Nic Narrates

“This shouldn’t hurt a bit,” the intern told me as she pricked the skin of my shin. “Anything?”

“No, not really,” I admitted even though I did feel the needle poke and settle.

I laid there on the acupuncturist’s table and tried to think of more pleasant things as she continued. Whales swimming south from Alaska to Hawaii for the winter to sing Mele Kalikimaka and have their babies. The two grown men I drove past on my way to the appointment who laughed and took turns falling into the pile of leaves they’d accumulated in the back of their landscaper’s truck at the end of a long work day. My favorite spot on the beach in Punta Cana and the way the sand and ocean feels between my toes. Happy things. Uncomplicated things.

When she’d finished, I had needles in my forearms, wrists, feet, ears, abdomen, and shins. I didn’t know what any of them would do, but was hopeful. Afraid to move or breathe too heavily, I stayed immobile, counting the ceiling tiles. I tried to relax, but my “calming” thoughts kept slipping away.

Before I became a pin cushion, they’d spent a good amount of time taking my pulse, listening to whatever it tells them about my heart and lungs and stomach. They looked closely at my tongue, awkwardly stuck out as my face grimaced in embarrassment. They asked about allergies, about my IBS, my depression. I didn’t want to get upset, didn’t want to cry in this stranger’s office, but there seemed to be no stopping it. I’d come to them for help.

“I’m sad,” I’d told the acupuncturist- an elderly French woman with thoughtful eyes- and her intern. “And nearly every time I eat I get sick. I’m sad and tired and I don’t know what to do anymore.”

She sat looking at me and didn’t respond. One leg up on the table beside me, she leaned in and held both of my hands in hers. She looked me in the eye, studied my face.

“We need to get you stronger,” she asserted in her accented English.

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. I felt only that I would cry again if I tried. Not from any pain she’d caused me, but from the recognition of the sadness I carry within. For all her kindness and hope for me, I didn’t smile or nod or speak and her words dissolved into the quiet room around us.

Her needles may have pierced my skin, but she saw right through me.

Filed under: city encounters, crossroads, depression, quiet desperation, sickness sucks, things people say by Nic