Contemporaneous: Chapters 23 – 24
23. Like when the car hit me, there’s no pain. But there is a sudden sense of shearing, of weight falling from me until all the aches of being almost fifty, the pain in my foot and leg, the tiredness in my body, and the inebriation in my head, shred, like they’re nothing more than tissue paper holding me, and I’m immersed in a thick grey mist. And I see everything because, as the cliché goes, it’s almost like life flashing before my eyes, but instead it’s a rapid recount: my birth; running happily around as a kid; school and my first teacher, am amputee without a right hand, which…
24
I lay awake, following the whirlpool of thoughts deeper into my self-consciousness. At first, it was trepidation about the anxiousness exploding into a panic attack. I existed on this brink that represented this horrible danger. Beyond it, I didn’t know what else there was. Madness, maybe. Or that’s what I thought when I was younger and naïve. Then it was worrying about possible health issues. Like that small lump that appeared on my hip following a game of tennis when I was just sixteen. Cancer, maybe? That was a weekend of worry, until my GP told me it was some fatty deposit. There were other things that cropped up. Like,…
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