Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

by Suleika Jaouad

It gets me thinking about the other ways we mark the crossing of thresholds: birthdays and weddings and baby showers, baptisms and bar mitzvahs and quinceañeras. These rites of passage allow us to migrate from one phase of our lives to another; they keep us from getting lost in transit. They show us a way to honor the space between no longer and not yet.

that old Hemingway saw—“the world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places”—is only true if you live the possibilities of your newly acquired knowledge. Neither Ned nor I have quite figured out how to do this, but as we finish our walk and part ways for the afternoon, I feel comforted to know I’m not the only one.

I noticed how he kept subconsciously referring to himself as split into three selves: pre-diagnosis Ned, sick Ned, and recovering Ned. Whenever I talk about my life, I realize I do the same. Maybe the challenge is to locate a thread that strings these selves together.

People rarely ask about my pre-illness interests, and as I recount long-forgotten pastimes, I feel as though I am touring someone else’s life. There’s an old Tunisian saying that your entire life is inscribed on your forehead but it’s as though everything that came before my diagnosis has been scrubbed from mine. I don’t know how it happened, or if it could have been prevented, but at some point in the last few years my entire existence, my identity, even my career, became linked to the worst thing that ever happened to me.

sound instructions on how to get out of a funk: “1) Write a list of things you are grateful for 2) Get your head out of your ass and take a walk outside 3) If you don’t have an eating disorder, get some good fucking chocolate and a strong cup of coffee.”

“Forgiveness is a refusal to armor your own heart—a refusal to live in a constricted heart,” he said, seemingly as much to himself as to me. “Living with that openness means feeling pain. It’s not pretty, but the alternative is feeling nothing at all.”

When we travel, we actually take three trips. There’s the first trip of preparation and anticipation, packing and daydreaming. There’s the trip you’re actually on. And then, there’s the trip you remember. “The key is to try to keep all three as separate as possible,” he says. “The key is to be present wherever you are right now.”

I used to think healing meant ridding the body and the heart of anything that hurt. It meant putting your pain behind you, leaving it in the past. But I’m learning that’s not how it works. Healing is figuring out how to coexist with the pain that will always live inside of you, without pretending it isn’t there or allowing it to hijack your day. It is learning to confront ghosts and to carry what lingers.

I keep waiting for some kind of sign, or reassurance that it’s okay to go entire days without thinking of them—that it’s necessary to forget a little if I am going to live. No matter how many apologies, acts of contrition, or sacrifices I offer up, I’m realizing I need to accept that things may never feel fully resolved—with the living or the dead.

We are trying so hard to reach through the plexiglass, to meet each other in shared territory we both understand, but what parallels exist between our experiences have their limitations. It’s a tricky balance, attempting to find resonance in someone’s story without reducing your suffering to sameness. Aside