Just one big, moist bag of garbage

I wish I had something profound to say, some little nugget of wisdom to impart like a Real Writer that people like to read or something. But the truth is I’m just tired. I’ve written about what I feel like before, so there’s no use in retreading that topic, but pairing that with the fact that I’m still working a full-time job, scheduling appointments with multiple doctors that are located five-hours away, battling the local hospital to send my records to the place I’m actually being treated, continually making sure my health insurance is covering my appointments, setting up a life insurance policy because if I don’t do it now no one will ever cover me again, organizing travel to-and-from Cleveland, and this week having to help Nina pack all her things into boxes and move them into my apartment, I don’t have much left in the tank.

Oh, and I’m also starting to get bills that look like this, which is very cool and reasonable.

That’s for the month of September. As you may know, it’s currently November, and I’ve got a similar amount of appointments on the books and will be staying in the hospital for a couple days and getting surgery, one that requires three highly specialized surgeons to be involved, so I’m sure that bill will also be nice to receive and then laugh at before putting into my folder never to think about again.

To a degree, I hate complaining about all of this, because it feels so incredibly whiny and precious. “Oh my life is so hard. You don’t understand.” But you know what, fuck it, this is hard. It’s hard to continue to live in a way that resembles normal and also take care of a million other little things that require me being on the phone for hours on end or necessitates making trips to fancy office buildings downtown only to be sent somewhere else and then back to the original place and then somewhere else and then back again. My days are endless washes of work, and what’s worse, once they are over I feel guilty that I’m not doing more. I’m letting down my coworkers by not being as present as I should be. I’m letting down my friends by not having the energy to hangout. And worst of all, I’m letting down Nina because I can’t carry things up and down the stairs and, at the end of each day, I just want to sit down and watch some stupid video on YouTube and fall asleep because that’s all I have the energy to do. My body hurts and my brain hurts, and at this point, I don’t fear surgery as much as I do just having to keep doing this forever.

For a long time, I was too prideful to live like I was sick. I just wanted to hide it and act as normal as possible so no one would be the wiser. I’m sure anyone who has seen me out in the past couple months probably thinks that I’m fine, or maybe that I’m faking it or something, because they don’t see any of the things that I’ve complained about in this here newsletter. But that’s because I’m never going to let anyone see any of it. If I’m out and about, you best believe there’s enough work going on behind the scenes so that you don’t notice. And I’m only now realizing that this was probably the wrong approach.

I’ve got two trips to Cleveland planned for the next two weeks, one to run a bunch of genealogical tests to see who I can blame for this whole thing (I’m hoping I can blame my shit-ass dad for it, but hey, that’s a subject for another time) and then another one to meet with a surgeon and I guess walk me through the surgery again? It all seems like a lot of work, having to go all that way for things that probably could be a phone call, but hey, that’s just what life is at this point, and no amount of complaining or hiding will change that.