#FailingAtLife

A sequel to 'It's About Me, Not You!'

Dear Mona,

Mmm, no, I don’t think so. I still can’t settle on a name for you. And saying Dear Diary just sounds ridiculous. I'm 30, not 13! Anyway, I’ll keep working on it.

Welcome to another day in the life of me.

Today should have started out like any other day. It most certainly did not.

Maybe if yesterday weren't my birthday. Maybe if I hadn’t finished the night by drinking the entire bottle of fine wine my smug little sister gave me (with her manager's bonus for out stripping all the others in the region). It might have been a bit different.

Today started with a rude awakening at 5am when my alarm sounded like a siren in my ear. Cursing, I threw my arm out to my nightstand to beat the stupid alarm clock into submission. It took me several attempts to hit my mark. At the time, the bruises were preferable to opening my eyes and dealing with the hangover headache.

Why do I have an alarm that isn’t my cell phone, you ask?

My mother. She persists in finding new ways to torture me.

This was her gift for my last birthday. She was concerned I was ‘looking tired beyond my years’. Her not so subtle way of saying she thinks I look old. She attributed my apparently haggard, sleep deprived appearance to the electromagnetic radiation I’m exposed to, sleeping with my phone beside my bed. She even set the alarm and checks any time she visits to make sure it’s still beside my bed and that my charger isn’t.

Joke's on her, my charger is wireless. She is so technologically impaired however, she hasn’t realised that the pretty purple disk with a marble swirl she thinks is a coaster is actually my wireless charger.

So, back to this morning. As I fell into bed last night and waited for either sleep to claim me or the room to stop spinning, I completely forgot to turn the alarm off. I was feeling a little like I'd been run over by a clown car going in reverse and after smacking my hand around on my nightstand, I managed to silence the pain inducing sound. I haven't checked yet, but I'm hoping I broke the infernal thing in the process. Groaning in an unladylike way my mother would have lectured me for, I resisted opening my eyes, afraid of the retinal stabbing rays I knew I would be instore for me when I did. My bladder however, was not prepared to allow me to go back to sleep.

I had no other option. I slowly opened my eyes to see...

Nothing. Pitch black.

What was I supposed to think? It was the middle of summer. It should have been light.

It was clear to me I’d gone blind.

So, I did what any self-respecting single lady would.

I panicked.

I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again. I blinked rapidly. I looked up and I looked down. I closed my eyes and shook my head (an action I instantly regretted). All to no avail.

My runaway-train of thought was not about to slow down. Omgomgomg!! I’d loose my job, my car, my freedom!

And, oh, my mother. What would my mother say?? She would blame my loss of sight on something ridiculous, like contracting a STD from a dating app. I know you’d laugh if you weren’t sentient. But she actually did that once. I was hospitalised with pneumonia after having the flu two years ago. I over heard her telling doctor I must have contracted such a horrible virus from ‘someone over that interweb page’. She was talking about a social media page dedicated to connecting singles in my area. Try telling my mother that you cannot get a venereal disease from your phone. ‘I know what sort of men are on those sites.’ I could have died. I couldn’t look the doctor in the eye again after that.

I needed to get to the emergency room. I needed to be seen by a doctor. Hopefully not the one from last time. But I needed help. Thank God for ignoring mum and leaving my phone charging by my bedside. I obviously couldn't call Mum or my sister. I couldn't call Dad, he would have to tell mum where he was going and that was assuming she didn't pick up his phone. Besides, Id taken the spare key back from mum after I woke up one morning to find her showing a cleaner around my appartment. The woman has no boundaries.

I rang the only other person with a key to my apartment.

“Hey Siri!! Call Kallie!”

“Jesus Christ, someone had better be dying or I’m going to kill you for ringing me at this hour on a bloody weekend!”

“I’M BLIND! THIS IS AN EMERGENCY! I NEED TO GET TO A HOSPITAL!” I’m sure Kallie didn’t appreciate me yelling down the phone at her. I was the one yelling and I didn’t appreciate it.

“What?! Is this a joke? I told you those Old Wives tales are true. All that self pleasuring would make you blind!”

“It’s not a joke, I woke up this morning and I can’t see!!”

My dearest friend in the whole world paused for a second, never one to be taken in by a practical joke. “Alright. Normally, I’d say piss off, there is no way you’d be awake at this hour voluntarily. I’ll be right over, ok? But please, don’t make me look at you in some ridiculous dental floss masquerading as underwear!”

“How am I supposed to get dressed if I can’t see?” It was too late though, she had already hung up.

