Memoir

Dimension: Not So Indestructible Julia

What does being on fire feel like? Well – I’d say it’s a mix of sensations. For one – the burning oh shit agony of holy fuck I’m on fire! Two, that mental replay loop of every childhood teacher telling me to stop, drop and roll, as my body panics. Three, that sound - this fizzling popping that whistles just above the roar of the flames as they consume me. Oh. That’s the sound of the water evaporating from my very skin. Not an altogether great mix of sensation: I rate it a one out of ten stars for ways to slowly die. Altogether though, compared to the even slower agony of recovery, of waking up to having my young body corrupted and unrecognizable; to having no face and being sent to a toddler level dependency on others – the feeling of being on fire was just a moment of discomfort.

It is even harder to describe what that feels like - that having my life as I knew it ripped away that. And yet it feels weird to even say that my life was ripped away. For all the pain I went through, I’m one of the lucky ones. Sure, my fingers are a little wonky and every inch of my body is scarred, but I’m alive. I have a fiery sense of humor, blazing brown eyes that see all the beauty in the world, and an appreciation for life that comes with experiencing death. That, that’s not something I ever thought I’d get to experience; at the age of fifteen, I was still aloof and emboldened by the idea that I was indestructible. That ended with the explosion, one quick moment to if not rip my life away, surely kicked me into an unexpected reality.

This reality is full of scars, fingers that don’t bend, missing hair, and a nose I watched be constructed from one of my ribs. I’d like to say that from the moment I woke up in the hospital, bandage wrapped and restrained; till now, that I accepted this new body. Saying that would be a lie. From the moment I realized what I’d had since birth was gone, my face, my very skin – I sank into delusion and despair. Somehow, in whatever drug-induced warped state I was in, I felt the doctors would be able to restore my unblemished looks. It has taken years for reality to sink in. Although each surgery brought me a tiny step closer to the normality I knew – there was no going back – no stepping again into the dimension I knew as Indestructible Julia. I went from being a young developing woman to an agonized patient fed through tubes. I was convinced I’d look like a barbie doll, reset to factory new by the wonders of plastic surgery - such a treatment does not exist in my reality.

There is a jealousy to those who can hide their scars, behind long sleeves or locked away behind their eyes. My scars are as plain as the face they lay upon, never to be hidden. I can’t hold back the secrets of my pain, choosing when to share that something out of the norm did in fact happen. One glance... One glance and you know something horrible happened. I see this reality when I step into public, the double-take as I walk by a stranger. The staring of children and the grimace of the unwise, it’s enough to shock me out of my forgetting - forgetting that I am a case people would double glance at. Sometimes I forget I’m a burn survivor and that my scars are like some foreign green skin tone that is enough to make some people stare. I try not to let venom crease my own lips as I notice these regards, I understand the stranger’s curiosity. But bitterness does edge my heart when within the first hour of meeting someone these words pass their lips:

“So, what happened to you?”

That’s the politest way it’s usually put. But to my ears, it is the same as asking:

“So, what was the most painful day of your life?”

Not exactly a topic I would bring up in meeting a new person, yet my scars seem to beg out the curiosity in people, allowing them to forget their tongues.

So here it is, the moment that changed my life for better and worse: On March 14th, 2009, at roughly 7:03 pm, a small number of girlfriends from freshmen year of high school and I decided to have a party. We cleared out the woods behind my friend’s house, setting up a pit in the ruins of an old hotel. The ruins being just two knee-high stone walls that provided just enough shelter for our shenanigans. But that night the ground was wet, the surrounding leaves and branches much the same. First, we pulled out newspapers and cardboard from an abandoned nearby shed. Those pages stayed lit for a while, glowing our hands with warmth as we danced around to shitty emo music, but eventually, the fire went out. We were still in a partying spirit.

Secondly, I decided to retrieve the gas can I often saw under my friend’s treehouse. This big red plastic canister, I remember how carrying it made my hands ache. The canister was so heavy it sloshed around as I carried it into the woods. I don’t remember if my friends tried to stop me then and there. Surely, they warned me that the gasoline was dangerous, but I felt bound to the spirit of the night to try and keep us warm. There’s a video of what follows, me pouring the canister on the small embers, flames rushing to life. But the only cries are their cheers and joy as once again we could continue our dancing, lit by the fire. Followed by their cries of, "do it again!". And so, I did - thankfully there’s no video of what follows.

