A story without the words

It has been weeks since I have had the urge to sit down and write a blog. It hasn’t been due to lack of excitement, emotion or experience in our lives, but rather an intentional avoidance. One due to frustration and annoyance – writers block of some sorts

It is so hard to find a way convey what happens here. I spend time typing paragraphs upon paragraphs only to spend a second deleting them before they are finished. It is so difficult to transmit emotions, events and perspectives and even harder to paint that portrait with dignity and accuracy.

My words, however elongated and eloquently strung together or short and sweet can not fully describe the elation in a patients face when they hear they are well enough to go home. Or the fear and shame in the eyes of an ill middle aged woman as it takes myself and three others desperately grasping an edge of the blanket she is coddled in to carry her up a hill to our car, knowing this will be the last time she is at home.

I don’t have the words to accurately relay the feelings of peace and security that surround me each morning as I sit around the breakfast table with my roommates preparing for another day. Or the feeling of relief I am flooded with when I hear that an HIV test comes back NEGATIVE juxtaposed by the blanket of misery that envelopes me when I hear that one word, POSITIVE, which changes a life forever.

Words won’t let you smell the smells I’m bombarded with everyday upon entering the Respite Center or see lines of worry in the faces of my newfound friends. They won’t let you feel the sweat dripping down our backs as I struggle to move a patient or the warmth I am filled with when I witness a patient hug another patient.

Minutes after I write them, my words become part of someone else’s story; one that I was blessed to observe.

A story without the words is just a collection of foreign memories; memories without a name are just faces of the past. So I suppose that’s the point. My struggle with writing is internal, something to be conscious of, but to not be bound by. My words give the experience a name; the stories a face.