Chemical Experiment: Resurgence

PART III: DELAYED EMERGENCE

"The emergence from anesthesia is the stage of general anesthesia featuring the patient’s progression from the unconsciousness status to wakefulness and restoration of consciousness. This complex process has precise neurobiology which differs from that of induction. Despite the medications commonly used in anesthesia allow recovery in a few minutes, a delay in waking up from anesthesia, called delayed emergence, may occur."

- Delayed Emergence from Anesthesia: What We Know and How We Act, National Library of Medicine ( NIH )

_____________________

I slowly wake

Thoughts and dreams in a haze

Like a mirage upon a vast desert

For that is all that is left for me

After this drought

Machines beep against pale walls

Steady and sure

Recounting every beat of a

Broken heart that refuses to cease

My skull is restricted by bandages, but

It is in one piece

It’s the first time I ever

Considered that a blessing

Shapes of faces I remember surround me

And I feel the warmth from their hands

As they embrace me

Have I always been loved?

If so, how is it, that after such a successful procedure

I still do not feel well?

Why can’t I love myself

As much as those shapes

Love me?

Papers float about

Signatures are signed

And new bottles clink against each other before my hands

“Take these,” the doctor says

“They will help.”

But I know what they will not say

The pills are no cure

Just as the sun is not the cure

For the rising moon

It is merely a repression of

that darkness I have walked next to

All my life

A friend I once knew

Brought back to life

By grief and a fractured confidence

So how do I stop this from happening again?

How do I emerge from this endless cycle

With my sanity still intact?

How do I emerge

Without the surgical cut?

________

This is the 14th poem in RE: SURGENCE, a poetry collection by Amanda Starks that shares what it's like to have and fight against mental illness in a free-form, lyrical prose.

Be aware that topics and themes may include suicide, self-harm, and isolation.

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