Go Light Your World

By Gloria Nesloney

I hear a knock on the door. The cold hollow metal framed interior door opens. Two women dressed in scrubs come into my room. “Ms. Gloria, it’s time to take your vitals. Put this under your tongue. Let me check your pulse and blood pressure. I’m going to draw blood from this arm today. Is that ok? How are you feeling? Here are your meds. Can I get you anything else?” With my eyes peering through slits to focus on answering questions the nurses, I answer with a shallow mumble, “ok.” My head raises just enough to take the medication with a small dixie cup of water. And to sleep again I go. Intermittently, I would vomit and leave my bed soiled and someone was there to help clean it up. Those were the days the hospital seemed to be the place I was able to get some rest from the things of the ugly world I was living in 1993.

Life was already planned out for me with a dead end at the age of nineteen. My future was dim. I was supposed to be productive and live the best days fully like all of my career-oriented single peers. Unable to recover from physical and emotional trauma kept me in a vortex that swallowed me deeper into depression. With no dream, no hope, and no vision for anything past my situation, I didn’t have the desire to live. My frustration grew as I lay in bed unable to move, unable to clean myself, but my mind and my heart raced, and my body was exhausted from trying.