I Used to Never Talk About This

(I know I will lose my autonomy)

This is a Part Two… A continuation of yesterday’s work.

(So if it doesn’t make sense or have a good flow… Be sure to read in congruence with yesterday, pretty please!)

Here is some context if you’re new here or like a review (if not, skip right past these repeat words and go to the new post below):

If it weren’t for you supportive Word Nerds here, I probably wouldn’t be able to justify writing every single weekday. A lot of people write once or twice a month on Substack for paying subscribers, so my neurotic self is over-doing the best-that-I-can as perpetual thanks to you but:

I take your support and presence to heart.

So, I hope to keep going: archiving and expelling!

That being said, if you ever get sick of having a busy Inbox, you can unsubscribe from emails from Susbtack but still be a subscribed reader by checking things out on your own timeline using the website or the app. (I hate too many emails so… I get it)

If you need a scholarship? Just ask!

I used to never talk about having OCD until a couple of years ago.

I started sliding it casually into pieces here and there - hoping no one would notice the sentence too too much, but never wanting to lie either.

This isn’t a play by play biography.

This is a prose riddled puzzle of a diary that isn’t meant to give you my medical portal in cold, flat ink.

Still, my superstitions are consuming when it comes to surgeries.

So whether needing to eat a really triumphant “last meal” before going NPO, or always finding myself doing some sort of useless self inflicted sadist dance seance: I can see that my wish to control something terrifying is embedded into silly little habits that feel like gulps of Life; A goldfish gasping through gills before the supply runs out.

I always know I won’t be able to dance for a while, even if dancing hurts.

I know I will lose my autonomy and need to ask others to reach things for me (not that I always abide those things or even have someone around to ask to do so).

I know my eyes will feel blurry and doubled, and so texting and typing will be tricky (thus, I bury myself in writing - as I am now, the night before - because here… no one can find me. Here… I hold the quill).

I have other rituals before a surgery that make me feel “better” about knowing I’m about to feel worse in order to hopefully feel better than the worse I’ve been… and they’re all fairly stupid.

I always have to take a selfie with my love (or whomever is with me) before being wheeled back. [I don’t know why, except for the fact that started some 11 or 12 years ago and now I cannot stop.]

I’ve had more surgeries than most anyone I know (in person. I know that online, I am just a small fry, of course)- so if my odds have been beat this many times and I’m still somehow sort of rocking and rolling, I figure:

Why F with an okay thing?

And as I said in a previous piece, trimmed for “time” like all things online now seem to be (including my own body), I’m feeling the following:

“As I try to regain my balance - wanting to rebuild the parts psychologically shattered by the last year, while waiting for the parts somatically once shattered to finally fuse - I must rebuild myself before I can try to build a safe ‘dance castle’ for others like I once had”.

We can’t live in the past. I often run from it. I hide from photos of failed moments and stop saying names of people that have harmed us (if intentionally), but …

It’s hard to run from the past when your new year has only just begun.

Tomorrow is a doozy of a confession so, I want to give you a brief trigger warning- but I’m honestly unsure exactly who to phrase it?

To put it bluntly: I will be talking about the dark side of surgery and not knowing what happens to your body when you’re asleep.

If you need any support along the way, or if the piece hits to honestly, please reach out. I’m here! (Even if right now, I’m basically not because I’m off my phone so much and suck at replying. But I READ every word even if I am yet to respond, and I will and am working way towards you as fast as I can!)

Until then… Thank you for your words. I see them and…

I’m just so grateful for Word Nerds of the world in general!

PS: Did you get a chance to check out yesterday’s column?

It’s free to you now (Life In The Grey)

Or, of course, the Part One of this piece.

Part Three (the final part of the week) is tomorrow and extra wordy as a Thank You too!

… Share with you someone you like?