Dealing with uncertainty:

Will I ever heal again?

 

I am new to this area.

For I spent most of my grown days, sliding the fog of irresolution with an imaginary sword The one I’ve been wanting to tattoo for a while,

Yes, I was pragmatic enough to let my ego

Picture itself as of the Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer above the sea of fog. Hand on the wrist,

Head high

Looking at human sufferings from above,

Thinking I’ve got a taste of it all

Heartbreaks, death of dear ones, mortal illness of family members, loneliness Failures or moments of winning

A battle in my own head or one I have to fight against destiny (?)

Oh you sweet child,

There’s one thing you never anticipated,

Waiting for death.

 

No I’m not dramatic in the way you may think.

Uncertainty for sure is a monster with many heads,

You try to cut one of the heads off,

You wake up, trying to embrace the rare sun of the autumn

You try to keep yourself in a good, receiving mood,

Trying not to await for yet another probable surgery

That might turn your world upside down again.

 

I cut the head off,

Smelling the small victory of spending another day without feeling excruciating pain I look into the mirror,

Just to see the other head of the monster staring back at me,

This one has another name

I’d like to call it: Will this last? For how long?

 

Over the course of past few months,

I’ve met the other heads of the monster,

They’re as scary as they were in the beginning

Each have their own smell, their own taste and their own gut feeling I sense inside Like cold lead slandering down my spine,

Like dizziness of having a banged on helmet on my head

Like a sensation of feeling so, so heavy and grave,

Not even able to make a muscle flinch.

 

I don’t wanna name all the heads of course,

I guess I haven’t met them all myself!

But the ones Ive met,

At least I got to know them better through reading existential psychotherapy. You’re right, I just dropped the name of my fragile solution of dealing with this demon, imperceptibly

 

I learned about the four fears of humankind

I learned that I can explain the nausea feeling I sense every time I hear the word antibiotics

 

With these four fears,

In fact, thanks to Ervin Yalom, I can now explain every fear I sensed in my life with his theory,

And god, how we love to categorise everything, Ive come to realise its because we have very lazy brains, willing to reserve the energy for surviving like other beings.

I learned my big fear is of death.

Death in its ultimate meaning,

And its translations in my day to day life,

Like not being able to move,

Not being able to walk or live normally

Not feeling well enough to get out of bed

Or wash my skin as there were scars everywhere.

“My little day to day deaths”

.

 

Don’t think I really sat down to read about existential psychotherapy like an intellectual

Oh no, I never had time, never had the energy or even the motivation.

I listened to a male voice explain the abc of it in the bathroom,

Where funny enough, I found myself spending most of my time there.

At first I was scared, I was warned this might ruin my perception of life.

But god, my perception was already shattered. So now, Why not kick the scattered pieces of it?

Gradually I found myself waiting for the night ceremonies of me sitting in a plastic tube, washing my scar and listening to his now friendly voice,

Unraveling the nasty lies human beings tell themselves with their defence mechanisms.

I found it soothing to learn how I prayed to an unjust god to save me from another operation, as a defence against the second fear: fear of loneliness

And I understood I also tied myself to my work because of my fear of freedom (For more information please read the book of mr Yalom, published by BasicBooks, a division of HarperCollinsPublishers! :)) )

I could do anything with the time I had left before the next stroke of pain would come But what did I do?

Sitting in classrooms, waisting time, instead of actually “living”.

Justifying all of this with “loyalty to purpose”.

 

The last fear of all, is meaninglessness:

Here this fear may end this little text, or as I like to call it my little poem of existence;

But Im grown enough now, to continue writing

A coda for all that I went through,

My experience is meaningful,

Not to you, the reader, nor to anyone else,

But to myself

As I have no other way to experience this little miracle of living without pain,

Or to even sense every second of pain for its also part of my existence,

Than feeling every feeling.

Feelings are the one sensory ability we can trust while we go through the experience of living.

There’s a whole explanation for that, provided by mr Schopenhauer, but I’m not gonna go there.

 

And here, I can validate my dramatic behaviour,

Since I really felt all of these written lines while I was dealing with irresolution.

I’m not seeking to persuade you in anyway.

I’m singing you my little poem of existence, Under the cloud of uncertainty,

While I still live.

Able to sense what it feels like to write these lines,

Enjoying the fact that I have the ability to turn my suffering to words.

Oh, How I missed doing this with my left seconds and minutes…

 

Arefeh Hekmatpanah April 2023