LITMIR.BIZ

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right now completely

      but some things maybe

      would you mind occasionally checking in on me? i might not be able to text back very effusively as i’d wish but perhaps briefly—it doesn’t mean i am mad, it just means i can’t think. i’m also worried something will happen to me and cosmo will just be alone

      also if anyone had the time and was interested in being a passenger in my car with me? i have 2.5 more weeks of classes.

      for now i think i can drive. or was able last week. but i go to bard twice a week (weds and thurs) and sarah lawrence mon and tues.

      i have nice offices at both if you wanted to work there too and even hang out with cosmo?

      or if you were ever in harlem? just walking with me to the dogpark? i’m not that deep in harlem, just 120th.

      or perhaps riding the subway with me? (i tend to avoid subways alone when relapsing)

      i might even drive cross country if i find i can’t take cosmo with me on a plane to the west during break. just will do the southern route slowly. if anyone wanted a free ride there too!

      i’m also happy to pay anyone for their time. not meant to be insulting! just meant to say i value your time.

      basically just the presence of others around me right now is helpful i think.

      (tho i also have a lot of work to do so i can’t take breaks. perhaps study dates?)

      all my friends are busy people who do work i love so i’m hesitant to ask. also you all have your own shit right now.

      i will not be mad at all if you can’t deal with this right now! i’m embarrassed to ask frankly. i thought to write people individually but i didn’t want you to feel the burden like you were the only one!!

      basically i am very bad at this.

      and sorry for chaotic nature of this email. hard to express myself.

      love p

      Most of my friends had never received an email like that from me. When I had my first definitive Lyme Crisis—what I now call 2011–2013—I removed myself from many people’s lives, while some removed themselves from mine. Here and there friends stuck by me, sometimes a partner, but the only consistent presence was a few doctors. Then, my dog, Cosmo. I was by no means alone—I had distant but steady support, but all in all, when it came down to it, it was me alone going into it and me alone coming out of it: driving cross-country in the dead of winter just past remission to pick up life somewhere, anywhere.

      And here I was again.

      My doctor did what he did the past two times I had had Lyme relapses and prescribed me supplements and medications: words like glutathione, acetylcholine, methylfolate, fluconazole, and more all back in my life. I was back to having dozens and dozens of pill bottles. It was done in an email and a phone call. And it all felt more or less under control for some weeks.

      Still, I was cautious and did not drive the two hours back and forth to Bard College, where just the year before I’d been appointed “writer in residence,” and to Sarah Lawrence, where I’d been adjuncting to make the Bard job financially feasible.

      In that penultimate week of the semester, I had a bad experience with my usual cab ride from Bard to the Poughkeepsie station, where I’d catch the Metro North to my apartment in Harlem. My forty-minute cab ride to the station was usually uneventful, but this time my driver Alan confessed to me that he was back on drugs. We had spoken about drugs before, on another ride I had taken with him, so he felt comfortable getting into it with me.

      “You know how it is, Porshka,” he said. He could never say my name. “Come on, you know how it is.”

      “I do know,” I said cautiously, as I noticed him speeding faster and faster. “And that’s why I think you should be . . . careful.”

      I was tempted to ask him if he was on drugs right then and there, but I had my answer, I thought. I tried to make out his speedometer.

      “You know, I gotta make some money on the side,” he said absently. He had recently begun dating a woman who worked in real estate. He had mentioned they “have a lot of fun. She likes it when I share my coke.”

      I had tried to switch the subject to the weather, to my students, to all the generic things we used to complain about together. (I tried to avoid talking about the Middle East—too many times I could tell Alan and I were not politically aligned and I didn’t want to push the subject.) I even got to Lyme. The ride was nearly an hour, always so much space to fill, but this time felt particularly taxing. I tried to concentrate on the trees blurring by: maple, oak, hemlock, cedar, pine, all still lush in that season of little snow, starkly stabbing into the immaculate blue of twilight. I wanted him to slow down, but I also wanted the ride to end.

      “You take anything for it?” he was asking.

      I realized I was barely listening to his end of things.

      “The Lyme—you take any pills? You need pills for it? Pain pills?” he was asking.

      I remembered he had once told me his mother was addicted to some “pain pill.”

      “I don’t take those kind of meds,” I said. “I take mostly supplements. Nutrients. I don’t do that other stuff.”

      “Anymore,” Alan said with a smile, as he pulled in to the station.

      “Anymore,” I decided to agree with him—he was not wrong, after all—but I also decided for myself that there would be no more Alan in my near future, that the bulk of the semester away from him had actually been good for me.

      The Poughkeepsie train station was less bleak than usual that night, the holidays in the air. As I went up to the ticket counter, I realized it was the same attendant I always used to see, a guy I nicknamed Lou because he looked like a Lou, while really his name was something like Lawrence. He would always ask me out at the end of our transaction, often a I hope you don’t mind me asking but you got a boyfriend? I always said I did even though I never did during my time commuting. He’d always tag on, Well, keep me in mind. I’d always throw him something between a nod and a shrug and walk off with a weak wave.

      This time he looked shocked to see me.

      “Yeah, it’s been a while!” I said quickly, hoping this time I could avoid his propositions.

      “No, no, look at you, what happened?” he cried. He pointed to my cane. “Why do you have . . . that?”

      I waved off his question as I often did. “Lyme. I get dizzy, that’s all.”

      He kept staring at the cane, and then I realized his eyes were welling up with tears.

      I nearly laughed it was so absurd. “Hey, are you okay? It’s nothing, I’m fine. I’ve dealt with this for years!”

      He shook his head. “No, no, it’s just that . . . Lyme.” I should have remembered that, unlike in the city, upstate everyone knew about the severity of Lyme disease. But I wasn’t ready for what he said next: “My father passed away a couple months ago from complications of Lyme.”

      I suddenly felt a burst of heat in my face. It was rare that I’d meet anyone who’d understand Lyme, much less someone who had experienced the loss of life that could come with it, the outcome that people seemed to be only slowly realizing was possible. And of all people, this guy. I avoided his eyes so I wouldn’t cry and quickly handed him my credit card. “I’m really sorry to hear that,” I kept saying quietly as he ran my card, but he seemed speechless. “Well, have a good night, okay?” He didn’t seem to hear me, his eyes still glassy and dazed, staring at his monitor.

      When I got to the track, the train was packed. Just before I took my seat, there was a loud boom, an explosion of sorts, and throughout my car the sounds of human panic rippled from audible gasp to scream. Everyone’s minds were momentarily in sync: bombs. We were all thinking of the Paris attacks, I assumed,

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