Corridors and Window...

 [4/29/25 WriteTime]

In the past 5 months, I guess...

Maybe it's been longer... 

I find myself reviewing my life in a hub of my memory...

Corridors from where images bubble up... 

Many are distinctively clear...

I think all are in color... 

Once these images bubble up, it's not unusual for me to gain an insight that either I haven't had before, or I can't remember if I had it, or the insight seems to have been there along, but I had to wait for it to come out of hiding and not immediately push the insight away because of training to not allow certain feelings of the past. And if they did come up, I was to declare them "null and void." That is so unhealthy...

But that's what indoctrination can do. 

It can replace, shield, correct, kill choice. 

Some may say, "Indoctrination doesn't kill choice; it limits choice." 

Technically, that may be true. 

But experientially, I beg to differ. 

I've' described my experience with indoctrination as a soul suicide.

Back to the memory corridors...

Counting backward in time, from when I first began training as Way Corps in 1978 at 19 years old...

There was The Way Corps and Word Over the World Ambassador, both from The Way International, an organization to which I stayed loyal for 28 years. Looking back, it's like, in part, I got stuck in an adolescent mindset.

Right before The Way, there was The Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements. 

Then, continuing backwards in time, The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ. 

Simultaneously with The Aquarian Gospel, there was Ram Dass with Be Here Now, and there was Transcendental Meditation (TM), Round 2.

Before that, The Southern Baptist Church which came after Transcendental Meditation, Round 1.

Before TM there were a multitude (I'm not exaggerating) of psychedelic trips, including a round with Jimson seed at 15 years old while I was strapped to a bed in ICU living in a world of horrific hallucinations for three full days and nights with no sleep. 

What led me to TM at 16 years old was the effect of too many psychedelic trips. Other than the Jimson nightmare, the trips were magical. I and my fellow trippers could feel the oneness of all things, at first.  

Around 10 months into the oneness, a shift happened. 

I turned inward, into a deep dark bottomless hole. 

Alone, paranoid, sitting on my bed with my head in my hands, rocking forward and backward, I thought I was going insane. 

I probably was. 

My saving thought was, "If I were insane, I wouldn't know it." 

Eight words. 

That same day, I turned to TM to heal my brain; it helped. 

Before the drugs there were boys and cheerleading.

Before boys there were horses and ponies and the neighborhood kids. 

There must have been 25 of us neighborhood kids... 

When I think back on those days, before my interest in boys at 13 years old, I feel a sense of freedom. 

I identify this feeling of freedom from around 5 years to 13 years old. 

Surely this feeling extends beyond that; my experiences would indicate so. 

But right now, I only feel it during that window of eight years... 

All in the context of my childhood neighborhood... 

Girls rode the horses and ponies; boys rode the minibikes which would sometimes scare the horses. 

One day, when I was 10 years old, I was breaking in a Welsh pony named Mary Jane. (I now prefer the term "gentling" as opposed to "breaking in.")  A minibike revved up behind her. She bolted in fear into some woods and threw me off into a tree and kept running. I broke my arm, and my face got all scratched up. They found Mary Jane downtown in the small city, more like a town, where I lived. Despite the incident, I got back on ponies and rode almost every day until I was around 12 when I began riding less and less.

We had freedom to roam; we camped outside, usually in nearby woods. 

Sometimes I'd camp out alone in our yard. 

I'd stargaze praying to see UFOs; surely, we aren't alone. 

I wanted to meet aliens; I thought they could bring oneness to the world. 

I'd read Chariots of the Gods when I was around 10 years old.

I wanted to believe. 

~*~~*~

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~*~~*~

Praying mantis arms...

The end of April 2025 will mark 14 years since the onset of polyradiculitis...

In late April 2011, my sister was visiting from Florida. We met at a restaurant to celebrate my birthday. As I shared about my new pet-sitting service, I told her that I had to purchase a smart phone to run the business. I then said, as I balanced my newly acquired, palm-sized computer in my left hand, "These smart phones sure are heavy." 

Little did we know what was about to transpire... 

Within a week, all my limbs suddenly turned to rubber...

My sister later shared, "I thought it unusual when you made that comment because smart phones are not heavy..." 

  

It took two years and eight doctors to receive a proper diagnosis.

It took another three years to discover an underlying cause.

~*~

Journal entry, 4/13/25

Settle Carol...
Yes, I feel I've experienced a shift...
It probably began on March 21, 2025...

That is when I (again) began to consciously walk and hold my body in better form, and I began to use my arms differently. 

I've lived with praying mantis arms for over a decade, though I used to get relief with cervical spine trigger point injections and lumbar epidurals. 
Every six weeks, for over eight years, I'd received some sort of injection(s) into my spinal cord area.

My last lumbar epidural was the week of April 11th, 2022; I think I received it on Thursday, April 14, 2022. 

Little did I know it'd be my last...

On April 28, 2022, I landed in the hospital for three nights; two good-sized blood clots, one in each lung. 

I and my wellness team were all stunned. 

I was then told that any more epidurals were too risky; the combination of epidurals and blood thinners is a high-risk recipe for paralysis. 

I became terrified... 
Without the epidurals, how could I remain mobile?
That same week, one of my providers began offering low-level laser therapy.
It's proven to be a godsend. 

Still without the lumbar epidurals, the cervical trigger point injections did not work as well. 

I gave them up too (in addition to the epidurals). 

It's all steroids; the tiny relief I got with the cervical injections didn't justify the side effects. 

My arms, already suffering from muscle atrophy, weakness, and shooting pains, became weaker, especially my biceps. 

Thus, praying mantis arms became my norm, until the last weekend of March 2025. 

Praying mantis arms: When a person has to keep their arms, from their elbows to their shoulders, close to their torso for support. If one has to reach, she moves super slow, concentrating, supporting the arm hopefully mitigating any kapow-bang-drop response.

Sigh... 
Do I really want to write about this? 
Haven't I written enough about life with polyradiculitis, whom I've come to name Poly Rad? 
To personify it seems to somehow lessen the fear.
Why is that?

Does personification bring it out of the scary condition that it is?
Like bringing it out of the shadows.
Or like exposing that there is no boogey man under the bed. 
Does personification lighten up the heaviness?

Oh my god, the heaviness...
Like my body was filled with iron slivers and Earth was trying to suck me right into her core. 
I would sometimes lay in my backyard, rolling from side to side in tears, looking up at the clouds and trees swaying in the breeze; they made movement look so easy. 

But it wasn't iron slivers in my body.
It was cobalt and chromium slowly poisoning my body from within, a defective hip implant leeching its metals for over eight years.
In 2016, the defective implant was explanted and replaced.
I no longer have the heaviness.

That's a good thing. 

~*~ 

Today, April 15, 2025

My bicep training continues; definitions of tiny bicep muscles are developing. 
I'm practicing to retrain my arms so that I am no longer a praying mantis.

Or maybe I am, just in a human costume.

~*~