(As published on Chicago's Craigslist in the Missed Connections section):
Dear Chicago,
On this, the eve of the 6th anniversary of our parting, I have a few things I'd like to say to you. I know I haven't been back to visit you as often as I should, but I have a reason. Trust me on this, okay? You'll understand once I explain.
Chicago, I fucking miss you like I have never missed anything in my life. I miss you so much that the one time I came to visit you a few years ago, I cried almost every minute because all my visit did was remind me that I am no longer yours. Like an old lover who can no longer face her ex, it broke my heart to see you so alive, so happy, so bubbling, so...not my home anymore.
This is not to say that I'm not happy where I am now. I am, of sorts. I've met with marginal success, have been able to live within my means a little better, and have furthered my education in preparation for the day I come back to you. The best part of where I am now, really, is that I've reconnected with dear old friends and the tiny bit of family that I have left - something you weren't able to offer me. That wasn't your fault. Making friends within your area was a little difficult sometimes, but again, you just weren't stocked with people from my past, so it wasn't your fault. Toward the end there I was getting pretty bitter and unhealthy about life (you really had started to throw some shit my way), and you just didn't have the support network I needed. Everything was falling onto the shoulders of the two last friends I had there, and I didn't want to lose them, too, so...I left.
Since the day I pulled the U-haul out of the alley behind my old apartment, I have missed you. My move, while somber at the core, held a lot of promise at the time and has come with many perks. I have a lot more space where I am now, and things like parking and rush hour are cakewalks compared to what I dealt with when I lived in you. I can register my car for a fraction of what it costs in Illinois, and I don't have to carry my groceries up three flights of stairs. In fact, I don't have to carry them far at all; I park 6 feet from my front door. Off the street. I have a house with a garden and a yard and my own washer and dryer in the basement, a basement which is providing a home for all the crap I've managed to accumulate (I haven't moved since I left you, and you remember what I was like, always hoarding, purging, and moving every couple of years, so you can imagine just how much shit I've piled up by now). Heck, I even have an attached studio space! I have more room than I know what to do with! And therein, Chicago, lies the problem.
You contained me. You kept me in check. Nothing could get so out of hand when I lived in those little apartments. My weight stayed down thanks to those sojourns to the grocery store and back, from those metabolism-raising trips to Bubbleland, from those "fuck this traffic" bike rides to work. I couldn't ever accumulate too much crap because there was only so much room, even with a storage locker in the basement. Now, I'm like a goldfish placed in a huge pond. I just keep expanding to fill the space.
But that's the least of my worries. Because you see, while my girth and my useless collection of possessions and ephemera keep growing, my love life shrinks. Well, maybe not shrink so much as never existed here in the first place. Why? It could be because I'm fat and miserable, sure, but I'm pretty convinced, Chicago, it's because where I live now is not filled with progressive, forward-thinking, educated single males like you are. In fact it's devoid of them. See, whereas I could spin around on any number of your crowded streets with my eyes closed and run an 80% chance of pointing to someone who fits the 30-45, child-free, educated demographic, it's a completely different story here. Here, I run about a .8 chance, if that. More than likely the odds are in my favor that I'm going to wind up pointing to (a) a bar filled with nubile and entitled co-eds, (b) a sedan containing a married father of three who's on his way to pick up his mistress, (c) a single dad schlepping off to his second-shift warehouse job to make the child support payment, or (d) a homeless guy. On the rare chance I do find one that's single, he drops me like a hot potato when he figures out that I'm old meat who's never gonna oblige him with loin-fruit. Or he's a flake with commitment issues who's still single because he lived at home until he was 30 and has yet to find his replacement mom. More than that, where I live now sports a mind-blowing shortage of men with any kind of taste in food, clothing, or music. My perfect date is an afternoon wandering a museum followed by a Thai dinner and - if things go well - a nightcap over some original live music. Not here. Now, please don't get me wrong, Chicago, I live in an area that boasts a great arts and music scene - it's just impossible to find a man who enjoys these things as much as I do. Single dudes here are all about pepperoni, cheap beer, football, and cover bands. And I, unfortunately, have become all about my cats.
