Twenty-Five

Twenty-four was better than twenty three. It was full of downs, but it had its share of ups. I cried for all the right reasons, and for some of the wrong ones as well. It was interesting, tormenting, character building and full.

I've always felt old. Down in my blood and in the makings of my soul I feel old. My twenty-five feels closer to fifty-two twice over. I have felt this way for years, but today is the day I let go of that thought. The number I am at is not old. It is full of youth, it is the prime of my life and if I feel old now, what will become of me when my number agrees? So gifts, then -for my twenty fifth birthday, I first give myself the gift of life. And I mean life at my own age for the first time in twenty five years. I give myself the gift of living my age, and appreciating how young I am.

My second gift is a promise. I promise that twenty-five will be my best year yet. I promise to hold on to hope with my teeth if I must. I promise to find it even when it hides, and I promise to keep hold of it even when reality tries to steal it away. I promise myself a new outlook, and a perspective that believes in reasons that have yet to show.

And finally, for my birthday, I give myself the gift of good advice. Go easy on yourself, on your ambitions and your demands of your life. You planned to be so much more than what you are at this age, but just because you didn't meet your goals doesn't mean you've failed. Perhaps your goal was faulty, the timeline was off and your plans were shortsighted. Think beyond the scope of what you pictured back when. See with the eyes of an adult that knows more of life today than she did even yesterday. Your end goal is so great and farfetched that you can't reach it in any way you think you can. When your dream is unreal, the path you take will surely leave plans and reality behind.

Trust in yourself, in your deepest dream and in Allah. You're driving blindly, but he can see -let him lead the way. And while you're at it, I strongly suggest you enjoy the ride. Life is not the stations we stop at, life is the drive.

Happy Birthday.. 

Stethoscope

When I was a child I got sick a lot. Clinics were as familiar as my own home, and doctors were the miracle workers that made my hurt go away -but more importantly they explained it. They looked into my mouth, listened to my chest and tummy and knew things. Doctors made me feel better, simply by caring, smiling and placing a stethoscope on my skin.

From the very first memories I possess I was in love with a stethoscope -the truest representation of everything good in the world. I knew that I wanted to one day don a steth and spend my time and energy giving people more time and energy. I loved stethoscopes with a silent ferocity that I held at the very center of my heart.

As I grew older my love only grew. I sank my curiously hungry mind into reading all about that world I so desperately wanted to join. But one thing I never so much as approached was anything related to steths. I didn't look for their proper name, what they did or how they were used. I didn't ask my doctor to let me so much as touch his, and I even avoided the toy ones.

I loved them more than to approach them as a silly child with a crush would. I had an adult brain in my nowhere near adult body and I was too deeply in love to squander my first touch. I would not learn what I desperately wanted to learn until I earned it. When I knew enough medicine to truly understand I would seek this knowledge. When my papers said medical student I would touch and try it. I would marry my love when I was officially married to medicine.

After three years of medical school I was asked to buy a steth. I touched it for the first time in a pharmacy, and tested its name on my tongue. Stethoscope. My stethoscope. I finally had one of my own and I finally understood everything about it. I was happy.

My stethoscope now lies hidden on a seldom used shelf in my closet. It's twisted and carries the weight of a hundred nick-knacks. It is not abused, it is hidden for its own good. It is hidden because it hurts too much to see it knowing I had let it down. My stethoscope deserves better than bitter tears from a heavy heart.

So I hide it, pretending that not seeing it makes me love it less, and want it with less force. I hide it and pretend I can't feel both our disappointments at it not being used to save the world. 

Breathe..

Soften your heart, lend it some tenderness and let it truly beat. The only reason your mind and chest ache is in objection to the hardness you force onto yourself. Solid does not mean strong, a rock breaks but rubber stretches and resists. We harden our shell to protect ourselves, forgetting that hard is weak in its rigidity and soft is strong in its adaptability.

Soften your heart and let yourself feel. The more you fight your feelings and inject stiffness into yourself the worse you'll hurt. You cannot outrun emotions, they find a way to manifest and trust me when I say they won't leave you until you truly feel them. They are not scary. Being a still stone might give you an illusion of calm but it does not mean that you are alive. We are alive because we feel. Our hearts beat and our blood runs because they yield.

