Guilt and Innocence

The light comes slowly into the dark. I lie in bed befuddled by another night of dreaming and wonder at the slow pace of its seeping into the room. A swirl of images and oppressive feelings surges within me.

One day, several years ago when I couldn’t find my words, I was told to go immediately to the hospital. They took me in without waiting and then had me wait with nothing to do while they tested my brain and heart. Eventually, everything was ascertained to be in fine fettle, but not until I spent the night in the surge unit—an all-purpose room with many beds and thin curtains separating the ailing inhabitants—and made a midnight run to the MRI machine where the attendant banged hammers against the machine my head was in while he drew detailed images of my brain.

This morning, the words are still here, though I haven’t tried to speak out loud yet. The odd thing about my ten minutes of aphasia then was that I still had all the words inside me, it’s just when I tried to speak them, they came out jumbled. I was aware of their disarrangement and slowly said to the person I was talking to: ‘I’m not making any sense, am I?’ He agreed, we called Melissa who was out doing errands (remember the old days?), she called the doctor and the rest proceeded as it did.

All of this is here now, somehow included in my night of dreams where I was waking up to not having lived up to my responsibilities. I dream this over and over. Usually, I’m at college and it’s toward the end of the semester, the paper is due, the exam is coming up and I haven’t been going to class at all or doing any of the work and I’m about to be found out. Sometimes I realize that I never got a course catalog at the beginning of the semester (perhaps the best part of college – the looking through the course catalog before the semester starts and dreaming of all the wonderful courses I might take) and have been enrolled in courses of which I am not even aware.

Last night I was living in a commune of sorts, where we were all supposed to do our share and I had been so busy that when I showed up in the kitchen, vowing to myself to start pitching in, that the others stopped what they were doing and gave me a lecture about how in group settings it’s always just a few who do most of the work. I sheepishly agreed and did my best not to make excuses.

I suppose someday I must learn to confess my guilt and protest my innocence more vehemently. It’s true, I haven’t held up my end of the bargain. I haven’t been the person I aspire to be. Again and again I have fallen short—disappointing myself and others. And it’s also true that no mistakes have been made. I have always done my best and even when that has not been very much, it has still been the best I could have done in that circumstance.

The universe I give back to the universe. I am tired of my self-proclaimed job as ruler and cede my misguided attempts at control. I vow once again to show up, to pay attention, to do what I can where I am, and to leave the outcome up to the source of life that sustains and receives us all.