This book is heart-wrenchingly difficult to read and the description of the hospital scenes brings back terrible memories.
I cannot imagine enduring the tragedy that Matthew Sanford went through, but I have a lot of experience sitting in waiting rooms and sleeping in hospital room chairs, so I can empathize with his mom and brother. As I read, I thought “This is so hard to read so soon after my grandparents passed” only to realize that it has been almost a year since the funerals. Most of last Fall was spent travelling between Waco and Humble, Texas to check-in on my grandfather’s health. When I simply couldn’t make it home for a weekend, I was on the phone, getting updates on his declining health. I never lost hope, at least, not until near the very end when it was clear there was no coming back. It made life hard, especially as a college student. My mind was rarely on my schoolwork. I had never lost a family member until this past January. It got was even worse in the spring semester; stricken with grief, my grandmother passed away shortly after, at the beginning of February. In addition to the emotional toll, this took an academic toll on me; one professor forced me to drop his class or fail me for missing an assignment, despite telling me that I could make-up the assignment once I returned. I become deeply bitter every time I see that professor…
I can’t imagine how Matthew’s brother managed to carry on so well despite what happened to his family. I can only imagine the emotional scarring that occurred.
The distrust that Matthew has for his body – at least until around college – is interesting. Most people at this age would be concerned about whether their body looked good, how muscular they were, whether or not they could lose a little weight or if they should spend some time in the sun. Matthew, however, fears his body because he has little control over his body and worries that it could betray him at any time. His body might do something out of his control – like the intestinal accidents that occurred in school – or that his body could be so fragile that it simply breaks, like the time he fell from being tickled and nearly broke his neck.
I’m not sure where I stand on the mind-body connection. The mind-body connection, sometimes mind-muscle, connection is a phrase brought up on weightlifting forums that is not properly defined, but generally means something like ‘building one’s mental ability to the point of being able to flex/strengthen a particular muscle.’ From a scientific standpoint, the mind-muscle connection is generally discredited. In reality, a person is just realizing how to properly engage that muscle during a lift. A similar phenomenon is observed in people that can wiggle their ears or raise one eyebrow higher than the other. They’ve simply realized how to do something they could do all along. If Matthew mentions the connection in this sense, then I completely understand what he means. Perhaps he’s just using the phrase as a coincidence and it just describes what he is feeling, but the mind-muscle connection is generally considered pseudo-science.
butwhydoyouwantfrieswiththat 