People always looked at my strangely when I told them I enjoyed recovery, and that being in a coma was the best time of my life, so I quit saying those things. But that didn’t mean I quit thinking them, and it didn’t mean I despised sympathetic questions and concerns any less — I just stopped trying to explain it.

First: imagine you have the deepest, fullest, most relaxing sleep of your life. You have amazing and vivid dreams — not all of them great, mind you, but all of them interesting and complex and mentally stimulating, while your body relaxes and heals and Thor could be hammering your bed to pieces and you wouldn’t wake up. How can anyone think that would be a terrible thing? In the meantime, you’re drugged within an inch of your life, so there’s no part of your body that could even think about being in pain. That’s being in a coma, and it was fucking amazing. If you think it’s a terrible or painful thing for the comatose person to be in a coma, fuck you.

Second: the person in a coma awakens with paralyzed hands. That was me. That doesn’t happen to everybody, obviously, but it happened to me, and this is my experience. People were forever asking me if it hurt. No, it doesn’t hurt. I’m paralyzed. I can’t feel anything. You could put out a cigarette on my hand and I’d shrug. It doesn’t hurt to attempt to do things, I just can’t do them because I can’t control my fingers. Remember the last time you slept weird and your arm was all crunched under your body somehow and you woke up and your hand was asleep? Remember trying to grab things or do things with that hand while it was asleep? Did it hurt? That’s what I thought. Obviously, that’s a circulation problem, not a nervous system problem, but it’s a reasonably apt comparison and the only one I can think of, because it’s quite impossible to explain to people what it’s like to not be able to even touch two fingers together. For two months I couldn’t bring my fingers together enough to cup water in my hands and splash it over my face — the water would just fall right through. It didn’t hurt though.

Finally, there’s this: Remember when you were four years old? You probably don’t, nobody does really — but you can extrapolate. When you’re four, you don’t have any responsibilities. If you learn how to tie your shoes it’s like a monumental cause for celebration. If you learn how to snap your fingers or use a zipper or button your shirt or something, it’s this big deal. But then you learn how to do all of those things, and then they become routine, and (with apologies to any four-year-olds reading this) no one will ever get all crazy fucking excited at your ability to button buttons and tie your shoes ever again. Unless, as an adult, you find yourself paralyzed. BAM. All of your responsibilities disappear. You’re four again. People will get excited if you tie your shoes — fuck, you will get excited if you tie your shoes.

Sure, I got frustrated when I couldn’t do something. Sure, I got frustrated that it took longer to do things than it had. Sure, I got angry at my inability to do basic tasks, at my forced dependency on others to do things I was accustomed to accomplishing easily on my own. I jealously guard my independence. But when I’d try to think of “real world” things, ask after bills or other concerns, I’d be told “You don’t need to worry about that; just worry about taking care of yourself and getting back up to speed.”

Who among us wouldn’t love three months to focus on nothing but ourselves, with no worries about any adult responsibilities? I find myself faced with a strange nostalgia for those halcyon days, when the most important things to do were try to tie my shoes for three hours, sleep for nine, and work on a jigsaw puzzle in the dining room.

Yes, I worked hard. But in these small but important respects, it was one of the greatest experiences of my life. And as I’m struggling under the burden of real-life responsibilities today, forgive me for thinking that the best favor anyone could do for me would be to hit me with a bus.