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Some people dislike diagnoses, disagreeably calling them boxes and labels, but I’ve always found comfort in preexisting conditions; I like to know that I’m not pioneering an inexplicable experience.
A diagnosis is comforting because it provides a framework—a community, a lineage—and, if luck is afoot, a treatment or cure.
I’m still trying to figure out what “okay” is,
“I know the devil’s not in the backseat, but the devil is in the backseat.”
Forgiveness, as it turns out, is not a linear prospect. Neither is healing. Both flare up and die down;
Yes, I thought, our eyes meeting, you may think I’m hot, but I’m also a rotting corpse. Sucks to be you, sir.
Suicide demands a narrative, but rarely, if ever, gives one.
But I am constantly misplacing various symbols of achievement—I have no idea where my diplomas are, or the medal, though I continue to strive for more achievements, and more honors.
I care about recognition as much as I care about my own self-regard, in large part because I don’t trust my self-evaluation.
After all, prolonged and chronic illness stitches itself into life in a different way than acute illness does. With chronic illness, life persists astride illness unless the illness spikes to acuity; at that point, surviving from one second to the next is the greatest ambition I can attempt. The absolution from doing more and dreaming big that I experience during surgeries and hospitalization is absent during chronic illness.
When an artist dies, the art that never was is often mourned with as much grief as—if not more grief than—the individual themself.
