PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING TO THE GAYLY HELPFUL FUNDRAISER FOR THE TRANSGENDER LAW CENTER

If there’s one thing I know about myself, it’s that I tend to stall myself any chance I get. I’ll sit there thinking about something I need to do, tell myself “yep, should probably do that,” and then continue to, you know. Not do it. Every year I would think “new year, new me!” and vow to make a change. And of course, I put off that change too, much to absolutely no one’s surprise. I started to push myself a little more, mostly with smaller things, and gradually started to feel like I had my act together. My endless hours fantasizing about what I wished I would do with my life started to become…well, minutes of actually doing those things. But minutes were a good start.

As I worked at it though, I got a bit overconfident in my newfound productivity. I started turning my progress goggles inward, looking at conversations I wanted to have, and looking at personal things I wanted to talk about. If only to just make jokes about them, if I was being honest. And that was the train of thought that led me to an impulsive decision that sat heavy on my mind the immediate moment I made it.

My best friend texted me bright and early on Thursday morning, while I was settling in at my desk at work with a big glass of water and my project list on the screen in front of me. She’d asked if I was interested in meeting up for drinks after work. I’d said yes right away, because my therapist told me I needed to try to be more in the moment, and I’d made my decision right then and there that I would finally have a real conversation with her that night, finally open up and let her in on some of the personal matters that had been hanging over my head for years now. Frankly, I regretted both of those decisions almost immediately.

Thursdays were always hard days to focus at work, anyways. And now I had this big looming conversation hanging over my head, even though I knew I didn’t need to have it, and even though no one other than me knew about it. It was cloudy and cold outside, and was likely to rain on the walk from my office to the bar a few blocks away. And, shit, why did I pick out that shirt that didn’t fit me exactly how I liked them fit, so I was tugging at it all day, feeling it sit a little too high on my neckline and put extra pressure on my already anxiety-tight throat? I tried to ignore it all, tried to plug into a podcast and focus on the work that I had in front of me at my desk.

A headache started to build up around lunchtime. I had been chugging water all morning trying to settle my stomach and make my strained throat feel better, and I’d been needing to get up from my desk every hour or so because of it. So I could assume lack of water wasn’t the cause. It had to be from the stress. Which, you guessed it, stressed me out even more. I dug through my desk drawer, finding a bottle of tylenol beneath a stack of notes about a project I’d finished some two years ago. Might be time to throw those notes out. But I tossed back a few Tylenol, finishing up another glass of water in doing so, and then shoved the bottle back in my drawer. Hopefully it worked fast today. I must have been way more stressed than I usually was, because this headache felt different. It wasn’t the typical throbbing at the top of my head that I usually dealt with, this felt like it was moving inside me. It was directly behind my eyes, a new and highly unpleasant undulating sensation.

Fuck, maybe tonight shouldn’t be the night to let loose and get personal. If I was so stressed out about the conversation that my body was finding whole new ways to torture me with anxiety, maybe that was a sign to keep my big mouth shut.

My decision was really starting to waver as the day was wrapping up. I stayed a little late, and packed up my work, and thought about ignoring the directions on the bottle and slamming down a few more Tylenol. The squirming pain in my head had gotten worse, and as I headed down the elevator I considered changing route and texting my friend that I had a last minute change of heart. But with my phone in hand, ready to type the message up and bail out, I got the text she was already there, and had a table for us, and it was getting busy, so hurry up, okay? I closed my eyes for a moment, stopping outside of my office building, taking a deep breath of the damp, frigid air around me. I’d worked through worse, I suppose. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to go out and drink when I was feeling so bad already, but at least I wouldn’t be the one driving home. And if I felt worse in the morning, I could take a sick day, and it would all be fine, right?

The bar was loud, but thankfully it wasn’t too well lit. But my friend was bright, and she was happy to see me, and happy to have a night out to talk. And, mostly, I was happy too. But I couldn’t stop thinking, couldn’t stop asking myself, should I just say it? Should I get it over with? And I couldn’t shake the feeling in my head. It was driving me crazy, and pulling me out of the moment. That wriggling feeling just kept nagging right behind my eyes, and I was beginning to feel a little light headed from it. A little disconnected from myself. It was all I could focus on, this feeling in my head and this incessant question of should I finally just talk?

