So, yes, I want(ed) to race again. But this is bigger than running a marathon. One of the things that truly sucks about living with a so-called rare disease like sarcoidosis is you're invisible even in the spaces that are designed to help you. In clinical environments, you are a question mark. There are so many presentations, you could be suffering from anything...or nothing. In the world, you don't "look sick." In research environments you do not take precedence.
Even as it seemed elusive, I believed I would realize my dream someday. Well, someday is here.
For the first time in four years my ICD "delivered therapy," which I discovered days after "the event" when my electrophysiologist's nurse called to ask "if I was okay."
I don’t think there is anyone who doesn’t want to belong to something or somebody. Not ownership belong to but be a part of belong to. Even me. I say even me because I’m a natural, albeit ironic, loner. Ironic because I’m a twin and we make two of five sisters. Ironic still because there [...]
I'm only recently accepting the extent to which my physical body has been intrinsic to how I self-identify. The realization has come on the heels of a bunch more that are the result of the heart failure (cardiomyopathy if you like big words) diagnosis in September. My body has changed significantly in the way I use it for self-identification purposes. [...]
So there we were living our happily ever after when our communication kept getting interrupted. The signal was poor. Eventually our conversations were curt and stilted—we probably secretly blamed each other for the poor signal. Turns out we were both wrong. (As far as doctors have so far surmised. This is idiopathic—without known cause).
The training, racing, and creative process...is a triumph over the physical and psychic conditions just outside the parameters of control which would censor and stilt performance.
I am here to talk about silence. And the violence of it. How it traumatizes the body that practices it as well as the bodies it is imposed upon. I want to talk about how it (silence, I mean)—and I made up this word—invisibilizes. And how that act—to render someone, a body, invisible is violence. [...]
5 years ago…
“Her father, a preacher, is already not happy with her first semester grades, but he’s allowed her to return to Richmond from Detroit to redeem herself. So far, she’s doing a bang up job and all because, ‘Ms. Scott, I guess I like the rush.’
I suggest she consider sky diving instead. It’s, at least, regulated.
Fast forward.
Today I ran like the fool child I am. 18.74 miles to be exact.”
Within a single semester I receive doctors notes from quiet, bright Simone-with-the-dimples to excuse her absences and allow her to make up missed assignments.
Today she returns to class after a week long hiatus with a new note: this one for an infection. She confides in me: “Those notes, Ms. Scott, are because I had to have 2 abortions.” This infection came from a glitch in the last abortion.
The second semester she returns to repeat my class. She starts missing assignments pretty early. This weekend she’s found herself at a party in some unsavory part of the city. She’s trying to change her ways, she tells me, and the guy who took her to the, erehem, gathering is angry that she won’t have sex with him. So he leaves her to find her own way back to the campus.
When I ask Simone how she finds these “friends” she…
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I am ridiculously behind on posting my stats. So for all 10 of you who keep track of my publication oohs and oh-ohs, here they are: July fellowship/publication submissions: 0 fellowship/publication acceptances: 1 fellowship/publication rejections: 3 books: Sister Outsider - Audre Lorde Secret Shame: I am in a love/hate relationship with Sleep. Mantra of the [...]
darlene anita scott 