In my feverish dream state of half awake and half hallucination (for the past 5 days), I reflected on the last time I had a severe sickness like this. Funny enough, it was exactly 8 years ago, 3 weeks before my birthday. I can confidently say that, in the past 8 years, the consistent improvement has been being in love with and getting married to Dan. Don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of ups and downs, and the downs almost felt like we wouldn’t make it, but we persevered. I suppressed every of my whim to self-sabotage and run and escape and never come back. He listens and adjusts and he changes a little bit at a time. 8 years ago, I took the train and checked myself into Urgent Care. I talked to the nurse. I took the IV and the tests (for 6-8 hours) and then took the train home and went to bed. I was too embarrassed (well, scared, really) to burden a person I just started dating. This Monday, as he drove me to the Urgent Care at the hospital I was only half-awake, barely forming coherent words, as he explained my condition to the nurses and the doctors, and as he took me home, made me food, and got me my prescriptions; I could not help but feel grateful. Maybe I’m aging. Maybe this is a more severe case than before. But I could not have done all this by myself this time.
As cliche as it sounds, you have to be ready to be loved for a love like this. I was recently out of a long-term relationship back then and initially was dating a series of (lovely) people that wasn’t a good fit for me. So I started self-discovery. I did a bunch of things. And I met this guy through the most random of chances. About 5 months in, I lost my phone and me being the idiot that I was, did not store his contacts on the clouds. So I went back to the random place we met, again and again, and waited for him to come on. And he replied. He found me funny. He found my aspirations for a sch-orphanage in Vietnam inspiring. We enjoyed having food and hanging out. And the rest is history
I don’t think this has to be just for romantic relationships either. It’s always precious in life to have a parent, a sibling, a friend, or a neighbor. Someone you can call at night if you needed and you know they will show up. It’s so so so rare in this vast human-digital world we’re living in. The key though, and this will sound harsh, is that you need to be ready to do that for them too. People can only give so much, and you need to allow them to share their challenges, their struggles, and allow them to call you when they need. If not you’re just an emotional energy vampire.
I don’t know what the point of this note is. Perhaps after 5 days of 38-39 degrees fever, and mostly incoherent words coming out from my mouth, I just needed to show myself I can still think and write normally. Perhaps I’ve listened to way more Lizzo and seriously her song 2 be love played in my head the entire fever-dreams I had the second day.
Or maybe I’m just really really really grateful to be loved.
Pace Fine Arts 