Someone to love.
Until you hate them."
~lyrics by Ricky Butcher
9:45 pm
I don't know why, but I didn't really feel like writing today. I didn't get a lot of free time, and what little time I did get, I spent - get this - looking up complete lists of prepositions on the interweb (that series of tubes). You know you're at a loose end when...
I guess I'll give you a brief synopsis of my day, and then I think I'll fuck off for a bit and watch Big Bang Theory, before reading the book that Sweet Aussie Sue lent me, called Sky Burial.
She just came up to my bed in the hop-sital dorm room yesterday, and handed it to me.
"I think you'll really enjoy this," she said, and walked out again.
...Kaaaaaaay, thought I.
It actually does look pretty good, though. Something about a Chinese woman in the 1950s, trying to find her Chinese husband in Tibet, even though the Army had already informed her that he was killed in the line of duty. She joins a militia heading into Northern Tibet, but gets separated, and ends up wandering Tibet for thirty years, searching for her husband.
Anyway. My day. The first thing of notable interest is the apparent body swapping the aliens have done with Kitty and her alien body-double. At least, that is the only cogent explanation I can think of, for the completely new person who inhabits the vessel that is Kitty's body.
"Kage, we have got to talk tattoos later!" she said through a mouthful of Rice Krispies at breakfast this morning.
"Huh? Wha?" I looked up from my oatmeal. Did somebody say something to me?
"Yeah, I wanna go get a tattoo. That's what I always go and do on my first Sunday pass!" she laughed gaily.
"Um...what?" I stared at her. She's laughing! I thought with alarm. What's happening? What's going on?
"Well, actually, last time, I got a piercing," she corrected, waving her spoon in the air. "But then I fell down ten flights of stairs." More tinkling laughter.
Ummmm...
"The time before that, though, I got a tattoo," she smiled at the memory.
Oh, yeah - Kitty has been here in hop-sital plenty of times before. I think this is her fifth hospitalization, in the same Restorations Refeeding Program, in the same hop-sital, in the past TWO YEARS.
Not very encouraging, really. Though I like to think it's just her.
"Ooooh, I love this song!" she suddenly said enthusiastically, and reached over to turn up the radio.
Ironically, it was playing Nirvana's Heart Shaped Box again - the same song that was playing last night, when she said she wished she could trade places with Kurt Cobain, cuz he was dead.
I shook my head in wonder. What the fuck was going on?
It continued on throughout the morning, and throughout the day. Kitty had done a complete 180 degree turn-around. She was friendly and chatty and bubbly and giggly.
Now, I know I'm a bit cynical, a bit jaded, and very cute. But still - this behavior is just...so...unstable, so erratic. It's not that I doubt her sincerity, because I really don't - I believe she really is happy and chatty and all the other shit. Just as I believe that yesterday, she really was angry and pissed off and suicidal. It's just amazing to see, live in action right before my very eyes, the very extremes of what I can only presume to be mania, and...anti-mania, for lack of a better term. 'Depression' doesn't seem to fit quite right here, because it was too angry, too energized, to fit that precise term.
Anyway, the girl I used to sarcastically call Miss Congeniality has, in fact, become Miss Congeniality - or a reasonable facsimile thereof. She's not half bad, if truth be told. Who'da thunk it?
Another event of notable interest from today is that I finally got to go to the piercing parlor and get my labret situation dealt with. I actually had it all set up yesterday, just like the Filipina RN told me to do - called the shop, booked the appointment, called me mum and asked her to pick me up from hop-sital and drive me there. Everything was ready to go. I was just heading into the Group room for Dinner last night, which directly preceded Mum picking me up and taking me to freedom, when the same Filipina RN caught me by the arm and yanked me back out again.
"OwwwWWWWWW. What?!" I cried.
"Doctor want to see you. For you lip. After Dinner," Filipina RN said.
"What? You told me to book the appointment! Me mum's already on her way," I embellished slightly. (She wasn't).
"No. Doctor want to see you. For you lip," she repeated.
How did you become a nurse? I wondered silently.
