The Horror Movie of Our Morning Was Hard To Shake The Rest of the Day

I expected to take my eldest daughter to work first thing in the morning but awoke to...

I have always been a huge fan of voyuerism… but not in the creepy way? I love “Days In The Life” articles… I never miss a Vogue beauty secret or a Women’s Health fridge guide (even if all of the above can be toxic)… and I pour over “Beauty Uniforms” and “7 Outfit Guides” and every ritualistic piece of writing that takes me through the path of another’s day. What are their secrets, tips, tricks?

But one thing I almost NEVER see is someone doing exactly that… while also juggling a full time chronic illness or lifelong pain.

That’s where this idea sprung (even if “springing” is not a verb I generally do). This is where I write out 24-hours (“no stomas barred”)- from products, to perspectives, to purpose- WITHOUT skipping the symptoms and side effects I often do when posting publicly, yet believe need to be notched in the footnotes of human experience.

Follow along in a ** sick ass life from soup to nuts, symptoms to nuance. Every update, complaint and caveat in an otherwise semi stoic sick *ss schedule.

I expected to take my eldest daughter to work first thing in the morning but awoke to coffee instead.

“Work got cancelled because of the rain,” she said in a mix of both relief and remorse (which perfectly summarizes my emotion most every morning these days. It’s a sense of relorse).

Since I homeschool, our days often begin with exactly that. Working on learnedness for as long as we can until my eldest goes to college, and I reenact every scene from ‘Life of the Party’ in the months thereafter.

“We have to call the liver doctor, the rheumatologist, and the vet,” I told her, taking a cup of coffee and beginning to feel a hopefulness about the day….

And then our cat (who’s also the love of my life) projectile vomited in such a way that it felt like a scene from one of those R rated slapsticks that’s described as “raunchy” in the paragraph beneath it, and yet I still say something afterward like: “I just wish the jokes were a little more cerebral”.

If I could have any “job from home” right now - that isn’t being a professor and therapist to my strong headed offspring and detailing my cat’s vomit to the internet (more on that in a second. I know it’s high priority for you, as well)- it would be writing the sentences that go with streaming movies because…

They. Are. So. Bad.

Have you read them lately? Like REALLY read them?

Example, the fairly high profile and not some-horror-movie-in-Patricia’s-backyard-budget-film with no excuse for its verbosity atrocities, “Love, Rosie” with Lily Collins was listed as the following on Prime: “Rosie and Alex have been best friends since childhood. When it comes to romance, these two struggle with their feelings for each other.”

Um… okay so it’s about people and feelings?

(There are worse ones but I was only going to scour a streamer for so long to make this point.)

It’s even worse when they spell out the plot so bluntly that you already know who dies or has an illicit affair with whom before you even press play.

I believe that writing about movies could be an art form (much like I loved writing the programs for Company Dance Theatre during my time with the pen).

“Past Lives” gets it perfectly vague and yet poetic, for example: “Childhood sweethearts, long separated, reunite in New York for a week, confronting notions of destiny and the choices defining a life.”

I generally don’t believe in criticism, you should know. I’m allergic to it. (It’s a fairly debilitating disease and I wish more people would take it seriously. It’s not just a sensitivity or whatever).

I think that critics would raise their value if they talked about things they valued in equal measure (the ratio of negative is almost always higher). Many of my favorite pieces of art were and are panned, and I always wish I never saw the words about it beforehand.

(It’s ironic that ‘hitting pan’ in the beauty world is a positive but being panned in most cultures sucks.)

One of my favorite critiques of myself when I danced professionally in New York for a fleeting moment was about my technique (I tried to find the direct quote but no such luck. Also, Googling yourself is, and always will be, awkward and problematic so must come with a time limit.)

Although most of what was said about my choreography or dancing was positive, thank goodness, I (like almost all humans) naturally clung to the one negative thing and think, at 3 AM on a random Thursday: “But why didn’t they rip apart my flexibility or my turns? That’s the real shit of it.”

