Bitzy, Bunny, Weasels, and Wheelies

Emotions are funny, wild beasts that somehow find these holes, mostly in our heads, and they leak out everywhere. Why, one day, I swear, I had emotions that were coming out of my ears. It was all I could do to keep my eyes, nose, and mouth closed. I was wearing long pants, and I didn't think anything would leak out through the lower half of my body. It was risky, though. One time my belly button managed to express righteous anger. That hadn't felt good at all.

For the most part, I focused on the leaky parts of me above my waist. Those were the most unpredictable parts and the hardest to control. I once had a special person, and I was too free. I wore all of my emotions on my sleeve, and it felt good to me until it started to feel like my bright self was tarnishing and all these emotions began to feel dark and agonizing, like I had stepped on a landmine or was about to step on one. I turned into a starfish for just a little bit while I grew back the part of me that had been torn off. At the end, I think I had become about 98% whole. There was still 2% missing. Eventually, I would gain and lose the same 20% of my emotional range. I became cyclic and predictable. Emotions were a roller coaster, and I was tired of all the hubbub they brought with them. I wanted to feel smooth and even all the time, like there was a safety net that would always keep me from falling flat on the floor, on my back, on my neck, on whatever it would be that might have the power to chew me up. Perhaps some unpacking for another time.

Today, however, my sister, Bitzy, fell off one of those ridiculous rental scooters. They lean against buildings everywhere, looking cheerful, inviting unsuspecting adults to get the same enjoyment as they would have when they were 10. But, seriously, who still has the agility of a 10 year old? Certainly not I. And definitely not my sister. She tried to pop a wheelie off the curb, and she succeeded in sustaining a tri-malleolar fracture. She phoned and gave me the directions for locating her in the Emergency Room.

Ah, the hospital. Yuck. I didn't particularly like sick people, definitely didn't like injured people, and I really wanted no part of any sort of gore. Bitzy had said she didn't have any exposed gore. Good stuff to know ahead, I thought. I wandered into the Emergency Department and asked for where I could find my sister. I needn't have asked because I heard her ridiculous cackle. Her cackle was sort of like the little blip on those submarine radars. I was getting closer to my quarry, and would see that she was, indeed, all right.

"Why don't you feel more sorry for me?" she asked, while I stood in the doorway to her exam room. Her face brightened when she saw me. And I will say this, my heart skipped a beat when I saw my sister looking only a little worse for wear.

Now, I could have done the kind thing and told her whatever it is that she wanted to hear, but I didn't want to get into a cascade of emotions, and I wasn't up to the task of fawning all over my sister for doing something so dumb in the first place.

"I feel sorry that you have poor judgment," I said. "All other feelings toward you still apply, however," I finished robotically.

"God! You're so weird. Ever since you and that weasel broke up, you seem like you're hiding yourself away. You've been hiding yourself away, for several years now. I worry you've forgotten how to feel," she said.

"Okay," I said, drawing out the last syllable, throwing in a dramatic pause and looking keenly at the beautiful moron lying on a hospital bed before me. "I think you took what was a calculated risk, and calculated wrong because your math skills are terrible. I think you would live a much safer life and make better choices by taking a statistics class." And then I started laughing. I kept picturing my sister in a lecture hall with a stats book, then had to backtrack the book, because she was so smug, she would make it her personal mission to take a class and brag that she was on course for an 'A,' and would accomplish all her dreams without buying the stupid book. And then, because I was laughing, she was laughing, and the the tri-malleolar fracture was just this idiotic thing she did.

"Were you picturing me taking a class and being ridiculous?" she asked. I nodded my head, still laughing. If I didn't do something soon, I was going to let the big emotion right out of one of the holes in my head. Oh, boy.

"Please, please, please, Bunny, can you stay at my house tonight? Chad is out of town, and I'm afraid I won't be able to move around as easily. What if I fall down? What if I drop something and break it and then I step on it and start bleeding to death?" She had the the look of the saddest puppy of the litter. The one who didn't want to be the last puppy chosen for a permanent home, the one who only wanted the people in its immediate circle to give him all the emotional support it could ever want. "I know that weasel hurt you, Bun, but it's been years now. Are you never going to get over it and allow yourself to feel all the big emotions? Because you can, and it's all right."

"You know I can't. It hurt so much," I said, and I gripped my skull. Pressing digits into the holes on my head, pinching some of the exits between my thumbs. "Maybe some day."

I started to busy myself with gathering her things. The doctor was making his way to the exam room to give discharge instructions. I had emotional mess leaking out me all over the room, and there was no way I wanted to leave anything like it behind me, close enough behind that any person could see what a toll today's episode with Bitzy had taken. I could and would move into a better headspace. However, on this day, I would allow myself to feel a mix of aggravation, gratitude, and humor because...well...duh, Bitzy.

"Look at you. Popping a wheelie on one of those personal hazard scooters." Then I started laughing again because she had a big hole in her jeans. "Hello? Oh, hi, 1992. You want your jeans back?" I handed a pretend telephone receiver to my sister. "Here you go," I said, "I think it's Joan Rivers calling you from the dead about your Fashion 9-1-1 emergency." I dissolved and so did Bitzy.

"Oh, Bunny, my Bunny," my sister said when we were safely in my car and heading toward her house. "I'm not going to put you on the spot and thank you with big sloppy emotions, but I am," she paused briefly, "so happy," again another pause, "you dropped everything for me." And I looked over at her as she wiped the tears from her eyes. Her emotions were leaking out everywhere. She turned her head toward me, and I desperately wanted to be the happy Bunny I was supposed to be.

"Bitz, you know what?" I said, reaching an open palm across the car's console.

"What?" she whispered huskily.

"You're going to see me popping emotional wheelies off curbs without a safety net, and I will need you. You are going to have to help me with the weasels, though, because they are the scariest things of all. I don't see them coming."

Bitzy sat there squeezing my hand, emotions still leaking out of her face, probably the biggest of the emotions taking center stage, and I had the foggiest recollection of revealing that same face on myself.