Thirdly, the can slipped – or maybe the rush of the flames was too quick for me to pull back from – nonetheless, the can exploded. A thunderous pop, like a flash of lightning zapping down at the firepit before my booted feet. And like that, I was transported to a world of excruciating pain and confusion. The explosion cooked me in an instant, but whether I remembered to stop, drop, and roll or just fell to the earthen ground and writhed out of pure panic - I don’t know. The spilled gas on the surrounding dirt reignited my clothing.

There’s this flash of memory then, the only thing I truly remember seeing while on fire was trees. Blue trees as the flames licked at my face, then darkness. The memory picks up at my friend’s house, me dripping blood and clothes charred staring in the mirror. I didn’t look bad, I especially didn’t look bad enough to have fifty so percent of my flesh removed in the coming hours. My skin was pale, peeling and oozing blood in some parts, but mostly intact. Still, despite the steady throb of my nerves I decided to hop into the shower. Rinsing off the ruined clothing and blood, watching bits of me clog the drain. Once out, I remember starring at the mirror; popping off my jewelry haphazardly as I began to scratch at my skin, paranoia and panic claiming my brain as my nails dug in. It is so odd, to think those moments of paranoia would be the last time I saw that face.

“Gotta get it off.” The words repeated in my mouth, spilling out like a nonsensical drunk.

But then my father’s voice broke the cries rattling in my brain. I didn’t want him to see me like this, or my mother, a whole new layer of anxiety set in. They would be so mad at me! Little did I know that moments before this my father had knocked two state troopers off my friend’s porch, demanding to see me, to be allowed in to comfort his daughter. I sat on a white linen kitchen chair, a sanitary blanket wrapped around me. The memory jumps like this, I don’t know at what moment I left the bathroom, or when the EMTs arrived; just that I was sitting there bloody and shivering, and then my Father was there telling me things would be okay. I wanted to believe him, neither of us knew how bad my injury truly was; but breathing was beginning to become difficult and I needed help lowering my body onto the stretcher. My skin felt so tight like it was choking me like my skin was turning to eggshells that would crack open with any movement.

My friends were sitting on the deck, lined up and crying as police officers looked them over. Some rantings were making their way out of my mouth as the EMTs carted me past, garbled questions about if the girls were alright, but their names became mixed up in my head. Ambulance lights lit the night, the dewy grass alive with reds and blues. That’s where the memory trails off. Eventually, though this too is a jumbled mess in my memory, I would awaken in the hospital - infiltrated by tubes, held together by bandages and staples. I don’t know at what point I realized how bad things were. There were so many drugs being pumped into me, just to keep me from experiencing how raw my nerves were. Everything in my head is a maze of fogginess. I can’t say I want to remember everything, what bits have stuck around in my head are enough. The wound care, the being fed through tubes, the mind-numbing boredom.

Deep in this fog, I regressed, my mind only thinking deeply enough to distract me from the pain. There was no mental image of what a burn survivor was. I had no clue what I would look like in ten years, let alone a week. Each surgery changing the tapestry of my flesh, replacing the bits that needed to be removed. Part of me didn’t want to get better, the small glow of what was left of my mind would have been perfectly okay with fading away. And yet my body held on, refusing me the release of death. Though maybe that is a misremembering of my desire. As much as there are blurred memories of just wishing to fall asleep and not wake up. There are also the silent prayers I would focus on in my head during bandage changes, praying out to any and all entities to just make the pain bearable, just to be able to survive another day.

My parents revealed to me years later, that the doctors told them every day that I would die, until it got to the point where my parents said, “Just shut up already, if she dies then tell us. Otherwise, get back to your job and save her.”

I was lucky enough to be surrounded by family. My father learned how to change my bandages alongside the nurses, which along with my silent prayers made the pain just below excruciating. At night my mother would soothe me with foot massages, one of the few perfectly unburned patches of skin that could lurk outside the hazmat bubble they kept me in when my skin grafts failed. In the beginning, it was difficult to even recognize my parents, their features hidden behind sterile masks and aprons. But they made sure to be there during the moments I was conscious, resigning from their careers to be with me. There was always a rotating cast of masked faces, familiar voices reading to me, distracting my mind.

