It is hard to imagine that one year ago today, I was hospitalized. It wasn’t a year ago that I was diagnosed, no. It was a year ago that paramedics picked me up after losing consciousness in the middle of the street after having a seizure. 

I was supposed to meet a friend in the park to soak up some sun.

A friend with whom, over the past few weeks, I was growing closer and closer. You know, the type of “closer and closer” that makes one all giddy, blissful, daydreamy, etc.?

I can still remember that morning. That’s the blessing and curse of a life-changing event, at least in this case, everything is highlighted, stands out, everything is… 

Is remembering my way of righting a wrong? Is it to replay it over and over to understand everything? To replay to capture the tiny nuances of the morning and then filter the following 12 months through them to make sense of everything. By “it,” do I mean cancer?

By “it,” I can’t just refer to the seizure; it’s not so simple. I wish it were so simple. 

I have heard of “survivor’s guilt.” Survivors of cancer, for example, feel a sense of guilt because they did survive while others, many others, with the same cancer, staging, treatment, etc., did not. I am not at that place simply because I am in treatment again.

My journey isn’t in that place yet. However, I feel a sense of guilt for being diagnosed, for being sick. This word, “guilt,” even written, doesn’t work. But what other word is there?

“Sorry, this turned out like this…” was what I said in the text I sent from the hospital to the woman I would meet in the park, the one I was getting all heart-eyed and giddy about. What other word is there?

“Jeremiah, do you know where you are? Do you know what year it is?” Those are the questions asked by the paramedics. I could feel the ambulance picking up speed as it transported me to the hospital. I could hear one EMS personnel on the radio describe me.

I remember thinking about his description of me, a total stranger, and finding it fascinating.

“Jeremiah, do you know what year it is?” 
“No, I’m sorry, I don’t.”

Again, “sorry” isn’t the right word. What other word is there?

In the weeks and months to follow, there was (and is) this underlining “I’m sorry”… even though “sorry” doesn’t describe it, just as “guilt” isn’t entirely accurate either.

This is part of the package. The grab-bag that is life… This feeling exists regardless, right? I place “sorry” on it because I lack the vocabulary to express an emotion I still can’t define.

Doesn’t sorry work when I see the tired and worried look on the faces of those closest to me? When I feel their anger and annoyance and pain… Doesn’t it work when I step from the shower and notice various scars that have yet to pale with time? It works, right, when I see my belly bloated from drugs, yet my arms losing muscular definition acquired from dozens of summers working as a laborer? Isn’t sorry appropriate when I can walk a mere 1/10 of the distance I usually undertake in the woods because my leg muscles shake if I go too far?

What other word is there?