“Are you okay?” The words felt like they had come out of nowhere. One minute she was giving me the hot gossip about her coworkers, the next she had her attention focused on me, her brow furrowed, her lips pulled to the side in a grimace.

“I’ve got a little headache, but it’s not too bad,” I said. “I took some tylenol already.” She glanced at the empty glass that had held my second cocktail for about five minutes before I chugged it all. “I do have to pee though. I’ll be right back.” I slid off the tall bar chair, swinging my foot around ungracefully to try and find the floor. My head spun a little, even beyond the movement behind my eyes, but I ignored it and shuffled off towards the bathroom. I knocked, grateful for the normally inconvenient one person bathroom, and let myself in.

For a moment, I just stood in the relative quiet of the small room. It smelled like someone had recently had a very bad time in there, and the music was still just a hair louder than I would have liked, but I only needed a minute to get myself together. We’d been out a while already, and I was sure we’d be packing it up soon enough to head home for the night. I just needed to get my shit together well enough to last maybe another half hour or so. Forty five minutes, tops. I could do that. Just had to take a deep breath (once I was out of that bathroom) and think about what I was going to say, and how I was going to say it, and think of some kind of joke to break the tension once it was out there. I went over to the sink, frowning at the harshly lit reflection in the mirror above it. Fluorescent lighting in bathrooms never did me any favors, and today it was highlighting a red splotch of dry skin along my hairline, a few dark pinpoints where I’d plucked a couple eyebrow hairs that morning, a new pink bump by my eye--

That caught my attention. It hadn’t been there on any of my million trips to the bathroom at work during the day, so it must have sprung up while I was at the bar. Thank god it was dark out there. Gripping tight to the bathroom counter, knowing the horrible skin picking habits that had led to semi-permanent marks on my cheeks, I leaned in towards the mirror to get a better look at it. It was very round, slightly pointed, sticking out from the inner corner of my right eye, making my lower lid bulge just slightly. Don’t touch it, I thought, again and again even as I lifted my hand, unable to help myself. I would just poke it a little, surely that wouldn’t cause problems. Everything on the illogical side of me wanted to reach up and squeeze it, but the small, rational part of me knew that today was really not an ideal day to get blinded by mysterious eyeball zits. Not that there was ever an ideal day for that though, I guess. But I did reach up, tapping it once-- or maybe twice-- with the tip of my pinky finger. And I swear to god I almost fell to the floor as, on the second tap, the thing retracted impossibly quick, moving right back beneath my eye and disappearing. The movement made me hyper aware of that feeling in my head, that pulsing, undulating feeling behind my eye.

I could have thrown up right then and there. I didn’t, but I did remain frozen in place, my hand hovering a little too close to my face, my eyes wide in the overexposed reflection in the mirror as I held my own gaze. I stood there, not having any idea what to do, and felt that movement behind my eye changed again. I could feel something squirming forward, could feel a stinging like something caught in my eye, and then it was back. That small, pink thing squeezing out beneath my eyeball, stretching my eyelid just a bit. It was maybe as big around as one of the tapestry needles I used to stitch knitting projects together. And this time, as though feeling bolder, this thing--this fucking worm--slid further out from beneath my watering eye, starting to curl down a bit towards my cheek.

I acted on impulse. As quick as I could, I took the tip of the worm between two fingers and yanked hard. I’d hoped it would come out quick, but it just kept pulling, and pulling. Dragging beneath my eye, making tears build up and overflow down my cheeks. It was a wet rope burn somewhere I never expected to have that sensation, and it pulled free with a quiet, drawn out squelch. And that was it. I had a thin, wriggling pink worm dangling from my hand in front of my face, hanging from my fingertips past my limp wrist and nearly to my elbow. It was like that moment after you brush a single spider off your leg, where you suddenly feel like you’re absolutely crawling with them. All I could feel was squirming inside of me, in my head, in my throat, an itching in my ears, down through my stomach. I dropped the worm into the sink, and promptly leaned forward, gagging. I felt something catching in my throat, but I still heaved, and I felt movement on my tongue. Unfortunately, however, not the movement of my second cocktail coming back up for air, but a definite slithering. The muscles in my abdomen seized, and I was desperate for something, anything, to come out of me, to get this feeling to stop. But for the moment all I could do was gag. I leaned in further against the counter, trying to use some kind of pressure to help things along, and I felt that slithering creep further forward on my tongue.

