Many many years ago, in what now feels like an altogether different life, lived as if by an entirely different person, I made a choice to “save my own life” through extreme means (in that moment). My ex-husband was coming after me with a very large knife, in a small apartment in Germany. The front door was locked from the inside, and I could not open that door to escape down the stairwell. I dashed to the patio, barely ahead of him, and rolled over the balcony rail. He reached me as I dangled there in that moment between actions, and his face wore a look of astonishment and alarm, “Don’t!” he demanded urgently. “I have to,” I said quietly, and then I let go.
I hit the slick paved patio below quite hard. My ears rang, I felt something snap. I “saw” an explosion of lights behind closed eyes. I felt nauseatingly dizzy. I saw him looking down, then retreating from the balcony rail quickly – I knew he was on his way and I panicked. I jumped up from the pavement, disregarding all sensations, and climbed a fence and a hedge to get to the nearest neighbor whose lights were on. I couldn’t remember a word of German in that moment other than “polizei”, and so that’s who they called. The police arrived, locked and loaded, and told the neighbors (whose English was better than my German) that an ambulance from the American hospital had been called. The police went after my ex husband, and once they found him he was arrested.
When the ambulance arrived, the medics quickly determined I’d likely broken my back (and there I was sitting upright in a lawn chair, flexing my spine uncomfortably and commenting that I could not figure out why I was so “uncomfortable” – I didn’t understand that I was in shock). They insisted I be still. They put me on a back board, and on a stretcher, and rushed me to the ER. I wasn’t there long, barely long enough for X-rays, and for the Military Police investigators to arrive to interview me, while the doctor reminded them that I was heavily medicated and badly injured, and to keep their questions to a minimum. A helicopter arrived, and I was medevacked to the big regional Army hospital to the north, where there was a larger team more capable of treating spinal injuries. That was when I realized I was actually badly injured. The flight was short, and the strange air mattress they had me on was more comfortable than the back board or the hospital bed. When we arrived at the big hospital ER, they went to take me off that air mattress (I guess it belonged with the helicopter) and I cried and pleaded that they please let me stay on it. I still didn’t know “how bad it was” (or wasn’t) and I was starting to feel pain, again.
…It was pretty bad. My back was broken in two places, a spinous process from one smashed vertebrae had gotten shoved into my spinal canal, and I had a concussion and a broken wrist. I’d be in that hospital for a couple of months after 16+ continuous hours of surgery to fuse the damaged vertebrae and install bizarre and uncomfortable hardware to hold those surgical sites still while healing happened. (A year later, that hardware would all come out… except for a ferrous surgical wire that to this day prevents me having an MRI; the wire was woven through the fusion to hold things together.) I’ve got a long scar down my spine, a visible reminder, and an uglier, shorter one on my left hip where the bone grafts were taken to build my fusion. I don’t care about the scars; I lived. I’m still walking.
Funny thing about all of this; the longer term consequences were not within view. I had no idea that I would struggle to form healthy attachments or build trust with lovers, possibly ever again. I didn’t know that the nightmares would plague me for decades to come – some to do with the domestic violence, some to do with the medical terror of the surgery itself, during which the medical team had to wake me up to verify that I was responding to stimuli. There have been few things more openly terrifying in my life than being awake during spinal surgery, intubated, on life support, surgical incisions open, and being asked questions that required answers. There have been other consequences… the pain of my arthritis reminds me regularly of the choice I made. A choice to live, sure, but also… a choice that came with profound consequences. I paid a high price for this life of mine.
I pause for a moment to reflect on the value of a life. This life. My life. The choice I made to keep it, to trudge on, to try again, reaches so far back beyond that despairing moment in 2013 when I thought to abandon it. It has been a worthy journey, consequences and all. Sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes it’s easy.
…Some nights I still have nightmares. Some mornings I still wake up in pain. When I look back, though, I don’t regret that terrible lonely desperate choice to let go of a balcony rail and fall to my… freedom. Some choices just extract a big price. It’s a question I think few of us ask or answer before we choose; will the price be worth it? It’s hard to know, isn’t it? It’s probably worth wondering, for at least a moment… but there’s no map on this journey. We’re each walking our own hard mile.
Choose your adventure. Pay your price. Begin again. The journey is the destination.
Evening Light 