(The following text is a true story based on a series of traumatic, life-changing events from my own journal)
May 30th, 2004 -
The sun was extra delicious that day. With its ultraviolet beams, it shone down upon us as we basked in the blessings of its warmth. The clouds existed, but all we could see from below was the great sea that stretched far above our heads. A clear day.
Maybe God is up there somewhere.
I really knew He was, but I didn’t bother ever giving too much thought about it.
It’s strange how quickly a cliff can creep up on you while you are driving speedily around a wide curb, instantly forcing you to slam on your brakes. Then leaving you muttering and cursing under your breath about how inconvenient that incident was for you and your day. It’s a funny thing how we think we have our lives under control, how we think our days will go according to how we think it will and how we want it to.
Religion, I never really understood religion. But I had a belief and a faith, a faith that I thought could not be broken. I said a prayer sometime in the 6th grade. What I said in the prayer were words that most kids that age didn’t say. It changed my life.
My mind remembers everything from this day as a fuzzy series of imagery.
Like an old film.
A snapshot that was taken out of focus.
Or a dream from a very long time ago.
3:00 P.M.–
I went on a walk with Mum, down my favourite road.
I reached my house with beads of sweat banging their fists against my 11-year-old body, begging for just one jump into the pool, something to rid it of Memorial weekend heat.
I dashed inside the yellow dollhouse we called our home, ready for the longest Sunday swim of my life. I skipped up the friendly, carpeted steps to my bedroom, probably singing a song along the way, as I always did.
I reached my house with beads of sweat banging their fists against my 11-year-old body, begging for just one jump into the pool, something to rid it of Memorial weekend heat.
I dashed inside the yellow dollhouse we called our home, ready for the longest Sunday swim of my life. I skipped up the friendly, carpeted steps to my bedroom, probably singing a song along the way, as I always did.
Shortly, I entered inside the pink walls of my bedroom, where everything was kissed with toys and decorated with blissful, childhood happiness. My window was the first place I went to. And as I pulled back the white lace curtains that hindered my vision from what I desired most at the moment, my body grew uncomfortably warmer, as I watched my father and two brothers splash in the cold, delicious water from our pool below. I waved excitedly at them, and they waved back.
I swam my skinny body up to the surface and poked my head out for air, immediately giggling of the satisfaction from the cool water to my warm, tanned skin. I spotted my daddy and swam up to him, splashing the heavenly water in his face and letting him do it back.
When I made the choice to go swimming that blissful day, I didn’t know it would change my life. I didn’t know it would affect me forever. The decision just seemed so easy at the time, it didn’t require any thought at all.
My oldest brother Sam was fifteen at the time, dark-haired and strong, strong to me at least. As I played in the water with my daddy, I glanced behind me every so often to see what mischief he and my youngest brother Micah, age eight, had come up with. Sam proceeded to grasp hold of our giggling little brother and toss him high in the air, letting him fall back into the water in front of him. I had let Sam throw me a few times, but I wanted to swim around with my daddy. And I did so.
People make choices. There are good choices and there are bad choices. None of the choices we made that day were bad. But sometimes you can’t control the outcome of your choice, even if it is good. Mistakes happen. But mistakes aren’t always a result of a bad choice you made. That’s why good mistakes are called accidents, when they are perfectly innocent and unplanned for. They happened accidentally.
And we didn’t mean for it to happen. And if any of us could have gone back and done something to prevent it, we would have. It wasn’t the result of a bad choice, just none of us were paying attention, that’s all. It was just an innocent mistake.
The accident happened.
4:00 P.M.—
What I saw, the imagery I remember this day in, sped up instantly, and suddenly everything played out at an extremely fast rate. I glanced behind me, for the last time, only to be surprised with my little brother’s head that smacked firmly against mine. My vision went black, and as his body fell on mine, I was quickly forced underwater. Sam had thrown him too hard.
The sound of Micah and I’s heads cracking together might have been extremely loud, but I soon as I felt it I couldn’t hear anything but a loud ringing in my right ear where he fell.
Once I had fully submerged under the water, everything from then on went from playing fast to slow motion. I opened my eyes and stared blankly at the bottom of the pool, allowing my limbs to hang down loosely from my body, like a dead man floating at the top of a river. I felt nothing, and the fact that my lungs needed oxygen never occurred to me. I just floated numbly, like an inanimate object, back up to the water’s surface.
But it was just before I reached the top, when an indescribable rush of hot pain burst into my right ear and through my head, like a massive train tearing through a car stopped on its tracks. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. That was when I realized I was still underwater.
I broke quickly through the surface and stood upright, gasping for breath, almost as if in a rage, with one hand clasped tightly against the right side of head. As soon as my lungs had been restored with oxygen, I let out an ear-piercing scream, only to be endorsed by an identical one coming from Micah, that happened from somewhere behind me.
