Read from the start.
I quit my job.
It’s a story for another day, but I quit my job.
Part of the reason for that was… I couldn’t stand doing such a high intensity job at the same time as “all of this” going on.
It wasn’t the only reason, no, but yes, I abandoned it all.
The main difference for me was…
The main change I experienced was…
The cardboard cutout backdrop of my life was gone. All those moments of kids and colleagues surprising me, and making me laugh, and pushing me to my limits.
And forcing me to answer questions about myself and what I value, and who I really am in those challenging moments. The patience required really strengthened me, but it also gave me deep regrets, of all the times I fucked up, or I could have done more, or I should have done less.
And I felt like I was abandoning them all, but— yes, a story for another day.
The nurse came around and—
I was very nervous while I waited for the nurse to show up. But as it happened, the injection was very easy, and I didn’t feel a thing, and you can’t see the needle anyway. The main thing to know is that you need to put it in the right sharps bin afterwards, the purple one, because it’s a cytotoxin. And what that means is that you can’t spill it on your skin, because it’s a cytotoxin and it will damage your skin. But injecting it inside your body is totally fine(!).
But yeah, there’s a spill kit in case you accidentally get it somewhere outside your body.
Unfortunately, the injections didn’t improve my sickness that much. It reduced the “aftermath” from two days to one. But the build up was just as bad, and only getting worse.
Luckily, I was working on something with much more flexible hours, so I could take a day or two off each week if I needed, for appointments and bed.
There was one nurse appointment in particular, where I was basically pleading with her to let me stop taking cushion.
But of course, nurses can’t make that kind of decision, so it was a bit unfair of me to ask her.
So she tried her best to encourage me to “stick with it” and “see how it goes” for another six months.
“After all”, she said. “It can become a mental thing. Something you have to get over. One bad experience can get stuck in your head.”
What does it mean for something to be in your head?
How do you know if someone is trans or not? How do you know if you’re trans or not?
I stuck with the cushion for about three months, and then I stopped taking it out of protest, and some people worried about me, and gently encouraged me to start taking it again.
But no, I couldn’t face it. I was at a new job that I loved. And I’m sure that my work would have been fine with me taking time off, but I didn’t want to do that. I was just sick of being sick!
And so, I welcomed back all my psoriasis symptoms with open arms. Hello again, red forehead! Welcome back, crippling limp! Oh and hi there, scabby leg, you’re new! They were nothing compared to weekly vomit.
I couldn’t take cushion anymore, I couldn’t look at it, couldn’t even hold a pot, I just started to gag! It made me dizzy, and my—
My body was trying to protect me. It learned that cushion was POISON.
Of course, in this case, my body was right: Cushion is poison.
My body got it right, but that didn’t make it any easier, and at every appointment, people told me to take it.
“I don’t like it,” I said. “It makes me sick.”
And of course, they told me, “Just give it a try. It’ll be okay really. It’s just in your head.”
What does it mean for something to be in your head?
Whatever it means, I’m not taking that cushion.
Continue to part five.