Not Everything Translates

Tag: existence

  • packing up

    My journey is beginning to come to an end,
    and I feel done.
    Done and at peace.

    On Friday, I will check out of the hotel
    and spend my last days in Prague together with my daughter, Alma.

    I am so glad I chose to do this, just for me.
    I know it has been quite hard for those at home, especially for Alma.
    But I think there may be something valuable in that too.

    It may sound brutal, but to try, just a little,
    what it is like to be apart.
    To not have to hold on to each other in a tight grip,
    out of fear that one day we will no longer be together.

    (more…)

  • Existential Paradox

    There is a brutal paradox in being chronically ill and still fully alive.

    I see clearly.
    I see my body, my illness, my limits.
    I see the present for what it is.

    I also see the future, dimly.
    Because the future is already here.
    Not dramatic, not sudden, but stretched thin over time.
    A slow deterioration.
    A life that keeps shrinking, quietly.

    That is why clarity can become unbearable.

    People try to protect me from it.
    Doctors. Friends. Sometimes even myself.
    They tell me it does not have to be this way forever.
    That it might improve.
    That my body could respond.
    That the fog might lift.

    (more…)