Picking up my race packet last year.

I will run my third half-marathon on Sunday, almost one year after my first. My body is in drastically, almost frighteningly different shape this time; my mind and motivations are, too.

Running through a failed relationship and post-grad angst, I relished the psychological aspect of miles and miles and miles. I logged 60-70 miles in a single week sometimes, running 12 or 13 miles after a full workday, perceiving it as the pinnacle of dedication to my health. The folds in my clothes multiplied that summer and fall; the more miles I ran, the less of me existed. I weighed 105 pounds when I crossed the finish line Oct. 18.

I felt invincible; running was the closure I needed, the structure I needed while adjusting to my first big-kid job. It’s not what my body needed. Not then, anyway.

Running is a hobby, coping mechanism, lifestyle and obsession for me. That spring, summer and fall, it was also a trigger. Training triggered my then-dormant celiac disease, shocking my body into losing 20 pounds and into months of crippling exhaustion. Continue reading →

The pink sunrise reflects in the glass of my end table as I reach instinctively for my tea, the black surface brightened by coral tufts. I am aware of my own awakeness this morning and every morning, relishing the ability to write a simple to-do list for the hours before work.

Read book. Pack bag. Pick out necklace. Pour tea. Pack lunch. They are, of course, tasks I would have remembered to do anyway. Once routine, they hold new significance and reverence, maybe, quietly reminding me to relish the sustained energy and the awakeness of it all. To worship it, even, taking extra care to monitor the minutes my tea steeps, to line up the corners of my favorite blanket, to awaken without instantly wanting to sleep and sleep and sleep.

I’m a bad millennial and don’t have Snapchat, but look at me and my cute friends at Drake!

I shed the memory of chronic fatigue with almost rebellious abandon this past week. I danced and sang and drank wine at (and before) The Wombats and Drake in concert. I saw the U.S.A. gymnastics team (Simone Biles!) in a live showcase. I ran miles and played tennis and stayed up too late and read books. I wasn’t living nap to nap anymore, but I needed to convince myself of it, still.

At the height of my exhaustion, I did all of those things, too, I suppose, assuming that if I willed my body to be alive and awake, it would listen. It would let me go out two nights in a row. It would let me stay up and finish the chapter.

I’m better now, and I think I believe it.

Like awakeness, betterness takes a while to settle in again. Texts read, “I’m better, don’t worry about me so much,” for months, as exhaustion tugged me back to my bed. I resented my favorite blanket. Continue reading →

I look fine but I don’t feel fine, a 2016 memoir.

Blue Moon was the last beer I drank, at my favorite campus bar. I left the orange perched on the rim of the glass; I needed beer unbothered. It’s unpretentious, tame beer; I needed that, too. As if a mundane beer choice could somehow balance the blow of it being my last.

Last week I awaited a different kind of last, one infused with cautious optimism and cruel pragmatism. Monday was my final hematology followup, a return to the land of bad blood and beige chairs. “Sooooo, we’re going to have to draw some blood today,” the nurse said as I walked back to a room furnished with a blue chair in each corner. As if they worshiped the wall-mounted display of needles, gauze and tiny tubes. As if I didn’t know what was coming.

I sent my infusion room nurses a thank-you card in May, gratitude and pain weaved together in awkward prose. I wonder if it nests among the cards taped to the cupboards. I wonder what’s inside the cupboard beyond the cards; syringes and Band-Aids and maybe the tacky, tan wraps that leave my arm indented for a few minutes after I unwind the bandages.

No more weekly infusion room visits, hematology appointments or hazy wandering the hospital hoping for casual eye contact with a hot medical resident. I forgot how to be well. Continue reading →

The derpiest cactus in the world guards my books.

I hold my tea mug to my chest; heat radiates from the ceramic, warming my body. I set aside the book I am reading. I take a sip of tea. I set aside the mug. I take up the book. It is comforting to focus my thoughts and attention on a single thing. The quiet in my mind is alarming, almost, the quiet of things finished.

