wheelchair clinic waiting room

i’m so sick of feeling like this all the time. i sit tired on the subway, in waiting rooms, on exam tables. over & over my tests come back normal. i feel sick to my stomach and the doctor won’t return my calls, won’t return my messages. i want to stay up until four in the morning and write in the text box, did i do something wrong? but, dutifully, i put myself to bed at ten p.m. and take my meds on time in the morning.

there’s a little boy here, standing with his feet on a chair to stare out the window, which looks out over the river. it’s the same view i had from my hospital room, so i’m not looking. his mother hushes him with an arm around his shoulders. i’m not looking at the water because i’m too busy watching her. an earring catches the light and it’s the same blue my mother wears. a part of me wants her to be here, signing all these forms that make my hand cramp up, but i’ve been too old for a while now.

i don’t know if it’s grief, exactly, this feeling in my chest. i do know that things have taken on a hazy quality somewhere in the stumblings between dreamy and nightmarish, one wrong turn away from falling into a different world. a different life. i don’t want to hope for that & i’ve always hated the language of loss but lately i haven’t been able to stop running what ifs into the ground. hang on. do you hear it? another nurse is calling my name. she cuts a look my way when she asks me if i’m still taking revia, like the name is dirty in her mouth. do you drink? why do you need this? i know she’s not supposed to ask but i smile anyway and tell her: it’s experimental, it’s a tiny dose, it lowers inflammation. i stop taking it six days later. forty-five dollars a month saved, i tell myself. it wasn’t working anyway.

how do you reckon with a bodymind that was wrong from the very start? it always goes like this: looking back, i can see all the signs. i was hurting so much and nobody knew how to help. i didn’t deserve what happened. who does? two things are true at once: i am fiercely proud of a bodymind that has fought so bitterly to be here now, and i am screaming-kicking-angry that i never even got a fucking chance. it is ten in the morning and i already know today is going to be an in-bed day, an it-hurts-too-much-to-exist day. i’ll hear back from the wheelchair company in three to eight months. none of this feels real. tomorrow i will be tired in another waiting room, another exam table. i’m learning to be okay with it.

published june 14, 2021

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