At Least They're Committed

I’m cautious when using the word irony. It’s used incorrectly so often. Even my beautiful mother has used the term at times where I questioned whether the reference was merely coincidence. Then again, I don’t believe in coincidence.

I got yet another set of test results just now. Again, they told me nothing except that I’m fucking Methuselah. And therein lies what I believe might be true irony. Kevin once acknowledged to me that there’s a huge difference between being suicidal and just wanting to die. I’m watching people who abused their bodies now fighting to live and here I am, having upped my sit-ups to 50, my treadmill fast-walking to 40 minutes despite the bloody feet after last night and my lifts to three sets of 10, sometimes more, ready to go. I’m ready to go.

So, for the grandkids who might never remember me, here goes:

• I was so painfully shy as a child that I once was encouraged to order for myself at a Dairy Queen and I couldn’t do it. I talked so softly that the guy behind the counter asked me to repeat myself and I tried instead to run away. I was 12.
• I got yelled at in fourth grade — oh, make that the second time I went to fourth grade because the “school-age limits were different” between Michigan and Colorado, but the truth was I chose to go to fourth again because I started kindergarten at 4 and I was so tiny and so far behind and I never spoke and I knew someone who was in the fourth grade the second time, so even now on Facebook I am the oldest one in my class — because we were supposed to stand up and say three things about ourselves, so I said, “I’m dumb, I’m stupid and I’m retarded” (it wasn’t politically incorrect then). I was trying to be funny, really.
• I had nightmares, often, often, often and now, wow, I can appreciate how fucking accurate they were. Decomposing bodies walking toward me in my room. Reaching for me, trying to communicate. Cold sweats, for real, as I trembled beneath the covers as one dead person after another tried to reach me, I could feel their bone-cold touch through the sheets and I would be too terrified to scream.
• My amazing parents didn’t quite understand me, but loved me and saw in me something important and beautiful. They sheltered me — I didn’t get to so much as watch scary commercials because I would dream the entire movie as I would perceive it to be — to save me from the world and myself. Funny thing, after conquering my fears and facing them head on and with a vengeance years later, the “movies” I created were far more terrifying than the weak-ass shit Hollywood had conjured up.
• I often heard the whispers behind my back, I’m Cindy’s stupid little sister. “The older one is so smart and outgoing! But this one . . . ” It went on from grade school up until my junior year of high school when Mr. Shaw, who I didn’t even have as a teacher anymore, pulled me out of a pack of students walking to our next class and, almost angrily, informed me that I was smart, that I was under-performing, that those silly tests they did were IQ tests and I was even more intelligent than my sister. Really? I, I, I had no idea. But then I did.
• I used to study people, girls, so I could mimic their actions, their words, the giggle, the head cock so maybe I could be popular, too. Maybe I could have lots of beautiful friends. But what I saw in the end was that they were shallow, insecure, their laughter was false, their confidence was feigned . . . and maybe I was better off just being who I was, which is a good thing because I’ve also discovered that no matter how hard I try to “behave,” I can seem to help but “be me.”
• And I WAS smart. I AM smart. I can’t dissect a sentence, I have these little gaps, but I can tell you if it’s right or wrong. So I’m an idiot savant and my career has beaten the shit out of me. I’m a displaced person of Flannery O’Connor proportions, but I’d like to think it works.

It’s different now. I’m old and wise enough to know that you can have faith without hope because I feel like I am fulfilling a purpose and I can look back on my life and the promise I made to my grandmother and God and myself and how far I’ve come from that little girl who ran away from the Dairy Queen and the pride I have as a mom whose children, through their confidence, never, ever ran away from anything.  (Run-on! And not even a well-structured one!) And even though I thought I’d be gone by now I have purpose so I have no choice but to keep on. And that is faith.

Hope, hope. That is far, far, far more elusive. People categorize them together but they’re entirely different. I remind myself of my incredible family and how many amazing friends I have and how awesome February is going to be and that I don’t need anything more and it feeds my faith. And faith is good. And while there are flashes when it’s difficult and exhilarating to know I can still feel, I don’t dare hope. And the irony of my health and desire to “go home” has nothing to do with hope and faith, and that is neither ironic, nor is it a coincidence.

Check off “self-examination,” but I guess I haven’t really answered the question, have I? I think it’s because I still haven’t figured it out.