On health

and lack thereof.

The same tests every time: glass vials of maroon blood, flat wooden stick on wet tongue, cold stethoscope on naked back. I’m used to it all. I like it. I even like the needle. I like being touched and not needing to touch in return, not needing to express pleasure. I just want to take it in, consume the pleasure without expression. I am so sick of moaning. Give me clinical hands that touch dispassionately, that sit on my skin like leaves on the sidewalk.

I learned recently that not everyone knows their own blood pressure.

It’s true that everything hurts and that I am dying faster than most, but at least I’m not bored. At least there is something to think about. For example: In another century, I would be dead by now, buried in a child-sized coffin with a little headstone with only my first name engraved on its surface. Science outwits destiny. I live on. Miracle or mistake? Interesting.

The doctor takes a pink rubber hammer to my joints. My reflexes are weak, almost nonexistent. My forearms lie lazy on my lap. Doctor taps my wrists, elbows, knees. Takes a needle and drags it gently across my fingertips. The needle does not feel like what it is. It feels dull, once-removed, like a secondhand story. Like someone else describing the sensation but not describing it very well. No charisma. I am only half-listening. The details get lost somewhere between skin and brain.

The doctor says nerves are compressed in my neck. My spine is collapsing. The floors are rotting and the roof is caving in and one day my spine will be an empty lot, a junkyard. One day I will be bedridden or dead. Deadridden. I can hear myself moving through time even now, breaking apart audibly like those videos of icebergs: deafening boom as pristine white ice cleaves itself apart, plunges into navy.

Nobody plans for the future anymore. It’s like we’ve all got chronic illnesses. People choose not to have kids. People scroll and swipe, next next next. People experience life in shorter and shorter increments, losing faith in the long term. People film five-second videos and write one-page chapters. People go on first dates. People play musical chairs and sit down before the music stops.

My body will fail me before the world does. But not yet. These days I still have the stamina, the desire to live. And so I do, greedily, ravenously. When everything is accelerated, there is no time to lose.