Leave Me Alone
In sixth grade science class, we were sitting at our assigned tables watching a video about Galápagos tortoises. Or we were supposed to be anyway.
Brad and I were playing football with one of those origami footballs. I don’t know which one of us folded it anymore, but we were giggling and having fun and not being studious in the least.
The origami football was lost to some classmates at another table when I attempted a field goal and missed colossally. Undeterred, Brad decided to make one of those origami fortune teller things next.
For the uninitiated, origami fortune tellers are little papercraft games where a player picks numbers, the folded paper is shuffled a few times, and then the player picks a random flap to open, revealing a fortune, or a joke, or whatever the maker decides to write.
For some reason, I got a feeling deep in my toes that Brad was into me, and he was going to use this game as a way to tell me. I looked across the table as he filled in the game with the requisite numbers and fortunes and became nervous.
Suddenly I was very interested in the video about Galápagos tortoises. I focused on the hundred-year-old creature as the narrator droned about evolutionary science. Even though I was into Brad too, I was, I don’t know, scared of my feelings or something.
Adolescence is weird. Leave me alone.
A couple of days later, curiosity overtook me. I had a chance to sneak the game from Brad’s desk and read the fortunes he’d written while he was out in the hallway. Seven of the eight fortunes he’d written were innocuous. Stuff like “this class is so boring” but one fortune said “I like you.”
So I was right.
Last night a fellow cancer survivor and I were chatting about edibles when he started sending me DMs. He was high. I was high. And his messages got vaguely suggestive. My self-talk is crappy enough that I sometimes miss more subtle cues because I don’t think anyone could have any interest in a woman with a brain tumor. But sometimes things finally register.
I was like “Oh shit, he’s about to send me dick pics.”
In his defense, he was not menacing or aggressive. Sometimes people with cancer need to feel good and feel alive. I don’t judge. Sexting folks halfway around the world though? Not my thing.
He was merely trying to gauge my interest, and I was suddenly 12 again not knowing how to simply be like, “Naw, dawg. Thanks though.” So I blocked him.
Cancer is weird. Leave me alone.
This morning I fell* trying to brush my teeth. The toothpaste was near the end of the tube. I looked down, trying to force out the last bits of Crest. However, I looked too far down, and my nystagmus kicked in.
The dizziness and struggle keeping the toothpaste on the brush led to imbalance and a panic attack. I tipped over when my muscles and my brain stopped communicating, but not without yelping a frightened, “Help!” on my way down.
Instead of being mean to myself about falling again, I stared at the bathroom ceiling and laughed about how hot I must look sprawled out on the cold tile floor.
It’s not my fault I’m a thirst trap. Leave me alone.
*I’m fine.