When You’re The Dying Girl
Having an Incurable Disease Makes Courage Seem Easy
There are things about it I really wouldn’t recommend.
Sleeping through entire days. Missing school, work, grad school. Lacking the energy for job applications or laundry. Coughing through ballet performances of Sleeping Beauty, and that movie everyone was dying to see, and the concert where you were so so careful to sit far away from everybody but they still glared at you like you weren’t far enough.
The vomiting. Oh, the vomiting. Your body convincing itself that everything that could possibly be compared to a food item, from cracked wheat bread to whipped cream, is no longer edible. The fact your car still smells like vomit. The fact that no matter where you sleep, you will wake up with the slight taste of vomit in your mouth.
The doctors’ visits in which they say there’s nothing wrong with you, followed by the doctors who tell you there is something wrong with you but they’re not sure what it is…followed by the doctors’ visits where they tell you what is wrong with you, at long last, and you think, finally, a way out of this hell.
The fact that you will be wrong. The doctor will put you on one medication, maybe two. They won’t work. They will make things worse. The doctor will say something like, “come back…
