“Overmorrow is an antonym of ereyesterday. Ereyesterday is
an antonym of overmorrow. In context|obsolete|lang=en terms the difference between
ereyesterday and overmorrow is that ereyesterday is (obsolete) the day before
yesterday while overmorrow is (obsolete) the day after tomorrow.” (WikiDiff)
When that
450 pound steam radiator fell down the stairs of our family home and onto my left
foot and leg, I screamed like I have not screamed since. At 12 years of age, I
was damaged, crushed and lying in a few cactus at the bottom of the stairs. Its
hard to explain the horror as I watched
that monolith tumble down and land on me.
The pain is hard to describe let alone define. In a heartbeat, even tomorrow was brutally
smashed. I have never felt anything like it before or since. Everything was broken.
The entire appendage was purple and swelling and looked more like a tube of
Play-doh than what it used to be. My foot intumesced into a giant violet
balloon dangling like my toes used to. The skin had been slightly ruptured and
I leaked out of a hole on the top of my foot and down onto my ankle. All I know
is it felt like a 450 pound steam radiator had been dropped onto my leg.
What
doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Tell
that to my shattered foot and the shattered remnants of my childhood. It
took years to fully recover but I did just that. There was something beyond any
broken tomorrow. Slowly but surely, I rebuilt my resilience just like they
rebuilt my foot. You wouldn’t know any
better but for the chunk of my ass that rests on the top of it. The skin graft
has never really disappeared even after more than 40 years. There is this thing
about tomorrow. By the time you get there its already the day after.
“We are the sum total of our experiences. Those experiences
– be they positive or negative – make us the person we are, at any given point
in our lives. And, like a flowing river, those same experiences, and those yet
to come, continue to influence and reshape the person we are, and the person we
become. None of us are the same as we were yesterday, nor will be tomorrow.”
(B.J. Neblett, American author)
He was
frozen solid. From head to toe he was as stiff as a board and he looked the
part. I gently and quickly looked him over and started screaming in my head.
There are certain flashes of him that linger more than others. His skin was
nothing but a sheet of thin ice. His jeans had popped open revealing the
whiteness of his undergarment. His treasure trail now a dead end. His hand was
raised, apparently reaching for someone like Jesus. His eyes were opaque, wide
open and gawking at nothing. The puddle of goo that had seeped from his head
was a testament to how he had landed. It appeared more like frozen pizza than
the remnants of this brain. Nightmare, pure
nightmare. As I stood there, it all ended. In the time it took him to
jump even tomorrow was gone.
Initially,
I discarded my life just as he had done. The result was completely different.
Somehow I survived my own self-destruction but learning to live with the horror
of what happened was a completely different matter. I look back on this place
and time with great sorrow and even more insight. Everything I thought at the
time was defective, filtered by grief and shock. I completely lost it, standing
there identifying what was left of my friend. I truly believed that by ending
his life, he had ended mine as well. I
was wrong. I started out quiet, a resistant nothing, an emotional zombie of
sorts. Time did what it always does. No matter the cost, you are forced to
either keep trying to die or you keep trying to live. You cannot have it both
ways even though many act like they can. You can survive pure horror but you
have to live with it for the rest of your life. No matter how much healing
occurs or how you move on and let things find their place, nothing can erase
the damage that was done. Instantly, there was no tomorrow. The only thing left
for me was the hope that their was something beyond tomorrow, although you
could not have convinced me at the time.
“Would you like to know your future?
If your answer is yes, think again.
Not knowing is the greatest life motivator.
So enjoy, endure, survive each moment as it comes to you in
its proper sequence
-- a surprise.” (Vera
Nazarian, Armenian-American writer)
I had not
felt so vulnerable since the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. I was much younger then but I still
recall the fear that lingered in the world at that time. The threat of a
nuclear holocaust was a reality and had been for years. When Putin invaded Ukraine
Unfortunately,
I can see what’s coming. There may be no tomorrow to follow. It’s just like 1989
but instead of the death of Communism we face our own doom, one more time. The
experience is unique to its place in history. Social media seems to have
produced a collective world
consciousness. I’ve never seen anything like it. People from almost every
country coming together to fight for their tomorrow. A nuclear response is a
real threat that lingers like the cobwebs of my youth. When I gather all the
current information, once I have settled on my view, I tremble at the thought
of it. At any moment, at any time, the world could come crashing to an end. It
would only take one missile, one impulse from a mad man. It would not matter where
it was aimed or where it landed. I guess, just like when I was a boy, I am
going to have to get used to feeling this way again. Tomorrow held such promise
but now it’s been invaded. From my vantage point, the day after tomorrow
doesn’t look much better.
“Tomorrow. The word hangs in the air for a
moment, both a promise and a threat. Then it floats away like a paper boat,
taken from her by the water licking at her ankles.”
(Thrity Umrigar, Indian-American journalist)
Some days
are diamonds, others are stone. Some are complete madness. You learn to live
with a different kind of pain. You have to muffle the voices and silence the
fear. You really don’t have a choice. Get on with living or get on with dying. As
long as you exist, there is always something after tomorrow, at least until
recently. In this global environment, who knows what might happen next. Like
losing someone to suicide or a broken body and soul, carrying on is the only
way to get through it. I’m not sure I’ll be able to say the same thing about
this Ukrainian conflict.
If you want
to get past the idea of what tomorrow may bring you have to focus on today and
what lies before you now, not when. Every day brings its own horror. Sometimes the nightmare lingers, even
into forever. You cannot escape the past with a chance at tomorrow. If there is no tomorrow there is no overmorrow,
it just goes without saying. Somehow it always comes. There is always a day
after tomorrow and a day after the day after tomorrow.
“If today is not your day, then be happy for this day shall
never return.
And if today is your day, then be happy now for this day shall never return.”
(Kamand Kojouri, International Ambassador of the Women Graduates Swansea University Society
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