Soften your heart and let it fill with a hundred sentiments and more. Feel everything you've ever fought to keep yourself from feeling. The pain, the hurt, the guilt, the shame, the love, the joy, the relief and the grief. Let a spectrum of contradictions into yourself and let them fill you. They won't hurt worse than your physical pain ever does. There is relief to be found in allowing yourself the freedom to truly be human. If you keep your insides "strong" then you outrun the positive but give the negative room to hunt you down and hurt you worse.

Soften your heart and lend it the tenderness it needs to beat with ease. I will give you directions on how to turn all your rigid into strong soft. Close your eyes and breathe. Let the darkness of your sight calm your jumpy nerves and breathe once more. Bring your shields down and surrender to your every thought. Scream every thought that should come with a feeling but doesn't at yourself a hundred times until you feel. Speak the words out loud. Tell yourself what you should feel. Say it again and again and again until you feel it filling you. Smile as you cry and tell your heart that you are setting it free. Remember that feelings mean you are alive and human, and that soft means you are durable and strong. Breathe, and allow your heart some room to breathe.

For my idiot.. 

Computerized Mind

I wish my mind was a computer, and the inside of my head had a control panel. I wish there was a keyboard attached to my skull, and a command center that responded to my every keystroke. I would simply let my fingers fly across a series of pre-labeled buttons and have my mind do as it's told.

My thoughts would no longer ricochet off the inside of my head and bounce around in games of catch me if you can. The flighty contemplations and the endless nagging of my mind would lose their power and yield to my every command. The ocean of feelings that lies beyond my control and washes over me in tidal waves that shake my core, and stormy rage that is my undoing would disappear at the mere click of Alt and F4. The maze of memories that haunts the back of my lids and courses ache through my veins would leave my consciousness when I order the process to end. Instead of spending days stuck amidst the chaotic pounding of losing past and future I would reorganize everything into neat folders that await my touch before they can release the chaos they hold within.

If my mind was a computer then I could shut it down knowing that with a tiny click I could bring it back. I would lie in my bed and send the command and wait as all my tasks and processes slowly got ticked off and my insides went blank. If my mind was a computer life would be simpler by tenfold. When my pieces broke and I got lost within the firing of my own neurons I would smile and order the faulty drive to backup and format. When I feel the virus of living death clawing its way through my soul I would restore my entire being to the last point I was functional. Time would rewind and my insides would rearrange until my past becomes my present and I am once again new and whole. If I was a computer I would lull my feelings into hibernation and restore the rest of me back to full strength.

Dark Through Light

November 12, 2015

If there is one thing I've learned in the past few years it's that sometimes we have no control. Sometimes no matter how hard you work, how much you try, how often you pray and will something into being it doesn't work out. That's just the way of the world. It spins even if you want it to stop. Life does things you don't want, and takes things you do.

We can't always have what we want or what makes us happy. I know as much, I've always known as much. But I've only recently realized that I am foolish, and that I let myself love so deeply that I dared want what I knew I wouldn't be allowed to have. I fell for peace of mind and comfort. I fell for having a purpose. I fell for things I haven't had in years. I fell for learning, and I fell for a home away from my real home.

But what does the world care? I am getting ripped from them anyway. I have to keep saying goodbye -but you know what? The fact that I keep saying goodbye just means that I keep coming back. Maybe not coming to stay, but I still manage to get a dose of my home, however minute it might be.

So for now let me attempt to divert my mind from the pessimistic and redirect it to the optimistic. I am blessed. I am lucky far beyond many out there. I have two homes, and that is something no distance or time apart can ever shake or change. Where people are homeless, I am overcrowded with homes and I have somewhere to run to when I feel suffocated. I have two families, one that I was blessed with when I was born and one that I found all on my own and joined their blood to my veins. I have two sets of people that make me feel like I belong, and I have such abundant amounts of love filling my life that sometimes it feels too much.

I lived a good life. I lost a lot, but I've gained so much. I am living a good life. I am blessed with things that I can't lose. Somethings are under my control, and seeing the dark through light is a choice I will make right now. I am full of love, I am loved, and I have things that make all the bad I go through bearable. I have things to miss, I am so lucky that I am crying because I'm leaving one home to go to another.

I am blessed beyond belief. I love you, my home, until we meet again. 

