First code

You would think, I would have written about you earlier. I am sorry. Someone has failed you, little toes. Little fingers.

I watched myself open the car door after it was done, and I know I cried there. I know I drove around Denver and lost an hour. I don’t remember really. The nurse waved at me, and it was raining. Cold rain. I didn’t wear my coat inside that night. It was warm going inside and cold when I left. You should practice self-care. You need to call someone. Your mother. Your girlfriend. A therapist.
I still have Medicaid. I scrolled through a list of therapists. I don’t trust the one at my school, because I don’t trust my school. No one is available.

I was in a small town during the Pulse shooting. No one called. No one from my family called. They moved to my state, but I was alone in the middle of nowhere Colorado with the weight of what this was, what it meant, knowing what we were losing as a country. What we kept losing as people. Knowing what I had lost as me.

I came home, and couldn’t sleep for five days. I woke up at four in the morning and cleaned, and organized. My girlfriend sat on my couch, concerned. Watching as I disrupted my entire house, opening the drawers. Taking everything out. Throwing away bags and bags of things. “Decluttering.” “Purging.” I surrounded myself with pieces of paper organized by titles. “Things I want.” “Things I need.” “Things to buy.” “Things to throw-away.” “Things to do.”
“Things to fix.”

The first thing on my list was “Me” and the second thing was “The United States of America.”

“Why are you doing this?” My girlfriend asked, eyeing the contents of my fridge and my closet and my drawers spread out in piles in my studio apartment.

“I just want to organize. To make my place clean. I want people to feel welcome.”
I want people to feel safe.

I went to my doctor. “I am concerned I may be manic.” She wasn’t sure. She threw out heavy-sounding medications. I knew enough to know I wasn’t willing to be diagnosed based on one event. I knew the side-effects. The blunting. My insurance wouldn’t let me access behavioral health, even if I paid for it. I needed help, but I did not need to be in an emergency room.

I had already been told studying medicine would steal my creativity. Would I let chemicals? I knew and know better. I have studied psychology. I study medicine. I study people. I know those chemicals save lives sometimes.

I went to my mother. “I am concerned, I may be bipolar.” “I know you,” she said. “You are not bipolar.”

I waited, and it went away. There was the nagging flash of memory-- just two months prior, I had held too many pills in my hand for just a little too long before packing a bag and spending the next four days at friends’ houses so I wouldn’t be alone. I can’t access that person now. I couldn’t access that person then, when I had the energy and the racing and the need to fix as much as I could get my hands on to fix.

I am aware, of what to do and not do. What to feel and not feel. The bargains I make with myself. I know not to listen to sad music. I know not to watch sad movies. I am my own gate-keeper for feelings because I know what letting myself feel too much can do to me. I know I feel later.
So I knew, a week ago, I should get help. Preemptively. That I would need help. “I am available on weekends and nights,” I said in messages. To therapists.

“I know I am okay now, but I know I might not be,” I whispered to my girlfriend.

Little fingers. Little toes.

At the hospital a week ago, a baby had a tiny hair wrapped around his toes. His little toes were turning pink and blue and purple, and we inserted a needle between his toes to block the pain before we cut through his toe. And he screamed, and his face scrunched up in pain. My heart squeezed and flip flopped and a course of pain went through my chest and bubbled up from my chest into my throat. I’m sorry little one. He went home.

Three hours later, I watched myself using three of my fingers to pump the blood for a baby who had been shaken, or hit on the head. “One, two. One, two.” Proper technique is two fingers.
He had been fine for several hours. It was a rough intubation, but his oxygen was good. He started to wake up, and flight for life was finally there to take him away.

“Things to fix.”

I should work out. I should be stronger so I can do this longer.

I should paint again. I need to paint.

“One. Two. One. Two.”

This is why we are doing this. So his blood can go throughout his body. This is why even though you can feel ribs cracking, we are doing this. Little fingers.

It's like the finger. We took the finger off so that it would not die and become infected, so the infection didn’t spread to his body. It is just like the finger.

“One. Two. One. Two.”

His heart rate dropped lower, and lower, and lower.

“One. Two. One. Two.”

I watched myself, doing compressions on this little bit. Mom was begging us not to stop. Doctor said to stop, and you were the last one doing compressions, but he was already gone and

The ultrasound said he was gone

And you stopping doesn’t make him more gone than he was before.

Baby had tubes, and the flurry stopped. The doctor braced himself against the counter, breathing for a second.

I’m thirsty. If I’m thirsty, he is thirsty, and he is sad.

