insides go out, part 3

here are some things you should know. you can put some cooked white rice into a pan with fat-free, low-sodium chicken broth and you can heat it up but it will not become food. three bananas does not get you any closer, really, to having protein in your belly than no bananas. dry toast is an abomination. i can feel my eyes tearing up as i write the words dry toast. also, the fancy medication i take to keep my brain where it is supposed to be requires a great deal of protein as a cushion inside. if i take it without enough protein, well, i will recreate the morning's swirling and exploding, but will add to it severe shaking, dizziness, nausea and stabbing pains that make menstrual cramps look like pretty candy. this lovely medication is a salt, and requires me to keep a normal salt intake if i want to keep my hands and feet and, eventually, all of me, from swelling up like that kid in the chocolate factory.

i spend the early part of the day on the couch, languishing. it is not the blandness that causes suffering. it is the lack of substance. i determine to look up this stupid brat diet as soon as i have strength enough to sit back up. i look over at my hand on the pillow beside me. it is swollen and bloated already. it looks like a balloon.

for some folks being sick is accompanied by a semi-delusional state. you know, where you can't make yourself make sense and everything is just disagreeable. so i am midway through my day of swirling stomach, food misery and confusion when i go into the bathroom to wash my hands. and i stare at the sink. and my brain scrambles around to push the words into the right order so i can think and when it does my brain thinks, "how on earth did i crap in the sink?" because the sink is filled nearly to the top with, well, some very ugly substance. blackish greenish slushy water. and i am convinced that somehow i had managed this in my delirium. then i hear a bang from upstairs. and another. i grab the sweetie's toothbrush from the counter and grab the bath mat and step back out of the room just as the swampy water spills out over the lip of the sink and waterfalls all over the pink bathroom floor. and then it stops. and then bang. and black water pours over the edge of the sink again. and i smile because it was not me and no matter how worried a person might be about sewage or filth or whatever spilling out all over the floor, knowing that you did not crap in your own sink is such a relief, none of the rest of that matters.

i run up to the upstairs apartment and find our neighbor and the maintenance guy working on a clog in that sink. i mention the waterfall in my own apartment and eyes get wide. our maintenance guy comes down and says a lot of very loud and very worried words, but reassures me that this hideous water at least didn't come from the toilet. just from a fifty year old sink pipe. he calls the plumber and the two of them spend a great deal of time banging and running down to the basement and yelling back and forth between floors. i tell them i'll do the cleaning up because, well, although our maintenance guy is good at building things, i suspect his bathroom looks like mine did when i was in college.

there is no food anywhere inside me but i figure that means there's no way any food could try to escape so i put on my hoodie (no mirrored glasses) and head out into the world to get more paper towels (we used a whole roll and two bath towels to mop up some of the water in the bathroom). against my better judgement, i buy a bleach cleaner. i pick up guthrie from daycare and as we are walking home, i begin to shake. i can barely lift my legs to walk. my stomach begins to cramp because there are no things in there to keep its walls from clanging into each other. i try to get guthrie to carry me home but he just looks blankly and trots ahead.

i get home and start the oven. i go to the opposite end of the aparment and spray the bleach cleaner all over the sink. i open the window. i begin to scrub. the world rocks back and forth, gently and everything smells like cool earth and swimming pool. i go back to the kitchen and get the whole grain bread ready to go in the oven. dry toast. mmmmm. i realize i can smell swimming pool in the kitchen. i open a window. i can taste swimming pool. i open the living room window and the bedroom window. wide. it is 34 degrees and the aparmtent smells like bleach and dry toast. i go back to the bathroom to scrub the walls (yes, the walls are covered with splatters of chocolaty dirtwater) but the dizziness is immediate and the bleach smell has a painful edge to it. no longer swimming pool. i think gas mask. the sweetie is working late and i wonder whether chlorine gas is heavy or light. probably heavy since it was used in battle. i pick up guthrie, sit back down. too dizzy to lift a small dog. i sit in the kitchen. toast is ready. i stare at it. it even looks cruel. i hate it. i decide to put a little olive oil on it and some cinnamon. i drizzle the oil, greeny yellow, onto the miserable toast and search for cinnamon. nigerian cayenne. nutmeg. coriander. cumin. chili powder. onion powder. ginger. sesame seeds. peppermint oil. no cinnamon. i am on the life raft. i see the ship, see its searchlight. i wave my hand. it keeps steaming past. misses me entirely. no cinnamon. i smash a whole banana onto the two pieces of olive oiled toast and sit down. it is beautiful. it is glorious. my bruised, aching stomach sings softly.