Yours Truly 2019 YT 2019 PDF (Joomag) | Page 74

that this horrible disease on my hands was connect- ed to the pain and trauma I was experiencing in my daily life and my relationship with my father. That felt like an impossible obstacle. How could that sim- ply get cleared up? So my hands were never going to be healed. Then the other pastor said, “I feel like there’s this huge hole in your heart where a father’s love should be.” Then I lost it, I didn’t care if I was being appropriate or not, I leapt out of my chair and into his big, strong arms and sobbed my heart out on his shoulder, long, hard and loud sobs that filled the old middle school gym with resounding heartache. A broken heart, a bleeding, blistering, scaly, red and angry heart. I left a large, wet stain on his plaid lum- berjack shirt. ~~~ After another week, I quit. It’s taken me that long to realize. It’s no accident that this is how my body has decided to tell me to stop. The day before we are supposed to start trimming weed, on Novem- ber 1st, 2017, I get a call from my sister Rachel that my dad is dead. I fly out from Medford, OR the next day to be with my family for the week. I barely cry. When I get back, I trim for two weeks, feeling noth- ing. But my body knows. It’s where the grief comes screaming out of me, begging me to get the fuck out of Southern Oregon. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Don’t you see? You can’t grieve here, in a white- walled, windowless room of concrete floors and florescent lighting. You need your friends. You need 72 Seattle and the comfort of those who love you.” On Thanksgiving Day—my father’s favorite holiday—I flee into the arms of my best friend. When I go to the doctor, she only gives me a stronger steroid cream. I am surprised and angry. Why doesn’t she just give me prednisone and be done with it? How much difference can there be be- tween an over-the-counter steroid cream of 0.01% and the prescription strength of 0.05%? ~~~ Five days later, the last blisters have gone and parts of my skin have hardened like leather into yellow crusts or dark red medallions on my fingers. My hands don’t itch anymore. New skin has formed underneath the yellow, thick scales and it’s a beau- tiful, strange purple, showing the blood under- neath the fleshy part of my palms. I guess there is a big difference between 0.01% and 0.05% after all. I have the urge to rip off the scaly pieces, as if they are only layers of dried glue that have formed on my hands, begging to be peeled off. But I know that if I do, it will tear into the tender flesh at the edges. In between my fingers, the loose pieces of skin flick and flap against each other like bits of dried paper stuck to my hands. I carefully trim the excess with nail clippers, trying not to eat into the tender, new, purple skin underneath with the teeth of the metal. My palms are scaled over in a thick, crusty skin pock- marked in dark red and yellow where the pools of blisters have now dried up. It will take its time. I must wait to shed this old skin.