Author: Sara Wasson (Page 8 of 11)

‘LIVE YOUR STORY’, by Katarina Juvancic

March 13, 2018 / Sara Wasson

Maybe me still being here is as random as someone else dying. Maybe my decisions and actions only worked for me and cannot be replicated by anyone else. I honestly don’t know. My mind is dwarfed by life’s mysterious ways. … All I know for certain is that as much as I would like to live in a cancer-free world and help anyone who is struggling with the disease, all I can really do is to share my story.

That is all I have to offer. A story. My story. And I would suggest that rather than copying mine or anyone else’s, make sure you’re comfortable with yours. Feel it. Articulate it. Own it. Live it. No matter how shitty you think it is. Because ultimately your story is the only thing that can and WILL help you deal with both – life and the loss of it.

by Katarina Juvancic
Author’s Website

Slovenia

‘Fibromyalgia’, by Zara Carpenter

March 12, 2018 / Sara Wasson

Fibromyalgia
My body drinks in the harsh cold of winter
Setting my bones on fire 
Hands ball up into blotched white fists
Suddenly and viciously
A message travels down 
My over over sensitive nerves 
Sending fingers shooting out 
Dead straight 
Rigor morticed with pain
 Liquid churns hot in my spasming bowels
Limp sprinting to the bathroom 
I watch through open legs 
As blood drips into the toilet bowl 
A crimson red rose blooms 
Then slowly dissolves 
I am a clockwork toy
 Wound too tight 
The obsessions I tidied away 
Are coming out of their boxes 
Quicker than a child’s presents at Christmas

by Zara Carpenter

www.zaracarpenter.com

United Kingdom

‘The Velocity of Pain’, by Sonya Huber

March 11, 2018 / Sara Wasson

I lie on the couch, but you cannot see my velocity. I have a tangential vectoring sense that pain is coiled mitochondrial speed, that while I am prone I am riding the rails deep into the future and the past at once, as if pain exposes ruptures in the time/space continuum and pulls me into the openings, as if a body at rest in pain is a body in motion through time rather than space. There is a sense of pressure on my skin as the force of time’s ungluing. There is a sense of coiled mathematical work and a formula connecting time to pain through space as I leave my location on the timeline and descend into time’s scaffolding. I am quantum, visible in two places at once. The electrons vibrate with pain, which is the pressure of the universe, the music of the planets.

by Sonya Huber
Book: Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and Other Essays of a Nervous System

United States

‘Singing Bones’, by Katarina Juvancic

March 9, 2018 / Sara Wasson

Deeply submerged in the melancholy of the dying summer with my knees telling tales of the approaching cold and winter. My bones, surrounded with tumor necrosis cytokines causing acute and debilitating inflammation are dreading it.

My body is a place of pain. My body is also a place of unutterable solitude, longing, and love. Love holding my cells in place. Love feeding them and helping them communicate better. I must find that place every time the system that keeps them in check collapses. I must remember it is here, all the time, ubiquitous and ever present.  I need to embrace my disease and live with it as best as I possibly can.  But most of all, I need to find a sustainable source of warmth and store it into my bones, so that they can sing songs of sun, warm breeze and golden evenings like this one all year round.

by Katarina JuvancicWebsite

Slovenia

‘SHARING VULNERABILITY THROUGH OUR STORIES’, by Katarina Juvancic

March 9, 2018 / Sara Wasson

I went to see occupational therapist today, as I am having troubles with my daily chores.

She asked some challenging stuff and burst into tears when I talked about my medical past. Then she told me her most intimate and painful story. I held her hand and we shared a beautiful moment of vulnerability together. Two women who have never met before and should conduct the conversation in a strictly professional, clinical manner, holding hands and crying.  I told her how precious it feels to be able to share our stories, to treat each other’s broken pieces with understanding, respect and dignity.

 Then she put some bandages on my hands and taught me how to stand, how to sit and how to bend. She welcomed me softly into my new reality where little mundane things carry huge meanings. Today I feel I’ve finally put my life vest on.

– by Katarina Juvancic

Website

Slovenia

‘A Hidden Truth’, by Amy Hunter

March 4, 2018 / Sara Wasson

After struggling with ear problems all my life and having two surgeries for Cholesteatoma in 2008 and 2015, a recent flare up has caused months of pain that is unexplained and has baffled my consultants. Having this on top of my original ear problems and cluster headaches sometimes the pain can make days difficult. This is just a glimpse into what happens on a daily basis.

Me. Pain. Intertwined.
Days. Coping. Bad days. Flare ups.
People. Confused. Understanding Difficult.
Hidden disease.

Medicine. No effect. Doctors. Befuddled.
Decisions. Hospitals. Waiting. Pain.
Hidden disease.

Explaining. Constant. Tiring.
Symptoms. Unexplained. Words. Lost.

Hidden disease.

Tired. Exasperated. Threshold. Pushed. Sometimes. Beyond Limits.
Tired. Sore. Always. Hidden Truth.
Tired. Battle on.

Hidden disease.

People. Unconditional Love.
Caring. Trying to understand.

Hidden disease.

Pain. Intertwined.
Always there.
Nothing seen.

Hidden disease.

This is me.

by Amy Hunter

United Kingdom

‘Mutation’, by Marion Michell

March 2, 2018 / Sara Wasson

This image is of a small green vase, grass-green and made of thick glass which slightly tapers top to bottom. Four small tulips stand in water, three with fading orange petals, one with purple. All are in the stage just before the petals, which seem to be curling in on themselves, fall off. A few stamen are visible, like tiny black tongues. An afternoon spent, or was it an evening, or three, in a wheel clamp’s tender clasp. My dues for modernist mutation paid out in full: ribs, calves, hands, sections of skull, wrenching, arching, hardening. A homecoming of sorts, a holding; mattress won’t grumble, neither will I – if only we knew if we’re hot or cold, horsehair or hardware, flesh or fish or foil.

by Marion Michell
My blog
My book Supinely Sublimely

U.K.

‘Encroachment’, by Mary Marie Dixon

March 2, 2018 / Sara Wasson

Wedged between sky and river
The birch, plaiting scarred spines, joins
Ochre leaves to Cirrus clouds.

In the wedge of bed and window
Your wounded limbs endure
A throbbing rhythm to misting dew

Autumn wraps a sultry cage
Of alizarin crimson.
She entwines the rising bone

To breach the slough of heaven
Branches thunder and crack
Under heavy snow

And escape still enclosed in
Huey blues Your mind warps
And wraps itself with morphine

by Mary Marie DixonFacebook Artists pageUSA.

‘Collateral Damage’, by Ellie Conway

February 25, 2018 / Sara Wasson

There is too much light
in the air today.
My eyelids won’t retreat;
they’re the heavy squad,
repelling all invaders.
My protection
from a day too heavy

for me,
for my chest,
my arms.
my legs.

I can only lie

down

beneath

its weight.

Breathing takes will.
Push, push the invisible hand
up,
feel it press back

down.

Repeat.

and repeat.

Repeat again.

Muscles rebel.
Fibres tug against their tense kin,
stiffening, a shudder of spasms.
Nerve endings return fire,
trajectory dipping from collarbone
toward elbow
past wrist
till fingertips vibrate

plucked

harp

strings.

breathe.

The throb, I ache.

My feet go AWOL – no –
now they’re back with a burn.
Television assaults me,
sound and vision launch

breathe.

combined assaults,
attacking my senses.

My brain scrambles to keep up.

breathe.

In silence, the soft pillows embrace me.
I lean in.
Let them tend my wounds.

by Ellie Conway; cinderdrellie at WordPress

Scotland