*sigh*
But I digress.
I miss your giant burritos at 4:00 a.m. I miss flying directly to anywhere in the world. I miss not having to drive if I don't feel like it. I miss the elote cart and his wonky little horn, the jingle of the Good Humor truck, and the United Nations buffet of dinner choices, especially Ethiopian food. I miss taking the bus and not feeling like a degenerate. I miss Green River and Swedish Flops and bean pies. I miss real baseball. I miss old, authentic, re-mantled Irish pubs. I miss walking down the street and having people actually be walking with me. I miss drivers who know how to navigate buses and cyclists at the same time. I miss the Trib crossword. I miss broasted chicken. I miss the rattle of the El. I miss the smell of Lake Michigan as it comes to life in early summer. I miss hailing a cab with the flick of a wrist. I miss the beach. I miss the skyline and how it rose up all important-looking yet friendly and welcoming from the flatness around it. It never failed, in all nine years I lived there, to take my breath away.
There is much I don't miss, of course, like the traffic, and the insanely cold winters and equally brutal summers, and the crime, and the expense, and the parking. But these are sacrifices I willingly made, hassles I put up with in order to be a proud denizen of Chicagoland.
But sometimes I wonder if I miss you, or miss the life I wanted to have with you. Toward the end there, it was bad, remember? I couldn't find a job anywhere within 50 miles of you. I had no more friends. Even if I did, I didn't have any money to do anything with them. Things got ugly. I hit bottom. I had to go.
Do I regret moving? Sometimes. When I look into the faces of the people who are happy to have me here where I am now, who are glad to spend time with me, who understand me and cheer me on and support me as only my friends can...no. I do not regret it. But when I think about what could have been with you...yes. I do.
So I'll tell you what, Chicago. I'll come back. I actually never doubted in my mind that would be back, it's just taking longer than I thought it would. Things will be different next time. I'll be older, wiser, and a little more relaxed. Hopefully I'll be a little wealthier, too, because my days of living in the ghetto are behind me, I'm afraid. I'll have to downsize and learn how to live on less, but that's okay. My only request is that you have a sunny apartment and a smart guy who likes Ethiopian food in my near future.
All my love,
Me
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
The road to hell is paved with insurance claims
WARNING: This (very long) post contains some rather graphic, albeit humorously pathetic, material. If you're short on time, or averse to bathroom references, bodily functions, or negativity against the franchise that is the American Health Care Machine, you might want to skip this one.
+++++
Remember last year when I landed in the hospital for four days with the mother of all asthma attacks? I drove myself to the ER that time, as I'd done twice before during such incidents.
Last week, however, I didn't even have time to do that. About five minutes into what I thought was "routine" tightness in my chest resulting from any number of possible environmental and/or physical triggers (can't say for sure which one), I was on my front porch, gasping for air, and begging the 911 operator to send an ambulance. The operator was having trouble understanding me (more on that later), and at that point I thought to myself, "this is it. This is the story that everyone reads about in the paper, the asthmatic who had an attack, didn't get attention in time, and died." The very thought was enough to send me into bodily-function failure, and I, well, I crapped myself. As if standing on my porch, leaning over the railing, shaking, and hoarsely shouting "HURRY!" weren't enough, I had to do it with a full diaper, too. Lovely.
A neighbor on the next street heard my cries and shouted over the fence asking if I needed help. Now, all right, I don't mean to look a gift horse in the mouth, and I'm certain that under the circumstances he simply misjudged, but honestly - you have a neighbor who is desperately gasping for air and panting "asthma....help...hurry..." into a phone while hanging over a railing...I think it's pretty obvious she needs help. And if that weren't enough, he called 911 (who had, by this time, figured out what I was saying and dispatched the ambulance) and told them I looked to be "about 45" and then also misinterpreted the situation as some sort of domestic dispute, which is why, as I later found out, the police showed up. Wow. Scratch that guy off the summer BBQ party list.
