Furiously Happy (18 page)

I'm sensitive about my weight, but overall I love who I am and I prefer my curves because when I'm fatter my wrinkles disappear. No one ever tells you that but when you're older and you suddenly get skinny you
also
suddenly age five years because your fat isn't filling out all of your wrinkles anymore. I sometimes get hassled for using the term “fat” but I also use the term “crazy” to describe myself and I'm fine with that because I'm taking those words back. I'm also taking “sexy” back because, frankly, Justin Timberlake has had it too long and he doesn't even need it. And I'm taking “flustrated” because that's not a real word. Stop using it.

Long story short, I am often crazy and sometimes overweight. It's not always ideal but it makes me who I am.
Literally.
Plus, I won't have to feel bad for eating too many egg rolls because if I suddenly get skinny that's going to be hard to explain. That's why I had cheesecake last night.
Because it's part of my craft.

Is there ever a line you don't cross in your writing?

I'm relatively filterless but I do have boundaries. When my last book came out everyone I wrote about got to read it before it went to press and they were all given full permission to take out anything they wanted. To their great credit they were cool with everything and in fact were the first people to say, “Hey, I have pictures of your dad's Armadillo Racing Championship ring, and of the pet raccoons wearing shorts that lived in our house. Do you want those?”

I do have boundaries. I don't tell stories that I think a mean fourteen-year-old girl could use against Hailey one day. I don't write about anything I'm currently fighting with someone about or anything where I'm not the biggest butt of the joke. There are a lot of stories that I don't write because they aren't mine to tell, but I think telling my stories helps to encourage putting other stories out there. When I first started writing, my father was very quiet about his own struggles, but after seeing the response of people who've read my stories, he's much more open. And that's a wonderful thing. When we share our struggles we let others know it's okay to share theirs. And suddenly we realize that the things we were ashamed of are the same things everyone deals with at one time or another. We are so much less alone than we think.

Do you ever worry that you'll pass on your mental illness to Hailey?

I used to worry, but she's ten now and I can see that she doesn't have the same anxiety issues I had at her age. It's possible she'll struggle with mental illness and if so I'll try to understand, and probably fail, and try again until I get it right. It would almost be easier if she had the same issues I have because I could help her and teach her the tools I've learned, but she's who she was born to be.

My sister and I were raised exactly the same way and we could not be more different. One of her daughters is more like me and my daughter is more like her. It's baffling for all of us. But it's not our fault. We're born the way we are. One of the best things you can do as a parent is to realize that your child is
nothing
like you, and
everything
like you.

You get asked to do lots of speaking and TV. Do you feel famous?

I just cleaned up cat vomit. I feel queasy.

Let me rephrase. Does it ever feel like everyone wants a piece of you?

Like they're pissed and want to fight me?

What?

You mean like, “
Hey, asshole, you want a piece of me?
”

No. Not like that at all.

Or did you mean they
literally
want a piece of me? Like they need my kidneys? Or they just want to dismember me? Because that still seems like people are mad at me. You don't usually want to dismember people you like. I think you've confused “famous” with “despised.”

I meant, like, a
metaphoric
piece of you.

Oh.
Right. Sorry. These questions are making me paranoid and then I get defensive.

Yeah. I can see that.

WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN?
YOU WANT A PIECE OF ME?

And
now
I see why you don't do interviews.

Honestly, I'm doing it for the good of humanity. Someone should get me a medal.

I can't think of any more questions.

I can't think of any more answers.

We make a good team.

Amen, mister.

 

I'm Turning into a Zombie One Organ at a Time

Last year my friend Laura woke up when her husband was tapping on her head at two a.m., but when she tried to wave him off she realized that he was fast asleep and on the other side of the bed. That's when she put her hand up to her head and felt something warm and moving. She thought it was her son's guinea pig so she turned on a light and found a live possum on her pillow that was chewing off part of her hair to make a nest. She screamed and the possum hissed angrily and ran into the living room and she made her husband go after it even though he was certain she'd just dreamed it. She was all, “
REALLY?
AM I DREAMING ALL THIS SLOBBERY HAIR ON MY PILLOW?” Then the possum charged and they had a full-out possum battle in the living room, which did
not
end well for the possum. But don't feel
too
bad for it, because of the entire wild kingdom, Texas possums are the dickiest animals ever. My dad made me raise an orphaned possum when I was ten and every time I fed it, it hissed and glared at me like it wanted me to die in a fire. It was a very imaginative, bitey possum and also a total douche-canoe. Eventually it was old enough to be set free but a few months later it came back to our house and died on the porch. Probably out of spite. It's hard to tell with possums.

Laura's possum hair story always struck me as being one of the worst ways to wake up at two a.m. until the day when I woke up at that exact same time and found that my right arm had been ripped off and replaced with bees. Or at least, that's what it felt like. And I lay there for a second, thinking that I was certainly dying and that if a possum
had
chewed off my arm I would probably bleed out within minutes and that this was exactly the sort of way I would die. I considered nudging Victor softly so that his last moments with me would be romantic and tender but then my chest spasmed and I may have involuntarily punched him in the neck as hard as I could. Luckily for him, that wasn't very hard (as I was fragile and dying) and so he groggily asked, “Christ. Did you just punch me in the neck?” and I screamed, “A POSSUM JUST ATE OFF MY ARM,” and
that's
probably the worst way to wake up ever.

I felt certain I was near death and Victor switched on the lights and pointed out that there was no blood and that I was probably just having a charley horse in my chest, which I'm pretty sure is not a real thing. I gasped for breath and told Victor that I was having a heart attack. Then he pointed out that I was clutching the wrong side of my chest for it to be my heart and that's when I realized that I was probably having a heart attack so bad that my heart was trying to run away. Or maybe my right boob was exploding. I tried to explain this to Victor but he was too busy yelling at me to calm down and so I explained that I needed to go to the hospital, except what came out was, “I'VE SWALLOWED A LEPRECHAUN AND IT'S EATING ITS WAY OUT OF MY CHEST.” This is when Victor assumed I'd had some sort of stroke and he got Hailey and me in the car as quickly as possible.

