Not long ago, a sweat-inducing pain between my shoulder blades made me crumble into a mass of useless muscle. Paralysis seeped into my left arm and leg and I began to fold up onto the floor like a discarded paper brochure.
All I could think about, was theft. Something was trying to steal me away.
The idea of existing in one location and then suddenly getting purloined is not a thought that has filled my head often as an adult. On this day it did.
As a kid, I may have pretended to be one of my favorite superheroes where a bad guy was trying to grab me and hurt me and take me to his lair or something. I would always escape though.
Periodically as my life progressed, I’d visualize things that I owned being taken from me. Stuff like my car or certain items in my house or perhaps even my money.
But what are you left to think when an invisible entity unexpectedly tries to actually pinch you?
I’m not talking about a friend trying to pinch your nipple or something. That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about an attempted pilfering.
Is The Universe Dragging Me Away?
I was being snatched away from everything that was important to me.
My wife, three children, and parents could never understand what they meant to me.
Words saved for my close friends would stay sequestered from them for good.
Grandchildren couldn’t walk with me while I held their little hands. They’d never know what a good listener I could be.
So, on the floor, I closed my eyes and tried to get focused, but that’s when time began to rush. My thoughts started to blend together and I slid down an emotional mudslide of panic. The more I grappled for stability, the faster I was taken away.
Where was I going and who or what was stealing me?
Will That Superhero Show Up?
So where is that superhero self right now? The one with all the courage and ability to battle against bad guys? What if that illustrious warrior doesn’t show up?
I began to breathe calmly. I began to focus and I started to fight.
The anger that I had always tried to suppress while being bullied, came to the surface and I worked on wrestling through the gripping pain at the base of my neck. This heist was not going to happen.
My left side was completely paralyzed now but my brain crackled with power and thoughts of escape.
I had to get going. I needed to move somehow.
Face down with my head buried in my arms, a muffled moan came to the surface. “No. Not now,” I mumbled indignantly as a sudden sense of power overcame me. My body was failing me, but a mental strength filled the void that my physical form was vacating. I clenched and coiled like a cornered rattler and waited.
EMS visitors suddenly arrived and wheeled me into a whining vehicle that dashed towards a hospital and an emergency entrance that quickly gobbled me up for tests and scans.
Hours later as I entered an operating room, a mask met my face and I faded into blackness.
A team of courageous medical lords worked on me while I slept, removing the cause of the pain and the complications that might have checked me out for good.
Reassembled, I awoke. Exhausted but exhilarated.
But what if I had not come through? All the people that I was so focused on gathering close to me while in peril would be gone. Wherever I ended up, I wouldn’t see them anymore.
Why didn’t I notice their brilliance around me everywhere before the knife began to incise my neck?
Life had lulled me into becoming a disconnected wanderer. One who only viewed what was close and dear through a foggy filter of normal mixed with a static sense of entitlement. While missing the point and opportunities to embrace experiences and special people, I drifted.
This was before the attempted theft and the mask and the knife.
I am here. It is now. Nothing is taking me anywhere at this moment and I see what’s truly valuable.
The Universe did indeed pinch me. Then it woke me up.
