So the weekend is almost over (to me at least.) I wasn’t necessarily excited for the weekend, like counting down the minutes to Friday or anything, and then when the summer ended I didn’t go into any sort of panic-induced depression…
But I’m getting that anxious feeling of impending doom right now—the one where I want to cry but I still want to enjoy what’s left of my freedom… Yet I can’t shake the feeling that I was just dropped off at the banks of the River Styx with nothing more than a copy of Twilight to paddle with because now the boatmen is too big of a jerk-off to do his job. (Wait. He’s paid, right?)
It’s especially annoying because I get the exact same feeling sitting in PreCalc and Chem, but a little less suffocating and a little more heart breaking. You’d think I would get used to it or at least build up a tolerance… but no.
We’re the only three people in this conversation.
When I was six years old, my dad was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes.
It was especially serious because they figured out he had it since he was fifteen—he was one of nine children living on a tight budget in Logan, Utah in the 1960s… medical attention was emergency only.
For a few years he was a food nazi. He defined himself as a diabetic.
When I was seven, my older cousin asked me if my dad would baptize me later that year (as most Mormon eight year olds are), to which I replied, “If he’s still alive.”
He went totally overboard in a lot of respects, but at least he was healthy up until about two years ago. He started to cheat more and snack on bread non-stop. He says that so long as they’re enough butter on bread, then it’s healthy.
Alcoholism is a much more legitimized condition with rehab. But bread to a diabetic is vodka to an alcoholic.
Today I made a deal that if he doesn’t cheat on his diet for that week, I’ll go to church with him… I know how badly he wants me to despite my moral obligation to church. And I know how passive aggressive he is, and I don’t know if I’ll trust his word that he didn’t cheat, but I’ll still uphold my end of the bargain—because come October, I’m pulling out the big guns.
Because for my Super Sweet Sixteen, I have two requests. Dinner at Red Robin with my friends and for my dad to do whatever it takes to still be living to see me graduate high school, college, get married, and meet my future kiddos.
jaecie:
When we were discussing which bunk we preferred (top vs. bottom), Poonam assumed we were talking about which spot we would prefer for sex and stated her opinion… only to realize what we were actually talking about.
That may have been one of the single greatest moments of my life.
That, seeing about 18 people (including 3 boys) cry at my going away party because they would miss me, going to Scandinavia (especially Copenhagen), and getting an article published in the paper… those are things that I cherish and will tell to my grandchildren.