It was anticlimactic submitting my law school applications; I clicked and checked boxes and double-checked my information. Bizarre, it is, checking and double-checking your own story, as if some biographical tidbit could emerge in the questionnaire. My story feels disjointed this year. As I moved forward on the LSAT and law school plans, I backslid into poor health and chronic fatigue, the kind measured in sick days and tea refills. Continue reading →

I will go wherever there’s a tennis court (and a law school).

Anxiety and excitement swirl into a single, murky color, like a tie-dyed T-shirt gone wrong. I am anxious for my hematology followup tomorrow, excited to go to law school, anxious awaiting application decisions, excited to (potentially) be done with doctor’s visits. I let the colors and emotions bleed together.

Continue reading →

2016 has its moments, like a rainbow outside my window.

Be with the person who touches your arm and says, “I didn’t notice,” when he sees you tug at your sleeve with embarrassment, covering the IV bruises that lurk under wrinkled fabric. For months I didn’t notice. How sick I was. How tired I was. How I craved the kind of relationships that exist in fleeting, intoxicating clarity, blurred by drawn-out time and undefined boundaries.

I notice too much now, maybe. I notice that different doctor’s offices include or exclude my middle initial in the address line when they send me bills. “O.” Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it isn’t.

I notice the asterisks on menus; I am one, I suppose, a living, existing exception.

I notice how happy I am now, too. My hair is growing out, finally; I didn’t notice, even as I snapped weekly selfies from my infusion-room chair. The Olympics have helped me make peace with 2016 and 23, creating a space for togetherness in a year that has broken me apart. Oh, and Leslie Jones’ kick-ass commentary. Continue reading →

A paper chain hung from my mirror before every birthday growing up. I cut paper strips for hours, sometimes rainbow, sometimes blue or pink (my favorite colors). I counted up, making sure to represent each day until my birthday; then I counted down, wanting desperately for the cake and parties and friends and streamers and a new year of me to get here, every November 24.

I’ve never needed a birthday as badly as I need 24.

I’ve existed this year in a natural state of countdowns, one appointment to the next, to my final weekly IV, to the LSAT, now, to 24. My paper-chain era reemerged in my memory; I pictured myself triumphantly ripping off one ring each day until November. I contorted what was a happy ritual, a celebration, into a dismissal of an entire year, an erasure of my own experiences.

It is easy to await a new beginning, to ruminate on all the newness 24 will bring: going to law school, moving to a new city, traveling to Europe with my sister before we both go to new universities. They’re shiny prospects, each one physically far away from the tedium and unwanted familiarity of a painful, trying year. Continue reading →

This photo from 80/35 captures my summer vibes.

It is funny how I find myself cobbling together bits and pieces of me, envisioning some kind of perfect, never-to-be-realized blend of my existence. I want the free time of my 17-year-old summer. I want to play tennis like 18-year-old Taylor. I want to drink like 21-year-old me. But I reject each of them in their wholeness, remembering the awkwardness of my college search at 17, the cancer scare at 18, the boy I spent a year-and-a-half getting over at 21.

I am eternally cobbled together, a blend of good and bad, of clumsy transitions and moments in which I feel like a damn fine grown-up lady. This is 23, to quote my own Twitter saying like a true millennial.

2016 is erratic, an unpredictable compilation of tedium and triumph. I got blood transfusions. A man told me he loved me and meant it. I ran a half-marathon. I cried about bread. I took the LSAT. (I took a lot of shots after getting my LSAT score back.) I survived six weekly IVs. Continue reading →

In other life news, I tried to be one with nature last weekend. I took a selfie in a park and went trail running.

We sprawled on the floor of his fraternity house, rulers, paper slips and Spotted Cow bottles encircling us. We taped and talked, perfecting the poster for his senior pre-law thesis. He wanted to study sports law. I wanted to make it through my junior journalism capstone. He wanted to get into Marquette (he did). I wanted to stay in Des Moines and find a summer internship. That semester-long, unspoken “What are we?” flirtationship faded with his graduation, but I kept law school in mind.

I remember looking at law programs my junior and senior years of college. I didn’t tell anyone, even as the guy I was seeing navigated the law school application process.

We’re not ready for our dreams sometimes. Continue reading →