I watched myself walk to get a styrofoam cup, and I stole a Sierra Mist from the fridge. I filled it only a third of the way through with ice half is too full and before that it was too empty. Too much ice. Too little ice.

“Things To Buy” My brother graduated and my mom has a birthday. I should spend time and money with them, you never know. We will go to brunch and comedy and horseback riding. You never know, be intentional.

“Things I Want” New shoes so I can look pretty in my dress.

You shouldn’t compare sadnesses. I paid $60,000 to learn that. There is famine in places like Africa. Three month olds come in alive and then they die and there is no music accompanying it, and I have to come back tomorrow and so does that doctor, and we have to be there to get stones out of noses, and make feverish five year olds laugh with us and trust us, and make them feel better.

My best friend moved to Australia. Her car was stolen, she said.

“How are you?” She asks.

Your car got stolen. You will get the insurance money. You are fine.

This isn’t your tragedy. I insist to myself. Don’t be selfish. This isn’t your tragedy, don’t own it like it is yours.

I know my feelings are not convenient. The next day I had to go to compassion training. My feelings  never come at appropriate times. In a room full of strangers, I see myself 10 years ago in the story of how a five year old was dead on arrival in Kenya, and the white young medical student tried CPR again even though CPR had been completed unsuccessfully. “And then they wrapped him in a blanket.”

White with faded blue stripes. Yellow ducklings. My eyes burned and I wanted to scream it out loud, that this thing had happened, and I might have feelings and I might not.

“You didn’t say a word,” my friend Jess said. “At the compassion training. You didn’t talk the whole
time.”

It was an hour. Coping mechanisms: glass of wine, (but not too much they said), and drawing (I should paint again), talking it out.

“Yeah.” I said.
That nurse, who waved at me, as I left the hospital, still won’t stop talking about it.

“Was that your first code?” She asked. “I bawled for days after mine.”

“I have never seen anyone die before.” I paused, knowing I was going to give something away about myself that I was not sure I wanted to. “I had more feelings about the digital block.”

Things to do

I have been cleaning again. My desk was the junk drawer of my life. All the notes, all the things I learned in PA school. Big trash-bags full of notes, stuffed to the brim with binders and illustrations, the chaotic handwriting of a stressed-out student. One pile for loans I have paid off. One pile for my house. One pile of letters loved ones have sent me. One pile for things to complete. Neatly stacked chaotically (but I understand where).

Laundry. All of it.

Cleaning my car. My bathroom. My dog. My body.

“Babe? What is the occasion? Why did you buy white roses?”

Yellow ducklings.

“I buy flowers for myself sometimes. No one else does.” Picking fights.

White with faded blue stripes.

“It’s just kind of weird. People don’t usually just have white roses in their house for no reason.”

Little toes.
Little fingers.

Feminist warrior goddess

We have jungles for minds.
We have countries and continents for hearts and fireflies for fingers,
airplanes for eyes and our mouths are chocolate factories,
our tongues are waterfalls, our breasts volcanoes our breath great tropical storms and our
voices fish tangled in a nylon net.
Our worlds are ant hills, but the breath in our lungs are made of galaxies and oceans and God
knows we will keep breathing with the fury that can inhale and exhale such things. If you ask
our bones to sing be prepared for the spewing from our lungs of moons and sea creatures,
humpback whales and stingrays, coral reefs and Saturn.
You know they say our bodies are commodified but I dare you to contain what we are made of.

15 years of "Losing Weight" as a New Year's Resolution

?
I was hospitalized for three weeks in third grade for a stomach bug turned into a psychological nightmare. I thought I had cancer and did not eat for several months. When I went into my well-child check-up, and to our glee I had lost weight, my mother said, "That's one way to do it!" I knew I had done something right.

114 lbs

Weight in my family is a comfortable topic among women. In sixth grade, I ask my friend Kassie if she has ever weighed more than 120 lbs. She laughs nervously, looks at her sneakers, and grimaces. Kassie is slightly bigger than me. Her mother takes us both shopping and I am surprised that I look good in everything. I am not used to that. Kassie cries in the corner, and her mother glares at me and asks me not to try on the same clothes that Kassie likes. I am surprised, but I agree. Did I do something wrong?

Two months later, my mother tells me Kassie has an eating disorder. "I wish I could have that kind of problem," she laughs. "That takes self-control." I am 11 years old.

120 lbs
I buy new pants. I look cute. My mother and father sit me down and say that I can't wear pants that don't have pockets in the butt because it "draws too much attention to my figure." I have to return them. I am not sure my mother agrees—but we do it anyways.

