The full moon last night is kicking my ass. I’m puffy with water retention and find myself being forced to accept that people are gonna let me down sometimes. I’m walking around with a ball of rage in my belly while my head simultaneously understands and empathizes. it’s disconcerting and I believe there are a couple of glasses of wine looming in the very near future.
Upside, I got a “psychic” reading from the fabulous Shirley Southerland yesterday and she reassured me that all is going according to plan and that the upheaval of the last year and a half were necessary to make room for what’s coming. I’m supposed to stop beating myself up, enjoy the moment and quit overthinking everything to the point of paralysis. Lord. What is this mysterious “enjoying the moment” that you speak of?
So I’ve got a lump in my breast. And typically me, I didn’t even think to ask Shirley about it. I don’t think it’s anything and the only reason I’m blogging it is because the ensuing conversations were pretty funny. Please don’t email me that I’m being flippant about cancer, that is not the case.
Cancer doesn’t run in my family and my doctor thinks it’s probably a small fibroid. I rarely check my breasts and work hard to ignore all mammogram recommendations because it’s a rotten procedure that makes me both giggle and squawk in agony. I know I’m fine, but I happened to check myself before seeing my fabulous and funny little Chinese gyno who insists I visit her for regular check ups before she’ll hand out the lovely hormones I depend upon in order not to kill people. And I found a small knot in the side of my left boob. When I mentioned it she felt it for herself and then puffed up to her full 5′ 2″ height and insisted I behave like a proper adult and go get some prescribed titty torture in the medieval mashing machine.
I freaked for about two hours. I thought, really, I need this right now? I already live in a constant fever pitch of inner drama when there’s nothing dramatic happening. It’s exhausting. People think I’m grounded because I’m great in emergencies and emit a weird calming energy for others. Completely untrue. It’s constant chaos inside this bad, bad brain.
When I’m happy, I find myself flying. In the rare moments that I felt good when I was young I would imagine giant black lace wings coming out of my shoulders, carrying me through the day, just high as can be on life. In adulthood there have been moments when I’ve walked the streets late at night actually hoping to be murdered, obliterated, wiped off the planet like an insect, leaving only a bloody smear on the pavement to be washed away by the dirty rain. It’s not wanting to die exactly; more like wanting to cease to exist, cease to feel. I still look up at tall buildings on some nights and imagine flying off into oblivion.
I am not bipolar or depressed. I am too lazy for that kind of commitment. It’s more a heightened dark sense of drama and humor that’s been there since birth. Everything looks like a movie to me. My favorite book in the 6th grade was Jane Eyre. I imagined my 11 year old self in those austere locations–misunderstood, suffering from an overabundance of feelings in a cold, hard world. Wednesday Addams in a 1970”s world full of Farrah Fawcetts.
God bless my poor mother for her infinite patience with her children, because my sister is equally ridiculous. She got sick a few years back with a buildup of yeast in her system from too many hardcore antibiotics and had to cease eating anything with wheat or sugar, which pretty much just leaves vegetables. She lost it completely and spent a hysterical week sobbing that she was going to starve to death while simultaneously stuffing herself with cucumber slices that she carried around everwhere in Tupperware, like a cold, plastic blankie. You could barely understand her declarations of dangerous hunger because her mouth was so full. And she, like me, loves to send out long, dramatic texts when drunk or ill.
Upside, I got a “psychic” reading from the fabulous Shirley Southerland yesterday and she reassured me that all is going according to plan and that the upheaval of the last year and a half were necessary to make room for what’s coming. I’m supposed to stop beating myself up, enjoy the moment and quit overthinking everything to the point of paralysis. Lord. What is this mysterious “enjoying the moment” that you speak of?
So I’ve got a lump in my breast. And typically me, I didn’t even think to ask Shirley about it. I don’t think it’s anything and the only reason I’m blogging it is because the ensuing conversations were pretty funny. Please don’t email me that I’m being flippant about cancer, that is not the case.
Cancer doesn’t run in my family and my doctor thinks it’s probably a small fibroid. I rarely check my breasts and work hard to ignore all mammogram recommendations because it’s a rotten procedure that makes me both giggle and squawk in agony. I know I’m fine, but I happened to check myself before seeing my fabulous and funny little Chinese gyno who insists I visit her for regular check ups before she’ll hand out the lovely hormones I depend upon in order not to kill people. And I found a small knot in the side of my left boob. When I mentioned it she felt it for herself and then puffed up to her full 5′ 2″ height and insisted I behave like a proper adult and go get some prescribed titty torture in the medieval mashing machine.
I freaked for about two hours. I thought, really, I need this right now? I already live in a constant fever pitch of inner drama when there’s nothing dramatic happening. It’s exhausting. People think I’m grounded because I’m great in emergencies and emit a weird calming energy for others. Completely untrue. It’s constant chaos inside this bad, bad brain.
When I’m happy, I find myself flying. In the rare moments that I felt good when I was young I would imagine giant black lace wings coming out of my shoulders, carrying me through the day, just high as can be on life. In adulthood there have been moments when I’ve walked the streets late at night actually hoping to be murdered, obliterated, wiped off the planet like an insect, leaving only a bloody smear on the pavement to be washed away by the dirty rain. It’s not wanting to die exactly; more like wanting to cease to exist, cease to feel. I still look up at tall buildings on some nights and imagine flying off into oblivion.
