When Your Body Fails You

When your body fails you people will worry. People will worry about your safety and your sanity and your cervix and your spit ends. People will carry you even if you’ve tied yourself to the ground. But it’s like a metaphor right? “Where will they carry you if you’ve tied yourself to the ground?” You might ask. Well they won’t carry you anywhere specifically, mostly they’ll just stand there holding you in their arms in the middle of the street sometimes. The amount of time that people will stand there holding you, unsure of what to do, while you are tethered to the ground, because you have tethered yourself to the ground and they’re not the type of person who would put you down here in the middle of the street—It would surprise you how long they’ll hold you. Actually they won’t hold you that long. They’ll put you down to adjust their bag of groceries, or to open a door, or to pick out a wedgie. Well they won’t really do that. They won’t put you down because of that. They’ll put you down because you ask them to.

You’ll say, “What I really need right now is for you to put me down.”

And they’ll say, “Right here in the street?”

And you’ll say, “Yes. What I really need right now is for you to put me down right here.”

“In the street.”

“Right here in the street. Look at this rope. I tied myself to this…fire hydrant because fire hydrants are…yellow and yellow calms me down.”

And they’ll be like, “Okay, I mean, okay yeah you know your own body, and I shouldn’t treat you like a baby. You’re an adult and you can take care of yourself.”

And you’ll be like, “I can’t believe this person who claims to be my friend is doing the same thing that so many others have done before, tying me to a fire hydrant—I hate yellow—and leaving me in the street. If they could read my mind, if they were a real friend, they would know what I want them to do is cut the rope, carry me somewhere, and feed me Hershey’s chocolate sauce with a spoon,” But that’s all, you know, in your own brain.

And they’ll be like, “I’ll see you later right? At work or the bar or Sunday School or something?”

And then they leave cause you’re like, “I’d really like to be alone with this yellow.”

And then you curl your body around the fire hydrant and think about how cold works. How the metal in the hydrant is sucking the warmth out of you. Out of your breast right here, and out of your thigh right here. You start to feel the sucking feeling spreading, like it’s been injected into your veins. It’s like a frozen Jacuzzi and you slip in and sit down in it. You can feel the hydrant sucking at you all the way in the back of your spine. And then you think: I’m cold. If I can feel the sucking feeling in my tailbone, and at the back of my neck I must be cold. I think I’m too cold. What are you supposed to do when you’re too cold? Then you look down and you’re in a pool of your own piss. Oh no it’s sweat. Fuck I must have sweated a ton! Oh no, no it’s piss. Or is it sweat? You turn your head to look for the sun. It was just here. But you have trouble moving your head to where you want it to look and you think, “Bodies are heavy. Especially heads.” You think, “Heads are especially heavy.”

And then you think: I have a disease. What’s it called again? Diabetes, I’m sure of it. Something doesn’t feel right because I have a disease and I must have taken too much medication. That’s what is usually wrong with me when I feel like I’ve never felt before.

And then you think: I could die. Maybe I’m dying.

And you sit with that for a while, for longer than you would think you’d sit with that. The first thought of dying echoes in your head until you really hear it. And then you think, I should probably pull out everything in my fridge with sugar in it.

I always thought that Shelby was over-doing it in Steel Magnolias.

“Stop it, Mama, I have some candy in my purse.” She says.

Her mother responds with “No no no! You didn’t bring your purse, you didn’t bring your purse sweetheart.”

I identify with that moment a lot, that look on Shelby’s face when she realizes her mom is right. She was focused too much on life and her wedding that death and familial obligation crept in. It’s either she has her purse and there’s candy in it, or she is an invalid.

“If you don’t leave me alone I’m gonna leave.” She says at another moment shaking, covered in sweat, fighting for her life.

“Oh ho! I’d like to see you try. Cooperate please.” Her mother responds giggling to herself.

Sally Field is so heartless as her mom in that scene. She just laughs in her daughter’s face as she is having an insulin attack and then gossips about how she can’t have children over her head even after Shelby begs her with her little glass of orange juice in her hand: “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”

But by the end you’re so into her. After her daughter is dead—spoiler alert: Shelby dies—there’s a part of you that thinks: Shelby should have stayed with her mama. Her mama’s the only one who really knows how to take care of her.

When your body fails you people will pull you in different directions. They’ll call into question the things you have believed about yourself for years, maybe your whole life. You’ll find yourself landing everyday somewhere between two extremes. Independence comes with the threat of death. Dependence comes with wiped bottoms and diaper rash, and Sally Field as your mother. Dependence might also come with asking for things, admitting to things. Independence comes with deniability. You have nothing to fear but the damage you can do to yourself. Independence comes with no one being able to see that damage. Dependence airs your dirty laundry to the world. That’s true of anyone. But when you’re sick and dependent, your dirty laundry also forces you into submission.

That’s the whole thesis of Shelby’s story in Steel Magnolias. She can’t stay with her mother, what she needs is someone to trust her and treat her like a human, but her independence is what ultimately kills her. That moment at the end when she’s leaving work for the last time and she gets a pain in her kidney, she’s in her scrubs, with her short hair, and you see her hand go to her side for a second. Her coworker asks her if she’s all right. That’s the moment, when she could have chosen dependence. Where the viewers at home believe she should have chosen dependence. But instead she leaves. And then she goes back to her house and goes into a coma. Sometimes independence comes with death. That is the risk you take when you’re alive.

When your body fails you you’ll scare people. You’ll start relating to characters in movies who serve to advance the emotional plot with their deaths: Shelby, Angel, Fantine, Guy Pearce’s incredibly sadistic wife in Memento. Life seems easy, you either make the mistake that kills you or you don’t. Like in scary movies when the stabber comes around and the victim runs up the stairs. It’s easy to think that you would never run up the stairs in that situation. But independence can manifest in mistakes, in wrestling with fate, in lying for hours on the sidewalk while the sun sets, pissing your pants.