This is a post I wrote for a secret blog a few years ago. Because it was written just for me and not for an audience, it’s rather candid.
I had an operation this week. One I’ve been waiting a year and a half to happen. That’s when I started the process for this operation. In reality I should have had it almost three years ago, in the actual dentist. While awake. They’d cancelled it the day before and claimed because the dentist was leaving, I would have to go through the whole process again. ‘Fuck that’ I believe my words were at the time. It was all going well until a rogue nacho caused a week long infection that had me stinking of clove and the cheek scaring that the Joker would be proud of.
Perhaps that awake tooth pulling would have been for the best. Rather than the mind fuckery, emotional bruising and quite simply a cruel and unusual time travel inducing lesson in who your friends are.
So. Many people were under the impression that I was fearful of going under the knife. While, that bit is certainly true of this particular branch of surgery (plaguing dreams of microscopic spiders crawling out of my mouth as they woke me sans teeth saw to that) this would be my fifth operation and I know how it goes. Oh so the same, but very different.
Tuesday evening, I text my best friend with instructions should anything go wrong:
Songs:
Kings and Queens by 30 Seconds to Mars
Nothing More by Alternative Routes
Readings:
I’d Like to be a Teabag by Peter Dixon
Puck’s final soliloquy from A Midsummer’s Nights Dream.
There was more. It was detailed, right down to the ‘go home and watch Jurassic Park together.’ Yes, I’m perfectly healthy and it was only my teeth. Have you seen Coma (1978)? Totally melodramatic and could have had a different reaction had I sent it to someone else. Did my best friend and twisted sister totally understand? She simply called it organised. That’s why I love her.
I wasn’t scared of dying. I don’t mean that in a ’cause for concern, this woman doesn’t value her life’ sort of way. Hell, I’ve never valued my life more than I do at the moment. I do not want to die. I did not want to die in that operating theatre. What I feared was that people didn’t know me enough to give me what I wanted should anything happen. I don’t open up. I chat shit and I talk and people probably would say I’m very open. Probably too open. That’s the tip of the iceberg. You start churning off things that have happened in my life and people will start to think I’m a liar or crazy. It’s no one’s fault but my own. It’s not the situation that causes the damage, it’s what you do with the situation.
The operation went fine. More than fine. I used the word ‘happy’ for the first time in at least six months and truly meant it. It was a synthetic high that I knew wouldn’t last. I emailed a few people. Streams of consciousness. Nothing deprecating or revealing; no declarations of true love or odes in comparison to Hiddleston, Smith or Strong. However, I was vulnerable. I went out on a limb and said ‘hey, I care that you know I’m okay.’ I might have been spouting my utter outrage that they gave me my rotten teeth in a jar or informing them I could see Minion butt cracks from my hospital view but I was reaching out.Stupidly.
Four days later, still a blue little tick. My email is sent, but not read. Along with a few others. Not many people knew I was having my operation, but a few I told failed miserably and in those few little gestures I’m back to being 15. Week 4 or 5 of my post surgery recovery and I’m watching my friends at the bus stop. They’re no more than 10 feet away from my house and they can’t be bothered to knock and see if I’m okay. The ‘get well’ card from school said it all; one person from my collective five friends signed everyone’s names. All these memories spilling out like hot lava, just because three people haven’t asked how things went?! What the FUCK is wrong with me? Why is it hurting so much?
Because the biggest fear of this whole operation is staring you in the face. The reason you are almost 30 yet clutching onto a battered teddy bear at a hospital for adults. Mother, mum, mummy, Marilyn, Lyn. Best friend, protector but not perfect. She never let me know what it was like to be alone. She hugged the pain away. She distracted me from the absence of friends. This woman isn’t here any more. My biggest fear was waking up from the operation, foggy and without memory. I was scared that I’d relive the loss all over again. How do you tell people that? Who do you tell that? The person you tell everything to; the person you’ve already burdened your last requests to? The new friends you trust, but feel like you’d just be giving one little bit of the jigsaw. A part that won’t help them help you. Or do you tell that person you want to tell? The one person your gut is telling you to tell. Only going onto day four post-op and you’ve not heard from him. You’re guts are full of shit Hunter. He wouldn’t understand and he certainly wouldn’t care.
This was about a man I would have done anything for. I loved. I don’t think is was actually in a romantic way, even though I did think he was the most beautiful, perfect thing in the world at the time.
I loved him in a way that made me like his company, want every happiness to come his way.
We’re 3 years later and this bloke is just a distant memory. I was used to help him progress professionally. All I wanted was a friend. Luckily I’ve recently discovered; friendship, true friendship, should never be that hard. It shouldn’t make you feel less than and it definitely shouldn’t make you think you would be better off dead.
I know it’s his loss. I’m frigging awesome (I will repeat that until I believe it, I promise) and friendship with me is easy. However, I still, every so often, miss that smile, that laugh. Hell, after what the replacement ginger did, I miss his mistreatment of me.
The key is how I move on. What do I do to ensure I don’t get trapped in a asymmetrical ‘relationship’ again?! That’s what the counselor is for, and over the next six months I’m going to work on my self worth.
The Queens of Geekdom 