Sassy's Up Late Again

I've been working up the nerve for my plan to go back to the restaurant this afternoon. I had Rusty drop off a form I need to complete to apply for state insurance for the kids, and called to let them know I'd come pick it up today. I've been sick to my stomach all morning trying not to think about it. And naturally, my SuperExcellent Fucked Up Brain has to fight back by directing me to ugly memories I have shut out of my head for years instead. Don't think about the discomfort and embarrassment I'm sure to suffer this afternoon, no, think about the embarrassment and humiliation you've suffered since the day you were fricken born. It's like these memories are being forced on me through some sort of mental View Master, and it's irritating the crap out of me. Most of them are pretty benign--stuff like the first time my period bled through my pants--at school; the time I left a notebook in class and returned to get it an hour later only to find my private letters to a friend posted on the bulletin board outside the classroom... I get the joy of reliving that adrenaline jolt during that white-moment of "Oh CRAP!" with each memory. I realize now that none of these memories involved the Ira Incident I recently hashed out--wonder why that is? Not complaining, just weird--I mean, if I wanted to torture myself with embarrassing and crappy memories, seems like that one would be a great place to start. Instead I keep remembering the Intern that assisted my doctor with my gall bladder surgery back when I was 20. [Hmm, I recall Rusty mentioning that a co-worker recently had gall bladder surgery. Maybe that's what awoke this memory...] Anyway, I don't remember his name, only that he was only slightly older than me, contrasted with my dinosaur of a surgeon, was from Iowa, and wore a hopelessly out-of-date fat tie. I remember thinking he walked out of a Barney Miller episode every time he walked into my room. I wonder if he had been forced to wear ties out of the lost and found, now that I think about it... I digress. I can't recall his name. I'll call him CornFed. Because CornFed was a fucking Pig. And this memory makes me angry--angry about what he did, and even angrier that I allowed it without a whimper of protest. I was such a timid, weak little thing pretending to be stronger than I was. Maybe that's why I'm such a bitch now--making up for lost time. It was the day after my surgery, I was in my room alone, lost in a Demerol Haze, but bored because I had no visitors, and was too drugged to focus my attention on TV or any sort of reading material, so when he came in, it was a welcome change from the wallpaper pattern I'd been studying previously. CornFed chatted with me for a few minutes about my surgery, mentioning that he'd done several of them now, and he was kind of jazzed about mine because I didn't fit the profile of the typical gall stone patient--Fat, Forty and some-other-F-word... "It's nice to have a patient closer to my own age!" he said. I was very drugged and don't recall most of the conversation or how he managed to convince me that he'd come to examine my stitches and check my chart, etc., and while he was there, it was perfectly reasonable for him to perform a breast exam. See, just saying it pisses me the fuck off. Perhaps had I not been drugged, I would have laughed in his face and brushed it off without a big confrontation, or I would have threatened to report him to my doctor. But drugged, I just laid there and let him do it. He'd already been poking at the incision on my belly and changing the gauze over the wound, and he did it in a non-threatening, matter-of-fact way--maybe if he'd acted like a skeezed-out perv I'd have mustered the urge to kick his Wojohowitz-lookin' ass. And then I get mad at myself for not kicking his ass, or telling him to fuck off, or pressing the call nurse button, or telling SOMEONE about it afterward.

I think about the person I was back then, and it makes me mad. Jesus, if I'd only had the confidence and fortitude then that I have now, I'd be in a much better, more successful place right now. And that pisses me off. Is it like that for everyone? Is a lack of self-confidence and a fear of making a scene just a normal part of being an adolescent or immature adult?? Does everyone have to wait til they're looking at 40 with stretch marks and saggy boobs before they can complain about bad service without breaking out in a rash? I know it's a waste of time being angry about the past... I guess this is a reminder that I need to embrace what little confidence and fortitude I have left and just walk in that restaurant this afternoon and take what's mine with a smile on my face...