Beyond Appearance (Non-Fiction Final)

A lot of television shows obese people turning their lives around. They have their surgery televised and millions watch their journey into their new life. It’s a form of entertainment and often becomes a topic of discussion. “It’s easy. Just stop eating. Get on a diet,” I often hear people say as they criticize the people on the screen and around me.

            If it was easy, I would’ve done it without the pain and hospital stay. I wonder if they know they know that the person on the screen was me, is me.

            “Are you doing okay, Melinda? Any pain or discomfort?”

            I heard their muffled speech through their masks. “I’m okay, no pain.” I spoke softly. I could feel my legs shake, a movement that quickly moved to my fingertips and then to my torso. Get it together. You’ve wanted this for a really long time. You need this. No going back now. I couldn’t recognize the voices behind the masks. I didn’t know these people who were calling my name and it made me uncomfortable.

Everyone was moving around me, occasionally using medical jargon I decided to tune out for obvious reasons. I lay there awake, waiting. I didn’t expect to be awake on the inside. I’ve seen every episode of Grey’s Anatomy twice, and still this place felt foreign to me. It was bright, too bright, not at all dark and dim like the show always portrayed it.

The masked woman next to me touched my arm, forcing me by instinct to focus my eyes on her. “It’s okay,” she said, gently rubbing my arm. “Don’t be nervous, Melinda. I had this surgery. It will change your life.”

I was uncertain of how to respond so I smiled, exhaling a deep breath to show I was taking her advice.

“Okay, Melinda, are you ready? This is Michael, Jennifer, and Jacob. They are a part of your team—you already know me, Dr. Ray, and we’re all going to take real good care of you.” My body continued to shake. They placed a mask on my face, making it difficult to breath. “It’s just oxygen. Lift your head a bit, please.” They moved a strap around my head, holding the mask in place. Strange how much harder it was to breathe with this oxygen than without it.

“Can you count down from five for me?”

I looked up and saw Dr. Ray’s eyes piercing mine, awaiting my count down. Oh gosh. It’s pretty much done. “Five…” I felt it hit me, right between the eyes. “Four…” It moved up my forehead, inching towards the top of my head. This doesn’t feel right. What if I don’t wake up from this? Please let me wake up from this. “Three…” and I was gone.

It felt like waking up from short nap when I heard the commotion around me. “Melinda? Can you wake up for me, Melinda?” The surgery was successful. You will have some bruising, but you’re going to be okay. This is Marcus, and he’s going to be taking care of you here in recovery.” It was the woman from the inside, her mask off. Her face was kind and I at once found relief, believing I was going to be okay.

At first I felt nothing, but then I felt everything. Something at the back of my throat immediately made me uncomfortable. I swallowed over and over, but the sensation wouldn’t seem to go away. Every time I swallowed, attempting to relieve the feeling, I felt the nausea build up in my stomach—or what was left of my stomach. Every couple of minutes I heard a machine resound behind me and saw movement coming from the tube in my nose. I reached for my face, right for the tube, and I gave it a light tug.  Realizing it would be much more difficult than I thought, I grasped for it again, getting ready to pull it harder than before, when I heard a light shout come from a man as he rushed towards me. “Ms. Melinda! Don’t do that!” removing my hands from the tube as you would from the hand of a child. “This is helping you heal! And it’s helping you with nausea. It needs to stay till Dr. Ray says it can be removed,” he said readjusting the tube that entered my face.

I pouted, hoping to shed a tear that would change his mind. “It’s making me nauseous.” And at once, speaking those four words I was overwhelmed with a feeling I absolutely loathed to feel. I began to gag. “I’m going to be sick!” I said grabbing onto the man’s arm, anticipating help when I knew he could give me none.

“Melinda! Look at me, Melinda! Breathe. Just Breathe. You’re not going to throw up because there is nothing for you to throw up. I need you to stop that. Right now! That is the worst thing you could do right now. When you do that, you’re causing your stomach to do this.” He lifted his hand and pumped his fist in my face. “And that can be very bad, that can cause your stitches inside to come undone, and you don’t want that. Ignore the tube. Just breathe. It’s all in your mind.”

