And it Will Feel Like Truth — Day Thirteen
I’m not pregnant.
I surprise myself. The negative sign on the test does a number on my psyche and I call my mom later that day. She tells me to book an appointment with the doctor, just to be safe.
I manage to get into the doctor, but it’s not my doctor — it’s her nurse practitioner. The entire experience is a disaster. She says, “if the test said negative you’re not pregnant.” Her and others around me are rolling their eyes. I tell her about the symptoms, and ask if there’s anything at all that could make me feel like shit.
“I can’t stop crying,” I say. “I’m not hungry. Or I am hungry and then want to throw everything up after I eat.”
She makes me take a test to determine if I’m depressed. I stare at the sheet of paper attached to the clipboard and shake my head in disbelief. Does this actually work?
Do you think of hurting yourself? Check yes or no.
She tells me I should probably see a psychiatrist for the issue of me crying. Russell speaks up, saying that even though I am an emotional person, the past few weeks have been abnormal.
“She does cry a lot,” he says. “Enough for me to notice…”
They look at him then and I know even though he was sticking up for me, they only categorize it as a male who can’t handle his woman’s emotions. I feel completely unheard. The appointment ends and I’m left shell-shocked. Russ and I go to a nearby pizza place that night and I eat my weight in pepperoni rolls and Canadian bacon pizza. I know I’m going to regret it, I’ve eaten so little grease and carbs lately, but I don’t care. I feel worse than I did before the appointment and fully intend on eating my feelings.
The next day, I write a letter to my doctor explaining the nightmare of care that I received. She books me an appointment with her later in the week.
“I’m going to do some tests,” she says. She hands me a slip of paper. “I want to check a few things: namely, your hormone levels. That will tell me a lot.”
I wait for weeks and finally hear back from her when I call and demand some answers.
“It’s your thyroid,” she says. “You should probably go to your primary care doctor and get some medicine to regulate these hormone counts.” She pauses, “and take some B12 pills for energy.”
I go see my doctor and get placed on hormone treatment. I start taking B12 pills. After researching cluster headaches and migraine causes, I realize Exedrin can create cyclical headaches and dependency. I stop taking it to treat my own pain and slowly see relief. After a few months, I start feeling like me again. They find something on my thyroid, something that looks like a cyst. I make an appointment for an endocrinologist but it’s stupid busy there and I can’t get in for months.
I take the medicine while I wait, and I dive into my second year of teaching. When I finally do get in, everything shows up fine.
“Your organs can get sick, just like you can,” the doctor explains. “I imagine your thyroid was just fighting something and looked inflamed. You do have a goiter, but it’s nothing to be concerned about — I don’t see why you need the medicine still.” He shrugs, “you can take it though if it makes you feel better. At this point, either the medicine worked or you battled a virus.”
I stop taking the medicine.
Russ and I haven’t talked about kids since before the appointment, and at this point, I’m avoiding it all over again. It’s been months. No need to change our rhythm, no need to stir the pot if nothing is going to happen. We’re in the middle of year two and without even discussing it, both of us are back on the five-year plan. We keep moving. There are fights, and there’s a learning curve that wasn’t there before in our relationship. The tectonic plates of our personality are starting to merge and shift. Our imperfections, the ways we wound the other, they’re becoming heightened.
We celebrate our anniversary that summer with a trip to Austin. I’ve always told Russ, “I could never move here” but that weekend I feel a fondness for the city. We start making trips consistently, start finding spots the locals love. Our relationships in Belton are growing distant. Russ tries to throw a surprise birthday party for me and our friends spend the entire evening playing Rock Band. We feel more and more separate, more and more different, more and more alone.
After a trip to North Carolina to serve as camp counselors, we begin to entertain the idea of moving to San Diego. While in Asheville, we connect with some friends we know from Invisible Children, an organization that works to raise awareness about Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army. No one really knows what Kony is resisting, but there are multiple references to the conflict being a spiritual one with Kony claiming to have the same spirit as Alice Lakwena, his predecessor. It’s a heavy week, and it comes with a lot of clarity for Russ and me.
First of all, I need to be writing more. For as long as I remember, stories have run through my veins. I’ve survived off books during the darkest moments of my life, and it’s impossible for me to not build a narrative with how I see the world. There are always characters moving, always stories building, always a pulse within that beats with the desire to spend my life helping others see that story — more specifically their story — can change the world.
There’s also something happening between us as a couple. Before the trip, I knew we needed to come but Russ resisted.
“We don’t have the money,” he said.
I waited, knowing we needed to meet our friend in her hometown and be on the bus when it pulled out of Biloxi. With days to go, he texted me while I am at a conference.
Let’s do it, the text reads. I can’t say why we’re supposed to go. It just feels like there’s something waiting for us there. Perhaps it’s as simple as community. Perhaps it’s a little more complex. It’s not until the end of the week that we begin to understand. We know that the comfortable lifestyle we’ve been living isn’t enough anymore. Back home, we’re feeling more and more dissonant with the white-picket-fence mentality of our small town. We know there’s something more out there for us. And even though we don’t quite know what “it” is, we think San Diego may be the answer.
Some friends of ours live there, and they’re thinking about starting up a local 826 chapter. They tell us about their hopes, about how I could serve as Educational Coordinator and Russ could serve as chef while taking classes at the CIA. We would mentor kids in writing and business and create a program where we swap books created by our students with books written by students in Haiti and Uganda. It fits perfectly with where we feel movement within our own lives and our lives as a couple, and there’s huge benefit in knowing we’d actually have a community of support around us.
One day, we’re talking to a friend on the phone and we tell him we’re praying about San Diego. He’s ecstatic.
“I can’t wait for y’all to get here. I’ll be praying for everything. Just don’t be surprised if, now that you’re open to hearing where God wants you, he asks you to move to Austin or something.”
We all laugh because of the absurdity and make tentative plans to move after the school year — after I graduate with my M. Ed.
It’s one of those seasons where things begin to click into place. Grad school has a sense of ease to it, Russ is excelling at his position within the district, I’m chosen as team leader for Pre-AP and AP English. Any sort of change outside of our plans for San Diego are not even considered. I even draft a letter of support for when we announce our move.
And then we meet the girl who changes everything.
