Reprise

19 January 2020

I’ll admit it. My only coherent memory from the Intensive Care Unit is a brief conversation with my dear friend, KP. I asked her to kill me. I asked if there was some way of unplugging me or doping me or something … anything. I had no idea what kind of life was ahead of me, but I imagined that it would involve heavy dependence on others for every action and every activity. I imagined that I would permanently be taking from this world far more than I would be giving and that sounded like my worst nightmare. KP, in her inimitable way, verbally slapped me (she has mastered the balance of kind and tough). She said I was being ridiculous, that it wasn’t even legal to do such a thing and for good reason, and that of course I had so much more left in me to give. She even dragged her partner, Joris, into it – “tell her, Joris, this wouldn’t even be legal in the Netherlands and they are the most liberal country in the world about these things”.

It was the perfect response. I thought “Well, okay then. This is how it’s going to be.”

That memory always makes me emotional. Always, it fills me with a mixture of shame, remorse, grief and pity. But it was real, and I accept that in that moment I could not conjure a better outcome for myself or for the people close to me. As my mate, Len, says “every barrel’s gotta have a bottom”, and that was mine.

As you all know, I went through rehab for a couple of months and spent many more of the following months learning how to be in a new form. I named my feet because they no longer felt like mine – they felt, and still feel, like they are their own separate entities. It isn’t just my feet either. Sometimes that’s how I feel about the whole 78% of my body that I don’t control.

I’ve had ambitions about what I can learn to do in this Claudia 2.0 form – I’ve written about some of them here. To be honest, I have been treating my body as a tool – much like my chair is a tool – and my approach has been to learn to use the tool. It feels inanimate, like a vehicle or a means for doing something. What it doesn’t feel like is something to which I am emotionally attached. I don’t feel good about it. I don’t get joy from seeing it or using it.

Often in a musical, there is a ‘reprise’ – a song that was sung early in the performance is repeated about two thirds of the way through. But the repeated version, the reprise, is usually changed somehow from the original. It is often livelier or more open in its sound. It might be in a different key. It is familiar enough that the audience recognises it but different enough to bring new life into it.

I am not a new year’s resolution kind of person. I think I’ve made three of them in my life so far. However, I am a reflective kind of person, and I do believe it is worthwhile to think deeply about life and about where you’re headed. In the spirit of the season, I am aiming for a reprise. Instead of more Claudia 2.0, I’m aiming for Claudia 2.1. A changed version – familiar enough to recognise me but different enough to see the new life.

My 2020 will be about falling in love with my body. I am determined to stop treating it as a vehicle and remember what it was like to feel joy in what my body can do – in what I can do. I am determined to stop treating it as a tool and remind myself what it was like to feel a little sore from exertion and strong from building muscle and endurance. I want to feel nourished by healthy food, and more than that, I want to feel like I’m doing right by myself when I eat. I want the result to be a more upbeat, lively version of me; one that is familiar but new.

It has taken some time, but I can now see what KP was talking about in the ICU – I do have more to offer; more to contribute. I’ve been practicing that contribution through my job, but I don’t feel like that’s the end of it. This year, I’ll start with taking better care of my new self and learning how to love the imperfect – who knows where that will lead.