And yet...

In high school, in her recommendation for my admission to National Honor Society, my debate coach wrote that I was "a tough nut to crack...but worth it." Later, she defined me further by saying that I have an "edge."

These are not untrue statements.  I keep that "wall" between me and other people pretty much intact. I'm sure I meet people and give them the impression that I am "quiet" or "stuck-up," or even a "bitch." I have heard all of these things, actually. I have gotten better over the years, though I still recently included "normal human emotion" on my list of fears.

Katie is the only one who sees my true colors. I give you readers a hint of things, and I certainly could be accused of oversharing in that last post, but for the most part I keep my emotions to myself. And though you know my name and what I look like, there is still something slightly anonymous about this whole blog thing. There's a disconnect. I don't have to look you in the eye when you read what I've written, and I certainly don't have to witness your reaction. And if you leave a comment I don't like, I can simply delete it. Thankfully, I haven't had to do that so far on this blog.

The point is, I don't let things affect me. And if they do affect me on an emotional level, I act like they don't and might even go out of my way to convince you that I am completely unfazed. In other words, I will show you my "edge."

You know what was not supposed to ever happen with this Oprah project? The woman was not supposed to affect me. I was not supposed to fall for her "aha moments" (still not clear on how one writes that, but Oprah seems to spell it without a hyphen, so there you go), or find myself nodding along at her spiritual statements or weeping with her downtrodden guests. This was supposed to be a lark -- a funny, sarcastic thing I could write because no one would expect me to write about Oprah. People with edges do not buy into the Oprah system. They just don't.



And yet...watching the 20th Anniversary Collection has been an exercise in figuring out just how exactly to keep my face from crumpling into a ball of agony with every burn victim and parent of a dead child that this Oprah Winfrey bitch keeps throwing at me. Though the first three discs have featured plenty of lighthearted celebrity montages, we've also run into the counterpunch of what Oprah calls "Heartprints." This is a category full of guests who have touched her deeply. Near as I can tell, they touched her so deeply because they crawled inside her chest, ripped out her heart, jumped up and down on it, and then popped the thing back in behind her ribcage. And by including them all in one place, back-to-back on a disc, Oprah ensured that my heart suffered the same fate.

You would not have wanted to be in the room when Katie and I were in the midst of this weepfest. We stuck with it through most of the hour-long segment, but when it got to one section that featured mothers who killed their children, Katie insisted on fast-forwarding. Apparently she's not too keen on stories about babies dying because their mothers stick them inside freezers when they won't stop crying.

Please note that she received no objection from me when she requested we skip that section. I swallowed the lump in my throat and complied.

We are currently in the midst of disc three, and we may be out of the woods as far as this "Heartprints" bullshit is concerned. I'm hoping that the rest of the collection just includes hilarious moments with Celine Dion and Maya Angelou. That's about all I'll be able to take.

Because, guess what? I think Oprah has changed me, god damn it. I did not want this to happen, and I can't even explain how or why it did. But I know for sure I've been changed, and it's not just because I'm suddenly inclined to sob when I see a mother dying of cancer who has decided to make videotapes for her daughter to see in the future.

You want to know how I really know there's a difference? Let me take you back to last night in the Erin-Katie household. Well, more accurately, last night and this morning. You see, Katie has been sick for well over a week now. The first round of antibiotics didn't do a damn thing for six days, so she went back to the doctor and got even stronger antibiotics, along with more prednisone and some Advair for her lungs. She took the prednisone and antibiotic yesterday morning, and then at about 8:00 last night, she took her second puff of Advair for the day.

An hour later, Katie complained that her hands had fallen asleep because she had been holding her phone strangely. Or so she thought. But she couldn't get the things to wake up no matter what she tried. I started researching side effects of both prednisone and Advair, only to learn that this particular symptom was one of those "CALL YOUR DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY IF YOU EXPERIENCE THIS THEN RUN FOR YOUR LIFE AHHHH" side effects. After a little bit of hemming and hawing over what we should do, Katie announced that she could no longer feel her feet. So I made the decision that we were going to the ER.

Now, you don't know that Katie went to the ER last week because the beginning of this illness was an insane ear infection that was so incredibly painful that she couldn't wait until the morning for urgent care to open. She sat in the ER, crying and rocking back and forth, for 2.5 hours while I stayed at home with Merritt. Then she gave up at 6:00 in the morning, deciding that she'd rather wait at home for those last two hours. So, she'd had a fun emergency room experience already this month.

This one was less awful. We didn't even wait an hour before seeing a doctor, who immediately ordered labs to find out what was going on inside Katie's (apparently delicate) body. We suspected a potassium deficiency. The doctor had never heard of Advair causing this kind of reaction, but after a little internet research, he determined that this was what was causing the problem, and that Katie was part of the less than one percent of patients who experience this weird-ass symptom. The labs were clear, and we were released with the promise that the feeling would come back. I felt better about seeing a doctor, even though he didn't do much for us, but ask me again when we get the gargantuan ER bill.

Katie and I got home from the ER shortly after 1:00 in the morning, and were unable to sleep. We had just purchased the Jodi Picoult book Sing You Home, so we thought we would start reading that. Now, let me first say that I hated My Sister's Keeper, but we heard that this new one might have some lesbians in it. And we're simple girls, so our interests were piqued.

I read aloud. The first chapter was 45 pages long. By about page 23, the two of us were weeping sacks of ridiculousness. I don't want to be too spoiler-ific here, but the first chapter of this book is just plain devastating. At times, I could barely get through a sentence. More than once, I had to put the book down to get Katie calm, even though I had tears streaming down my face, too.

Yes, it was sad, but I'm certain that a year ago I could have read it and been like, "Ah, that sucks," and gotten through it. But not this morning. This morning I was just completely undone over the description of a stillbirth (oh well, I guess I spoiled it, but I assume the entire book centers on this woman's struggle with infertility, so I think you can handle this minor detail), despite the fact that I've never been pregnant, and probably won't ever be pregnant. I would get calmed down, think I was fine, only to start to read a sentence and have my heart and voice and eyes betray me entirely.

And I swear to you that in the midst of it, I said out loud to Katie, "What the hell has Oprah done to me?"

But is it even correct to blame Oprah? I don't know. I think I just started this project (the whole blog, not just the 20th Anniversary Collection) at a time when everything in my life had just changed, so Oprah got me at my weakest point. I was a new mother, and I was unemployed, so I had nothing but time on my hands. And I was emotional and freshly in love. In other words, I was the definition of the Oprah demographic.

Huh. Come to think of it, this could all be Katie's fault. Yep, let's blame her for my conversion to the dark side.

Regardless of whose fault this is, let's get something straight here: I'm not starting a gratitude journal. I don't believe in worshipping John Travolta. I will not be getting a subscription to O Magazine. I will still roll my eyes pretty much every episode when Oprah says something corny or annoys me in some way. In other words, I am not "living Oprah." I don't know exactly what I'm doing, other than weeping uncontrollably at things that ordinarily would have made me sad, but not necessarily distraught. I guess the jury is still out on whether or not this is a positive change in me. We've still got a few more months of the project to go, so I suppose I'll wait to determine the final verdict until all the evidence has been presented.