Ticking & There's Always Tomorrow
by Sarah Bigham
Ticking
The loud ticking of clocks hurts my brain and itches my ears as I wait for the flares to subside.
So I bought clocks with continuously swooping minute hands. They emit no sound, which is
wonderful, yet the arms never, ever stop -- an endless game of chase, showing me, perhaps even more clearly, how the passage of time never ceases, never slows. There is no fraction-of-a-second gap between moments. Time is running away, or at least looping constantly on a track, like the pet gerbils who used to run on their play wheels, never getting anywhere, but doing so industriously.
There’s always tomorrow
My battle word is enough. I returned to creative pursuits in a desperate search for distraction
from an onslaught of pain hard to imagine and nearly impossible to describe, but I wrote about it anyway so that some might understand and others might not feel alone. I often thought I had suffered enough of the torture and could not remain. I searched the country and the web for ways to tamp down the pain, if only for minutes -- to break the strangling cycle. I found enough options to live. Last year I decided I had endured enough of the excruciating treatments ironically used to treat pain, stopped pursuing any interventions that hurt, and focused instead on alternatives that soothed. I slowly, oh so slowly, began to heal. This year I am addressing frequent self-doubt, focusing on believing that I am enough, that I am not broken. Next year I hope to prove to myself that I am strong enough to carry on with joy, that I, like Bruce, am tougher than the rest.