I Miss Him

April 14, 2015

Everything feels surreal. Like my life has been one long nightmare for weeks, and my mind refuses to admit that the nightmare is reality and not a dream. When I sleep I see him get better, I see him leave the hospital and I see him smile and laugh off what happened. I see him assuring me that he's alive, telling me not to worry, that reality was the dream and this was what's real. And then I open my eyes and I'm in bed and the truth sits on my chest and keeps my lungs from expanding.

He is gone. He did not get better. I saw him for the last time lying in a hospital bed, his chest vibrating as the ventilators fought to keep him alive. The last I know of him is a number on a machine. The last I ever heard his voice -I can't remember what he said. It kills me that I can't remember. I've tried so hard, but I can't even remember what he was wearing on that last night, or what he said before he left.

I don't even know if he ever knew that I loved him more than I ever showed. I don't know if he knew that he mattered.

All that is left of him now are memories that hurt more than I can bear. All that is left are things he left undone, and words he left unsaid.

I miss him.

Empathy & Disdain

I used to be empathetic. That was one of my best qualities. I could put myself in other people's shoes as easily as I could breathe. But somewhere along the line my shell hardened, and my empathy turned into sympathy, from there to compassion, on to indifference until it finally became contempt and disdain. I used to appreciate everyone's struggles, be they big or small. But something has changed.

I am jaded. My once sensitive insides have grown hard and unfeeling. Life hacked away at me, and in my fighting back I ended up losing pieces of myself. My war was so terrible everything else began to pale in comparison. My battles were so deadly everything else began to seem trivial. I was so hurt and so busy in my own huge war that I forgot that the struggle is real no matter how small the fight.

I don't like what I've become. I don't appreciate losing what I once deemed my best quality. A change is necessary. Back when I was full of empathy, I used to imagine myself as another person and write from their perspective. Like an exercise of sorts, to see if I could get the feeling right, if I could truly feel what they feel as I put it on paper. That is my challenge -to immerse myself in others' feelings, until my empathy returns and I am once again who I used to be.

And so it begins. 

Falling, and Flying

Stop clawing madly at the air around you. Stop kicking and screaming, stop panicking. Stop trying to find a handhold, stop trying to somehow stop falling.

Just let go. For once in your life surrender. Allow yourself to fall with careless abandon. Cease all movement and let yourself feel the undeniable freedom of falling into unknowns. Let the air you cut through fill your lungs and let the speed of your fall force your heart to beat at a new rhythm. Feel the pull of gravity and allow it to render all your thoughts silent and speechless.

Stop thinking, consciously and subconsciously both. For once in your life find the will and strength to silence every part of your mind, even that distant corner that you believe lies beyond your control. Let the fall fill you with such wildness that you break free of the shackles that are your mind, your thoughts and your subconscious.

Surrender your precious control and accept your own helplessness and the inevitability of your limitations. Stop wondering why you're falling, stop wishing you had a rope to cling to, stop hoping to find a handhold, stop dreaming of a safety net and stop fearing the end of your fall. For once in your life shut your mind down and enjoy the moment, enjoy the freedom of being helpless and the lack of responsibility that comes with having zero control.

The reality is that you are falling. Whether you struggle or not you are falling. Whether you fret and worry or not you are falling. If you think and fear you're falling and if you don't you're still falling. You're not in control, and there's nothing you can do to change what's happening. But if you fight it then you hurt yourself to no end. But if you let go, if you relax and surrender, then you'll realize that falling can feel exactly like flying. 

Silence & Solitude

Abandon me on an island and forget that I ever existed. Leave me where there are no distractions. Let me be among utter silence, somewhere where the only sounds piercing the quiet are those of nature. Waves, wind and creatures that aren't human. Abandon me with nothing but myself, and let the silence and solitude push me into tending to my insides.

The war has ended, and I lost in more ways than one. My mind is in ruins, and my soul is scattered. The debris left from all the battles is threatening to drown the last remnants of who I am. Everything printed on my outsides is foreign. Everything that is left of me is alien. Somewhere amidst the fighting I became things I'm not. I no longer recognize myself. I lost, and I am lost.

Abandon me on an island and forget that I ever existed. Leave me where there are no distractions to numb my pain. Let me be among utter silence, somewhere where the only sounds piercing the quiet come from within. Thoughts, recollections and decisions that need to be made. Abandon me with nothing but myself, and let the silence and solitude push me into finding the self I lost. 