So...I suppose I should back up a bit and tell the story from the beginning, to shed just a little more light on things. About 10 minutes after I got home from work, I started feeling tight in my chest. I took a hit off my inhaler and went on my way. After a few minutes I was feeling even worse, so I sat down to give myself a nebulizer treatment. After that was done, I still felt no relief. I took another hit off the inhaler and started worrying that this was going to grow up to be an exacerbation. I thought some fresh air might help, so I went outside. Within 30 seconds I felt as if my lungs were made of wood, and it became clear that I needed medical attention. I started feeling dizzy and out of control. I came back inside, grabbed my phone and my wallet, and went back outside and called 911. This is the moment at which I thought I was going to die...
"911, what's your emergency?"
"Asthma...help...asthma...help..."
"You're having trouble breathing, ma'am?"
"YES! Asthma! Attack!"
"Ma'am what is your address?"
"Eight....teen..."
"Eight, what street?"
"No! Eight...teen...Hoyer"
Now, "Hoyer" came out more like a loud whisper, which is all I could get out at that point. If I tried to talk any louder, it was even more broken and incomprehensible. So "Hoyer" came out like "HOE...Yer."
The operator didn't understand. She kept telling me to speak up, I kept telling her I couldn't. Had this woman (a) never taken a call from an asthma patient before and (b) not familiarized herself with the streets of Buffalo? In all fairness, my street is tiny, but when you're dying and someone is prolonging the agony, you tend to not cut them so much slack. We went through just about every word that rhymes with "Hoyer" - even with me spelling it out - until she finally got it, and by the end I was barking, "HURRY! PLEASE HURRY!"
Insert neighbor guy here.
After calling 911 as well, the guy came over with his dog. I cried out, "OH NO!" which prompted him to say, "Oh, don't worry, she won't hurt you!" I didn't have the breath or the energy (or the desire) to explain to him that my interjection was not due to a fear of his little dog, but rather because at that very moment, I lost control of my bodily functions, and didn't want him to come near me. And since I'd never met this guy before, even if I could talk I didn't really feel comfortable saying, "Hi, how are ya? My name's Deedee. Your dog is cute, and I would pet her if it weren't for the fact that I can't breathe, can't move, and I just crapped my pants." Sure, it'd make for some great storytelling in the future, but not exactly how I wanted to waste what little air I was able to take in.
I'm really being hard on this guy, I know, but when you hear what he said to me next, you'll completely understand.
"You're about 45, is that right? Because that's what I told them."
Yes, yes, I know. It was chaotic. I was in the throes of an attack. He was across the street. I was bent over and he couldn't see my face. And everyone knows that all fat women are about 45.
I just looked at him and said, "I'm 37" in a voice that more or less sounded like my head might start rotating. He stepped back. Where the hell was that god damned ambulance??
As I started to fade out, I heard the sirens. A firetruck and a police car were the first to arrive. What the hell? My house wasn't on fire, my fucking lungs were. The firemen ran up on the porch and put an oxygen mask on me. This was NOT a good idea. When you have an asthma attack, you feel as if you're suffocating -- because you are. There is no air moving through, in or out. The LAST thing you want is something on your face. Normally in the hospital they put a cannula under your nose, but I guess it's different in on-the-go situations. So I started to panic some more, clutching and pulling and scratching at the mask. There were faces. Lots of faces. And voices. I handed someone my wallet. I started to cry. I begged them to help me. I told them I couldn't breathe. They told me I could, but that I had to calm down for it to happen. I heard someone say, "You're breathing, ma'am, you ARE breathing, you're just not doing it well. Hang in there, hang on..." and two men picked me up under my armpits and put me on a stretcher. In the upright-seated position I felt like I had a three-ton weight crushing my chest, and I panicked again. "Icantbreatheicantbreatheohmygodicantbreathe..."
Every bump felt like another blow to my chest, and when they lifted me up into the ambulance, the only thing that kept me from believing I was going to die was the face of the paramedic waiting inside. I was glad it was a woman. I was already full of injury and insult; I didn't need more self-consciousness heaped on top of that. I was immediately stuck with an IV full of steroids and someone put a nebulizer mouthpiece between my lips. I breathed rapidly, watching the long puffs of steam curl out from the other side. Inoutinoutinoutinout...
