The Day I Breathed Trees
This is an excerpt from Living with Shadows, my collected stories about living with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy.
I sat inside reading a book, likely a Madeline L'Engle story, I read those over and over back then, when I lost focus on it. I kept trying to read, but the words wouldn't stay together, or I couldn't keep my mind on the task, I was simply and suddenly too agitated. I was 15 or 16 at the time, I'm not exactly sure.
And I felt the nudge. This is all too familiar to me now. You don't ignore the nudge. There was something it wanted to show you.
I told my mother I was going outside for a while, and I wandered into the backyard. We had a wonderful backyard in the house on Cornell Street, full of flowers, bushes, trees, a small garden with fruits and vegetables. But today, I felt fuzzy and out of focus. I stumbled off the back porch, down the back sidewalk and into the middle of the lawn. I was nudged again into the shade of the massive birch tree. I veritably collapsed onto the ground, drawn to lay myself out and bask in its shade.
Lying there, at first all I felt was the itch of the grass on my skin, and the warm summer breeze blowing across my skin. A bumblebee buzzed by, unconcerned with my presence. Perhaps I had imagined the nudges? But no, I'd learned to be patient. The nudges came, the physical sensation of being pushed, or kicked, or well, nudged. And then the odd awareness of 'something' coming, and I'd perk up. Whatever the puzzle piece, I had to pay attention. I had to make sense of it. It was essential. I'd learned this. I didn't know why, but I knew, if I was ever to make sense of what was going on, I had to pay attention.
Suddenly, my consciousness shifted without warning. My mind left my body and spread out like butter across the surface of the birch tree above me. Before, I'd noticed how it swayed in the breeze. Now, I swayed along with it, dancing as it did with the other trees in the vicinity. I felt the commingled pollen amongst the trees; saw the little messages passing as wavelengths of energy. I read those messages, understood them, and laughed aloud.
The sun broke through the clouds, and the tree sighed with appreciation as it lapped up the rays eagerly, the energy flowing into the heart of the tree, storing to feed and nurture the future seeds. I fed on the sun, took it into myself. Water sucked up from the extensive root network reached to the tip of every leaf. I felt the tree breath out, and I breathed in its breath. I felt like a speck of disconnected dust next to this massive creature, dug as it was into the earth and interwoven across the skies to its brethren.
As the moment began to fade, dissonance crept in. I tried to cling to the tree. I'm with it one moment, and the next it's shattered into a million pieces, and I'm nauseous, confused, dizzy, and my tongue tastes metallic. Sometimes I forget where I am, or what I was doing beforehand. The degree of disorientation varies. I get up, and go back inside. I was clumsy afterwards, but not for too long.
It's inevitable on the pleasant moments, I don't want them to fade, but I always try and hold on. It doesn't matter, they last a set period of time, I don't get to pick. I've learned this over the years.
