Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2014 13:13:24 GMT -7
I write this against my own desires, to my own pain, on the enthusiastic recommendation of my therapist, who believes that writing, sharing and seeking advice is cathartic. That placing and seeing thoughts on paper is healing.
My earliest memories are of the piano. Pre verbal, before everything had a name and a purpose, I remember the feeling of the keys, of the sounds they made. I never thought of piano as process, as the linear progression of my thinking to move my finger, striking a key, and then hearing a sound. All I remember is thinking the idea of a note and then hearing it as it came out of the piano.
I approached a piano just as I was leaning to walk, and crawled up into a piano bench before I could take steps unassisted. My entire world was piano, from my earliest memories.
I remember being amazed that the words I heard could be represented as marks on paper, at the same time that I figured out that the sounds that I play on the piano could be represented as notes. I learned music at the same time as I learned reading. Phonics came simultaneously with relating notes on paper to keys and sounds on the piano.
I was fluent in piano long before I was fluent with words, fluent with reading music before I could read a book. My emotions, my moods, my self-image, all have been tied up with piano, forever.
My social network, as I got older, was always related to piano and music. I was the "piano player" in every group I ever was a member of.
I got a music scholarship to a major university when i was only 16 and started my freshman year at 17, majoring of course, in applied music; which is a way to say, piano.
I learned details on how music is composed and the constituent elements it is composed of, but that was like learning the physics of making love. It was separate from the experience, the merging myself to the piano. That is what I lived for, the merging of myself with the music I played.
That’s what I did, who I was.
In the summer between my freshman and sophomore year, when I was 18, I was in a car accident and lost my right arm. I have a tennis ball like stub at my shoulder where my arm was, the skin on the stub is scarred and rough and I cannot feel or move it. It just sits there, attached to my shoulder, a short length of bone fused to my shoulder. This little stub of flesh, attached where my arm was, is the more awful thing, far uglier than anything I could have even imagined before I first saw it.
For my second year of college, I enrolled in a community college near my home so I could live at home during my 'rehabilitation’. Which tuned out to be a great disappointment. There is not much that can. be done for me. I have a prosthetic arm, but it’s useless, and I have never worn it much. I learned to move the shoulder and the elbow and close the hook, but it is far more trouble than it is worth.
So I completed my second year and I thought that I was really well on the road to recovery, when my real problems started. This was about three months ago, when I finally decided to do something about the sleeves on my blouses and dresses.
One day I just suddenly got tired of the hanging sleeves, the pinned or rolled up sleeves. I decided to sew the sleeves shut so they fit me properly. I picked a favorite blouse; measured carefully, even held it up in front of a mirror to see how cool and form fitting it would look. I laid it out on a table and cut the right arm off, then very skillfully sewed the sleeve shut, exactly at the right point for a custom fit. I even matched the pattern so that the pattern flowed visually. The closed sleeve didn’t look cut off at all; it looked like it was designed that way.
I took off the blouse i was wearing and put in the new one I’d just finished sewing, I buttoned it (I remember being so proud of my left handed buttoning skills) and then looked in the mirror and broke into tears.
And I have been crying, on and off, ever since.
I ripped off the blouse, put on one with intact sleeves, and from that day on, I have been unable to roll up a sleeve at all. I find that I am very sad unless I just let the sleeve dangle empty.
I have also started seeing my missing arm. I look down at the empty sleeve and for an instant the arm is there, the hand is there, and then it disappears. Sometimes I sat at my family piano and move my body so the empty sleeve drags over the keys, and I hear the notes for an instant, before I realize that the arm was gone.
Now I am going back to the regular four year university where I started. I will have to charge my major, they suggest music education but I don’t know if I can bear it.
Most of these people have not seen me since the first year there.
Yesterday I want to a pre-class mixer, a preschool starting social event and I was blown away, just blown away. Some didn’t know I had lost the arm, and came up to me, offered a hand to shake and then I’d sort of gesture and their eyes would see the empty sleeve and melt, that's tight, my friends seemed to melt when they saw it. The empty sleeve. Then the melted look would metamorph to pity as I watched, over and over and over I saw this, the pity when people realized that I couldn’t ever play the piano again.
The more of my old friends I meet the worse it is getting. And every time I think about the empty sleeve I get more horrified than the day before. And now the thought of being near a piano, of even touching the piano again, paralyzes me with sadness.
I am going to a therapist and a support group but it doesn’t help much. I fret about never being attractive to go out on a date again, and the therapist days that if I order a Caesar salad I won’t have to worry about being unable to cut food without a hand to hold the knife, as if that is what I am worried about. No other amputee in the support group is my age and most of them are men who have lost legs. The only others I have met without an arm are congenital amputees who have never known different.
I was once beautiful, or at least pretty. All of my life I have worked to be in good shape and slim, to run every day, to work out, to eat healthy. Now my body is ugly, and will never be pleasing to look at again, ever.
