Down the Rabbit Hole

Anger and Shame

Yesterday I was angry. Things had finally been getting easier in that department, progress coming in the way of planning a future with the man I love, when what should have been a simple trip to the doctor’s with him for a routine procedure, plunged me into emotional distress. During the time my boyfriend has been pursuing relief for a back problem, we’ve been in an out of various doctors’ offices. I had accompanied him on several such visits, both in a show of support as well as to ask my own questions about the latest doctor’s prescribed remedies. These visit all transpired without incident. I think that was what made what happened yesterday all the more alarming for me. I was suddenly caught completely off guard when the nurse led us into a room, preoccupied by a typical hospital gurney and not the customary exam table and chair I’d grown so used to. My throat started to close up and my hands started to tremble. One look at his face to told me his anxiety matched, if not surpassed mine and I tried to cover my obvious discomfort. He donned the traditional hospital-issued cotton dress as he’d been told to do and I sank into a stool across from him. I reached forward to take his hand in mine and the pit in my soul opened. Like a war veteran, flashbacks began to roll in on me in waves. I tried not to look around, not to focus on anything but his face. Visions I long ago thought I’d banished careened into the forefront of my mind again. That horrible hospital smell of industrial antiseptic designed to cover the scent of disease and sickness, even death, filled my nostrils. My skin started to crawl and my stomach shuddered. He made a comment about the plastic-lined pads on the gurney; I halfheartedly reassured him that he wouldn’t need them. I knew what they were there for. I’d seen them put to good use, bile, vomit and worse. I’d changed those pads myself when the medical ICU unit was understaffed, as it often was. One time, I found the one under Seth so soaked with blood, that I had to I run out in the hall and flag down a passing medical student on rounds for help. I knew that this wasn’t a hospital, and certainly not the critical unit ward like the one I’d spent so many horrible weeks and countless hours in. I tried to breath deeply, engaging my boyfriend in conversation, focusing my attention on this man, this man who was counting on me. This man who needed me. The pressure on my bladder finally drove me to the restroom; I knew I was having some kind of panic attack, my body suddenly vulnerable to quaking and nausea, my stomach whirling with nervous jitters. I splashed my face with cold tap water and begged God to help me get past this.. I was capable of rational thought. I knew where I was and who I was with. My boyfriend wasn’t dying. He wasn’t sick. He was young and healthy. He was going to get up from that gurney and walk out into the light of day with me. He was here for a simply procedure that would be over in minutes. I managed to calm myself to the point when I could join him again. I looked at him and felt a deep guilt and shame, this was the one man who didn’t deserve to be let down. How could I support him when every visit to the ER or hospital could potentially cripple me this way? How long before I purged all these awful things from my mind at last?
I kept apologizing, trying to explain without having to say Seth’s name or give any additional time to another discussion about my past. He thanked me afterwards, calling me in my car on my way back to work. It just made me burn all the more with guilt. I sobbed the entire drive back to my desk, sobbed and called Seth every bad word I could think of. Those weeks and months of my life I gave to him, all the horrific things I saw and did while Seth had lain unaware wrapped in a cocoon of medicinal bliss unaware, are still in my head, like ugly scars. And it makes me incredibly angry. I can’t shake my shame, my guilt, and my fear that this will always be hard for me. Once again, even from beyond the grave, Seth has managed to make me feel broken and useless. And I fucking hate him for it.