by Mindy Raf
The
Symptoms
of my
Insanity
by Mindy Raf
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Copyright © 2013 by Mindy Raf
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Raf, Mindy.
The symptoms of my insanity / by Mindy Raf.
p. cm.
Summary: When you’re a hypochondriac, there are a million different things that could be wrong with you, but for Izzy, focusing on what could be wrong might be keeping her from dealing with what’s really wrong—with her friendships, her romantic entanglements, and even her family.
ISBN: 978-1-101-59230-4
[1. High schools—Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction. 3. Hypochondria—Fiction. 4. Mothers—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.R10952Sym 2013
[Fic]—dc23 2012024708
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
For my dad, who always loves, supports,
and believes in me and all my insanity,
and for my brave and brilliant mom,
who’s always here, even when she’s not.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: I’m diseased
Chapter 2: I’m suggestive
Chapter 3: I’m the assistant director
Chapter 4: I have knockers grandes
Chapter 5: I’m having a slumber party
Chapter 6: I’m a pushover
Chapter 7: I love cleaning out the attic
Chapter 8: I’m not pretty
Chapter 9: I’m a terrible listener
Chapter 10: I’m having trouble breathing
Chapter 11: I can’t get loose
Chapter 12: I’m a clueless cyberchondriac
Chapter 13: I should have worn a cardigan
Chapter 14: I’m invisible
Chapter 15: I’m a bad daughter
Chapter 16: I’m finally feeling inspired
Chapter 17: I shouldn’t have opened my mouth
Chapter 18: I have negative energy
Chapter 19: I’ve gone digital
Chapter 20: I didn’t know it could morph
Chapter 21: I need to talk to my mom
Chapter 22: I’m scared
Chapter 23: I don’t want to talk about it
Chapter 24: I was picked
Chapter 25: My lightbulb’s on
Chapter 26: I am photogenic
Chapter 27: I think it’s beginning too
Chapter 28: I’m not sorry
Chapter 29: I’ve got girl-balls
Chapter 30: We’re all in the snapshot
Acknowledgements
About the Author
CHAPTER 1
I’m diseased.
I’m standing inside a large fitting room at Lola’s Lingerie. Oh, and there are three hands on my breasts.
Yup, three large Russian hands. On my breasts. I’m not kidding.
One of the hands removes itself and returns, holding a tape measure. There are now two hands on my breasts, each cupping a boob. I wonder if the one on the right feels anything out of the ordinary. Should I ask her? Should I say, Excuse me, Svenya, I know you’re just fitting me for a bra, but do you feel anything strange or lumpy in there—does that one feel cancerous to you?
I read all about breast cancer on one of my mom’s chat/support sites. My mom doesn’t have breast cancer, but she does have this habit of staying logged into all her stuff after she borrows my laptop. One woman had this lump in her breast and just assumed it was a benign cyst. Nothing to worry about. Well, now she has no breasts at all. So, naturally, I decided to study my own breasts in the bathroom mirror. I’m no medical expert or anything, but I could plainly see that my right breast was bigger than my left.
And then today, as I was sitting in biology thinking about having to go get fitted for new bras at stupid Lola’s Lingerie after school, my right boob started hurting (the one that’s bigger!) and I started to feel really strange. I know it sounds crazy, but self-diagnosis is totally possible, especially when the patient is knowledgeable about symptoms and stuff. Since I had no bathroom passes left, I had to sit through the rest of biology knowing that, at that very moment, cancer was probably spreading throughout my entire body. I almost raised my hand, but what would I say? Mr. Bayer, may I please be excused? I’m not totally positive, but I think I might have cancer. No way. Then everyone at school would know, and they would treat me differently, and I would be known as “Izzy, that poor girl who diagnosed herself with breast cancer during biology.”
