I Would Eat Every Last Evil Word if I Could, Like The OA

Two-ish weeks ago, I had neurosurgery on two discs in my cervical spine...

Well…. I’m sort of surviving.

Narrowly?

This isn’t really a medical update, per se (I am generally not into those but I might try one this week because I’m into when other people write them?), but it IS a somewhat-lucid hello mid week, to say thank you for your patience with this healing week off.

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I am sticking to my Write Every Weekday promise… even though surgery was just 1 week ago on this exact day!

I was supposed to be getting another surgery on that exact day, ironically…. but since everything got moved and cancelled… Here I am.

Life and career plans luckily not thwarted… but dang if it wasn’t unusually hard to make sure I keep writing?

The future surgeries are now tucked into hopeful holidays down the road. This recovery is my primary focus. And I have a ticking time deadline to get back on my feet, so I can get back to doing what I love again (not just writing, but dance educating too): Which means, soon, my writing might change in tone. My positivity might increase. My focus will hone.

A window will open and light will leak in….

But for now, I have to get from A to Z-ed.

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Two (one-ish?) weeks ago, I had neurosurgery on two discs in my cervical spine.

I had one disc replacement in my C-spine before in my past (2021), but have had 7 spine surgeries overall in 4 years.

I also just changed phonetic numerical tense between sentences… and I’m wondering if that also bothered anyone else?

I hate doing formal medical updates like this because I think the world has taught me two things (back to phonetics), and they are as follows:

If you write openly about your health, the world will think you want attention for your health. (Hence the smoke and mirrors over the years. Are you dazzled? “Don’t give me attention… but do give other people attention because we need to advocate for this. And also, remember me. And also, let this be a living scrapbook for my children if they need one one day. And also… Maybe make my pain be worth something. Let it give, for all it takes away?”)

priest-core? (surgery week)

freedom right before…

Secondly, I’ve learned that nothing moves faster than medicine, so the second you DO try to be transparent and write candidly… something changes. A surgery gets moved. A complication arises. And so on. We can never keep up with it… So how could our writing?

But writing is my Sleep to Dream, so onward I go. Even so, if we write really openly about how something feels… There is a line of people out the back ready to point at a woman and dramatically scream: “Dramatic!” (Kind of like how funny it is that people write “too long, didn’t read” on a caption and don’t worry that one day their reading comprehension and future employers might want them to outgrow that gleeful admission.)

But how DOES someone write about dramatic things without sounding dramatic?

I have loved many people who have died from what ailed them.

They are gone. All ages… But when it comes to the younger ones, I look back at their elegant silence and I (now) selfishly wished they’d written what it felt like. ‘Let me now your Bright Hour,’ I think, deep inside, “Let the cost that pain took have delivered a richness somewhere else.’

I want their suffering to have not been for naught… and though silence is elegant, truly, I still don’t think those taking the time to write down medical updates are doing something wrong.

And I regret. Oh, how I regret.

I swim in it until my fingers get all pruny.

I regret the times that I said, out loud, to friends, “I hope So And So doesn’t complain to me about her pain right now when I’m rotting inside, waiting for this surgery”. I would eat every last evil word if I could, like The OA a glowing bird or a sea anemone. I can transport myself back to every single ugly moment when I said the same “I’m dealing with so much and can’t handle someone talking AT me as if I don’t understand” speech and- though talking “at” versus “with” is still something I struggle with and may never fully stop being a Douche Bag about (a capitalized one, at that)- I regret, I regret, I regret. I had to get this close to 40 to grow the F up.

Almost every time an ever changing So And So did reach out to me and tell me what hurt them… I would end up softening, swiftly, behind the scenes, and be what they f*cking needed like I always should have been. But by then, my ugly words at already been said in secret to someone I thought I could kvetch to. Once the time came, I became… a friend. I let the pain stop being the front seat driver and I tried to actually listen and help those who just want to feel a little less alone.

It’s a gift to know that someone would tell you their pain. A beautiful damn gift…

And, in a way (an OA): It’s exactly what those who dare to write down their pain in a world waiting to pick it apart are doing too.

We are trying to talk with you… not at you…

And I wish I had more troves of how something felt to those I’ve lost, now. Because their pain DID matter. Because they DID matter. Because their dimmest hour might have someone else’s brightest, because in that moment:

We got the privilege of loving them.

Wearing Gem’s top, in an old life; Same love

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