Dark Stranger

Pain is Weakness Leaving Your Body - Nietzsche

PAIN has swallowed me like the whale that swallowed Jonah . This summer we have been pounded by low pressure fronts and pop up thunderstorms which add to the whole vertigo~pain in the neck/head factor. There have been no 'good days' for a while now. Thank goodness my surgery is on the horizon, although December feels so far away, I am hoping it will get here quickly. So if pain is weakness leaving the body then I should be feeling a whole lot stronger any time now, right?

There isn't a soul on the planet who isn't feeling some type of pain ~ emotional, physical or spiritual. We all deal with pain differently, but the question is, do we let it define us? For me, I still haven't figured out if learning, from a very young age, to grin and bear it was such a good thing. I think there has to be some kind of healthy balance of putting up with the pain and letting it consume you. For me, feeling pain reminds me that I am alive, my heart is still beating. This doesn't mean that I enjoy it, but a gentle reminder that I am human.

I watch X-Files reruns almost on a daily basis, shocker, I know! One episode from Season Four really stayed with me ~ I copied some quotes from the episode below:

Scully: In med school I learned that cancer arrives in the body unannounced. A dark stranger that takes up residence. Turning its new home against itself, this is the evil of cancer, that it starts as an invader but soon becomes one with the invaded, Forcing you to destroy it, but only at the risk of destroying yourself. It is sciences demon possession and my treatment sciences attempt at exorcism. Mulder I hope that in these terms you might know it and know me. And except this stranger so many recognise but so many cannot completely cast out and if the darkness should have swallowed me as you read this. You must never think there was the possibility of some secret intervention, something you might have done and though we have travelled far together this last distance must necessarily be travelled alone.


Scully: (Writing in her journal) I have not written to you in the past twenty four hours because the treatment has weakened my body. Mulder it’s difficult to explain to you the fear of facing an enemy which I can neither conquer nor escape.

In away, I identify with Scully's 'Dark Stranger'. Certainly an over zealous brain tail and cancer are not even in the same galaxy, but nevertheless, my brain tail is a part of me. In an attempt to make room for brain tail my body will feel great pain. With Chiari ~ there is no conquering or escape ~ not yet. I had a dream the other night that I shot a syringe of salt into my brain tail and just like that, it shriveled right up like a snail. Problem solved ~ I wish the cure for chiari were that simple.