What Do You Mean I’m Not Superman?
Invincibility doesn’t exist.
I can’t remember a time I didn’t think I was invincible. When I didn’t know that I would always come out of everything ok.
Superman didn’t have shit on me.
When I was just a couple of years old, I stuck my finger in my mom’s sewing machine. Still have the scar. Survived. Invincible.
When I was four, I would stick bobby pins in electrical sockets, get shocked, cry and stick them back in. Invincible.
In high school, I once accidentally cut my finger to the bone while playing Five Finger Fillet. (I guess I was more Ted than Bishop).
I could keep listing my moments of invincibility. There were dozens. Falling out of the tree in our front yard; catching a pass in pickup football and landing face first in a concrete grate; my years of addiction. It seemed that no matter what I did to destroy myself, I survived.
Invincible.
About ten years ago, I was sitting on my couch in Denver, CO, typing away on my laptop. I stood up. Maybe a bit quickly. Maybe not.
When I stood, my right foot had fallen asleep. “Oh good,” I thought, “nothing better than a tired foot.”
Ten years later, it still hasn’t woken up, and parts of my right leg has joined it in its slumber.
When Graphicly finished, I decided that I was going to do a full medical work up. Get everything checked. Even my hearing. Everything was fine. My teeth are perfectly straight (naturally), my nasal passages were “the straightest” the doctor has even seen. Even my blood type is A+.
Invincible.
I went to the neurologist about my slumbering leg. I was beginning to lose strength in my hands, and was getting a bit of numbness. I was worried it was early onset of Parkinsons, given my 23andme said I have a 60% higher liklihood of getting the disease.
Three MRIs and a visit to a neurosurgeon later, I am getting surgery on my neck. Pretty serious surgery apparently. The surgeon seemed really concerned about how easily I could injure myself if I didn’t get it asap.
I guess I’m not invincible.
It’s a hard realization that things you thought made you special, really don’t exist. I know I wasn’t really unbreakable, but, well, kinda, I did.
And today I am wallowing a bit. It’s almost like I have lost a piece of me. An unrealistic piece, but something that I felt made me different.
You know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world. To not know why you’re here… That’s… That’s just an awful feeling. — Eijah Price, Unbreakable (2000)
The truth is that I will be fine, and I know that I will be fine. But the realization that the end of my life is becoming more clear while the beginning is starting to fade kinda freaks me out.
I guess even Superman gets old.
