The Strength of the Human Heart

My dad's real sick.
He has been, for as long as I've been alive. He had his first heart attack years before I was born--he was 30. A congenital defect in his heart mixed with, well, bad luck, mostly, put him in the hospital for a bypass on his mother's birthday.
As a child, I rarely understood how his "condition" affected him, or my mother, or any of us.
It was the source of funny stories--looking up in the ambulance on the way down to Boston with our family doctor's face all he could see: "Mark, you dead yet?"
The weekly drives to a clinic in Boston, and the Jamaican nurse who once brought out 16 vials for his blood tests: "Ah, I'm just fookin' witcha, man!"
The one time, when I was ten or so, that his doctor wrote a prescription that spend the winter attached to our refridgerator: "Kids must shovel snow. Use as often as needed."
And every February we celebrated, on one day, two events: his mother's birthday, and his "anniversary." I was never entirely sure which one was the most important, though I knew which one he tried to ignore.
But mostly, it didn't affect us too much. Not us kids. We knew, eventually, that money was tight because of all the pills Dad had to take--stacked up on a side of the counter and in the two medicine cabinets, with strange-tasting names like Lipitor, Lysinopril, and Plavix. But for the most part, all we knew was that Dad was sick.

Starting around twelve, when I was rebellious and sick from my own birth defect (this one in the chemicals that create emotional rationality), I'd go with Dad on trips to pick up take-out. We'd listen to NPR and mostly, we'd sit in silence with each other. Dad would sometimes mention about how he and his own father rarely spoke when they were alone--words weren't needed. I learned from my father the joy of comfortable silence, and I felt sincere pride when I thought of how we could be comfortably silent together.
But there was one night, crossing the bridge on Route One, when the report on NPR was about prescription drug coverage, and prices, and how over-medicated our American society has become. Then, we talked. I remember how angry I was at the report; I was just reaching the age where I really understood how much money my parents spent on medication, and felt helpless to stop it, and guilty for contributing to the need. I said as much. "What can you do? You have to take the medication. Pharmaceutical companies know that. You have to take it! You die if you don't! So you have to pay them this money! There isn't any choice!"
"No," said my father. "No. You don't have to take it."
And it was then that I really began to understand that my father really was sick. I remember him telling me that maybe, eventually, when we were all out of school and out on our own, maybe then he'd just stop taking the drugs. "There is a choice. Everyone dies. If you get to choose how..."

When I was just past fourteen, on his fiftieth birthday, my father had another heart attack. I remember seeing him in the hospital bed--sitting up, conscious, smiling wryly and cracking jokes about how he knew how to make a birthday special. But he was, for the first time, someone other than my father. He just didn't look real. His skin was gray. Literally gray. And he looked thinner than he had that morning. Covered in tubes with the "whoosh-tick-ping" of the machines surrounding him, I couldn't be sure who he was.
They put a pacemaker in to his chest. And for a while he joked about him and Dick Cheney--two men with BMWs in their chests, or at least something which cost the same.

I've been noticing, the past two years, as he lost his father and then his mother, that each time I come home from college, he looks older. Paler and thinner. I try to pretend that it's just I haven't seen him in a few months, and the man I'm remembering is from when I was just a child. He's lost a father and a mother in the space of two years. He is fifty-seven, and he has heart disease, a bad back, and diabetes. Of course he looks old.

My dad's real sick.
Even the doctors admit it now. Dad wouldn't have mentioned, but my sister and I both asked how his last appointment went. They're sending him to Boston to talk to some transplant doctors.
There is a part of me, the small bit that always claps for Tinkerbell, the bit that knew the soccer team freshman year would win State Champs, even though we'd never won a season, that says things will be okay. That each thump of his fist, that each early night, that each deep breath, that each pvc, that each electric shock he feels in his chest is okay. We'll take it one day, one night at a time. I will wait for him to go to bed, and then I will go to mine, and when I wake he'll be at work, and when he comes home we will have dinner and watch "Two and a Half Men" and he will take the dog for a walk while I do dishes. And he will make it. That yes, everyone dies, but I don't have to worry, he'll be here for twenty, thirty, forty more years.
There is this other part of me, which I try to keep pushed deep down inside, that my father often called a pessimist, and my pessimist of a grandmother often called a realist.
This part knows that transplant committees follow an inverse age ratio, and my father is fifty-seven. This part knows that transplant committees want hearts to go to healthy patients, and my father has diabetes. This part knows that even if everything goes well on the medical side, this may be the time when my father simply says "Enough."
I've done enough research since I was fourteen, and I've seen enough episodes of "House." Assuming one gets through the surgery and the transplant is never rejected, the average time a person can assume to get from a heart transplant is five to ten years.
If the doctors are pushing him this time, that means they think the risks (and there are so very many) are worth it. That means they think an average of five to ten years is probably more than he's looking at now.