Oh, and then Marcus totally caught me studying my breast asymmetry in bio instead of working on my Punnett square. I tried to act like I was picking lint off my sweater, but I don’t think it worked. What’s Marcus Mason even doing in my sophomore bio class? I mean, I know why he’s there, but who chooses to work on an independent bio project with Mr. Bayer for fun their senior year?
At least it was only Jenna’s brother Marcus, though, and not like Jacob Ullman or one of his idiot friends. Jenna calls them “testosteclones,” and they would totally torture me if they caught me boobing-out in bio. They’ve been saying idiotic things to me ever since I got these things in fifth grade. “Hey Izzy, how’d you do on the math breast?” or “Boom badda boom badda boom” when I walk, or “What did you have for bra-fest this morning?” Which is one of Jacob’s favorites, and which he actually whispered to me in temple during our eighth-grade Hebrew school graduation. I don’t understand why boobs are such a big deal anyway, but if I’m wearing a top that’s not super-duper baggy, the guys in my class just stare at my chest like it’s one of those Magic Eye patterns.
So yeah, I’m confident my secret’s safe with Marcus. His mother would have him locked up if she caught him even looking at boobs anyway. Cathy Mason loves telling people that other people need to be locked up. Mainly people who do things she considers “inappropriate, immoral, and disgraceful.” Almost every gossipy conversation she has with my mom ends with her saying, “Can you believe it, Linda? Isn’t that completely inappropriate, immoral, and disgraceful?” And my mom always nods back at her and says, “Yes, completely, Cathy.”
Anyway, it wasn’t just the asymmetry of my breasts that was worrying me today—I would never diagnose myself based on a single symptom. No, I also felt tired. Not ordinary tired, but alarmingly tired. And then this afternoon in the art studio I broke out in a sweat for no reason at all. The ventilation fan next to me was even turned on high, but I just kept sweating. That’s not normal. So later in study hall when I was supposed to be doing web research on the Incas, I typed “spontaneous sweating” and “body asymmetry” into Symptomaniac.com.
Do you want to know what came up for me?
Progeria!
That’s when children mature really quickly and then die with the body of like a seventy-year-old. I didn’t read all the details, but that’s the basic idea. Which completely makes se
nse since I’m fifteen and already have the body of a “voluptuous” (my mom’s friend Pam swears that word’s a compliment) twenty-five-year-old. It’s true. It’s December and I no longer fit into any of my bras. The back-to-school ones! The size C back-to-school ones! Hence, why I’m trapped here, after school, in a Lola’s Lingerie fitting room.
I’m about to ask Svenya if she feels anything suspicious, when I look down and notice the cavernous cleavage I have from the monster-size underwire the Russians have strapped onto me. Holy cow! If one of these ladies dropped her pen right now, my breasts would swallow it whole. I’m like a living, breathing, busty Bermuda Triangle. Forget high school, I should just get a job for the government hiding top secret documents in my cleavage.
“It’s a C. No bigger than C. Round, very good. Not sausagey. C.”
The hand on the other side wags its fingers and shouts out a reply.
“Nyet, a D. Too big for C. Too big.”
“They a C.”
“They a D.”
“They a C.”
The third one chimes in.
“Nyet! Nyet! A D, a D. They a DD.”
A double D?! Oh my God. I’ve shot up three letter sizes in three months! I’m about to ask for a recount but am silenced by the tape measure. I watch the numbers fly by as it wraps itself around my chest: 5-10-15-20-25-30—
“Thirty-three one half,” three voices proclaim in unison. The tape measure is discarded and all three women stare at me a second before victoriously shouting at megaphone volume, “Thirty-four double D!”
Thanks, ladies.
I should not be here right now with the Russian Underwire Trinity. I need to be working on my art portfolio; I’m more than three pieces behind schedule.
“That looks tight. Is it too tight? Does it fit you? It should fit you.” Mom steps into the fitting room. She’s holding a bunch of merchandise in one hand and waving the other in the air trying to dry the fuchsia nail polish from the manicure she just got next door.
