This past week has seen several things come out of nowhere and slam right into me. It's a lot to process and take in for just one item, let alone three. So, I need to get them off my chest, so to speak, so I'm doing that now. Also that's a line from the telly show, Road to Avonlea. It's such a great line and I wanted to use it here, so I am. The first thing deals with my neighbourhood. I small little subdivision planned out and built in the early seventies. There are nine houses around the horseshoe that is Wildwood Circle, and then my house and another that a part of it. I'm on the circle at the south portion, which is the top of the hill, but the front of my house faces Westover Drive, as does the other house which is across the street. The rest of the lots were all woods because they were not good enough or large enough to put houses on. I have been here a very long time. Most of the original home owners have died or moved; their children long gone. There are a few left still. We are not the original home owners, as the man who built the subdivision built this house for himself, but he had a heart attack and him and his wife moved away. Another person lived in the house and they also moved away shortly. My parents purchased the house in January of 1980 and in September I was born. I was the first child born on this circle and one of only two ever born on this circle. I've never known anywhere else as home and it has also never changed. I've tromped through the woods countless times in my youth, I've seen neighbours come and go, I've been inside just about every single house in this complex (there's only two I've not been in), I remember all of the times the creek flooded really badly. So, you get the picture. This is the neighbourhood where I was born and raised and it has not changed in the past 38 years. So, lets move on to Mr. Realtor. He's buying up all the lots around the neighbourhood and keeps pestering us to sell him our house. Somebody has always owned the lots and nothing has ever been done, so it wasn't time to panic. Now it's time to panic. The corner lot in the north east quadrant of the horseshoe, Mr. Realtor had purchased, then sold to someone so they can buy a house there. I drove around the circle one day, as I do when I'm going to drive by my mailbox and get the mail, and everything was gone. No tree's, no grass, no woods at all, just a leveled piece of land that was nothing but red clay which was tilled into hills and chunks. It was actually really sad to see. It's always been some bit of grass and then the edge of the woods that are butting up next to the creek that runs back there. Now it's just this vacant lot of red clay baking in the sun, turning to dust. It was alarming to me and slightly perplexing, but that's down the hill and away from me. Surely this progress won't touch me. And I was wrong. Mr. Realtor knocks on our door earlier this week to inform us that he's purchased the lot right next to me and intends to build this fine, grand house. All I could do is hang my head and lament about the trees. I also ended up telling him he was old in a round-about way. He's already said he knew the Adams kid (whose dad still lives here, who never purchased Girl Scout cookies from me, and I think poisoned one of our cats though I couldn't prove it; and he walks his dog up here and lets it do ALL of its business in our yard and on our yard furniture. I've never liked him.) and the Davis kid (whom used to live in the two story house across Westover from us - the wife would always call the cops when we shot off fireworks and they'd tell her she was an idiot - the dad went places and streaked.). Anyways, the sons of these kids were old when I was a kid. They were old when The Sister was a kid. They were older than our brother. Teenage boys in middle school as well as high school when I was a kid were just OLD. Super old. They were tall and kind of scary and intimidating and just old. Which I said that I didn't know them, because they were old. He made a face like he couldn't believe I'd just called him old. Don't care. It's true. Those sons were probably pre-teens/early teens in the mid seventies! So, I'm getting off track here. Mr. Realtor has been out there with his crew everyday this week. Banging up a raucus and felling almost all of the trees. It was nice he wanted to keep the two magnolias and the two hickory trees, but he's going to build a house there. I feel like someone whose been shuttered away their entire life and now the world has found me and is banging out my front door. It might seem ridiculous, but it's sort of how I'm feeling. It's not like we've not been effected by progress. They started building around us in 1986 with the retirement home next door (though they are set off and a little away from us... and there's a line of trees there. Then someone built a house in the woods across the street in about 1987 or 1988. You know there's a house there because you see a light or two at night, and you can see their driveway from Dogwood Circle, whose entrance and exit is across from the northern loop of my neighbourhood. Besides the fact that I walked up to their house on occasion all those long years ago to sell them Girl Scout cookies. But no one has ever lived right next to us. There is a house, where the Ainsworths used to live and has seen several renters, with a new guy living there now and he's cool. But they're down the road a piece and are parallel with our backyard; not my bedroom windows! We have to crane our necks in either direction for him to see us at our house or for us to see him. Mr. Realtor plans on selling