And so I did. I lay there slightly inclined, alone in my curtain-divided section of the room, my bed next to strangers. Why did I do this? I was fine yesterday, and today I feel terrible. I was fine! I don’t want it anymore. Tears strolled down my face. Conversing in my head, a place that did not make me feel nauseous, I couldn’t sleep a week that night. The clocked inched closer to the next hour, and then the next. The sound of the machines around me made me feel anxious, as if they were somehow contributing to the slow movement of time.

It was quiet, until I heard a woman lightly begin sobbing. Her sobbing turned in to screaming. It was disturbing. I could tell her cry was from pain, but I couldn’t help but wonder if it was possible for her to feel any worse than I did at that moment.

“Where’s my family? Why aren’t they here?” I asked a nurse when she drew near to check my vitals.

“Melinda, you know why. This is the ICU. We don’t allow family in here, especially not at this hour.” ICU? Why am I in here? They told me this was recovery. Am I okay? How could I not have noticed this?

The woman cried and wailed on. I didn’t know why she did this, but I presumed she was in a painful situation—a situation she didn’t want to be in. I felt selfish. I chose to be in this room when it was likely that she did not.

That night was the longest night I had ever experienced. That week was even longer, as I was hospitalized for five days post surgery. They told me the ICU stay was used as a precautionary gesture because my weight was so high. When informed of this, I felt sad. Even after taking this step forward, my weight still managed to make things difficult for me.

The months moved slowly. I wasn’t expecting to waltz on out of there a new person back in my old ways, but the journey was more difficult than I had anticipated. Recovering from the surgery was hard, both physically and mentally. It did not last days or weeks, but months. My body hurt, and my mind was confused. I couldn't physically see the changes, but I knew I was changing.

The woman in the operating room was right. It did change my life, but it didn't happen overnight. An immense difference exists between who I am today and the person I was before the surgery. I made a decision. It was not a shortcut as many believe it to be—as it was not an immediate change, but rather a process, a very time-consuming process. It was not easy as some hint—as it is by far the hardest journey I've ever been on.

I’m unsure of what has changed my life the most—the surgery or the thought of my life before it. We live in a world where our looks determine the outcome of our success or failure. However intelligent I may be, my appearance determined whether I go the job or whether it was given to the pretty, thin bimbo next to me.

I like to meet people, all people. I’m kind. I’m chatty. I want you to tell me characteristics of yourself, beyond what I can see. That is who you are, not who or what everyone makes you out to be. Don’t judge a book by its cover. The phrase is cliché and heard time and time again, but there is truth in that familiar saying we often ignore.

When people see my old photos, the words “wow” and “oh my goodness” often fall from their mouths, along with their jaws. I’m terrified to know what they think of that girl, the one in the photograph, the girl I was a year ago.

Thrills and Chills (fiction)

My grandmother’s house has always been a place of solace for me. She’s always lived a simple life. She didn’t have internet or cable, and it’d always been my little getaway spot. I remember sitting there on her porch sipping on my glass of sweet tea. There was a nice breeze out and the sun was descending from its position in the sky. It was rather peaceful. Though her front yard was gated, I could clearly see the homes around me.

There was a white faded building directly to the right of my grandmother’s home. It was an old apartment building that held two families. It was old looking, and unattractive. It always felt oddly placed in the neighborhood, but too old to tear down. An old couple lived on the second floor. They kept to themselves. The man often sat by his open window, occasionally lifting a cigarette to his mouth. He remained in the spot for much of the day, while the old woman would leave to buy groceries from time to time. There was a family who lived just under them. The couple was in their early to mid thirties and had three small children under the age of ten—the youngest was no more than two years old.  They came and went as well. I didn’t know much of anyone around me, nor them of me; I simply watched them when there was nothing else to do and we all just kind of came and went throughout the day.

As I sat there counting the number of cigarettes the old man would smoke in one sitting, a blue minivan suddenly came speeding around the corner and down the road towards me; it grasped my attention immediately. It was always so slow in the neighborhood, and I was quite excited to see some action taking place around me. The van braked to the right of me, converting my slight excitement into fear. The minivan remained on as the driver quickly got out and frantically walked to the door of the apartment building. He clenched his fist tightly and began to hit the door with the side of his hand.

