Why I Disappeared and What I Refused to Give Up

Beginnings and Endings

The first steps are shaky: the awkward silence of a first date, dumbbells after a December of champagne and cookies, writing the first page, the first poem, of what begs to be a book.

You can do it all, poet and friend Alexis Rhone Fancher once told me, just not at the same time. I have carried this advice like a worry stone, my thumb rubbing the idea. 

This year, I decided to write and (hopefully, eventually) sell a novel. My health had other plans. Since the new year, I’ve been suffering from constant infections. In May, I spent in bed with the stomach flu; then COVID, all while fighting the sinus infection I’d had for the past eight months. 

I have been sick most of my life. When my sister and I compare memories, she recalls moments dripping with spices and the arc of every interaction. All I remember is illness. In the most critical moments of life, I’m fist-fighting infection: the fever in my wedding dress, flu-like body aches at my mother’s death bead. Decades spent weak, dizzy, bu…