Jed Wolf

I choose to write because it feels healthier than choosing not to. I’m extroverted. Rather than memoiring in a garret while in therapy, I prefer breaching social bounderies in checkout lines and shining my moons of mania wherever I go, then writing about it. I wax and wane on Facebook, to my house and garden creatures and talk intimately with friends and strangers. What reflects back is mostly positive, ’til it’s not.

I tell the folks at my local nursery, “My biopsy’s scheduled for March 17th so begin chanting on the 11th and have a pyre of black or white smoke ready to billow upon my result.”

There’s no controlling people’s reactions. I note their brows or the size of their eyes and swoon at the opportunity to explore and make fun of our primal fears, but I must take care. Many of us have lost badly to horrific things.

Yet despite and because of fear of taboo subjects, death deserves a poke in the ass. “I can manage ill health,” I say “but kill me now if you can’t take a joke.”

But lately the reflections of my lead balloons plummeting into my mooney lake have become disturbing. Since scheduling my biopsy, my facetiousness is ferocious.

I’ve always been one of those people others would like to take a hammer to. My tongue’s a blade. l have zero patience for pity or comfort yet people expect me to be sensitive to their need to offer them when I’m least in the mood. When my neighbor said “let me know if there’s anything I can do,” I said “how about a sponge bath.”

I’m no good at creeping around to protect other’s grip. I continue to manage bullshit with jokes and will let people know if I need help, but unsolicited compassion is gross. I’m not ready to mourn myself and already I’m trying like Hell to not let people’s solicitude ruin “what joy I have left.”

If this is why people keep medical concerns to themselves, I don’t buy it. I’ll force people to trust me with awkward humor and prove it won’t kill them to relax their “concern” for me out of their foreheads. I’d never tell them to stop projecting on me – I’m not their movie theater, ‘cause I’m not that mean.

As I get older, (and older,) I’m still not afraid of death or dying. It’s dealing with others amid potential forced changes that frightens me. Being alone in my head would do me in so I have to communicate but picking and choosing what to say where or when would mean changing who I am. This doesn’t seem the right time for a personality change especially in my “time of need.”

I’ve had several different surgeries and couldn’t wait to be released from the automated compassion of nurses, friends and family who were oblivious to my wish for them to act normal. But I was younger then and knew I’d bounce back.

I hope I’m clever on the gurney before they knock me out but if I feel like smashing something, I’ll try to control my tongue.

Nah.