Sylvia's Journal

While everyone within a radius of a few hundred miles could only think and talk Red Sox, I went about my usual schedule of a mixture of work and appointments with therapists: massage, EMDR and physical. And when all that was done I headed out to Babson College at the end of the afternoon. I drove in a big circle around Boston on Route 128 as thousands of cars streamed on and off the various spokes that lead into Boston for the second Red Sox game (they won, again). I stayed on the ring road and pulled off in Wellesley over an hour later. It was a long drive and my right foot was, again, not happy. Once I joined up with my OBTS Boarder buddies I handed my keys over and was driven to dinner. We are lodged in the fancy Babson Executive Education & Conference Center. Under the watchful eyes of a photo gallery of worldwide, mostly male, entrepreneurs I can help myself to as much ice cream, M&Ms, drinks, coffee, tea and yogurt as I want in a series of snacking stations that are sprinkled throughout the building.

Yesterday’s EMDR session was intense and gave me a little glimpse into what the body knows but the mind has pushed out of consciousness. It is comforting to think that I blacked out during the crash itself and was therefore oblivious of what must have been several terrifying few minutes. I have always believed I was unconscious when that happened and only woke up to the shouts and sights of our rescuers in their heavy boots and with their jaws of life. But now, in the EMDR therapy, my mind is releasing some images that intimate that I lived through the crash in a more literal sense; images of a huge auger-like machine drilling into metal; a pylon being pounded into the earth. They were images without sound but powerfully destructive. And with the images came shots of pain in the left side of my body, the good side, but also the side that hit the ground first. I was registering all these images as if I saw a movie. I was audience not actress in this drama. There were no people in it. It was simply a show of sheer mechanical force. I watched it with detachment. There was no emotion, only those new pains, mirroring my right arm tendon pain at exactly the same spot on my left arm. And then, when I was done telling about the images, the pain left as quickly as it had come.

There was more, as my mind released an insider’s view on my recovery: a bridge spanning a huge waterway; the first part of the span up to its highest point was black. Ruth encouraged me to go there and I discovered it was all I-beams and no asphalt. “Hmmm, I-beams,” she muttered, “go there,” and she turned the buzzing wafers on again. As I made my way up to the middle of the bridge I held on to the railing, balancing on the I-beam that seemed to get narrower and narrower. I could feel the wind passing underneath. The dark lurking water deep down was a frightful sight. I got stuck there for awhile as other images, some very sweet and some more dark and gloomy, took me elsewhere. Later, as the session came to an end, I went back to that bridge and passed to the white side. I now had a sort of hazmat suit on and I was tied to the bridge with a rope and people on the other side were cheering me on as they reeled me in. Back on land I quickly took to the skies and found myself soaring high in the most luminous blue skies.

It could have been a dream but it was produced in broad daylight through two little wafers that buzz in my left and right hand while I watch the images that are projected on the screen of my mind’s eye. It is quite an amazing process, mysterious, and, in some bizarre way, also enjoyable as I hand over the reins to my mind and then sit back and watch it reveal its wonders in a very intimate sort of way to its audience of one.