He was hurt, too.
Everything following that instance just simply happened. My head only remembers being in one spot after that, and then another, and then another, with Micah somewhere beside me. I remember it in the same way that people appear when dancing behind a strobe light, or if you were to watch a movie with a flashing screen, only seeing bits and pieces, but nothing in between.
My mother came rushing up.
Micah and I crawled out of the pool, our screaming now combined in a sick sort of duet.
Daddy and Sam stayed in the pool, shocked and speechless.
Then we were on the back porch; Micah stood and I lay down on the nearby bench.
I felt the wet tongues from our dogs all over my face.
Mom said something about Popsicles, as if that would persuade us to stop screaming.
How does she think she can calm me down when all Hell has broken loose inside of my head?
I saw nothing but blurs of what looked like the concrete below the bench that I lay motionless on.
The pain worsened.
Then we were inside and I knew instantly that I was standing up. I hung on one of Mom’s arms and Micah hung on the other. I could stand no longer. I needed to lie down. And I needed to lie down now.
“It’ll all be alright, now. Hush. Come with me, let’s go upstairs and you two can lie down.”
No. There was no possible way I was going to make it all the way up the staircase and into my bedroom. I was in no way going to make it that far. So I pulled away from my mother’s arm and threw myself onto the floor of the nearby room— my bathroom, on top of the soft blue rug. I just needed something to lay my head on.
And I lay there for what felt like hours. My blonde hair was wet and my was body shivering from the cold pool water that still covered my skin, now like a blanket of ice. It wasn’t long before I shriveled up into a pathetic ball of misery, whimpering and shivering, and grasping my head all at the same time.
Every so often, my mother made an appearance in the room to check on me and make sure I wasn’t bleeding. Sometimes she’d ask me my name to make sure I hadn’t gone brain dead. I thought that was a little over-dramatic of her. But the pain, it was so bad. If you could actually feel what it was like to have a demon possess your mind, what I felt might be close to what that feels like.
Every now and then, she’d leave and I would hear her on the phone in the other room talking to doctors. But I never heard a hint of panic in her voice, so I knew it would pass. And it was during one of my mother’s appearances, when I had been whimpering so loudly that she felt sorry for me and had no other option but to feed me Asprin. I threw it up.
There I lay, on the rug on my bathroom floor with the lights off— we thought it might help ease the pain— I was still in my swimsuit that was drenched in pool water, and now lying in a puddle of my own vomit.
The pain worsened even more.
“Oh, God!” I yelled out loud, clenching my head even tighter. “Ohhhhhhhh, God! Make it stop! Make the pain go away! Please, God!”
God— whoever He was, wherever he was— He didn’t heal it.
I laid there longer, hoping Mom would come back in the room again and realize I was lying in my own puke. I wanted her to clean it up. But then again, I didn’t want to move. I held my breath.
Maybe if I lie still enough, even hold my breath, it will ease.
The pain grew worse, but for the last time.
I heard Mom’s voice.
Micah laughing; he was alright!
Why am I still lying here?
I felt a storm blowing around in my head— waves hurling themselves around and lightning cracking against the side of my skull.
And then there was nothing but darkness.
I fell into another world and lost consciousness.
No one knew it, but I was slowly dying.
Just a few more hours left.
Fists full of hours went by before I would ever open my eyes again. But I didn’t open them in the way one does when they awake from a night of sleeping. My eyelids only barely lifted, like waking from death.
I stared long before ever seeing.
My heart beat slowly beneath thousands of cotton sheets that bound me tightly like a caterpillar inside its cocoon.
Silence screamed loudly inside the white walls I existed in.
Breathing slowly, I watched the blurry picture in front of me dissolve into clear reality, or something relating to reality.
A woman stood standing, just off to the left of where I lay. Muffled sounds of soft whimpering led me to believe she was weeping. Some part of my mind wondered why, the rest didn’t. But the tears running down her face twinkled with some kind of happiness. She was not sad.
This woman was my mother.
She opened her mouth and said my name. I stared at her, my eyelids barely lifted. Then she proceeded to walk in large geometrical shapes inside of the tiny white walls. Then when she reached my bed side again, Mom took hold of my left hand. She bent her torso just slightly toward me, and with every hope that had ever existed inside of her, she spoke these words,
“Sus? Sus, if you can hear me, squeeze my hand.”
I squeezed her hand.
Seven long days came before this one. Seven long, important days that my memory has no knowledge of occurred. Play it back.
May 30th –
Mom was kneeling down beside me on my bathroom floor, crying out for Dad’s aid.
“Susie, if you can hear us, say something!” Their voices were shrill and panicky— tones I have never heard them speak with. “Susie, are you there?!”
I said nothing. I could not hear them.
