The nurse at the otolaryngologist's gives me the PHQ-9, which is only odd in that (1) patients—myself included—usually fill it out online during check-in, and (2) it is very awkward for a practitioner to have to read off the answer options every time. “Not at all, Several days, More than half the days, Nearly every day.” (Two days later, my new psychiatrist does the same. Must be a New York thing, I think to myself.)
We go through the questions, and each time the words “Nearly every day” march from my mouth, I see her spine start to bend in an unasked question mark. She keeps giving me the same look that I give my co-workers when a third-grader cries after coming off the trapeze rig. It’s an embarrassing pity to be on the receiving end of—for her, felt by me. I’m embarrassed that she doesn’t understand that this is just the way it is. (Perhaps she thinks that I don’t understand that it doesn’t have to be.)
The ENT—or, the otolaryngologist, depending on which one is funnier to say—opens the door as the nurse finishes proctoring the exam; as she is asking me how difficult these problems have made it for me to do my work, take care of things at home, or get along with other people; as I tell her “very difficult” with an even and unaffected voice.
“If you need a social worker, or anything….” she trails off. She has seen my medications list, knows I am on SSRIs, the implication of a psychiatrist.
“Thank you, but I have a Prozac prescription, and a psychiatrist, and a therapist.” I smile. It probably reaches my eyes.
The crying-child-on-the-trapeze look again. The ENT moves towards the computer, the nurse lingers in the doorway. He gives her a quizzical look, she finally walks away.
“The diagnosis is that I have depression,” I explain to him. “She’s taking it hard.”
I am at the otolaryngologist for a recurring sinus infection. Sure, I suppose this also makes me depressed. But no more than my lack of job, purpose, partner, reliable friend circle, support system, and steady physical health has. The otolaryngologist laughs at my joke. “Let’s go over the results of your CT scan,” he says, clicking around on the computer.
***
The best part of New York is the medical tests. The swabs stuck in my mouth and tubes threaded through my sinuses. The phlebotomists who let me lie down in case I pass out after the fifth vial, my M.O. The receptionist who recognize me because of the little paper calendar I use to keep track of all my appointments. The 24-hour portable EKG. The 48-hour prep diet for the breath test. The nerve-testing needles in my extremities. The CT scans, the x-rays, the ultrasounds, the MRIs. So many doctors in New York have seen right through me.
I wanted another colonoscopy and I got one, BOGO with an endoscopy too. I tested for blood clots, for white spots, for inflammation. For celiac, for rheumatoid arthritis, for MS. I got told it was SIBO, fibromyalgia, hypermobility, and low immunoglobulins. On top of what was already there. I got some diagnoses I don’t fully believe in, but I got them without going broke.
The tests are the best part of New York because of the medical bills with a love-love score (the US Open was in Queens when I wrote this section). I love love subsidized healthcare. My zero-dollar premium, my zero-dollar copay, my 21 visits a month (or at least in February) to a doctor or specialist. The one big benefit of making [Mona Lisa Saperstein voice] no money. If I had to pay even a low-tiered insurance plan’s pricing for all these procedures, I’d be in the red. & I’m already blue (sad).
***
I’ve said to friends before that when I feel depressed I lose my personality, that I become not-a-person. They don’t know what I mean because I am usually a person when I am telling them this.
At the otolaryngologist’s, I hadn’t been a person for three months, maybe longer. I didn’t come back to myself until a few weeks later, mid-late summer, sitting on a hard metal chair by the Hudson River Piers, waiting for work (purpose) to start.
The older man playing music for passersby on his speaker; the passersby running or walking or an awkward combination of both; the taste of dried mango bursting in my mouth and how it dawned on me that this was joy; the hours that I sat, just sat, reading nothing, writing nothing, looking out at the lingering pieces of pier field still studding the water.
***
The worst part of New York is how many people assume I’m leaving because I couldn’t make it. I mean, yeah, I couldn’t “make it”, but only in the sense of—I finished school, and I couldn’t get a job. And school and a job give me a sense of purpose, help me be a person. Help me pass the PHQ-9.
New York, they say sympathetically, looking at me like I’ve just realized my broken arm is broken, is a hard city.
New York is not a hard city. New York is bike lanes and reading on the subway. LA was a hard city. LA was rush hour and intrinsic loneliness. LA I came to love, but like, Stockholm Syndrome. New York I loved right away. I hustled to make it in LA which means I should have been able to make it in New York, but my jobs wouldn’t give me enough shifts and the grocery stores wouldn’t hire me and the 800 other people who applied to every non-profit programming job I did also didn’t get the job either.
Any city without a sense of purpose turns into a hard city eventually.
***
The day before my flight left JFK (i.e. yesterday), New York got more non-hurricane rainfall than it had in the last hundred years, a fact I found out after I had already biked through flooded Brooklyn streets, murky water lapping up against my brake calipers. I stepped outside my goodby brunch in Lower Manhattan to empty the water that had slalomed down my rain pants and pooled up in my boots, catching the German couple next to us staring at my sock feet with what I thought was judgement, and later realized—upon seeing their bare feet propped up on the table’s legs—was admiration.
After several different flooded subway reroutes home, I dropped my bike off for shipping (Haven or Hell!), pulled my damp notebooks out of the water-resistant backpack which my dumb ass thought was waterproof, and finished packing. The next morning (i.e. today??) I called doctors to forward prescriptions, looked at pictures of my crush online, looked at pictures of a prospective apartment (aka my new crush) online, said goodbye to a friend, got in a car, headed to the airport, wrote this last section in my sock feet on the plane—where I’m pretty sure I stepped in piss, outside the airplane bathroom, somewhere over Illinois.
Everyone kept asking how I felt about moving and I kept being like, no paparazzi please. I can’t really do emotional examination right now (“very difficult”). I’m focused on going forward.
Dublin, California; I’m coming. Oakland; Berkeley; San Francisco; I’m coming. LA; Sacramento; I can’t wait to see you soon. Brooklyn; New York; I promise I’ll visit you. And I’ll think about you. “Nearly every day.”