Okay so I didn’t like my first chapter of fiction. I was forcing it the whole way and I hate that. It feels like it is from outside of me, not inside and the whole point of writing for me is creative expression that makes me feel good whether someone else likes it or not. So….I will write non fiction but call it fiction and just change the names to protect the guilty. Lets see how that works…God this is so hard. I hate it. I love to write and I hate it when I don’t love it. No wonder so many writers are alcoholics…this is enough to drive me to drink.
Anyway I was thinking I would write a piece of fiction with a lot of truth to it because I wanted the main character to look more like a victim than I am in reality. But again it is forced and really my life has been so colorful full of high drama and dynamic characters that I thought it might make for much better reading. Also looking at the title of this post I thought what a great title it would make for my book so without further ado here goes…
The clock read 2:33 am when I woke up to a searing pain raging through my gut. I barely made it to the bathroom when all hell broke loose. I sat on the toilet while hanging my weak head over the sink and let nature takes its cruel course through my body. I was completely baffled as I tried to process what was happening when all thoughts abruptly stopped as another wave of fury racked my body. After 20 minutes of pure hell I determined I would not be teaching anything today. I dragged my weary body to the couch, flopped down and reached for the TV controls hoping to find a Law & Order rerun I could just mindlessly watch. Life just kept getting better. I hated my job and I hated my life. In fact I couldn’t remember the last time I could honestly say I liked my life. Depression set in as I waited for the early glow of dawn.
Throughout the wee hours of the morning the sickness would force my body to the bathroom time and time again. It couldn’t be food poisoning because Scott kept sleeping blissfully in the other room completely unaware of my revolting predicament. This seemed a little over the top for stress to be the root of this but none the less wave after wave of nausea and bowel disruption continued to play its tortuous game throughout the long hours until dawn. By the time Scott woke up I was nearly paralyzed with dehydration and lack of strength. I got a forced show of sympathy from him as he prepared for work. I hated him for that. Would it kill him to care just a little? I was certain that all he was thinking was this was just another excuse to not play his sex kitten fantasy girl so really my use to him was nil. I called in sick promising I would be in as soon as I was on my feet but that I had no idea when that would be exactly. I felt like telling them to just hire someone to replace me because I couldn’t imagine ever recovering from the continuing assault. Scott finally left for work and I lay there in complete exhaustion feeling quite sorry for myself. That is where Scott found me when he came home for lunch and again after he got home from work. All day I either was crawling to the bathroom or praying to God to just put me out of my misery.
This continued for another full day. The third day I called my mother and asked her if she could drive me to the doctor. Rachel, my PA that I loved and adored, wrote me a couple of prescriptions to try but I was back two days later. By this time I could barely walk and I was certain I was dying of E. Coli. Come to find out it wasn’t E. Coli but Giardia. Upon that revelation I flashed back to drinking out of the water fountain at the High School I was teaching Science at and realized that the water they pumped in from the San Juan River was not treated. The high school was on a Navajo Reservation in a place called Montezuma Creek. My grandfathers favorite description for dysentery was Montezuma’s Revenge. It all made sense now. If I wasn’t so weak I might have laughed out loud but instead accepted the prescription for the treatment of Giardia and went home grateful that this would soon be over.
Two days later I was back and sicker than ever. I would have been dumbfounded if I cared but by this time I was half dead and beyond all worries. Rachel decided to send me to a specialist in Monticello, a small town 22 miles north of Blanding. Dr. Black decided the best course of action was a colonoscopy. That was like rubbing salt in the wound, especially after he explained what I had to do to prepare for this procedure. In my opinion, I felt I had been preparing for over a week but he wasn’t satisfied, the little sadist that he was, so I took yet another prescription home and let the party begin. The preparation for the colonoscopy was devastating to my already weakened body and to top things off my husband Scott decided to have one of his meltdowns. He was screaming at me about how unhappy he was in Utah, that he wanted to move back to his hometown in Virginia, my parents sucked that they weren’t supporting us and I was a bitch for putting him through this. I made the mistake of sipping some ginger ale to try and hydrate my body but unfortunately there was nothing to hold the liquid in. If I was honest with myself I knew that the only way to drink anything was to do it sitting on the toilet but I had enough dignity left in my spirit to refuse to do this. As I ran to the bathroom once more Scott yelled out to me “Oh fine, just get up and leave when I am trying to talk to you!!” He obviously was oblivious to my suffering and had been for over a week. The tears would have spilled onto my face if I had any liquid in my body but instead I sat there praying to God to seriously end my suffering. By the way my name is Lisa and this is my story.
My life really isn’t remarkable. I have had profound life experience but I am not famous, rich or beautiful so the fact I am writing a book about my life seems silly. However, I do have a story and I want to tell it. I was born in Torrence California in 1966. My father was in Vietnam at the time. He got wounded in Vietnam and I was told I met him for the first time in a military hospital in Hawaii. He never recovered mentally from his time in Vietnam and so my mother and he got a divorce when I was six months old. I did not meet him until I was 24. In 1974 my mother remarried a man by the name of Tom whom she had been dating since I was in diapers. I didn’t learn he wasn’t my real father until I was five. A month after their wedding in Las Vegas Tom moved his new and ready made family to Athens Greece. He worked for five weeks in Saudi Arabia for a company owned by Halliburton and was home in Greece for two. We were to be over there for two years. Eight years later we finally moved state side to Virginia where I lived for 23 years. I quit school when I was 16 and got married when I was 17 and had my only child, a daughter, when I was 18 in 1985. My first husband reminded me a bit of Charles Manson. I finally escaped that horrific marriage when I was 28 and remarried Scott when I was 30. While I went to school and got a BS in Biology Scott played golf, played guitar in a rock band and played me. I was now 40 years old, living in Utah and I was pretty sure I was going to die.
The colonoscopy revealed a black colon lined with ulcers and Crohn’s Disease all stressed induced. I would have to give up my job teaching and the Dr. said “Lisa, you are very, very sick. This is dangerous and you need to make some life decisions because what you are doing now is obviously not working”. That being said I reflected back on that mornings conversation with Scott “Yeah, so Lisa your mom will have to take you to the hospital because I have a golf game.” No, I could honestly say it wasn’t working at all.
I finally managed to get my health problems under control but my health was tenuous at best. I had to give up meat in my diet and I had to try to manage my stress. I went on anti depressants and anti anxiety medicine and I was taking methadone to combat the constant pain from Fibromyalgia. The depression was unbearable on a good day and I just muddled through. I continued to take care of my parents every day, our reason for moving to Utah as they were both in bad shape, and I continued to try to find a reason not to kill myself. I wanted out of my marriage and I wanted out of my life. I began to stock of what my life had been and where it was going. It was looking fairly bleak.
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