May 2022

The closest feeling I could describe this month to is, oddly enough, waking from a coma all over again.

It's been gearing up all year, actually, and I'm only just noticing. Things are going by faster and faster, and the fact that we're practically halfway through the year astounds me.

I've been waking up feeling rested. I've found the appetite I'd lost these last two years. I'm reading even more voraciously than ever (has it really been 23 books since January already?). I feel like I want to move, go out, see people. I'm writing all day at work, and then writing in my off hours too. I feel inspired and full, and it's all this great big breathe of fresh air.

It's just like those first days when I started walking again. Or the first time I jogged on a treadmill going hardly anything an hour in rehab. Actually, it feels more like the first time I ran full-tilt down the street for minutes at a time, gulping for air, my muscles straining gloriously, grateful for the blood pumping through my body. Ecstatic, in one word. Alive, if you want another. I think I cried after that first run (maybe during, too). Because a few months prior my parents had been spoon-feeding me my food while all I could do was blink. And a few weeks prior to that, a priest had come over to check in with my parents, and ask them if they wanted to administer last rites. Because since I had woken up, I had dreamt of running almost every night, and then woke up trapped in my own body.

Right now feels a lot like that first run after barely making it by the skin of my teeth. Except this time, it's not my body doing the waking up and going again, it's my mind. The exhiliration is more mental than physical. It's more emotional than physical too.

But it feels like a little bit of a rebirth all the same.