wagon will

people get antsy when you’re an addict.

like a smorgasbord of picnic delights, i laid my renal demise upon a crumpled linen of red and white for all to sample. and they did. from all across the facebook, family and friends sipped up the latest blood results, grazed at the slaughtered soul and swarmed upon the sticky sweetness of surgery fait accompli.

trimming the fat, serving sinew and bone, leaves little marrow to suck out. just reality to chew on.

and so, they scattered.

when the monster of addiction ravaged through the dandelion celebration; leaving smeared jam shirt, nutella poop smudge and red wine stain.

far too late for white wine salve.

with vibrating antennae tuning into real, reality television, they scattered.

but let me tell you about a few who haven’t.

first, there’s j.

only yesterday. yes. ter. day. my friend of 30 years wrote to see if I was ok.

and today. to. day. she had a baby. a beautiful, baby girl, with the greatest name on the face of the earth, (that i must assume is a most excellent tribute to her father, yet devastatingly original.). oh, the gift of her call in rehab. but, in her voice i could hear pain. confusion. and devastation. for me. as she struggled to understand, what neither of us did. but, she hasn't given up.

there is e.

e. gave me back myself. she gave me another 28 days in rehab. like a good, red wine, i had to open, breathe and mellow before soaring out on the wealth of my authentic self. [and yes, you can be sober and make an alcohol analogy.] she acted, as she has with everything in our friendship, without hesitation. without condition. she doesn’t offer love. suggest love. or pantomime love. she is love. pure and simple. 

and then there is l.

my frustration with all things television was cauterized today. after flipping around last night, finding absolutely not one show, not one person of interest worth donating a smattering of gray matter cells to...

like my predecessor, dick simmons, bloated belle here was sweating to the oldies; scanning by default the plasma screen double parked right above her head on the gym wall. “the doctors”. some daytime reality show that i missed during my drug-fueled, three year co-dependency with my king-cal. [with a noon start, it was, quite frankly, probably on way too early for me…]

definitely challenging to take seriously these glowing, glossy, blacklit beteeth-ed md’s. but ah, they were doing a segment on fingernails.

i haven’t had fingernails in 10 years. 

back in 2002, i left my ego on the bathroom counter, alongside my hair straightener and glitter shadow, and trudged over to a mcjob at a market research company. officially, well, i've blocked out the politically correct, tightly spun concocotion that was my title. unofficially, i was a gal friday. my retro-futuristic take on "jack shit". doing everything from peeling stickers off of fruit to overwindexing conference tables with a visible film so thick, johnny weir would have won a gold medal on it.

[geez. take a blog away from a girl for a week...]

and that was when the culprit surfaced.

"fung-ass of the thumb".

it is possible, a medical condition such as this doesn’t exist, but in my fucking world, it did.

latin american standoff. unable to fight this off with my immune system, yet unable to take medication potentially damaging to the kidney.

[yes. i see the irony.]

and so, this fung-ass of the thumb decided to dig deep and settle in, spread out and make it self right at home. and for the last 10 years, i've had no nails.

unable to open cans. scratch hubby's back. get fun manis.

on my scale of physical side effects, it always floated down and settled in near the bottom, but there was always one friend who remembered. every time i flew due north and landed for a cuppa tetley.

inevitably, without fail; with beautiful, detailed compassion, she would ask,

"how are your nails?"

and so today, when the shiny, happy doctors explained that broken, stunted, raw nails were often a sign of kidney disease i thought bubbled,

"uh. d-uh."

and then i looked down, and smiled.

and the first person i thought of showing was l.

"look, l! look at my nails!"

who's been writing. and calling. and worrying. and being my friend.

my never-think-twice airport friend. the friend who picked up my medications, so i wouldn't worry. the friend who scoffed when i thanked her and said,

"please. give me something hard."

three hearts. three friends. three angels.

and for the record, no-one fell off the wagon this week. i am sitting here firmly, bare-assed. splinters prickling, stinging; cheeks sizzling, fajita-hot.

but i have no intention of giving up my seat.