The Things We Bear
The vitamÃn aisle at CVS became my sanctuary after Mom's diagnosis. I stood there reading labels, convinced I could decode the secret to outrunning genetics. If I took enough D3, enough B12, enough of whatever promised cellular resilience, maybe I wouldn't end up like her — a woman who looked at her own daughter with the polite confusion of a stranger.
"You look like you're solving for x, " a man said beside me. He was holding a bottle of fish oil with the same intensity I'd given the vitamin C.
"Just prophylactic optimism, " I said. "My mother has early-onset Alzheimer's. I'm thirty-two."
The words still felt foreign in my mouth. I'd only started saying them aloud two weeks ago.
He nodded, something shifting in his face. "My brother died last year. OD. I still catch myself reaching for my phone to tell him shit. " He gestured at the supplements. "I keep thinking if I find the right combination, I can metabolize the grief out of my system. "
We moved to the coffee shop next door. His name was Marcus. He had hands that trembled slightly when he wasn't holding something and a laugh that sounded like it had been used hard. We talked about the things we bore — the legacies that sat in our cells like uninvited guests, the family histories we'd inherited without consent.
"My dad, " Marcus said, "had this saying. 'Blood tells.' Like it was some sage wisdom instead of a threat."
"My mom used to read my palm when I was scared, " I said. "She'd trace my life line and promise me it was long, promising. Now she doesn't remember how to hold my hand."
We met there for weeks. The vitamin aisle rendezvous became a strange ritual. We compared notes on therapy, on the way friends stopped asking how we were doing after the first month, on the exhausting performance of being fine.
Then one Tuesday, Marcus didn't show up.
I waited. Then I waited some more. A week passed. Two. The CVS employees started giving me looks when I stood alone in the supplement section, reading labels I'd memorized long ago.
I never learned what happened. Whether he moved. Whether his grief became too loud to sit with. Whether he found what he needed somewhere else.
Sometimes I think about how easily we become each other's Sphinx — riddles someone else carries for a while before setting down. How we show our stripped selves to strangers in fluorescent-lit rooms, how we bear witness to each other's broken places, and how sometimes — most times — that's all it is. A moment. A witness. A cat that crosses your path and keeps moving.
I still take the vitamins. I still read the labels. But I've stopped trying to solve for x. Some equations just want to be witnessed, not solved.