The Two Kinds of Decay

Before and After

When I turned twenty-two I thought my life, which had already been relatively easy, would get even easier, since at twenty-one, I’d already done the hardest thing I’d ever have to do.

The only hard thing I’d ever done had not left me compassionate.

I remember the first friend I made who met me after the diagnosis, but I don’t remember when I stopped thinking, when I met new people, This person, whose hand I am shaking at this moment, is another person who never knew me before the diagnosis.

The only hard thing I’d done in my life was recovering from a disease. My self-image had been highly susceptible to that event. It constituted most of my identity.

When a friend or a stranger mentioned anything about a difficult or noteworthy event, I chose one of countless hospital vignettes from recent memory and told the little story in a way that prevented further conversation about it or any other subject.

Though during the bad relapses I knew I was a better person temporarily, in general the disease made me furious, jealous, resentful, impatient, temperamental, spiteful. My sense of entitlement grew enormous. I knew the steroids had triggered what is now called a mood disorder, and I didn’t care.

The hardest thing I’d ever done, the hardest thing I’d ever have to do, had made me a worse person! That wasn’t how it was supposed to work. Tribulation is supposed to make strong people, people who radiate mercy, leaders of their kind.

I’d have to do harder things before my self-regard lost the mean air that had inflated it.