In the Last Year, I’ve Had 6 Surgeries and 9 Hospital Stays

The last year has been marked by loss and there’s no other way to say it.

PART TWO.

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I hate numbers when it comes to relationships.

It feels like a suffocating totally that means nothing except to be comparative to others; Relationships of your past.

My partner and I have been together for 12 years. Our 11-year marriage anniversary was actually 10 days ago (different from a wedding-aversary), and I remember being so scared that  if we didn’t secure our union back then, my girls might not have a legally accepted Papa in the way they eventually did… because I was so so so sick.

I’ve never been a birthday person or an anniversary person. Mother’s Day this last year was one of the worst days of my life. I look at holidays and celebratory events through a wary lens; What ill will befall? How far can I hide?

“We all have a birthday,” I say casually, too callously, “It’s just a day.”

But in early September many many years ago, my partner met a single mother who was ferociously involved in her Deaf community and thus didn’t need to use the muscle of her voice… who was ignoring her declining health while doing mud races and mountain climbs with wild abandon… and - although I loathe talking about weight lest I trigger anyone when numbers clearly should not define a damn thing - I was, in fact, a solid 30 “strengths” more than I later became. I couldn’t look and feel farther from who he fell in love with, for worse and for better.

Once I survived a few life saving surgeries, an experimental stem cell transplant, and became accustomed to the right antibiotics and clearance routines: I was reborn. I auditioned for dance companies and began to pursue something I thought I never could. I got stronger and stronger; All my time with my kiddos. And even though I’ll never discuss how difficult some of that “single mom” reality really was back then… the price felt on my head… I somehow survived some of the most terrifying years one could suffer, finding our way back to safety.

Numbers didn’t matter to me then, and they started to feel like a thing of the past, fast; A Bermuda Triangle rewritten by optimism and giddy ignorance.

In 2020, the year when my life should have been lined by “37” as its end, I actually was the healthiest I’ve ever been. I worked my body back to the stronger number I shan’t fully speak of. I savored all the time with my loved ones- Quarantine and shut downs a bittersweet gift. But then: The spine.

The decline of my time has been by my spine.

It took my ability to write long form catharsis (novels or books). The few novellas I’ve written in the last year or so have all happened in 2 days, maximum; frenzied furious sentences, under the pain gun. Each book completed in 48 hours or less.

See all these numbers? Oh how they add up to what the world thinks we are. To what we “contribute”. Without them: our capita-ciety sees us as nothing to see.

I don’t want to focus on what’s been subtracted, but for every medical prediction overcame…

The last year has been marked by loss and there’s no other way to say it.

Continued tomorrow!

(Last day of this nostalgic math lesson)