I have read all kinds of stories which relate the follies of the tender age of eighteen through thirty. How people have loves which seem so intense and strange, so deep and connected, and then find the love is nothing but passion in the sheets and a fool’s attempt at escaping the inevitable. So many of these stories also include heaving drinking, drugs, and going to foreign countries and living off the land basically. Well, I am writing to say I did none of this.
I wonder at times, while reading these stories, if I missed something, if I would have turned out different, more fun, more reflective, or just ashamed with conflict thrown in for good measure. I never had a love I met at a beach and then moved in with him; never drank until I simply passed out; and never even tried pot until I was in my 40’s and didn’t feel anything once I finally tried it.
I did, on the other hand, hang out with people from time to time during this age of enlightenment, if one could name it as so. I remember being at the local lake with some friends of my roommate’s who all drank and did so much pot in the afternoon we were there, they didn’t even finish cooking the hamburgers, and since nobody thought of bringing a lantern, we bit into raw hamburger. I finally went to the lake side, set up my lawn chair and waited out the rest of the day just going in and out of sleep. The next day, I wound up having to drive someone else’s car with three drunken people in the back seat. There was lots of pulling over while they took turns throwing up, and even a couple of ‘barfs on the run’. After I got everyone home, and found the house where the car belonged, I called my mom and asked her to come and get me. I had no idea where my roommate was, and frankly, didn’t want to talk or see her right away.
This whole even took on an even morose tone when I finally got to mom’s and told her what had happened just prior to being talked into going to this stupid lake party: I had lost my cat suddenly. My cat was small, she never grew very big, but she was like a Chihuahua
The vet I wanted was there, and she had gotten real quite on the long drive over to his office. He looked at her briefly, took her back and did some x-rays, and then he came back into the little waiting room with the cold metal table between us. He didn’t bring my cat back. He said she had severe brain damage, and from what he could guess, it was from when she had such a bad case of ear mites when a boyfriend had bought her from a local pet shop. At the time, she had to be put to sleep so they could wash out all the ear mites and then she had to stay at the vet’s for a couple of days. Now, he said he guessed this ear mite issue was also why she never grew to a normal size cat, and figured without a doubt, was the reason for the brain damage and seizures. He told me, while looking across the cold metal table, almost as if he was afraid to get too close to me and liked the distance between us, she was dying right now, they wouldn’t even need to give her anything, and she was just going rather fast. He asked if I wanted to see her again, and at the time, I said “no” because I had seen her all the way to the vet’s office, seen her eyes roll back in head, and seen her look dead already. I left the office with her collar, and drove home.
My roommate had a few friends at the house by now who were all going with her to the lake. She ever so briefly asked what had happened, and I told her with no tears. I have found it hard to cry in front of people, and especially people I knew would not care. Without skipping a beat, my roommate then decided this was just the reason I needed to go with them to the lake, to cheer me up! So, in haste, my roommate got all the stuff I would need together in a hemp basket for me, and somehow I was in her car headed to the lake without ever really knowing what happened. I wasn’t really aware of how many people were in our little crowd until the next day, and wasn’t even really aware of where I was until I bit into the raw hamburger. This is what led me to the rocky beach just dozing in the sun, I cried under my hat, and then would fall asleep, and wake again, move the chair back as the tide was coming in, and would cry again and fall asleep.
When it came time for us to sleep, I was squeezed in between two others in the back of the blue station wagon, which I would later drive home three of the partiers of which I never learned their names. I was hurting quite a bit, and it wasn’t just my heart, it was my body, I was really aching. The next day when I finally got to my mom’s, I found I had burnt my body so bad; I had sunburn under my bathing suit. I was aching because of the severity of the sunburn. I couldn’t wear anything but my bathing suit for days, and found it extremely painful to even sit down wherein my burnt legs would fold and skin would touch skin and just send tendrils of pain throughout my whole body again. I called in sick to work for three days, and on the fourth was finally able to put on some normal clothes and go to work. I still had the headaches, the body aches, and the pain of clothing touching all the red skin, which was by now starting to blister quite grossly. My boss said the burn looked so bad even now I should go to emergency and get treatment. I denied it was as bad as all that, and went on with my days. At night I would just go home, get naked and lay in bed. My roommate, in her wisdom, tried to get me to do some pot, telling me it would ease the pain, the tried to get me to do some coke, as it would ease the pain, then told me if I did some new drug, which I think was meth, it would lessen the pain as well. What lessened my pain was just lying on my bed for hours until sleep finally found me. But this was only lessening the pain of the immediate physical issue of the burn, not of the deep pain which was building in my heart.
