Dirty Winged Creatures

I was diagnosed with chronic asthma yesterday.

Good timing, eh? What with the shifty global pandemic continuing to wreak havoc on the entire world, whether people want to believe it or not, it’s not an excellent time to have asthma.

And, not only that, but I may be on my way to acute bronchitis once again.

Perhaps it’s related or maybe because it’s June and it’s the month my mom died a few days after Father’s Day which is like how my dad died a few days before my mom’s birthday.

Hey life. You’re beautiful and, also, fuck you.

In any case, I was feeling much like a dark puddle last night.

Having asthma now means I’m probably not able to go on this birthday wine bus winery crawl with my favorite family members in July. I have been looking forward to that since the event was created at Christmas.

It’s the only event I’ve looked forward to since the pandemic started.

But oh well. I figure that, if I do manage to die from coronavirus, I can serve as that example some friends and acquaintances want as proof that coronavirus is not a conspiracy:

“Do you know-know someone younger than seventy-five who has died from coronavirus?! And I mean, someone you know.“

The conspiracy that coronavirus is a leftist conspiracy is insane to me. If the liberals were able to invent and magically orchestrate/invent all of the bodies, the media reporting here and throughout the world, the international scientific community’s unanimous belief backed up by hard data, all the health workers and their stories of suffering and death, the National Guard testing stations, the overcrowded hospitals…

if all that has been a conspiracy invented by the Left, then the Left should be able to get a few more of their bills passed in the Senate.

But, in case I die from coronavirus, I could be the quick answer for friends if they’re asked that question.

“Hillarie! She died from it!”

“Oh but she had asthma. Of course she did.”

Sigh. Interacting with people used to feel easier to me. Maybe it’s because I was a kid and shorter than everyone so I missed out on all the dumb shit people would say because I was staring at grass or something.

In any case, I’m going in for a follow-up visit in a month (in person) but my nurse practitioner prescribed me a brand new inhaler and another medication but all I care about is the PREDNISONE!!!!!!!!!

AKA STEROIDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No, it’s not good to get so excited about a drug prescription.

At the same time, it’s the thought that cheered me last night. “Oh oh oh I’m going to take steroids tomorrow morning!!!!!”

Last spring when I wasn’t getting enough oxygen for an extended period of time and then I wasn’t getting any… I was prescribed antibiotics and prednisone.

AND IT WAS AS IF I WAS BORN AGAIN.

I mean, I’m sure it was the whole “oxygen to the brain” phenomenon but if all my former drug addict friends gathered around (in some fictional future when I am again able to leave the house and interact with a group of people who are now… I honestly don’t know where/how they are… ) and talked about which drug was their favorite drug

mine would be steroids.

Hands down.

Also, I’ve clearly never done drugs except for pot and of course I never inhaled. Pot makes me even more analytical and skeptical so I’m that person who always turns down pot when I’m standing outside in the freezing cold of winter with a group of people who all suddenly smoke and I don’t smoke and… I don’t smoke pot.

I’m that person.

The healthy one.

I don’t say the “not fun one” anymore because as a middle-aged human I am no longer susceptible to peer pressure. So, therefore, I mutter “I’m the healthy one” under my breath as I decide to not join everyone to not-smoke and stand outside in sub-zero weather and instead sit alone at the now-empty bar with my good friend, double whiskey.

I don’t drink whiskey or much these days because parts of my body keep sending me notice-to-vacate letters about how they’re going to leave/shut down/no longer exist if I don’t live essentially like a Mennonite with a more colorful and unethical wardrobe and far less community.

But back to pills and powder drugs.

I needed an escape when things with my family became really bad when I was a teenager but I did anorexia instead. A drug addiction requires more social interaction and that caveat therefore didn’t make it the escape I was craving.

I did always mean to take up smoking as then I could go outside with everyone and not be left at the bar and, when alone, I could look cool because I grew up when cigarette ads were insanely cool/ridiculous and I love old movies and the stars all glamorously smoked.

At the same time, smoking would give my hands something to do but then I got a cell phone and I could occupy my hands with that until, in the last couple years, I started to really despise cell phones and now I’m back to staring at the wall when all my friends leave me to smoke outside.

