Don’t you ever just feel like telling the world to, “Bite Me!” Reality really can bite sometimes.
“I’m here for my appointment,” I said, approaching the window in the doctor’s office.
“Kerry?”
“Yes.”
“That was yesterday actually.”
The receptionist said this, without sounding at all annoyed at this latest inconvenience of her precious time, but I would find out later that it happened a few times a week usually. In fact, one girl came in after me, only to learn she was, in fact, a day early for her scheduled appointment.
Immediately I felt like crying. I couldn’t believe I’d done that. I’d checked the card, several times over the last few months, and I swore I had the right day. Maybe they’d written it down wrong. Maybe this wasn’t my mistake at all, but theres instead. Maybe?
I wouldn’t normally have felt like bursting into tears over something like this, but I hadn’t slept well, fallen to sleep after finding out another terrorist attack had taken place, and even the death of a famous Toronto mayor, of cancer, this had contributed to my state of sensitivity.
I don’t know. Something about the situation I was in, the coming together of the events already that morning, it all felt kind of unreal.
“Really?” I said. “Thank you very much.”
The receptionist must have taken pity on me. “It’s her OB morning, but I can squeeze you in somewhere.”
“Oh thank you very much,” I said, grateful I wasn’t going to leave without finding out what my test results were, without getting a chance to speak with the doctor about my situation.
I took my seat, preparing to wait as long as possible, as I knew I was lucky to still be seen. All around me, women were arriving, being weighed and getting their blood pressure taken, being shown to exam rooms to see the doctor for their varied, so-and-so month checkups, all in different stages of pregnancy. Here they were. I didn’t know their stories and they didn’t know mine, but I began to feel out-of-place and silly amongst them.
One woman came out to meet her husband and young child. I wondered about all the women there alone vs the one there with, likely, her supportive partner. But maybe the other fathers had to work and couldn’t get off. Who knew. None of us truly knew another’s life and circumstances. That would, likely, be too much of a weight to carry anyway…even more than any fetus.
Speaking of unborn babies, I wanted to cry, at the realities and the uncertainties. But I wasn’t going to cry, there, in front of all those pregnant and expecting mothers, some already mothers, whose hormones and the huge event to soon happen to them actually had more of a physical reason to burst into tears than I had.
But of course I had a reason, my reasons, several reasons, but I didn’t do it, not there in front of everyone, receptionist and patients, in that waiting room on a Tuesday.
I wasn’t there, on that OB morning, for the same reasons as everyone else and I didn’t think I ever would be. I really really didn’t know what I felt about that likelihood.
Forty-five minutes later, I left still wanting to cry. So many things about that day felt unreal to me. Yet another global terrorist attack. Yet another life taken too soon from cancer.
And as for myself, I was sick of yet another symptom with nothing causing it. No blood test or examination result could be connected to how I was feeling. I’d stumped yet another medical professional, but I definitely wasn’t there for the same happy, blessed occasion as the rest.
I’d been through this before. Really had enough. Really sick of it. Real ridiculous. No, really.
So, the list of the unreal grows and grows and grows.
It’s really unreal that certain people are in the running for the US presidency.
It’s so unreal to me that people, the book buying public, that they seem to require life to be spoon fed to them, as someone pointed out to me how unlikely any publisher is to want a memoir when they can have yet another how-to.. diet or get-rich success story.
And it’s really
to me that I’ve been doing this
for almost exactly one whole year,
At least I have stream of consciousness writing to help me work through the realities of life.
Where, oh where, would I be without you?
Her Headache 