I kept trying to sign to the paramedic, hoping she knew ASL, because it would have made communication a little easier. Between the fact that my normally bad hearing was made worse by the stress and the background noise, and having a mouthpiece firmly clamped in my teeth, communication wasn't going well. Eventually I was able to breathe well enough to take the mouthpiece out and answer her questions. Within fifteen minutes I was pumped full of steroids and breathing well enough that I could say full sentences, refuse a ride to the hospital, and apologize for pooping my pants (which, mercifully, the ambulance staff dismissed as something they see all the time). And in half an hour I was laughing and cracking jokes. (Come on now, did you really think I could sit in an ambulance after a near-death experience with shorts full of shit and NOT find some humor in it? If you did, then you don't know me very well).
After close to an hour, my peak flows were back up and I could breathe again, and I was exhausted. They let me out, and I went back into the house. Crisis averted, my life spared. But instead of feeling relieved, I felt angry. Betrayed. Gypped. I should have gone to the hospital, but you know what stopped me? Partly, it was my messy house and my pets. I didn't want to leave them for an unknown amount of time with no caregiver. I had one rat, in fact, who was dying. I couldn't leave her. I didn't want to subject someone to navigating the minefield of my mess. I didn't want to arrive at the hospital in poopy pants. I didn't want to miss school or work. It's the end of the semester, and I'd never catch up if I missed any classes.
But mainly, I didn't want to go because I didn't have the money. I'm still paying off last year's hospital bills, and with my summer tuition and possible graduate school looming in the near future, I simply couldn't afford another several thousand dollars. I do have health insurance, but it only covers so much. And this is what pissed me off.
Here it is, people:
There is something fundamentally wrong with a country that makes its citizens choose between their credit ratings and their lives.
If you've ever seen Michael Moore's "Sicko," then you know. And even if you hate Mr. Moore, even if you think he's an egotistical spin doctor with an agenda, you cannot deny there is truth to his mission. I have lived it, over and over again. I have scrimped and pinched for it. I have ruined my credit rating with it, I have filed bankruptcy against it, and I have subsisted on ramen noodles in its name.
This. Is. Wrong.
Now I'm sitting here, battling the side effects of the medication that keeps me breathing, and wondering where the vicious cycle ends. Does it end when I get better insurance? When the privatization of health care ends? When I make more money? When it finally gets to be too much and the ambulance doesn't get there fast enough? Or when I claw my own eyes out while climbing the walls hopped up on corticosteroids? When?
I didn't want to turn this into a political entry, honestly, but the more I think about this, the more I realize that I am just one in MILLIONS who has to face choices like this EVERY DAY, it makes me livid. It makes me want to do something. It makes me angry, and it makes me ashamed to be an American. I'm not saying I'd want to live anywhere else (if only Ireland didn't have that pesky left-side driving weirdness...) but it breaks my heart that I live in a place where people are forced to choose between money and life on a regular basis. And I just can't believe that more people aren't up in arms about this.
We should be revolting! CEOs of the health insurance companies are the new tea. Throw them overboard! Hope that they can't swim, and then tell them they need to cough up a year's salary in order to buy the little Styrofoam ring that will save their lives. Fuck them!
There is most certainly a special layer of hell reserved for the health insurance folks, and I take comfort in believing that these assholes will be eternally subjected to every single illness they have ever forced the "little people" to live with (and die from), and will be made to do nothing but decipher claim forms forever and beyond while they struggle to breathe through acrid hell-fire smoke, waiting for the ambulance that will never get there in time.
But in the meantime, I sit here stewing, wondering what I can do, trying not to let the anger overshadow my joy and relief at having made it through my experience with nothing more than a few scars on my lungs and a dramatic story to tell.
I just hope my luck doesn't run out.
+++++
Remember last year when I landed in the hospital for four days with the mother of all asthma attacks? I drove myself to the ER that time, as I'd done twice before during such incidents.