"All he's gonna do is look at it and say, 'You really should get that taken out'," I said angrily. "I've got the appointment booked, and me mum's on her way, because that's what you told me to do! Why do I suddenly have to see the doctor?"
"Cuz that what he said," she said firmly. "Now you call you mum. No appointment."
I opened my mouth to protest, and LOUDLY, but something in me made me take pause.
Do you really care, Kagie? I asked myself. Honestly? The only difference is whether you go today, or whether you go tomorrow, and you know it.
Yes, but - I started to protest.
No butts, I told myself. It's not worth getting upset over, and you know that, too. Pick your battles, dum dum.
I took a deep breath, and let it out slooowly. Amazingly, I could actually feel the anger and tension ease a little bit. I really didn't care that much. Certainly not enough to blow a smegging gasket. Yes, they could have handled it better, and not told me to book the stupid appointment and call me mum before they knew what they were talking about. But, and it's a very big but(t), it would be just as much fun leaving the hop-sital tomorrow to go to the piercing parlor as it would be right now. I could wait for one more night, couldn't I? I was a big girl now, was I not?
With one last long sigh, I turned away from Filipina RN, and walked into the Group Room for Dinner.
The truly ironic part is that the fucking doctor NEVER SHOWED UP. Ha ha! I waited for NOTHING. The back of my piercing was almost entirely submerged under my lip by the time I calmly showed it to the RNs this morning and demanded a pass, on pain of malpractice lawsuit. Which I got. Quite easily, too, prolly since my lip had progressed from being an issue that could be easily dealt with at a piercing parlor, to something that required minor surgery at a doctor's office.
You know what, though? I ended up having a great afternoon out on my pass today, and was so glad I didn't go the night before. Yes, it was immeasurably more painful to remove the jewelry from my labret piercing, and I cursed Filipina Nurse and the doctor-who-couldn't-be-arsed-to-show-up for their sins. But, and again, it's a HUGE but(t), Sweet Aussie Sue told me to take some extra time off this afternoon, just to have a break from the hop-sital! Which ended up having to be cut short by half an hour, cuz she forgot that I had an appointment with an RN from Day Program at 3, but that was okay too, cuz Mum brought the dogs anyway!
Fuck yeah! It was an awesome pass! I got my lip fixed, we got sweet, delicious, beautiful COFFEE, then we took the kids down by the river for a walk, before heading back up to hop-sital, where me mum even bought me a magazine before releasing me back into the loony bin.
In a brief aside...oh fuck, was that coffee ever fecking good. Oh, God. Though both Mum and I learned how bloody impossible it is to walk three dogs while holding two cups of coffee.
Anyway, I got back upstairs just in time for my Preliminary Orientation session with the RN from Day Program. Which means, da da da da (that's music)...that I will be graduating soon! Yup, they have offered me a place in Day Program, and I have graciously accepted. I will find out in the next few days when I will be making the transition from inpatient, to outpatient.
It's funny. Last week, when I found out I will likely be here in hop-sital for longer than thirty days, I was furious. But now that my discharge date approaches, I find myself at times to be somewhat apprehensive. Especially today, at the Orientation session, when we were reviewing the rules for Day Program.
"...there will be no purging during program hours," Rachel, the Day Program RN, read aloud from the package information, as Mumbles and I followed along from our own booklets.
"Whoa, wait," I cut in. "I thought Day Program was zero tolerance for purging."
"While you are in program, at the hospital, during treatment hours," Rachel corrected, and I smirked.
"Are you serious?" I said. "That's stupid."
"Why?" she asked.
"Well, because I thought it was zero tolerance at all. That was really gonna work for me. I didn't want to lose my spot in Day Program, so I wasn't gonna purge. But now I know I can, and I won't lose my spot. It kinda robs me of my motivation to not purge anymore, to be honest."
"It's not an open invitation to purge," she protested.
"I know that," I shrugged. "But still."
Oh, Ach du lieber himmel. Es ist 12:30 am. Shiesse!
I need to go to bed, I finish this stuff tomorrow.
Night.
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