Jet Lag Can Kill
Without Prejudice
I barely know my own name at the moment. The confusion of Jet Lag has hit metaphorically and physically. I struggled up to the doctors disorientated and shitty, my eyes gritty and sore, my body somewhere else and my head throbbing, one eye half closed. I haven't fractured my skull, she says, the Doctor who I wait a half hour to see. A half hour of gritting my teeth, shirty with impatience, and I ask how long of the two young receptionists who are planning the rest of their pretty young lives. I close my eyes, swaying slightly and their answers come from far away.
I hit my head with a crack as dizzy and disoriented I stepped back over my own feet or one of the bags that I have loathed carting all over Europe in the last two weeks. It's been 24 hours and I touch my skull with its big egg lump and wince. My wrist throbs a little, my elbow bruised on the funny bone and nothing is funny. My shoulder aches on the bone and I wonder if my metabolism is on overdrive as I stress about pain that doesn't dull, even when I take Ibuprofen with Lysine that speeds the absorption.
I remember Brisbane airport and the pain as I fell straight backwards on to my skull. I remember the concern in others eyes, the helping me up, the kindness of strangers, me a modern day Blanche Du Bois who hates being helpless or relying on others. But I give in, their sympathy pricking at my conscience, remembering how kind people really can be and my stubbornness to admit it. I am at first startled at how many people come running as I bounce off the floor. The a Doctor asks me if I lost control of my body functions and I smile and answer, no.
The ultimate humiliation of the victim, the shocked, the elderly. Having spent the last two weeks in the company of my 92 year old Aunt I can see the indignities of the elderly, their frailties, their ageing bodies turning against them, they who have once stood so strong. I ponder on the next thirty odd years of my life and decide once the jet lag is gone to live every moment as if it were my last, cheered on by the ancestors gone before. My Mum, My Dad, my Aunty Pat, Lauren, Jamie, my brother. All of them there in the country if my birth. My Aunt gives me a cloth worked on by her and my Mother as teen girls and it's precious, so soft and tied up in memory. My Mother, myself.
I am her at thus age if she had lived. A Mother genius who loved kids, many kids and I am her if she had been sane. And although many times I have thought I would have ended up like her, a dead child, a stressful life, a brain that overthinks and has to be calmed with meditation and slight medication I realise how ill she was really. She had a nervous breakdown during the War, my grandparents having to travel to Leicester to see her in Hospital. She was just 19. She was ill before she met my Father, this I now know. She was beautiful, stunning, dark hair and a temper, strong, who didn't suffer fools gladly. A born to be Matriarch, a vulnerable brain of beyond genius, the line between brilliance and madness fine as a hair.
And her hair was so fine.
I realise in this country of my birth the sadness of my Mothers life, perpetually terrified to lose her finest instrument, her mind. But she gave us life beyond all hope. Her seven children who miss her every day. And in the end in one lucid moment of what had become her horrifying nightmare she took her own life at 53. Ending her terrifying nightmares, ending her descent into madness in one decision that belonged to her. And her alone. Dying on her own terms and I realise how hard she had it. She would have stayed if she could but she was ill and I know no matter what could ever happen to me I can never reach that depth of despair.
She was releasing us, her children and my Father and I know the love and strength it took to do that. She didn't want to be a burden, she knew her future tied into her past and that there was no going back and I love her all the more for it. Seeing in my Aunt what my Mother would have been like if she had not been ill. A dignity, a love, a strength of the elderly female that still contains the innocent carefree girl she once was. Just like me.
I barely know my own name at the moment. The confusion of Jet Lag has hit metaphorically and physically. I struggled up to the doctors disorientated and shitty, my eyes gritty and sore, my body somewhere else and my head throbbing, one eye half closed. I haven't fractured my skull, she says, the Doctor who I wait a half hour to see. A half hour of gritting my teeth, shirty with impatience, and I ask how long of the two young receptionists who are planning the rest of their pretty young lives. I close my eyes, swaying slightly and their answers come from far away.
I hit my head with a crack as dizzy and disoriented I stepped back over my own feet or one of the bags that I have loathed carting all over Europe in the last two weeks. It's been 24 hours and I touch my skull with its big egg lump and wince. My wrist throbs a little, my elbow bruised on the funny bone and nothing is funny. My shoulder aches on the bone and I wonder if my metabolism is on overdrive as I stress about pain that doesn't dull, even when I take Ibuprofen with Lysine that speeds the absorption.
I remember Brisbane airport and the pain as I fell straight backwards on to my skull. I remember the concern in others eyes, the helping me up, the kindness of strangers, me a modern day Blanche Du Bois who hates being helpless or relying on others. But I give in, their sympathy pricking at my conscience, remembering how kind people really can be and my stubbornness to admit it. I am at first startled at how many people come running as I bounce off the floor. The a Doctor asks me if I lost control of my body functions and I smile and answer, no.
The ultimate humiliation of the victim, the shocked, the elderly. Having spent the last two weeks in the company of my 92 year old Aunt I can see the indignities of the elderly, their frailties, their ageing bodies turning against them, they who have once stood so strong. I ponder on the next thirty odd years of my life and decide once the jet lag is gone to live every moment as if it were my last, cheered on by the ancestors gone before. My Mum, My Dad, my Aunty Pat, Lauren, Jamie, my brother. All of them there in the country if my birth. My Aunt gives me a cloth worked on by her and my Mother as teen girls and it's precious, so soft and tied up in memory. My Mother, myself.
I am her at thus age if she had lived. A Mother genius who loved kids, many kids and I am her if she had been sane. And although many times I have thought I would have ended up like her, a dead child, a stressful life, a brain that overthinks and has to be calmed with meditation and slight medication I realise how ill she was really. She had a nervous breakdown during the War, my grandparents having to travel to Leicester to see her in Hospital. She was just 19. She was ill before she met my Father, this I now know. She was beautiful, stunning, dark hair and a temper, strong, who didn't suffer fools gladly. A born to be Matriarch, a vulnerable brain of beyond genius, the line between brilliance and madness fine as a hair.
And her hair was so fine.
I realise in this country of my birth the sadness of my Mothers life, perpetually terrified to lose her finest instrument, her mind. But she gave us life beyond all hope. Her seven children who miss her every day. And in the end in one lucid moment of what had become her horrifying nightmare she took her own life at 53. Ending her terrifying nightmares, ending her descent into madness in one decision that belonged to her. And her alone. Dying on her own terms and I realise how hard she had it. She would have stayed if she could but she was ill and I know no matter what could ever happen to me I can never reach that depth of despair.
She was releasing us, her children and my Father and I know the love and strength it took to do that. She didn't want to be a burden, she knew her future tied into her past and that there was no going back and I love her all the more for it. Seeing in my Aunt what my Mother would have been like if she had not been ill. A dignity, a love, a strength of the elderly female that still contains the innocent carefree girl she once was. Just like me.
