Switzerland

It began as a distant whisper: “Switzerland… Switzerland… Switzerland….” The numbness in my brain & body had left me feeling frozen. My ability to think and move had slowed to a crawl, as if the anti-freeze which had been my warming blood, lost track of how to continue to travel and nourish me.

Like the helium steadily escaping from a balloon, thoughts and emotions swirled with their own momentum. The acuity to contain and analyze them, as elusive as the mental fog which was encompassing me.

Where was I? The chilling winter in Switzerland?

Then, like disjointed sections of movie trailers, sequences leading to my arrival here began to appear, as a curtain of semi-consciousness pulled back and forth in between.

A bizarre accident. A Traumatic Brain Injury. Words taunting and confusing me where they don’t belong. Numbers appearing dyslexic on the page as if thrown up in the air, landing haphazardly to futilely decipher. Sentences emerging in a series of non-sequiturs. Then, in a replying mirror to my own dismay, observing the abject horror in the eyes and faces of friends, family, and colleagues who no longer recognized who I had become.

Unable to remember getting from one place to the next. The person who could accomplish anything. A creator, innovator, manifester.

A lonely, dispiriting Kafkaesque journey through the U.S. Healthcare “System.” Balkanized. “Specialists,”with no view beyond their ivory towers. Charlatan Government Disability Doctors: “It’s just a Concussion.” All while my life had collapsed like a house of cards.

Like watching a slow motion documentary of a natural disaster as my business collapsed — shuttered. Bankruptcy. Shame. Despair. Too many potential years ahead of me to piece together how to provide. Dignity shattered.

So exhausted, feeling like the blood is flowing out of me in a reverse I.V.

“Switzerland….”

Cash stash found. Passport lost. Frantic. Crushed. Memories of Lausanne, Switzerland. Green, lush, blue water. Serene. Please, I just want to feel free again. Passport found!

As I prepare to board the plane toward Dignitas, an ultimate solution – I observe my daily reading ritual, and the prescient Horoscope casts a light and a challenge:

“The outcome you’re worried about is unlikely – that is, unless you keep up the worry, in which case your fixation will trick your mind into assuming you want that scenario, and it will do everything to make it so….”

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“Switzerland” is an excerpt of a Memoir in progress.

One Response

1. LAG says:

   June 13, 2018 at 7:49 pm

   Riveting!

   Reply