Rargh! This place is not for you! I will banish everyone from my hospital room.

It’s Wednesday night, so the heart story continues.

Picking up from last week -

I was pretty much complaining (When am I not, right?) – talking about how I would not accept almost any friendly or loving gestures from anyone – ’cause I was so needlessly stubborn, and all.

“Hey world, you’re not allowed to just be nice to me. You have to be nice to me for the right reasons. And the right reasons do not include the fact that I’m sick. Call me when I’m out of the hospital, yo!”

Yes, it was stubborn. Yes, it was a bit silly. And yes, I am exaggerating my attitude a bit for the sake of the story. I wasn’t quite so in people’s faces about it as I’m making it out to be. But, I seriously was asking (begging, pleading with) people not to come visit me.

And I still can’t promise I’d be any different now. The hospital is an uncomfortable place to have visitors. When you live your life trying to be cool, and “win” (by doing great projects, getting accepted to things, yada yada yada), you have absolutely nothing to offer anyone who comes to visit you.

“How was your day?” “Well, um, a nurse brought in my breakfast tray. Then Law and Order was on twelve times in a row…”

Of course, there’s always something to talk about. Funny things happened with my new hospital friends. And I worked on scripts that I was happy to blabber on about. But still. Hopefully you kind of get what I’m saying.

Back to my classmate who offered to come play Monopoly with me -

If you asked me at any other time in my life (including now) if you could come over and play board games with me, about 99% of the time, I would say yes. (I absolutely adore board games.)

But when I was in the hospital, I was saying no more than ever. Even though I desperately wanted to play Monopoly (the opportunity doesn’t come up often), I told Caleb, “nu uh.”

Let me tell you, if people are offering to play board games with you, it’s possible that you should go ahead and do it. (I know we’ve already established that faced with the same situation now, I would probably be too stubborn (even still). But it might not be the best choice.)

Chances are, once you join the ranks of society again, people will no longer have all this time to throw at you. It doesn’t mean you’re less cool or they’re less thoughtful. It’s just an unfortunate part of life.

Going back to the beginning of last week’s post, and how I was trying to keep my illness (ew, sounds weird to be phrased like that, right? (Puts hand on forehead in big sweeping gesture, and in damsel-in-distress-southern accent says, “my illness”)) under wraps; I didn’t touch on the obvious question that comes out of that. Why is someone who is shouting her story from the rooftops on a blog so uptight about sharing the fact that she’s sick with anybody in her life?

At this point, years later, I’m writing a memory.

At the time, I was weak. I was confined to the hospital. My life was spiraling out of control. Who wants to share that? “Uh, hey guys! I had to quit my job. I’m failing out of a couple of classes. I’m getting bloated, fat, and gross (oh my) hanging out in the same room all day, day after day after day. Check me out!”

Granted, things still aren’t completely the same. I have yet to lose the rest of the weight that I gained, or pay off the rest of my debt that I made. My life is still affected by my heart problem, but my life is no longer run by it.

I’ll pick up with the story next week.

Tagged: board games, cardiac patient, friends, hospital, too much attention