Fuck

Every time you get electro convulsive therapy  they give you a test at the beginning to see if your memory has been affected. It consists of awesome things like identifying pictures of animals, connecting dots, and drawing a cube.

The thing about this test is they only change it up every couple months so usually you have the same questions for quite a few treatments in a row. One of the things they ask you to do is name as many words in a minute as you can all starting with the same letter. For my first eight appointments or so the letter was “F”… which of course meant I started each session trying to think of a minute full of “F” words without saying “fuck.”

“Face, fumble, fear, flustered, futon, feng-shui, fester, Physics, no that doesn’t count, ferment, flamingo, Febreeze….” ahh, I just need to say Fuck.

The past year had been full of fucks. It is the perfect word to use when describing extremely frustrating challenges. Challenges you do not see ending. And I used this word quite liberally. It provided a moment of comfort, a release from the anger.  In the ECT appointments I wanted to say “fuck” so bad, especially in the beginning before the treatments had started working, but I just couldn’t.

Why not?

Because of the fucking ECT nurses who are so fucking kind and so fucking sweet. They are some of the best fucking people I have ever had the chance to fucking meet. Because of them I just couldn’t fucking bring myself to fucking say it. Not even one fucking time.

But then one day they finally changed the letter to “A”.

Assholes.