SECOND CHANCES

THE FIRE

 I suffer from the hyper-mania part of the manic-depressive (bi-polar) disorder spectrum which in short means I don't experience depression but my mind races from one subject to another so one way to calm myself was by reading any and everything. My house was full of newspapers, physics, coding, math and medical textbooks every place you looked, so much that I spent 20 minutes every night moving stuff just so I could fall asleep reading. It was December 17th (my nephew's birthday) and freezing cold outside so I had engaged a portable electric heater that unbeknownst to me had a faulty cord. I woke up to the brightest light I've ever seen, I tried to put the fire out but that was a futile endeavor. My way out was blocked by flames but I walked through the flames anyway to get to the door but then couldn't open it because I didn't have the key with me and all the windows had security bars on them as most houses in large cities have to prevent break-ins. I turned around and flames were everyplace, the heat was "unimaginable". I must have passed out because my next memory is waking up in the burn ward sometime in February. Firemen had pulled me out of the burning house. I had 3rd degree burns over a good portion of my body including my face. My family couldn't even identify me. Although I was still on a morphine drip almost two months after the fire I was in tremendous pain, so much so that all I could think of for my first three waking days is "why didn't they just let me die". I couldn't walk, talk or eat. I had a feeding tube attached directly into my stomach above my belly button. After a year of extremely hard work at physical therapy I was able to somewhat function.