Don't Call Me Shirky: Over 800 People Can't Be Wrong

Birdie sent this to me with the note "This reminded me of the content of some of your blog posts. Plus, it is so funny and I thought you would LIKE IT."
Hyperbole and a Half: This is Why I'll Never be an Adult

Yes. Me + cartoons = that post. And it's funny.

What amazes me is that it has over 800 comments. Eight hundred people feel this way.
My expectations are so high that anything less than perfection gets thrown together in the "I am garbage" pile. "Unable to cure cancer," "didn't email back friend," and "forgot to pay parking ticket" all fall in the same wretched half of my black-and-white world. I go through Allie's responsibility cycle, worked into my very own ballet of self-loathing.
Why?
Over 800 random-ass blog readers responded to say they do the same damn thing. What's going on that so many people's expectations of "normal adulthood" knock them into the fetal position?

We have this strange luxury of choice, this ability to do things with our time other than find food and fight predators. We need what we need to stay alive. Then there's the next layer of the things we need to make life worth living. This is the crap people kill for and die for, things that inspire epic poetry, Opera and phone commercials.
Then there's everything else. There's just so much everything else. It's unnecessary and overwhelming, but it also helps all the people live a little smoother and it can be beautiful and add to the "worth living." But bullshit and junk and imaginary importance and stress stress stress make me run back to being a child, when all the grown-up nonsense is supposed to look like nonsense. I personally made the mistake of taking grown-up nonsense seriously as a child, which makes a lot more sense when you think about it--making noise and writing on lots of papers and everybody picking a title and wearing funny things to signify what they're supposed to be is much more of a child's game than the business of the life-learned. Send me to school now that I need daily gym class, now that I can understand the practical applications of economics, and could really use a refresher course in sharing.

With real mortality-related things happening in my life right now, I have much less luxury of choice. Dealing with my mother's needs and just sucking it up is exhausting, but it certainly reminds me I am and can be an adult. Last night the stress and weather finally won over my over-medicating hyperdrive and I crashed hard. In a strange way, I was glad because it somehow re-legitimized my migraines; like my body made it abundantly clear I'm not just being a pussy and I can't just push through and be OK.

My mom's ok and I'll write more later. Now I need to nap so I can go to my parents' house for dinner.

Crashing at my parents house, watching a History Channel program "for mature audiences only." WTF.

Ways to Help

My mom went home today. My dad has been with her since she had her surgery, sleeping in the chair beside her hospital bed. My parents can be infinitely annoying and occasional emotionally abusive, but they are pretty incredible.

Today is the first day since Tuesday I won't see my mother. I'm relieved. Starting tomorrow, much of her daily care will fall to my brother and me. He lives there for the summer, so he has less ability to escape. I have to remember it is not my job, that her friends can take up some of the slack.

Yesterday, while I was feeding her ice chips, my mom started complaining to me about one of her friends and went on her standard bitch-and-moan about her mother and one of her clients and other flawed people in her life. She's keeps checking to make sure she's not overburdening me with the physical stuff--repeats over and over I don't have to feed her or help her stand or poke at the bloody things unless I'm comfortable--but I've never been able to properly communicate how uncomfortable I am being her emotional support system, and now seems a cruel time to say something. I feel so backwards--help from her local adult daughter post-double mastectomy is a huge act of charity; therapeutic services have been assumed since I was 4. I never had to do the dishes or take out the trash, maybe I just got the emotional trash instead. And my parents still don't expect any sort of physical, visible work, but perhaps to them it's a greater burden to do something than to feel something. Not me.

I'll be back at their house tomorrow night and it will be emotionally draining, too, but it's emotionally draining sitting at my house.

The cicadas are loud again tonight. Crickets chirp, cicadas scream. The sound swells and ebbs in irregular waves. I never see them, but I hear them. They are monsters.

Not Real Sucky

Headline News on mute in my mother's hospital room has been nonstop coverage of Lindsay Lohan. I don't have to look up the spelling of her name online because I can look up and it's on the TV. Still.

There are four clear turkey baster bulbs attached to four clear tubes attached to the incisions in my mother's chest. The body tries to heal the wounds, sends blood and fluid, and something needs to be sucked out. The tubes are stretchy and need to be squeezed clear of blood clots. Then we have to empty the bulbs and measure the fluid.

I don't have to do any of this. I volunteered. I'm strangely good at it, except when I tried to feed her the applesauce and got more on her than in her. At least I thought to bring the applesauce. All natural, NOT chunky, no sugar added. My dad said she'd been really nauseous all day, and I'm an expert at nauseous. She has dry mouth, too, way worse than I ever did but at least I understand the feeling. Ice chips mixed with the apple sauce trumped everything the hospital tried to feed her. You'd think hospitals would know these kinds of things, but I suppose it's different for everyone. We're related, so I imagine our reactions are far more similar. Nausea requires cold. Cold and wet, but not clammy. I'll often run my wrists under cold water at rest stops to battle the car sickness. My mom was grateful and amazed that I knew to put ice chips on her wrists when she was at her wooziest. But with her, with Cancer, with life in general, there's so much beyond my and anyone's control. I want to say it's "nice" to be able to make her feel better in little ways for even a moment, but "nice" the wrong word. It's all I can do and I'll take it.