“Mark, open the door now!” He yelled. “Let me in! Let me see them!” He continued to bang on the door but there was no response.

After a while, the door slightly opened. The chain appeared to still be on and someone stood by the door facing the minivan man. They appeared to be having a soft conversation which aggravated me. I couldn’t hear a thing. The minivan man began to take slow steps backwards away from the door. As the apartment door in front of him closed, he quickly turned to his car to enter the driver seat door. His expression had changed. I only caught it for a second before he sped off in the same manner he had arrived, but I recognized the expression. It was fear.

I sat there, pondering on what had just occurred. His very expression had given me chills. An expression I couldn’t escape. It was forever engraved in my mind and I needed to know what the man knew. What had Mark told him? I was not only aggravated with my lack of information, but the man’s expression continued to trouble me.

I got up from my chair on the porch to refill my glass with sweet tea when I heard another car come speeding down the road. It was a police vehicle. He didn’t have his lights on, but even from afar, I had a feeling it was going to stop at that old apartment building. And it did.

Two cops came out of the speeding vehicle when it had finally came to a halt. There was nothing distinctive about them. They were both older gentlemen, perhaps in their forties or so. They faced each other, the car in between them, and begin to whisper something across the roof of the car. They both nodded in response to their secret conversation I was not a part of, and I watched intently for their next move.

One of the police man reached for his radio, reciting some numbers I didn’t know the meaning of. And they then, both in sync, walked towards the door and retrieved their pistols from the holsters on their hips.

I debated on going inside for the next couple seconds, but quickly convinced myself that watching this was very entertaining and I wouldn’t want to miss it.

The policeman closest to the door clenched his fist and too began to bang the side of his hand against the old wooden door. “Brownsville P.D! Open the door!” He gave the door a couple more hits, repeating the statement a second time, but there was still no answer. The policemen exchanged a brief look and nodded to one another.  The first officer took a couple steps back and used his right leg to kick the door. It fell to the floor instantly as they rushed into the apartment, announcing themselves as police officers.

There was silence after their announcement. I waited, staring at the door that lay there, but still heard nothing. About thirty seconds had passed. I knew kicking down someone’s door was serious, and I waited for an arrest to take place, but there was none. I heard movement coming from inside the apartment, as one of the police men quickly made their way out of the door opening and onto the sidewalk outside the apartment building. He leaned over towards the grass in front of him and vomited. The second police man made his way out of the same opening, and his expression matched that of the minivan man’s. He reached for his radio and looked towards the porch where I sat. He looked into my eyes for a second, realizing he was not alone, and turned his back towards me as he whispered into the radio attached to his left shoulder.

TWO YEARS LATER…

“Alright, I just have to stop by my grandma’s house for a second to pick up something for my mom and then we can take off. It shouldn’t take too long. Try not to be inappropriate,” I said with a smile.  I pulled up to the right of my grandmother’s house to enter through the side gate.

            “Hey, I think I’ll just wait in the car.” I looked towards her, as she stared at the old white building.

            “Why?” I said sternly. “My grandma really wants to meet you.”

            “Your Grandma’s house gives me the creeps. It just looks like a haunted whore house,” she said jokingly.

            “First off, my grandma’s house is over here” I said pointing towards the familiar porch to the right of me. “And secondly, people died in there. So let’s not joke about its creepiness, because it really is just creepy.”

“Are you serious?” she said, staring at the door way boarded up cheaply with wood that had corroded over the past couple years.

“I wish I wasn’t.”

“Was it just like a random person died in their sleep, or was it like murder or something?” she seemed very interested in the topic. I suppose I would be as well if I hadn’t been on the porch that day.

“It was a murder suicide. Multiple murders actually. This guy killed his three kids and his wife, and then he killed himself.”

“Oh gosh, I remember it now! The guy was all over the news a couple years ago. His friend came to visit him, but saw something weird inside or something, so he called the cops, but they got there everyone was dead. That’s the place right? Did you know the family?”

“No. I don’t really know anyone around here. Are you ready to get off?” I asked, hoping she’d forget about the building next door.

“We’re gonna go inside? Is it open? I kinda wanna know what’s in there!”

