I Always Wanted To Be Transformed

Zine from the CancerGram 17 of 18, expressing my desire to be transformed.

My life started hard. I suffered inside growing up. I often felt unsatisfied and separate and wronged. I observed differences and distance between myself and other people. I wondered how people became friends. I dreamed of some kind of redemption.

I hand wrote a love letter in perfect cursive, then later denied it was mine because of how it was written. I started a club with no members. I had a birthday part on Halloween and resolved never to do that again.

In my early teens I embraced a life of principle, self-sacrifice and service, yet longed for personal satisfaction. I resolved to make myself into whatever I could be. To work and work, to try and try, to put aside my desires and accept what might come from being the best version of myself I could be.

It was a faith in the long, slow road. It was based on the belief that eventually, my quality would be recognized, if I cultivated and nurtured it.

I spent my life working and waiting, hoping that the second half of my life would be filled with life and love and family. I hoped to find a small college somewhere that I could make a difference in the lives of young people, make a contribution to a worthy institution and live out a creative life. Teaching felt like an infinitely sustainable metier. I thought I’d never retire.

And then suddenly, I was transformed. But not into the person I wanted to be or hoped to become. I was transformed into a dead man.