Are you OK?

The sun is not out yet. The skies have turned a pale blue in anticipation, no longer the deep abyss that evokes darkness. There is so much promise in a sunless sky.

Every word of her essay speaks to me. The Duchess of Sussex was sitting across me in my living room and performing surgery on my thoughts. Every “Are you OK?” she says, I feel a sharp twinge in my chest. The devastations of miscarriage are foreign to me. I have never lived with a part of me being snatched away from me as I stood helpless waiting for someone to intervene. I never had to look at babies and wonder how she who was taken would have been. The specific grief of my flesh and blood turning lifeless inside of me is alien.

Doctor Lim was whispering a secret into my ears. I sat in front of him, unable to move my body of ice held together by a fragile skin. I dare not move. Doctor Lim put his hand on my arm. Maybe to give me strength or to check my pulse. Convinced I was alive, he whispered the dirty secret again. “Its bad news. You have cancer.”

I am sure there are a million books written about how to deal with bad news. I am sure there are a million books written about how to deal with cancer. I had not read any. There were better tales to invest my time in. So, before I could catch myself, I was spiraling beyond any control.

I had just spent my thirtieth birthday drinking up a whole bottle of rum, my immortality bright and shining. I had saved cars, boats, flights from imminent destruction armed with nothing. How was I suddenly so vulnerable?

They cut off a part of my tongue. That did not stop the words of anger from spinning inside my head. They cut off parts of my neck. It did nothing to stop the gurgle of self-pity rising from my stomach. There were better people than me around me doing everything in their power to make me human again. I hated these superhumans…

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