I am lukewarm when it comes to the matter of my inevitable death. I’ve never struggled with my mortality the way it seems most people do. If anything, the promise of my eventual nonexistence has brought me far more comfort and joy than it has the kind of disquieting pause most humans tend to experience. The certainty of my predestined quietus has been, at times, the only stronghold I’ve had when attempting to survive the atmosphere of life, which is — to me anyway — at times more consuming and suffocating than any tomb.

Like most things, this shrug in the face of death probably arose from a childhood spent in graveyards, weaving my way through the lush, tall grass that grows where bodies blight beneath. I loved to read the headstones, the insignia adorning each plot, trying to create a life for the dead since I couldn’t seem to make one for myself. Why, at five and six and seven years old I felt compelled to escape the responsibility of my own blood and breath for that of someone centuries forgotten, I couldn’t say.

I suppose I was born grieving.

I try not to read too deeply into “timing”, but I am a practical woman.

One who navigates by way of reason and logic. If I’m ill, there’s a reason — not some philosophical reason, not some psychological sleight of hand where my sadness manifests as painful eruptions on my skin.

The discovery of the root of the illness, the cause, is about preventing it in the future; understanding and being momentarily fascinated by its mechanism as a means to bide my time until I well. I’d rather not curl up in bed and ruminate on the “meaning” of the illness, because to me, it is what it is. Virus enters body, proliferates. Infects. Sickens. Weakens. Thrives.

There’s something fascinating, almost achingly beautiful, about infection when it behaves in this metered progression.

Though, it doesn’t always.

Symptoms may include. . . Side effects may vary. . .Ask your doctor. . .

I was staring at the ceiling with this song on repeat (for no other reason than I didn’t have the strength to change it) trying to imagine the moment when the Shingles virus was liberated from my nerve vesicles.

I tried to recall if there was a moment where I went from well-enough to sick. When the virus was released, did I feel it? Was there a twinge in my spine, a flush along my back, a sting in my breast?

Maybe.

But I was far too busy to notice.

Maybe there’s something to be said about timing. As I’ve been having a bit of a lie-in, prisoner of blankets and twelve-hour lidocaine, I’ve also been navigating the early days of (cough) what I earnestly hope is a life of some modicum of literary acclaim.

While the book proposal is now complete and under consideration by publishers, thus out of my hands for the time being, I’ve been working full-time throughout. And I regret to say that my salaried, benefitted position is less about writing than you would expect from being a journalist, but the media landscape is changing. I’m responding to those changes by working harder and holding people to that high of a standard.

So, in short, I had few friends even before the Shingles thing.

Now I’m definitely not making friends.

I remember being told by teachers as a youth that I was liable to “run myself into the ground” — I always thought that was a funny euphemism for overworking one’s self. It implies, to me anyway, that there is a trip or a rather bad fall involved. I never saw myself falling. I didn’t make it a habit to imagine my failures in the daytime hours because it was all that filled my dreams at night.

I realize now — and maybe it’s age and wisdom, I don’t know — that no one ever sees the fall. In all likelihood it’s not you so much as the foundation you’ve been standing on, worn down under your nervous pacing and incessant hamster-wheel spinning.

You hit the ground running and run yourself straight into the ground.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit, as you might have gathered, as I’ve been laying awake in bed for these halcyon days. What irony! I am at last successful in this way that I’ve worked so hard for, yet some may argue that I’ve all but sacrificed my health to achieve it. As though I’m supposed to feel bad about it.

I only did exactly as I was told; I worked hard.

No one ever said how hard. No one ever said, stop when you hit bone.

I’ve been carrying on, bluffing with my paltry deck of cards, unwilling to give up — never imagining the fall, saving visions of my frailty for my dreaming hours.

Even as a young child I felt that I wouldn’t mind so much if I died young. I didn’t particularly care when or how I met my end, so long as I’d achieved what I felt I was here to do.

When I write I feel I’m on the path, and I don’t know if it will be this book or the next or (God-willing) the next that makes me feel as though I’ve done what I came here to do.

So, I don’t worry much anymore about how these illnesses keep befalling me, how I seem beleaguered by my own immune system at every turn; because really, as long as I can write the rest can go to hell.

If this book on the horizon leaves me and I do not feel that resignation of, at last, having Achieved, then I’ll know the work remains to be done.

But should I arrive at that place where I finally, after a quarter-century, exhale my very first breath (which I feel unremittingly ballooning in my chest, like a scream that seeks a pillow) resting my weary bones at last, it won’t matter if I’m 25 or 85— I’ll never fear death.

What I’ll fear is dying with an uncapped pen in my hand.