As I reached for the doorknob with my right hand, I had but one and only one impulse.
Run! Turn around and run as fast as you can!
It's fair to say that being a physician requires a certain constitution. When one deals in the currency of death, it becomes second nature to hold our heads high when others fall. How else can we view the tortured realities of existence. The average life is chocked full of suffering. People die tragically, unexpectedly. Pain rips through the tender belly of humanity leaving us raw, and yet we stand our ground.
But sometimes it's different. Sometimes the guarded armour of the physician is pierced in just the right fashion to expose the glistening skin overlying the Achilles tendon. We fall, mortally wounded but unable to close our eyes. It is in these times we learn to hurt all over again.
It is in these times, you either shield yourself, or open the door and let the pain run right through you.
I choose to open the door.
The act of writing about what hurts usually soothes me. It gives a morsel of control over that which is ultimately ephemeral.
Today, writing it is an act of submission.
As the raging
waves of the ocean crash against the shores of my insides, the waters eventually
calm and the tide recedes.
And I am empty once again
1 comment:
It takes great courage, not only submission, to write one's pain. I salute your ability to write with a transparency that makes your readers ache too.
As a writer I tend to hide behind my opaque veil metaphors when I write about what hurts -- a gutless way to go, yet all I can manage right now in my work.
Keep going, Jordan.
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