EIGHTEEN

I’ve been to the edge of myself and back again, and every time, I return different. I return remade, barely recognizing who I was before all this began. After my first stay, I was different. After my first surgery, I was different. After every surgery, different. For more times than I can count, I end another admission at the Clinic, again. Each of these hospital stays takes something from me, pieces of myself that don’t survive the nights, the frustration, the pain. Letting go feels less like strength and more like survival—like the fee for the ferryman.

I’ve watched myself weep, scream, and be made new. Every month for the last year, my body has been manipulated by doctors, nurses, strangers—each one altering me. When I began here, I was not happy; I did not have shape or substance. I was not as happy as I intended to be. I was not where I intended to be. And now, I am approaching. I am becoming. I am almost home if home is where I am safe and happy. If home is where my body is my own and I am cared for and cared about.

This year has been more than a test of my body—it’s been a reckoning. In the moments and spaces where I felt most powerless, stripped of control and reliant on others to piece me back together, I found something I didn’t want: meaning. I found that I had to be made of more than flesh. I found that I had to remain whole. I didn’t want meaning in any of this, but when a member of the staff I’ve seen every time I’m here quotes something back to me that I said to them a year ago, the meaning finds me.

I wouldn’t say anything I’ve experienced in the last year was that awful. I’ve considered myself lucky in many ways. I’ve had a years’ worth of medical treatment I’ve paid nothing for. I’ve woken up from every surgery. I’ve been surrounded by love, support, and access. I’ve seen the Pacific Ocean, I’ve fallen in love, I’ve held my friends. I’ve gotten everything I need. I am not who I once was, and I am grateful for that. But there is heaviness in gratitude, there is a reason for it. There are parts I will never get back even though I am whole. I will remain whole. I will remain.