Together, they gathered my wet, limp body in their hands and rushed me out the door and into the nearest vehicle. My sister and brothers questioned them on the way there.
Car doors closed.
Dad drove at a dangerous speed.
Mom sat in the backseat with me, holding my head in her lap.
Then serious voices from educated men and women—doctors and surgeons.
I lay on a moving bed.
Thousands of unfamiliar voices echoed all around me, speaking to one another of the next step we would all take. Somehow I was included in this group they had made; somehow I was the main character of their film. And from somewhere amidst their encumbering voices, I heard the fearful voices from my parents, following closely behind this moving pack that we had created.
The phrase epidural hemitoma was spoken quite often.
Then I lay very still.
Single lights shined brightly on my head, and hushed voices spoke all around it.
A large piece of my skull was missing, and my head gaped open.
Brain surgery.
Then stillness, for a very long time. I was in a very deep coma.
May 31st –
It was Memorial Day.
I lay still.
My eyes were closed.
Loud noises screeched all around me.
June 1st –
People touched my hands and kissed my face.
I lay still.
My eyes were closed.
Friendly voices offered up prayers out loud.
June 2nd –
Frightening storm clouds hovered outside windows nearby.
Lightning cracked and glass shattered.
People screamed.
Ladies in white coats wheeled all the nearby beds into the hallways, except for mine and someone else’s.
We were hooked up to too many machines.
Hands covered my face with white sheets as some form of protection.
I lay still.
My eyes were closed.
Then darkness— the electricity went out.
Something inside of my throat, something that was helping my lungs breathe, the only thing keeping me alive— my respirator, it suddenly quit working.
My lungs froze.
For 30 seconds, a prayer I had said back in the 6th grade came into play. I had asked God to draw me closer to Him. I wanted to be close to Him.
For 30 seconds He came into the room I existed in. His hand touched mine.
I heard your prayer. We’re in this together.
30 seconds later, several panicky voices sounded around me. Trained hands adjusted and touched my respirator.
It began to work again.
I continued to breathe.
June 3rd –
Familiar and unfamiliar voices.
Multiple prayers.
I lay still.
My eyes were closed.
Hope faded.
June 4th –
Questions of organ donations were asked.
The familiar “pull the plug” option hung in the air.
I lay still.
My eyes were closed.
Dreams withered and floated away.
June 5th –
More audible prayers.
I had dreams I cannot describe.
My eyes were closed.
My body moved.
June 6th –
My eyelids lifted to an empty, white room. Sunlight poured in through a window somewhere off to the side. I didn’t know what I was seeing, but I was not afraid. I heard city noises from somewhere in my mind.
I drifted in and out of sleep until it came to my realization that I needed to get out of bed. I was being lazy. It was obvious that the rest of my family had already gotten up and was eating breakfast somewhere.
I struggled for a long time to get up, until I realized that I could not even lift my head.
What was going on here?
Out of frustration, I laid still and frowned upon my predicament.
A woman approached me from out of nowhere. She leaned over until her face was in front of mine. Her eyes widened as she spoke very slowly to me,
“Do you know where you are?”
Yes. I am in a hospital. St. John’s.
I spoke, but no voice came out.
She read my lips anyway.
“That’s right. But you’re in St. Francis hospital. Do you remember what happened?”
Her voice was annoying and she spoke slowly as if she thought I was stupid.
Yes. I hit heads with my brother.
I only barely remembered that day. It felt like it happened years ago, or like I had dreamed it.
“That’s right,” the woman said, smiling. I paused, staring into space.
Where’s my mom?
“She’ll be here around 9 A.M. she told me.”
Well… where is she? What time is it now?
“She’s at home, sweetie. It’s about 7:30 in the morning right now.”
10:00 A.M. –
Tall, dark figures hovered over me. I didn’t recognize a single one of them.
They were not nice men. They were here to hurt me.
And they proceeded to do hurtful things to me. They did strange things that I cannot explain, and they pulled on the tube that stretched all the way down my throat.
I needed it to breathe! And they were taking it away!
I swung my fist through the air and attempted to punch one of them. I had to protect myself somehow.
Of course, they were smarted than that, and they proceeded to tie my arms down to the bed I lay on.
Suddenly, I spotted my mother standing in the corner of the room. She had her hands over her eyes and I could hear her weeping.
Mom! Mom, please help me! I don’t know these men! They are trying to hurt me! Mom, please!
No sound came out.
I gagged and gasped so hard for air.
The men tugged on my respirator and I choked.
My body wiggled and I arched my back, gagging and coughing loudly.
An unknown amount of time passed and I opened my eyes.
The men were gone.
My mom stood by me, tears running down her face.
Mom, I don’t know those people. Don’t let them come back. I couldn’t breathe.
I began to cry.
“I know, baby. But they have to do this. They have to take out your respirator, so you can breathe by yourself.”