Last week, however, I didn't even have time to do that. About five minutes into what I thought was "routine" tightness in my chest resulting from any number of possible environmental and/or physical triggers (can't say for sure which one), I was on my front porch, gasping for air, and begging the 911 operator to send an ambulance. The operator was having trouble understanding me (more on that later), and at that point I thought to myself, "this is it. This is the story that everyone reads about in the paper, the asthmatic who had an attack, didn't get attention in time, and died." The very thought was enough to send me into bodily-function failure, and I, well, I crapped myself. As if standing on my porch, leaning over the railing, shaking, and hoarsely shouting "HURRY!" weren't enough, I had to do it with a full diaper, too. Lovely.
A neighbor on the next street heard my cries and shouted over the fence asking if I needed help. Now, all right, I don't mean to look a gift horse in the mouth, and I'm certain that under the circumstances he simply misjudged, but honestly - you have a neighbor who is desperately gasping for air and panting "asthma....help...hurry..." into a phone while hanging over a railing...I think it's pretty obvious she needs help. And if that weren't enough, he called 911 (who had, by this time, figured out what I was saying and dispatched the ambulance) and told them I looked to be "about 45" and then also misinterpreted the situation as some sort of domestic dispute, which is why, as I later found out, the police showed up. Wow. Scratch that guy off the summer BBQ party list.
So...I suppose I should back up a bit and tell the story from the beginning, to shed just a little more light on things. About 10 minutes after I got home from work, I started feeling tight in my chest. I took a hit off my inhaler and went on my way. After a few minutes I was feeling even worse, so I sat down to give myself a nebulizer treatment. After that was done, I still felt no relief. I took another hit off the inhaler and started worrying that this was going to grow up to be an exacerbation. I thought some fresh air might help, so I went outside. Within 30 seconds I felt as if my lungs were made of wood, and it became clear that I needed medical attention. I started feeling dizzy and out of control. I came back inside, grabbed my phone and my wallet, and went back outside and called 911. This is the moment at which I thought I was going to die...
"911, what's your emergency?"
"Asthma...help...asthma...help..."
"You're having trouble breathing, ma'am?"
"YES! Asthma! Attack!"
"Ma'am what is your address?"
"Eight....teen..."
"Eight, what street?"
"No! Eight...teen...Hoyer"
Now, "Hoyer" came out more like a loud whisper, which is all I could get out at that point. If I tried to talk any louder, it was even more broken and incomprehensible. So "Hoyer" came out like "HOE...Yer."
The operator didn't understand. She kept telling me to speak up, I kept telling her I couldn't. Had this woman (a) never taken a call from an asthma patient before and (b) not familiarized herself with the streets of Buffalo? In all fairness, my street is tiny, but when you're dying and someone is prolonging the agony, you tend to not cut them so much slack. We went through just about every word that rhymes with "Hoyer" - even with me spelling it out - until she finally got it, and by the end I was barking, "HURRY! PLEASE HURRY!"
Insert neighbor guy here.
After calling 911 as well, the guy came over with his dog. I cried out, "OH NO!" which prompted him to say, "Oh, don't worry, she won't hurt you!" I didn't have the breath or the energy (or the desire) to explain to him that my interjection was not due to a fear of his little dog, but rather because at that very moment, I lost control of my bodily functions, and didn't want him to come near me. And since I'd never met this guy before, even if I could talk I didn't really feel comfortable saying, "Hi, how are ya? My name's Deedee. Your dog is cute, and I would pet her if it weren't for the fact that I can't breathe, can't move, and I just crapped my pants." Sure, it'd make for some great storytelling in the future, but not exactly how I wanted to waste what little air I was able to take in.
I'm really being hard on this guy, I know, but when you hear what he said to me next, you'll completely understand.
"You're about 45, is that right? Because that's what I told them."
Yes, yes, I know. It was chaotic. I was in the throes of an attack. He was across the street. I was bent over and he couldn't see my face. And everyone knows that all fat women are about 45.
I just looked at him and said, "I'm 37" in a voice that more or less sounded like my head might start rotating. He stepped back. Where the hell was that god damned ambulance??
