10 August 2007

If you Miss the Train I'm on...

Yay! I just entered Quote 500 into the random-quote-list! Five-hundred points to anyone who knows why I picked the title I did. ;^) As for the quote, "We may be so defended against feeling the full impact of our emotional pain...that we unconsciously escape into a cloud of numbness in which we do not permit ourselves to feel anything at all or know what we are feeling. ~Jon Kabatt-Zinn" from Wherever You Go, There You Are. Actually, there doesn't seem to be a comma in the title, but it looks better to me with a comma. And the ellipsis is just to cut out a semi-parenthetical list of specific types of emotional pain. The quote almost describes my state last summer, except that I was actively seeking that numbness. I never found it. Instead, I found a few fleeting moments where the pain became unimportant and life meant something again.

As for me, ibuprofen-withdrawal-headaches are not nearly as unpleasant as caffeine/chocolate withdrawal headaches, but they go on longer. So if caffeine-withdrawal is like dropping a twenty pound bowling ball on your foot, ibuprofen withdrawal is like dropping a seven-pound bowling ball on your foot, and watching it bounce a few times. The headache started off feeling like someone was tightening a metal band around my head. The next day it was more like a leather band. Now it's a cloth band, but it comes loose sometimes, so that there's no headache for a few hours. Then it tightens back up. With caffeine withdrawal, it was more like the metal band stayed on for three full days, gradually getting looser until it vanished. As for the left knee, I've had to ice it once for pain and swelling, but that's better than I had anticipated. So with any luck, the headaches will be gone in a few more days, and my knee will continue to improve.

4 comments:

John said...

Folk song "500 miles"
done by several artists, including
Peter, Paul and Mary
and
(I think) Arlo Guthrie

Qalmlea said...

DING!

We used to listen to a Peter, Paul & Mary tape on the way to and from Colorado. One of the songs was "500 miles." Another was "Leavin' on a Jet Plane." When I was little, I misheard the title lyric to that one as "I'm leavin' all of ya plain," so that the next line, "Don't know when I'll be back again," made no sense at all. :^)

John said...

I grew with that same tape being played on family roadtrips. Nothing like PP&M on auto-reverse for eight hours or so. (Our destination was a lake near Kingston, Ontario).

Seriously, I loved that tape. Sometimes I wish I had it for my car now.

Qalmlea said...

Yeah, that was a good one. Probably my favorite of the ones we played routinely on long trips. We didn't play it nonstop on auto-reverse, though. I think one of my parents has a CD that is mostly the same, with possibly a few extra songs... might be worth seeing if I could borrow it to copy the ones I like.