risky business

it's official: i am uninsurable. yep, i'm a huge risk, me and my CRAZY therapy going ways. i mean, that makes sense, it would follow that since i went to therapy after the sudden death of my one remaining parent i CLEARLY have mental problems that will end up costing blue cross blue shield MILLIONS of dollars. and my instability is even more clear considering i then went BACK to therapy a year later, which proves that i was not effectively cured of my sadness in a reasonable time frame. terminal case. who takes longer than a year to grieve their parents? a HUGE insurance risk, that's who!

fuck blue cross. i wouldn't want to be insured by someone with "cross" in their name anyway. i'm applying to aetna, they have dental (nyah, nyah, nyah-stupid blue cross!). and if they ask me about therapy, i'm going to lie my ass off. aetna doesn't cover mental health unless you have a genetic or biological imbalance (ie. a REAL mental health issue) anyway, and apparently the only way to get by in the world of corporate america (which, sadly, in this fucked up system includes healthcare) is to lie. pants on fire, here i come.

on the topic of other risks, today i start a ficiton writing class at northwestern. i am terrified. i can't even make up a lie to cover my ass with insurance investigators, how am i going to make up a whole story? but that's why i'm doing it, i like to scare the shit out of myself from time to time. it keeps me on my toes, keeps me moving forward. i love my teacher, that was a big motivation too. he taught my last two nonfiction classes, and he really likes my work. i am thinking that what i want to focus on is fictionalizing stories from my own life and my parents' lives. that may sound like a cop out, but i think it could be a good balance for me. this summer at the iowa festival i met a writer whos work i loved, and when i asked him about his stories he admitted that several of them were deeply based in his own experiences. he too lost his parents, but when he went to write about it literally it just wouldn't come out. so he embellished a little, moved some things around, made some stuff up, and found that that method worked much better. i have a feeling it may work for me too. whenever i try to write about them i get so bogged down with the imprecision of my memories. i am the only one still alive to tell a lot of these stories, i can't double check the facts, so it would be so much easier if i could just write what i do remember (or in some case what i WANT to remember) and make up the rest. that would allow me to fill in some of the gaps in my own memories as well. or is that propagating an illusion, a deuluded reality, making fact into fiction to suit my own desires and help me cope with pain?

maybe blue cross is right, maybe i AM crazy....



nah, fuck them.