The List

Quick. Make a list of everything you've ever wanted. Everything you would do if money were no object. Would you be sitting here, staring at this computer?

I would.

Maybe that's my problem.

Three people have asked me this very question this week: what do you want to do? Not as in, shall we get tacos or sushi, but on a grander scale, like a vacation to Bali or a pony or a piercing. Certainly some of those sound more appealing than others, but nothing seems to bubble up from within.

Well, except the one thing.

The One Thing has been there for longer than I can recall, and I'm now kind of over it. Because now It is scarier than it was before. It's on the other side of the surgery, which, if you're unfamiliar, is where they cut out parts of you. On purpose. And then you pay them for it.

This has happened to me twice before. My parents made the decision to have my tonsils removed when I was seven, a procedure I remember vaguely, mostly in the context of suppositories because I couldn't stop throwing up, and Crocodile Dundee, because it was 1980 something. In my later years I've wondered if my body isn't sailing by in ship-shape because of whatever the tonsils were supposed to be doing. Like what if my special purpose, or the compass for my special purpose, was in my tonsils? And this is why I'm so despaired at finding what I want, because I haven't a clue?

Later I had my wisdom teeth removed, which also seemed the informed choice based on various cultural norms and the American inability to clean one's teeth properly. It was painful, but worse than the pain was the inebriation from the medication they used to put me under. The Fog has lasted into my thirties, perhaps because there are still icky bits of medication in my blood, or more likely, because my wisdom was removed.

And now I face Polly, my affable polyp who has been not-so-innocently standing by whilst my marriage and mental health rode off hand in hand, into the sunset.

Back to the want.

So long as I can recall, or at least the parts of me that remain recall, I have wanted to be a mother. To bear children and then raise them up like my personal little science experiments. I would like the opportunity to mess up some offspring, see if the computer models are correct, see what the blossoms of this tree look like. I'm not sure what kind of tree I am, and some part of me (maybe even Polly) believes that I can't know until there are little fruits rolling around my roots.

Maybe then I'll know what I'm made of.

The want was so loud that I've drowned it out with sorrows and busy-ness, which isn't news to anyone. And all the while, Polly. Dear Polly, was saying I DON'T THINK SO. Your shit is yours to figure out girlfriend, no friend, nor potion, nor cosmic force, nor boyfriend can help you. And neither can your fruits.

They say that the entirety of the tree is in the seed. The memory of the mother is in the daughter.

What's in a polyp?