The Three Lives of Cate Kay

by Kate Fagan

“It’s like… ummm… how do I explain this? It’s like you hold me steady, but without holding me still.”

as far as I could tell, being cool in high school was a death sentence. No pain to fuel you later.

What many people don’t understand about serious injury or illness is that what you’re really coming to grips with isn’t the physical limitations (although there is that); it’s how the physical limitations alter your interactions with the world. At first, you can only take. You take people’s time, their physical energy, their emotional reserves. You’re in a state of need and you take, take, take without giving. And taking without giving, that messes with your head. You start asking yourself what the point of your existence is. A drain on the world’s resources, on the resources of those you love, nothing else.

“The trick of life, as I see it now, is to make what’s around you beautiful. It’ll grow from there. Took me a long time to see that.”

Broken things are beautiful. More beautiful in the end than perfect things, which are usually an illusion of some sort.