Cry Baby

February 16th ~ It’s getting harder for me to use my fingers. I wish I knew how to tell them how much I still need them. 

19th ~ I wrote about Anna Biller’s first movie Viva on my blog. It’s a film for those who love spring colors, vintage styling, and seeing lots of tits. If you’re into censorship or whatever watch something boring instead. You have plenty of options. I thought it was good as I wrote it but didn’t post it. That seems to be my issue lately.

22nd ~ These are tumors 4 and 5 but the nurse still calls to check in on details anyway I guess. I can’t eat or drink for six hours before I get to the clinic. That’s more than enough to kill me. 

24th ~ I feel like a big stupid idiot baby because I’ve cried so much this month. Maybe it’s that thing where I grieve loss before it happens.

26th ~ I’m trying to think of a way out of this but mostly I’m thinking about all the days I spent working first so I could write later.

27th ~ On my way to the clinic I remind myself of 3 truths: 

1. I’ll look and feel like a fat toad on a wet log once I wake up from the anesthesia. There’s no getting around it. 

2. Though doc knows how to scrape the tumors off my bones he’ll have no idea what it actually feels like to recover from it. 

3. Even with the good meds I’ll go into shock from the pain, my body will shake and sweat from the burning. I’ll squirm in my bed instead of sleeping. 

March 1st ~ My Troll 2 screening was tonight at the station. There’s just something about watching the dumbest shit in the world to help me calibrate. 

2nd ~ When you’re on oxycodone the sun slowly spreads into night and you’re still sitting in the same chair you were that morning. Full days of nothing. A blissful emptiness. 

3rd ~ Mom came over. She brought gifts. Thai for lunch and a blanket she crocheted with elephants that look more like dogs. We ate in the sun. It felt good. I told her I was going to finish my book soon. It sounded funny to me. 

“I’m going to say things about my childhood,” I said. She pursed her lips like she does and instead of talking about her absence she decided to talk about my father. 

“You know you were only four years old when he threw you up against a wall.” I nod. I’ve heard that one before. But then she tells me something new. When I was a baby, every time I cried he would pinch over and over until I stopped. 

I didn’t tell her the obvious, that none of this information was useful to me now. I already know my body isn’t what it could have been. There are holes in some of the memories, warped and spotted like dirty film, but there are still plenty I can’t seem to forget.

I was grateful for the oxy because I felt nothing. I watched a spider walk on the ceiling from one end of the living room to the other with my mouth slightly open. 

4th ~ Today it took me 20 minutes to peel a banana with one hand. During the debacle my nose started running so I tried to wipe it on my shoulder but my hair was in the way so I ended up wiping my snot on my hair. 

5th ~ I got a diagnosis finally. My husband relays the information while I sit in a stupor on the couch. “Benign tumors,” he says. Good, that’s good. I picture my doctor talking now, the usual thickness in the air between us. I am aware of his ranking because it’s established him as someone who believes he’s worthy of talking down to me. Ever since I first met him I’ve wanted to cut the thickness by interrupting to remind him that we will all die alone and that hierarchy means nothing, but I don’t.

The words “rare disease,” “locally aggressive,” “high risk of recurrence,” and finally, “there is no cure.” Everything floats out so easily, so matter-of-fact. Detached. As if he's saying, “I’ll take an extra dry cappuccino.” I bet that’s his order. 

My body gets warm like I’m gonna throw up. I think it might be the medicine. A violent spark rips through me. I wish he was here right now. I want to punch him in the face. 

6th ~ I love my husband for doing his best to wash my hair in the shower. 

7th ~ I went home early from work today because my hand looked like a water balloon and I felt like the world had left me. How stupid to crack under this pressure. 

Bad movies. Home cooked Peruvian food. Books that make me sink deeper. Accessories. Matching the color of my underwear to my outfit. Movement. There is always remedy.

8th ~ I’m making connections now ~ correlation/causation. The violence of my childhood. That night at 17 I took too many lines off of my Hello Kitty mirror and watched the moon fall from the sky. That night in the bath tub. All the nights I somehow didn’t die. 

9th ~ Doc told me to keep the wounds clean, as if I wasn’t already fucking planning on it. So today I got myself off on the bathroom floor because it felt like the dirtiest thing I could do. 

Sometimes I have visions of cutting off my fingers, one by one. It makes me breathe heavily. It feels biblical. Wasn’t it Jesus who said, “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off.” I smile at the thought, but I’m left handed after all. 

10th ~ I used to believe that you had to sit with something for long enough to finally put it behind you. I don’t know if I believe that anymore. 

11th ~ Illness is like a parasite, it can eat you away slowly and reshape you without permission. I think about Darwin. How he couldn’t believe in an-loving God because of the existence of the Parasitic Wasp. 

12th ~ I told my husband I would flash my doctor in order for him to take out my stitches. He told me he hopes it works. It didn’t. He only took out half.

13th ~ I cried more today. Maybe I’m catching up. I know there’s only a small window of time I can feel sorry for myself without becoming insufferable.

14th ~ I finally tied my shoes by myself today. When I got out of the car by Neurolux, both of them were untied. There’s no way I can live the rest of my life like this. 

15th ~ I feel the nerves now, firing up again in all my fingers. The small delicate movements are the worst somehow. Clasping a necklace, fastening a button, the twist of a lipstick. I saw a picture online of a woman who didn’t get her tumor removed and it ended up growing so big it broke her bone.

16th ~ My writer friend from Austin keeps telling me to submit more. As if getting published is what I give a fuck about now. 

17th ~ I hiked up Tablerock. Movement is everything but it was amateur hour in the foothills because every person hiking in front of me with seven kids didn’t move over so I could pass them. Plus, everyone wears joggers now and they just look so bad on everyone but no one sees it somehow. I know I’m getting real close to the line where I might become a bitch forever. 

18th ~ How silly of me to have fallen in love with the process of writing. 

19th ~  I thought about the movie Tammy and the T-Rex again and I feel like Michael did when he held up the mirror with his tiny T-Rex hand and noticed he was forever changed into a dinosaur. Tammy rides on his back into the sunset  in the end because she’s still in love with Michael no matter what. And I know, I know it’s not about loving something so much you let it go, it’s about loving something enough to let it change. 

20th ~ We will continue to wake up and live in a world where we assume most things. And as it turns out, I am the only one who knows how many years I lost trying to love myself and what I was born into. 

22nd ~ After my screening of Chopping Mall today I told the audience I’ll be back to show the movie Garbage Pail Kids on Easter Sunday. All is forgiven on Sundays. 

23rd ~ I got my stitches out today. I’m thankful. My finger looks like a hot dog now and I still can’t make a fist. 

24th ~ There is a new tumor growing on my left pinky finger. It’s already started to push the skin outward and I can feel the ache when I use a pen. I look up at the perfect monstrous sun. I know it is a tremendous gift to be able to do anything at all. It’s now, right now and I've gotten so good at lying to myself. I can do this. I can do this. 

Grace Lovera is an experimental non-fiction writer, published film journalist, and analog visual artist. Her writing weaves notes of philosophy, illness, fashion, and general ennui. As a lover of B-horror and low budget film, she is a curator for the Idaho Film Society. Grace lives in Boise, Idaho. Find her on Substack and Instagram.