All Things Considered, Things Could Be Worse

When people ask you how it feels to publish a book, you can’t say “My dad is sick” in response. You’re supposed to beam and preen (just a little), pirouette along the fine line that separates a humble pride from peacocking, as you say reverently: “It’s a dream come true.”

Absolutely no one wants you to say:

“It’s cool. I get to go into bookstores and libraries and see my book on display and sometimes people want me to come talk about it, but my dad is sick. I left my job in May and I don’t have a new one, so I moved home to regroup and care for my dad. I’m doing interviews I arranged myself from my childhood bedroom in the city I’d always fervently hoped I’d escape. So, it’s cool and all, but everything’s on fire.”

It's not much of a problem because I don’t go out much anyway, as it’s not much in my disposition, but on the rare occasion I’m confronted with folks from high school or college who only know the highlight reel from social media, I try to make myself scarce. I’ve been pulling a broke version of a tuck-and-roll through crowds since I was fourteen, using folks I don’t know as human shields trying to stay out of eye side of people I do. (Spoiler: I’m decently tall, pleasantly heavy and my voice tends to carry, so I’ll let you decide if it worked.)

I can’t let someone who used to know me better than anyone ask me how I am because then I’ll start sobbing during cocktail hour at my best friend’s wedding and then everyone’ll be ready to pack it up.

I never could lie. I’ve also never been the kind of truthteller folks find intriguingly insightful. It’s always been more like I’m partial to telling the kinds of truths that fall clumsily from my tongue and cause everyone to shift uncomfortably in their seats.

It’s giving Cassandra—but make her a Black Millennial.

No one wants to be uncomfortable, and I can’t lie so it’s often best if I stay out of the way.

All I know right now are things that make polite society squirm. I’m an artist with no financial security. Effectively unemployed. Caregiving for a man with a visible disability and chronic illness that, in spite of all that, no one, including doctors, wants to see.

Some days, rage at the unfairness of it all floods my body. Every time my parents return home with no new answers and the same pains, my rage is a monster. Every time I have to pull my father upright my sadness turns to flames because who could see him like this and send him home with nothing, and he returns home to search for the will to survive another day.

It is maddening. The circles the doctors lead you round, telling you to check with another specialist who you won’t be able to see for two months before they can see you back. Insurance companies that refuse to fund treatments or at least will not fund necessary treatments until you’ve done what they consider due diligence. The endless number of doctors and specialists. Emergency rooms that finally said, “Since his conditions are chronic, unless there’s a traumatic injury there’s nothing we can do for him here.” And the sobering realization that the options you have to stop the pain are shrinking by the day.

This is after the painstaking fight to get ready for appointments, find the energy to get dressed and go; to haul himself into a vehicle; to swing yourself out; to sit in pain, often too long in waiting rooms for doctors who will barely look at you.

This is after it took him hours to wake. This is after hours of restless sleep. After yet another sleep test that tells us nothing. This is after he didn’t want dinner. This is after the pain was so bad my mom felt it in her head, and I felt it in my stomach.

It is a deluge of rage that will not subside unless I have howled or stomped my feet or gripped a glass so hard I know it will break but I stop because I know it will upset my family. Something long fingered with talons claws at the inside of my chest all the way up to my throat like it wants to climb out of my torso and throw the tantrum I can’t have.

When someone says, anger made them see red, I always thought it was a bright red. A flash of light an ambulance driving by.

My vision turns dark, a red almost black like spilled blood. Not a flash, but a blanket of darkness.

I want to let this monster that tears my torso into neat halves and obscures my vision loose. Wouldn’t that be fair after all we have been through? The savage thought pleases me only for a moment; because after all that, my dad would still be sick.

I’m familiar with illness. Some people know death; we know sickness. I have spent more major holidays and birthdays inside hospitals, rehab facilities and nursing homes than I would care to count. Illness follows my family so closely sometimes I think someone’s great-great granddaddy must’ve made a deal with a devil at a crossroads some years ago. There’s no other explanation.

(Capitalism, medical racism, COVID fall out, fatphobia…)

Just because I know Illness don’t mean we’re friendly.

She’s greedy. Takes everything like a spoiled rotten child. Sucks bones dry. She’s not welcome but she makes herself at home anyway.

Maybe she’s the one I should I let my monster destroy.

If only I could see her to fight her.

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The good news is: I’ve found my way back to reading recently. I never stopped but I don’t think I’d been reading at my normal pace for at least a couple years.

Things I’ve read recently that I loved:

-Yellowface by R. F. Kuang

-They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurrabiq

-Exceptional X-Men #1 by Eve L. Ewing and Carmen Carnero

-This Land Is Our Land: A Blue Beetle Story by Julio Anta and Jacoby Salcedo

-That Self-Same Metal by Brittany N. Williams

I also listened to Mutt by Leon Thomas which I liked a lot. (“Answer Your Phone” is true yearning music! More! Please!)

I’m normally watching TV and movies, too, but there’s nothing that I’m super excited about right now beyond Abbott Elementary being back. I am probably overdue for rewatching some classics, then.