How are you?

 How are you? I've read enough blog posts and grief pages to know that I'm not the only one who goes into a tailspin when asked this seemingly innocuous question. For me, it's sorta the same as asking me how many kids I have? It causes brain freeze and heart hitches and frogs in the throat. How am I doing? It depends on the day, the week, the hour, the minute, the swimming schedule in Bermuda and whether or not the Northwestern caught any crab last year on Deadliest Catch. I think what I'm trying to say is there are a lot of variables in the equation that you would never even think about if you've never been here. Ha! Forget if you've ever been here before, if you've never been ME before. 

 Yeah, it's all sort of the same for everybody. But no matter what, especially if you don't know yourself very well, you have no idea how you'd react if you were me or if any of this happened to you. It seems to me there's a LOT of people who have the distinct inability of putting themselves in someone else's shoes to any extent. This is something I've never understood even before all this happened in my life. How do you NOT feel bad for someone? And if you do, how do you expect them to "move on" and "get over it." It's not a bridge or a lane of travel. Let me give you a scenario and then you can tell me how you'd handle it.

 Say you are taking a walk in this beautiful park. The birds are singing and there's flowers bursting forth all around you. There are waterfalls in little ponds and happy fish are swimming around under lily pads that are in full bloom. As you walk along you come past a cherry tree in full bloom. You stop to smell the flowers and maybe take a few pictures so you'll never forget this awesome moment. Then suddenly, this six foot tall dude dressed all in black leaps out from behind the cherry tree. You scream in fright and take off running but he's way bigger than you and faster too, so he catches you and then cuts off your arm with a machete. Thankfully your screams have alerted the police who rush over to help you, but the guy disappears into the trees.

 Now. Tell me how soon you're going to forget you lost your arm? When is the next time you're going to feel safe walking in a park gazing at trees and bushes. How long will it be before you quit thinking of all the things you used to do with your arm and the things you'll never be able to do with that arm again? When are you going to stop being scared that man in black is going to jump you again? How long will it be before you are happy and rejoicing that a madman cut off your arm? Will you find it kind and loving of the people who tell you to be thankful you still have your other arm? Will it fill you with happy thoughts when people tell you that they know how you feel because they lost a toenail in 5th grade and they remember how much it hurts?

 How will it make you feel when people look at you like you're a cripple? And how will it feel when the rest of the people want you to still go rock climbing with them? What about when they ask you how you're doing while awkwardly looking at the spot your arm used to be but if you say anything regarding your trauma they give you a look of disgust and change the subject?

 How am I doing? I'm doing. And one thing I'll tell you till the day I die is this: PLEASE. Please actually mean it when you ask how I'm doing. Because if you don't really want to know that I'm not back to the same old me that I was before I lost a part of me... then don't ask.