There are 9 boxwood plants on my Brooklyn patio, all planted last summer by my ex-boyfriend. That relationship died slowly, over the course of years, and then fast – but gently, with love.
The plants took a faster route, turning from a healthy dark green to a burnt yellow color overnight this summer, returning my patio to the barren wasteland feel of its early days. I tried more water, briefly, but quickly took to just staring at them, looking for some sort of roadmap in their leaves: how to revive them, yes, but really myself, as my body fell apart at a similar speed.
I’m learning that for the unlucky (me, my plants) the prospect of death can come on suddenly and in many forms. You can believe you’re in your prime and wake up one morning to a totally different reality: a body that functions like you’re 40 years older than you are, a face you don’t recognize, a cluster of mysterious conditions no one can diagnose. I’m learning that, despite all of the “live as if you’ll die tomorrow” energy we’re bombarded with, lacking awareness of your own mortality is much preferred.
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In a high school theater class, we had to bring in a poem to “perform” and I – with a very juvenile understanding of misery that I wish I could return to – chose “Lady Lazurus” by Sylvia Plath. I haven’t thought about it in 15 years and yet somehow still have it memorized, the words coming to me in bed one night recently as I anguished over my achy body.
“Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell.”
It’s a poem about suicide, yes, but also the spectacle of suffering, a death drive, resurrection, and rebirth, depending on how you read it.
Right now I am dying a little too well, learning that there’s nothing spectacular about real suffering. It’s not something you want to indulge in with Tumblr quotes as you might have at age 13. It’s a suffocating time warp, where everything feels both surreal and too real at once. A hall of the world’s worst mirrors, reflecting your entire life back to you with question marks – did all of that (the not-bad times, when you functioned with something closer to ease) even really happen?
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I look tirelessly for other options than the one that presents itself to me most – on Reddit threads, where I cry with other people and try to cobble together what exactly is wrong; in a steady stream of new doctors, who promise me relief for a few thousand dollars, then disappear once the deposit is made; in procedure after procedure, my veins punctured 25 times since the start of the year.
I whirl in and out of MRI machines, trying to whisper a list of the things that I’m told are good in my life, but mostly crying instead. Andy Puddicombe tells me to follow my breath, so I do, or I try. I listen to family and friends saying that it will get better, and feel myself floating away further each time it's repeated – their voices melting together into something like white noise that my mind is no longer willing to make out.
I make lists, lots of lists – will it help me find meaning? 50 doctor's appointments this year, 25 needles in my arms, 5 urgent care visits, 5 MRIs, 8 X-rays, 6 antibiotics, 2 steroids, 1 failed surgery, 1 steroid injection. A belly full of anti-inflammatories with nothing to show for it.
I look at old photos to try to find signs that this was coming – something off about my face, or my stance, an omen I might have missed. I ask others, who don’t understand that irrationality can be a salve, if they see anything, too. (“The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?”)
And I look out at the boxwoods – fried, golden, wilting – longing, with a desperation so quiet it’s loud, for something like resurrection and rebirth.