Months later, while at work, I started just getting really snappy with everyone, even the customers. My boss noticed this behavior immediately, and knew it was not like me, so she kindly told me I could take the rest of the afternoon off. I remember feeling paranoid about this, as if she was going to get rid of me, and then cajoled myself out of this by looking rationally at the past, and the future promised to me by her and the company. I went home, my roommate was gone, thankfully, and so I just had the house to myself. I went into my room and then just sat on the floor. Then all the pain of losing my cat came out, and the guilt I had for dismissing seeing her before I left the office, and then going out with a bunch of fools, all came to the surface.
The next day I went to work with red swollen eyes, but no one said anything, not even my roommate, and I believe my boss figured I needed time right then to release some demons.
This was my only real experience of letting go and running with a pack of wild dogs. I never did it again, moved out soon after that experience, and haven’t spoken of or heard about my roommate since.
Later, in my late thirties and forties, I worked as a paralegal. I had to write many motions, answers, and depositions, all in an effort to explain our client’s actions, behaviors, and desires. In doing this, I realized some people, many in fact, never leave the stage of experimentation, of trying on a suit of clothes but never taking them off, just wearing them out. I met lots of people who really were old looking, even to me and I am not good at guessing ages, and realized from their file, they were much younger than me. I understand now why people always think I look so young: in comparison to others out there, I do actually look younger, and as one man put it, cleaner, than most people.
I am not going to bore you and say I am a born again, or I have found Christ, or I had some revelation, because I have none of these, in fact believe in my own system of spirituality which doesn’t fit and does fit into so many religions and belief systems. I didn’t go all organic and become a tree hugger. I didn’t move to another country to find myself. I have just lived my life mostly in this stinking city, getting married, divorced, married, and yet divorced again; had a horse, sold the horse, bought another horse, sold the horse again; lived on my own, lived with a boyfriend, lived on my own, then lived with my mother a couple of times; and had friends come in and leave again, then some come back. I have worked on my education, which now puts me over half way through a Ph.D. simply because there wasn’t work for me, and now because my health won’t allow me to work in my profession, or any profession which is going to require daily attendance on a schedule. I have found out I have Systemic Lupus, then discovered I had knee problems which should have been corrected when I was growing up, but welfare children don’t get special attention, then more recently, found out many of my new symptoms are related to Fibromyalgia. As much as I had drugs, I now also have to make sure I have pain pills, but I am so scared of becoming addicted (although I have never been addicted to anything in my life, not even fun), I take one only when I really think the pain is bad and is not going to lessen anytime soon. They don’t let me forget what is going on in real life, just as drinking never let me forget my inhibitions either. Forgot to mention the fun little disease which is common for Lupus patients, and that is Factor V Leiden. Just a little thing really, it just makes my blood clot more than the average person, which used to involve taking rat poison in small doses (commonly referred to as Coumadin) to control this disease and have my blood tested many times, sometimes weekly. This little side effect of Lupus has cost me the possibility of having insurance at any small business, as the cost for me on the plan is about $800 a month at last checking. So, I am relegated to having no insurance to pay for the needed knee replacement I need on both knees now, and when I am able to go back to work, I have to work for a large company or a County, State, or Federal agency. Thus, the reason I have the time to sit here now and write, as I am waiting for a disability claim to go through to qualify me for the insurance I need to get the knee surgery. Once this is done, I will be able to be more active and
buy a horse,
again.
In reflection, I never had the time, or never took the opportunities, to be young, rebel, try things out, get a tattoo, but I did eat a raw hamburger and got at least 3rd degree burns on my body trying it once.
