When I was a teenager, they put me on birth control at the first sign of irregular pain. They told me the hormones would stop the disease; that maybe I didn’t even have it. They told me I was fine. And for a while, I was.

And then I wasn’t. Intense pain crashed into my life on my 24^th birthday. I’ve lost almost thirty pounds since then. Between February and this August, I have been in the ER four times and to a myriad of doctors. I have had a CT scan, an ultrasound that was rendered incomplete due to the pain (and still they said I was probably fine!), blood tests among blood tests to rule out lupus and rheumatoid factors for the pain… I have been given every explanation from kidney stones to UTIs to celiac disease to colitis to neurosis, given pain killers and told to go home.

Finally, a doctor, a good doctor listened to me. Unfortunately he is a gastroenterologist, not a gynecologist, but he knows what he’s doing. He ran another CT scan, this time with contrast to make sure that my colon, etc. were fine in and of themselves. He told me that he can feel there is something wrong. He brought up endometriosis before I did. I told him about my mother’s case. Immediately he referred me to a gynecologist and told me to hold firm; that I am not being neurotic.

In the next few weeks, I’m going to be scheduled for a laparoscopy and they suspect that there are growths on my bladder and small intestine, at the least. The surgery doesn’t phase me. The pain of it doesn’t shake me. Maybe they will find this. Maybe the pain will stop. Maybe I’ll be able to eat again without throwing up. Or have the energy to stay up past midnight again. Or begin to feeling like I am only 24. Maybe I’ll go on adventures again. And smile again. Maybe the shadows under my eyes will go away.

But I know that maybe this will only get worse. And maybe I won’t be able to have children. And maybe my life will be riddled with pain. Maybe no one will be able to love me through this. Maybe I won’t have the strength to love myself.

I used to say that I didn’t want kids. That was when I was afraid that I was too crazy. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to care for them. I don’t feel that anymore. And I know that the hardships I felt during my childhood do not need to be repeated. And it seems that at the brink of that realization comes the blow, the very real blow that I might not be fertile. That it may not be my choice to remain childless. I have always wanted to adopt. And while genetic commonality bears no relation to the amount of love felt for a child, I still find myself these nights lately crying myself to sleep at the thought that I may never know what it is like to be pregnant. I may never have a husband run his hands over me and sing into my belly button. I may never know the pain of childbirth; the greatest pain humans willingly endure; yet I have to live a life so heavily saturated with pain from the very parts that may likely deny me a child.

For as long as I remember, I’ve always been pretty sure that I am dying. But in the past six months, I’ve felt it much more intensely. Interestingly enough, those were the months when I wasn’t smoking.

It’s like my morbidly obese boss said the other week, “It’s all you skinny people getting sick. It’s the fat, cigar-smoking ones who are always in the hospital waiting room, and the skinny ones in the beds.” Now, I am sure much of that is in jest, as he is trying to get healthier, but still…

But I’m dying.

Or something. I feel like my stomach is eating me instead of the food I put in it. And I’ve lost almost 20 pounds since May. And yesterday I woke up with bruises under my eyes for no reason. And I’m shaky all the time.

So they’re testing for Celiacs. But I’m thinking more along the lines of stomach cancer, or a tapeworm, or something they haven’t even discovered yet.

And cancer isn’t a joking matter. I’m kind of mad at my OCD-riddled brain for even going there. I know people with cancer. I knew people with cancer. I’ve seen cancer. Cancer’s a bitch.

I don’t have cancer.

But can you please tell that to Google?

But I’ve found something even more widespreadedly addictive in a neighborhood where I learned the other night on a walk to the bodega, to never let a crackhead dogsit (she lost his dog, and boy was he angry)… And that thing is Popeye’s.

Being a vegetarian, and a person who never really enjoyed most fried foods, I don’t get the appeal of a soggy cardboard box full of salty, greasy chicken bits. Apparently I am alone on that.

I got off the train yesterday and immediately turned the corner to drag my tired ass to the grocery store for some olives because I had been thinking about olive since lunch. I got inside Food Bazaar (nicknamed Food Circus due to the shit show of crowded ghettoness that is usually contained within its premises) and the first thing I noticed was that it was empty. Not just emptier than usual, but EMPTY.

One girl says to a bored (because there was no line of shoppers) cashier, “You know they all at Popeye’s gettin’ their 8 pieces for 5 dollars.”

Oh.

OH.

Wow.

And when I left the Food Circus and turned the corner onto Broadway, I saw the line out the door and down the block, stemming from the doldrums of that dirty, underlit Popeye’s.

I chuckled and thought that was all. Not so. On my walk home I heard, on multiple occasions, people saying into their phone, obviously calling people who were farther down Broadway, in line already, “Hey yo tell him I want…”.

Popeye’s Chicken, a community unifier. A sale on cheap chicken caused more energy to course through that little corridor on Myrtle and Broadway than I’ve seen as of yet in my time there.

Back up.

Yesterday was gorgeous. Upper fifties, sixty degrees when I got out of work and sunnnnnny. A couple friends met me after work and we dodged the St Patty’s parade (not an easy feat) and headed into Central Park because the one nice side effect of working on the Upper East side is that the Park is a block away.

We skipped around the park, careful to avoid children (one of the ponds was drained for spring cleaning and there was a group of tiny blonde little girls in Catholic school outfits wandering around in the empty lake. IT LOOKED LIKE CHILDREN OF THE CORN) and the Renessance festival reject playing minstral music near the Alice in Wonderland sculptures. Although after a few minutes, we realized that he was actually pretty good.

