There was once a point where I could've told you the name of every constellation in the sky. There was a time when I said dying was scary, and a time where I was ready. I used to think I was ready, I don't even know anymore. I actually didn't care about living for a long time. Then I found out my secret passion for playing cello.
Seventeen is a really weird age to pick up a new hobby, but when you're dying it doesn't matter how old you are. The world is open for you without judgement. So when seventeen-year-old me was lying in a bed in a hospital with a placid image of a pond on on one wall and a window on the other, and I dramatically groaned and reached for my cellphone for the hundredth time within the hour, my mother yanked it away telling me I needed a hobby. "What would you suggest," I asked staring at that pond poster. I'd seen it so many times I could effortlessly describe every small detail to you. She looked at me with that smile she hadn't used in so long, "how about an instrument or knitting or something, I dunno anything. The world is yours minnow." I smiled softly, "how about the cello?"
So I started playing cello. Let me tell you this much, I sucked ass at cello. But God it felt so good to let myself go somewhere else for 20 minutes everyday. Plus it meant I was allowed to go downstairs to a quarantine chamber to meet my instructor. I had stage IV leukemia. He had a daughter who died from it. Made it his passion to teach kids who were gong through what his daughter went through. He always sat on the opposiet side of this glass wall and smiled. Smiled like his daughter wasn't dead, like I wasn't dying, like we weren't in a hospital. We talked about my depression, about his. We talked about his friends and my lack thereof. I guess you could say he was my first hospital friend, and I'd been there for 2 years.
He convinced me to go to this stupid dance when I was in a recovery period. I was finally allowed to leave quarantine and be around other humans. He looked at me and said, in his Chicago-influenced accent, "ya know, you should go to that prom thing. I hear it's gonna be a hit." Needless to say I went. That's the whole point to this book right? You're waiting to meet Mr. Wonderful. You'll meet him all in good time.
YOU ARE READING
The Feeling of Loving You
Roman d'amourLoving him was like that feeling you get when you're listening to Stubborn Love by the Lumineers, or the way honey looks when it's in the sun and has a golden shine to it. It was a warm and perfectly broken place to be. Loving him was like a Radical...
