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“She was convinced the demonic pain she had suffered in her leg as a child had been in some sort of preparation for the accident. Engraved in her memory was how she had been left speechless by the first attack. She had yet to accept that pain cannot be expressed in words but only in inarticulate screams. It took time before she could put brush to canvas, and still more time before she could paint pictures that screamed. In place of the screams themselves. In place of verbal descriptions. She owed it to her father, she thought, to the frantic look in his eyes which she would never forget, and to his words: 'Tell me, tell me!”
― Frida's Bed
― Frida's Bed
“And then came the pain. First in her leg, as if something had sunk its teeth into it. A huge beast, a dog, maybe. It locked its jaws onto her limb and tore at the muscles with its teeth. She screamed, that was all she could do, scream. She could not describe the feeling of having her body ripped apart. She remembered her father's despair, his face as he leaned over her bed, and his words: What is it, tell me, what is it? As she writhed in pain, soaked in her own sweat, Don Guillermo, her kind, good father, waited for her to tell him. For an explanation. A meaningful verbalization of this horror, so that he could understand what was happening to his child. Otherwise, how could he help her? Because her frenzied cries were not enough. Pain needs to be articulated, communicated. It needs a kind of dialogue. It needs words. But only screams and shrieks of pain escaped from the child's lips.”
― Frida's Bed
― Frida's Bed
“It is not true that you feel something when you are in an accident. There is no feeling, no thought. You do and you do not exist, like a particle of dust swirling in the air. You see the blue sky and you are part of it, you are a part of the air, the water, the greenery in the park. You drift in a silence where you cannot even hear the beating of your own heart. Isn't that the experience of nothingness?”
― Frida's Bed
― Frida's Bed
“I know now that everything after the accident was merely a tactic to indulge in escapism and self-delusion. When you are hit by a streetcar that almost smashes you to a pulp, when you experience your own end...there is no recovery, only temporary respite, she thought.
Pain made me aware of my body. My body made me aware of deterioration and death. That awareness made me old. My death sentence may have been deferred, but I now had to live with a twofold realization. Not only was I going to die—there was nothing unusual about that except that I was made to realize it at a tender age—but I knew exactly what that meant. Because I had already been through it. Unlike other condemned people for whom death is an abstraction because they have no idea what really awaits them, my stay of death came with a constant reminder, the presence of pain.”
― Frida's Bed
Pain made me aware of my body. My body made me aware of deterioration and death. That awareness made me old. My death sentence may have been deferred, but I now had to live with a twofold realization. Not only was I going to die—there was nothing unusual about that except that I was made to realize it at a tender age—but I knew exactly what that meant. Because I had already been through it. Unlike other condemned people for whom death is an abstraction because they have no idea what really awaits them, my stay of death came with a constant reminder, the presence of pain.”
― Frida's Bed
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