I was talking with my naturopath today, and right after he told me how well he thought I was doing, he reminded me how difficult what I have been through was.\u00c2\u00a0 reiterating that no one knows how hard it has been but me; not him (who had cancer at 31), not my mother, who has had to watch, etc.<\/p>\n
A year ago my ex girlfriend went from kinda-sad to severely-clinically-depressed overnight.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll skip the dramatic in-the-middle-of-the-night catalyst event, as that was too big and messy for this analogy.\u00c2\u00a0 The point is I didn’t get it.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t understand what she was going through.\u00c2\u00a0 I had never been clinically depressed.\u00c2\u00a0 I did not know her experience.<\/p>\n
The breaking point with my ex was when she called me in the middle of the afternoon when I was at the studio, demanding (there really isn’t any other word) that I come home and make her some chicken.<\/p>\n
This i understand now<\/em>: when you are sick, and have no appetite, and all of the sudden you want something, that thing becomes the most important thing in the world.<\/p>\n This I understand now<\/em>: when you are sick, and you cannot get something for yourself you feel helpless,\u00c2\u00a0 When that illness is psychological, you feel doubly helpless.\u00c2\u00a0 When someone does not attend to you, you feel triply bad.<\/p>\n The argument unfolded without these two kernels of knowledge that my cancer has given me.\u00c2\u00a0 The highly condensed version of argument went something like this:<\/p>\n me<\/strong>: Can’t you just order some chicken from the place on the corner. Then I took off on my bike, leaving my assistants at the studio.\u00c2\u00a0 That bike ride was the one where I intentionally hit the guy in the suit on the Brooklyn Bridge.\u00c2\u00a0 This is the only time I’ve intentionally<\/em> hit a pedestrian.\u00c2\u00a0 He was in the bike lane, walking towards me.\u00c2\u00a0 He looked up at me, made eye contact, then went back to using his Blackberry.\u00c2\u00a0 It all happened at the threshold of conscious decisions: I took two hard pulls on my pedals, and subtly dropped my right shoulder and clocked him.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Hard.\u00c2\u00a0 I heard his blackberry smack to the deck and skittered off in a freefall into the East River (Its okay, the company probably paid for it.)\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t look back to see if he was on the ground.\u00c2\u00a0 I wasn’t.\u00c2\u00a0 And I had chicken to cook.<\/p>\n The bridge shouldering is both one of my favorite stories to tell, and one of the lowest things I have done.\u00c2\u00a0 Funny that.<\/p>\n But the real point of this whole story is the the other thing I understand now that I did not then<\/em>:\u00c2\u00a0 no one person can take care of someone who is sick.\u00c2\u00a0 It is just not possible.\u00c2\u00a0 It is too much work.\u00c2\u00a0 It is too emotionally tiring.\u00c2\u00a0 It takes a team.\u00c2\u00a0 It takes a family, and I mean that in the biggest sense of the word.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was talking with my naturopath today, and right after he told me how well he thought I was doing, he reminded me how difficult what I have been through was.\u00c2\u00a0 reiterating that no one knows how hard it has been but me; not him (who had cancer at 31), not my mother, who has … Continue reading Day 17: Hi Fives from the Naturopath<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[31,38,16,14],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-update","tag-brooklyn","tag-learning","tag-other-peoples-stories","tag-sick"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nher<\/strong>: If you can’t come take care of me, I will find someone or go somewhere where people will take care of me.
\nme<\/strong>: (silence) (sigh) okay, I need you to do one thing
\nher<\/strong>: (some shouting about how she is sick, and she can’t do anything)
\nme<\/strong>: Take the chicken out of the freezer.<\/p>\n