Confessions of a Dynamically Disabled Academic

E is my oldest friend. We reunite at a coffee shop that sits in the shadow of a Costco. We both make ourselves small. She, cross-legged, intent, like a therapist witnessing a breakthrough. I, huddled and fidgety, attempting to mimic sturdiness.

She lives in New York now and marvels obliquely at the elderly in the winter - those city lifers traversing snowbanks for groceries (as it is always de rigueur to endure). I picture her in the elevator of her high-rise apartment building, trench-coated and hungry and remarkably imperturbable.

E has brought me a graduation gift. The best of Anthropologie's home and beauty offerings. Monogrammed trinkets and eye masks. She dotes generously on the milestone I've already blotted out.

In December, I'd secured my Master's degree in English. As an off-season accomplishment, there was no structured fanfare. I leaned into the oddity. The first thing I wrote after crossing the finish line was "the cap and gown distort me."

Right as my diploma shipped amidst the mad dash to Christmas Day, I had a severe flare-up/migraine episode. Became suspended in time and space for a full eight days and never bounced back to my baseline. I closed out the year feeling completely emptied. Capsized and stranded. Later, directionless.

This is why, across from E, nursing a saccharine latte, I nix memory lane (our usual itinerary) for a shaky confessional.

I tell her how I can't get the rheumatologist's face out of my head...how her face contorted in dissent when I mentioned my desire to pursue a PhD. How damning it was to sit there and drown in the terminological stew: geneticbrainstemcerebralspinalfluidsubluxationjointlaxityautonomic.

I try to elicit a laugh from E about the irony of the situation: my academic aspirations in Disability Studies are being foreclosed by my disability. Something I'd long feared to be true.

I tell E that the trade-offs I made to complete my degree with a 4.0 GPA have had terrible ramifications. In order to squeeze in my classes, my part-time work as an Administrative Assistant, my committee meetings, my editing side gigs, and the foundational slog of writing and researching, I had to put everything else on hold in terms of my health. I stopped physical therapy (bad idea, as I quickly lost the ability to stand unsupported and without pain). I, quite frankly, stopped going to doctors altogether.

Even after two suspected cerebral spinal fluid leaks in October, I just settled to sleep it off, postponing any wider concern. This is not uncommon for those with EDS (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome), I told myself. You simply must accept the constant flux of unruly comorbidities.

Still, I tell her, how well it all went that final fall semester. How my advisor, who suffered from chronic migraines, told me my capstone work was novel and publishable. How I saw my potential so clearly for a moment. I saw myself meandering through campus with my new ByAcre rollator, outfitted with silly keychains and a mesh bag for books. I saw myself teaching the oh-so dreaded freshman comp and going to sparsely attended angsty poetry readings. I saw myself proudly taking up more space.

I tell her about the journal article on crip time I have under review. How impatient for an update I was. UPDATE: Another two months would pass before I'd reengage with the lengthy article, make it to a second round of revisions...then drop the dreamed-of publication due to poor health and reaching an impasse with one peer reviewer.

What I don't tell her about is the anger. How claustrophobic it is. How, in light of my body's latest nosedive, I seem to be losing the ability to mask my grief (she hasn't seen me cry since we were children). How I perseverate on everything I've had to give up over the years. All that this body, in its disconnected glory, has taken...

I could spend hours turning over that one word, taken... clutching and stripping its meaning(s). Taken as in seized or swindled, reserved or charmed. Taken with or taken from. To take care. To caretake. To take cover. My body takes from me as leaves are taken from the trees, as acorns are taken by squirrels.

That is to say, my body takes from me cyclically and purposefully. This does not soften my anger.

Academia was my last (linear) refuge, I realize, while speaking to E. An intellectual quest I white-knuckled for the sense of purpose and triumph it occasionally dished out. The one component of my life I thought I wouldn't have to relinquish. But career academia is a snug, slippery vein; it's hard to access its sanguine current, even for those with a steady, unsqueamish eye. I fear I've become all at once too tremulous, too bruised to keep going.

E says she still thinks I can do it. I'll just have to do it my way. I love her for this. Even so, I don't know if I believe her.

The cafe has partially emptied, with many patrons likely summoned to Super Bowl Sunday parties. My latte has lost its foam. I'm tachycardic from talking. My neck struggles to support my skull. Living with chronic dizziness makes sudden partings commonplace.

E offers to drive me home if necessary. I decline. I know she needs to catch the train back to the city.