Welcome to the Jungle
Technically, I found this image with the search term “rainforest,” not “jungle,” but there’s no catchy song lyric worth telling the truth here. Come at me, David Attenborough. Also technically, this post has nothing to do with the jungle or the rainforest. It’s a metaphor, duh. Figurative language is such a nice way to make others think what follows has much more depth than its true form: lofty lessons learned from a visit to the ER.
For some backdrop, last month I had nose surgery to shave down something called turbinates. Basically, the aim was to help me breathe better. All was going well until twelve days post-surgery, when I leaned over my bed and watched as red started dropping onto my white duvet cover. Long story short (and to spare those of you who cannot stomach bodily fluids outside the body), I ended up in the ER at Bellevue for six hours. It was one of the most traumatic days of my life.
Let’s introduce the jungle now. Imagine you are in the middle of a boundless, noisy, dense jungle, full of strange creatures and plants that could kill you if they wanted to (and some do). Now imagine you are in the middle of that jungle and your nose starts to bleed profusely, like a faucet far beyond a trickle. Then imagine the trees part and the sun shines through on an army-ant-free path that leads straight into the ER of a first-rate medical institution, with some cute EMTs as escorts. This last development is what it felt like to have my roommate just a panicked holler away, with her blood-free hands to call 911 and pat me on the back.
But let’s rewind, and now imagine you’ve started bleeding, in the middle of this boundless, noisy, dense, malicious jungle, and no path appears. You’re just bleeding onto the panther-trodden leaf matter and wondering why it won’t stop. Maybe if you’re abnormal you know which fern to mash up and clot the blood. But if you’re like the rest of us, welcome to adulthood.
Urban centers like New York City often get compared to jungles, but the truth is, anywhere can feel like a jungle if it’s new and teeming with people struggling to make life’s biggest decisions. Once you leave the nest, you fly beyond any familiar paths through the underbrush and are forced to wield a machete to make s**t happen.
My trip to the ER was eye-opening not in the least because I was actually bleeding out of my eye (sorry). It was eye-opening because it presented the possibility that the next time something scary or unknown was to happen, the next time I found myself faced with a new challenge of adulthood, I might be facing it solo.
How would I have handled the situation had I started hemorrhaging all alone? I am sure I would have grabbed my phone, run to the bathroom, and eventually called 911. But in the moment, it was nice to have someone else’s head doing the thinking. Perhaps I had been stranded somewhere far uptown during Ida and been unable to return home. How would I have handled it?
My family seems to ding me on my street smarts quite often, but I have a little more faith in my own abilities than they do. Regardless, when you are standing alone in the jungle, and the tree above you is suddenly lit with a thousand pairs of eyes, what do you do? In the jungle, as in adulthood, each instance is another of unpreparedness. You need to think on your feet, roll with the punches, watch out for that tree, etc.
As Axl says, the jungle has fun and games. Adulthood is awesome in that it means you can choose play over work or carelessness over caution any day, as long as you accept the consequences. But as Axl also makes clear, the jungle can enjoy watching you bleed. This is something I learned very literally. It’s something we will all learn, likely the hard way, and likely more than once.
On that note, however, I will disagree with Axl that each day in the jungle gets worse. Because with each thorny vine to be macheted, each predator to evade or nosebleed to stop up, we’re learning how to adult. We’re getting better at this thing called living, and even when presented with new challenges (as we always will be), we’ll be more comfortable with making any necessary adaptations to wriggle free and move on.
I want to end here with another appropriate quote from the GNR classic that holds up this entry. I thought “you’re gonna die” would be nice and honest, though maybe isn’t to the point. So I’m going with “you can taste the bright lights, but you won’t get there for free.” Eventually, you will find that path through the boundless, noisy, dense, malicious jungle, but you won’t make it through without a few scratches, some oozing bug bites, and perhaps a brush with hypothermia. There are going to be so many things you don’t know how to deal with and have to face alone, but we’re all living in this jungle together. We’re (mostly) Clothed and Afraid. But know that even if you have to eat a few squirrels to find your way (and I’m learning this, too), it will be okay.