Life and Death Experiences

I was watching a movie tonight, at the Spectrum Theatre, in Albany, NY, and left half way through it. I felt as though I needed to be creating, writing, drawing, painting....I needed to "let out" an emotion within me. I have lived a story which needs to be told and which co-insides with who I am: edgey, gritty, witty, fantastical and beautiful. I can't remove it no matter how hard I try because something within me begins swell and  my emotions and pulse race. I can't control the creativity. When I feel the need to create I become anxious, distraught and distracted...my mind goes anywhere and everywhere. I lose control...one thought streams into another idea. First the idea becomes drawing then a painting. Then the painting manifests into sculptures and then an installation, sometimes with moving parts...with streams of words and an outpouring of emotion into every split second of thought.

Everything is well thought out, and if there isn't a preconceived thought...there's always a preconceived emotion. The preconceived emotion, is what I'm always harboring within me. They are the emotions I haven't painted or sculpted out yet in my mind. The emotion becomes more complex when I combine feelings of past, present or future together. These emotions have made me what I am today.

My past experiences are what lights my soul and sets it afire. To have been so close to death so many times in my life has made me more appreciative of not only the good in the day...but the negative, dark, crazy times we experience. I've always enjoyed the darker places because of  the light I find within them. For when we feel the light in the darkness, its always more rewarding and beautiful, then any other time. I think that's why I crave mischeif...I'm always looking for the unexpected spontaneous things which can occur. However, after life and death experiences we realize how easy it is to die...even if not physically, but mentally we can die. I use to deal with my disease and the prison it built around how I lived because I stayed in all the time, either of pain, paraletic limbs, facial pain (trigeminal neuralgia) and every other medical experience I suffered. However, now today...I live! I'm free of disease and pain, and I feel this is what allows me to appreciate moment of everyday.

Then of course there's the loss of a loved one....and anyone who has experienced the loss of someone whom was very close, and whom you loved dearly... knows how terribly this effects you. My fiance died in my house, on my sofa, eating a fentanyl patch. The transedermal patch was never meant for ingestion...but what does the ass do when I went to sleep that night?  He placed the synthetic narcotic patch into his mouth!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I remember the morning this happened....

I awoke the morning after Thanksgiving to my two children telling me, "Mommy get up...Jarrett isn't waking up..."

"What?!" I sat up quickly...

I hear Veronica's voice tremble..."Mom there's something wrong he won't get up... "

I jumped out of bed...and ran down my short hallway..and in those 2 seconds before I saw him..I could feel my heart punding and bursting in my chest....I felt a rush of thoughts run through my mind....I knew something happened with the drug he was fooling around with. I remember the night before I fell asleep arguing with him about the fentanyl he was taking. I was begging him to stop...telling him his voice was slurring and he wasn't even aware of it. I exclaimed, "He was fucking with the devil."

I turned the corner at the end of the hallway and saw him....slumped into the sofa...his head tilted uncomfortably to the side...his lips were blue and his palor bluish grey ...I knew he was dead...

AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

I examined him quickly...searching for a pulse in his neck, placing my head against his chest looking for a heartbeat, pulling his eyelids open to see his eyes were rolled up into his head. I began to lay his head down onto the sofa becausse I needed to preform CPR...I attempted to postition him, but his body felt so heavy...so lifeless I could barely move him. So I pushed his body onto the  ground....opened his mouth and saw a piece of plastic in it...I put my finger into a "C" position and cleared his airway...out came a piece of plastic...the fentanol patch!!! I grabbed my phone, and called 911.

"Operator I need an ambulance now...My boyfriend he's experiencing a drug overdose."

"Mam, you need to calm down..."

"I need an ambulance now! I live at 508 London Square........NY...I need help now!"

"Mam you need to calm.."

"Calm down? No I do not need to calm down...My boyfriend is dead!!! I need to preform CPR!!! You have my address right?!"

"Yes mam we do...Someone is on the way now."

"Go downstairs and wait for the policeman..."I screamed at my kids...

I dropped the phone...and began breathing into Jarrett...trying to get his chest to rise and fill with air...instead I felt and heard liquid rattling ...and his chest didn't rise and fall...I began to get frantic...and become more scared...

I knew he was dead..my heart sank into my stomach and I began to shake....I climbed on top of his chest and began pushing with my palms..counting 1..2...3...4......10. Then I returned to his side to preform further mouth to mouth...I felt not one beat from his heart and his body felt cold...lifeless...dead....

A state trooper showed up within minutes and came in...He knelt beside me and told me to move...He pushed on his chest so hard...that after a few times, vomit and blood began to come out of his ears and mouth....I began freaking....

"Mam, you need to give him mouth to mouth..."

"I put my mouth over his and began to blow, but I wasn't getting past the vomit, blood and mucus that now filled his mouth....So I opened his mouth and cleared out his passageways and began again..smelling and tasting his blood and his vomit in my mouth...I could feel my blood curdle inside....How I wanted to cry....scream...and let out the emotion that was consuming my body...I was looking at the man I loved...dead...I could barely believe what was happening to me...

What was happening? was I going to awake from this nightmare? Oh, God please don't let this be true..please don't let this be true..."

The paramedics arrived after a few minutes....they immediatly took his O2 level and his blood pressure...they said he must have been dead for hours.

"Aren't you going to shock and revive him!?"

"No, he's dead...If we did that he might come back brain dead."

I started screaming, "No!  NO!    NOOOO!!!!     

Bring him baaaack!!!!"

The state trooper next to me..grabbed me, lifted me up and forced me into my bedroom....Where I began to scream...and cry...

I didn't stop crying day and night for 9 months, unless I exhausted myself into sleep......