CW: Sickness/illness
I refuse to be the sum of my parts.
Monday, November 13th was a day like any other. I went to class, drank one too many coffees, procrastinated my homework. I fell asleep curled around a book.
Tuesday, November 14th, I woke feverish, teary-eyed, shaking. I fell asleep clutching a thermometer that read 103 degrees.
I can’t remember November 15th, or 16th, or 17th, or 18th. I know my partner helped me write emails to my Professors explaining absences. I know my fever did not break 103 degrees until Friday night. I know I received three rounds of treatment. I know, almost a month later, I am still recovering.
It’s in moments like these, I find myself aligned with death apathy. In the obliterating pain and sadness, I become resigned to the prospect of death, probably because it feels so intimately close. In moments like these, it is extremely hard to remind myself I am more than the body that is making me feel this way.
The awareness icon for my disease.
Our conversation last week regarding what we conceptualized as our “I” continues to resonate with me. My classmate, Ryan’s, comment about the view of their body and mind being inherently linked struck me. Why did my body so viscerally reject this statement? Why did I feel so disconnected from so many of my peers? Why didn’t I feel the connection between my body and my Self?
Because my disability lives in my body, whatever form it chooses to manifest in is physical. While it continues to facilitate the degeneration of my body, it cannot touch my mind, my spirit, my soul. These aspects of me – despite feeling physically exhausted – feel so alive. If we were truly just our bodies, this would be incompatible – at least, to me it would be.
Despite the yearly, monthly, weekly breakdown of my body, I feel stronger than ever. I frequently combat anger, frustration, and feelings of unfairness due to my disability, but that does not hinder my ability to feel generative, creative, and as I said before, alive. I don’t write this post to try to change anyone’s mind, but write it to explore how our lived experiences and identities shape how we talk about ourselves and relatedly, our future deaths. How do you think our conceptualization of our “I” fosters death anxiety/death apathy? Do our personal identities and experiences help us create our conceptualization of our “I”?