I am not bipolar or depressed. I am too lazy for that kind of commitment. It’s more a heightened dark sense of drama and humor that’s been there since birth. Everything looks like a movie to me. My favorite book in the 6th grade was Jane Eyre. I imagined my 11 year old self in those austere locations–misunderstood, suffering from an overabundance of feelings in a cold, hard world. Wednesday Addams in a 1970”s world full of Farrah Fawcetts.
God bless my poor mother for her infinite patience with her children, because my sister is equally ridiculous. She got sick a few years back with a buildup of yeast in her system from too many hardcore antibiotics and had to cease eating anything with wheat or sugar, which pretty much just leaves vegetables. She lost it completely and spent a hysterical week sobbing that she was going to starve to death while simultaneously stuffing herself with cucumber slices that she carried around everwhere in Tupperware, like a cold, plastic blankie. You could barely understand her declarations of dangerous hunger because her mouth was so full. And she, like me, loves to send out long, dramatic texts when drunk or ill.
It’s gotta be genetic.
So I trudged to Chinatown in the hot sun for a bout of truly vicious mammograming and ice-cold sonogramming. As I lay there waiting for the last frigid and greasy sonogram on my beleaguered and by all reports lumpy left boob, I ran everything through to the worst conclusion. Double mastectomy, no hair, blogging tediously about my “journey”, until the final days–my long-suffering friends enjoying my meds (you’re welcome) as I lay in the hospital emaciated, haggard, incoherent, unloved and dying after living a dissipated and self-absorbed existence in which not much was accomplished.
This simply would not do. I am no hero. Suicide would clearly be the order of the day. But how? Jump off that building I’m always eyeing? Roller coasters make me cry and my feet tingle when I look over balcony railings. Carbon monoxide in a garage with a car running? Who do I know with a garage and a car in New York? No one. Okay, I do know a shit ton of former junkies. Drug overdose, heroin probably the easiest to procure! But how much? And that means I’ll have to quickly learn how to inject myself. Hmmm…
I called Drew, who let’s just say had more than a passing acquaintance with substances during his youth.
“Hey. I have a lump in my boob and I’m probably dying.”
He played along, because he knows the insanity better than anyone. “You can’t lose your boobs, they’re your best feature. And you’re annoying enough when you have a cold.”
Me: “I KNOW. So I might have to kill myself, and I figure drugs are easiest, and since you’re no stranger, to…ah…substances, I’m gonna need your help.”
Drew: “Well, if you get to kill yourself with dope, then I get to do it too! I’m fucking tired!”
Me: “Okay, that’s fine, but you’re buying.”
Drew: “That makes no sense. If you’re dying who cares who pays?”
Me: “I’m the one whose DYING! I DIE, you BUY!’
Drew: “You really are a jerk. it’s about time God finally smote you.”
Sam, my too young and completely under-equipped to handle my brand of crazy new boyfriend said, God bless him–“You know I’ll be there for you if it’s something.”
I said, “No way. This would be way too much for you.”
He waved his palm in my direction and said, “This whole…ah…”thing” is too much for me.”
I called my sister and told her my plan and she informed me that she has three little titanium pieces in her breasts from lumps that were biopsied and benign and that according to her doctor our family is genetically predisposed to “dense breasts”.
She then said, “Soooo, just saying suicide might be a little extreme. Think of all the good wig options.”
To which I replied, “Hmm…I do like a good wig…But still. I will not be a positive role model. I’ll be terrible and whiney and overly dramatic and it will be a huge torture for all of my friends.”
She said, “You’re already whiney and overly dramatic and torture your friends. You’d just be doing it in a wig.”
I said, “Eh. I guess it could be all right, as long as I don’t end up crying and eating cucumber slices.”
She sighed and said, “I was DYING of starvation. It was a TRAGIC SITUATION.”
So I guess we’re all good. Business as usual. I’ll keep you posted.
MISS ANTHROPE'S HOUSE OF HIGH DRAMA 
Love You
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I can totally relate to paragraphs 6 & 7. Part of the reasons why I gave up on dating in 2000/2001.
xo, R
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My goddess we are family…
1st, I'm not making much sense, because I haven't sept in almost 48 hours, yeah…, fucking moon in Aries!
I'm laughing to myself, because I can't comment on Facebook, and don't even know if you will see this.
I'm in Facebook jail for guess what? A boob! A classy, 1933 George Hurell boob. I posted it in 2011?
Saturday, I DJed a great Q&A and installation with Ann Magnuson, as part of a feminist exhibit at an art Gallery in the state with the silent “”c” … maybe some radical bitch looked me up and reported my photo?
We do the same exact thing! Happy go lucky I'll do anything for you because I love you shit.
I don't think the world has a fucking clue what that entails…. You churn and feel everything inside just like I do. Sucks right?
I just doused your picture with my pendulum. You do not have cancer! Your energy is very strong.
I'm so,amazed at how closely I related to this very feminine post, but I have all of those same private, dark feelings all the time too, with a smile on my face!
I love you so much, I hope this works my dear sister…..
Douglas
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In case you need to reconnect with that 11 year old: http://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/charlotte-bronte
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