Stranded
When they pull you to safety but can't rescue you
In the dream, the theater swells with people. Auditions are underway. People gab, laugh, press against each other as they wait their turns. Bursts of song come from the stage, a director barking instructions.
Squeezed into a folding seat, I sweat under a canopy of neighbors who chatter across the rows. Nausea swells and a wave of dizziness crashes into me as I try to stand. I cling to seat backs while crawling free. Everyone ignores my distress. A stretch of cool, clean-enough floor to lay down on is nowhere to be found. Everything is too hot and crowded, even the lobby with its sticky linoleum and clanging echoes.
I stagger outside where the plaza and parking lot buzz with activity. Every slammed door, every laugh a hammer to my skull. At the dark edge of the plaza, I try to catch my breath. The Lyft app is still on my phone but the card on it has expired and it won’t let me order a ride. A vertiginous confusion makes my hands shake as I dig through my purse. The head pressure worsens and my legs start to give out under me. Panic, blackening vision, no refuge, no help, no way home.
We all have some version of this dream. The fear of being stranded and desperately alone must be near-universal. We are animals who live in packs, who thrive or die based on the fortunes of the collective. The myth of individualism crumbles to nothing when you zoom out and look at the whole of human history. Our DNA programs us to seek connection, to fear the absence of it.
The truth is that this dream scenario would never happen to me. Any number of people would respond instantly to a distress call. More importantly, a stranding would require a journey beyond the radius of help. Such journeys simply do not happen anymore.
Fatigue, dizziness, nausea, and confusion keep me mostly homebound. A sudden worsening of these near-constant symptoms can happen without warning. I will be walking the dog around the block and have to sit down on the curb, right now. Even in the house. Halfway through loading the dishwasher and suddenly I’m gripping the doorjamb, trying to steady myself enough to make it to the sofa so I can collapse on cushions rather than on the kitchen tile.
So many choices are a reckoning with security, both real and imagined.
When I was an undergrad a thousand years ago, I met Wendy, a doctoral student in the writing department. She seemed so much older, so much more worldly. She became a friend and a kind of mentor, offering no-BS insights into the options in front of me. This included razzing me to no end when I reported back after a date with the hot but supremely dull engineering student in our Comp 101 class.
I was starting to make plans to study abroad in my junior year. The list of possibilities was tangling me up: semesters, years, summer programs, exchanges, service trips, homestays, … I asked Wendy if she had ever studied overseas. She took a beat before answering. “I don’t have any support from my family,” she said. “If something happened to me, like an emergency, there’s no one to help me get somewhere safe.”
What she did not say because she didn’t have to: You have parents who would rescue you, Shannon. And that makes our choices very different.
At that moment, something clicked. So many of my assumptions had been shaped by privilege. She was in graduate school. She taught classes, hosted pizza parties, surrounded herself with whip-smart weirdos. She was one of the most competent, confident women I knew. But she was not secure, not in the sense that I took for granted. She had mentioned before that she put herself through college and was on a teaching assistantship for her PhD. But before this conversion, I had not understood that someone who looks like me could be living in an inversion of my world.
Vulnerability, it turns out, can be lurking just behind the veneer of competence.
Every time my partner and I go out into the wild (which happens almost never these days), I take noise-cancelling headphones, sunglasses, an electrolyte drink, my blue handicapped hang-tag, earplugs, a blackout mask, and two pillows. I also always grab my wallet.
“You don’t need a wallet, I’ve got us covered,” he tells me.
“Just in case,” I say.
Just in case… what exactly? I don’t need my driver’s license because there is no way I’m getting behind the wheel. He pays for everything when we go out. This is mostly an expression of his generous soul. It’s also a little bit because I am either reclined in the passenger seat or parked in my wheelchair bracing myself against sensory overwhelm while he is at the counter paying for whatever needs paying for.
I take the wallet just in case he abandons me (he never would). Just in case the bottom falls out.
My wallet holds a Visa with a decent credit limit. A wad of cash. A debit card linked to an account that can spit out more cash if an ATM is within reach. My health insurance card. My faculty ID. My driver’s license.
This beat-up old wallet is a canvas lifeline. Everything in it is an expression of security and privilege. So much so that I could leave the wallet behind and still be fine. On top of that, my security is also my people: partner, parents, neighbors, friends, and coworkers. All of whom I can trust to show up for me if the need arises.
This security has always been with me. It’s part of why Wendy’s response was so jarring. I took it for granted that I could go to Zimbabwe at 20 years old. I knew in my bones that if anything went pear-shaped, my family would have helped me get to quality care, and someone would have shown up on the next flight to make sure I was ok. Security is a privilege.
I know I will never be stranded. Not really.
And yet.
Underneath the assurance of support lurks the specter of a deeper vulnerability. It surges up in my dreams. Variations on a theme, over and over again. My body giving out, my brain short-circuiting, confusion and weakness and so much fear.
The dream, of course, is only marginally about being stranded out there in the world, lost and unable to get home. At its core, the dream reflects the living nightmare of being stranded in here.
Maybe I will never find myself deserted at the side of some unrecognizable road, unable to get to safety. But the sensations plaguing my body and brain in that dream are the same ones my body and brain experience every waking hour too. Even here, sitting in this safe and comfy recliner in my living room as I type this. The same head-spinning, concrete-blanket, nauseating malaise. Right now. And yes, right now too. And still right now.
Being housed and fed, being cared for in so many ways by loved ones, are privileges not every disabled person possesses. These resources provide immense security. But living with chronic illness means coexisting with an unrelenting sense of insecurity. At any moment, it can take us down. No amount of love or money can rescue us from that.
Nightmares don’t plague the afflicted every night. On occasion, the mind gives us some reprieve. We dance without pain. We climb mountains on sturdy legs.
Tonight? Who knows. Maybe a savior will gallop up to scoop me onto the back of a steed made of well-funded medical research.
A girl can dream.
How beautiful you write and yes I know all about those dreams, all about being ill in a way I could never have imagined. The insecurity is there even when being privileged with love and help around me. A kind of loneliness resonating in all I do, always questioning will it be too much. Thank you for being here and sharing your story, for the time and energy you give so freely. ❤️
Your writing speaks to me so beautifully, albeit painfully. This is so relatable, even though our conditions are different. I’m wishing you safe harbor, always.