Someday we'll know...

     Four years and a little over a month ago, I was in the hospital in Newark, NJ. Awaking from my eighth surgery since October 2005 - a fifteen hour long pelvic reconstruction - I could hazily see my mom and dad standing over me. Vaguely, I realized that there was still an anesthesia tube down my throat, and as I came to, I became distressed at not being able to communicate. I tried to talk, choking on my tube, to ask for apple juice or an ice chip or anything to run down my tongue and throat so that my thirst would be satisfied. However, the nurses couldn't give me anything because it was so soon after my surgery, and I would certainly throw it up. Yet as I tried to pull the tube out of my mouth, I became so aggressive in trying to sit up and be able to talk (I felt fine, even if I wasn't.) that I threw up anyway. My mom pleaded with nurses to take the tube out of my mouth and gave me a pad of paper and a pencil to communicate with. At last, I was relieved of the tube and able to talk (hoarsely) and sip on juice. I remember my doctor coming out to talk to my family and showing me my new x-ray. I was whole again; my hips were even and the damage done from that original surgery righted. I sank into a daze and finally an uneasy sleep as my family watched over me, and I was transferred to my own room in a special wing of the hospital for recovery.
     Several days later, I was still swollen from surgery. I looked down at my fingers the size of sausages and laughed at that fact with the man who came to beat on my chest, maintaining circulation. But my hospital stay was far from filled with lots of laughter. My hips, although not in pain, constantly felt as though there were hundred-pound sandbags atop them; the pressure weighing on me felt unreal at times. I was in a daze most of the day, missing my friends at home, and crying that I even had to go through all of this. I remember my mom staying with me - buying a fan when my room's AC unit didn't work in the middle of June and making sure I was always comfortable. Eventually, I was forced to try and move from the bed to a wheelchair and get into the hallway so that my sheets could be changed and my back aired out so as not to get bedsores. I remember groaning as the nurses tied a belt around my waist and lifted under my arms, instructing me on how best to put my weight so as to cause minimal pain. My knee on the side where the surgery had been most intrusive refused to bend and became awkwardly positioned once I was seated in the wheelchair, causing me to shriek and sob with my inability to move my own leg until the nurses could move my limbs into better positions. I was expecting to stay out of my bed for an hour, at most, but they never came back to help me again until four hours later. I was exhausted and furious at myself for being weak and pitiful. I began to cry.
     My mom reached into the bag by my bed and pulled out a mix CD I had made prior to my surgery: "Hospital Mix #1." Knowing exactly which song I needed at that moment, I switched to the fourth track, a song I had fallen in love with in 5th grade, from the A Walk to Remember soundtrack. It was called "Someday We'll Know," performed by Mandy Moore and Jonathan Foreman. As I laid in my bed, feeling exhausted and depressed and alone and more pitiful than I had ever before felt, my mom reached for my hand and began to cry with me. This song has touched my heart for many years and has been, for a long period, a song I called my "favorite." It brought me peace in the month I was in the hospital and rehab in NJ. Mostly, it just made me cry. But sometimes, I needed that. Sometimes, I felt so much at once, and my body needed to be drained...so I could fill up with good things - cards from home, visits from family friends, and phone calls to my best friend...even a cute boy who got my number in rehab. With such a heavy heart, I couldn't appreciate everything around me - the love flowing from every person connected to me, a giant web of fibers flowing through me and from me and to me; I couldn't see that when I was so weighted down. And I needed that support system. This song, in its own different way, reminded me of that love. It made me cry...and away with all my tears flowed all the despair laying atop my soul.
     Tonight, again, I sit with a heavy heart. Tonight, again, the pressure makes it hard to breathe, hard to move, hard to foresee a brighter future. Tonight, again, I cry out in despair. Tonight, again, I recognize that I can't make it alone. Tonight, again...I am healed.

"Ninety miles outside Chicago,
Can't stop driving, I don't know why.
So many questions - I need an answer.
Two years later, you're still on my mind.


Whatever happened to Amelia Earhart?
Who holds the stars up in the sky?
Is true love just once in a lifetime? 


Did the captain of the Titanic cry?
Ohhh...


Someday we'll know if love can move a mountain.
Someday we'll know why the sky is blue. 
Someday we'll know why I wasn't meant for you..."