pineapple cognition
The other week I went to a street festival, and I saw everyone walking around with a pineapple. The flesh of their pineapples had been removed and the resulting cavities filled with slushy beverages. Slices of that very same flesh ringed the side of the pineapple vessel. On a hot September day in Middle Tennessee, the allure of the pineapples was undeniable. The friend I attended the festival with remarked on the brilliance of pineapple marketing: once you see one you can’t help but notice them all, and immediately wonder where the source is. I fully fell for the trick, and intensely desired my little piece of everything that pineapple represented to me: relaxation, relief, festivity, freedom from obligation and the doldrums of quotidian life. My friend graciously waited in line with me at the drink kiosk, and finally my turn arrived to be transported to wherever I go in my mind when I’m smiling.
“What would you like to drink?”
“A piña colada.” Not the boozy kind, it wasn’t that kind of festival.
“And what kind of cup would you like that in?”
“The pineapple!” I felt like a cliché, but I’d kick myself if I went to Paris and didn’t do the Eiffel Tower just the one time, you know?
“That’ll be $30.”
I heard the number that the cashier said. I knew that even with the refill that came with the pineapple cup, I was functionally being charged $30 for a fruit and some convenience store slushy mix. I knew I could so easily say “nevermind, I’ll take a regular cup.” No one would be particularly inconvenienced. But I had already put the words into the universe. I already had us wait in this line so I could light up the part of my brain that responds to heavy handed signifiers of relaxation. My mind went absolutely blank, my smile didn’t waver for a second, and I handed over my credit card to be swiped. I took a sip of the glorified icee, holding tightly to its spiky vessel for which I paid thirty United States dollars. My disappointment was thorough and profound, but I managed not to let it show on my face. Disappointment in the drink. Disappointment in myself for purchasing it. Disappointment in the American healthcare system for making dental care so difficult to access, considering that I could feel my teeth rotting as I sipped.
As my friend and I strolled around the street fair and I kept sipping my drink trying desperately to convince myself there is some universe where it was worth it, I tried to understand how this happened. How could I make such a nonsensical decision knowing the entire time that it was nonsensical? What force stopped me from taking hold of reality and steering it in the direction I wished for it to go? Where exactly do I go when I’m the passenger in my own life? Who is driving?
That stupid pineapple sent me down a rabbit hole, considering my own life story and the set of experiences that would lead me to become someone that lets life happen to them, someone who forgoes agency in favor of passive acceptance. I think I have my small intestine to blame.
I’ve written pretty extensively about the various surgeries I’ve been through, so I won’t go into great detail here, but the gist of it is that I’ve got a pretty long and complicated medical history. When you’re in the hospital, as I have been so many times, you don’t really have a choice besides letting life happen to you. If you need a particular test run, you kinda have to get it. If you need a particular surgery, you kinda have to have it. You can say no, but you only hurt yourself in the end. Any control you appear to have over your own life is distressingly shallow and dissipates at the next thing your doctor orders. I can remember fleeting moments of true agency. Moments when I firmly told a doctor “yes” or “absolutely not”. But those were few and far between, and what does it mean to exist on an archipelago composed of isolated moments of sovereignty when the surrounding ocean’s vicissitudes could end life as I know it at any time? My doctors seemed to run the show, but in truth my own body ran the show, which was the scariest thing of all. It was an occurrence within my body that landed me in the predicament I was in, and I couldn’t get well until my body decided that’s what it wanted to do. I was in an adversarial position with the only body I’ve got. How dreadful it feels for the brain to want something that the body refuses to provide.
Perhaps I never fully moved past the passive voice. Or I suppose, the passive voice was never fully moved past by me. Could it be possible that my default mode was now riding shotgun while someone (or something) else drives?
I thought back to the moment I heard the price of the pineapple cup. I didn’t want to spend that money. But something felt inevitable. Unstoppable. Immutable. The blank space that took over my mind. The dulling of my thoughts. It dawned on me for the first time that that may have been the only way I survived the past decade. Chronic illness makes so many decisions for you. It can tell you who you are and what you’re capable of, if you let it. And no matter how much you insist, there will be some things that you simply cannot do. The imposed limitations, other people calling the shots, my body making me its enemy, all these things led me to make myself ever smaller. I was on a quest to take up the least space that I possibly could. With any luck I’d shrink and shrink and shrink until I disappear altogether, all my mass collapsing and forming an imperceptibly tiny black hole: all-consuming from my vantage point, but too minuscule for anyone else to care.
I reached the last dregs of the slushy, thinking of what its glycemic index must be before ejecting the thought from my mind. I knew I didn’t want a refill, even though I paid for it. The dental work would be much more expensive if I drank another. I tossed the pineapple. I stopped thinking about what I felt obligated to do, and thought about what I wanted. It fully hit me that with this realization, I was about to be on a long journey to taking up space. Letting people know what I want. There would be no early collapse to a black hole because I am a star that deserves to shine until its dying day. And even then, the resulting black hole will not be miniscule. The singularity left by my absence will be massive and impossible to ignore.
I paid $30 for a pineapple full of corn syrup. But I received potentially life-changing insight into my own psyche as well, so I think you could argue it was actually a steal.