(Dis)Orientation

This is like a meta discussion in graduate school: talking about talking about the disorientation that I've been dealing with. When I discuss it, it's always in the context of what I did while disoriented: nearly took a header off the front porch, fell into my car, fell headfirst into the bed. But I feel like what I should be talking about is what it feels like to have to talk about "the spins" or this rolling deck type motion that comes over me.

I hate having to discuss this. It makes me feel weak. This whole situation makes me feel weak and small, and at times, I hate myself for being this way. "The spins" are getting worse. I can hardly make it into the bathroom late at night. I nearly fell in the tub the other day. There are so many near misses. When it snows, I will surely bust my ass on the paving stones. Jb has taken to walking behind me, as if he'd catch me if I fall. He watches me, to make sure I make it in the door, up the steps, across the yard. And all I'm able to say about it is, "I can't help it."

For the most part, I don't want to talk about what's happening to me. I had a professor who told me that even silence is a form of rhetoric, and so it is. My silence says that I am, in some small place, ashamed. This is even worse now that I've started getting the shakes. When Jb and I go out for a smoke, I start to shiver and my hands start shaking. As it's coming on fall here, he's right to ask me if I'm cold. And sometimes, I say, "Yes," and sometimes, I say, "No" -- without any more explanation than that, though the true answer is always, "No."

All this silence, all this guilt, over a year since I went on FMLA at work. Around six months since the hospital, and in some ways, I'm worse. How can BP show up at 33 and just wreck your life? Oh, I know, I know. The signs were there. I made excuses. I didn't see them. But if they were spikes in the Richter scale of my life, this breakdown was the Big One. And yet, I still don't know how to talk about how I talk about it.