As I started to fade out, I heard the sirens. A firetruck and a police car were the first to arrive. What the hell? My house wasn't on fire, my fucking lungs were. The firemen ran up on the porch and put an oxygen mask on me. This was NOT a good idea. When you have an asthma attack, you feel as if you're suffocating -- because you are. There is no air moving through, in or out. The LAST thing you want is something on your face. Normally in the hospital they put a cannula under your nose, but I guess it's different in on-the-go situations. So I started to panic some more, clutching and pulling and scratching at the mask. There were faces. Lots of faces. And voices. I handed someone my wallet. I started to cry. I begged them to help me. I told them I couldn't breathe. They told me I could, but that I had to calm down for it to happen. I heard someone say, "You're breathing, ma'am, you ARE breathing, you're just not doing it well. Hang in there, hang on..." and two men picked me up under my armpits and put me on a stretcher. In the upright-seated position I felt like I had a three-ton weight crushing my chest, and I panicked again. "Icantbreatheicantbreatheohmygodicantbreathe..."
Every bump felt like another blow to my chest, and when they lifted me up into the ambulance, the only thing that kept me from believing I was going to die was the face of the paramedic waiting inside. I was glad it was a woman. I was already full of injury and insult; I didn't need more self-consciousness heaped on top of that. I was immediately stuck with an IV full of steroids and someone put a nebulizer mouthpiece between my lips. I breathed rapidly, watching the long puffs of steam curl out from the other side. Inoutinoutinoutinout...
I kept trying to sign to the paramedic, hoping she knew ASL, because it would have made communication a little easier. Between the fact that my normally bad hearing was made worse by the stress and the background noise, and having a mouthpiece firmly clamped in my teeth, communication wasn't going well. Eventually I was able to breathe well enough to take the mouthpiece out and answer her questions. Within fifteen minutes I was pumped full of steroids and breathing well enough that I could say full sentences, refuse a ride to the hospital, and apologize for pooping my pants (which, mercifully, the ambulance staff dismissed as something they see all the time). And in half an hour I was laughing and cracking jokes. (Come on now, did you really think I could sit in an ambulance after a near-death experience with shorts full of shit and NOT find some humor in it? If you did, then you don't know me very well).
After close to an hour, my peak flows were back up and I could breathe again, and I was exhausted. They let me out, and I went back into the house. Crisis averted, my life spared. But instead of feeling relieved, I felt angry. Betrayed. Gypped. I should have gone to the hospital, but you know what stopped me? Partly, it was my messy house and my pets. I didn't want to leave them for an unknown amount of time with no caregiver. I had one rat, in fact, who was dying. I couldn't leave her. I didn't want to subject someone to navigating the minefield of my mess. I didn't want to arrive at the hospital in poopy pants. I didn't want to miss school or work. It's the end of the semester, and I'd never catch up if I missed any classes.
But mainly, I didn't want to go because I didn't have the money. I'm still paying off last year's hospital bills, and with my summer tuition and possible graduate school looming in the near future, I simply couldn't afford another several thousand dollars. I do have health insurance, but it only covers so much. And this is what pissed me off.
Here it is, people:
There is something fundamentally wrong with a country that makes its citizens choose between their credit ratings and their lives.
If you've ever seen Michael Moore's "Sicko," then you know. And even if you hate Mr. Moore, even if you think he's an egotistical spin doctor with an agenda, you cannot deny there is truth to his mission. I have lived it, over and over again. I have scrimped and pinched for it. I have ruined my credit rating with it, I have filed bankruptcy against it, and I have subsisted on ramen noodles in its name.
This. Is. Wrong.
Now I'm sitting here, battling the side effects of the medication that keeps me breathing, and wondering where the vicious cycle ends. Does it end when I get better insurance? When the privatization of health care ends? When I make more money? When it finally gets to be too much and the ambulance doesn't get there fast enough? Or when I claw my own eyes out while climbing the walls hopped up on corticosteroids? When?
I didn't want to turn this into a political entry, honestly, but the more I think about this, the more I realize that I am just one in MILLIONS who has to face choices like this EVERY DAY, it makes me livid. It makes me want to do something. It makes me angry, and it makes me ashamed to be an American. I'm not saying I'd want to live anywhere else (if only Ireland didn't have that pesky left-side driving weirdness...) but it breaks my heart that I live in a place where people are forced to choose between money and life on a regular basis. And I just can't believe that more people aren't up in arms about this.
