This is a Woman

This is a woman that can’t seem to remember if she is 36 or 37.

This is a woman that forgot to put the blue recycle bin out on Tuesday.

This is a woman that has noticed lately that she can’t catch and keep those fast rats of thought running around in her mind.

This is a woman that thinks a suburban spell has come over her and her mind.

This is a woman who, as a child, was frightened by the movies The Planet of the Apes and The Stepford Wives.

This is a woman you won’t find doing step aerobics in pink shorts with Juicy Couture written in shiny ribbon across her butt.

This is a woman that is on the treadmill, in running shorts and a t-shirt, hair a sweaty mess, with her ipod on too loud, pumping out a playlist something like this: superfreak, paradise city, save me, if you want my love, sugar, we’re going down, tattooed love boys, no more words, blue sky, anything, anything.

This is a woman that doesn’t like to be still. In mind or body.

This is a woman that did not hear her father say I love you until she was twenty-nine.

This is a woman who used to go out for what she called, cigs & drinks nights, with her three closest girlfriends. The walk was short from one of the girl’s tiny but hip San Francisco apartment to the bar around the corner. To the bar where drinks are the size of punch bowls; drinks decorated with paper umbrellas and pineapples and cherries. Drinks in electric alcoholic colors like turquoise, lime, safety cone and lightening bolt.

This is a woman that would sometimes smoke an entire pack of Camels during one of these outings for this: To feel wired. Jittery. Her heart a wild bird, flapping hard to get out. Her heart a motorboat racing inside the blue ocean of her blood.

This is a woman who is still close in heart, but not miles, to these three girlfriends, now scattered like marbles across the U.S. There is now no bar around the corner to collect them in. Cardigan sweaters, businesslike hair styles, organic produce, a Ph.D. program, responsibility, a master’s thesis, wedding rings, a terminally ill parent, small children, fertility treatments and big mortgages—all these things have rooted, contained and caged them.

This is a woman that is thinner and fitter after having two children than she was before having kids.

This is a woman that has not felt truly unabashedly honest-to-god black garter belt red- satin sexy since she gave birth to her daughters.

This is a woman that remembers the prizes: the beaded coin purse, the candy necklace, the plastic ring, the pencil topper that was shaped like a cluster of grapes and smelled purple. She was sent to a speech therapist twice a week in the fourth grade. Was given dittos of poems to memorize and recite to the lady sitting across from her in the small room with the row of windows all around. She didn’t go for very long. The lady heard nothing wrong in her speech. This girl just didn’t like to open her mouth.

This is a woman who feels uninspired by the desert landscape surrounding her. She needs cloud, rain, gray, ocean, sand, sun, tree, grass, green. Not blue sky sunshine blue sky sunshine blue sky sunshine. A perfect day placed side by side with no end in sight is insanity.

This is a woman who, between silk, star and coco picks star to smell like during her deep tissue massage.

This is a woman that remembers the old ladies patting her head, saying “such a quiet good girl.”

This is a woman that felt like Anne Sexton was telling the truth.

This is a woman who, three years ago, leaned into the mirror, tilted her head back to put mascara on her lashes, saw a lump, size of an almond, stick out on the left side of her throat, felt it, finished applying her make-up, and didn’t say anything about it for two months.

This is a woman who, one New Year’s Eve visited a psychic who immediately sensed that she has a lot of fear in her.

This is a woman that looks at the picture from Disneyland as her before shot.

This is a woman who had an enlarging left thyroid mass. Fine needle aspiration showed atypical epithelial component. A hemithyroidectomy followed by possible total thyroidectomy in the case of cancer was recommended. The risks of injection, inferior scarring, hypoparathyroidism, recurrent laryngeal nerve injury were discussed with her in detail. She understood the risks and wished to proceed.

This is a woman that researches everything. She looks up the percentage risk rate of damage to the vocal cords for this type of surgery. Three percent does not seem low enough to her.

This is a woman who, as a child, refused to recite her ABC’s for her older sister. Red record button pushed down. Sister making all the noise, imitating Grover, singing Row Row Row Your Boat into the speaker. Say something, you can hear the sister say. The little girl you whispers back “I don’t want to talk.” Click. Tape ends.

This is a woman that doesn’t sleep. She stays up at night looking at thyroid cancer websites and sending emails to Jill. She writes “make it go away.” She erases it. She wishes it was that easy. That fast.

This is a woman that is obsessive about her body. She is afraid she will get fat after this is all over. This would be worse than death to her.

This is a woman that married a man that says I love you to her almost every day.

This is a woman that puts mascara and lipstick on the day of her surgery even though the direction sheet the hospital administrator gave her explicitly says no make-up.

This is a woman that was raised on homemade fudge, PBS and worry.

This is a woman that is so nervous everyone can see it and feel it. She hates this, hates that the fear is leaking out, glowing in her eyes, dripping in her palms. The anesthesiologist, a small blonde with funky glasses, asks her if she’d like her to give her something to get her to relax. The small blonde doctor pushes something opaque and white into her IV. She feels something altogether foreign to her—calm.

This is a woman that thought she could control one thing in life.

This is a woman who wants to believe this priest and these words he said to Anne Sexton: “God is in your typewriter.”

This is a woman that doesn’t tell those three girlfriends what’s been going on all summer until after the surgery, after she is home, after the skin starts to sew a thin red seam.

This is a woman who thinks back. All those sore throats she had as a kid. Her tonsils. always swollen, red, infected. Their removal at age nine. The cool strawberry ice cream bandage. It wasn’t the end but the first warning.

This is a woman that encounters a theory on a Carolyn Myss website about biography becoming biology. About the physical dysfunctions that occur when one does not surrender personal will to divine will. Thyroid problems. The list of ailments ends with thyroid problems.

This is a woman that had a picture of her aura taken years ago. Red, green, yellow and orange color the background. The spiritual colors—blue, indigo and violet—are no where to be found.

This is a woman that is driven to search for the answers. Blue. It is always seems to be colored blue, a pale heaven hue, on a chakra chart, the throat chakra. She reads this from her Astrological Bible: Failure to achieve full experience of the self at this stage can result in heart attacks in men and blocked throat chakra in women, who feel they are “unheard and cannot speak.”

This is a woman that’s childhood nightmares involved apes that could talk and women that were robotic.

This is a woman that starts to make connections. Draws the lines to every sister. A solid square between the four of you gets filled in with the same color: thyroid disorders, depression, inability to locate their true passion and disturbingly quiet personalities.

This is a woman that closes her eyes and sees the words—love stop yes no now wait pain more dream—stuck, those little dead bodies of sound, rotting in her throat.

This is a woman that has felt captured by invisible things.

This is a woman that had a scalpel slicing millimeters from her vocal chords.

This is a woman that starts punching an S.O.S, an alphabet of Morse Code out on her computer keyboard. No matter what she configures with the black alphabet it all says Listen:

This is a woman that has something to say.