The untitled one

I think I wrote somewhere that I’d never let more than a month go by without writing something new here, so hours before that month is over and becomes one month and one day seems like the perfect time to tap on the keys and see if some words result from that. So, bear with me while I spill a month’s worth of guts here.

Let’s see … where did I leave things? I’m cheating a little by counting the previous post –on the Haitian earthquake– as the last one when the last on-topic piece of writing was probably an earlier one. It’s not important to read it, as I’ll probably repeat myself some more here.

Our guests –an aunt and a cousin– departed on the 15th last month, after a two-week stay, bringing long-awaited relief from those inflatable mattresses that my brother and I slept on. That’s the positive bit of news. Now, for the opposite end.

I haven’t picked up a book since that García Márquez one I last wrote about. Plenty of books here, but I don’t feel like reading more than a synopsis on a back cover … and a few blog posts.

My health is as bad as always, probably worse. I know a visit to the doctor won’t help because the last few tests didn’t found anything worthy of note and the medication didn’t really do much. Can’t keep much food down without some serious effort and lack of motion, so I tend to stay away from the solids and go for things that won’t take so long to get past my stomach. The coughing doesn’t help. It also didn’t help that, late in the month, I ate some bad “fast food” –despite articles on that same day about the dubious contents of it– and woke up the next day wanting to die … well, more than the usual, but wanting to die. Took a few days to get back to my usual could-be-much-better state.

On the same day as the beginning of bad-food episode, my father suggested that I take some courses and become an air traffic controller. Putting the lives of hundreds of people flying over our heads in the hands of someone who doesn’t do well under stress? Brilliant. Couldn’t have thought of anything better. (Note to self: give my thanks to the people who advertised those courses in the newspaper. My father kept on about it for a day or two.)

I’ve gone back to getting rid of things I don’t want or need. I initially tried burning something … more specifically, a drawing I made for a 1996 contest when I was in fourth grade. It didn’t work so well and there’s always the danger of fire. Next, I went through a bunch of papers, looking for what to keep and what to destroy. Most of the things I didn’t keep consisted on grade reports from the first school I attended, which went on for several pages. Some of those reports, dating back to 1995-1997, deal with me having problems socializing, getting involved with others in class and doing homework … I guess I wasn’t as great as the numbers told. There was a piece of writing done by my father which mentioned that I’d been suffering from health issues and that I would get better with continued treatment. Boy, do I wish that had been true. Would have been great if my problems had ended back then instead of … never ending.

Fire wasn’t the greatest idea for all these papers, so I went for the next thing. One morning, after having decided what to keep –hardly anything, just a few letters and diplomas–, I submerged all the other papers in water and tried to get it all to disintegrate and dissolve, breaking it up in small pieces and moving them around in the water. Bad idea. After a good while I tried to get all the paper to go down the drain, thinking that it wouldn’t be much trouble and the drain would take it. It didn’t. I spent about an hour trying to get most of the paper out from there, forcing water into the drain so the paper would float out, using a bucket to take out the excess water and sticking an unraveled wire hanger into the pipe and ever getting my whole arm in there to see if I could unclog the drain. Took me a while, but I got it done with a combination of all those things.

Knowing better, I decided that neither fire or water were effective in destroying things that I wanted gone for good. At least I had managed to get rid of most things. The remaining papers, more grade reports –some were copies of the ones I tried to dissolve–, simply ended up torn into tiny pieces and thrown away with the rest of the garbage. One of those grade reports had “promoted to 4th grade” written on it. I remember the day I got that one, and how sad I felt that it would be months until I saw my friends or the school again. Back then, I had absolutely no idea that, one year later, I would be forcibly taken out of that school for good (or bad, because that really was a turn for the worse).

Back to the present, my mother is being persistent about some job thing. She’s not giving me enough details about it and she’s now expecting a curriculum vitae that she’ll pass along to “that lady from work”. I’ve said this before, but I’m just not interested in working anywhere until my health is in order, which it is not. Also, I haven’t done anything worth anything (to me) in almost a year, and this laptop isn’t good for that. I’ve managed to delay the whole thing until just now. My mother expects that paper with my supposed qualifications by tomorrow so that she can pass it along, but I’m not feeling well. Telling her that didn’t help the last few times, as she insists that nothing is wrong with me. Perhaps she should spend a week or two in my place … that would change her mind, but if I really had the power to make that happen, I’d rather use it to spend my remaining days in the place of someone who is healthy. Much better.

Now … I’m lost. I really don’t know what to do. I really wish I would get better, healthwise, so that I could go out there and find what I want, on my own and without people making the big choices for me, as has been the case for most of my existence. I don’t think I want more of that, or that I can take it …

Advertisement