Thrown

The summer of 2002. I had just stumbled out of my sophomore year at UMass and I'd never felt emptier.

I kept trying to piece together that most ultimate of phenomenological questions: How did I get here? Heidegger has a concept that translates to something like "thrownness" to describe the relationship of the subject to time. How we are thrown into the present moment, and while it is the very nature of, the essence of consciousness to provide an answer to the question, to construct our world not just in space but in time, in narrative, when we try to suspend those processes we begin to experience not the constructed, floating opera but the raw opening into life that the present really is.

Mostly then I was wondering: who was that guy? Walking the Longfellow Bridge over the Charles River, heading to Mass General to get some tests done, listening to Tori Amos on my discman (it was 2002, remember), she was singing "This is not, this is not really happening. You bet your life it is. You bet your life." Those were the two strongest sentiments I had about the situation I was in: this is not happening, and you bet your life.

Today, there's no escaping that this is really happening. There's no narrative, just, like Bishop says, "everything connected by 'and' and 'and.'" This is the now I've been thrown in and there's only so much strength the past has to offer.

Back then, my doctrine of "wait and see" had ceased to be a mantra for remaining open to life. It had become an excuse not to change. I didn't much like myself and I was scared of being alone. Any situation that made me feel more interesting or brought some company into my life I would not reject. "Wait and see" had become a way to let wounds fester, not to lift a finger to stop myself and others from getting hurt. A way to take stupid risks under the guise of playing it safe.

I find myself thinking of that guy today as I cross the same bridge back to the same hospital, no longer the scary mass of unknown and alien sickness it was then, but an even bigger monster that has swallowed me. I have to make a home in the belly of this beast, avoid false hopes as readily as despair, and keep telling myself "wait and see, wait and see."