“It’s like every time I sneeze, I am one sneeze away from the hospice.”
Vicki, Reality Bites
Fuck I loved that movie. Still do. It was one of the ones I overwatched in my late teens. Back when we had to rent movies from video stores. My buddy Josh worked at the one movie place in my small town, Superstar Video and I got away with keeping True Romance for way too long. I think I finally just bought it. Maybe I kept it so long so he’d call and remind me to return it. Who knows.
You’re so cool
Funny, the song from the end of the credits just came on my playlist. I downloaded it yesterday and I cried for some reason. It isn’t even shark week and I have been in my fucking feelings. I used to make everyone in the room shut up so I could hear the beginning of the song at the end. Two Hearts by Chris Isaac.
After my miscarriage it was Cold Mountain and Garden State. Both showcased Natalie Portman crying in her brilliant, contagious way and the word conundrum. I love the way she says it. You Will Be My Ain True Love still thunderpunches me in the heart. Found that out yesterday too, Spotify thinks it’s fun to make me cry. I had to wait to the end of Garden State to hear Let Go by Frou Frou. I watched them every day on repeat for 3 months. I had gotten fired so I couldn’t afford to buy them, so I just ran up the late charges instead. Maybe if Josh had worked at the Bloor and Dufferin Blockbuster he could have called me up and pulled me out of my funk, but he didn’t.
A kid named Mike worked there, years before the miscarriage, he chased me in the rain one time to get my phone number after I had rented a movie from him. He said he didn’t want to be creepy and get it from my membership info. It was hella romantic. I was 22.
But that’s not what this is about.
Jumbo Video in Timmins probably got a whole minimum wage 40+ hour a week paycheque so I could listen to Ethan Hawke tell Winona Ryder he had a planet of regret sitting on his chest about how he left her after they fucked. I rented that over and over and brought it back late often.
Oddly, that was a long running reality for me.
Meet a dude, date a lil bit, sleep together for a while and suddenly, without warning they were ‘out the door before the condom came off’. See blockbuster boy above.
Fun times.
And invariably they would show back up all carrying their own planets of regret. A parade of Atlases shrugging. And I would have to decide if I wanted to let them back in the house. I ran into Mike at a bar years later, he apologized profusely. I didn’t take him home.
You get what you ask for and then you realize you have to get better at asking.
Ain’t that the truth. Sure chasing me in the rain was romantic, as was him falling to his knees and begging my forgiveness in a dingy bar. But I don’t want grand romantic gestures with no substance in the middle. I lived 3 years wondering what I did wrong just to find out it wasn’t me. That is movie life, it isn’t real. Montages don’t exist. Just falling and healing and more falling with a few movie moments in between.
That isn’t what this is about either.
Hello time bomb, ready to go off ~ Matt Good Band
During the whole “is it Lyme disease, my tit or bone cancer” debacle of October past, I had to go for an ECG. They found suspicion of left ventricular hypertrophy.
One of the walls of my heart is down with the thickness.
Maybe.
It’s just a maybe based on a quick picture of my heart.
As a result, I am hyper aware of my heartbeat. And the last 24 hours it has been a-beating and a-fluttering something awful. Every other thump freaks me out, “is this it, am I done?”
I am sure I am fine. I have naturally low blood pressure, I eat like a saint, I quit smoking and I have been almost sober for over a year now, hey, 53 weeks. Yay me.
The weird miracle here is that if I hadn’t gotten so insanely sore driving back from SJ and gone to the doc to figure out what was wrong, I never would have been misdiagnosed with one thing and figured out the other things that are wrong.
That rash trip I took this summer to tie up loose ends and move forward with my life got me where I am right now.
It’s my tit by the way. None of the other 6 things they tested me for, and I knew it. As sad as it is, my good tit is The thing that is making me hurt all over. Making me feel 84 years old some mornings getting out of bed. Making my shoulders feel like they are dislocated and my hip feel like it is constantly in the wrong place unless I am face down in an awkward yoga pose. I never had Lyme disease, but I took my meds just in case and my face was pretty for a bit, tetracycline kills Lyme bacteria and acne it seems. I knew that but was still tickled by the results. Medicine done and the bumps are back. I’ll figure out what to do about that later. I have tanning to do and a life to plan.
The heart thing is vexing. It might be the same as the Lyme.
We think you have a thing but we’re gonna run 57 more tests just to tell you you don’t have the thing.
My doctor was funny when he cleared me of Lyme.
“Why did we test you for that again?”
“Because I asked you too. I knew it was my boob, but we had to prove what it wasn’t, remember?”
“Oh ya ya, smart girl. Thank you for telling me.”
He said that a lot. He is an urgent care doc, I had to fill him in on my vast medical history as we went along. He always responded “Okay, thank you for telling me.” And then went back to whatever he was doing or scribbling. And he never once got upset that I did some research on my own. Good dude.
Almost smart.
I didn’t research enough to realize that silicone migration could actually trigger a false positive, just thought the symptoms were identical, and they are.
Yep. Smart-ish girl with a potentially broken heart. And half the answers I need.
I told Attica what was happening, and she said, “oh no, does that mean you could die of a broken heart?”
Technically, yes.
Although if that were an actual threat, I’d be long gone.
I break my heart all the time.
I used to anyways.
I used to carry aspirin in my purse in case someone had a heart attack. I hung out with a lot of drug dealers and cokeheads; the threat was real. Turns out I needed it too. Maybe. Still haven’t gotten the next tests yet. I always worry about other’s hearts before my own.
I think it is high time I worry about mine.
My messy, oversized (now thicc too apparently), pink bubble cloud of an all-encompassing stubborn heart.
The kind of heart the universe falls in love with.
I almost broke my heart today. I had the option of staying safe and just keeping doing what I am doing, or I could let her parade out onto my sleeve and say what was on my mind and take the risk of being rejected.
Clincher is, it wouldn’t have broken my heart had the answer been no.
I’m not that girl anymore.
I spent a couple weeks mentally preparing and truly looking at all the fear factors, the possible outcomes and not only did I learn a lot about myself and my past, but I attained this level of enlightenment where I accepted all of the possible answers to my question.
Things only affect your life if you let them; and any loss you feel that involved another person is just you mourning a future that hadn’t come to fruition yet.
I don’t know what my future is. I have to deal with my tit and my heart before I can make any grand leaps forward. But I have an idea.
If you would like to support me in my folly I get $4 every time someone buys my book.
And you know it’s going to lead to some pretty amazing blog posts if I make a big leap of faith, so win win win.
American Kindle link here
