Tonight, I took some time out of my usual writing of my book to read the journal that I poured my pain into the days after the fire in August of 1998.
I do this every year at this time, and every year…a different part of this journal speaks to me based on what is happening within my life currently.
This particular entry was written just after the Divine Energy which I later discovered to be Reiki had just entered my room, took me out of my body and up to the ceiling, suctioned all of my wounds and left me with 90% of my pain lessened.
I would like to share it here for whoever my words scribbled in the wee hours of the morning in a Burn Ward will help:
“9/6/98
I don’t know what or who just helped me, but I just got up to use the bathroom, and I seriously felt no pain.
I still felt the wounds stretch and they are still incredibly tight, but the usual hot searing pain and throbbing is no longer there.
I am far from healed, as I still look like Freddy Krueger, but fuck I really seriously have hardly any pain all of a sudden!
Just today, I was wondering when the hell I was going to be in less pain. Someone…or something heard me.
This last trip out of bed and into the bathroom was the quickest and least painful since the damn fire. Even the bottoms of my feet, which are raw did not hurt when I walked on them!
I am so relieved, and I hope it is all downhill from here into the arms of healing.
2 straight weeks of pain. I’ve never felt so much pain in my life.
Maybe this happened to me because for so long I have been so dead inside.
Now, every nerve in my body is used to being awake to feel every bit of pain my wounds have to offer.
The way I look now horrifies me. My hair hasn’t been washed or conditioned in 2 weeks, my legs have not been shaved, different colored patches of skin grafted all over me and large red patches of raw left where my good skin used to be on my thighs…all of this, and I have been in unflattering hospital gowns the whole time.
One of my thighs with the large rectangle being where they peeled good skin off of me to graft it onto my hands and feet. The other red areas are burns.
On my way to the toilet, I glanced in the mirror and even though my hair is a mess and in a tangled pony tail…my eyes were alive and vibrant. I see the fire within them.
I look refreshed and ready, when usually in the past 2 weeks, when I glanced at myself in that same mirror, I’d see my face scrunched up in a pain filled grimace with my eyes dull and lifeless except to reflect the pain.
I believe I have woken up.
I believe it is now my turn to live life, love life and love me.
I know I have survived.
I know I can do anything I put my clear mind to.
I will. I can. I AM!!!
Usually the last 3 years have given birth to endless journal entries written at this time of night about lost love, no love and self hatred.
I know myself too well to hate her, and although there are things I want to change about her outside…inside, she is tough, she is loving, she is fierce, she is good and what right do I have to hate her? NONE!
I’m alive damn it, and if I do only one thing with my second chance of life, it is going to be to truly learn how to completely love me!
This is the first night since being a little child, that I can truly say that I am proud to be me and that I love me.
Even when I was in a committed relationship I didn’t feel love for myself so this, ‘I need a mate to make me whole’ bullshit is finally over.
I need nothing but myself and my love for her to make me whole.
I am the only person who can truly find out who she is now, because she has changed after this. She has become a warrior.
Her whole history as a being as far as material possessions has been burned away, but fuck…there’s a lot of heart and soul history between us that I will never forget, and how could I ever hate that?
She has had enough people hurt her, fuck with her and put her down in her life. Who am I to be one more?
She needs to stand tall and be who she is because God damn it she is me and I am she and tonight we love each other.
I am going to get used to that love.”
———————————————————————-
A few days after this energy awakened my heart to fill me with new found love for myself, the wounds that were not healing even after multiple skin graft surgeries began to quickly heal.
I was soon released from the hospital to heal my body, so I could get back out in the world and figure out what it meant to actually love myself.
Some seeds in the wild need fire in order to break open, root, sprout and grow into beautiful plants after a wildfire ravages the land.
I suppose I am one of those seeds.
“