06 - Something Is Wrong With Me, Part 3

Good evening, Walking Buddies all. I took a day off yesterday, a day of quiet and calm just for me. It was the first day both of my parents had returned to work (at my urging that I am well and okay and still loosely capable of making a sandwich should the situation turn most dire, and we run out of every other leftover ever from everywhere). My mother told me afterward that it was very difficult to drive away from me in the morning, and I commiserated with her as best I could, sharing with her how it's also a little heartbreaking for me when I turn or walk away from mirrors in my own life.

It's seriously hard. How could you abandon this face?

I try to make sure they get a good chuckle or three out of having me at home every day, when I can. I mean, they didn't ask for life's sharp left turn to bring me back home again after all these years any more than I did, so why shouldn't I try to make sure it's always as inversely positive an effect of the negative storm as it can be? Nobody would gain anything from me railing at life, the universe and everything about the raw hand I'd been dealt, taking it out on anyone and everyone nearby. So far I haven't missed a day yet, on earning at least a handful of genuine laughs from the people who matter most to me. Without laughter, what's the point of clinging to or fighting for life anyway? Funny things don't grow any less so just because a tumor or three has decided it wants in on the party, after all. They're still what they are, and I am still what I am: largely irrepressible, more than a little goofy on the surface, but most of all aware of and actively working toward the continued enjoyment of my own life and those I can reach from where I am standing. There can be no greater base purpose for a life than the enjoyment of itself and others, I wholly believe. It's why I want to tell stories. It's why I write at all. I want to reach out my mind and brush the lives of others, and I want them to think. I want them to smile. I want them to feel something. A life lived only for me would be (has been) an empty life, a wasted life.

I'll probably be doing that periodically, just taking a day for me sometimes when I realize it's been four or five and I haven't had one. What I consider to be "doing work" right now is pretty light stuff as it is anyway; I come and sit at my computer, I write for a little while, I reach out and view and answer every message I can that I've received over the past few hours, and I listen to music or browse Imgur. I love Imgur. It brings so much random positivity and happiness into my days, and since it's all user-created and -uploaded images it metamorphs every single day to new snapshots of humanity. If you haven't been by there to visit for some pure slice of internet humanity from day to day, you should check it out. But what I'm really looking for right now is work I can do from here, to start earning some money in anticipation of the medical costs that are mounting invisibly behind everything that has happened to and for me so far. Does anybody know anyone who needs some writing/editing done? Could I earn something writing an article or two here or there? Any leads would be very welcome.

So let's see... when last we hit the roadside we were talking about my decision not to bring my longest-running and closest friend in on the cold news of my new and improved, limited-edition lumpy neck. As I said before, it wasn't a decision I made lightly, but weighed methodically and came to a very reasoned conclusion that Kathleen had to have more time to adapt to the changing circumstances of our upcoming parting of ways before I allowed her to get to work imagining every dark medical drama scenario that a lump in the neck could mean. From chest-bursters to Dark Passengers, I had my own hands full scanning the home turf of my body for any other changes which could come to indicate what I was looking down the barrel of; the last thing I needed was for my companion to lose her head entirely. She was, after all, the breadwinner of the household at the time. But no longer could I ignore that Something Was Wrong With Me; that had become a dark and silent certainty.

What I discovered was an odd itchy rash that began forming on the backs of my ankles, first one and then the other, each fading in turn, before finally appearing spontaneously about my left elbow and beginning to spread outward there. A similar rash appeared under each arm, first on the right side and fading, then under the left. As a few days passed, I noticed something which alarmed me somewhat more so.

My neck had very subtly begun to grow thicker.

