Today I cried twice like a little baby. Big heavy wet tears, soaked cheeks, the whole pathetic nine yards. The first time I really let loose. A nurse couldn't find a vein in my right arm, so she kept pulling the needle out and sticking it back in, and sort of nosing it around a little, and then when she found it, pulling out my blood (which I need, to survive, apparently) and putting it away in a little vial and sending it off with a bunch of other little vials to determine if I am seriously sick (I'm not). Shit sucked. I don't like needles, I like getting tattooed to an extent, but I've never liked getting injections or getting blood drawn, I immediately start to sweat, I feel sick, light-headed, and all the stuff they asked me if I felt to begin with. So once again, in less than a week, I found myself crying in a hospital. Yeah, it hurt really bad, and the IV felt pretty lousy, and I could feel the fluid (all sorts of fluids!) moving up my arm and into my chest, and I sort of felt like Frodo when he got stabbed on Weathertop, but I also think I cried because I felt a little sorry for myself. Every time I get sick I miss my mom (I'm being serious), I miss having someone there to hold my hand and tell me it's going to be OKAY, I can't help it. Growing up, we find ourselves in these situations where it would be really nice to have someone around (or health insurance for that matter) and it feels harder when you're trying to do it all by yourself. I'm luckier than most people, I had a friend who drove me to the ER and sat there the whole time while I got stuck with needles and acted like a brat, and she didn't ask for anything in return (I took her to lunch anyway). Most people who are sick, or hurt, or really, really fucking sad have to be alone, they don't have anyone to turn to. I should be grateful, but sitting there feeling like I was going to puke on the nurse, I couldn't help it, I had to embrace the suckiness of the situation and let it in. Not my proudest moment. I probably won't go back to the hospital anytime soon, but I have lots of friends who have had to go over and over again without health insurance, and I can just imagine they cry like big babies too when they open their hospital bills. Really, you can't imagine opening a bill for $1,400 when you can't even afford to go get a cup of coffee. Friends of mine walk around with that weight on their shoulders all the time, and yeah, you could be a dick and call "first world problems" on all of that, but I think the moment of feeling really alone, of wanting help, that's the transcending moment for all of us, it's relatable, and it's a pretty big universal bummer.
I walked to work in the gloomy weather we've been having, black pea coat and black books. I felt high on IV drugs and thought maybe I'd make it a whole shift. Thankfully, again, someone covered my shift and I got to walk home almost immediately. House to myself, night off, fucked up on Benadryl, still feeling pretty shitty, so what did I do? Netflix. I watched X-Men and a one episode of Buffy and then I started browsing around (genre: romantic) and I found a possibly made-for-TV movie with Miley Cyrus called Last Song or maybe The Last Song or A Last Song, anyway, the description was something like "troubled teen spends summer with estranged father" and I watched it immediately. As a whole, complete garbage, but with just enough redeeming moments to keep me watching. Very cute teenagers meet each other and have a summer fling where they tell each other "I love you" after the first month (puke) and hold hands a lot on the beach. However, the twist to the movie is that the dad actually has cancer or some other life threatening disease, and the two bond after so many years apart, and somewhere before the last scene where they complete a piano sonnet together (not making this up) I started crying just like before; big wet tears and glistening eyes and puffy cheeks. Thankfully none of my roommates came home. I got up and washed my face in the bathroom and told myself, "it's just a movie." Back on the sofa, five minutes later, I had snot and salt covering my face. How did I get to this point? Have I reached a new epitome of self-pity, or am I just too full of empathy to function? At the end of the movie, after the funeral, the boy decides to go to college in the town where the girl lives, and I went back into the bathroom, and threw up.
*Plato. I know this quote shows up A LOT in blogs, zines, my mom's emails, et cetera, but I think it's mildly overused because of its simplicity. Life sucks for a lot of people, and no one should assume anyone has it easy. I'm all for people taking care of their problems on their own, and being independent, and not wallowing in bullshit, but I also think it's important to be kind to people, especially the woman serving you coffee in the morning, or the mailman, or the kid at the punk rock show with no friends. You never know who just spent most of the day crying behind closed doors.
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