No 5: SILLY ALIEN MACHINES

PHOTO BY SHELBY ORASKOVICH

LUCIA AUERBACH

[photo above taken shortly after surgery]

I am lying alone in a spaceship. Needles attached to long, thin, clear tubes protrude from the veins of my inner elbow. Metal surrounds my head and holds it tightly in place, and a tiny mirror dangles above my forehead so I can see my toes. A foreign sense of warmth floods around my body, disguised as comfort. Sounds of propulsion zoom past my head. My body lies motionless with only my thoughts and dreams running. Dreams of being a sailor with an orange rain cap, fighting off storms, and sailing away. Dreams of owning a bakery in Spain, selling pastries, and organizing flower beds. Dreams of being a spy in bespoke clothes, fighting off domestic threats while hiding in plain sight.

I began receiving routine MRIs during the spring of 2018 when I was diagnosed with Ameloblastoma, a rare and barely understood tumor in my lower right jaw. This anomalous tumor has the power to disintegrate bones, dissolve teeth, and metastasize throughout the body, leaving its host with half a face. The thinning of my jaw had already begun, leaving it weak and brittle. The doctors warned me of a loss of appetite and feeling in my lips, but they didn’t warn me about the inversion of my worldview.

When you’re in an MRI, doctors tell you not to move any part of your body, not even your head. There are no distractions. No magazines to flip through, no social media to engage with, no clubs to join or debates to win. Your body is immobile but your thoughts run free. MRIs are isolating and lonely, but they gave me the space I needed to reflect. It didn’t take long for my dreams to outgrow the bounds of that cramped capsule.

I would return to school after an MRI with an alien orange band around my arm, a reminder of the previous hours. I’d focus on the Lewis structure of radon for chemistry or my Affirmative Constructive speech for Policy Debate, but now those were only pieces of the puzzle I was thinking about. I had become borderline obsessed with the power of thought. Every person perceives life differently, and from our own experiences, we create our own parallel universes. I began to wonder if there were other people, in their spaceships, imagining their worlds. I immediately wanted to know them all. But, how could I gather all of these unique, authentic worlds together?

I started SILLY GAL, an online literary magazine for anyone who identifies as female. It provides a platform for people to convene from their spaceships and to celebrate one another. For months leading up to the release, I sat at my computer screen in the dark and listened to at least 19 movie soundtracks as I visualized how SILLY GAL could be born. I recruited the most talented artists I knew from all over the country and told them that I would consider art whatever they considered art. SILLY GAL embodies what I found in the MRIs: a fusion of strength and vulnerability, a desire to listen and discover one another, and a deep passion for equal representation in this world.

I am now two years clear of Ameloblastoma, and SILLY GAL has twenty six volumes published and is still growing. I don’t have MRIs as often as I used to, and most bizarrely, I am starting to miss them. MRIs aren’t medical devices at all; they’re vessels for transformation. In my MRI, my spaceship, I steered myself to the world I wanted to live in.

this is why I think pink

the world is not granted to those who desire it

I think pink to remember the good

and the good fight.

boy did I fight hard