Barren Land

I am choking on my "independence". I am falling on the two legs that hold me up. My "I function better alone" is constricting my throat, and my "I am an introvert" has sucked me dry. I have used up all the energy my "self" has to offer, and all the support my independence has to lend. I have fallen within my own armored shell, and the walls that protect me have become my dying cell. I craned my neck beyond my now evil walls, and all I saw around my shields was barren land. Perhaps the walls had no one to keep out, and all they were built for was to hold me in. 

Fire and Twine

The fraying twine breaks. The last bare thread holding the string together lets go, and with it the twine breaks. It crumbles to nothingness and the wave is released. I feel its awakening. I feel the mighty stretch it gives before spreading its limbs into every crevice of my mind. It is a never ending blanket that encompasses my very core, it is everything I am and everything I wish I am not. It laughs at the remnants of twine lying dead at its feet. It roars its joy at breaking free and spreads within me as nothing but a wave can.

I feel it filling me. I feel every inch of the spreading wave changing my thoughts and altering the very structure of my mind. It is fire coursing through me and setting me ablaze. It burns and blackens. It roars and explodes. My anger is alive, almighty and all consuming. It spreads within me and colors everything with its fire until nothing is left of me. I have so much of it pent up, held together by pieces of twine too thin to hold it back. It breaks free and consumes me. It fills me with blind rage, it covers my strength with anger and uses it as fuel. All my reservoirs go into fueling the flame and I have nothing to douse the rage and pull it back. It is like an infection, it sickens all the good and turns it into black. Try as I might to keep it locked within my flesh it escapes. It lashes at those around me, it burns them with my new fiery thoughts, it licks madly about and swallows anything that crosses its path. It is a sickness. It is who I am under layers of self-control. I am anger and rage.

The fire burns all its fuel and nothing remains but ash and ember. I knot the two pieces of twine together. I pull the beast back into my center. I put it back into its sound proof corner, and tie the locks with many knotted strings of twine. I sit by its side and lull it to sleep. It is satisfied with the carnage it reaped, and with a soft smile it goes to sleep. I search for more twine and add more knots. I tie it as tightly as I can. I sit by its prison and look at the ashy ruins of my mind. The wave burned through my every part. I am left amidst chaos and black ash. I look for water, but I find none. 

Dear Allah

Dear Allah,

I believe in miracles. I believe in them with every cell in my body. I believe in your mercy, I believe in your ability, I believe in your kindness. I believe in you against all logic and reality. I believe that you can fix what logic and reality say is a lost cause. I believe in you so much that I refuse to believe what my eyes see and what my mind tries to tell me.

I have faith in you beyond belief. I trust you so much I know that you are testing me, and that in the end I will get what I so desperately pray for. I believe in your promises to answer our prayers, and in your promise that you are what we believe you to be. I might break and cry sometimes, but that is only because I am human and I break, but my trust in you is infinite and unbreakable.

I trust you, I believe in you, I have faith and I have hope. Please let me be right, and let reality be wrong. Please don't make me out to be the idiot that held on when she should have let go. Please let me be the person that held on against doubt and got rewarded.

With Love. 

Tick-Tock

There it sits. On that verge way over there. It rocks back and forth. Taunting fate. Tempting disaster. Challenging physics. It nearly falls a hundred times but never does. It plays a winning game. It trusts within itself.

A clock sounds in the center of my heart. It ticks with my beats and tocks when my heart rests. The sound fills every corner of my being. And I am filled with knowing; when it stops it will fall. If it isn't salvaged, it will die.

Tick-Tock.
It reverberates through the painful corners. It is louder than all my loud. It is the new center of my life. When it stops it falls and I fall. The knowledge is soul chilling -when it stops I stop.

Tick-Tock.
The deadline looms ahead. Its rocking is numbered. Soon it will fall. Unless. But my hands are tied. I can't save it. I can't save myself. I sit and watch.

Tick-Tock.
I weep and pray. I sob and hope. I use all my reservoirs to will it to be saved. I believe against doubt. I hope and pray with all my might.

Tick-Tock.
Don't fall. I beg you, don't fall. Stop ticking. I beg you, lend it some extra time. Don't fall. I can't lose you. Someone will save you. Just don't fall.

And yet still Tick-Tock.
Don't let it fall. I beg you, God, don't let it fall. Save it. Save me.

