Life and really living

I never really wrote about this when it happened, but tonight I read an Atticus poem that struck me and brought me back to a year ago, when this all happened. The poem is from his latest book LVOE which I’ve just started but am already in awe of.

Her whole life flashed before her eyes and it was just as spectacular as she remembered.

When I read this, I was transported back to laying on a table in a nondescript medical building downtown. The nurse was running an ultrasound reader over the smooth, cold jelly on the left side of my neck. I was trying to hold in the tears. Calming myself, trying to think of anything but the possibility of what could be happening. She didn’t say much, as she rolled over and over the bump that had formed there.

If it doesn’t go away with the antibiotic, you’ll need to do blood testing, the doctor in Rome had told me. Best not to wait.

It didn’t go away with the antibiotic. So now here I was, jet-lagged and disoriented with my life flashing before my eyes. I didn’t know what to do with myself when I left the ultrasound. What does someone do when they’re waiting to find out if they have cancer? I could get a coffee, but I felt like I was seconds away from streams of tears running down my face. The weather matched my mood, cloudy and about to rain. Why was it always cloudy here?

I started driving. I thought about what I would do if I had it. Would I have time to go back to Italy? I thought about my life up until this point. I thought about how glad I was that I lived, really lived. I didn’t let anything stop me from doing what I wanted, from starting to create the life I wanted and living one that excited me and made me happy and afforded me so many moments of magic. I didn’t even know it yet but there were so many more people I would meet in the next year who would bring so much love and happiness into my life, I didn’t even know how good it would get.

I thought, I’m so glad I went to Italy.

I felt like okay, if this was it, I really lived a life I can be proud of, maybe not in all regards but in most. And what matters is that I tried, and I followed my heart and found places and people where my soul belonged. And maybe some people search their whole lives for that, but I already found it and I’m so young. I’ve already felt that feeling of home, that feeling of belonging, that some people might never feel, might never find. And that has to count for something, right?

I didn’t think about the mistakes I made, or fights I had, or stupid petty things people spend time worrying about daily. It felt too soon, for anything, of course. I hadn’t even really loved yet, really. And when the email came instead of a phone call and I learned it had just been caused by an infection and wasn’t anything else, I was determined to live. To live voraciously, with passion, and get caught up in the act of living so much so that later on, when I do see my life again in a way I’ve only ever seen that day, I’ll be able know it was as spectacular as I remembered it.

And maybe it’s not fair to write about this, since I was fine, since other people have had it much worse, have come much closer than I was. But it’s an event that left a real impression on me and I needed to write about it, even just for myself. I hope you don’t let anything stop you from living. Really, truly, living.