Gauntlet

Here is my challenge. I am to get out of my head and into my heart.  I am to focus on what I feel rather than what I think.

This is hard, hard stuff. I am only really comfortable in the cool calm ambience of intellectual distance. Having to get down into the visceral stuff, the guts and gore of it, the awful, dreadful screaming, panicking mess of it feels scary. It feels like it might all be out of control. 

I did a project once for London Underground. They were looking at their process for what happens when someone slips down beside a train as it's pulling out of the station (or pulling in if they try to jump in front and mis-time it).  The person slips down and gets wedged, usually at the top of the hips or around the trunk (any higher and it's a straight one-under, a straightforward case of crowd control and haz-cleaning). 

When a person slips down the side, the train pulls the bottom of their body around faster than the top. Its like wringing out the bottom of a flannel. In these situations, it's common for the person to be alive and conscious. The twisting acts as a natural tourniquet, and they don't actually feel much pain. They think perhaps they are going to be ok. 

But when the train moves away, the tourniquet is released and they will definitely die, as all their main arteries are torn. Everything just drains out. There isn't really anything that can be done to save them. 

However there is quite a window of time, maybe even half an hour, when a family member could be brought to talk to them, when the situation can be assessed, when they are lucid and can discuss what might happen next. Should they be told? Should the family member be told? Should they be knocked out with morphine before the train is moved, even if they say they prefer not to be? 

Anyhow. My situation feels like this. Like I have been in a train wreck. That somehow I am managing to hold myself together, but that if I am untwisted everything will hurt too much and all the life will gush out of open wounds and I will just soak away.  

I will try and untwist, and see what happens. Logically speaking, I'm pretty sure I won't actually die.  Just need to convince myself to unwind gradually.  Little by little. 

Maybe a different image would be more helpful.  That might be a good place to start.