And suddenly, they appeared again and my mom disappeared back into her corner against the wall.
I cried and tried harder to swing my fists, but they were still tied down.
The men reached for my breathing tube and tugged.
I choked and arched my back.
12:00 P.M. –
A group of familiar figures stood on the right side of my hospital bed. They spoke of stories and comical events I had missed out on while I was “away.”
The muscles in my face may have been too weak to show it on the outside, but somewhere inside of my body, I smiled. These people were my friends. I wish I could have stayed awake to hear the end of their stories.
Subsequently, I lifted the slits of my eyes again to find my friends vanished. Taking their place, stood four pieces of me, but on the left side of my bed this time— my family. Cheerful words wandered outside of their lips, but not out of their hearts. The most vital part of their insides cringed and cried, and somehow rejoiced pathetically at the monster lying before them. Nonetheless, they were more than happy to see me alive and slightly awake. That was all they needed. So they spoke cheerfully and smiled.
June 7th –
Waking in and out of consciousness, I saw many people, both familiar and unfamiliar, most of them nervous. Sometimes they would put their hands on me and offer up words to God. But they usually just sat with my mother and talked and wept.
I began to grow weary of lying still for so long.
1:00 A.M. –
I woke from a strange dream to a pitch black room resembling a lonely, dark cave. The only lights visible were those from the coloured, uneven lines racing across machines beside my bed. I didn’t understand why my arms and legs had to be attached to them. They held onto me like a prisoner and they laughed at the paralyzed coffin that was now my body; I wanted to get away.
But from somewhere in the room, I could feel the presence of the one thing I found comforting in any lonely state of affair. It was both a warm blanket on a snowy night and your favourite box of crayons on your first day of school— my mother lay asleep on a chair at the end of my bed. I needed her there.
3:00 A.M. –
I could not sleep, for sleep does not exist in prison cells. It especially doesn’t when you’re tied down by slithering wires, attaching you to machines that scream in short alarms every time you move.
Mother turned over in her sleep.
I was restless.
My monitor chords tangled me up and the IVs plastered on my wrists and thighs began to ache.
Darkness stared at me.
“Sus?”
I turned my head. My mom was bent over my bed where I lay. Her eyes drooped and her voice was tired.
“Baby, I haven’t slept in days. And every time you turn over your monitors go off. I need to go home and get some sleep.”
She ran loving fingers through my hair.
“I’ll be back first thing tomorrow.”
I stared at her.
An indescribable sea of sadness swallowed me whole and made my lower lip quiver.
I felt cold tears on my cheeks.
I reached for her hand but I couldn’t move my own.
So she grabbed mine with hers.
“Sing to me, Mommy,” I whispered with what voice I had.
And she knew just what to sing.
“Little baby Susie
She’s our favourite girl
Everybody loves her
In the whole wide world
Little baby Susie
Daddy loves her too
And little baby Susie
We’re in love with you”
I closed my eyes as soon as I heard the comforting melody we used to sing years ago. I moved my lips to the words even though no sound came out. I couldn’t speak but I pretended to sing anyway.
A warm kiss pressed against my forehead.
I opened my eyes.
Mom was gone.
4:00 A.M. –
An angel sat at my bedside. As soon as she entered the room, all of my worries, all of my previous fears crumbled and dissolved into thin air. I forgot about being lonely and my night terrors existed no more.
Her body glowed with composure, as she made her way around the foot of my bed and toward me. And strange as it seems, from somewhere behind her I am sure I remember harps from the heavens themselves being played. When she smiled, I was at peace.
The room was dark, but when she entered it, there was yellow light. The darkness must not have comprehended.
An angel sat at my bedside, disguised as a nurse.
She held my hands and we laughed.
She fed me my favourite cereal.
She talked to me, and I struggled to talk back.
She told me stories and soon I fell asleep, wrapped in some deep kind of tranquility.
If God exists, then He must have sent her.
June 9th –
Through waking moments during states of sleep, I saw many people— familiar faces, friends, family, and people I did not know who just wanted to hold my hands and weep.
When I was alone, my very hallucinations were what kept me calm during my waking hours. In my mind, my body would transcend from the hospital bed to individual rooms around the world, so often that I would forget I was ever in a hospital.
Some mornings I would wake on the sunny balcony of a hotel room.
On occasions I found myself staring into my aunt’s
kitchen, watching her go about her normal cleaning tasks. I began experiencing different emotions.
There were evenings I was standing in a mall, watching a hungry boy steal from the bakery and no one seeing him but me. I remember feeling guilty for not chasing after him or alerting a nearby store clerk.
In the midst of a party, I stood surrounded by chattering people and faint music, watching a saddened girl sit alone with a doll in her hands. I felt compassion. I badly wanted to sit next to her.
