Woods?

Look at that long county road, the way it stretches out ahead, calling to us! What's that around the corner? The winning lotto ticket, or certain DOOM? My good friend's well meaning comment (well meaning - the Northern version of "oh, bless her heart.") that I may not be out of the woods yet just triggers all kinds of remarks, some of which were inappropriate and I passed those on right away.

But seriously, the prospect of denial, of saying "no, this time I'm really fine," when I'm really NOT, raises the possibility that the process of feeling good may, itself, be a symptom. It's not that you're feeling good, it's that you're in denial about the loss of capacity you've experienced as the result of your trauma. Yikes! Or maybe it's about when, and how we count our losses.

Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug. We can always count on life to diminish us somehow, to turn our experiences into symptoms, to take from us our sense of "power" over the inevitable. Sometimes it just rains shit. Nothing to do about it.

Those of us who have experienced a good deal of chaos (and we know who we are), are likely to hedge, to plan, to arrange, to coordinate, as a way to feel like the mojo is back in pocket. Truth is, that mojo is coming back when it damned well feels like it.

I'm okay with some crap happening somewhere else for a while, but even that isn't a dodge. Nothing like sitting in an ER in triage to remind us how the lives of strangers effect our own. Around that bend ahead is "somewhere else" and I might be there soon.

By the way, the New Glarus EMS service, who arrived in time to drive me uphill for the helicopter, managed to get the first bill to us. If they drove as fast as they billed it would have been more impressive.