I am beginning to think that I might drop out of college for a while, or at least go to a new college where everyone doesn' t feel sorry for me. I know that I will be able to live a full live with one arm, but for now, any suggestions would sure be appreciated!!
Jill
My earliest memories are of the piano. Pre verbal, before everything had a name and a purpose, I remember the feeling of the keys, of the sounds they made. I never thought of piano as process, as the linear progression of my thinking to move my finger, striking a key, and then hearing a sound. All I remember is thinking the idea of a note and then hearing it as it came out of the piano.
I approached a piano just as I was leaning to walk, and crawled up into a piano bench before I could take steps unassisted. My entire world was piano, from my earliest memories.
I remember being amazed that the words I heard could be represented as marks on paper, at the same time that I figured out that the sounds that I play on the piano could be represented as notes. I learned music at the same time as I learned reading. Phonics came simultaneously with relating notes on paper to keys and sounds on the piano.
I was fluent in piano long before I was fluent with words, fluent with reading music before I could read a book. My emotions, my moods, my self-image, all have been tied up with piano, forever.
My social network, as I got older, was always related to piano and music. I was the "piano player" in every group I ever was a member of.
I got a music scholarship to a major university when i was only 16 and started my freshman year at 17, majoring of course, in applied music; which is a way to say, piano.
I learned details on how music is composed and the constituent elements it is composed of, but that was like learning the physics of making love. It was separate from the experience, the merging myself to the piano. That is what I lived for, the merging of myself with the music I played.
That’s what I did, who I was.
In the summer between my freshman and sophomore year, when I was 18, I was in a car accident and lost my right arm. I have a tennis ball like stub at my shoulder where my arm was, the skin on the stub is scarred and rough and I cannot feel or move it. It just sits there, attached to my shoulder, a short length of bone fused to my shoulder. This little stub of flesh, attached where my arm was, is the more awful thing, far uglier than anything I could have even imagined before I first saw it.
For my second year of college, I enrolled in a community college near my home so I could live at home during my 'rehabilitation’. Which tuned out to be a great disappointment. There is not much that can. be done for me. I have a prosthetic arm, but it’s useless, and I have never worn it much. I learned to move the shoulder and the elbow and close the hook, but it is far more trouble than it is worth.
So I completed my second year and I thought that I was really well on the road to recovery, when my real problems started. This was about three months ago, when I finally decided to do something about the sleeves on my blouses and dresses.
One day I just suddenly got tired of the hanging sleeves, the pinned or rolled up sleeves. I decided to sew the sleeves shut so they fit me properly. I picked a favorite blouse; measured carefully, even held it up in front of a mirror to see how cool and form fitting it would look. I laid it out on a table and cut the right arm off, then very skillfully sewed the sleeve shut, exactly at the right point for a custom fit. I even matched the pattern so that the pattern flowed visually. The closed sleeve didn’t look cut off at all; it looked like it was designed that way.
I took off the blouse i was wearing and put in the new one I’d just finished sewing, I buttoned it (I remember being so proud of my left handed buttoning skills) and then looked in the mirror and broke into tears.
And I have been crying, on and off, ever since.
I ripped off the blouse, put on one with intact sleeves, and from that day on, I have been unable to roll up a sleeve at all. I find that I am very sad unless I just let the sleeve dangle empty.
I have also started seeing my missing arm. I look down at the empty sleeve and for an instant the arm is there, the hand is there, and then it disappears. Sometimes I sat at my family piano and move my body so the empty sleeve drags over the keys, and I hear the notes for an instant, before I realize that the arm was gone.
Now I am going back to the regular four year university where I started. I will have to charge my major, they suggest music education but I don’t know if I can bear it.
Most of these people have not seen me since the first year there.
Yesterday I want to a pre-class mixer, a preschool starting social event and I was blown away, just blown away. Some didn’t know I had lost the arm, and came up to me, offered a hand to shake and then I’d sort of gesture and their eyes would see the empty sleeve and melt, that's tight, my friends seemed to melt when they saw it. The empty sleeve. Then the melted look would metamorph to pity as I watched, over and over and over I saw this, the pity when people realized that I couldn’t ever play the piano again.
The more of my old friends I meet the worse it is getting. And every time I think about the empty sleeve I get more horrified than the day before. And now the thought of being near a piano, of even touching the piano again, paralyzes me with sadness.
I am going to a therapist and a support group but it doesn’t help much. I fret about never being attractive to go out on a date again, and the therapist days that if I order a Caesar salad I won’t have to worry about being unable to cut food without a hand to hold the knife, as if that is what I am worried about. No other amputee in the support group is my age and most of them are men who have lost legs. The only others I have met without an arm are congenital amputees who have never known different.
I was once beautiful, or at least pretty. All of my life I have worked to be in good shape and slim, to run every day, to work out, to eat healthy. Now my body is ugly, and will never be pleasing to look at again, ever.
I am beginning to think that I might drop out of college for a while, or at least go to a new college where everyone doesn' t feel sorry for me. I know that I will be able to live a full live with one arm, but for now, any suggestions would sure be appreciated!!
Jill
