The human ego has its own gravity. It's like a black hole trying to suck in everything around it. Our own experiences always supercede the ones of those around us. When looking back on the past, it's invariably tinted, the people are all caricatures, the point of view skewed. Always be sceptical of the autobiographer, even the unflattering stuff cannot be trusted.
So it is with trepidation that I look back on the autumn of oh-five in an attempt to describe what I went through. You have been forewarned about any claim to veracity herein, and the literary mind paints with the colours it will. Who knows when it really started, but I choose to begin by looking at myself as I walk down the stairs and tiers between the concrete colossi behind the Leeds University Library, going down to the Sports Centre to work out. I think for the first time, and also the last, but I'm far from certain that's true. I do remember that I had to quit early because I was troubled by a pain in my big toe, and I had to limp up all those stairs on my way back to my room in the Henry Price Building, over-priced and shabby, scheduled for renovations and thus filled with us transient exchange students.
The pain subsided after a while though, and I went with my new-found friend Christoph to Steffi's next door for a few drinks. I had a good time, but was feeling a bit under the weather and left early. I remember going into the kitchen I shared with nine or so others to get a drink of water. Suddenly, I started shaking uncontrollably and I couldn't breathe. Luckily, I haven't caught a lungfull of air since I was born, so I stuck through it and it passed. I went to bed wearing my coat under the duvet since I was still feverish and shivering. The morning after, all my muscles were cramping and felt like steel wires, and I had a very bad case of the runs. I remember doubting my ability to walk the twenty minutes downhill to the city centre to find a chemist, but I braved it in the end and got some pills to stop the leakage.
It worked alright, but by Monday the pain in my toe was back, and by Tuesday my knee had swollen up and I couldn't bend it. I limped down to professor Dennis Something's somewhat aptly named class "Other people's pain - suffering and problems with representation in American literature". Horribly pretentious name, but a terribly good professor, probably the best I ever had. He opened my eyes in many ways to a wider scope of literature. A shame I'm wasting it all now, but that's life for you. I hadn't prepared for the class, and in a class of six students there's no anonymity, so when he asked me a question and I said I hadn't done the questions, he gave me the scolding of my life. I was sort of vindicated when I saw the surprised look on his face when I gingerly put my right shoe back on and half climbed, half limped down the stairs outside his office.
The time had come to get my ass to a doctor. The next morning I got in to see a doctor who promptly sent me down to the Teaching Hospital for an examination and a good look at something the Brits have got right with their healthcare system. The day went by, and by the end of it I'd peed in a cup, gotten an X-ray taken and had a giant needle stuck directly into my knee. They extracted 150 ml of yellow fluid ("Looks nice and clear," said the doctor) from which I almost fainted. About three days later I got the results of some blood tests done to figure out if a had arthritis. The mind is a funny thing, and to this day I don't know if I got the wrong message on the phone or if I simply assumed the worst and inserted my own worst fears there. But the way I heard it, the test was positive and I was doomed. And down plummeted Icarus, who had the audacity to approach the warmth of the sun.
The confusion was cleared up a few days later, but by then I'd compared notes with this lovely dancer my girlfriend was rooming with. I've forgotten her name, but I'll never forget that angelic face and vulnerability. She loved to dance, but if she did she was bedridden for days. This world was all too familiar to me and had always felt like living inside a guillotine. By this point, I was was limping around and wearing a stocking from my toes to mid-thigh. Flimsy little thing, but I couldn't walk a step without it. They didn't give me any crutches, so caught in the rapids as I was, I clung to the only rock I could find. Her name was Amy, and I hope she remembers me more fondly than I perhaps deserve. We all use the people around us to some degree, but there's using and then there's using. She told me one night outside the computer lab, that she loved me. I said I loved her to. Why didn't you say so, she asked. I don't know, I said, and I didn't. I didn't not mean it, but maybe less then than later. Is there ever a right time? I think I remember tears in her eyes, but it was dark and maybe I want to remember it that way.
After that came one of the most confusing times of my life. The swelling in my knee fixed itself after a few months, but the pain stayed. I spent three months or so basically doing chemo-therapy, and the next two years eating pain-killers almost daily. On the one hand I was happier than ever, going back and forth from Kristiansand where Amy was living as an au pair (a chapter in itself, that), and on the other hand I was so depressed I hardly did any schoolwork or got out of bed on the weekdays. I was working two jobs, filling in at the local book shop and hating my boss at the supermarket who'd effectively demoted me while I was away (another chapter really). Then I went down to Oz, but the munchkin guild had no vacancies and since there's no place like home, back I went.
It's all more or less faded by now, but last autumn I was practically sentenced to death by some pencil-pusher, and if the gleam in my eye seems lessened to you, now you know some of why. I did make a promise to someone that I wouldn't use this space to cry out my woes, but if the shit wants out, out it must go. I'm not seeking pity, just a sort of understanding.
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