At nighttime, I would return back to my hospital room and watch the wallpaper dance. Four bears, a family, would spring from their stiff positions and dance in the air all around the room, like a magical scene displayed in a children’s movie. I would watch them in sadness with the awareness that I was alone in this dark room. They asked me silent questions about where my family was, taunting me for the family they were dancing with.
Days passed and then I was finally moved to the hospital floor below me. I was much happier there, especially because they unhooked me from some of the awful machines and tubes I was constantly tangling myself in.
As my hospital bed and I were wheeled down the hallway to my new room, we passed children in other rooms, some peeked out of their doors at the newest addition to their floor, me.
An awkward feeling settled in my stomach; I was different from these other kids. They were all standing and walking, and some only had casts on their arms or legs.
I was strapped to a bed and could barely move my own head.
But it was when Mother told me about the play room at the end of the hallway when the upsetting feeling left. She said when I got strong enough, she would take me down there to play.
But I never got strong enough.
She later put me in a wheelchair and took me down there anyway.
I made necklaces for my friends.
June 10th –
One of my nurses wheeled me to the other end of the hallway to look out the big window that overlooked the parking lot.
There were a lot of cars out there.
I saw people, people driving and people walking to places they had to go.
Freedom.
I secretly wished I were they. They had normal lives. And they all looked happy.
Even all the silly balloons and pretty flowers flooding my hospital room couldn’t bring me that joy.
I hated this stupid hell hole I was in.
June 11th –
Bright sunshine exploded through my window. It was a beautiful day. But it grew even more beautiful when a large group of doctors came to see me. The only one I recognized, my brain surgeon, said I could go home. He said something to my mom about that being the best thing for me and that I wouldn’t get any better just lying in a hospital. I loved that man a lot.
The sun shone even brighter through my window.
It took a long time for everyone to get me in the car.
Mom and I were really happy.
I looked out the window the entire drive home.
Then we finally pulled into a driveway with a long, white fence. There was a big, yellow dollhouse in the middle of a lot of trees at the end.
I recognized that place.
I saw Dad, my brothers, and my sister, and even my dogs and cats. I missed them.
Later, Mom pushed my wheelchair outside to my favourite place— my swing set in the backyard. I hugged my favourite swing. It had missed me, too.
June 13th-
I convinced Mom and Dad to let me go to the church picnic with them. I wanted to see all of my friends. I couldn’t sing the songs very well because I didn’t have much of my voice back yet, but I still enjoyed myself there.
My sister’s friend, Jaron, said I looked pretty. I knew he didn’t mean it, because my hair was a tangled mess, my right hand was useless and curled up in a ball beneath my chin, my face was pale and broken out from the medication, and I was probably skinnier than anyone he had ever seen. But I still smiled because that was very nice of him anyway.
My friends laughed when I couldn’t remember their names and we all laughed even harder at the panicked looked on my mom’s face when they accidentally dumped me out of my wheelchair.
June 18th –
It was my first day of physical therapy. My 70 pound body sank shyly into the black wheelchair that seemed to swallow me whole, while all of the therapists knelt down to speak to me. They all made fools of themselves talking so loudly and slowly as if I were stupid. Even though I couldn’t speak, could these strangers not tell there was a real little girl inside of the scrawny, deformed body they spoke to?
Later they put a large, oversized flannel shirt over my clothes and asked me if I was able to unbutton it. I had full use of my left hand, yes, but that was not what they wanted. My right hand felt disconnected from the rest of my body and embarrassed me when I tried to execute their request. That hand was rebellious and had a mind of its own. I couldn’t unbutton the shirt. I hung my head in embarrassment.
Later, we practiced moving my leg. I practiced talking better and remembering things. The therapists even got me out of my wheelchair and helped me walk across the room. I like it. But it made Mom nervous.
Several weeks later, I started walking by myself.
July –
My best friend made fun of me because I walked funny and my right hand looked weird. But I laughed anyways, I didn’t want her to think it bothered me.
I worked harder at physical therapy.
August -
7th grade began… and so did an unfamiliar, yet comfortable acceptance of myself. People who had not seen me since before the accident would pat me on the back and say nice things about how they were amazed that I lived through such an experience. The feeling was awkward
I was discharged from my regular physical therapy visits because I had reached their goal—-walking by myself.
The fingers on my right hand were skinny and crooked and curled up inside of my hand like dead tree limbs. I could only use them in slow movements and mastering the art of gripping one’s pencil was something that kept me awake at night with worry.
I started seeing monsters in the mirrors.
Dragons.
Beasts.
A creep.
September -
I began to realize the significance of my injury, the remains of the damage, displayed publicly on my very own body. I wasn’t getting better very quickly. I questioned if I was getting better at all.