the lot behind our backyard and two others between that one and the Daniels' old house too. I'm about to be woods-less and surrounded by neighbours. Oh wait, I have to watch all of the woods being torn down, the last vestiges from my youth, as all of the other woods from here to the main road were mostly all torn down between the mid nineties and the mid 2000s. Then I have to have all sorts of construction noises for leveling and grading the lots and THEN all of the construction noises of houses going up before I actually am pinned in by all of these new neighbours. This realtor guy is changing everything and it's making me extremely emotional. Besides the fact that houses were never put on these lots for the plain reason that these spots make terrible places for homes and who in their right mind wants to pay out all of this money for brand new houses in a rather old and tired neighbourhood. It's one thing to buy the old fixer-upper house that's been here for fourty something years, but what he's doing? Seriously, who would buy a house here? All I can see is that all these trees are going down and I'm going to be suffocated by people. I feel like I'm being kicked out of my own neighbourhood. It's making me also see just how neglected my own home is. Our fence is falling apart, our house is falling apart, and I feel like my life is going with it. The only place I've ever lived and I feel like all of it is being ripped away and carted off like the trees across the street. We can't live here forever, my parents are septuagenarians and their health isn't that great. I don't know how to sell a house. I don't even know where I'd go if we left here. Everything is right here, and yet I no longer like right here anymore. I don't like what right here is coming to. I feel like a scared child and a monster is invading. I don't know how to not feel this way. The next thing has to do with my health, or rather my health two years ago. I previously mentioned in a post that for a year I was ill and had to have surgery. That post got me thinking about that time. It had been diagnosed in January as gastritis, but by November things has gone from bad to much worse. In the early hours of the morning of 17. November, I was very ill and vomiting and said I needed to go to the emergency room. The doctor ordered an ultrasound of my organs. He was sure it was my gallbladder that was causing the pain and thought perhaps there were stones. I remember everything being so painful during the ultrasound, even when she wasn't pushing. When he saw the results he said that my gallbladder had twisted itself and I needed surgery immediately. I remember clearly that that is what he said and that his face showed the intensity of the situation. I had this slight feeling that this was either just super serious or that it wasn't very common or both. But I was in too much pain to care and agreed to the surgery and afterwards the only thing I could focus on was the emotional pain. Primarily, before searching for information this week prompted by that post, it had been emergency surgery as in right now as soon as we can get her in surgery.... and no one seemed to care. Mom went back home to get more sleep, The Sister stayed home most of the day and slept. Dad went to his doctors appointment. It was like business as usual. The first friend to actually ask how I was doing after surgery was a friend who lives half a world away. A friend I have never met. And it was three weeks after surgery. Only two other people asked within the following four months. My own family wanted to act like nothing had happened. I have friends who live in town and they couldn't come see me or even ask how I was doing. It actually really hurt a lot. This lack of disregard. I almost died, and yet it seemed like no one cared. Like perhaps life might be better if Sarah were no longer around. So, jump to this week and I search "twisted gallbladder". Basically the gallbladder does one of two things when it goes wrong. It makes stones which are very common, or it becomes twisted; known as Gallbladder volvulus, which is really rare. There have only been 300 confirmed cases since it was diagnosed in 1898 (which is weird because that's when my maternal grandfather was born). Out of those 300 cases most patients are elderly white women. They are the norm for having this happen. But it can and has effected people from age 2 to 100, both sexes, and other races. But this means that it's more rare, within an already rare condition, for a 35 year old to have this. It also isn't treatable except by surgery (unlike stones) and once it is twisted and is cutting off blood supply, it will cause sepsis pretty quickly and it always results in death. Which means that once it's gotten to this point, surgery is imperative immediately or death will occur. So, I'm currently dealing with the realization that I was one of the rarities of a pretty rare condition and that I was literally dying while in the hospital emergency. If they had not preformed surgery as soon as they could... I wouldn't be here right now. (Which might be a blessing since I'm sitting here gnawing over all of this, but I am here, so ya know.) I was dying... of a rare condition... I wasn't merely in severe pain from my gallbladder simply acting up. I was dying. Of a rare condition. After the doctor said I needed surgery, my dad said he wanted to wait and have us come back after I'd gotten on health insurance. The doctors face looked grave. I don't know if the doctor would have spoken up, but I did. I had taken his words, tone, and face to mean that this surgery was needed now, so I