I’m better and we should have a party.

This post is about a month old (been living in my journal with an eviction notice), but seeing as it is about my ten month doctor’s appointment which was supposed to be my nine month appointment before it got cancelled and rescheduled three times, I think I am right on schedule. Better late than never, right? That seems to be the theme of my entire spinal fusion experience. First surgery didn’t work? Try again! Better late than never! But, seriously, this post is serious. Because my ten month appointment brought some seriously good news that only paled in comparison to the news I received at my six month appointment when I found out that my fusion had FINALLY healed completely. At my ten month appointment the doctor said that I was doing so well and everything had healed so perfectly that I did not have to come back to the office for an entire year! I went to my six month appointment with so much trepidation (it was at the same time after my first surgery that I found out that my fusion had failed) that my only possible reaction at receiving good news was relief. When I left my ten month appointment with the knowledge that I was doing so well that I didn’t need constant monitoring anymore, I could not get the smile off my face. I believe this was the first time that I left my surgeon’s office with a smile that was not worn out of mere politeness. And would you believe it, the smile was still there after I left the elevator, went through the front door, walked down the street and waited at a red light. I just could not forgive myself if I did not post something about how happy I felt upon getting that news.

I would be lying if I said that the experience of having two spinal fusions in as many years was not a really scary and really painful one or to suggest that this good news means that I am now not scared and pain free. I would also be lying if I said that knowing that I am fully healed has made me stop acting and feeling as if I were not. I do not know if not rushing out to grab the life that I have been missing means that I am lazy or unmotivated or, perhaps, emotionally paralyzed. Maybe I never had a lot of ambition to begin with. I always felt that ambition was not a virtue, but that it brought out the worst in people. I don’t know. Here is what I do know: I cannot stay in bed forever and that I am really frigging happy that I don’t have to go back to the doctor for a year. Oh, and I’m jobless. This weekend, I went to an open call for Central Casting in New York. They cast a lot of the extras for movies and television shows in NYC. I tried to be an extra once before and it did not work out. Back then I was the actor who thought that being an extra was going to get me places (possibly into the union). Now, I’m the girl who just needs to make some money and sees all these actory types as caricatures of a former self (but not caricatures that I'm laughing at!). Also, I’ve been working pretty hard on a children’s novel that I’m writing for my cousins in Florida (Christina’s editing it!). I feel really excited about that.

I have no idea what kind of job I would be good at. There are probably a lot of jobs that I could do. I just don’t know what they are (again, maybe I'm too lazy or too scared to figure it out). I do know how I feel when I write and how I feel is good. I feel like windows are opening up in my head. That’s a strange explanation. I’ll try again. I enjoy writing and it is work at the same time. Sometimes it takes me twenty different rewrites before I get a sentence that works, but when it works I feel like a really difficult puzzle piece has just been slid into place. The window opens, it fits, it feels good. That’s how writing makes me feel and that’s just about the only thing that I have going for me right now that makes any sense. That and reading books. If I could get a job reading books! Maybe I’ll have to research becoming a literary agent (or more like getting a non-paying internship with a literary agent). For now, the extra people haven’t called. I’m giving the whole working-as-an-extra-thing two weeks before I apply to Starbucks. And this blog another sentence before I force it back on track. This post was supposed to be a nice, formal (possibly even witty) piece of writing about getting good news from the doctor, but I guess I slipped up and just said what I felt. Oops. What I meant to say was: I’m glad that I’m better and that we should have a party.