People who think like I do
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009Sometimes you read posts on blogs that sound as if you wrote them yourself. Today I’ve had two.
I was 21 years old when I looked in the mirror in the computer science building’s bathroom and saw the first grey hairs growing out of my scalp. It was that same year that I started to see small grey flecks of dust in my vision when I looked up at a clear blue sky or at a white wall. My eye doctor told me these were floaters, little blobs of protein that develop in the fluid in your eyeball. Near-sighted people like me get them quite frequently. [...] A friend my age told me over dinner she is fighting acid reflux disease and takes medication for a slight thyroid imbalance. Another friend was just diagnosed with pernicious anemia and has to get shots of B12. We are not old. We are in out late 20’s and early 30’s.
No one told me my body was going to break down so fast. No one warned me that after 21 years I’d start needing repairs. I cannot trade myself in for a newer model. So if you are young and your body is working, enjoy it for me. It won’t be long until you’ll need a fix-up and wish you’d invested in more dental floss as a child.
This is EXACTLY what I feel like. To a tee. Except with different problems.
A year and a half ago I went to a Suzanne Vega concert. I was completely sober, but overexcited. I decided to jump on the stage of Paradiso to get a setlist — it was the best show I have ever seen and I wanted a memoir. A memoir I got — despite being fit and flexible, my knee said “pop” and when I eventually got home over an hour later, I was in excruciating pain, the knee the size of a grapefruit (luckily not the size of a melon, because that would require immediate surgery). It took a month in bed, then months of physiotherapy to get back to normal. And it is normal. Almost. If I forget my bodybuilding supplement, it gets stiff and achey. I wrote about that a few weeks ago. That knee is not going to go back to its original state. The only thing that can happen is that it can get worse.
I work out like crazy and take care to exercise my lower back, yet in the recent months I discovered sometimes at work it is difficult to get out of my chair, because my lower back is aching. It only happens if I sit too long at work. My chair has been adjusted by a professional to make sure my back is protected as well as possible. So has the height of my screen. Any hints?
My eyes… worry me. It feels like the field of vision, especially in my left lazy eye, is decreasing. Also, I’ve been wearing lenses for 12 years now and my eyes are getting very… demanding — nothing but the best lenses and best liquids is accepted. But I don’t want surgery (98% success rate isn’t enough for me to allow people with knives near my eye), and I don’t want to go back to glasses. But who says I’ll have a choice? Not now, but a year, five, twenty years from now? It’s not going to get any better.
My teeth are good. Generally speaking. Except for the fact a dentist once put a metal plate between two teeth to separate them and ever since then food got into the resulting “cavity”. And for the fact that I get loads of plaque despite flossing like crazy (you won’t believe how irritating it is to carry food in your teeth at all times). And for the fact I’ve had about eight cavities repaired. And that still counts as having very good teeth, apparently. Especially next to my friend, who has spent half her earnings on dental work since 2004 or so…
In the last few weeks I keep on waking up with very dry mouth. VERY dry. As if there was a sandbox planted in there while I was sleeping. I dread to think if it means something. It might be connected with the deviated septum surgery I had performed on me 10 years ago that never stopped bleeding. Or with something else, but I don’t want to think about it. Same as I don’t like thinking about the increasing amount of gray hair on my head.
Then I realise the outside world thinks of me as a very fit guy with amazing teeth, great skin, great eyesight (well, those who don’t know I wear lenses) and gorgeous hair. And I start wondering — what do the others feel like? Is the gorgeous ex-model I work with plagued by teeth cavities and skin problems? The cute PhD guy has got loads of problems with his back, I know that for sure. My boss has had problems with knees. Oh hang on, and the writer colleague gets such awful problems with his back he can’t walk at all for weeks. (I want to be like him when I grow up. Only without back problems. Is that possible?)
Okay, I have to finish, as I just ate and now I have half a chicken in my teeth, which drives me mental. (How’s that for a TMI Thursday post, dear LiLu?) But before I go, let me add that I fully and completely agree with Ashley’s sentiments about March. March sucked so far and it doesn’t look like it is about to improve anytime soon. I am still happy, because I decided to be happy and little things such as bills for 1350 euro (another one arrived today, much to my joy and cheer), fights with boyfriends, being overworked and tired all the time, aching back, having no time for myself or for my friends, family problems and last but not least crazy weather won’t get this bad mutha down. But really, March, you have disappointed me. You are dismissed. And, April, if I were you, I would think REALLY well before misbehaving.
EDIT: I have been reminded that Texel was also in March — for the love of Morrissey, my brain really hasn’t grasped the concept of timelines. That indeed is a redeeming quality. March, you get a stern warning, but you may go back to your desk and continue work.
PS. Everyone whom I owe an e-mail — it’s coming soon. Really.