Tick-Tock.

Another Fix

Give me one more fix of fiction. Another dose of anything that isn't reality. Numb my brain cells and lull them into a world that isn't my own. Fill me with feelings that have nothing to do with how I feel. Pump my mind full of images of people that don't exist. Distract me so thoroughly that my mind finds the escape it so badly seeks. Submerge me in any world that isn't mine until my chest stops aching and my tears dry. Take me away from reality and abandon me in fiction, forget that I ever existed and help me forget that I ever was.

Allow me the leisure of being cast away from myself. Allow my mind the bliss of forgetting that I am who I am and the things that are happening are happening. Let me lose sense of the goodbyes looming in my horizon, of the pain of leaving, of breaking apart what took so long to build. Let me instead hide in a world of wizards and magic, worlds with zombies and killers. Let the drama I watch unfold and become the foldings of my mind until my own folds lie unfurled and painless. Grant me an out -mere minutes of peace living outside of myself.

Give me a fix of fiction to hush the pain enough to let me breathe for a few moments. Just a few moments of relief before reality finds a way back in. Escape is wonderful, but reality has a way of catching us no matter how fast we run, or how deep we bury ourselves. Reality crashes through the layers of fiction, it peels apart the not real and attacks with violent stabs that nothing but real can possess. Reality hurts and aches and suffocates when the fiction is set down and the lights go out. Reality is never as real as it is when your eyes are closed and there is nothing to distract your mind from itself. 

Unjust Workings

Let me tell you of the unjust workings of the world. Let me tell you of the day-to-day unfair dealings that have more impact than most can see.

There are people who are rude. They are loud and demanding. They push the line of appropriate social conduct past the limit as a hobby. They push people around. They are inconsiderate to anyone that isn't themselves. They are selfish. They are childish. They are so high maintenance you have to climb a mountain of eggshells stuffed with mines around them. They make you dislike them. They are bullies, and the world is their play ground. And yet, people will go out of their way to be decent to them. They will give them what they so loudly demand, they will get their way and no one will stand and say no. They get the best treatment. They get decency in return for their lack thereof.

And then there are people who try so hard to be decent. They are easy going. They are forgiving. They are understanding and compassionate. They aren't demanding. They accept anything you have to offer. They would take the worst and they would accept it and forgive and forget. They take what they can get, and whatever else they want they convince themselves they don't need. They compromise at their own expense. They never push to get their way. They are lenient and kind. And so people take them for granted. They stomp all over them. They get the short end of the stick every day of their lives because everyone knows they're too nice to object or demand more. They get trampled. They get mistreated in return for their decency.

That is how we operate. We reward the bullies out of fear and we punish the people who deserve rewarding. And when the bullies rise and gain in place and power we blame the world for making wrong choices. When in fact it is people like us, the ones that cater to those who need to be told off on, that made the bully into what they become.

In this scenario there are four groups of people -bullies, boot-lickers, stompers and decents. My only solace is that even thought I keep getting squished under running feet, at least I was the mistreated, not the mistreater. Even though I've turned into pulp, at least I can still sleep with a clear conscience. 

They Storm

They gain strength when I'm left at their mercy. They storm and rage with such force that my frail frame stands no hope. They tug at my pretenses; they pull at my smiles and my laughter. They rain all over my dying, flickering flame. They scrape against barely healed skin and peel down to thin bones. They lend strength to shadowy webs of fear until the shadow consumes all. They constrict the space within my chest until the room for air is filled with ache instead.

They storm water from my eyes and rage death within my chest. That is all there is to be said. 

Freedom to Run

Sometimes it gets too much. Sometimes it's all too heavy. And when it is, I used to run. I used to go out to my favorite place and run as fast as my too slow legs would take me. I would feel the wind in my hair, the crisp air exploding into my lungs and the pounding of my heart in every inch of my body. The exhilaration of running with such freedom, with pain shooting up my twitching muscles and feeling breathless even though I'm so full of air -it filled me with energy and life. Enough of them that the weight would feel just a little less.

Those were good days. Now I have nowhere to run. It gets too much, and then it gets even more. It gets too heavy, and then it gets heavier and I suffocate and choke. The load never eases off. I can't run, I can't feel my precious wind piercing my lungs. I can't feel alive with my pulse exploding in every inch of me. I don't have that simplest of freedoms anymore.

