Rewriting History

In the last few months, a realization has gradually been permeating my brain. It started when Southern California began hitting the spring season and my head clouded up from the nascent buds of trees, flowers, and grasses sending their warning shots across my hay fever. And then it solidified after a rainstorm when my sinuses, oh so briefly, granted me a reprieve from the pressure that is my constant companion for 2 1/2 months each spring and fall.

What if my high school and college years weren't as awful as I thought they were? What if - and this is what is really starting to sink in - what if I had people who genuinely enjoyed my company all around me and I didn't even notice?

The thought makes me shudder, but I'm also finding that I have the opportunity to revisit my teenage years because of Facebook. It's a ubiquitous 'everyone is doing it' kind of a thing that until recently I had managed to avoid all together. But a job with a lot of free time and a general office policy that prevents me from reading People Magazine to find out what Mel Gibson is currently doing with his girlfriend has forced me into the realm of the internetally connected.

And I can reach out to people I knew when I lived in South Carolina - a beautiful state with a rich history and a pollen count that includes every plant I'm allergic to in vast, florid quantities, along with the moisture and humidity required to grow more mold than one hay-fever challenged teenager could ever overcome with over-the-counter antihistamines and little bottles of saline nose spray. My initial forays have been incredibly well-received. I shouldn't be horribly surprised; after all, I do have a friendly demeanor and a large social network in Southern California - and that can't be entirely an accident of geography.

For those of you who are blessed to have avoided hay-fever, and even for those of you who might get sneezing fits from cat and dog dander or the occasional really heavy pollen count day, allow me to explain my ailment. I have severe hay-fever which was finally diagnosed when I was about 9 years old. My primary symptom - the one which I believe has impacted my life more than any other single factor - is an aching, banging pressure running across the front of my face which is, at this point, only partially alleviated by antihistamines, decongestants and nasal sprays. When it truly flares up, the pressure converts to a pain much like a dagger being stagged directly through my temples. Being vertical causes my eyelids to droop and my head to want desperately to sag forward until it is flat against whatever tabletop or other surface is in front of me. I feel tired all the time - whether from the heavy levels of medication I'm taking or my body's reaction to the allergens, I'm not sure. And the world feels like it is pressing in around me and squeezing the air out of my environment.

Ironically, the symptoms have never been so alleviated as when I lived in the area of Los Angeles that is Koreatown. So much asphalt, so much concrete, so little room for my enemies to take root and grow! I may be the only person in the world for whom chemical-based smog is a blessed, holy relief. I could think and feel without the filter of medication and pain.

But when I was a teenager, I lived in a verdant forest of green, with a bedroom on the 'wet' side of the house, so that my north wall, even repainted several times, reeked of mildew. Walking into the room was like a two by four smashing directly across the bridge of my nose. And I SLEPT there every night for FOUR years. In fact, I did a little research, and Greenville-Spartanburg Metro Area and Augusta, GA Metro area are BOTH listed in the top 20 worst places to live for allergy sufferers for 2006. How I managed to make it through the schoolwork of high school is a miracle. That I didn't notice people flirting with me or even trying to make a connection with me in a friendship way is, in retrospect, completely unspurprising.

But I'm pissed off. This rambling shambles of a memory of high school and college wasn't necessary! I could have been more present, more aware, more awake to the possibilities around me. My depressed moments, when time seemed darkest to me and no one knew I was alive or even cared, were much more likely the times that the corn was pollinating and the goldenrod and ragweed were blooming!

I want those years back. I want to notice boys who have noticed me (which I didn't), to celebrate my prom outside the fog of Chlortrimeton 12-hour - which must have had some extra ingredient, because it doesn't work the way it used to for me, to feel the excitement of high school life instead of slogging through a morass of heavy-duty antihistamines and to hang out with friends and go to parties instead of sleeping every weekend away.

But in the meantime, I'm going to say hello to people I knew back then, and see if I can find out what REALLY happened when I was young. Who knows, I might have had a great time.