In Medias Res

Last night took a lot out of me. I don’t really know what triggered it, sitting in traffic for nearly two hours might have had something to do with it, but by the time I got home the pain I’d been enduring throughout the day at work had intensified doubly. Prescription muscle relaxers and pain killers alleviated as much of the discomfort as I imagine giving a few Good N’ Plenty’s to a person who hasn’t had a meal in a week would stave off pains of hunger. Getting out of my sister’s mustang required the gritting of teeth, stealing of nerves, and the meticulous unfolding and repositioning of my lower extremities. Once twisted with both feet planted firmly on the ground, it took three attempts at pushing/pulling myself to a standing position. My leg gave out then, and my face would have no doubt grown much more acquainted with the asphalt in that moment had I not reflexively grasped onto the door first. It fucking hurt. Double plus. To the nth degree.
But despite the physical pain, the most difficult part in all of this has been the involuntary restraint. I call it “lock syndrome,” because, really, there’s no other word for it. Sometimes it feels as if I have no control – that there is a miniature terrorist posted up in my brain with a joystick that’s been wired to govern my every muscle. I have lost authority over my own body. Numerous times, I’ve attempted to retrieve something on the floor, step onto a curb, scoot myself off the bed in the morning, ad infinitum, and been suddenly and utterly unable to move any part of myself any degree, however minute, farther than whatever fucked up or twisted position I found myself in. It doesn’t matter if my mind is willing to push through the pain; my body simply won’t budge. As if the pain receptors are interpreting every electric synapse at lightning speed and, as is their primary function, instantly work to prevent their escalation. I don’t even know it’s happening until it’s already over. Like laying your hand on a fiery burner. You don’t have to consciously tell yourself that you’re being burned, that being burned doesn’t feel good, and that you should remove your hand from said burner. It just happens. It’s reflex at its best, designed to prevent or cut off pain.
That’s what locked syndrome is. Happens on its own, regardless of my intensions.
A real pain in the ass, if you ask me. Makes my dependence on the people around me much greater than I’d prefer and, unfortunately, is becoming more and more of a nuisance to them. Like yesterday, my sister and I went for Chinese food on our lunch break and, after parking and unfolding and finally righting myself, I attempted to move from between the mustang and an SUV parked alongside it up onto the sidewalk. At the same time, a woman who was… very… incredibly pregnant… was exiting the coffee shop directly in front of me and making her way toward the same passageway I was currently occupying. In any normal circumstance, I’d have had plenty of time to get the hell out of her way but… no such luck. Apparently, those few extra seconds it took me to unlock by strategically shifting my body weight off my weakest leg and attempt stepping onto the curb caused her great distress. By the tone of her body language, you’d have thought I’d forced her to belly crawl atop the fetus beneath the SUV’s undercarriage, military style. When my elbow bumped her purse, as her regal pregnant ass couldn’t be bothered to back up a step, she let out a disgruntled objection before shoving her way into the space I’d vacated only seconds before.
Fucking pregnant chicks.
Needless to say, perhaps, by the time 7:00 came around, I was a bit of a grouch. And I still had to transfer from my sister’s car to Shaun’s truck (he picks me up from her condo as I’m still not able to drive), swing by the shop to pick up Roy, take him to his meeting, and drop by the pharmacy to get a refill on Codine.
But you know… shit happens. Stuff like this, I mean. It happens. And it sucks. And you get through it the best you can and hope that someday, it’ll end or get better or maybe just easier.
Yet sometimes, in the midst of the happening of shit, other stuff happens that’s… not so shitty. Simple stuff, really. But, in spite of the shit, or maybe because of it, this other stuff tends to come from out of nowhere and smack you upside the head in such a way that leaves you begging to be hit with it again.
That happened last night, too.
The beauty of it really is in the details, but the transfer of emotion, I’m afraid, can only be inferred.

It was around 8:30. Shaun and I had successfully replenished my pain killers, shot the shit with the other artist and the piercer at the shop for a few, left with Roy in tow, and deposited him at the local YWCA for his meeting, where we were met by our other friend who’d just recently come off a binge after he relapsed on heroin. We chatted with him for a bit, and, finally, made it back to my parent’s house. It was now time to leave once again, pick Roy up, and head over to his house for a session on my tattoo.
On the verge of getting dark, I was extra careful in navigating the driveway and front lawn as I made my way behind Shaun toward the truck. I didn’t even see her until she was right in front of me.
Her back was arched and her shaky arms poised in that not quite ninety degree angle notoriously held by our population’s more seasoned individuals. House slippers adorned her shuffling feet. Gray hair pinned lightly into a loose bun. Out for her evening stroll, as it was.
At <span style="font-size: medium”>the same time I registered her presence, I realized that she was speaking to me – that she was, in fact, already mid-conversation, and was now awaiting a response. Or perhaps she had been speaking to no one, to the universe, and I’d just happened to hear. I don’t know. But the puzzled look of intrigue that bejeweled the soft wrinkles of her face told me that her inquiry was sudden – the kind of random wonderment that never ceases to accompany an individual on a lone walk during a quiet evening in Spring.
“I…,” she spoke softly, pausing now and submissively opening her hands as if to gesture her request, “I wonder…. Wh-wh-what happens?” Her voice shook as her eyes searched for an answer.
“I’m sorry?” I asked, stopping myself just shy of the sidewalk where she stood.
“When the squirrels die – what happens?” Her face intensified as she glanced toward the high branches of the neighbor’s tree. “Do they just… fall out? Of the tree? Wh… what happens to them?”
My eyes met Shaun’s only for a split second before we both joined her up in that tree, expecting to see… what, I don’t know. Squirrels falling, I guess. Or perhaps simply willing them to chime in.
“I don’t know why… I was walking and it just…” she reasoned, “it just came to me. And I wondered, what happens when the squirrels die? I just… I don’t know….”
In that moment, it felt as if nothing else existed but we three and this one, single question. Nothing else mattered – that I was tired, that I was in pain, that Shaun and I were living in this stupid house and that he’s been struggling for more than two years now to find steady work. Or that we were so different, Shaun and I in our youth compared to this woman and what was once her own – that we were on our way to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting to pick up a friend whose drug of choice has always been methamphetamine, or that afterward, I was going to scar my body with more ink and then come home, smoke a few cigarettes, swallow an Irish night cap, and sleep in a bed next to a man that is not yet my husband. All the shit washed away in the innocence of her confusion and the soft inquiry of her delicate face.
Her need – a passing of the torch, if you will, from one generation to its successor.
“I…” I started, “I’m not really sure. But…,” I dug for the right words then, “I think they probably know. Just before it’s about to happen? And they come down and… they’re ready for it. They’re prepared. And it’s peaceful.”
I didn’t have time to think about whether or not it was the right thing to say. I hope it was. That I gave her the answer she needed, because, even if neither of us realized it at the time, I don’t think her question was intended for squirrels alone. And I think I needed her question more than she needed the answer I was able to give her.
She seemed happy with it, at least. Thanked Shaun and I for giving such a thoughtful response to an old woman’s stupid question.
But it wasn’t stupid, was it? It was beautiful, really. And more philosophical than it seemed in the dark. Sometimes, our bodies fail us. And sometimes, we fall. More often than not, we have more questions than we do answers. But so, too, do we find that at times we already have answers –  just needed a new set of eyes to ask the right question.
And, yes – I needed it. In the middle of all this pain and frustration and not knowing – needed to remember that despite the shit we sometimes have to endure, we don’t live in a world where squirrels are doomed to drop dead from trees.
That, at least, is something.