Lying face-up on the porch swing on the side of our house, my eyes were drowning by tears. The feeling of death settled in for its very first stay and I prepared myself for it to take me. I made desperate gaps for breath in the midst of my sobbing. As my bony arms stretched toward the ceiling as if touching something above me, I screamed for the same God I had asked to take away the pain I experienced the day of the accident— the same God that didn’t.
“God, please! If you can hear me, God… please… I am ready to go now.”
I took one last look at my green backyard, my last look at earth, and then shut my eyes.
“What have you done to me? I hate who I am. God, I can’t live like this. I am inhumanly weak, I won’t make it very far in life.”
I opened my hands and stretched them higher into the air.
“So I’m asking you to take me now. I am waiting on your angels to descend and take me home.”
Waiting in silence turned my heart angry and bitter. I clenched my teeth.
“Yes, how we are all impressed by Your ability to save me. It was really wonderful and everyone saw it. But You’re a show-off-God, everyone’s finished feeling impressed and I am stuck here with this physical mutilation. Can You not see me?”
I clenched my hands into fists in complete bitterness.
“Just finish me off and finish the rest of Your destroying me. Why stop? Why have You left me like an Israelite in the desert to die?!”
I finally dropped my hands to my tear-stained face and covered my eyes with them.
“I’m ready, God! Do you hear me?! I am ready! Go!”
I let my childish imagination take over and pretend to fly me through the clouds and into Heaven. I pretended that I was being held by angels in some sort of white, padded room. I pretended that God listened to me.
I only wish that I had never opened my eyes after that point for the violent fury that would consume me like bait. As soon as I cracked my hands and peeked through the slits between my fingers, my heart spun like a wild, ugly animal and I screamed at the murdering God that was too big of a coward to finish His job.
“God! Where are You?! Please listen to me for once! Take my life, take my life! Take me right now!”
I screamed aloud and kicked my legs in extreme ferocity, my chest tightening at the intensity of my sobs. I gave Him another chance and covered my eyes with my shaking hands again, only to open them in impatience and find myself in the very same spot I closed them in— lying on the porch swing, agitated and distraught.
I repeated this routine for God only knows how long, each time turning out a little more crazed and eventually close to suicidal. After this event, my daily thoughts were that of suicide and ways to die. At night, I would hide beneath the covers of my bed, weeping, and softly singing myself to sleep. I wrote my mom a poem about dying leaving the Earth, the only way I knew how to truly communicate to her my lack of purpose in the world.
February 2005 -
I sat curled up in my mother’s lap, crying softly as she rocked me in her chair and sang a familiar lullaby, “Little, Baby Susie.” When she finished, she asked me what one thing would help heal the pain of feeling so alone. I told her I just wanted a friend, someone close to my age, who had a similar experience and was “messed up” like me.
October 2005 -
I listened as my new friend, Cassie, showed me how her left ankle turned when she walked and that she had been born with one leg longer than the other.
February 2006 -
A quadriplegic once wrote, “God never closes a door without opening a window; He always gives us something better when He takes something away.”
God had taken away certain physical abilities from my body, and in return He had taken me down a long road of spiritual comprehension. But I had been blinded to this truth by the conflict between myself and my emotions— both of which were growing powerful, leaving me a victim to its persecution. I struggled for happiness and I reached far for the joy that I once had. But the farther I stretched, the more it faded. This resulted in confusion and great frustration. I no longer saw my reflection in the mirror.
I soon fell into a pit of great depression. New emotions twisted my heart into puddles of agony, but I hid my pain very well. I was happy and always had a smile on my face when I was around people and with friends. But during the week when I'd be alone, I'd cry constantly and wished for death. Some say it was the drugs, their powerful aftermath still wearing off, but I believe that it takes time for every human to adjust to a reality they don't want to accept. And the hardest part was being so young and never even knowing the definition of distress, to suddenly come face to face with the unchangeable fact that I was different.
I was the kind of different that no one wanted to be. I was handicapped, disabled, whatever word you use to describe someone who has physical weaknesses. But I was just normal enough (physically) for the flaws to not show as bad as they hurt. People would smile and try to sound encouraging by telling me my disability was hardly noticeable, but only because good words like that made them feel good inside… it made them feel like good people. Don’t get me wrong, I was always extremely grateful for any bit encouragement I was given, like the family dog below the dinner table, drooling over the slightest smell of what he can’t have, and then growing thrilled at the littlest scrap he can gobble up in milliseconds.
These people didn’t really understand the depth of the wound they were dealing with, though. They weren't with me throughout the week when I had to labor over physical therapy that didn’t seem to work, when I would cry myself to sleep because I couldn't do the things I used to, when I discovered for the first time in my life the feeling of being alone.
The story doesn’t end there, though, because every story must conclude with some sort of happy ending. This is when the sun rose. My cell of depression transformed into a room of joy. My frustration changed into understanding, and God began to show me what this was all about.
