Broken Doll

Today is the deadline for my ex-landlord to return my security deposit. His assistant tells me he never gave her the money to write the check, so I know it’s not in the mail. He himself has not returned my call. Of course not. Two weeks ago my mother drove by my old place and saw big red signs stating that the gas company was about to shut off service because dear darling landlord never paid them (to the tune of $800-plus).

Between the security deposit, moving expenses, and damages done by his workmen, he owes me over $3000. So now I have to wonder if he actually has the money to give me, or if he cavalierly (and illegally) spent it on little things like gutting and condo-izing the building he kicked me out of.

According to the city government folks, my single option is small claims court. Because, you know, this is a really good time for me to become mired in a court case. And spending even more money in legal fees. Right.

And even if I win, which should be a slam-dunk since it’s very clear they’re in violation of the ordinance, if the money doesn’t exist then what?

And of course this hitting me now, when I’m looking at tomorrow with a hell of a lot of dread and something akin to terror. It’s beyond nausea. It burns and twists somewhere deep inside, everywhere and nowhere. Even now I can’t even think about that stupid box lunch without feeling that burn and wanting to throw up. There is this awful smell which I’m not quite sure doesn’t exist entirely in my head. It’s this rank chemical smell which I swear is the chemo burning its way through me.

I didn’t get a chance to play at all this week, and next week I’ll be too sick. Maybe it would have helped. Maybe not.

I don’t want to be alone this weekend. I can’t do this anymore.

And along my nerve endings. That’s as good a way to describe it as any. There is a lump of static-acid not-quite-pain, not-quite-nausea sitting in my chest, spidering out to my stomach, shoulders, arms, thighs. Sometimes it gets so bad that I get flushed and hot, I sweat, I pant for breath, just sitting in my chair. A week later it’s usually faded, but it’s not going away now. It’s constant, energy-sucking. I want to throw up. I want to lie down. Neither happens so I might as well be at work and miserable as at home and miserable — no difference.

I want it to stop. This isn’t just feeling “run down.” I feel sick.

So in the battle of the dueling side-effects, guess who lost? Weight loss, of course.

Of course starting out 15 pounds heavy from winter holiday over-indulgences didn’t help.

Being physically incapable of a brisk 10-minute walk doesn’t help either.

I gained 5 pounds in the two weeks between chemo session number 4 and chemo session number 5. So now 20 pounds too heavy, and projecting similar weight gain for the rest of this hell until I am (hopefully) finally allowed to not have the nurses poison me every other week, that puts me at oh… 50 pounds overweight.

Did I mention that this is nearly the entire amount that I finally lost 8 years ago?

Lovely fucking irony that the one possible side benefit to this hell — losing a few extra pounds — isn’t going to happen. Lovely fucking irony that I’m gaining weight in spite of the fact that I barely eat 4 or 5 days out of 14.

I am panicked enough that I want to start running again. This may be hampered by the fact that I can’t walk, slowly, for half a mile without breathing hard.

So it’s not just robbing me of the year I have to deal with treatment and recovery. I’ll have to lose the weight before I can even start going back to the things I love. Am I going to spend $500 on headshots of the fat girl? Am I going to just audition for the role of the fat loveable sidekick? That’s not me and not my life. I fucking want it back. And how long will that take? Seventy pounds took me almost two years the first time around. Two fucking years.

I’ll be fucking starting over. I did not bust my ass for those two years just to end up back in the same god-damned place.

I look at myself in the mirror at night before bed. My arms are thick, my belly sticks out, I look like a bloated jellyfish. My hair now looks something like a halo you can barely see. My chest and neck are scarred up and there’s this latticework of big blue veins spidering all across the left side of my chest. Who would even want to touch this thing in the mirror? Who would want to even so much as fuck this?

So we had one of those relationship conversations where I’m not surprised by anything he tells me, he doesn’t tell me anything I don’t already know, and I’m stunned by how much it hurts me to hear it anyway. It hit me like a punch to the face, and I say nothing, because what am I going to say? “Actually, I thought I was okay with this, but I want to change the rules”? Well, he doesn’t, so it’s a particularly useless thing to say.

And there’s nothing to do about it either. If I leave all I’m doing is depriving myself of his support and whatever small physical comforts I get now, and end up with nothing. It’s not like I’m able to just run out and find someone else while I’m sick, bald, fat, and ugly. It’ll be months, at least, before that’s even an option. Nevermind that I fly under everyone’s “has potential” radar even when I am healthy. Nevermind that I can’t fall for someone while still in love with someone else. Even after being dormant for months — I honestly thought I was okay — those feelings remain and fuck it, if after three years and all of this they still won’t let me go, they never will. They never will.

For the first time since all of this started I find myself wishing it had just killed me before we found it. At least I’d have been happy when I died.

I’m so tired I feel like I can’t put thoughts together, but I’m still awake.

Last weekend saw the end of any pretending that I’m not going bald. The wig has come out full-time now.

But at the end of the day, I still have to look at myself in the mirror. My hair is so thin. My scalp is clearly visible. I look old… like I’m about 80 years old. Squashed down from being under a wig for 12 hours, it looks patchy. I look sick. I look like shit. I look fucking ugly.

I’m having trouble dealing with the wig. Even just in practical terms. It’s hot and a bit scratchy. I feel like I’m wearing a helmet, all day, every day. It took me two days to figure out that it was the hairnet I was wearing underneath that was giving me the tremendous pressure headache. I still haven’t figured out the happy medium between my-hairline-is-slowly-sliding-backwards and I-have-a-nasty-headache-right-behind-my-ears. The bangs hang in my eyes and won’t stay swept to the sides. The ends get super tangled by the end of the day and I worry, constantly, that it looks ropey and unnatural. The aforementioned sliding hairline means that I’m constantly adjusting, constantly worrying, which I’m sure looks weird and does nothing for my peace of mind. The tangled hair in the back and at the nape of my neck takes 15 minutes or more to comb out every evening. I’m super-careful, super-paranoid, about combing slowly, picking apart bad tangles with my fingers first, slowly combing through them til they’re gone, and still I get a few strands coming away at the end of it all. Less even that what I’d normally lose of my real hair, but I’m still paranoid because I know that this hair won’t be growing back. Is this normal? Or is it going to start looking tatty within weeks and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it?

And then there’s the emotional stuff. I can’t pretend it’s not happening anymore. And I have to deal with this transition of going from pixie-length and wavy to 18 inches and straight literally overnight. So far the only people who’ve seen this happen have been people who already know the story. But I have no idea how to handle others — people who know me incidentally, who know me by sight if not by name, and who have no idea why I cut my hair short in the first place. I’ve been walking around with short hair for almost two months, many people have seen it that way. So what do I say to the wait staff in my favorite restaurant, my neighbors in the apartment below, when they see me again and ask what the hell happened to my hair? For total strangers it wouldn’t matter, they probably will never have any idea that the hair isn’t real so I can say nothing and pretend that it is, but these people will know, and will wonder why, and I can’t think of a way to answer that question without it being completely, utterly awkward.

I won’t lie, but can you imagine how flustered you’d feel if you saw it happen, were shocked enough to ask, and then were told, “Oh, yeah, the chemo was making my hair fall out,” from someone that you really only barely know?

I can’t pretend it’s not happening anymore. I don’t know what to do.