“I was talking about getting off to meet my grandma, not breaking and entering into the building next door, Sam. I really don’t wanna see what’s in there, if there’s anything still left in there. The police were in and out of there. They probably swept the place clean.”

            “Oh, c’mon. Just for a minute or two?” she said as she reached for my hand. “Please?” She smiled that smile I adored, the one that made me do all the things I never wanted to do.

            “Fine. But not right now. My grandma’s waiting.”

            “Okay. We’ll come back tonight then!” she said with her eyes still fixed on the building next door. She was a little too excited to enter the place I had only ever seen from the outside.

THREE DAYS LATER…

The night felt darker than usual. There was an obvious absence of stars in the sky above me, and the clouds were parting their way towards the full moon rather quickly. I stood there for a moment, mesmerized by their motion, as I began to walk towards my parents Sedan, my head still tilted back gazing at the black sky.

I spent my life looking for the thrill. The little chill you get when your friend jumps out of the dark to scare you, I liked the feeling. I wanted the thrill of the chill, and now I can’t escape it.

My phone began to ring, loudly piercing the silence of the night. I jumped at the sound of it as it fumbled in my hands, and quickly brought it up to my ear.

“Hello?” I answered before the voice on the line had spoken.

“Are you coming? I don’t want to be alone.” I knew the voice. Sam had asked me to stay the night with her before, but her intention was different this time. I could hear the change in her voice. Her tone was now different; she was different. I could hear the fear in her voice and it gave my body chills.

“I’m on my way. Try to get some sleep. I have a couple of errands to run.” I hung up quickly before she could contest. I have no errands. The truth is she doesn’t want to be alone, but I don’t want to be alone with her. I’m supposed to be brave for her, but I’ve never been so scared.

I opened the door to the car, and hesitantly glanced into my rearview mirror. There he was. I quickly turned away. I didn’t want to look at him. He was always there. They all were. Everywhere I looked. I saw them when I was awake and I saw them in my dreams. I couldn’t escape them. 

Getting the Feels

The relationship between Frederic and Catherine sparked much interest in me. It seemed very complicated as I constantly found myself trying to decipher their feelings for each other, for their words and thoughts seemed to contradict their actions. Some believe Catherine Barkly to be a crazy woman and Frederic to be a man with a high sex drive willing to overlook Cat’s love at first sight craziness, but I believe it to be so much more than that.

            Frederic says he doesn’t love her (30) but seems to spend a lot of time thinking about her. He wants to spend the night with her and imagines lustful encounters with her. Does this mean he lied about lying when he said he loved her? More than likely not. We all know us as humans are able to get the feels without getting the feels inside—in other words, sex before falling in love is not a new thing. When Frederic said he didn’t love her, I believe he was telling the truth at the moment.

            I found his character to be very strange. When first reading the opening chapters, I thought he was disgusting, as he was using Catherine, saying whatever sly words would get him into bed with her. I immediately became very fond of Cat when she called him out on his lies. Just when he thought she was being crazy, she was actually being really clever. Did she love him when she asked him if he loved her? Probably not, I think she merely was testing the waters, trying to see how far Mr. Henry would go to try to get with her.

            Nonetheless, I do believe their loveless infatuation with one another developed love along the way—it simply took a while for them to get there. Catherine was not crazy, she was a typical girl. She longed for the love that she had never gotten to experience, and Henry longed to escape the war he was in the mist of. Catherine had this image of love in her mind that she wanted to fulfill, a love that she had lost with her fiancé who was blown to bits. Even his injury/death was not how she pictured it to be, and it disappointed her. Meanwhile, Henry has lost feeling and purpose for the life he is living—depicted in his constant consumption of alcohol and his fearlessness on the front line.

I believe Catherine and Frederic were capable of fulfilling each other’s needs. Henry was giving Catherine the love she had longed for and Catherine was perhaps giving Henry a real escape from the war. Sadly, Cat’s life ended abruptly and Henry failed to completely and sincerely envelop himself in the love that he was, contrary to his beliefs, capable of. The war had left Henry lonely and hollow, and perhaps had done the same to Catherine, as she experienced the loss of her first love. It’s strange how the war had taken so much away from both characters, but also managed to give them so much.