"For I know the plans for you, declareth the Lord; plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future and not of destruction."
I clung to that verse so tightly after that. I was the oxygen I didn’t possess. It’s what kept me believing in a better tomorrow.
May 2006 -
I lost hope again. Another year went by and I was still fighting. I went from one doctor to the next, way too determined to give up.
“God is going to heal me,” I would tell people. “I’m one hundred and one percent sure!” But little did I know that I was caught running blindfolded through a maze that had no beginning or end. None of these doctors could fix me. They strapped my body to every machine and punctured my skin with every needle they owned, but it was all in vain. There was nothing they could do and they were too arrogant to say it.
Almost every day during the summer was spent being the star in some doctor’s odd ritual, sometimes lying face down on a table, while receiving multiple Botox injections, sometimes spending the whole day in a waiting room, and eventually spending every day in a heavy, plastic leg brace.
When the summer left, it took every little bit of motivation I had with it. Autumn leaves began to fall and I fell with them, and for some reason I hit the ground harder than they.
“God’s going to heal me,” I’d still whisper to myself. “He really is.” But it was way too obvious that my voice was saying things my heart did not feel. “I can live with this I guess,” I’d tell myself. “I can be a handicap and still enjoy life. I guess I don’t have to be all the way healed.” And then I began to fall faster, paranoid of hitting the bottom. So I changed my course and started falling in a spinning direction with no up or down until very soon when I became emotionally sick.
Have you felt that feeling when all you could see were blurs of color no matter how many pairs of glasses you tried on? I really want to know. Have you have felt what it’s like when all you could hear were faint voices, no matter how loud you tried to turn your iPod up? It was like having a front row seat for a silent film and suddenly discovering you’re the star in it- an actor without a script. What good are you then?
“Be still and know that I am God.”
The comedian can see people laughing but hears no noise.
“Be still and know that I am God.”
The doctor tries to break the news and discovers he can’t speak. It’s a nightmare the child can’t awake from. Somebody help me.
“Be still and know that I am God.”
I couldn’t quit banging on the walls of life, so desperate to get out of the box it had stuffed me in.
Then everything slowed down for a moment or two, maybe it was a month, or maybe even three months. However long it was, life all around me began to freeze and the colours began to dance in slow motion for once in my life. A slow, but happy song played somewhere muffled in the background. I was at peace.
“I will make you still so that you can understand I am God.”
September 2006 -
Dr. Darnell Blackmon’s face lit up like the fourth of July in an explosion of excitement, as we told him we were giving up the pursuit of doctors and that he was our last one we would be seeing.
“I know exactly what surgery is needed for this! I have performed it several times, and every patient has had positive results.” He continued to explain all of the details of the surgery in foreign doctor language and then proceeded to kneel down in front of me, gently holding my leg brace in his hands. He chuckled at the duck’s head that was attached to the thick sock I wore inside of my brace to keep it from rubbing, and then he looked at me with compassion in his eyes.
“They made you wear this?”
His aid walked in and shot me a grin.
“Tiger, we’re going to fix you!”
December 2006 -
The surgery wasn’t as easy as I had expected it to be. I had a simple one back in November, but this one left me immobile for several months. I spent Christmas morning on the living room floor with my leg wrapped in heavy gauze that resembled a massive cocoon, the remains of the tendon transfer that was going to “heal me for good.”
During that recovering process, I passed the time using the family keyboard, relearning how to play the piano in my own way. I learned to compensate for the stiff fingers on my right hand, by crossing over my arms and playing the important keys up higher with my left hand, and playing the few bass notes with the fingers on my right hand that still worked. Instead of spending my discouraged hours like I used to, preoccupied with thoughts of suicide and allowing my mind to touch the brink of insanity, I spent those discouraged hours putting my thoughts on paper and producing lyrics for songs.
February 2007 -
I lay on a table with my cast finally off, my entire body shaking with pain and weakness as I stared at the bloody and bony leg that was going to be “fixed.” The breeze felt like knives against the fragile skin. My mother stood beside me, trying to hold my leg so it wouldn’t touch the table, while also trying not to touch it too much with her own hands.
As we waited for the doctors to come in and rip out all 96 stitches, I told my mom about the “ultimate shoes” I had always dreamed of wearing— shiny, bright red heels like the 1930s movie stars strutted in. And it was there when she promised,
“Susie, if you make it through all of this, I will buy you the “ultimate shoes.”
After months more of casts, leg braces, and even more physical therapy, I began walking right again… for the first time in almost three years. I did it. And my mom bought them.
August 2007 -
Tonight I saw a boy on a walker. He inspired me without even speaking. Then when he proceeded to tell me about the brain cancer that tried to take his life, I knew it must have been God that allowed us to meet. He took away a lot of the loneliness in my heart.
