Living In the Exception
A while back, my wife pointed a thread out to me by someone who had become disabled as a result of repeat COVID infections. I wish I’d saved it so I could give her credit, but the gist of it was that before she’d become disabled, she had never thought it could happen to her.
Even if her health diminished, surely her doctor would catch things, and even if she got sick her healthcare provider would back her up. Her doctor would listen before dismissing her concerns, and so on. People who’d had these things happen to them simply didn’t know how to advocate for themselves. They had simply lacked the good support network behind them to catch things in time.
Of course, she was dismayed to find that her doctor - not up-to-date on some of the newer research regarding the possibility of chronic illnesses post-COVID - dismissed her concerns at first. She had to grind away at her healthcare insurance provider to try to get coverage. Her family and friends didn’t understand, often wondering if she was simply not standing up for herself forcefully enough.
This continued when she was diagnosed with a chronic respiratory illness, of course. Even people close to her minimized her issues when they didn’t get frustrated.
Thankfully, her doctor recognized her illness and was able to prescribe treatment and her health insurance provider accepted and was going to cover it. . . after months of struggle.
That’s when a friend - who had been a shoulder to cry on for her throughout her ordeal - mentioned having very familiar symptoms. When she offered her friend advice on how to navigate getting a diagnosis, and how long it could take, her friend thanked her for the concern, but she knew how to advocate for herself. . .
This is what I’ve come to call “living in the exception” - it feels like it’s a close cousin to rugged individualism, an illness we’re all afflicted with to some degree or another. We can’t avoid it, really - it’s in the very air we breath ‘round these parts.
And I get it. Everybody’s living with precarity, everything’s moving too fast to keep up, and often to cope with the world we’re all in we have to engage in a little self deception. Fake it ‘til you make it, right? The problem becomes when that thin veneer of optimism becomes a way to filter out any information that might put cracks in that same wishful thinking. It becomes a way to draw away from community, from the bone-simple solidarity that, yes - as the somewhat old-fashioned saying goes - “there but for the grace of God go I.”
We are all in this struggle together, whether we accept that or not. Anyone can be affected by the horrors we now see every day. Understanding this is the first step to listening to others, to stop believing that living in the exception will save you or anyone you know.
I confess that I had planned to tie this together with storytelling and writing, but honestly I don’t know that I have any novel (ha) answers for anyone that wouldn’t sound prescriptive. This newsletter was already delayed as a result of trying to figure out how to thread the needle between this and writing to no avail, and the connection won’t make itself clear to me. Besides, as I have to remind myself: stories are where the fiction happens.
Maybe that’s all the writing advice needed, who knows.
On the Work Front
This will be brief because let’s face it: we all have bigger fish to fry now. Now that this administration has decided that they can disappear anyone, that’s much more of a danger than me losing my Federal employment. Suffice to say I’m still clocking in, but this time I’m in the office Monday through Friday. Not a huge issue, given that Return to Office mandates have affected many, many others. That said, it’s required some adjustment, and part of what I had to set aside for a good month or more is writing.
I feel like I’ve been able to figure out when in the day to get some writing done (pre-dawn hours, before the commute) and how to do that (spoilers: early bedtime or less sleep).
One More Thing...
If you’re reading this, I’m almost certain you know that one of my oldest stories, written in the long-ago era of 2013, finally sold after 12 years and 55 rejections. When I built my website in 2016, I named it after this story - convinced that it would sell very soon afterwards. Feel free to have a chuckle at that. I’ll join you.
Anyway, I’m honored to have A Line of Ink, Stretching Back Like a Shadow appear alongside so many other amazing, talented writers in Cold Signal Magazine. Please go check the issue out.
Also, Cursed Morsels accepted a tiny flash piece I sent them for their Family Legends zine call. It’s currently being included in orders of D. Matthew Urban’s collection, Shaky Pictures of Vanished Faces.
And that’s all she wrote!