(Dis) Orientation
I have an endoscopy on Tuesday morning. I've kind of been in denial, and when I cautiously let myself poke my head out of it, I was surprised to find that I'm nervous, but not brick wall nervous. Does anybody else have the brick wall? I mean, there's "I don't really feel like going to the gym today, but I"ll push through" and then there's "I want to go to the gym, but there's this brick wall". There was the time Matt was out of town and I had to take Eve to the Carleton University basketball game and I knew there was no way to get out of it but I was brick walling hard and I basically sobbed all afternoon and it was almost insurmountably hard (just getting there, of course, once I was there everything was basically fine, although none of the other parents talked to me because apparently I have some giant invisible-to-me writing on me that says NOT A VALID BASKETBALL MOM. And it seriously is basketball-specific, because I've never had this issue with baseball, volleyball or hockey. WTF, basketball parents? I am perfectly lovely. But I digress.)
Of course there is a tiny voice in my head alternately saying "this is good that we're doing this, they'll be able to figure out if something is wrong and treat it" and "well now you're letting them look so of COURSE they're going to find something terrible, you idiot". But I don't black out with fear at the thought of the process, even though some kind of sedation is possible.
I also have this weird map in my brain, although it's kind of like it's in my body because of how I feel when I try to go against it. The subdivision we live in is set up pretty well for driving in a square for groceries, drug store, gas, liquor store, library, dentist etc, so when I'm doing errands either from home or from one of my schools it's easy enough to drive in a square. Which is good, because I can't backtrack - and I really kind of mean "can't". If there's a set of errands that mean backtracking would result in less driving time, I might briefly consider it, but if I try to actually do it, I'm more likely to just skip the errand and go home. If I think "FINE, fine, you massive weirdo, we'll do it the longer way", then I can do it.
Similarly, when we go to the bar on Tuesday nights, it's in a grocery store plaza. Coming out to drive home, you can either turn left (away from home) and be almost immediately at the stoplight to the main street, or go right (towards home), and go over a few speed bumps past the grocery store to get to the main street. Most of us go the first way. I am utterly incapable of doing it, and if my husband is driving I ask him to go my way too, because it's almost physically painful to go the way my internal compass feels is correct. I haven't timed it, but I'm pretty sure I always come out to the second light before everyone who goes the other way, but that's a hundred percent NOT why I do it.
Feel free to chime in with any of your own quirks to make me feel like less of a freak. Or just exclaim vigorously at how very strange this is, and hint that maybe the basketball parents had a point, because dude, I KNOW.
Of course there is a tiny voice in my head alternately saying "this is good that we're doing this, they'll be able to figure out if something is wrong and treat it" and "well now you're letting them look so of COURSE they're going to find something terrible, you idiot". But I don't black out with fear at the thought of the process, even though some kind of sedation is possible.
I also have this weird map in my brain, although it's kind of like it's in my body because of how I feel when I try to go against it. The subdivision we live in is set up pretty well for driving in a square for groceries, drug store, gas, liquor store, library, dentist etc, so when I'm doing errands either from home or from one of my schools it's easy enough to drive in a square. Which is good, because I can't backtrack - and I really kind of mean "can't". If there's a set of errands that mean backtracking would result in less driving time, I might briefly consider it, but if I try to actually do it, I'm more likely to just skip the errand and go home. If I think "FINE, fine, you massive weirdo, we'll do it the longer way", then I can do it.
Similarly, when we go to the bar on Tuesday nights, it's in a grocery store plaza. Coming out to drive home, you can either turn left (away from home) and be almost immediately at the stoplight to the main street, or go right (towards home), and go over a few speed bumps past the grocery store to get to the main street. Most of us go the first way. I am utterly incapable of doing it, and if my husband is driving I ask him to go my way too, because it's almost physically painful to go the way my internal compass feels is correct. I haven't timed it, but I'm pretty sure I always come out to the second light before everyone who goes the other way, but that's a hundred percent NOT why I do it.
Feel free to chime in with any of your own quirks to make me feel like less of a freak. Or just exclaim vigorously at how very strange this is, and hint that maybe the basketball parents had a point, because dude, I KNOW.
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