Hailey was still mostly asleep so I tried to stay quiet so I wouldn't scare her. Victor kept telling me to breathe, and I told him that I already knew how to breathe
and why do people even say that because it's not like people just forget to breathe
. He pointed out that perhaps people do and maybe that's why people die all the time, and then another spasm hit me and I bit through my lip and passed out. When I came to there were police lights flashing and Victor was in the process of getting arrested for speeding. But then he explained that he was speeding because his wife was having a heart attack and the cops came to my door, looked at me, and called for an ambulance. Then they proceeded to yell at Victor for stupidly driving so fast when he could have just called for an ambulance but in his defense, he wasn't thinking straight and he'd just been punched in the neck by a woman who claimed to have a leprechaun inside her.

The ambulance arrived and the EMTs tried to get me to walk to the gurney but my entire body was shutting down and I couldn't stand up straight from what I just assumed was spontaneous retroactive scoliosis. The next twenty minutes were a blur, but I remember looking at my feet as the ambulance careened down the road and thinking that I should totally tweet a picture of this. Then I realized I hurt too much to use Twitter and that's when I knew I was dying.

The EMT strapped monitors to my heart and took my vitals and then told the driver to make it quicker. Then he said, “Sweetheart, are you allergic to nitroglycerin? Because I need to give you some,” and that seemed really bizarre because I clearly remember that episode of
Little House on the Prairie
when the wheat crop failed and Pa had to take that job driving a wagon of highly explosive nitroglycerin and almost blew his balls off. Then the EMT asked again and I said, “I'm allergic to exploding,” and he looked at me funny and told the driver to speed up again. Probably he thought I was hallucinating because he didn't watch enough
Little House on the Prairie
. Regardless, he made me hold nitroglycerin under my tongue and it tasted a lot like pain, but that sort of made sense since I was letting an explosive melt in my mouth like a poisonous Jolly Rancher.

Moments later I was being whisked into the emergency room while a horde of doctors tried to ascertain what was wrong with me. “Patient complained of severe chest pains. Blood pressure is elevated,” the EMT said.

“And I ate explosives,” I whispered, but no one was listening because they were too busy pulling my shirt off and doing an EKG, which apparently told the doctor that my heart was perfectly fine and that I probably had gas. I was relieved that I wasn't having a heart attack but I was pretty sure I was still dying and so I screamed, “MAKE IT STOP OR I'LL CUT YOU,” right as Victor rushed into the room.

“She's not good with pain,” he explained as the doctor backed away from the gurney. Then the doctor nodded and ordered something diluted to give to me. I told him I wanted the full strength and then he explained that he'd actually said “Dilaudid” and that this was a major pain reliever. A few excruciating minutes later a nurse injected me with the Dilaudid
1
and then the pain abated and I decided not to set fire to the hospital after all. In fact, I felt so grateful that I thought I should make up for my poor behavior by sharing a bit of trivia.

“Did you know,” I asked no one in particular, “that sharks are attracted to urine?”

“She'll be a bit high for a while,” the nurse said to Victor.

“So no matter how scared you are,” I continued, “DO NOT URINATE.”

“And
that's
how you can tell the drugs are working,” said the nurse.

“No,” Victor sighed. “It's actually not. This is your tip. She does this at restaurants too.”

I tried to protest but I was a bit too nauseous to point out that I only do it when we have excellent service or when the waiter refills my Diet Coke without my having to ask for it.

Then I blinked and we were home. I might have been high. Also, I was a little mortified that I'd mistaken gas for a heart attack but I trusted the doctor and was relieved that it would never happen again.

Until two weeks later when it totally happened again.

This time I was certain I was dying but I was calm enough to let Victor drive me to the hospital at a normal rate of speed because in spite of the fact that I hurt more than when I was in labor, I was pretty sure the doctor was just going to tell me I needed to fart really bad. We arrived and they recognized me immediately because apparently I have that sort of face, or maybe because most people don't give out valuable shark advice for services rendered.

I calmly explained that this was not gas and that it felt like I was having labor pains in my chest and that possibly I'd developed an extra vagina and needed to push. No one believed me and so I screamed, “I HURT AND YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO FIX ME SO GIVE ME DILAUDID,” and then Victor told me to stop talking because I looked like a drug seeker. I explained that that was very astute of him because I
was
a drug seeker and I was seeking drugs to make my invisible chest vagina stop being such an asshole. Then he explained that “drug seeker” is medical code for addicts who come into the hospital looking for a fix and that screaming the actual name of the drug that I wanted was not helping my case. Luckily there was a doctor there who did a ton of blood work while I was screaming and realized that there was something wrong and that I was probably passing a gallstone. They gave me drugs and told me to see a gallbladder specialist to make sure the stone had passed. I told them that hamsters can only blink one eye at a time. I considered this a fair trade but they billed my insurance company anyway.

I went to see a group of gallbladder specialists but they all said that it was better to not do surgery because maybe I wouldn't have another attack, but I always find that removing body parts that want to kill you is a good thing so they referred me to Dr. Morales, who was known for taking out gallbladders like crazy. Maybe he collects them. Hard to know. What I did know though was that Dr. Morales didn't have a normal office and instead just used one from the nearby colon and rectal surgery clinic, which was disconcerting for a number of reasons. First, because I was pretty sure I didn't want my gallbladder removed rectally, and second, because the pictures in the waiting room were of asses. Literally.