Numb

Hmm, I wonder why my leg has been asleep for so long. 

A familiar thought. It's quite similar to

Hmm, I wonder why my vision is blurry in one eye. 

The answer is as plain as the nose on some ugly motherfucker's face, and yet it does not occur to me immediately.

The tingling, the burning. That's normal, right? The thought frees my mind so that I'm able to ruminate on whether or not I'm dying of cancer.

Having MS really is, in a sense, like being a battered wife. You never know when the brute will backhand you across the face. I'm actually lucky, in that my ball-and-chain seems only to get violent every few years. And even then, all he does is burn me with a cigarette or punch me in the eye, just to remind me that he could, at any time, put me in a wheelchair.

Of course, there's always false hope. Maybe it really is asleep, or maybe I have a problem with my circulation. But, my experience is that, although this disease is a mealy-mouthed serpent with all kinds of sensory illusions up his sleeve, there are some symptoms that seem to bear his trademark. The tingling numbness, the fuzzy feeling of disappearing, the almost perceptible nerve damage -- it all just reeks of him.

I would, needless to say, love to dump him: serve him with divorce papers before strapping a pipe bomb to his car. He's inside me, though; he is me. He is my defect. He is why I ought to have been returned to the lot.

I know I should be grateful, and I am. I've spent nine years being grateful as fuck that it isn't worse. Sometimes, though, you've got to tell the truth about things, and take a break from suckling at the teet of positivity.

27.10 edit: I can still walk, and I can still come. Having thought about it, I'm doing pretty damn well.

Ugly is The New Presentable

The key to understanding me is this: I am an indie douchebag/nerd trying desperately to be a hot girl.

I spend about half an hour on my makeup every morning. I piss away another 15 or 20 on my hair, which is a bush (a wild tuft of 70s pubes, not a shrub) that rarely, if ever, looks decent. I check myself in the mirror twice or three times or four times before I leave for the day.

I want you to think that I'm a naturally hot girl who takes care of herself, but whose priority is something other than her appearance. The truth, however, is that I waste rather a lot of my time on looking good, and the only reason I don't waste more of it is because I have no idea what I'm doing. Things even go awry occasionally, and I end up looking like a seventy-year-old hooker with the complexion of a greasy-faced adolescent.

And then people say thing like, "You look so much like you love to read!" and I'm left thinking to myself, "While that is true, that is not the look I'm going for!"

So I continue to slather products on my face every morning while I listen to NPR or some douchey shoegaze band, hoping that this regimen will grant me beauty and grace.  "It's cool that you don't care about your appearance. You're just that kind of deep individual, aren't you?" I hear.

How does one admit to not only caring (and failing to produce the desired results), but also to being a vapid loser whose depth is about ankle deep?

Last week, I showed up at Finnish class without any makeup. I had slept two or three hours, so I couldn't summon the will to give a shit about anything at all. My regimen went undone. At break, a classmate greeted me and we exchanged pleasantries. She paused. "Are you...sick today or something? You look...different."

And it was then that I realized that my regimen does not grant beauty. It merely staves off ugly. So many of the best things in life are ugly. Genitals are said to be ugly. Chocolate mousse looks like it came out of something or someone's backside. Horror movies are the best. Maybe staving off the ugly is a stupid idea.

Little Girls Are Messed Up

Lest you think otherwise.

I am 8. It is early in the school year, and I am at the dentist. As I sit in the wallpapered waiting room, awash in Top 40 radio, I pull a book from my bag to allay the boredom. The book is called Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones. I had begged for it until I was allowed to purchase it, yet I am among the last in class to get my hands on a copy. The badass, a-little-too-edgy-for-kids art by Stephen Gammell is just too glorious. It is sanctioned horror for children -- black and white, unsettling, and occasionally gross. These drawings have the ability to genuinely freak a kid out, or perhaps outright scare her to death.

So, I begin leafing through the book for the second or third time -- I must have gotten it at the school book fair shortly beforehand -- pleased as punch that I'm looking at something so creepy.

Ace of Base's "All That She Wants" comes on the radio. I've never heard it before, because the only top singles played in my household are by the Beatles, Elton John, Bob Dylan, and Bach. Such is childhood when one has boomer parents.

Then I see her. She isn't as dark or as skeletal as the others, but she hits me in the pit of my entrails with the sort of fright that all childhood boogeymen employ. Her beady black eyes, her wrinkled smirk, the wisps of her black hair -- I internalize all of her details instantly.

So, I'm deeply freaked out. All of a sudden, Ace of Base's state-of-the-art MIDI saxophone begins to sound kind of scary. I listen to the lyrics, and imagine that they refer to this pale, neckless abomination.

All that she wants / Is another baby / She's gone tomorrow. 

She's going to getcha!

Due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the word "baby" in this context (to be honest, I still don't know what the lyricist intended), I am pretty sure that this nightmare is going around trying to get pregnant by like, 6 different men at once so that she can spawn as many vile little boogeywomen as possible. Ew! I bet if you cut her, she bleeds black tar. What if she shows up in my bedroom? Understanding what I do about the science of human reproduction (I'm a big girl), I'm certainly not in any danger of giving her another baby. Still, she's gazing devilishly downward, as if over a child's bed. Does she lurk in the dark, after bedtime stories, when she's not out trying to get inseminated? This is not good. Must not let Mom know I'm scared. She'll confiscate this awesome book!

"Elena?" The dental hygienist with a clipboard is ready for me.

Days later, I'm in a friend's car, and her mother likes to listen to smooth jams while driving. I hear that plodding sax riff, and I shudder as they sing along and dance in their seats.