My dad's real sick. And I can't fix it. And I don't know what to do.

Anger (noun): The righteous emotion experienced by a person when their civil rights are denied them.

Somebody today asked me why I was so angry about Proposition 8.

Am I angry? Yes, I'm fucking angry. Am I pissed off? Yes, I'm goddamned pissed off. I might go so far as to say that I'm feeling vengeful, even.

Here's why:

I am a citizen of the United States, of Maine, of Farmington. I have worked every summer from the age of 14 on (that's 8 years) and every school year from the age of 17 on (that's 5 years). I pay my Maine and Federal taxes every year. I vote in every local, state, and national election since I was 18, and I campaigned for the presidential election when I was 17 and couldn't vote. I've attended public schools and did pretty damn well in them. I've volunteered my time for political campaigns, at soup kitchens and car washes and even animal shelters. In short, I've paid my dues.
Do I have all the rights of a citizen? Hell no. Far from it. And the rights I DO have change depending on what state I'm living in.
The man who (kidnapped, beat, and raped more times than I can count) assaulted me, on the other hand--BECAUSE HE IS STRAIGHT--has MORE rights than I do.
Now those of you who think extending civil marriage rights to the LGBT community is wrong, those of YOU out there who count me as your friend, you sit there, and you give me a reason, one goddamned tiny fucking LEGAL reason, as to how this fact even remotely attempts to be close to JUSTICE.

Go ahead. Give me your reason. Give me your reason why I should be given less civil rights than a man who has admitted rape.

Then maybe I might not be so angry.

Family Conversations: My Anti-Anti-Drug

I'm thinking of writing a play:

Sister: Oh! Periods hurt!
Self: I haven't had one since December.
Sister: What, why? Are you pregnant?
Self: No, the last time I had sex was in October.
Mother: With who?
Self: The person I was dating in October.
Sister: Oh! Him. I mean her. Did you guys have normal sex?
Self: What?
Sister: Like, p to v?
Self: Yes, we had penis to vagina sex.
Sister: Ew! You could just say p to v!
Mother: I thought you didn't like sex?
Self: I have a very high sex drive, actually. I'm pretty much constantly horny.
Sister: why would you not like sex?
Mother: Because of her experiences.
Sister: Oh! ...did you want it this time?
Self: Yes of course.
Sister: Did you like it?
Mother: Yeah, did you?
Self: I spent 2 hours in the shower afterwards, but yeah, at the time. It's cool. She dumped me anyway.
Mother: That's what I figured. You aren't ready to have sex with people.
Sister: Why wouldn't you like sex?

Evenings are interesting...

Judgment Day

Today has been a difficult day. The Prop. 8 ruling hit me a lot harder than I had expected.

What has hurt me more are the significant number of people--some of them friends--online today who have managed to vilify me for CARING about Prop. 8. There are people who think that because I care about civil marriage equality, that because I have and will continue to volunteer my free time on Maine's civil marriage equality campaign, that must mean that somehow I DON'T CARE about the thousands of LGBTQQA (and etc, I can't remember all the letters at this time of night/day) who:
Can't afford health care
Can't get a reasonable job at a living wage
Can't afford housing or get denied housing
Are murdered or beaten or raped or otherwise victims of hate crimes
Can't get proper HIV/AIDS education, medication, and research
Try to or "succeed" at committing suicide because they feel no other option is open for them any more.