said so. That I didn't think he meant us to wait. The doctor did nod and dad gave in. After the doctor left, dad apologized because he hadn't realized at first that it was so serious. I never did get on medical insurance either, because I don't qualify because my state didn't expand Medicare (or is it Medicaid? whichever one). I still don't think they realize how serious it was. It was serious to me before I even searched out this week exactly what went down two years ago, which just makes it ten times more serious. I know my family cares, but they're shit for knowing how to show it. They really are. But, I know it would recall that memory for dad, of him wanting to take me away from the hospital and wait. This would just kill him to know that I was literally lying there dying, and he'd almost just "murdered" his youngest child. I want to tell them. I want them to know that I had a feeling it was extremely serious. But, I can't do that to them. They always act like I'm pesky and underfoot and not wanted, but I do know deep down that at least my dad and The Sister don't really feel that way. They may not show me that they love me so much, but I do know it. So, I can't express this new information because it would really upset them. So what can I do? Keep realizing that I was literally dying of a rare condition and in time, the horror will fade from me. I can also jot down my thoughts here and now hopefully it'll make me feel better. Last October I wrote a post about this guy I knew. It was a meeting where there could have been love between us, but I'll not know. I really don't want to write it all out again, but it's all there in the post I've linked to.
I did see him after a long time this past October. Mom decided on this restaurant to eat it, and that is where he works now, though I'd figured he didn't even life in town anymore. I kept thinking about him after seeing him that day and had to write out an entire post about everything just so I could feel normal again. And it did work. It took a little time afterwards, some weeks, but then I didn't think about him again. Until this past Thursday. The Sister and I were downtown at the farmers market. She'd been teaching yoga and was now finished and we were meeting friends. The Guy Friend that I mention in the original post is standing there with us. The Sister wanders off to see if they have geranium pants for her aromatherapy class the next night, and he is waiting on his wife, which is the second half of the friends we were meeting. He and I discuss the train that went past and how we both like large machinery and then he figures he'll just call her on his mobile to tell him where he is. "(insert initials of THE guy from the post)? As in (insert full name for those initials)? Oh yeah, I see him and (insert name of wife here) now. Cool." and then he proceeded to basically say where he was and to get over there to us and ended the call. And from across the grassy park, in the shade of the trees where the vendors are set up, I can see him too. I can not make out his face, but I know instinctively that it is him. The person he's walking with who is obviously his wife? She is short, fat, and brunette. I reel for a second. He married a fat girl. He married me. It could have been me. It's because I ran away that day, isn't it? I need to pull myself the fuck together because people he actually hangs out with are right here beside me and one is heading this way. She probably isn't anything like me personally and probably is someone perfectly suited to him, but when you see a girl, from a distance, who looks exactly like you, married and walking with the guy you wanted even if you shouldn't have wanted him...? Well, it stings a little. And you feel regret and all sorts of twisted up feelings. And when you can't process them because you're in public and standing next to a friend of his who actually still hangs out with him...? Well, then you end up crying in aromatherapy class. Which leads me to aromatherapy class the following evening. It was all about geranium, which is a heart opener and we did heart opening yin yoga. I found myself in this weird floating savasana, stranded on a too small see of bolster pillows and falsa blankets with a heart-wrentching song that I know smoothly emanating from the speaker set... and I started crying. I still couldn't just cry it all out. Not The Guy, not my crumbling neighbourhood, and not my dying; because there were two other people in the room. But, it was becoming hard to breath and tears started rolling down my face. I had to try and control my breathing, which had started to become ragged with wracked sobs not yet cried and take the eye pillow off my eyes so I wouldn't sully it with my mascara. In that moment I knew I need to get all of these feelings out of me, which leads me to today; to now. I was resolved to plant my new geranium plant, and the two others we had purchased as extra's, today. I never garden. I certainly never garden by myself. It's always random times and always alongside The Sister. But, I planted three geraniums, two bulbs of some flowers, some weird plant, and three tree saplings today. And that is my beautiful geranium up there in that photo that I lovingly planted in a pot and placed in the bush line in front of our house. And now this blog post is complete, so perhaps I can breathe a little more freely now that all of this is out there and away from me.
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AuthorA girl from South Mississippi who finds herself in exploration. Archives
November 2019
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