My condition is chronic, subject to random inflammation, and fills me with shame. It’s like my soul has an STD. (That I got from my mom, if you felt like this metaphor needed to be grosser.)
When was the last time the pathology presented? Last night, when Nell showed me her grades. All As except for one B, in an elective. I scanned the paper, noting the As, but compulsively looking for anything that wasn’t above 90. “Great work,” my brain says.
What does my mouth say? “Tell me about this Speech grade…”
I don’t even want to be saying it! It comes out before I can stop, like I have some crazy Guilt Tourette’s. “Damn! Shit! Fuck! A B in Speech?!?!”
Then, after I vomit questions about concrete plans for pulling it up, and she patiently answers them and goes to bed; I hang my head. What is wrong with me? I know! I’ll go apologize and tell her how proud I am of her. The retraction always packs the same punch as the initial error, right? Yeah. Text it, too, so maybe at least she can write me off as unstable and awkward instead of wicked.
I have to assemble gougers and scrubbers and pickers, to find this cancer and pull it out by the root, to scrub the hole and salt the wound. Because I know what happens when the disease goes unchecked. The people you love don’t decide to meet all your adequacy requirements and jump through all the hoops you thoughtfully chose for them. They get resentful, or they get lost. Or both, if you give them enough reasons and enough time.
I carried 15 pounds of Screw You, Mom weight for as many years, cutting off my nose to spite my mother. How stupid is that? But I don’t want to lose this other baggage like I lost that- I want to lose it like chopping off a gangrened hand. I want it to be sudden, thorough, and painful, for penance. And so I can look at the scar and remember how not to be.