On the fifth of February, in the year of some people’s Lord two thousand twenty-two, I collapsed on my bed. I was unable to find words to say aloud, but I was able to think them. I indicated to my partner that I was afraid I would no longer be able to “food, pan, hot”, by which she was able to deduce I meant “cook”, which was my occupation at the time.
Aphasia. That’s the word for it.
My left side was weak and I was having difficulty standing and walking. My visual field was overcome with aura, a scintillation of color and light which might have been beautiful on an acid trip (I wouldn’t actually know), but was accompanied by intense head pain, like my skull was attempting to collapse while my brain was trying to escape.
And then, what I later found out is termed “allodynia”, kicked in. The word means “other pain”, which isn’t particularly helpful. Imagine ants carrying nine volt batteries across your scalp and occasionally dropping them so you get shocked and a crawling sensation. Along with it came intense nausea, you know, just as the worst consolation prize in history.
We thought I’d had a stroke.
In the emergency room, I was given intravenous magnesium and nutrients and saline and the terror of the speed at which they wheeled me in to the imaging area to do a CT scan of my head. Conclusion: I was having a complex migraine (an MRI and two neurologists later confirmed).
To step back momentarily, I’ve had migraine events since I was fifteen. So when people ask about this one, and it is one, they don’t know what to do when I tell them it’s a single migraine that, at the time of writing, has gone on for seven hundred eighty-three days.
It sucks.
Most of the worst symptoms are being managed. The pain is still there. The other pain, too. I have good doctors. And I have enough at this point to cover all positions on a baseball field and still have to bench a few.
But this isn’t about chronic medical conditions. It is about chronic conditions, which I suppose are at least metaphorically medical.
This is not my first resurrection.
I’d say rodeo, but I’ve never been to one, and resurrection is a better metaphor.
In undergrad, I met a woman and got engaged. I was a Christian at the time. I thought the engagement was what God wanted. She wanted us to plant churches together. I went along for a while before realizing I was complicit in a manipulative path, both of me, and by me of others. I broke it off.
And that was a good call.
It took years before I admitted I was an atheist. You see, I got into Christianity mainly to make friends. I learned to talk like them, think like them, judge like them, and very occasionally, love like them. But Christianity didn’t really exist within me. I was being dishonest, and if there is a God, it’s not fair to them, and it’s certainly not fair to me.
Also not my first resurrection, but at least it was interesting.
Listen. I am not one of these New Atheists who want to eradicate religion. Dawkins gets probably an A in biology, a C in philosophy, and an F in not being a pompous jerk. I’m more Camus clan. Religion is the death of thought, because someone already thought it so you didn’t have to.
It’s a consumerist approach to truth. Or it can be. It’s the live, love, laugh sign in mismatched typefaces you bought at a Michael’s craft store. Should you do all three? Of course, they’re great! Should you hang it on your wall? Better get that stud finder out. People like nailing things to wood for some reason.
Oh.
And.
Everybody dies.
Not because it’s inevitable (though it is), but because it’s the only way to get to resurrection.
You might even call it euthanasia.
You might call it mercy.
I’ve had to put to death the idea that I’m not in chronic pain from migraine. The idea that I’m typical in the way my brain works. I’ve put to death my fake Christianity. My desire for adulation and fame. My aging. My trauma. My need to please others.
Holding on to avoid the death of ego only holds pain. Pain at who we used to be, who we wish we were, who we recognize we are not. It lacks becoming.
Death is not the end.
And neither is resurrection a simple beginning.
In plain words, people change. And that’s good. So long as you keep on moving on to the next resurrection, the next change, the next horrible, unstoppable moment that causes us to ask if we should pull the plug on the parts of us that keep us from truth.
This is my current resurrection.
To become both the ship of Theseus and the ship of Theseus simultaneously in one’s inner and outer lives is the idea. Knowing the past, understanding its influence, and learning to drop it off on the side of the road like an unhinged hitchhiker you brought with you for miles because you wanted to trust them. Someone. Anyone.
It’s not an uncommon idea in humanity’s stories.
Once, a man died. He took some time. And then he lived, changed.
No, it’s not six words. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end, so it counts.
We live many lives within the span of our lives. We die a thousand deaths. It’s not rebirth. We love. We lose. We wait. Three days, minimum. Years, probably.
I use resurrection to describe this rather than rebirth. It’s not beginning from the beginning, not fresh. It’s not starting over. It’s not a mulligan. It’s not running away from your problems and the problems of the world. It’s not holding pain like a stuffed animal you’re unwilling to part with.
