Yesterday, I made my mom come to take me to the oral surgeon at NYU. The medicine I take for lupus, cancer and diabetes have rotted my teeth beyond belief, and I have extractions and root canals and root removals scheduled for me. My X-ray is full of gaps and gray, telling me things I don't want to know.
I got in the dentist chair at 2 and I got out at 5, my face and lips smeared with blood. I was woozy because I took Dilaudid and Xanax and nitrous oxide.
At 11 p.m., I was exhausted and fell asleep for 20 minutes. I awoke in a rage I have no reason for. I kicked and hit things and I couldn't breathe.
At 2 a.m., I called my dad and asked him to send my mom over. I live in the apartment above the garage since I came home from LA. It's a Judd Apatow screenplay waiting to happen.
I'm 27 years old but my mom came over with a blood pressure cuff and medicine. My heart pounded. She asked to lay with me.
She rubbed my back but every time I almost fell asleep, I slipped into a night terror. I was a gunman in Boston, killing people. I was a runner, screaming at the finish line. I was 16 and watching the smoke travel from the Twin Towers in NYC to our suburb on the water. I was 27 and I was me and the pain was real and I couldn't tell if I was awake or not.
I told her to go home because she'd never sleep next to me, with my twitching and kicking and crying.
I've taken so much medicine at this point that there's nothing left to do except sit here and ice my mouth and clean my room. I've organized my nerdy pen collection. I've packed for trips I may not be able to take.
There are many times when I am so happy! Many, many people say they'd never know that I was sick. Even at NYU, I joke and people laugh and I know am worthy, I know I am a light to many people. I know I have an amazing group of friends and a truly unique family.
But right now, living feels like so much work. And the wait to get better keeps getting longer and longer. There'll be surgeries for the next few weeks, and cancer scans, and then tests because of lupus and diabetes affecting my nervous system and so much stuff that sometimes it seems like it's happening to someone else, some other persona.
I am two. And I always will be. I am living, traveling, funny, happy and never lonesome, because I have a world. A wonderful world.
But then there is the other me, the one who is here now, when this bed is empty, this pain is real, and the only thing I can do is type, type, type.