It’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. I am screaming on my bathroom floor as blood breaks through the bandages on my freshly shattered foot. I am all but waterboarding the upper part of my body into an ice bath trying to reduce my temperature, but can’t stop screaming, can’t stop bleeding, can’t stop vomiting. You are out of town. I won’t know until months later that you’re in Pittsburgh when you are supposed to be in Cleveland, visiting your grandmother freshly admitted into a hospital. But A, the psychiatrist, my best friend, she is here. And she continues to coo, this pain is temporary. You are safe. It is going to be okay. as I continue to throw up and scream into the night.
The only thing I want is your embrace.
I was only a few weeks out from an NPC bodybuilding competition. I was finally going to be on stage and take back ownership of my body after being assaulted in Arizona. But you don’t know what happened. No one does. As luck would have it, I dropped a 225 pound barbell on my foot earlier today and was hospitalized most of the day. But you don’t know about that, either.
My parents came to town. My mother’s presence only makes the situation worse, but I can’t turn them away. My best friend, A, she is here; Z, the software engineer, he’s here, too. We planned to have a family dinner, as in the kind with your chosen family, while you were out of town. Instead, it is spent with my father asking Z about work, admiring him, and asking A about her work in psychology. He hates her liberal politics, but seems to respect her intellect and wit.
Once they leave, A tells me, come on Naomi, we have to get those bloody bandages off you from last night. I try to bargain with her: I will do anything for this foot not to be touched. It is throbbing and I am on opioids and high on marijuana, but can’t mute the pain at all. She encourages Z to sit on rim of the bath tub and hold me back as she unbandages the blood-filled, sopping blood-filled, cloth. They catch on the wounds of my foot, eventually exposing my poorly stitched together big toe. I almost lost it.
Z runs his fingers through my hair and plays my favorite YouTube playlist. He tells me he realizes he’s not you, but he will love me with everything he has because I deserve to be loved. I shriek in pain as blood hits the bath tub basin, and recoil into his arms. I vomit over his lap in agony.
When I come to myself again, we are all laying in Our bed, and A has put on my favorite season of Gossip Girl. Z is holding me, A is holding me. I am squeezed in the middle.
I am admitted into the Panhandle’s best outpatient surgery facility. You are with me only because someone is required to drive me home later in the day. As the nurse preps me for surgery, you continue to type away on your laptop and take an incoming call from a lender. You’re working hard over there, just having come back from another trip to Cleveland. Needles puncture all of my veins throughout my right and left arms. I am scared, I am really scared; I don’t know if I am going to lose part of my foot yet, but you are somewhere else entirely. I look over to you from time to time for comfort. But you are nowhere to be found.
When I wake up from operation and am finally carted back into the recovery room, I ask you to borrow your phone to call my parents. And there she is: Divya. I have never seen or heard of the name before, but she is there. And you’re talking about having babies with her-- six to be exact. Her message pops up on your phone. But I am on Fetanyl, and I am on anesthesia, and I gaslight myself into thinking it’s nothing.
I feel like a burden because I can’t do anything for myself. If i need water, I need you to get it. I can’t feed myself. I am in endless agony that no drug is strong enough to control. You mostly ignore me, watching sports and reading Twitter, and passively telling me that it will be okay.
As we go outside to the balcony to smoke a bowl, you mention in passing that you think it would be best for me to stay at A’s while I recover. So I limp into your truck, let you take me there, and now I live in the basement of an aged building with mold on the walls, radon in the air, and cum stains on the carpet. There is no money in psychiatry and this proves it. My guest room is dark, damp, and has only a mattress, a week of clothes, a company computer, my medicine, and my lizard.
I am supposed to go to Chicago for work tomorrow. I am only a few days post-op, but the vice president has requested that i speak at a conference there. I look like shit. No one is feeding me. I can hardly bathe myself. So, I do my best to get into a car, and drive to a nearby esthetician to work on my eyebrows. I figure it’s the least offensive thing I can do to look immediately better.
Outside of my appointment, walking back to my rusted Ford in the dark of Tallahassee, a group of men surround me and yell at me for me to give them my wallet. I refuse and they take turns beating the shit out of me. One pulls out a car key and shoves it straight into my cornea.
When it’s all over, I can no longer see out of my left eye from the damage. It feels like shards of glass are repeatedly stabbing me, and I break down crying behind a Publix. It must take me an hour before I can walk again and get to my car.
When I get home, Z and A are watching a film on her new projector. When they see my eye, bulging and red, they immediately ask what happened and I blame it on the esthetician losing her grip and hitting me with her tweezers. There are no noticeable rips or bruises on my skin that they can see. No one knows what really happened.
I close my bedroom door and cry. Z comes in and tries to console me, but it is of no use. No one understands why I am really crying. All I want is to see you.
I text you but you never reply.
The following day, I have to go to an emergency eye doctor to evaluate the damage to my eye. He tells me that I may lose up to ninety percent of my vision without surgery. He dilates both eyes, and puts a patch on the impacted one. I call you from the parking lot to ask for your help to pick me up. You say that you’re training the new hire and can’t come.
The next thirty minutes are one of the scarier moments of my life as I swerve in and out of traffic with only one dilated eye and one working foot.
I have seen you only twice in a month. We are at an Indian restaurant when I tell you that my surgical boot is coming off tomorrow, and I would love to come home. I am scared here. I don’t want to be here anymore. I just want to be home with you. In. My. Home. That you kicked me out of. Two days post-op.
Mid samosa bite, as I chew potatoes and carrots and fried bread, you tell me that we need to break up. That we want different things.
I suppose I should have seen this coming, but it is still a shock. And it’s a far worse blow to my being than the foot or eye.
titsay
vaporwave
dededos
gummygunk
germansingergirl
izzy806
andulkaphoto