Eventually we met up with another friend and decided that since it was St. Patrick’s Day, we were going to get Mexican food. Who wants to go on a pub crawl when you can sit in a dark Mexican bar/restaraunt with a gazillion bajillion Christmas lights on the ceiling and drink margahtritas and get terrible waiter service? TEQUILA ALWAYS WINS.

At some point we came up with a business idea called the Porta-Party. Don’t ask about it yet, but you’ll know what it is once we get internet-famous.

Drunk-at-8pm-me thought it would be a great idea to go to the Boyfriend’s house and pick up the art supplies I got delivered there because even though I was falling asleep at Margahrita dinner, I’d totally, definitely stay awake enough to walk home after getting to his house.

Nope.

We laid down for just a minute to cuddle and because I kind of fell onto the bed and kind of took my shoes off and kind of also pulled the covers over me and so we kind of fell asleep cuddling. I woke up and it was 12:40am. So I slept over.

So then I get up at 7:30 and walk to my house to shower and get ready for work. I was dragging my way down Broadway, hair sticking up all bed-head like, yawning, squinting into the sun and thanking the weather lords that it was going to be 70 degrees today,  and at Myrtle there is a man in the middle of the Intersection of Crazy (poorly designed intersection + crazy awful drivers + New York + kind of the ghetto) with one crutch lying next to him and a white sheet laid over him and his round midsection.

I don’t know what happened, but there was no car stopped, There were police everywhere talking to one another and standing around the body, but not too close, maybe four feet away in a semi-circle. The sidewalk was clogged with people standing around and looking at the deceased as well. I suppose everyone was waiting for the correnor.

Did he get hit by a car? Was he walking home from the hospital? Did he get shot?

I have no idea. And this is the first time I’ve seen a dead body.

Rest in peace, Mister. You picked a beautiful day to die.

When I got into the bathroom tonight to floss I realized that I had made a grave mistake. While I realize that to any normal person, the specific flavor of their oral grooming products may not register as of any importance, I was horrified to discover that MY NEW FLOSS IS SPEARMINT. One, I do no quite care for spearmint. Two, MY TOOTHPASTE IS WINTERGREEN.

After flossing, I moisturized my cuticles, painted my nails, and watched syndicated television, packed my lunch and breakfast for work tomorrow, which among other things included measuring out exactly one cup of cereal, and counting out 17 pretzels (a serving size) WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

Two things wrong here: one, my mouth still tasted like mismatched mint, and two, if I was watching my life from the third person, I’d turn the channel, or time travel to another house, or whatever just get the hell out of there because my life, my life tonight looks like the beginning of a romantic comedy with some lonely mid-twenties something. All I needed was to make a phone call while toweling off my hair, or have an episode of Sex in the City running in the background, or be jogging in Central Park and accidentally bump into Hugh Grant and lock eyes… (and HEARTS)

What happened to the boozin’ and cruisin’? What happened to staying up late taking too many of my Adderall and painting?

Lately I don’t drink very much, and I schedule time to paint, go to bed often before midnight, sometimes before 11 (!!!) and and and I’M OKAY WITH IT.

I still want to live in Cobble Hill, where the trees live. And come fall, maybe there’s a way that will be possible. And one day I’ll get out of this country, I’ll go to small towns in Italy and the south of France and Kiev and Africa. And right now I’m learning not to be afraid of myself. And yeah, I’m dearly sorry all of my fellow cynics, but love helps.

BARF.

People are still often impossibly stupid. And I’m still afraid of dirt (and 312 other things). And lots of things suck. And being happy still makes me want to cry sometimes, but for the first time in 14 years, I am not depressed.

have to go now. I have to eat one of those pretzels in the plastic baggie in the plastic bag in the fridge with my food for tomorrow. 17 is an odd number. I hate odd numbers.

Still neurotic, though.

Get off the 6 train as soon as humanly possible.

I just started a job in a boutique real estate agency on the upper east side where I am pretty sure the corner store clerks are in a higher tax bracket than I am and the only train that runs up that side of the island is the 6.

The crowded, slow, jerky 6.

At least on the M, I have the option of moving to the other end of the car when someone’s being a creepster. On the 6, not only can you not move to escape them, but most likely you are pressed into their bosom with someone else’s briefcase sodomizing you.

Rush hour is going to be renamed lush hour because I’mgoing to have to start taking shots before leaving the house to deal with shit show that is the 6 train.

And the world’s best boyfriend.

You win some, you lose some.

Closing up shop at the cafe is much better with Jack and Coke.

Bed-Stuyers only half-ass sidewalk shoveling, so there are heaps four-foot high of snow at the intersections of the road and the sidewalk where the plows spat it all out and no one shoveled through it, so walking home is more like rock climbing. And I have no balance in plastic galoshes.

WINTER NEEDS TO ENNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNND.

and rubbing breath against breath on the fire escape

because we could more easily bear the deep freeze of January

than to be inside someone else’s grandmother’s lottery apartment any longer.

One girl babbled about the effects of the advent of touchscreen phones

on our blemish of a generation while the rest of us sucked on our beer.

She couldn’t say anything interesting.

And perhaps years, or maybe a few minutes later a comet,

or piece of space trash cut the half-polluted orange-black sky clear across.

An iridescent snail gone turbo speed.

The group of us stared, trying to eek out some emotion,

the stars calling to us with some great production of color and speed,

saying something about infinity and absolute zero.

But nothing was interesting.

And one girl looked back down and texted somebody, “comet”

on her touchscreen phone.