Autobiology

I woke up from the most relaxing sleep to realize that it had happened again. Now, usually, I would adjust to the change in circumstances by learning my function and trying to be quiet, tame, polite and even inconspicuous (a good word; a word that I was learning to use more and more often when I was on my own). But this felt a little bit different.

Someone had decided that I needed to transfer my essence to various parts of the body. This really could be the worse form of reincarnation anyone could imagine, and I thought that I was in hell the first time it happened (or was it – is it – purgatory?). After that particular arrival, I realized that I was responsible for the functions of a kidney inside the body of a very heavy drinker. Now, I did say “kidney,” not “kidneys”. I know that we are born with two of them; I also know that there was a scar where this man once had a perfect pair of them. And how did I know that it was a kidney that I now occupied? Well, that might be too disgusting to report in detail, but I found out that my function was to keep his body clean. Not so easy to do when you could predict what was going to happen on certain Friday and Saturday nights when he was with his friends and other acquaintances. He was going to do the most damage to his body imaginable before he went back to a job that involved a lot of sitting and shouting (never really figured out what it was). At least the job I had was not located in the liver. That failed him soon after a very long weekend of “drowning his sorrows” (yes, he actually said that out loud) and I could feel his body collapse, be transferred, and eventually fail to continue. And I moved on to the next one.

It was a bone in the arm of a young girl who had broken it earlier in her difficult life. This is hard to talk about. There were parents in her world – I will not say they were really a part of her life – who treated her very badly, and I could feel the damage done on the level of marrow and in the healing fractures. They do say that a bone left to itself will find a way to repair the damage, but there is always something more that cannot be covered. She was now in school, having a rough time with everything except her lessons (her arm was lifted by a sympathetic teacher who congratulated her on a very successful test). This did not make her any more popular with those people she had to share a classroom, bus ride, or cafeteria seat with and she just gave up. Even in the bone, I could feel that blood leave her arms as she opened up her veins and stopped trying to fight them all.

Depressing, I know, but there are also stories that are quite funny. You will never know how amusing it is to be a part of the lower half of the human body until it happens to you. A year spent as the colon of a boy in potty-training is worth a few college degrees; even if the joke eventually gets weary (at least I did not have to die in order to transfer to the next body). Feet are really funny, too. Yes, we – I have to speak of myself in the plural – go through a great deal of strain and wear, especially in the situation I was in. I am not sure what I did to deserve this one, but to become the support of a long distance runner was incredible. The best thing about this was the massages that she underwent when her routines were over and her partner took it upon herself to massage them, meaning me. Yes, there were plenty of erotic moments in that phase. You would think that it would only be true just below the navel, but no; no, that was disappointing. It was a very lonely man in his mature years who had no one else in his life (very sad, that one). He was found having his last breath on a bus when I knew that my time had come.

I am sorry. I did promise to mention that there were funny moments in all this transference from body to body (more body part to body part). You must forgive me if I am a little distracted right now. You must know exactly what has happened to me to make me so confused.

It was a heart; a tiny, struggling human heart in a baby that was just learning to live. There was love here and this young girl was going to be fine, but a part of me felt that this was just not fair.

No, it was not fair.

This was how I had ended.

Let me explain: I can remember who I was and what I was before my own death. I was a small child who had been taken away from a mother who had done nothing to deserve such a loss (a car crash; a pathetic cliché when you think of it). At first, my mind could not understand what was happening and the first change was very confusing (the eyes of a young man facing combat for the first time; won’t tell you too much about that one). After many of these moments, here I was, at the beginning of another life trying to understand why this was finally my fate. Maybe I deserved to finally be happy and to have the life that was taken away from me and the ones I loved.

So why was I filled with so much hate?

In this most special moment, all I could think about was my own mother, even as I embraced the love that I deserved and needed to grow and become a real person. All I had in my head was, “Mine, mine, mine!” Just like a real child, I was both greedy for love and ready to ask for more.

This would be an interesting fate for me.

Let’s see what happens next.