I check myself out in the mirror. No, it’s not possible that I’m this unattractive. Is it? No, it must be the fitting room light. Fitting room light is extremely unflattering. I don’t think anybody looks good under a fluorescent glare. Mom sets her stuff down in the corner of the giant fitting room and continues air-drying her nails. I take that back. My mom looks good. But she always does. If there were a Miss Cancer America beauty pageant, she would totally win.
“Izzy, does it fit? Is it too tight? Is it pressing on your shoulders?” Mom is determined that I be well supported. Before I can respond, she and the Russians start conversing about my breasts as if they’re having a deep political discussion.
I watch my mom nod her head at the Russians while checking out her nails in the fitting room mirrors. I try to focus really hard on taking what my art teacher Miss S. calls “mental snapshots.” She says we go through life so fast and that a good way to remember stuff is to try and take pictures with our mind. Lately, whenever I do something with my mom, I feel like I’m back at summer camp and it’s the last day when everyone’s all sad and thinking things like, This is the last time we’ll eat lunch at the mess hall, this is the last time we’ll hear the announcements by the flagpole, which is so stupid because this is not the last time I’m going to go shopping with my mom. She’s not dying or anything, she’s just sick.
Not that you would know it by looking at her. My mom is really good at hiding things. She can wear tons of makeup and make it look like she’s not wearing any at all. She’s also really good at keeping herself immaculately put together at all times. Her shoes always match her shirt, her shirt always matches her purse, and her nails always match her shoes, shirt, and purse. Her lips are always perfectly lined, her clothes are never wrinkled, there’s never anything hanging out of her nose, and she always makes sure that she has no food in her teeth before she leaves the house, even when she’s just getting the mail. I can hardly wake up with enough time in the morning to brush my teeth and make sure I have on matching socks.
“I still think you are sisters every time I see together.” Svenya looks from Mom to me and back again.
Mom waves a hand, trying to eat her smile. She’s in her forties but doesn’t look a day over thirty, so I hear this “sisters” thing all the time. But honestly, I really don’t see how anyone could possibly think I’m my mom’s daughter, let alone her sister. My older sister, Allissa, is the one who looks like Mom. They both have light brown hair, blue eyes, no curves. I have jet-black hair, dark brown eyes, and—according to my mom’s friend Pam, who swears it’s another compliment—“God-given birthing hips.”
Mom says I take after Dad’s side of the family. Which is just great because that means I might have inherited my dad’s mid-life-crisis chromosome. Like one day when I’m forty, I’m going to move across the country and marry someone half my age. Yay.
Mom’s always saying how I look just like dad’s mom, Grandma Rose, when she was sixteen. She dug up and showed me an old picture of her and, she’s right, I do. Which wouldn’t be so bad except that now Grandma Rose is a four-foot-ten-inch-tall, eighty-three-year-old woman with gargantuan breasts that take over her entire bra-less body. Really, I should just bolt out of Lola’s Lingerie right now. What’s the point of spending money on bras when I’m going to end up a short, eighty-three-year-old woman with dangle-boobs?
Mom’s still fielding compliments from Svenya, who’s clicking her tongue against her teeth and shaking her head. “You too skinny now. Never have the weight put on. Every time you here, you look like more skinny.”
“No, no, I’m fine, I’m fine,” Mom demurs, stepping away from the mirror. Svenya gives her a “whatever you say” shrug and leaves the fitting room to dig through the old-lady bra bins for my size. Mom is digging through her own pile of merchandise.
“Look what I found out there, Izzy. Isn’t this cute?”
She holds up a cream-colored, floor-length, flannel nightgown decorated with pink bunnies, as if to tell me that although I may have the body of a grown woman, I’m still going to dress like a six-year-old.
“Mom, no. I’ll never wear that.”
Twenty minutes later we’re leaving Lola’s Lingerie with six new double D underwire bras and one floor-length, bunny-covered, flannel nightgown.
CHAPTER 2
I’m suggestive.