November 2007 -
I met my best friend. She taught me a lot of things about true beauty and happiness. I have learned a lot about thankfulness.
December 2007 -
I sat on the bench at yet another strenuous basketball game at my new school. I was convinced that playing my first love again would be the finale to the healing process. But I thought backwards.
I was weaker than the rest of the high school girls. My coach was rude, impatient and treated me differently than the others, like I was playing the disability up. I joined the team expecting to be pushed to my limits like the others, not pushed beyond my limits. I fell a lot and my leg began hurting me often. My coach yelled at me every time my leg would give way and cause me to fall.
I spent Christmas day in a boot cast this time. My leg was injured for good. I quit the basketball team and gave up basketball for good. My ultimate shoes twisted my ankle and they found their way to the back of my shoe rack in the closet.
July, 2008 -
I met a blind girl named Destin when I went to do missions work in West Memphis, Arkansas. We both walked on canes side by side, but she could even walk better than I. Though Destin is blind, she can see far more beauty in life than I ever will. Destin taught me a lot of things about contentment.
August 16, 2008 -
Have you ever seen the white box? I have, I've been inside of it. It is the coldest and loneliest place I have ever been in. And I pray to God that I will never have to be there again. I cannot describe to you its size, because it has none. Its size all varies on how long you choose to walk in it. But that's its greatest trick—for you to think that it has an end and that if you only keep walking in it, you will reach your destination—but that is tomfoolery.
Inside the box, there are no other directions than forward. However, if you turn your head just slightly around, you can see people behind you, your friends. They are laughing and dancing, and there is colour and joyfulness. Yet, you can only go forward, remember? And everything before you hangs in white dereliction—still, numb, and silent, leaving room for your mind to scream "What is going on? What have I done?"
I saw things in that white box that no little girl should ever see. It told me things that no little girl should ever hear. Have you been in it before? It felt like all you could do was walk, walk, walk on a long road on the path to nowhere. Who knows, you could be walking in circles or upside down or up the walls, on the ceiling, and then back down.
The box is simply a world built by the imagination—perhaps a way for the mind to cope with trauma or a difficult situation. I discovered it 4 years ago. I haven't been back since.
April 9, 2009 -
I have reached the final stage of fighting. I went to see my leg doctor for the last time. This happened yesterday.
The test results came in. And he told me the problems were all in my brain and not in my leg. He told me that he can't fix me. But I already knew this.
He said my progress has been decreasing because of mini strokes I have suffered recently, that I had no idea I was having, or because it is delayed damage, damage that will keep increasing, for maybe the rest of my life. He said,
"I will send you to a place that can make almost any kind of brace you want" because I am going to live in one.
And then I will go to a new brain doctor, maybe only a few times, for the last time.
I never knew I was getting worse. I never imagined this happening. It is very sad news, we them received yesterday. But I am not sad, no, not at all. I was happy yesterday, and had been waiting a long time for someone to tell me this.
It takes a lot to look at a little girl with dreams in her eyes and tell her that she will be disabled for life and her little brain with dreams may pretty much be decaying. But I have been waiting to hear that. I am tired of men forcing me to pin my hopes on false dreams. I just wanted them to man-up and be honest with me. And yesterday, he was. Thank you.
Today I am happy. Tomorrow I will move on with my life as best as I can.
August 21, 2010 -
Tomorrow I am being baptized again, but this time in a lake.
I was first saved and then later baptized when I was 9 years old, but it didn’t mean much to me; I didn’t do much with it. What good is buying a new dress if you’re not going to wear it? Why become a Christian if you’re not going to tell the whole world about it?
I should have died 6 years ago and sadly it wasn’t until just a few years ago when I started piecing things together that I began to realize why God didn’t let me die... and what it is I really am to live for.
God didn’t save me so I can feel sorry for myself. He saved me because there are suffering people all around me who hide in corners and inside their homes because they’re afraid of what people might think of them. There are girls who are too scared to look at themselves in the mirror because they don’t think they are pretty. And there is Susie— a girl who used to hide in corners because she has brain trauma, a girl who used to be too scared to look in the mirror because she can barely walk-- but who has so much joy inside of her and loves those people
We use our tiny eyes to see enormous things and God uses the small to do great things. When I was in the hospital, God spoke to me and said,
“Susie, you will always be weak. But I will always be strong for you.”
And just recently I have been called to missions over in Iraq--to learn their language and tell the murdering, Iraqi soldiers who killed my friend years ago that there is just as much hope for them as there is for me. I am called to love like Jesus loved. And tomorrow I am turning a new leaf; I am being baptized like Jesus was baptized.
Down in the water by His friends.
September 23, 2010 -
"And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.” –Joel 2:28
Healed.
To be continued. . .
