last,
And thereby finds himself first;

Holds himself outside,
And thereby remains at the center;

Abandons himself,
And thereby is fulfilled.

– Lao Tzu … Translated from the “Tao Te Ching”

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This blog  is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

© 1 April  2016