Not how we watch movies, but sometimes how it feels...

Anyways, I think that troll culture is an epidemic.

Sometimes I think it could all be solved if trolls just had someone to make out with (We set up an international kissing booth concept that’s sort of like a CVS for toxic keyboardists so they may find a cure). Sometimes, though, in seriousness, I think it’s contributing to suicide rates at a level that we still aren’t taking seriously enough, nor holding hellacious harassments accountable in any real way.

So, in other words: I hate my cat vomiting, troll incitement and movie descriptions … even if I believe that “hating” things is something to hate.

Anyways…

The cat.

My poor buddy is really really really scary sick right now and I definitely am not ready to write about that yet or the changes in him (I’m not even ready to post a photo of him because I love him so much and am willing the universe to turn this around), but: the horror movie of our morning was hard to shake the rest of the day.

Even so, the day was filled with the afore mentioned attempts at physician planning, messaging my PCP to confirm if going on steroids could in any way aid my quality of life right now (current reply: it could weaken my bones further), took my first bath in over a year (not in the sense I haven’t bathed, but that sitting in a bath has been too painful compared to the pains of standing in a shower), did work (that part is top secret for now but everyday is an office day in some regard), and forced a ballet barre for Kage, my firstborn, and I because we needed one physical thing badly and I can’t afford to go to PT.

This is my physical therapy.

We watched the new Jennifer Lopez documentary at the end of the night - “The Greatest Love Story Never Told”- and Kage remarked: “You are so much like her Mom. You know what you want. You like to control the end product when you direct and you don’t apologize for being a boss amongst mostly men. You will work yourself into the ground…”

“But I just don’t have the health to be her,” I said, taking her kind thought and making it negative. (Motherhood™️)

“No, but you have so much of her quality and Papa can be so much like Ben with his camera lenses and his dark and twisty side and his not wanting to share all of your life but you don’t know how else to make or write things except to be honest.”

“Sometimes I just wish the world was okay with a woman knowing what she wants creatively and saying it,” I said, knowing it’s been a lifetime of apologies and that the Sorry’s will likely never stop. “Finding a Jay-Z is no easy task….”

“You have a foul mouth like her,” my eldest laughed, pointing out the hoops and the dose of menswear, then reflecting on how uniquely different from that, she, I she - herself- is and can be.

Later that night, my partner caught the end of the film and began to comment on it himself.

“Did you just study J.Lo over the years?” He teased me, though our life has felt salt on wounds and shame on shame more than anything else as of late: “She’s doesn’t care about money and will make the thing she wants to make even if it makes no financial sense.”

I cannot argue with that.

I go to sleep not wondering about the greatest love stories needing telling or the messier parts of the day… but how much I wish Prednisone could help me.

Relorse.

‘It could weaken your bones,’ is so true, but still without promise.

No promise of lessened pain. No promise of less narcotics or reducing pills and “band aids” for survival. No promise of promises…

If J.Lo were as sick as I’ve been, with as many war wounds, would she keep making things?

I will… and I know she would too.

But how do we exist as women who know what we want- even if it doesn’t reward us financially - and will put the work in… but are still asked to say we’re sorry? In a land with mostly no Jay-Z’s; No Bens?

How do I keep promises to myself when my body only breaks them?

Another day has come and gone…

And the bones that built this house might be breaking.

Stay tuned for more of “The Side Effects Set”, a recurring feature on Catching Breaths… and if you believe more “Beauty Secrets” and “Days in the Life” SHOULD include people with chronic illness, please feel free to share share share.

Otherwise, how will the world know this is something we even want? See that we can be seen as anything other than our side effects at all?

** If ANYONE can’t afford a $5 subscription (which includes all my weekly free writing, unfiltered personal writing, and a plethora of articles that I’ll be hustling every weekday), just reach out here or email Bailey@catchingbreaths.com and let me know what you’d like to see. Plain, simple, quick; No questions asked. Here for you (and can relate) **

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