Towards the end of my nine-month hospital stay, it would be my fathers’ mother who would sit with me; watching as I struggled to feed myself and keep my bitterness in check towards the tasks that had come so naturally before my burns.

She tells me, “One night, Julia, you just looked at me and said, well – I guess it’s time I start moving on with my life.”

I have no memory of this, though the sentiment holds true in the long run. Despite slip-ups and self-loathing, I did eventually move on with my life. Learning to forgive myself for the momentary bad decision of using gasoline on the fire embers.

On a whole, the experience of burning has been a short blip on the events of my life though the impact has stretched years and likely a lifetime to come. The memories of recovery are flickering away in my mind with each passing year, oddly I’d like to hold onto them. It’s with these memories that I can recall the hurdles I’ve passed through. Adulthood is a scary place full of new and odd situations, but comparing them to the struggle of learning to walk again makes them seem so small. Day-to-day anxiety of college is valid, but I know someday I’ll look back on these current days with the same disconnected quickness I view the months I spent in the hospital.

Though it took longer than nine months, eventually I was reborn into the person I am today. Determined to take back my life no matter what shape my body is in. With a stronger respect for just how fragile our existence is and a yearning to live each day, to love and cherish those around me. The impacts of burning has not been all bad, I’ve met some amazing people who I am so happy to call my friends and I’d like to think I’ve helped some people as well. I’m in a unique position, while my scars make me stand out, that allows my smile to shine even brighter. I can communicate to people how strength is not a constant quality we have. Some days we can absolutely feel like we can tackle anything that hits us. Other days, we can be so very close to recovery but fall right back into the pit of despair.

So many time’s people will tell me, “I wouldn’t have been strong enough to go through what you did.”

And I get to say, “You don’t know until something happens, you might be stronger than you think.”

The reality is until the crap hits the fan, we just don’t know what we can handle. And it all depends on the day, so many factors can make the difference in strength.

When people say, “You are so strong!”

Oddly, the effect on me is not that of proudness. I was not strong every day of my recovery. I hated physical therapy. I hated looking at myself. But I took things one day at a time and slowly, sometimes agonizingly slowly, things got better. I’m wise enough to see that my reality could have been different if just one component of my story were different. For that, I am eternally grateful to all those who helped when I couldn’t stand on my own. Otherwise, maybe I would have died. In some other alternate dimensions, I probably did die. But right now, in dimension Not So Indestructible Julia, I’m alive and kicking!

Recovery has taken a long time, I’m ten years out from my accident at this moment. I’ve had more surgeries than I care to count. But I do remember laying in my hospital bed and looking down at my body. White cloth bandages wrapped around frail limbs, everything stained brown with silver nitrite: a sort of liquid antibiotic the nurses would pour on me. This concoction stained everything it touched, from my body to the bed to the floor – everything looked dirty as a result. But as the nitrate stuck to my skin, I realized I was healing - I was finally getting better. Much of my body looked like a webwork of roughly connected skin, brought together by bold red scars. Recovery was just beginning then; it wasn’t pretty and it didn’t happen fast – but the process had been started.

 And now the proverbial torch is in my hand. Thankfully, I am not near anything flammable this time around. The doctors have done everything they can, more so everything I’ve thus far let them do. Even if they promised me my old face, I don’t think I could bring myself to go back under the knife. Even if there was a magic drink I could take to heal me completely – I can’t take it. These scars are now a part of who I am, and while I’m happy to see them age and lighten; I can’t imagine myself without them. These lines upon my skin that I sometimes hate, they are mine. Each line is a testament to everything I’ve overcome, to who I’ve grown to be. Because without my accident, without my scars or the awkward conversations strangers lay upon me – I wouldn’t be me. The torch is in my hands and it’s up to me to keep moving forward. It has taken ten long years to get my life back to what I consider normality. With each year, as my body returned to being mine; my mind has gotten to learn from experiences I wouldn’t wish upon anyone. The night my body burned, though I lost the porcelain skin of youth – I gained wisdom far beyond my years. Pain is an interesting teacher. Each surgery and following recovery taught me patience, taught me hope. Maybe in this dimension, though I am not indestructible, I am hard to break.