Love Comes Bearing Tissues, Pt. 2

Continued from here.

It was an early evening in late July. The sun was pouring onto my street, into the house and seeping into the yard. It was warm outside and I was with three of my closest friends, S.D., my boyfriend at the time, my best friend, Hannah, and her boyfriend, Alex.

Hannah and Alex had gone out to the backyard and were sitting on the trampoline eating pizza. I was in the kitchen getting my plate of food, and my boyfriend was close behind me getting his. I turned to leave and go towards the backdoor to go outside, but before I could go anywhere I got that familiar drip in my nose.

I spent the next half hour in the bathroom trying to contain the mess as best I could. My boyfriend hovered in the hallway. I tried to pretend everything was just fine and make it look as best I could.

Still, after thirty minutes and the bleeding still had not stopped, my mother decided to take me to an urgent care center. She told this to S.D.

“Can I come?” He said.

Was he just saying that because that’s what every good boyfriend is supposed to do in this situation? Or does he genuinely care? This was the first time anything medically had happened to me, but even though this was a unique situation the two of us hadn’t even really encountered before, I wasn’t quite convinced. Even though I was puzzled, the three of us and my bloody nose piled into the van and headed to the hospital.

I remember hiding. I hid the fact that inside I was absolutely terrified and that it scared me to see how much blood I was losing. I hid my tears as I pulled towards the opposite door from him and stared intently out the window.

My nosebleed had stopped by the time we reached the urgent care center, but even while in the waiting room I felt like I needed to hide the mess. I couldn’t control it, but I still tried to sweep the imperfections under the rug and do the best I could to feel like I wasn’t at the hospital because of blood spilling from the front of my face.

S.D. may have cared a great deal. I was probably projecting insincerity onto him because of my own insecurity and lack of comfort with him in our relationship. So despite asking the wrong questions about him, it still taught me something very valuable relationships.

Having a blood nose worthy of a hospital admittance is an imperfection I cannot control or hide, and a similar situation is bound to come up again during my life. I needed to be with someone who I could be vulnerable with. Trust is the key element.

This is why when I experienced a nosebleed of the same magnitude a second time, I was surprised to find myself so comfortable with S.O, my current boyfriend. I was able to sit in the waiting room with a tissue stuck inside my nostril, my face a mess, lips chapped and eyes red from crying, and he still loved me as much as when I was “perfect” and healthy. While I wasn’t exactly happy, I could at least trust him to not turn away from me and to continue loving me despite my imperfect nose.

Because Love shows up in the oddest places.

Love Comes Bearing Tissues

It was 5:20pm on Monday evening. I was cleaning up my desk at work and was getting ready to leave for the night. I wrapped up my headphones, put my iPod away, and then grabbed my phone. Just as I was putting in my purse I felt a drip in my nose. I froze and held my head back slightly. More drips, warm liquid was filling my nose. I reached my hand to my nose when I brought it back fresh blood had stained my fingers.

I quickly made my way down the hallway and into the women’s bathroom. I pulled off two paper towels, crumpled them, and put them to my nostril. At first the flow of blood was slow, but within a minute or two I was struggling to keep up with the bright red liquid. Another minute passed and I was leaning my head over the sink further and further to keep the blood from running down my throat. More paper towels. The trash can was filling up with red splotched tissue.

Suddenly, I felt the cavity of my nose fill to the back. I kept replacing the tissue but there was just too much blood. The hot blood was starting to drip down the other side of my nose. Both nostrils were now bleeding.

Panic was setting in. Hands shaking. I was losing a lot of blood and it wasn’t slowing.

My phone, which was sitting on the counter out of the way, started to ring. The caller ID told me it was my boyfriend, S.O., was calling.

“Hello?”
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Um, not too much. How are you?”
“I’m alright. How about you?”
“I’m not all that great.”
“How come?”

I had a choice. Either pretend like I was just fine and wait it out by myself or tell him exactly what was going on.

“I’m… in the middle of a massive nosebleed.”
“What? Are you okay?”

My fear and panic started creeping in and it tightened my throat. Hot saltwater filled the base of my eyes and I was able to muster a shaky “I don’t know.”

“Do you need to go to the hospital?”

I was trying to balance the phone on my shoulder while simultaneously ripping paper towel after paper towel and stepping on the pedal on the trash can, letting each one fall on the mountain of tissues inside. The tears building in my eyes made their way down my cheeks.

My throat was so tight that all I could muster was: “If you wouldn’t mind.”

“Alright, I’ll be there in two minutes. I’ll meet you out front.”
“Okay. I love you.”
“I love you too, babe. I’ll be there soon.”

I been in this situation the year before, and needless to say: things had gone much differently.

To be continued.

Oh Porcupine!

Oh porcupine
You call another “prickly” and “thorny”
But forget your own spines

And porcupine
Why would you assign
Fatal words
To one of your own kind?”

Love is

Love is still cuddling with me after I projectile sneeze and get snot all over the blanket when I’m sick. Love is remembering to get grilled, not crispy chicken, on salads. Love is knowing he will still be crazy about me whether I wore my cutest outfit or whether I didn’t have time to shower because I woke up late and just threw on a sweatshirt.

Love is when there was 10″ of snow on the ground and I was without a cell phone to let him know I didn’t end up in a ditch, he said “Tell me exactly which roads you’re taking to get home and if I don’t hear from you in forty minutes, I’m coming to find you.”

Love is not being mad after a nosebleed interrupts dinner and movie plans on Valentine’s Day. Love is rushing me to an urgent care center after the bloody nose won’t stop gushing. Love is sitting with me in the waiting room. Love is not shying away from me during it all.

Love is spending three hours on the phone to fight it out. Love is sacrificing sleep to talk out our deepest fears. Love is being able to trust each other to tell all the stories we keep hidden inside. Love is saying sorry followed by ten hugs.

Love is laughing at me when I wear leggings, when I hiccup, when I jump during scary movies, when I steal a sweatshirt or pajama pants from his closet, when I use lots of creamer in my coffee, when I try and fail miserably at video games, and when I trip on my own logic. Love is being able to laugh with each other for no apparent reason. Love is kisses on the forehead.

Love is pep talks and hugs and kisses before difficult conversations. Love is not shaving his beard until I got home from Europe safely to show an outward sign of support and commitment. Love is teaching me little by little with every game about football. Love is not huffing when I don’t understand football. Love is offering to make a second stop because he knows I don’t like Taco Bell.

Love is defending me. Love is yanking me out of harm’s way in a mosh pit. Love is protecting me. Love is telling me the truth and being completely vulnerable in honesty. Love is being completely afraid of the unknown future but hanging on to each other anyways. Love is taking a chance.

I love you.

Original question is here.

A Noiseless, Patient Spider

As artists we learn to love that we sell our souls to our art.
That’s because our art is our soul.
It’s the fruit on the branches of the trees,
the petals on the edge of the flower.
My writing, your photographs, your songs, your paintings, and anything else that you create:
It’s our soul on paper, in the melody being carried by a voice, in the colors that bleed off the canvas into the rest of the world.
When it comes out of us it takes a life that it might not have had locked up inside of us.

“The fish swims in the sea, well the sea is in a certain sense contained within the fish. Oh, what am I to think, what writing of a thousand lifetimes could not explain if all the forest trees were pens and the oceans ink?” (“The Dryness and the Rain” written by MewithoutYou)