Last night started well enough…I had a decent day, got a facial for free from my old place of business, M Spa. I also got them to wax my arms to save myself from the pain of having that plastic taped pulling my arms hairs out by the root when they start shoving A lines and Ivs into my arms next week. In prep for my party time surgery. My coumadin nurse made me a little more wary of this coming surgery. I mean, yeah, technically I know how complicated and risky it is. But she started mentioning not being able to go anywhere for three weeks, being in bed and bla blah. And she told me that going back to MA was a bad idea, if not just for the distance from the surgeons but for the fact that they will be sending me my very own home nurse to help me get around and shower and “prepare meals’ and all of that good shit.
It’s too bad our technology hasn’t advanced to great levels just yet. If my internal organs didn’t have to be exposed to normal filthy air for so long, recovery would be a snap.
Anyways–I went to see MW play last night with E–all with my frisky Crew sticker stuck haphazardly across my left leg. They put on a killer show, par usual. Saw a bunch of people, harvested some pity points I guess.
Later on as E and I were talking I started getting pissed. Really pissed. I have this jealousy complex with other people. I get jealous of what I deem simple easy roads people have in their travels to get what they want. Mostly everyone actually. E tends to have lots of people around him making lots of money, having done all of the right things, having had the good opportunities. It makes a sour ass like myself pissed off that everything has to be so fucking hard, that I don’t even have control over my own body to just chill out and give me some space away from being sick and taking lots of medication for long enough to really know what it is I want to do, and how I would like to spend my time in this life. So we fight sometimes about it, and I realize I am wrong to be so concerned with what everyone else is doing. And getting angry that everyone else isn’t sick and having to deal with heart surgery interrupting their efforts to achieve their dreams.
And then he says to me, something about good people deserving good things happening to them because they worked hard for it. And do I expect that just because I have had a hard life, should I expect shit to just fall in my lap? That that is just pity, and everyone gets help, and how miserable I would be watching everyone else get what they want while I sit here all wrapped up in self-loathing. That if I expect that I deserve to have good stuff happen because I have been through so much fucking garbage, that it wouldn’t be worth it. That I wouldn’t have worked for it.
So I sat there, really pissed off, as he had made a good point. And I threw an inner tantrum where I considered the effortlessness it would have taken at that moment to pound some ten penny nails into my eye sockets. And how pissed off everyone would be, and what a waste things would have been to these doctors who had saved my life if I did absolutely nothing about anything.
And then it struck me. I don’t believe in god. I really wished that I did sometimes. But, the fact that I don’t believe in god or karma or anything like that made my line of thinking a complete wash. I’m sitting there just like I did when I was younger, thinking “all of the pretty girls now will be ugly later. and all of us ugly girls now will be pretty later” (though a lot of the pretty girls then weren’t all that when I saw them last). Like, all of the people who have had a cake time will have a hard time later, and the fact that I’ve paid my dues so young, will make my life easier later. Like there is someone doling out experiences to even out the experiences an individual has had in their life already, to balance things out. There is no such thing as that. It’s a complete fairy tale, that shit works out for some people for a reason. Shit is always happening, because something has to happen. There is no rhyme or reason to any of it. God doesn’t kill 200,000+ people in Indonesia and Thailand because they earned it.
Bad things just happens, no matter what you try to do to steer it your way. You can only control your actions. Not even your body, just your actions. And I have been sitting around with my thumb up my ass for years.
It also has more validation than thinking if I close my eyes real hard and pray for a fucking pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that I will get one. Thinking like that will leave me sadly disappointed.
So the moral of the story is you have to make your own pot of gold. No one is helping me. Francis and my birth father gave me money to help me out. My birth mother took care of me for the first week and a half. I sent an email asking for positive thoughts. But honestly, at the end of the day, no one is going to be buying me groceries or bailing me out of debt. I am getting food stamps tomorrow and SSI to help with this shit. But it’s all on my shoulders. Making it through the surgery is mostly my energy, with accompanying good thoughts to carry me through. As I said to someone recently, having 80 people thinking highly of you and sending you good energy to help you is better than having 80 people wishing you were dead. But when it’s over and I’m chilling out at home with my rib cage freshly wired shut, I have nobody to count on but me. Because, as a wise man once said to me a long long time ago—we come in alone, and we go out alone.
It’s what you do in between that’s all up to you.
April 13, 2006 at 10:21 pm
Dear Francis,
This is one of the most brilliant, insightful, graceful, honest, and well-written pieces I have ever read from you.
You’ve gone through more than anyone I’ve ever known, and in spite of all the hardship and pain, you continue to progress and grow and evolve into an ever-more-amazing human being…and in fact you are the person in this world I most look up to and admire. You are intelligent, strong, independent, kind, generous, brave, and thoughtful.
You possess so many of the qualities (grace, diplomacy, empathy and concern for others, decency, kindness, generosity, patience, maturity…) that wish I possessed, and when I think of becoming a better person, I think of becoming more like you.
You’ve been a role-model, a parent, a sister, a best friend to me for 10 years.
You’ve listened attentively even when I’m talking about total crap. You’ve tolerated (time and time again) my oversized, swollen desperately-needs-to-be-downsized ego. You’ve patiently forgiven my shortcomings and mistakes. You taught me how to cook and do the laundry. You taught me…you still teach me…what it means to be human.
I am grateful to have met you and even more grateful to have become and remained a part of your life.
And I love you more than anyone else on this earth.
Yours Always,
This Francis
April 13, 2006 at 11:49 pm
jimmimy crickets
I like a sticky wicket.
Though no, really. I just liked the way that rhymed.
Thanks, Francis. I can only tell you how absolutely frustrating and mortifying it was to realize he was right last night. I wanted to simultaneously fill up all of my syringes with Lovenox and inject them into my ass and punch him in the face, all at the same time.
Then the whole god thing struck me. E was saying for someone who doesn’t believe in god, you sure do blame him a lot. And I told him it obviously wasn’t personal. It’s just the way things were.
And I’d say, at least I’m not ugly, right? I got one thing right at least.
Thanks for that Francine. It means a lot coming from you.
All hearts n stuff.
Love,
Francis
April 14, 2006 at 2:24 am
You should go to taco night if you’re able to. Even if I’m not around yet to go w/ you, you should go. Not for particular reason pretaining to this post, it’s mostly just a brain-fart on my part, but you’d enjoy yourself and that would be good for you.
April 15, 2006 at 8:57 pm
yes
This is a good idea. Hopefully I will be up and frisky soon. Who has it?
And where?
I need to contact that young man you gave me the mail of…and Dana too.
April 16, 2006 at 5:46 pm
Re: yes
that’s no young man, that’s Jeremy, and he is the one that has the taco night. He is awesome ppl, you’ll like him a lot.
April 16, 2006 at 5:47 pm
Re: yes
ps. he also already seems to have some fondness for you.
April 16, 2006 at 6:42 pm
Re: yes (in the right column)
pps. Jeremy is on AIM most of the day, it’s his preffered method of communication, in case you wanna drop him a line. sn: studiojah