It was the kind of thing nobody else would really even notice at first, but I did almost immediately, partly because I was paying such close attention by now... and partly because I've never had a football player's neck before. There's supposed to be this sort of curve between my jawline and my shoulders, a remnant of my gangly youth; no matter how normal-sized I became bone-wise as a grown man, I still had the uniquely thin neck of my teenage years to remind me that it was the size of my head which mattered, not my biceps. When that disappeared, I noticed, and I was not happy to see it go. Around this time the last and most telling symptom also appeared: a small circular net of visible blue veins appeared in the center of my chest, which over the next two weeks would begin spiderwebbing outward across my entire upper chest. I mistook this for bruising due to it feeling exactly like so, but did not fail to note that there was no telltale discoloration of the skin which should have accompanied a bruise. My body was in the middle of some kind of a battle, and I had no idea who the enemy was, or if I was winning or losing. And still I said nothing.

I wasn't just waiting around to get better, though, nor was I wrapped in a bubble of denial. I knew that Something Was Wrong, and increasingly seriously so. I also suspected firmly by this point that this problem was not going to resolve itself; the slow spreading of the distended veins across my chest, the increasing discomfort of my neck changing shape over the slow course of days into weeks... it was all indicative of a trend rather than an isolated episode, and that put me well on my guard. But I was also on the bare cusp of possibly my best chance in the past year at a solid, decent job at a local area college which would, if offered, start with immediate full state benefits. I'd hand-crafted my application to suit the job, emphasizing that my experience was actually sort of uniquely suited for it. I'd restructured my resume to reflect it as well. And then to top it off, when called for the interview I was prompt, professional, and (in my personal opinion) I had a near-perfect interview of thorough answers to complex "what would you do" scenario questions. This was followed by a professional letter response to a mock-upset parent of a student, and some basic Microsoft Excel skill demonstration. I was gambling my time and health on the chance that when I did go to get this problem formally identified, I wouldn't have to drag my family and friend into bankruptcy due to my unemployed and uninsured status, and I wasn't doing so blindly. I had a real shot at this job, I thought.

As the days went by, the decision was revisited again and again. Prudence dictated that I re-examine it once a day, look at myself in the mirror every time, and gauge the progression to try and determine when and where the invisible cutoff point of no return would be from an unidentified internal medical threat. The moment my health seemed to be in imminent danger I would have gone to seek care at the emergency room, of course, but in the end I came to a different conclusion without a direct cause forcing me into it. It was no longer wise to wait and see, and the job and its insurance cushioning could not be the cause of my delay and continued quiet danger any longer. I needed a formal medical opinion of my current state to make a more intelligent decision, even if I couldn't yet afford the resultant care I might require. My grandfather once made the mistake of delaying medical care for too long to prevent a serious problem from growing ever more so, and I was not going to dishonor the memory of the lesson he left me by recommitting the same error. Finances be damned; I'm a clever and resourceful fellow. I can always find a way to earn more money. The dark voice in my mind whispered in sibilant undertone in reply to this, that it had been a solid year and no one wanted to hire me now... how was that going to get anything but less likely if I turned out to be debilitated by a serious illness or condition? I stared into that dark corner until the voice fell silent, and then held my gaze on it until it slunk quietly away into the recesses again. My fears were not unfounded, but they could not be allowed to make my decision for me; too closely already was I riding the line between stupidity and gallantry in waiting for the job to call back after my stellar interview over a full week prior.

My parents had seen me by this point, as they had very graciously come up on a weekend to help me begin to move my things from Harrisonburg to Kathleen's new apartment in Staunton. They became aware that something was wrong, and though I did not share everything that I was experiencing with them, I did share with them my unquiet that what was wrong might not turn out to be simple. Like any loving parents who don't wish to face the idea that their son may be in serious danger with no resources, they concurred with me on the several things it could very well have been which were not remotely life-threatening, but agreed that it would be a good time to get a doctor's diagnostic opinion. My father offered to pay the visit fee to an emergency care clinic for an examination, which I thought was very nice of him.

