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Our good friend in Tunisia, in North Africa, was very concerned about the level of pain I’d been experiencing since I fractured two vertebrae. He wrote me an imploring email, saying he could connect me to a top orthopedic surgeon in his country, if I would be willing to talk to him. I replied that I would be willing to talk to anybody, if it would help.
A call was arranged, and I was surprised by the way I answered when the surgeon asked me what was wrong. Instead of telling him about my pain and symptoms, I told him that I had had two traumatic experiences with moving in the past. One was that my husband and I lost our house after a flood. The second was that our landlord decided to sell the condo we were living in. We only had a few weeks notice and I was on a book tour. In each case, I lost a home, a base, a place to come home to. I felt uprooted and rootless. A home to me meant somewhere safe, where I could relax and not expend energy. A little place away from the demands of work, travel, and constant interactions with others. A place to recharge and rest.
Somehow I got through the stress of both moves with help from friends, but my nervous system was very shaken. And it took me a while to get my equilibrium back. When we rented our last place, nine years ago, the landlord assured me he had no intention of selling or moving in himself.
A few months ago that same landlord told us that we had to leave because he wanted to move in. There was a terrible shortage of rental housing and the prices had skyrocketed so we couldn’t find any place to move. At the eleventh hour, we found a small house, but I was overcome with panic and then depression. I felt as though I couldn’t move. I just couldn’t do it again and in a way my body may have made this happen. I broke my back and became bed-bound. Any time I tried to get up I had excruciating pain.
So I said to the Tunisian doctor that I couldn’t move, literally and metaphorically. It took many people to help us move because I couldn’t lift a finger. My husband took charge of everything.
The surgeon listened very patiently and I asked if he would be willing to hear the second part of what I had to say. He said that of course he would. I am bilingual, and there is an expression in French, “il me scie le dos” which means he really bothered me — or he sawed my back. I felt that way about our recent landlord. He was applying unneeded pressure and really making me unhappy. So, you can say that he sawed my back and now it’s broken.
As I was speaking, I felt that perhaps I was being ridiculous in talking to a man I didn’t know, I had never met, was half a world away, who was certainly exceedingly busy.
To my great relief, the surgeon listened very attentively, and when I told him that I thought these were the metaphors for what happened to me, he said very strongly, I agree. I agree with what you have deduced. I agree about the metaphors.
He also approved of the very conservative treatment I opted for, and when I got off the phone, I felt elevated, lifted, and hopeful. He normalized my pain and immobility. He also normalized my belief that mind and body had the same response to moving.
Figuring out the metaphor for what happened to me has not taken away the pain, but it has given some meaning to what I have been suffering.
Sometimes I lie in bed and I think about stories I was told by people I met while traveling. Many years ago a French woman named Annabelle told me she had recently gotten a divorce. She had lost a lot of her hearing and the doctors could not find anything wrong with her ears. Her husband had constantly berated her and she told me that she just couldn’t stand listening to him anymore. After she divorced, her hearing came back. At the time I didn’t really understand the importance of her experience. Now I comprehend it fully.
At a beach in Australia, Mike told me and another fascinated traveler that he loved the beach but couldn’t go in the water. “I think it’s because I was working a government job and I always said I was drowning in paperwork. I felt that I could never dodge the waves of paperwork that landed on my desk. And now I have this fear of going in the water. Maybe drowning. It’s the truth, mates.”
Again, at the time I thought it was a quirky story, but today I understand it a lot better.
Right now I feel like I'm living inside of a metaphor, and even though the move is finally over, the effects linger. Vertebrae and compressed nerves can take a long time to heal. I am trying to tell the latter, “You have some nerve hurting me this way.” Does it work? I don’t know. But it gives me comfort to say it. And of course, I hope that recognizing the metaphors I inhabit will somehow lead to my healing.