There are four seasons in Michigan. Winter with snow, winter with rain, summer, and winter with falling leaves. This is one of those uncomfortably cold, winter-with-more-winter kind of days.
Mom and I are now standing in the parking lot of Lola’s Lingerie, and she’s reapplying her lip gloss in the car’s side mirror with one of the fourteen shades of pink she bought today. Just when I think she’s done, she takes out another tube of pink from her purse.
“Can’t you put that stuff on inside?” I ask. “Gimme the keys.”
“Hold your horses,” she manages to say while using her lips to blend.
For my mom, going out in public with un-glossed lips is like wearing dirty underwear or forgetting to put on deodorant. Once I tried to count the number of times she reapplied her lip gloss in the course of an hour. I got up to seven before realizing that collecting lip-glossing data was not the most productive use of my time.
“I think this shade of pink is more festive than this one,” she declares, holding up both tubes of gloss like they’re paint chips.
“What?”
“For the Dance for Darfur centerpieces. See the difference? This one, the festive pink, is more what I had in mind.”
“Yes, yes, let’s talk about it in the car.”
Mom is one of the co-chairs for the Dance for Darfur Holiday Ball happening at school right before winter break. I think it’s great that all of our school dances are combined with fund-raising, but it’s not so great when your mom’s in charge. My freshman year was the Children’s Literacy Luau. I was forced to collect donations from my classmates in giant pineapple-shaped bowls and wear so m
any layers of leis, I looked like I had on a fake-floral neck brace. So fun.
Mom finally puts the glosses away and checks her lips one last time in the car’s frosted side mirror, but then she pauses, catching my reflection.
“Why did I buy you that nice winter coat if you’re not going to button it up?”
I’m not in the mood to tell her that my bionic boobs have already made it impossible to keep my coat closed.
“Did you wear that sweater to school today?” she asks with a sigh so big, it smokes the winter air.
No, Mom, I changed outfits in the girls’ bathroom before you picked me up to go shopping. It’s all part of my master plan to never wear the same outfit for more than six hours.
“Yeah, I wore this to school. Why? What’s wrong with this sweater?” Can you tell my right breast is frighteningly bigger than my left?
“Nothing’s wrong with it. It’s cute. It’s a little suggestive, but cute.”
Suggestive is my mom’s all-time favorite word, and due to the arrival of my newly measured 34 double Ds and my God-given birthing hips, I have learned two things: 1) Everything I wear looks suggestive, and 2) When someone looks “suggestive,” the thing that they are suggesting is sex.
So yeah, I’m not surprised my mom’s calling me suggestive in a strip mall parking lot while we inexplicably stand outside the car in the freezing cold. I hear it all the time. I hear it in the morning before I leave for school:
“You can’t wear that to school. It’s suggestive.”
“Mom, it’s a button-down shirt.”
“Well, you should have bought a large.”
“This IS a large.”
I hear it at night before I go to bed:
“I really hope you don’t plan on wearing that tiny little suggestive T-shirt anywhere but to sleep.”
I even hear it in Yiddish:
“Izzy, what is that?!”
“It’s a tank top, Mom.”
“Well, take it off. It’s suggestive. You look like a nafka.”
Nafka, by the way, is Yiddish for “a loose woman.” When I was little, I thought my mom was fluent in Yiddish. Turns out she was just using the same seven words over and over again. This is her Yiddish vocabulary: chazzer, nafka, mishigas, vildeh-chiyah, meiskeit, bissel, and shpilkus. They mean (respectively): a pig, a loose woman, craziness, a wild animal, really ugly, a little bit, and nervous energy. I’m waiting for the day she uses them all in one long, ungrammatical sentence: “Ugh, Izzy look at that nafka over there eating that donut like a chazzer while her meiskeit, tattoo-covered vildeh-chiyah boyfriend drinks that large coffee and really, I don’t see how he stands it—even a bissel coffee in this mishigas mall gives me shpilkus.”
