What Did You do This Weekend?

“What did everyone do this weekend?”

I love to ask that question. I love to know what people do when I’m not around. And maybe it’s the writer in me, but I want to hear details. What did you eat? What did you watch? How long did you nap?

Rarely does anyone get into the weeds with me. Rarely do we give anyone the total truth. We give highlights. We tell about the movies we saw or the concerts we attended. We give overviews of the parties we went to or the hikes we took. No one ever mentions the existential dread of a Sunday night. Or the times when we had no plans. When we wasted perfectly good time watching Men in Black once again, or got roped into a Marathon of 90 Day Fiancee.

Side bar- I actually like it when a string of of episodes of the same show is called a Marathon. At least it makes it sound like I accomplished something. “I didn’t sit on the couch all weekend, I participated in a marathon.” That’s way better than saying you “binging watched the entire series of Riverdale."

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Sorry I didn’t write for a few days. Glad to see everyone survived. Or maybe you needed a break. A lot of people like to tell me that they read the blog, “But just not everyday.” Like I was going to quiz them. Like when they ask me, “How I’m doing,” I’m going to respond with, “Thank you for not reading!”

I didn’t write for a few days because I was on a little vacation with my family. They were at Folly Beach for the whole week. Since the clinical trial is going to make me go out of town once every three weeks, the time I can take away from school is limited to say the least. So after work on Wednesday Jaimie and I hopped into her Elantra and headed to Charleston.

I know a long weekend with the family can go either way, but this was one of the good ones. The weather was warm but not too hot. I got to see my sisters and my little nephew. I taught my father the term “slap.” As in, “This Kombucha really slaps.” He kept using it wrong, though. Or at least in a way that I perceived as wrong. We are at dinner one night and he said, “Wow these shrimp are really slapping.” I rolled my eyes at him the way my students roll their eyes at me, and the circle of life was complete.

It felt weird to be seen.

Since I live in the same town as most of my family, most of the time I spend with them is on my own terms. They get the highlights, the good parts of the day. They don’t get the late nights and the early mornings. But in a three bedroom condo on the Edge of America, it’s more difficult to hide parts of yourself. Like the fact that on Wednesday my feet smelled bad. Or the scar in the middle of my stomach from surgery, or the rash on my back from the steroids. Or this pesky cough. Or the shortness of breath.

My social anxiety is based on my fear of negative evaluation. I want everyone to think I’m perfect and amazing all the time. But I’m not. Sometimes my feet betray me. Sometimes I don’t have plans on the weekend. Sometimes I cough really hard in the morning and at night.

And that’s ok.

Well, I’m getting used to that being ok.