Lingering in Doorways

Hi.

It’s me.

You won’t believe what just happened.

Last night I cut my finger open, actually open, sliced it hard at the joint with the blunt edge of a Daiso eyebrow razor, and it was this terrifying debacle involving spray-on Betadine and a sock drawer. While I was trying to uncap the thing my hand jerked too fast the wrong way, and before I knew it I was gushing blood all over the drawer, good stockings and all. I felt my brain stutter for a long second. Really stutter, all dysfunctional and loopy. Everything was hot and weird and wrong, dazy like a trip scene, and it took a lot of panicked bathroom pacing (red everywhere, warm and glossy) before my consciousness started to slip, and I finally went to get Mom, who went to get the Betadine, and the antibiotic gel, and the fabric plaster band-aids. It was so stupid, the most interesting thing to happen in 37.2 days, but also it was one of those end-of-the-world imaginings, the kind you don’t appreciate until well after the fact. You nick a nerve with a rusty eyebrow razor and see, for the first time, the inside of your finger, and in the next four hours of recovery decide you cannot do it, have what is essentially the worst nervous breakdown of your existence, and then somehow, convince yourself that you are going to die.

Fun!

Anyway, the first time I saw the finger, my finger, mangled and horrible and is that a bone poking through, I thought of Rothko, and velociraptors, and also the Jaws attraction at Universal. I spent the next few hours mimicking labor — think eight-part breathing exercises and Jacob Collier, full volume — and I know, it’s funny now, but last night the pain was so bad it felt like life or death. WikiHow instructs me to prop my hand up on a pillow, elevated above the heart, and I learn to sleep like this: body turned, elbow tucked and knees touching, the curl of a fetus in the womb. But WikiHow tells me the other stuff, too. I am offered a diagram of what the infection looks like when it enters your body. I am told that your jaw locks, and your muscles spasm, and when left untreated it could be very very bad, etc, like in that Sherlock episode where the cause of death is tetanus from a nail scrape, and God, I don’t want to be killed by an eyebrow razor. How very un-metal it would be to die by beauty tool. How very un-metal it would be to die, period, when it’s all you’ve been thinking about the last few months — where is the surprise, the subversion? It doesn’t make a good story, is my point, and so if the universe makes this my ending I will scream into whatever abyss it deposits me into.

This morning I read an article about the last words of a health worker who died of Coronavirus. “Love you,” she’d said in her final text. “Mom be back.” But she never came back, and the only way I know is because the New York Times wrote about it, because her last words were recorded, and last words fascinate everyone. Of course that’s what haunts me as I think through the pain, the last things I’ve said to everyone ever, how if I die today they will forever be remembered for posterity. How they’re bound to be about something stupid, like a meme, or a TikTok. How now not only will I be known as the girl who died by eyebrow razor, but as the girl who shared a Nick Wilde thirst trap, whose most important message to the world includes an ad for teeth whiteners. This is my legacy now.

There’s this, though. I’m still writing, I think that should count for something. Granted, I’m not really writing to anyone (except you, but in this scenario you’re dead) but I like to think there’s someone on the other side of this all the same. Like maybe a descendant who decided to root through my email drafts to discover I did have okay last words after all, written especially for them to find and post to the Internet.

But that would imply that I have something of substance to say, when I don’t. All I can think about right now is that I have a hole in my hand, and I can quite literally hear my body working hard to fix it. I’m also thinking a lot about death, which is maybe a little alarming. I’m thinking things like, okay, if I die I’ll be discovered in Angry Birds Christmas pajamas and it’s April. Or, I have a library book overdue and Mom won’t know where to find it. Or, my brother will have to move into this room and eventually take all my stuff down, the postcards and poster of One Day with Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess. He’ll have to paint over the walls because he’ll think mint green is ugly. He’ll find weird things like car park receipts and movie tickets and not know what to do with them, all this dead sister junk, and so one day they’ll be reduced to bags on a sidewalk and mean nothing to nobody. And I cried so much thinking of this that I forgot that I’m not actually dying, my source of misery is a cut on my finger, and maybe it hurts a little but I’m fine, I’m more than fine, I’m alive. But I think I’m depressed. I’m scared of death but can’t stop thinking about it, and that’s why everything hurts so much.

I’m still learning how to talk about my feelings without being embarrassed by them. Like: It’s one thing to feel things and another to try to explain them, seriously, to people who may or may not think you’re making things up for attention, which is probably my worst ever fear. But for what it’s worth, I really am trying to be better. Earlier I went down to the kitchen to find that there was fresh bread on the counter, not one but three different kinds, and I thought to myself that this is what life is worth living for, the luxury of carbohydrates. And I called my grandparents and told them I loved them, and started re-reading Harry Potter, and my right hand managed through the first part of Clair de Lune. And so it would be a shame to die today, when there are so many things to look forward to, so many things left unfinished. But therein lies the good news: you will not.

Today I washed my hair, and ate dinner that was prepared for me by the people I love, and I doom-scrolled through TikToks but did it lying beside my mom. I watched Gilmore Girls with my grandma and we said yes, yes, that’s so us, and I listened to my brother laugh while playing his video games. I changed my band-aid. I cried for a bit. I thought about death, but I thought about life, too. It was a good day of nothing, and I’m glad to have had it.

There’s still blood on my sock drawer. It looks a little like a comet, like a teardrop, like a wishing star. I’ll wipe it down first thing tomorrow. It will still be there, and anyway, so will I.