February 21, 2011

 

A Strange Awakening

Yesterday morning I had the surreal experience of waking up on the cold bathroom floor bleeding from the back of my head and no idea how I got that way. I remember thinking, 'How did end up on the bathroom floor?' Then when I reached up to the sink to pull myself off the ground I discovered blood on my hand, and I found blood on my shirt and on the floor. Of course I started to freak out. It took me a while to remember that I had gone to the bathroom shortly before and suddenly felt like I was going to feint thinking 'I need to get to the sofa.' That was probably a bad idea since I probably should have just laid on the ground. I'm lucky to have some great friends. My very kind neighbors took a look at me and suggested that I probably needed a stitch or two (and they brought me some breakfast) and a good friend came over to take a look at my head. When the urgent care opened I went by and the closed the cut with something like super glue.

I haven’t had a lot of experiences with passing out. Once in college while going on a fairly extreme hike on no breakfast I came close and had to lie down in front of a tree, and once before in high school. Consciousness is a strange and interesting thing. Our lives and the very ability to have an idea of who we are are based on our conscious experience – the sum of all remembered moments that lead to the moment of 'now.'

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