Medical debt

“A cage is a closed door when you feel like you can’t see another place to get out.” — Ash

Ash said that yesterday, and I’m not sure what inspired him, aside, perhaps, from the mood lurking under my surface.  He was in the bathroom at the time, so maybe that’s what triggered the verbalization of this deeper thought.  All I know is that the kid nailed it.

Sometimes being caged isn’t about whether you ARE trapped.  It’s about whether you FEEL trapped.  Sometimes it isn’t about the walls around you, so much as the door that just slammed shut in front of you with an ominous click, that’s all you can see, all you can hear.  Sometimes it’s about being able to see what’s beyond your space, and always reach out to it through what holds you back, but never being able to move more than a certain amount in any direction because you just can’t find an escape.

I’ve been playing all week with metaphors related to our situation with medical debt.  There’s quicksand — the slightest misstep….no matter how careful you were, or maybe thrown off-balance by something beyond your control, or perchance you stepped in knowingly because it was the only way to avoid a swifter and more violent death….and suddenly you’re stuck there, sinking deeper, and it seems the more you try to do, the faster you’re smothered….and when you get to a certain point, there really IS nothing you can do to save yourself but call out for someone to throw you a line.  There’s the Metallica lyric from “No Leaf Clover” — “Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel / Was just a freight train coming your way”….Thanks to our close, personal relationship with Murphy, I have that line in my head a lot.  That lead me to thinking of being caught in a network of tunnels….maybe an old subway or sewer system — for all that I’ve been known to say that the light at the end of the tunnel shines even in the darkness around the bend where you can’t see it….well, maybe every time you get closer to the light, there’s a tunnel collapse, and you have to work your way backwards before you can even begin to find another way to move forwards.  That brings my mind around again to an ant farm — no matter how many tunnels you dig, no matter how many paths you travel, no matter which direction you go or how many other paths you cross….until there is nowhere left to go, and you’re just pushing around the same packed clumps of dirt through the same spaces, over and over again….you’re still going to be stuck in the damn thing, until some higher power knocks it over and sets you loose to run like hell.

But, now I have Ash’s line about cages in my head, too.

We’ve “done everything right” but a whole lotta stuff has gone wrong.  There is so much I want to be able to do for Ash — ok, yes, and for us, too, all of us, and our other loved ones — and I am so tired of feeling like most of it is on the other side of the door.  I believe we’ll get through this together.  I’d just like to be able to get beyond it.  And I wish we could stop guilting ourselves over the fact that we haven’t been able to, yet.

Of course, I’ve got PMS and am still a bit sick, have had lots of fresh stress lately and am kind of emo right now, so…meh.