Stronger?

 

"What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” I think the platitude was meant to ally my complaining about the cold. She even agreed, saying how it was so cold out. Nodding, I joke that it was the middle of August for chrissakes!

As I try to keep my teeth from chattering, I laugh, trying to keep a sense of humor about it. But I am so goddamn cold! The Plunge Pool is always cold, and frankly, I don’t need it. My entire body is shivering. My fingers are little white frozen popsicles. My brain is cranky!

She heads out of the locker-room into the Cold Zone. I wish her luck.

And then think, is it true? That what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger?

Not that I think I’m going to die from swimming at the Plunge, but I am miserable.

Does that make me stronger?

I think not.

I think it just makes me more frail, less robust.

Like my broken wrist this summer. Okay, honestly, there was one point in the emergency room where they had given me some heavy-duty painkillers and then wheeled me to a dark room. On the way, all I saw in my brain were florescent bright images of lime, lemon, and orange coral.

I thought I was dying.

Of course, I wasn’t. Yet, did this belief that I thought I was leaving the planet, and then surviving it, make me stronger?

Maybe. I know that if I hallucinate florescent coral reefs again that I’m not dying. That could be a help in the future if I go through this again.

Which I hope I don’t!

But another part of me is filled with fear and anxiety. I don’t want to go through another bone break. I am afraid of falling again. I walk with trepidation. I move my wrist with ginger care.

It’s not an attitude of strength.

Yet, are there other times where I thought I was going to die and then I reemerged stronger?

The ambulance ride to the Loretta Krankenhaus in Bavaria when I was sure the pain would kill me. It came out of nowhere. A lightning bolt of agony. A doctor came to my bed. Gave me a horse needle full of painkiller.

I survived.

Was I stronger? Perhaps. Years later I can look back on that experience and realize that I am a survivor. I have, at this point in my life, survived cancer and surgeries and other near misses. (Haven’t we all been driving on the freeway when a zooming car comes out of nowhere, cuts us off, and we have to hold our breath and hope they don’t crash?)

So, today, when Linda platitudes me, I have to smile and shrug. In a way, she’s right. After all, I’m still here.

But still. I think the Plunge could turn up the heat! Just a little. For Chrissakes, it is the middle of August!