The Emptying

I awake at 2:00 a.m. to severe intestinal cramping. Bleary-eyed and somewhat annoyed at the interruption of my sleep, I stumble into the hall bathroom to take care of business. Sitting down was the last thing I remember.

I am paralyzed, my mouth hurts, and there is a tingling on my lips and tongue. I try to move my arms but they are frozen. I deduce that I must be asleep, but I cannot will myself to wake up. In my mind I am running around myself, yelling and prodding my immobilized carcass back to life. I begin to regain awareness and my vision clears. I lift my head off the floor and see blood. I manage to rise enough to look in the mirror and there is blood coming out of my nose. Fearing I have had a stroke or a seizure, I call out to M with fear in my voice.

She comes to my rescue, helps me to sit up, and isn’t too shocked by my absence of all human dignity. A moist towel dabs the blood from my face as I notice drops of blood staining the bath mat. A new wave of intestinal cramps break like a tsunami of diarrhea when I realize the truth: I have fainted and fallen, head first, off the pot.

Doing a face-plant on the ceramic tile may sound like an extreme sport to you, but to me it’s blog fodder. I have numerous facial cuts and I am fairly certain I bit off part of my tongue. Today my doctor confirmed that my nose is broken. You may wonder why I would put such an embarrassing and personal story on the internet. Indeed, I’m not sure I’m going to. Perhaps my hunger to entertain exceeds my distaste for humiliation. Perhaps my desire for approval-by-amusement exceeds my fear of disapproval-by-disgust. I must have issues.

If so, are these issues common to other bloggers? Could it be that we all suffer from this virtual exhibitionism of the soul? Are we crying out to the blogosphere, “I am here and this is who I am!!” hoping that quasi anonymous visitors will leave comments of assurance, convincing us that our experiences, our lives, are indeed normal?

Nah.