132 lbs
We go to Aristotle to try on jeans with some of my Christmas money. I will not come out
of the dressing room in the Size 9s. I am mortified. "You are a Size 7," my mother says. She buys the smaller jeans. "These will be something to work for." I am 14 years old.

122lbs
I stop eating breakfast or lunch. I write sad things in my diary about wanting to weigh 99 lbs. "If you have a problem, then why don't you weigh 99 lbs?" my mother asks. The size 7 jeans don’t fit anymore. They are too big.

120 lbs
I go on a school trip to Nigeria. There are plain pieces of white paper tacked on the walls with instructions on how to die well if you are dying from AIDS.

How To Die Well
1. I am sorry.
2. Forgive Me.
3. I forgive you.
4. Thank you.
5. I love you.
6. Goodbye.

I don't think about my weight for three weeks.

160 lbs
"You can eat all the cheese and meat and cream you want! You will still lose weight!" My mother sits me down at the kitchen table with a rotisserie chicken.
She takes a butcher knife and cuts it in half. We eat it. We eat some cheese. We eat some ice-cream.

I work in a small sandwich shop. I have been “good” for several weeks” I make myself a sandwich with wheat bread, turkey, tomato, lettuce. No cheese. I know I am "sabotaging myself." This has to be healthier though, right?

149 lbs*
I feel comfortable at this weight. My tight jeans are just a little bit baggy. I feel pretty. I feel not hungry. I am 18.

My mother and father sit me down to discuss a "serious problem." They are "very concerned" with my weight, and think I need to "get healthier" and "just a little more active." My mother weighs about 200 lbs at this point. I tell them not to worry about it.

My mother takes my little sister shopping for a prom dress. The dress is two sizes too small. Something to work for.

117 lbs
Grad school is stressful. I take my grandmother to watch World War Z. I asked her if she preferred the Pixar film that was out. She wanted to see the zombie movie. I sprung for the 3-D version. Grandma is 82. She wants popcorn and I tell her to buy some. She eats quickly, like she is ashamed, like she is hiding how much she is consuming. "I should not  be eating this," she says, her face flushing from her perceived indulgence. I touch her arm softly, recognizing my mother's shame on my grandmother's face. "If not now Grandma, when?"

?
I am not keeping track of my weight right now. I am happy. I am 24.  I come home for Christmas, and my mom says "I got fat" by way of greeting me. "You are beautiful," I say. And she is beautiful.

?
I come home for my sister's wedding. My sister has purchased a wedding dress two sizes too small. She is thin for her wedding. My mother has not eaten in 20 days in preparation. They do look really beautiful. Happy (right?) I don’t bring my girlfriend to the wedding- she wouldn’t be welcome in Ohio. I drink a little too much at the ceremony, and cry during my toast. My sister laughs to her new husband. I am definitely the heaviest in the wedding party. I have to have my dress let out. I did not purchase a dress too sizes too small, and I have gained some weight. Working out hurts, and I don't like to do it. I have developed a taste for craft beer. I examine a photograph of myself when I was 16 years old. I am struck by how very average I am. I am not as huge as I remember. My arms are a little too thin.

171 lbs
I step on the scale for the first time in over two years. My clothes are tight, and it is uncomfortable. I brought my on-again off-again girlfriend Anna as close to home as I have been with someone I have dated. We make it as far as Cleveland, and social media tells us that my family celebrated New Year’s Eve  together while we stayed at my vaguely homophobic but well-meaning aunt’s house in Milwaukee.

My mother insists it is "weird" that I want to to bring her around my hometown. We have been trying "this" for 2.5 years. I am angry. I pick fights with my girlfriend. My mind picks fights with myself.

My mother doesn't want to talk much about Anna. She is happy to discuss how she is "eating healthy" again.

I eat a doughnut, mozzarella sticks, Arby's roast beef sandwich, and a chocolate shake on the 11 hour car ride home. I joke about how I am "eating my feelings." Anna does not laugh. It is not that funny. For dinner we have ramen. I like pork belly. "Tomorrow I am going to pay for this," I say. My girlfriend grabs my hand. We drive.

January 2, 2016- Goal Weight: 128 lbs*

"I am sorry I got fat," I whisper. I am eating spinach with eggs. Goddamn it, I hate dieting. My sister hasn’t called. My mother hasn’t called.

"You are beautiful," Anna says. I try to believe her.

I buy some new jeans with some of my Christmas money. Two sizes too small. Something to work for.