From my understanding, this is unlike:
anything else on Substack
any other “illness” story (though it’s been called a mix of Joan Didion precision with Nora Ephron/David Sedaris humor)
anything that is in a neat category
My description? Devastation + humor. You’re watching someone do hard stuff, seeing the wild character development alongside a consistent voice the entire time.
The “journey”: one reader called it “a rollercoaster from hell.”
The people in it: another asked, “why are people around you so fucking fragile?”
I collected healing modalities like a Swiss Army knife — tried over 100 of them, trained to the highest level in over 30 of them, invented my own when I still saw gaps and holes in the methods.
I said multiple times that I felt like I was preparing for the apocalypse.
I didn’t realize that I think I was preparing for … this.
Where the only thing worse than the physical pain was … everything else.