The Two Kinds of Decay

Walking

I returned to school after the first couple of hospitalizations, and both times I made appointments with the disabilities office.

A van would pick me up and take me to and from my classes and wherever else I had to go. The van was driven by a student, and it was free, and it never came when I needed it. I seldom went to class, and when I did, I was late.

The driver helped me into the van even though it wasn’t in her job description and she knew I could sue her if I were injured while entering or exiting the van. Since she got in trouble for being late, she helped me. I took too long to drag my body up the van’s three steps on my own.

At that point I was using two crutches. Crutches weren’t a good solution to my mobility problem, generalized limb weakness that worsened distally.

I wasn’t safely mobile on the crutches. I shouldn’t have gone back to school. My doctors were doing the best they could, but they must have been delusional to think it was safe to let me go back to Cambridge without a wheelchair. I was still poisoning myself a little more with every beat of my heart, barely able to manipulate my crutches, just waiting until I wasn’t able to manipulate the crutches at all.

I remember walking out of Adams House one night, after dinner with a friend, barely able to stand upright, crutches splayed out to the sides. Someone behind me said something. I realized my crutches were blocking the entire patio, from brick wall to brick wall, and that no one could walk past me. And of course I was walking very slowly. And of course I was not doing what properly could be called walking. I was slumped over the crutches, which were braced against the walls.

The brick walls were all that was holding me up.

My friend carried me the rest of the way down the slate patio and onto the sidewalk and into the van.