Cassandra Craig

A friend once asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks. Not externally. Internally. I am a highly verbal person inwardly, and while the conversation continued around me, another one had already begun in my head. Earlier that day I had been cataloging the various grievances I believed had been inflicted upon me by another person I had once counted as a friend. After listening patiently for some time, my friend asked: “Why exactly do you need closure?” At first, the answer seemed self-evident.

The steel cage door slams shut. Its metallic echo reverberates through the arena, a warning bell for a contest already decided by those selling tickets. Under the harsh lights stands the patient. Thin, weary, clutching a stack of medical records instead of weapons. Across the cage wait towering opponents. Corporate health systems, their muscles swollen with profits and policies. Government regulations, thick rulebooks wrapped around their fists.

I grew up as the son of a dead Air Force officer who made the ultimate sacrifice for his country. In Boston in the 1970s, that lineage didn’t shield me. It marked me. I walked around with a crewcut, government-issued BCG glasses (“birth-control glasses,” as every military kid knew), and a stubborn refusal to follow the crowd. That was enough to get me spat on more than once. Those moments didn’t make me bitter. They made me strong.