One time, I was really focused on smoking. I was going to do it. I was hanging out with my friend who had earned a night pass from the rehab facility he had been sentenced to nearby and we were sitting at a quiet bar and he just shook his head as I told him I was going to start smoking that night.

He of course smoked. He took a cigarette out of the box in his pocket and handed it to me along with his lighter.

And then I happily took a puff, holding the cigarette as if I’d been born with it as an extension of my hand.

And my friend snarkily laughed and said, “No. You’re not doing it right.“

And he coached me on really inhaling.

And I fucking fell off my bar stool.

Seriously. This demonstrates why “Prednisone” is my favorite “hard drug.”

And then, stubborn beyond measure, I picked myself up off the floor and climbed back onto my bar stool, took another drag and fell right off my bar stool again.

My friend looked down at me, sitting on the floor and said, “Promise me you’ll never smoke.”

My friend who had been at that time residing at the nearby rehab facility for his ongoing heroin addiction made me never again want to smoke.

Ever.

Besides, I hate stuff in my lungs.

It’s like I’ve already died from tuberculosis or consumption in a past life and I just refuse to go through it again.

So, no, I would never smoke cigarettes. Or, sigh, even cigars.

And now I have fucking asthma so I really can’t fake smoke cigarettes or cigars.

I’m also forty years old and a hermit so I don’t even know what life I’m mistaking for my own but it’s not the one I’m currently living.

My friends are made of cloth and stuffing and some have glass eyes and they don’t smoke or do anything fun.

In any case, before I was prescribed Prednisone for my acute bronchitis last spring, I had only thought of steroids as something aggro weightlifters and athletes feeling too much pressure did.

But, since grade school steroids made me feel the rush of life flowing through my blood, I now mix my old understanding of steroids with my new understanding of steroids and feel, if I had endless access to steroids, I would end up pretty big and hairy.

In any case, I hope the Prednisone helps prevent the scene from Hereditary this late spring and it also helps with the blooming gloom I’m experiencing.

Well, this was the end of this post. But then I reread it and it was markedly short and extremely non-cheery.

It was a bad day, what can I say. It rendered me concise and grey.

So…

Well, I woke up yesterday morning and found myself yelling out the window at the street cleaner at seven in the morning because it looked like he was purposefully trying to miss the street trash.

I mean, what the fuck.

When you find yourself yelling at city workers before eight in the morning, you just know it’s going to be a troubling day ahead.

This is an example of one of those patterns in life you can count on.

Also, yesterday I spent an hour trying to get a gigantic fly out of our apartment. I mean, the thing was freaking out. At first, I thought it was some kind of flying beetle and was very “oh hell no,” but then I saw that it was a regular old steroided-out fly.

Okay. So it wasn’t a GIANT fly but, relatively speaking, it was bigger than your average house fly.

While it spent most of its time flying into the various window screens situated around the apartment, for a short time it just kind of stayed close to my feet.

I thought it was dead as I could get really close and it just kind of sat there. Moved around a bit. But didn’t make any effort to get away.

This went on for about five minutes as I waited for my husband David to get a cup so I could catch the poor fat fly and release it.

As a kid, and shortly before I was told flies carried every kind of disease and would eat your eyes if they could or some other propaganda, I loved flies. I liked how they would wipe their hands together like Mr. Burns when he was about to do something extraordinarily evil

or I remember how, when I was little, I felt so happy to watch a fly wipe its hands (legs) together as it was trapped in the backseat of the car with me.

I felt the fly was gearing itself up for something big.

Therefore, despite never permitting myself to touch a fly because I was told it was a carrier of the dead, I still root for individual flies and will help them out if they’re trapped, if I’m able.

So today I spent a good hour getting the relatively giant fly out of our apartment. Eventually, it just flew down our entry stairs and out the front door below.

And it was free.

Beyond how I knew I’d be starting steroids tomorrow, this made me happy.

If I ever feel blue, I tell myself, “Just imagine. There’s a fly out there somewhere with Hollywood Dreams.”

And, for some inexplicable reason, this cheers me.

But not more than the anticipation of breathing.

I suppose it can be summed up as, “Tomorrow will feel better.”

🖤