A Decided Lack of Ghosts

I think the thing I find most confusing about this is that I feel fine. Even the other times that they were like “Oh, it could be cancer,” in one case, I was randomly and spontaneously bleeding from every orifice and so clearly something was wrong, and in the other case, I was having trouble breathing and thought I might have pneumonia again.

But this time? I feel fine. I can’t even feel the inch-diameter thing in there they want to biopsy. If I just check in with myself, I feel fine.

And it’s such bullshit. If my body is my house, it is haunted. It has a spirit in it that wanders around crocheting afghans, writing ghost stories, and watching TV. This spirit feels like she fully inhabits the house, like there’s no closet or toe or basement or rib that is off-limits to her. So, how can there be anything potentially bad in the house without the spirit knowing it? How did I somehow not notice the marble of shit in my boob? How, even now, can I not sense it?

I have a better sense, when I step into my kitchen, whether the Butcher is somewhere in the house even if I can’t see or hear him, than I do about this thing.

Which, I guess, is the other hard part. My parents want to come down and… do what? As of yet, I don’t need people to do my dishes or bring us food. In fact, last night, I made this fantastic thing that was pretending to be a pilaf. I mean, I guess it was a pilaf, just at the general level of being rice cooked in stock with spices, but I highly doubt that there’s any real pilaf recipe that calls for asparagus and cashews, and yet, dear readers, I tell you, it was pretty damn good.

I don’t really need anything yet. I don’t feel bad. I’m just frightened and upset, but that’s not really something I need help with. So, I don’t know. It’s just weird.

Eyes Like Planets, Boobs Like Oceans

One interesting thing is the ways in which all these medical procedures reveal your body to be a collection of landscapes. They shoot pictures of the interiors of your eyeballs and you experience yourself as having these vase hollow yellow and red worlds in your face. They ultrasound your boobs and the pictures you see on the screen look like small seas, waves of fat and ductwork (I assume) rolling toward you and disappearing from view. It’s very beautiful.

My phone call to my parents went disastrously and so, even though everybody who texted me was like “Call if you need to talk” I just didn’t want to talk to anyone else. It’s mostly just that my mom started the phone conversation with “How was your day?” and then, after I was like “Did you not get my text? Not great.” launched into all the reasons I was grateful that they were able to do these tests that would all show that this was nothing. Which, yes, I suppose I am grateful for, but we don’t know yet that it’s nothing and I needed a minute to just be terrified and to talk through a plan of action. But it hit me like bricks that she needed me to comfort her and I just started crying hysterically, begging her to stop talking.

And I feel bad about that, because she just handed the phone over to my dad and I didn’t mean to upset her and really, really didn’t want to upset her. But I can’t tell you how upsetting it is to get terrible news and to have to deliver terrible news and have the person you’re telling respond as if you’ve just told them not terrible news.

So, that was something of a disaster.

And it also meant that I just couldn’t hear more about how it was going to be all right, because it was too close to my mom acting like everything was all right.

Anyway, I have to say something to the folks at work today so that my pending erratic schedule makes sense. And I have to fill out a bunch of paperwork.

I’m always amazed when people handle this shit with grace. Just assume from here on out until there’s some resolution that I’m either crying or about to cry. I’m not even going to fucking try to have my shit together. My shit is going to be thrown all over the sidewalk like the aftermath of an ugly breakup. Some of my shit is going to be three blocks away. You’ll see my shit in messy piles, people tripping all in it, it sticking to strangers’ shoes.

My dad said, “You know I’ve seen a lot of this with my parishioners and I can tell you that the one thing that makes a difference is a positive attitude.”

And I laughed and said, “Well, then, we’re in trouble.”