May 27, 2011. I'm still here. Yesterday I started to lose my mind, a reaction to an antidepressant I was taking in a brutally misguided attempt to quit smoking. It backfired and I spent the day pacing around in my parents' driveway, chain smoking, terrorizing my ex boyfriend with needy phone calls, and watching Project Runway with my Mom in her sweet attempt to distract me from my own instability. I wanted to go back home, to Brooklyn, but my mother asked me to stay for another day so I could drive her to the doctor. So that's where I am, I'm the parking lot of the medical complex, still chain smoking in the unexpected heat, waiting. I make an apologetic call to my ex and forge an awkward plan to have dinner with him later, once I'm back in the city. But for now I'm waiting, in the waiting room where I let myself doze. It's an hour, much longer than either of us expected, before my mother comes out of the office, and I meet her at the reception desk.
"It's not good," she says.
We go to a diner after even though neither of us want to eat.
"I don't think I can accept a kidney from any of you," she says. "Maybe I can get one from a stranger."
"Stop it," I say. It might be the only sane thing I've said all week. "You have to let us try." I already know, without really knowing, that it's going to be me. "What would you give up," I ask, "if you could have your mother back?"
A few hours later, I'm on the train, rushing to meet my ex-boyfriend, who I will only a month later admit that I'm still in love with, before he goes off to spend the weekend with the mystery person he's using to replace me. The train is only semi-crowded, and I have a seat to myself. I curl up where I hope no one can see me, and cry. Stage four kidney disease.
