Hindsight

 

You’ll wake up in the middle of the night with

shooting pain

Your doctor will laugh at you

You’ll go to the ER alone during the peak of the pandemic

A person follows you around and sanitizes after you

Six hours later you’ll be

diagnosed

Your new doctor will sit you down and tell you there’s a 90% chance you have—

What?

It won’t sink in

Your bloodwork will come back positive

You’ll lose sleep and wonder why she left

Your thoughts will overrun

Your life will become a series of tests and series of negatives

They’ll stick needles in your arms, a camera

inside you, you inside giant machines

The tests are worse than the symptoms

Six months in you’ll finally see a specialist

He’s seen this all before but spoiler alert,

he won’t figure out what to do either

Instead you’ll learn

You’ll learn that men in lab coats don’t always have the answers

You’ll learn how to stick yourself with needles,

how to push through the pain,

how to be at peace with the uncertainty of it all

Being young doesn’t mean you’re invincible

You’ll wonder how fate chose

You’ll wonder if any of this is real

Would anyone pick you as their avatar with all your flaws?

An old lady tells you she’s jealous because you’re young and pretty

How does that matter?

Your emotions live at the brim: full and overflowing at

a moment’s notice

So you will write and write and write

And write

And she will return

Time will bring the fleeting joy of sweet things

melting in your mouth

Of warm winds that sweep you away

Of sunsets that eat up the sky

And naiveté of young and pretty