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August 25, 2016 - 9:40 a.m.

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"EVERYONE'S GETTING MARRIED," I message her.

"Rosie. Get off Facebook and have a beer. You'll feel better," she messages back.

~

The pain wakes me up. The air in my bedroom is cold and hard, but my hips feel like they're on fire. My lower back feels like glowing iron. My knees feel like they're being twisted out of their sockets.

I'm sweating from it. There's no relaxing and going to sleep. I stagger to the bathroom.

The hour is so early, even the cats don't come when I flick on the bathroom light.

~

I drive, I drive. The sun is becoming the thick gold of fall, the leaves are starting to turn.

I find my mind drifting while I drive, and it's probably not good.

It is alarming to me to realize how much I could fuck up so many people's lives, just by jerking my steering wheel just...so.

~

So much blood, so much blood. I pass clots as big as mice.

Trying to clean it up. The blood is electric red. So healthy, so vibrant. Glowing with oxygen.

Coming from this deformed beast of a uterus. Such healthy blood from such a horrible uterus.

I wonder if it will ever bear a child. If it can. If I'll get the chance to try.

~

Another friend has a baby. Perfect. Nine pounds, some ounces. It's her second, with her darling of a husband, on their little farm in the valley.

I'm not working yet. The anxiety settles on me like a lead blanket, paralyzing.

~

I rinse my mouth out with water and swallow and ibuprofen. I wash the smears of blood off my forearms and stagger back to bed.

I adjust the black towel under me, the one to keep blood off the sheets.

There is no sleeping now. The tide of pain has not even begun to recede.

I turn on the light and start skimming people on OKcupid. Looking for that right combination of mental stability, kindness, nerdiness. But not too nerdy. Someone who understands social graces.

~

Scott, a guy I went on one terrible date with, gets married. I didn't even know he was dating anyone, and suddenly his wedding photos appear on Facebook.

It doesn't matter, not really.

But it does a little.

~

I wake up in the morning with the light still on, and my phone in my hand.

The tide recedes.

.

Rosie.

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