DEAR THYROID^TM

Dear Thyroid,

You cannot be both healthy and sick at once.   It is a logical impossibility.   And yes — I know absolutely nothing about math or reasoning or any sort of rational thought, but I know enough about the world after twenty-four years to understand that someone cannot be both one thing and something else at the exact same moment in time.   For example, I am not both a raging feminist and a syrupy-sweet-smile/let-me-cook-AND-clean kind of woman because they are fucking contradictions.   Another great example I just came up with is this: I cannot be both pregnant and not pregnant (not that I am actually pregnant or have ever been — this is purely for illustrative purposes) in my uterus, because either there is an embryo growing in me or there is not.   Trust me, I’ve been to enough baby showers with syrupy-sweet-smile kind of girls and women to know how to perceive if someone is actually pregnant or just in it for the gifts and sheet cake.

So you have to understand that when you tell me you’re healthy because all of this expensive and painful-to-extract-into-tens-of-vials-by-a-minimum-wage-worker-who-could-give-two-shits bloodwork and paperwork come back as exceptionally magnificent and never been better and three separate specialists tell me I’m the healthiest sick person they’ve ever met, I will shake my head at you because why the fuck do you keep lying?,   If, by chance, you’ve ever had an opportunity to pay close attention to the weird thoughts that echo inside of this body — from my mind to my freakishly flat feet for which I require orthotics — you will be able to gather that I value honesty of the self more than any silly thing women usually like, such as pedicures, chocolate, and fresh cut flowers.   (But not honest in the I-will-scream-or-yell-at-you-to-get-my-point-across,  way, just the maybe-these-ideas-need-editing-because-they-are-a-little-strange-even-for-an-artist kind of thing).

If you plan on using the fact that I have failed every math class since 3^rd grade against me in this lesson in logic, then I will get all writing major on your ass and use my rhetoric as a sharp and biting defense mechanism, as I have been doing since childhood.   Be prepared.   Yes, this letter is the warning.   The next one will be taped to your door and written in bold magic marker for all our neighbors to see (like that time I wrote a “please could you so kindly stop inconsiderately blasting your fucking music, you seem like such a lovely person otherwise” note to the guys who lived downstairs in Brooklyn that one year).   And I even think I have a pretty brilliant starting line — something dramatic and/or incredibly poignant about how you raped me of my youth and even though I have always been an old lady, you forced me into early retirement.   (In writing circles, that’s called irony, or maybe juxtaposition, fyi).

Stop lying.

Liz Schau

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Liz Schau is a Writer, Dear Thyroid,   Editor, Dear Thyroid Nutrition Columnist and resident GreenGirl for hangPROUD.com. Read more about Liz Schau.

Tags: Dear Thyroid Letters, Thyroid patient letters

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