Easy in my harness

Right now, the EMU is quiet. There are no epileptic children squawking, as there often are. It makes this place feel like a pet store full of myna birds and guinea pigs rather than a specialized care unit in one of the more prestigious hospitals on the Eastern Seaboard. When it is quiet like this, and no one is fussing with my electrodes or checking my pulse, and all I can hear are the sounds of minutes passing by I think I might mistake whatever I am feeling for something close to contented.

It is, in some ways, a relief to be literally glued to one spot for a time, at least for me-- at least for now. For all the discomforts of the wires, and the tedium, and the terrible food they bring me (or forget to bring me...), I can sort of make peace with being stuck here. I have to be here, for a predetermined length of time, for a predetermined reason, and that is that, There is no anguish on my part whatsoever over what I should be doing, and if it is the right thing to be doing at all. It is easier to stifle longing for various elsewheres when I cannot even walk across the hall. Of course I cannot be at Knox right now, I am glued here. I am glued here until Monday, and so why bother longing at all?

It is, of course, not so easy to settle into my surroundings when I am at home. There I am also trapped, in a lot of ways (some some of them literal, some of them less so), but for no good reason. When I am able-bodied and un-glued, I do not think I should be content to sit in Maryland, biding my time until somebody signs my permission slip. Just as the wild animal who knows he is injured will allow himself to be handled and caged, and the one who is well will bite and pace when he is restrained, so too do I, I suppose (Now I apologize for that metaphor, I really do, but it was apt, you see. You understand. Don't make fun).

All of this is not to say that I do not want to be at Knox right now, because of course I do.I just have momentarily sorted out "something I want" from "something I should have", and so the turmoil of being trapped has died down. It's nice. When you give up the struggle, it is quiet. The myna birds of the EMU will teach you that.

**Post originally written 3/27/2010. There is sadly very spotty internet in the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit, so it was not published at the time.