The past few days have been filled with heat waves and electrical storms and flash flooding. Our power went out three times in the last week, only once while it was raining. Driving to the hospital today traffic signals were out or blinking all over the place. Transformers 3 filmed in Chicago last weekend, with explosions and parachuting and fireballs. Tuesday HDS and I sat on the Wao Bao patio at State and Lake and heard a huge blast. Most people didn't even look up.

I feel like the world is getting more and more absurd. There's crazy shit all over and we have our far-fetched explanations because if you stop and really think about any of it, the whole universe is too insane to be real. My dreams make more sense than my awake. Nothing makes real sense, we just stretch and accept whatever gets put before us. We're incredibly flexible creatures. Turkey basting my mother's chest? Why not.

Staring at the Sun

My mom is being amazing. She's optimistic and rational and moved by all the support she's receiving. I'm so impressed. She was built for this. I very much wish she didn't have cancer and we're only a week into knowing it's there, but at least it's acting as the smack-in-the-face we all sometimes need to remember what it means to be alive.

I'm also completely freaked out and not sure what else to feel or think, so alive is a pretty good place to concentrate.

My mom just called to let me know she has breast cancer.

She just found out. It's apparently one of the least bad kinds and she sounds pretty positive about the whole thing. My response was "That sucks, I'm sorry, do you need anything? I love you."

She said she kept thinking, "Oh no, now my daughters have a mom who had breast cancer."
Maybe all our day-to-day negativity and pessimism is just a way of saving our hope and optimism for the big stuff. I always say about  my migraines, "it's not cancer and it can't kill me." Well, my mom has cancer. Maybe the distraught hasn't hit yet. Maybe today's just a day I'm accepting things. One foot is already in a dream. My mom has to have cancer to show her the meaning of life. That's how the story goes. We all learn things and understand things and hurt and cry and bloom. I've seen this movie. Now it's our turn to live it.

Clear, Fog

The rain is so light it barely textures the surface of clear, still Lake Michigan.  I can see angular boulders make a path under the water and I want to walk rock to rock until the water submerges me, too.

Like a plow, the beach comber made its shrinking circles around the sand. My dog and I stood at the top of the concrete steps separating beach from city to watch and wait. The machine seemed to change its course to finish the section in front of us. It felt like he was combing that bit just for us, but I figured it was more like  finishing off a golf hole. We stood and watched his figure eights disappear unswept sand, and then he honked and waved for us to come down to the beach; he had changed his course for us. We were royalty. In cotton shorts, flip flops and a t-shirt, I commanded a presence. Sometimes I forget I'm not invisible.

Since the hospital, I've been feeling better in that I'm more inclined to get shit done and only had bad pain yesterday evening through now. I was crazy light sensitive before that, but light's not bugging me anymore.

I feel like I'm in a temporal hiccup where I constantly cross paths with past, present, and future versions of myself. These sorts of lessons get learned much faster on television.

Discharge

I'm leaving the clinic today. I still have a migraine.
In the hospital, I don't have to remember my pills and meals all day. I don't worry about paying bills, running errands, making plans. They take care of me.
They also struggle to find my veins so they can then shoot me full of drugs. The IV lines start to hurt almost immediately, and after a day, ice packs and deep breathing are no match for the excrutiating pain ripping into my hand and burning its way up my arm.
They do this in the middle of the night, too.
And the food 65% sucks.

At home I take care of myself. It's hard for me. I see couples taking care of eachother and I'm jealous, but I push people away so I can prove to myself that I'm capable. HDS doesn't do dishes. Another friend of mine doesn't drive in the city or on highways. Other people don't kill bugs or clean showers. The longer I'm alone, the more I'm forced to learn.

Lately, I've been a stagnant smog of  indecision. I've been turning to other people for excuses to go one way or another on all choices. HDS refuses to make decisions for me because she knows I'm just looking for a way to blame someone else for the outcome. Maybe that's the only way I know how to let myself off the hook; everything is someone's fault, so how can it be not mine?

I now have to wear a medical alert bracelet for my MAOI patch. Honestly, I'm glad. I want something to show for all this fucking pain.

All the other symptoms, too.

In some ways, I belong in a hospital. My memory is swiss cheese. Faces blend together. Being fucked up in the hospital is ok. But at home I want to run around and go to the bar and see friends. At home, I have a very hard time keeping up with friendships. People (Neighbor Guy) take it personally when you repeatedly cancel plans. Other friends stop calling when they don't want to bug you in case you have a headache. It takes that much more effort when you  have that much less energy. But today I so desperately want out of this fucking hospital and the IVs out of my veins, I'm taking charge and responsibility and out out out.