I reached up, and the same hand that tugged a worm out from beneath my eye reached towards my mouth now, sticking two fingers between my lips. This new one felt a lot thicker than the first one had as I ripped it up out of my throat. It finally broke free, followed by sputtering and coughing and a load of bile that was too similar of a green to the drink I’d had earlier. I dropped the new worm, this one thick around as a pencil, into the sink. My eyes were stinging, watering endlessly, and now the inside of my mouth had a foul, sour taste. I could still feel that pulsing headache, that unnatural squirming beneath my skin practically everywhere--and I thought fuck no. I’m not doing this. I needed to go. I swallowed hard, despite wanting to gag again, and then gritted my teeth as I scooped up the two worms again. I tossed them in the toilet, flushed them down, then washed my hands and wiped my eyes. And I left the bathroom.

“You know, actually,” I said as I reached the table, surprising my friend enough to make her jump and look up from her phone. “I’m not feeling so hot right now. I think I might be getting a migraine.” I swallowed hard, feeling another tickle in my throat. But I ignored the feeling. I had to keep it together just a little while longer. This needed to be an at home me problem, not an at the bar me problem. My friend looked worried, but she nodded, and reached for her purse.

“We can go,” she said. “I think we were done anyway. We just need to get the check.” I nodded, and hoisted myself back up onto the chair. I reached for the glass of water I’d barely touched, and drank until it was empty. She was looking around, trying to spot our waiter in the crowd. I just kept thinking about the worms, and my eye, and that talk I wanted to have, and god everything just built up and up and up, didn’t it?

“Sorry to cut the night short,” I said suddenly, trying to take my mind off the thoughts and the worms, and the squirming feeling behind my eyes and in my stomach, and the tickle in my throat. The itching I was suddenly feeling in my ears. I swallowed hard, wishing I had more water. She shook her head.

“No big deal,” she said. “Better to just go home and have you feel better. Not like we won’t see each other again any time soon.”

“Yeah, I know. I was just hoping we could stay out a little longer.”

“Me too. But we’ll see each other this weekend.” She finally caught the waiter’s attention, and he signaled he’d go get the tab for us.

“Right. I wanted to tell you something tonight though.” The words came out of my mouth before I could think too hard. And I thought something else might come out of my mouth too, the way my throat suddenly felt tight, and full, and sick. I cleared my throat, and reached across the table to take her glass of water. It didn’t seem to make a difference, and the pressure I was feeling had me thinking I might gag. God, which would be worse? Finally telling her my personal problems, or spitting up a worm right here? It probably said something about my mental state that I really couldn’t answer that.

“What was it?” She looked at me across the table, and I tried to get a read on her face. She wore a stony, neutral expression that she tried to keep on whenever things were even remotely serious. I knew she had to be feeling something under there, but I didn’t know what. There was nothing on her face to give it away. And god damn if that didn’t make it feel all the worse. I wanted to talk, to distract myself from these unsettling feelings inside of me, but I didn’t know if I could.

“Well, I--” I stopped myself quickly. The tightening vice that anxiety always locked onto my throat was caught on something. Something new, and slimy, that felt like it was crawling its way up from my stomach. I worried distantly that I might have gone completely green in the face at the sudden change in expression across the table from me. I thought she might have said something, but if she did I didn’t hear it. I looked away, pulling my arm up to cough into my shoulder, but the coughing turned quickly to gagging, to full retching, to an absolutely horrific splatter on the ground. My throat was finally clear and I sucked in a harsh breath, but it was all at the expense of the people around me. It was hard to tell who was more repulsed by the new worms that had spilled from my mouth. Me, my friend, the poor onlookers at the tables around us, or the waiter who had a look on his face that told me he did not get paid enough to be dealing with this shit.

“I’m so sorry,” I said quickly, to no one in particular. My nerves were getting the worst of me again, once more tightening my throat and sending that sick, heavy feeling straight to my gut. My eyes were watering again, and this time I didn’t know if it was from the horror of the moment, or from the discomfort of regurgitating a pile of worms in public. Probably both. “I’m sorry, I—“ I cut myself off, feeling something rise in my throat once again.

Maybe it was better if I just kept my mouth shut.