The Invisible Black Woman

It’s 1:48 AM. I should be fast asleep. But I’ve done nothing but toss and turn for the better part of an hour. The miracle drug I was prescribed has done absolutely nothing to improve my sleep. I’m now no better or worse off than I was when I used a combination of Benadryl and Zzzquil to sleep through the night. Maybe it’s because I have another round of tests that await me first thing in the morning. My echo came back clear, still waiting on the mammogram (more on that later), and in less than 6 hours, I’m getting a Venus Doppler, which is just a fancy term for a scan of my legs to look for blood clots.

So maybe that’s why I’m wide awake wishing for sleep. Or maybe, just maybe, I’m watching the seconds roll by as I look out the window because today is the day. Today is when I break the news to my job by way of my insurance that I’m not coming back Monday—which is in less than 72 hours.

It’s already been a month. Honestly, I’m not even sure where the time went. Between “focusing” on my mental health, school, and going from one appointment to the next, time vanished faster than I expected. And now, here I am yet again, faced with having to be the bearer of bad news: I’m not cleared to return.

It’s all I can think about since my brain unceremoniously told me to get up. I should still be in the land of slumber. Yet my brain decided if it’s gotta be awake, so should I. So now, I try to calm myself in light of what I have to do later. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure why it’s so rattling. I’m not well, yet I carry an incredible amount of guilt for having to take what my illogical brain has termed the coward’s way out. Why not just woman up and be back stronger than ever come Monday? How come you’re allowing your weak half to have a say? Just a few of many questions clanking around in my brain.

All the while, my heart thump, thump, thumps, as it does its level best to burst out of my chest. This again. A clean reading from the doctor on my ticker, yet it feels like anything but in this very moment.

So now, as I watch the clock continue its steady march forward, unflinching in its regard for my current state of panic, I try to mentally walk through what comes next today, after they check my legs.

I’ve gotta drag myself to the behavioral center yet again—tail between my legs from where I’m sitting—and admit that I am not mentally ready to go back to work. Why does that bother me so much? At what point does it become okay for me to be okay with the fact that I’m not okay? Is there a timeframe where I finally just embrace it rather than wildly swinging from solemn acceptance to abject disappointment in my weakness?

I am honestly not sure I’ll ever be okay with not being okay. It could have something to do with the fact that it makes me feel defective. Damaged. Flawed. And don’t get me wrong: I’m far from perfect and I have never claimed to be. This imperfection feels different. It’s like the difference between a kid with a chipped or missing tooth and a grown adult with a row of missing front teeth. Only one of these is cute and endearing (in my mind, at least).

No matter how much distance I put between myself and where I currently am mentally, I’ll never not have this be part of who I am. Having to live with the notion that I’m not as strong-minded as I thought I was is a hard pill to swallow. Maybe I’ll find a way to deal with that once I start the outpatient program.

So instead and until then, I wait. Not just for daybreak, but for news on my disability claim that has yet to arrive. I wait for the hours to roll forward so I can be an adult and tell Petra that I need more time. I wait for the moment when I work up the courage to tell my job they won’t see me come Monday. I wait—in vain—for sleep to kick back in.

I also worry. Worry that my illness is somehow not bad enough to earn me more medical leave. Worry that not being in a hospital bed, hooked up to tubes, or at death’s door means I could actually be at work. Worry my very legitimate and valid claim gets thrown out.

I’ve never not worked. In fact, the last time I had surgery, I was still answering emails on my cell phone, right up until it was time for me to be wheeled away—at which point hubby wrested the phone from my hands. I was back to work the next day because, as I put it, “my fingers aren’t broken.”

Work has been a constant. Always. It has also been an escape, especially from pain. But what do you do when your escape is the thing you need to escape from? What’s the solution when the very thing that is your security blanket is the thing that’s making you sick?

And just what kind of level of sick makes it so that the very idea of going back to work makes your heart do the 100-meter dash in your chest cavity? How can the very notion have me this alert and oriented at this ungodly hour? Yet I have the gall and nerve to ask myself, how could you do this? Why are you so weak?

But maybe I’m looking at this all wrong. Maybe the weaker part of my brain is the peanut gallery and the stronger part is pulling all the strings, telling my heart to remind us how that place and the people in it make us feel. Maybe just maybe, the stronger part of my brain is allowing my body to react so viscerally to the idea of returning because it knows we’re not ready. It knows we very well could die if we go back sooner than planned.

Is it possible that all this time—as I have turned this idea around in my head from the perspective of my upbringing, my roots, my race, my womanhood—what I thought was me in flight mode was my brain directing my body to fight for our survival? I have more questions than answers at this point.

Like for starters, how come I can be sick and yet still have good days? How could I be well enough to go for a walk but not well enough to go into the office? How can I be in front of my iPad right now, but be paralyzed just thinking about turning on my laptop? How can the very idea of opening my inbox fill me with such fear and dread?

I couldn’t even begin to tell you a single answer to any one of those questions. I’m still figuring it all out right now. All I know for certain at this point is that mental health is a mother—