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Use whatever you can to draw his attention to your lips. A faint smile tugs the corners of his mouth as his eyes drop to the depression cheese resting in my right hand. Ah. Perfect. I raise the nozzle for a hit and attempt to charm him with my feminine wiles. This is how you flirt, right?
Most of the time, people are too uncomfortable with negativity and pain for honest answers. Wanting to fix it, fix me, they offer positivity and solutions, which become toxic in their frequency. I’m an optimistic person in my own way, but there’s a danger in forceful optimism and not recognizing reality. I exist in a state of perpetual pain, and I’ve had to accept that to survive—it’d be nice if others acknowledged and were okay with it. Otherwise, the guilt and anxiety of being “a downer” are put on me too.
The two were inseparable growing up next door, playing football in our backyard, video games in our basement, or spending hours in Caleb’s bedroom, music blaring and eating all the damn food in the house. At the same time, I was relegated to the porch because, according to sweet Caroline, ladies don’t play football, video games, or eat. It was never apparent to me what ladies did exactly, besides bitterly observing two boys enjoying life and getting stood up by them at debutante balls. But whatever it was, it rendered me nothing more than a pretty little thing Caleb needed to protect. And
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“Or Charlie Bennet. He’s tall and took a liking to you in high school. I’m sure we could persuade him to escort you if you apologize for your little mishap.” “It wasn’t a mishap. Charlie Bennet tried to grab my boob at lunch, and I shooed his hand away with a plastic fork. He over-dramatized the whole damn incident if you ask me.” “The boy had a black eye, sweetheart.” “I stick by my I didn’t give him that statement.”
He still wears his shirt sleeves like Gene Kelly—high and tight. Neat. That doesn’t make me weak in the knees at all. Le nope. His corded forearms are leaving me completely unaffected. It’s fine. I’m fine. The unsettling stomachache reserved for him flutters to focus, right on schedule. It’s really not fair that just his presence and a slight lift of his sleeves have this much of an effect on me. Seriously, I’m as bad as a Victorian man seeing a woman’s ankles for the first time.
And second, I am and would always be so much more than my ability to create tiny humans inside of me. Separation from her hysterics had proven as much to me.
He shakes his head, smiling into his cup. “I have no doubt you could win whatever you want with me, Peaches.”
“Does your mom want him to get another black eye?” “Contrary to popular belief, I didn’t give him that.” “I know. I did,” he says calmly, sipping his coffee like this isn’t a serious news bomb he’s dropping into the conversation. “You did?” My breath snags in my throat as I try to fully comprehend what he’s saying. The pocket full of sunshine. King of Whittemore High School. Wonder Boy. Punched Charlie Bennet? Because of something he did to me?
It doesn’t go away, but I have a life to live, so I can only devote two seconds of my sanity to caring. There’s always a pain. Just some are more manageable than others. I’ve had to learn to cope and surrender my energy reserves to ignoring them, since living life in the fetal position isn’t an option long-term.
None of this gets easier. I just have to get tougher. Hell, I am so tired of having to be tougher.
One moment changes everything. Validates everything. Doctors who have told you your whole life you’re mentally unstable or have a low pain tolerance, that it’s just painful periods (that one’s hard to swallow when you’re very aware it happens almost every day) suddenly tell you you’re one in ten, ushering you into a forced kinship nobody wants to be a part of. Endo warrior. That’s the nickname they give us. Sure, I would prefer a cure, but there’s no time for that when you have an erectile dysfunction crisis looming. Stodgy old cis men must be able to get it up at all costs!
Either people care too much about your pain and you have to endure false pity while they tell you you’re strong, a warrior, and handling things with grace, unconsciously heaping pressure to maintain composure to meet their expectations, or they think you have a low tolerance and need you to quiet your drama queen tendencies. Either reaction gets old real fast, and both recenter and detract from the validity of my own pain. Sometimes I want the freedom to be and not be strong or a warrior, and I sure as hell don’t want to be graceful.
“Life sucks hard most of the time. Let me escape into a promised land where everything works out in the end.”
“I never wanted my endo. I mean, who would? But I didn’t have a choice, and it has to come with me in whatever relationship I have. How can I justify that? And who the hell would want to take that on? It’s better for everyone if I keep my hopes low and not try.”
Harmony furrows her immaculately manicured brows. “Your little issue is still giving you problems, huh?” My incurable disease? Why yes, yes, it is. “Here and there.” I shrug, grabbing
I swear all it takes is a fixer or dreamer to mention one of the Holy Trinity of Cures—yoga, diets, and supplements. And bam! I’m one eye of newt short from cursing Harmony with a perpetual bad hair day.
“I expect you to be very mature about this information in the future,” he whispers. “But Evie, I shut a door in your face the other day because I was hard, and I panicked.” I stutter, blinking at this admission. “I’m sorry—I’m—uhm—I’m going to need you to repeat that. You, what?” The tips of his ears turn red, and he mouths, “I got a boner.”
Because a lot of the time we measure success in forever, but with my disease, I’ve had to learn to have success in fleeting moments, or else what was the point of anything?
I firmly believe I shouldn’t judge another person’s pain or pain tolerance because I don’t want to diminish anyone’s plight. It’s all valid. But sometimes, I wish that in validating other people’s pain, I didn’t feel like I was diminishing my own. I understand sciatic pain is something that pregnant people experience. I understand it’s incredibly painful. I even understand that my pain cannot eradicate theirs; they both exist. But when Clare says she knows exactly how I feel, I can’t help but get the sense that it’s misplaced empathy. People don’t have to connect or commiserate to show
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He leans down and checks the remote on the heating pad, pressing a few buttons. Sometimes the timer turns off, and I forget to flick it back on and just sit there in pain and wonder why. It’s weird I’ve had this disease for over ten years, but I still get surprised by silly things like that. Liam’s been a guardian of the heating pad ever since he saw it happen, constantly monitoring it and ensuring I don’t fall into my own trap.
“Oh. Well. You see. It’s funny. One of the things I learned in the past few months is that home isn’t exactly a place for me. It’s a person. It always has been. Nana filled that role for so long. That’s why I felt so untethered when she passed. That’s why nothing ever fit, not here, not Paris. But with you, I finally feel like I’m home again. That warm comfort I’ve craved since I was twelve, that’s here.”