She was right though. It wasn’t quite ‘dental floss’, but as much as Kal was my best friend in the entire world and we had known each other since we were kids, I didn’t really want her to see the black lacey number I’d fallen asleep wearing last night. The matching bra was somewhere on the floor. It was a little too much bare skin between friends.

I flung back the covers and put my feet to the floor. One hand on the edge of the bed I found my way round to the side closest to my walk-in robe. Feeling confident I’d lined myself up perfectly, I turned and stepped forward.

And smacked into the edge of the doorway. Mum would have called the language I used ‘extremely unladylike’.

On the upside, I had found the doorway. The downside was my head was now pounding and I was very aware it would be only a few minutes before Kallie arrived.

I grabbed the nearest pair of pants off the hanger and pulled them on. It was the soft stretchy lounge pants I hadn't worn in years. You know, that pair that don't really fit properly anymore but you hang onto, telling yourself you will regret it if you throw them out. This pair was a really bad fit these days and I could feel a patch of cold on my thighs I was sure meant there was a hole in them I'd forgotten about. Normally I'd have taken them off and found something else but this was a dire emergency. If a doctor or half the emergency room caught an eye full of my black lacies, so be it. Next, I fumbled around to find a bra. I didn’t care which one, just as long as it was on. Don’t tell Mum this, but I’ve put on a bra in the dark a couple times, slinking away from a one nighter that I didn’t really want to have to have the ‘Soooo, this was fun.....’ conversation in the morning. Sometimes you just don’t want to have to even give out a fake number!

Bra in place, I rummaged trying to find a top. I grabbed the first one my hand landed on and shoved my arms into the sleeves.

A chorus of, ‘Shit! Shitshitshitshiiiiiit!!” greeted Kallie as she came through the front door.

‘Fearn? Where are you?’

‘In the bedroom!!’ The relife I felt at the sound of her voice!

I was still struggling with getting my top on when I heard her foot steps coming toward me. I turned toward the sound. ‘ I can’t get this damned top on!!’

The response was dead silence for a couple heart beats, and then raucous laughter. ‘That’s because you are trying to pull a pair of pants over your head!!’ Between cackles, I heard the distinctive sound of a phone camera.

‘No!! You are not taking photos of me! Come on! I need help!’

I could hear the smile in her voice. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to post them on social media. Here, let me help you with that.’

I felt her hands grip the fabric and pull it off my head. ‘Help me find a top!’

That was going to be tough for her. She was so far gone, she was snort laughing! I was worried for a second she might pee herself.

‘This isn’t funny! I’m blind! I need to get to an E.R!’

Through the laughter, I could hear Kallie taking more photos.

‘What are you doing? Help me, Please!”

‘Ok, ok, I’ll help you. Reach up and touch your face.’

Was she insane? I’m blind and she wants me to touch my face?

‘What in Hell are you talking about? How is that helping me? I need help and you are taking photos and playing Simon Says?’

‘For God's sake girl, just do it!”

She was clearly not going to help me until I did what she told me to, so I reached up to touch my face, expecting to encounter soft skin and eye lashes.

Instead, I felt the silky smooth fabric... of the sleep mask my mother had given me in a beauty pack for my birthday last night. It’ll help you sleep better, she said, my friend Caroline swears by them, she said. Caroline looked half her actual age and slightly less than the age she told people she was, but that had more to do with 3 facelifts and botox than an eye mask.

Sheepishly, I lifted one edge up to eye my friend, dying of laughter and filming me.

I sighed and lifted it off my head. ‘I suppose that video is going to Derick and Peta?’

‘Oh, yes! Right now!’

I sighed and looked down. Not only had I been attempting to put pants on my head, I’d managed to put my favourite turtle neck on instead of pants. No wonder they didn’t fit properly.

‘I need some pain killers.’ Now that the stress of going blind was gone, I was really starting to feel the early hour, the bottle of wine and knock to the head.

‘I’ll go get you some. And then you can take me out for breakfast and tell me all about this. And you’d better not leave out how you got that egg on your forehead! Put some clothes on. Properly.’ Kallie laughed again. ‘The other two are going to love these pictures!’

To be completely honest, the photos are hilarious. So is the video.

My therapist would have asked me, what did I learn from this?

I could say wise and deep stuff like, keep a level head in an emergency, or I should not attempt to drown my feelings of inadequacy in alcohol. But seeing as I know you are not going to grade me as a person based on my answers, I’m going to say, I learned never to mix the presents my family gives me again!

#FailingAtLife! But loving every moment of it.

Love, Fearn.

Follow the link for more of Fearn's misadventures!