Unknown Buddhist

There is a kind of disorientation that comes with outliving people who were supposed to outlive you.

I live with a serious illness. For years, the implicit social contract has been clear, if unspoken: I am the one being cared for. I am the fragile one. I am the variable in other people’s lives. I am the reason I have a medical case manager, an adjusted schedule for living, and a ‘what if’ contingency plan.

Strangely, mortality has a logic to it. The ill go before the well. The old before the young. That is the order of things. Mortality is simplistic, except, of course, when it isn’t.

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Year three of this bullshit, and I am still alive. I was supposed to die a year back, but nope. I keep thinking of some lowly spiritual angel who dropped a wrench into the bicycle wheel of my life. And, “Bam.” The Unknown Buddhist is stuck on a plateau until the spokes get repaired. Thus, you meander through the days of repetitive medical cycles, poor humanistic skills of physicians, and just a lack of support.

This post is not about the Israeli-Gaza War. Neither is this about the Ukraine-Russia war. While both wars are significant, I focused on other crises. My life got sucked into a tangled in a trove of medical ups and downs, one damn appointment after another, and many that offered no value. At the end of several months, I’ve burned out my insurance HSA and wonder if this is what dying feels like. It’s the loneliness. The patient deals with it alone. And sometimes, the lack of humanity is spiritually painful.

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