seventeen
I don’t want to be here. It’s my first trip to the Clinic that I am upset by. I was here less than a month ago for my third experience with Buried Bumper Syndrome and tonight, my 4th. I was here a week last month, waiting every day for an answer to arrive. This wasn’t supposed to happen again and here I am.
I have made so many plans and goals that I’ve never seen. I am beholden to my body and it won’t let me forget. Trips I’ve tried to take, money I’ve tried to save, cities I’ve tried to live in and nothing. Nothing except an aging, ailing body. An abdomen I don’t recognize as human and a failing set of intestines.
I’ve kept my chronic illnesses as separate from myself for as long as I’ve been able. Fresh from the shower the other morning, I moisturize, put on clean, soft clothes and catch my face in the mirror. My eyelids carry a weight, a new heaviness I can’t ignore. In just over the length of a year, my body has been cut and gone into almost ten times over, I gave up a home, a pet, more people than I care to count, and I can see it on my face. I used to see my illnesses as parts of me but now, they are me.
I’m not afraid to die. I used to be. I used to worry about a sudden stop to everything. Crying in an ER room at 2:00am, I’m not afraid of dying, I’m afraid how long I will have to live like this and how much worse it will get. I am tired. I need a moment, a break, a breath. I am missing my life as it happens around me and I want to catch up to myself, catch my breath. In a hospital room in Cleveland, I collapse in on myself. All I want is a function feeding tube and a single month that I’m not admitted to the hospital.
The options are survive or don’t. I choose survive because I remember how it felt to see the Pacific Ocean and a swarm of Monarchs for the first time. Because I have @malblum tickets in November and I want to enjoy music in an accessible space and feel my heart swell. Because I believe the dark times are as intense as the bright times. Because I promised Dee I would. I wouldn’t know how to stop fighting so I don’t.