We should be revolting! CEOs of the health insurance companies are the new tea. Throw them overboard! Hope that they can't swim, and then tell them they need to cough up a year's salary in order to buy the little Styrofoam ring that will save their lives. Fuck them!
There is most certainly a special layer of hell reserved for the health insurance folks, and I take comfort in believing that these assholes will be eternally subjected to every single illness they have ever forced the "little people" to live with (and die from), and will be made to do nothing but decipher claim forms forever and beyond while they struggle to breathe through acrid hell-fire smoke, waiting for the ambulance that will never get there in time.
But in the meantime, I sit here stewing, wondering what I can do, trying not to let the anger overshadow my joy and relief at having made it through my experience with nothing more than a few scars on my lungs and a dramatic story to tell.
I just hope my luck doesn't run out.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
It's not over 'til it's over...and God only knows when that'll be.
I know - it's been a long, long time since I laid any type down on Planet Deedums. You all know, though, that I've been preoccupied with other things, and hopefully you still love me. If the turnout at my show was any indication, I've got a wonderfully diverse and fabulous group of folks in my life who, at the very least, like me.
So. The show is over. I'm really surprised at how well I managed to pull it all off, particularly the reception (especially considering the formidable list of obstacles preceding it), but I had a good deal of help and support from my family and friends. At the end of the reception, I had planned to go home, have myself a hearty, deep-cleansing cry, and sleep off the remnants of the nerve-soothing wine. It didn't quite happen that way, though. I ended up stopping by a friend's reception elsewhere in town because I had enough time to do so, after which I went and got myself a cup of coffee and a snack. (I heard, by the way, that the food at my show was excellent. I was too busy trying to manipulate a glass of wine, hugs, and handshakes with my hands to hold a plate, and too busy running my mouth to actually put anything in it).
When I got home, I kicked off my 4-inch heels, which had become instruments of torture at that point (my feet STILL hurt), wiggled out of my fancy dress, put on my sweats, and sat on the sofa. I waited for the tears to come, for the release of many weeks of hard work and anxiety through my eyelids, but they didn't show. I think the real torrent will come when I finally have that diploma in my hand.
Before I can have that, though, I have to get through the next two weeks of classes, during which I also need to secure an internship, wait for the grad school decision letter, and learn Flash Animation, which I am convinced was invented for the sole purpose of making my life a living hell.
That said, I can't guarantee it won't be another four months before the next post, but I will certainly try to keep everyone updated on the goings-on here. And thanks to everyone who came out to Impact - it meant the world to me!
So. The show is over. I'm really surprised at how well I managed to pull it all off, particularly the reception (especially considering the formidable list of obstacles preceding it), but I had a good deal of help and support from my family and friends. At the end of the reception, I had planned to go home, have myself a hearty, deep-cleansing cry, and sleep off the remnants of the nerve-soothing wine. It didn't quite happen that way, though. I ended up stopping by a friend's reception elsewhere in town because I had enough time to do so, after which I went and got myself a cup of coffee and a snack. (I heard, by the way, that the food at my show was excellent. I was too busy trying to manipulate a glass of wine, hugs, and handshakes with my hands to hold a plate, and too busy running my mouth to actually put anything in it).
When I got home, I kicked off my 4-inch heels, which had become instruments of torture at that point (my feet STILL hurt), wiggled out of my fancy dress, put on my sweats, and sat on the sofa. I waited for the tears to come, for the release of many weeks of hard work and anxiety through my eyelids, but they didn't show. I think the real torrent will come when I finally have that diploma in my hand.
Before I can have that, though, I have to get through the next two weeks of classes, during which I also need to secure an internship, wait for the grad school decision letter, and learn Flash Animation, which I am convinced was invented for the sole purpose of making my life a living hell.
That said, I can't guarantee it won't be another four months before the next post, but I will certainly try to keep everyone updated on the goings-on here. And thanks to everyone who came out to Impact - it meant the world to me!
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