Thursday, April 17, 2014

Report from Pillville: Pillville Squared

The man who loves me has been in the hospital all week for a myriad of reasons relating to his chemo and radiation. It's felt like this around here:


And it would be swell if some giraffes or trapeze artists swept through here about now.

But instead my mom and I had an encounter with a man walking his personal mental health high wire in the podiatrist's office. He swept in without an appointment in a cloud of perfume wearing an obvious coating of make-up, talking about his gout and how he needed to get it taken care of before he was sent off to active duty in a submarine to deal with Putin, which he was entirely well-suited for because he was in an elite unit that was super-secret and had more expertise than the Navy Seals---AND he was a marksman/sniper. And the poor guy has cancer with metastases and has to have chemo, but the Army needs him. He kept telling my mom she looked like she was17, and that they should waltz.  Oh, and he played classical violin, but he was happy, too, as a rock musician. Holy shit.

And if that didn't make my hair stand on end, my entire do stretched to the ceiling when the doctor got out the sharp instruments, and I suddenly came to my goddamn senses and realized her INR (this has to do with blood coagulation) levels had for some reason skyrocketed  (which I had just discovered when I returned home and tested her while juggling (more circus imagery)  my lunch after visiting the man) and I divulged that to the podiatrist who very gingerly clipped her toenails and sent us home.

And all the way home I pondered my lack of humanity and how I must perform these days as the Amazing Woman Who Must Split Herself in Two. Step right up and watch me kill the emotional me while the administrative me is a fucking assassin filling out forms and searching the Internet, but don't ask me to smile at you.

And if I told you I once saw my dead father in my kitchen (no, not his ghost, but him in the flesh) or that I spent 10 months encased in a plaster body cast, or that I once let a North African immigrant pick me (and a friend) up in a Paris train station because we were penniless, and that we rode out to les banilieus with him and that he made us dinner and didn't rape us and that the only running water was in the courtyard of his apartment complex and that I still remember his name, or that I once spoke, through an amazing coincidence, to the son I gave up for adoption when I dialed information because he worked for the phone company, or that I auditioned for a crappy TV show singing and juggling while wearing a bikini, or that I saw the entire main street of my college town burst into flame because the moon set it on fire and everything merged into oneness, would you think I  was crazy. No doubt, right? The line is thin sometimes, dear readers, and I hope this man was actually "crazy" and does not have cancer. Because cancer is a bitch. And so am I. But so is mental illness. And I don't want that for him either.

So I made spaghetti for dinner for my mom and me. Spaghetti is comforting. And I feel comforted. We talked about Chelsea Clinton and how she is pregnant, and we both expressed our wishes that Hilary does not go all grandma on us and still runs for president. And that was fun spaghetti for the head. Spaghetti. Confetti. Giacometti. For some silly reason, I now feel like rhyming.

this is me
And in contemplating the passing of Gabriel Garcia Marquez this evening, I think it is worth noting that sometimes life is actually both magical and real. Really.

5 comments:

N2 said...

Carry on spinning gold out of the crazy events of your days, Dear Denise. We are listening. x0 N2

Ms. Moon said...

Nope. I do not think you are crazy at all. Well, no more than the crazy all of us are. I think you are full of life and memories of true-things-that-really-happened and still living a life of true-things-that-really-happen and I loved this post.

Anonymous said...

And all the way home I pondered my lack of humanity and how I must perform these days as the Amazing Woman Who Must Split Herself in Two. Step right up and watch me kill the emotional me while the administrative me is a fucking assassin filling out forms and searching the Internet, but don't ask me to smile at you.

THIS. It has been me for several weeks now. I feel you and enjoy your writing.

37paddington said...

I was going to say I cannot imagine what this feels like, but actually I can, and I am glad you can write it down, with such poetry and humanity, and find comfort in a bowl of spaghetti with your mom and in the memory of things that are not in any way crazy but just proof that you are a magical being, and real.

I hope things get a little easier soon. For you, your mom, and the man who loves you. It's a lot. My God, it's a lot. I am here, bearing witness, wishing I could do more.

janzi said...

such fluidity in your words that conjure up all the pain and quiet desperation that you are feeling at this time... and its quite right that you do, you feel so, and say so, and that is right....thank you for sharing, we all have a myriad of things to do,just to keep living and sane... and I am sure that you are worried to death about your lover and then your mum....what a terrible thing to have to split into two to cope... keep writing your words and they will help you...plus all the energy we can send you over the ether waves... hugs and thoughts to help along... you are not alone, we are here for you....janzi