the jumper

i feel like i should take a moment to warn the reader the below is of a different kind of content then i have ever had or ever hope to have again in the future. i witnessed an accident on september 1st that was very graphic and i wouldn't want to surprise the reader with that. maybe it just feels disturbing to me because i have a visual aid to accompany the words, but please, be warned and read with caution.

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my voice teacher explained to us that when the body wants to resist an experience it's having, it stops breathing. like in moments before a car accident, the one or two seconds of time before impact that stretches out to infinity become silent and breathless. refusing air, the body is rejecting the act of taking the experience into itself.

but i learned something new last wednesday while driving to the hospital to visit az in the icu. i learned that there are the times when denying the body breath simply isn't enough protection from the outside world that is forcing itself upon the spirit and one has to purge oneself of the experience, expel it out as quickly as possible.

that said, i never thought i would be a screamer. does anyone, really? people scream in movies and it almost always feels contrived and useless. but after sensing something strange happening with traffic up ahead, on this particular wednesday, i made a poor choice and switched lanes to my left instead of my right.

a mere moments later traffic opened up and revealed a stopped car in the middle of the freeway with a man walking behind it to place the first flare. and as i came parallel to the car an obstruction in the road directly in front of the car appeared and my mind speculated for a brief, innocent, second on how creepy it was that the debris faintly resembled a torso. that innocence was fleeting as the dark line in the rubble became a belt and the grey and red objects that used to mean something to this body became blood and grey matter.

and that's when all the panic and horror tore out of my body shredding themselves on my vocal chords along the way.

i screamed for long moments, city blocks, full breaths in and out, tears running down my face, yet it still took me a quarter of a mile before the voice in my ears identified itself as my own. that was when my brain switched back on as i struggled to pull myself together knowing i couldn't pull over anywhere near the site and witness any more. a hazy body lying parallel on the pavement, the crowds of watchers that were sure to come. even the emergency vehicles approaching would be too much. there was no such thing as a safe distance.

so my body continued on autopilot as i steered the car while my mind roved through the circumstances: the body's proximity to the car that was too close for having flown from it, the overpass above, all the people i was driving passed each moment that had no idea of the accident just out of sight and all the while still screaming through my hand clasped tightly over my mouth. my hand was my final, paltry attempt to keep whatever i was expelling out from reentering back the way it came. hold myself in. keep everything else out and away. far far away.

and here i was, on the way to seeing someone tied up in tubes and oxygen and IVs up the arm like full sleeve tattoos with no where to put the horror. all this i considered, my body voicing itself quietly, with shorter breaths and smaller, sadder sounds until eventually i could reach out, call e and leave a long, broken voice mail, text ross, the only one i know who knows even more about body splattered on car and pavement.

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my throat hurt for days and the first night i couldn't turn the lights out in my room at night. have i ever been that afraid of the dark?

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the next night i decided to spend the night in the icu with az. he was officially out of the icu, just hanging out there until a bed became open elsewhere in the hospital. we watched toystory. he got some sleep. and the thin mattress and squeaky frame was a welcome respite from the lonely, creepy sleep i had gotten the previous night with the pillow over my head and the lights on in my bedroom.

i had two dreams this night, each seconds long, back to back, summing up all the extremes of the previous few days. the first dream was golden in color. warm and safe. i was in the icu with az, but the room was filled with his brother, sister-in-law and mother, all who were there standing vigil with me. there was a lot of love for him in that space and it was comforting to me as much as it was there for him too. this dream was abruptly snatched away and replaced with another. the colors were dark, blue/grey as az and i were in my car in a full spin right through the scene where the man jumped and killed himself. as we passed the scene where it happened, time slowed down so we could get a full, elongated view of the space where he took his life.

and then the lights came on as the nurses came in to say we were being transferred to a new floor. amen.