NEWS FLASH:
I care. I care a whole fucking goddamned lot.

Yes, people are dying. No, civil marriage equality isn't going to save any lives. And yes, UHC, affordable housing, living wages, aids prevention and research, organizations supporting and defending queer and trans youth will all save countless lives. AND I ADVOCATE FOR THESE CAUSES AS WELL.

No, it is not more important for me to have the option of marriage than it is to combat what is basically a government-and-society based systematic mass murder.

Yes, my first girlfriend was raped and brutally murdered by her uncle because she was gay.
Yes, I've been raped and beaten by someone who was trying to make me straight (as if that were possible).
Yes, I know and have known queer people who have tried to commit or "succeeded" at committing suicide.
Yes, I know queer people with HIV/AIDS.
Yes, I've attempted suicide numerous times (so many I've lost count, actually).
YES, I CARE.

I'm not putting gay marriage ABOVE these other causes.
I don't prioritize gay marriage over these causes--yes, it's true, I'm working on a marriage equality campaign.
I'm also working on trying to help queer students at UMF and in the community gain adequate health care, jobs, housing, and feel safe and comfortable on our campus. Have I succeeded? I don't know. We are nowhere near where we need to be. But I think, maybe even just a little bit, we are closer than we were when I first came to Farmington. And that's something.

So stop fucking judging me when you know next to nothing about me. It's hurtful, it's offensive, and it puts you in a damn shitty light. Maybe, just maybe, you should get off your goddamned high horse and actually DO something besides judging people who you think aren't doing enough.

You Insinuate, A Snake, Words Falling From Your Lips Like Dying Spiders

I'm not really feeling okay right now. Like, really not okay. I'm feeling really lonely, really down. I'm feeling really hurt by the amount of people not even tangentially connected to me who hate me because they can't believe someone they know would ever do something so horrible.
Well fuck them, and fuck their hate, and fuck the irony of this statement.
Fuck being stuck in this goddamned limbo of a court battle for what is possibly another three years where absolutely nothing will happen. Fuck the system and fuck not standing up for myself when I should have because if I had, none of this would be happening right now.
Fuck you, IFN, and fuck me for ever loving you, and believing you ever loved me.
I am tired.
I don't want to do this anymore. I want to go away.
I really really really really really really really really really really really want to go away.
There is no where to go.
I just don't want to live anymore.
This is not my way of saying I'm going to hurt myself--I highly doubt I am.
But it's a defeat, admitting I don't want to live. I try so hard to "pretend to be normal," like Dad says to. Dad wants me to pretend about everything, it seems sometimes.
I'm not a big fan of pretending to be normal.
I hurt. And I don't want to have to hide it. Most of the time, I'm not even sure I can.
And fuck you, Supposed Best Friend, for when I reach out to you online because I need to talk, saying "Oh dear... don't do this please." When you hurt, I drop everything. I talk to you. I make sure you're okay. When you storm off because you're pissed at your girlfriend, I IM you, and ask if you're okay, despite the fact that you get verbally abusive to me, who had nothing to do with the fight.
I know it's hard to sit there and listen when you want to fix things and can't. I know it's hard and it sucks and you don't want to do it. But I need someone right now, and fuck you for not being willing to be my friend. Friends aren't just about good times. They're about listening when someone's in pain.
I hurt, and I needed to talk. You shut me out because you, apparently, couldn't deal. So fuck you.
Fuck everything.
I'm sick of pretending I'm okay. I'm not. I don't know how I'm going to get through anything, all I know is I don't want to, and I have to try. I have to pretend to be better. I'M NOT. I have to pretend always to be 100% fine because no one can deal with my problems anymore, everyone thinks it's somehow a failure to still be hurting, to still be afraid.
There's no set time-line for getting through abuse, for getting over being raped every goddamned night for 18 months. SO FUCK EVERYONE WHO THINKS I'M NOT DOING THIS QUICK ENOUGH.
Fuck you. Seriously.
And fuck me for being angry, but goddamnit it's the only way to maybe get through without crying, and I really don't want to keep my (perfect) sister awake.
FUCK.