I just want to run. 

Dancing

I'm dancing along the edge. My body pulses in time with a song about feelings. I can't control the movements of my limbs, nor can I control the music reverberating through my bones. I dance at the line separating sanity from mind loss, and in my dancing I hop between the two sides.

My mind is lost to the beat. I fall a victim to the edge and gain my footing all during the same song, and over and over again. I'm not in control of where my body goes. I'm not in control of how my particles choose to act. The music is. 

The Sound of an Email

The sound an email makes after it travels through the complicated web and as it lands into my phone. That specialized tone I've set for emails and nothing else. That sound that seems hardwired to those parts of my brain that issue the command for adrenaline to pour into my blood. The sound an email makes has the ability to send my heart racing and pounding in my chest. My body shakes in response and my heart does triple its usual work.

A slab of contradicting feelings slams into my chest and fills me to the brim. One side urges me to check it, check the email, we're dying to know. The other side cowers and begs that we're not ready. I ignore both voices and reach my hand out to my phone. I don't do it because I'm  brave, or because I've listened to the side that's dying to know. I do it on autopilot. Your phone makes a sound. You check it.

My shaky fingers click the tiny icon for emails, I click inbox with my heart in my throat. And it says iTunes, or Twitter, or Paypal. It doesn't really matter what it says, because my mind reads it as unimportant, doesn't matter -not it. It's not the email that decides the rest of my life. It's not the email my adrenaline was released for. It's still not the one. 

Chisel

You grabbed a chisel and took it to the rock of me. You hammered at my stone and filed at my edges. Hammer, hammer, hammer -trying to change the shape of me, trying to add new shadows and new highlights. You beat your instruments against who I am, and tried to mold me into a shape you would like better. You tore at my stone flesh and attacked it with no mercy.

I tried to hold my shape. I tried to keep my rock strong and unyielding. I tried to absorb the force with which you beat me. Hammer, hammer, hammer -trying to keep my rock from splitting, trying to fight your instruments of change. But you won't stop your attack. You won't stop filing at my skin. You drive your metal deep within the weak edges of my stone and try to pry the pieces apart. I hold on to myself with every ounce of strength I possess. I will not yield. I will not change. I will not be who I am not.

But hammer, hammer, hammer at my shape, my spirit and my soul. Hammer until I break. Hammer until I yield to your chisel. Hammer until you change me against my will. My stone crumbles to your will, and the shape of me becomes what you envisioned. I am not who I am anymore. I am who you wanted me to be.

I fell. You won.

But let me tell you this; if you love someone, you love them as you found them. If you don't, you walk away or you change them into something you can tolerate and love. They always say be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it. And you just did. Beware. 

Waylay Station

The ride was bumpy. From the minute I stepped on the train it didn't stop rattling. The compartment floor shook so badly I could never maintain a balance. Right, left, fall, stand, sit, crash. I held on to impossible handholds that weren't made for holding, and tried my best to brace myself for the long ride.

There was an accident. The train crashed into a stop. I was knocked off my feet, and thrust into a wall. I woke up, dazed and bruised. The lights were flickering madly. I dragged myself ahead, trying to find a way out of the broken mess. The floor was covered with picture frames. I kept getting distracted. They were pictures of all the sights I'd been too busy to see. Everything was reduced to nothing, except those pictures. I stayed amidst the rubble and stared at what passed.

I hobbled out of the train. We'd crashed into a station. But it was empty. There wasn't a soul around. I found a phone, but the line was dead. I found a door, but the handle wouldn't turn. I found a train schedule, there were trains scheduled to stop by. I would wait and get on the next one. I would sit and lick my wounds until a train comes.

Time passes. The station is eerily empty. It's full of shadowy ghosts that lurk around. It's abandoned. It's condemned. It's haunted by its past. Time crawls by as I huddle in a corner. I hold my broken bones and sit and wait. The light is slowly dying out. Night is coming. The shadows are getting thicker. There's more of them. I'm filled with fear.

No trains stop by. I look for exits until my broken bones ache more than I can take but I keep looking. I find none. I am stuck. It's my waylay station. It's where I'm meant to sit and wait and think. It's where I realize that the train never shook. I was the one that could never stand still. I couldn't handle the ride. I wobbled and hobbled on steady floor. I crashed the train. And now, now I must suffer and wait.