Not everything is about you
on self-absorption, remembering long-lost eating disorders, and the world as a mirror
Lately, death seems closer to everyone. Two months ago, my ex found out she has cancer, a friend’s mother was diagnosed with a terminal neurodegenerative disorder, and someone I barely know killed herself. So maybe it’s not that everyone is dying, but if several things happen within a short time frame, you start to see patterns everywhere. Death becomes concentrated. The suicide is especially poignant, which feels wrong since I didn’t actually know her. Am I selfish for making her death about me? I’ve heard people express similar fears when someone they love dies. It seems almost absurd, as if somewhere along the line, we convinced ourselves that we aren’t entitled to our experience—to acknowledge that something impacted us without first prefacing it with, it’s not about me, but.
Nearly three years ago, a man died in front of me. The motorcycle crash was so direct that I wondered whether it was intentional—like he was aiming for the tree. It was a violent scene: body flailing, blood sputtering, and then permanent stillness. After I finished giving my statement to the police and the paramedics put a white sheet over his body, I started sobbing. Visceral sobs that would make sense if they came from the chest of a loved one, but he was a stranger to me. I still pass by the spot where he died. Apparently, he had been a city worker for decades. Something related to transportation, but I avoided looking at the news afterward, so I don’t know. They named the street after him, turning it into a kind of memorial. The delicate flower arrangements along the side of the road are perpetually fresh, so someone must be replacing them—someone who knew him and loved him.
The woman I barely know who killed herself had a severe autoimmune disease. Her hypothesis was that the deterioration of her health was triggered by the eating disorder she had in her teenage years. She tried every experimental treatment and surgery to undo the damage, but it was irreparable. This struck me as especially unfair. She didn’t even die from the eating disorder—it was the damage it inspired long after she recovered from the thing itself.