The Door Girl, Part 21

I began to get burns all around my neck to the point that I could hardly turn my head. I couldn’t bend my arms or take a shower without taking an 800 Motrin just to endure the pain. My skin looked like someone had poured acid on it. I was burning as though I was on fire. The voice inside of me was being choked to death and I couldn’t breathe. My body was set on fire and literally burned me from head to toe—like lye soap in foster care.

I tried diet. I tried allergy testing. I took shots. The burning progressed to the point of debilitating fatigue.

One day, while talking to a psychologist friend, he asked, “Junie, what’s burning inside of you that you can’t speak?” I held my head in my hands and cried.

“Everything,” I sobbed, “all of it. I’m just so tired.”

If I had a nickel for every time some well-meaning individual says, “Everything happens for a reason,” I would buy myself a unicycle, just for the fun of it. Just because that saying is a joke and so is riding a unicycle, unless unicycles are your thing, and it they are, that’s totally cool.

It’s just that…everything doesn’t happen for a reason. Sometimes life is just senseless. And the truth is that people can’t stomach living in a senseless world, so they make up stupid things like that to say.

Can’t anyone just say, “I’m sorry. Life is shitty sometimes.” No, because it scares them. But to the person going through the shit, anything besides that is just condescending.

To, my advice: just don’t say it (and if you’re going to say shit like that, just say it in your head).