I have to go to the doctor’s office today so that she can evaluate how I’m recovering from the operation. This will be very very hard because it’s been exactly 3 weeks since I went to the same doctor at the same office and heard the horrible news. I have to see her, though, because she is the one who performed the C-section.
All morning I’ve been searching for a way to frame this visit in a way that will make it bearable. The way we narrate the events of our lives to ourselves is what we can control, and that becomes especially important when we face scarily unpredictable things.
So I’m telling myself that this visit is not a continuation of a tragic story that I protagonized but the beginning of a completely different new story. This should get me through the visit.
Someday this will all be something that happened a long time ago, that contributed to forming your future self but is in the past. Live through it an hour at a time until you find yourself in a new present.
It’s hard.
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Your narrative now, I think, is that you’re making sure you have no open wounds so you won’t bleed out, as described in your subsequent post. Body integrity is life integrity, right?
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In difficult situations I always default to the narrative of war. That gives me, at least, a heroic role in my own eyes.
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I do that, too. 🙂
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