The girl with arthritis

My breasts hurt. They sit heavy on my chest like sagging balloons filled with heavy, viscous fluid, pulling on the surrounding flesh and tissue, a constant reminder of this grotesque, ever-tender thing I've become.

I read Out of Joint today--got it for Christmas--in one sitting at work. I want to ask Jed to read it, but I don't like feeling like I'm assigning homework.

I stare at my fingers. Am I imagining it, or are they getting more knotted, knuckles more prominent, puffy, bent in odd ways? It's hard to tell, because I can't really straighten them. Thankfully I can type still, but today my wrists hurt more than usual.

Such long, beautiful fingers, they used to say. A pianist's hands. I always wanted a piano. I was taking a piano class when the arthritis first moved in.

He picks me up from work with the dogs. I plop in, close my eyes, exhausted, and let the tears roll down my cheeks. I breathe through my mouth, so he won't hear me sniffle, hoping against hope that he won't notice me crying, and that he will, and will drop everything and just hold me. Theo's head peeks around the headrest and licks my face. I am reminded of the dog of tears in Saramago's Blindness. Is everyone else blind? Is there clarity, insight in pain? Will my name stop to matter, will I simply become the girl with arthritis, a character, a devise? I worry about losing my sense of self, of something other than the disease. My body is already confused as to what is external and internal, benign and malignant, harmful and necessary. How long until the mind follows?

I keep it to myself, until it's time to go to bed. My breasts hurt, I try to explain, hunched over, hugging myself. They just feel so heavy, and tender, and bad. He is frustrated that he can't do more to help, make it go away, make it better. I remind him of how much it means to me that he holds me and lets me bitch or mope or cry or laugh when I need it, and everything else he does for me. There is nothing else to be done. I am terrified one day he will get sick of it, and leave.