The resulting visit was absolutely, incredibly unhelpful. The doctor informed me that my skin rash was caused by some variation of poison ivy or oak, and seemed quite unconcerned with my reply that I am in fact a Casper-skinned shut in who had an effective zero percent chance of having encountered any combative plant life during the previous month unless they had somehow begun to sprout invisibly out of my Xbox 360 to caress me gently and inexplicably about the left elbow and each ankle in turn like a blind virgin lover. He prescribed me a topical steroid cream for the rash, an anti-allergen nasal spray for my persistent cough despite my having no historical or present indication of any allergies whatsoever, advised me to get an over-the-counter antifungal cream for the underarm rash, and handed me a list of local surgeons I could consult regarding the lump in my neck, none of which I could afford to see since they all worked out of the hospital at RMH. It was a shotgun solution, a bundle of stab-in-the-dark treatments for each of my individual symptoms without regard for determining any link or underlying cause, because he most likely wasn't trained to do so anyway. I left feeling the opposite of reassured, and annoyed at having spent over a hundred dollars of my father's money on essentially no information.

Three days later, however, I would encounter in passing a recommendation of a different area doctor I could see who ended up effectively saving my life from the absolutely real, imminent danger of sudden death it would turn out I was in during every hour of my "wait and see" gamble.

But that can be a continuation of the tale for another day, Walking Buddy. My throat's dry from all this self-interested prattle I've been boring you with. Can we talk about you for a little bit instead, do you think? I think I'd like that instead for awhile. ...How about this?

In the comments below, leave me something about you. Tell me the thing you do best in the world, the thing which has made you the most special during our stage time on this earth.

I would like to tell you that mine is writing, my talent with the languid leanings of language and lurid lexiconography laid low... but truth be told that's only ever been my hobby. Learned skills. I wasn't naturally any kind of a writer at all, I just wanted to be. So I read everything I could put my hands on and wrote terrible stories until I lucked into one I didn't hate, and thus found a purpose and passion.

No, my true talent is in the way I can look at a person for the very first time or the fiftieth, and see both everything they mean to show me and a dozen things they do not, all simultaneously. I read people the way you would read a pamphlet at the dentist's office, idly and without need for extra effort of even particular focus, and it gives me an enormous amount of information which can, properly comprehended, provide me a substantial social advantage... which just so happens to almost entirely offset my intense social awkwardness that comes from knowing way too much about every new person you meet without ever being 100% clear on what is "normally" visible and what is being provided by my underlying always-on empathic/body language analytic antenna.

It's not, as odd personal abilities go, exactly gilded in gold. This is what underlays my sometime admissions of being a loner despite my ready stance with a joke and generally outgoing capability... always feeling disconnected and separate from other people regardless of how surrounded I may be, and so on... I think differently, because I see differently. To you we are just sitting and having a simple conversation; to me, you are speaking in one audible voice and shouting silently in another every minute detail of your current emotional state by the flicking of your fingers, the twitch of a crossed leg, the flicker of your eyes, and it's all coming out at once, a cacophony of information it took me years to be able to process separately and discern "normal" meaning from. It is still a source of mystery to me that most people can look directly into the face of all of that cascading information and discern no more than what the person is choosing to say aloud.

In a way... it can be accurately posited that I spent so much time learning the grasp of the language so deeply and so well, just so that I might one day have a shot at making myself genuinely understood to other people who cannot ever naturally see me the million myriad ways I see them.

That's my personal confession for you this evening, Walking Buddy. I am irreparably unusual in this way, and it has been as much struggle as power in my life to date. Tell me the thing you do better than anything else, now. The thing that makes you... you, and unique. You won't go leaving me hanging out here on my own, exposed like this, will you?

Catch you on the morrow, Walking Buddy. I'm thinking I'll take an interlude from telling the linear tale here, and maybe tell the story of how Kathleen and I met and became friends next time instead, since a few of you have expressed interest in that. It's a pretty good story, and between her blog and my own I think we can tell the whole tale together, she and I. Speaking of which, why not go and visit her sometime? As I said, she's been having a tough time through all of this, and I am not by far the only person who can benefit from the kind of light and love each of you have shown me you can bring to the soul of another. I'm sure any comments there would be greatly appreciated, and in return she is offering the perspective of what it is like to see this situation unfold not from within, but in the person you count on and care about the most. It is a different and no less impactful view from my own.

See you all here again soon.

It's so hard to say goodbye...

- Gabriel, Seriously Walking Away From The Mirror Now