Friendship or Contamination?
As I take a break, a memoir excerpt from "With Love, and Wafflenugget"
Beautiful human,
I tried, and tried, and tried to write about the Harvard Summit and all it held over this past week, but my body is simply not up to it just yet.
I am still completely exhausted.
So, in honor of the truth I aim to live and teach, I am listening to myself and my needs this week. I am not pushing through. I am resting.
Instead of sharing another installment of The Healing Lab, I’m sharing a chapter I wrote this summer of from my second (unpublished) memoir with you, that was prepared over the summer — anticipating that there would be weeks like this, when writing something new would be just too much.
For lovely newcomers, I wrote the first part of my memoir, Maura and Me, here on Substack with a chapter a week from 2023 to 2024. It was an incredible honor to be read as I shared the story of my best friend Maura and how our unlikely friendship helped save my life. If you are curious about those years of my life, what serious mental illness really looks like and how powerful a friendship can be in hard times, you can read it here: Maura and Me: The Complete Chapters.
Here are some of the incredibly kind and generous words readers shared about the book:
Now, over these last few months I have been working on the the second part of my memoir, which chronicles my adventures in re-entry. This is the story of how, after being told I’d only survive in a locked psychiatric ward, I rebuilt my life by re-wiring my entire brain.
Most importantly and far more eloquently put, this is the story of how I reclaimed me, fell in love, and was saved by a dog.
With Love, and Wafflenugget
Today, I’ll be sharing Chapter 4, but if you’d like to catch up from the beginning, start here:
Chapter 4: Friendship or Contamination?
Where we last left off, Kate had moved into her own apartment in town — at the urging of her dying therapist. She was still experiencing hallucinations, obsessive-compulsive disorder (with particular fears of contamination), and the frequent incontinence that came with her body shutting down. She was still learning how to be human, by watching old TV and movies, imitating what she saw on the screen. She wanted a bigger life, but she no longer had Maura, any other friends, or very much hope left. Then, out of the blue, an old friend Nivi texted saying she back in town — could Kate help her move in?
Before the fear of seeing my college friend Nivi hit me fully, I noticed a new text alert bubble on my phone — a foreign concept at this hour in the morning. I only got texts from two people, after all, my parents. And I only got those texts in the evening when fear overcame their restraint and they wanted to make sure I was still alive and hadn’t attempted suicide that day.
But the text that morning pulled me right back into my younger self. It was joyful, chaotic, and also a deep relief.
“I have to run home for this mountain bike race thing! Just couldn’t miss it and Kona wanted to see her horse friends. We’ll be back in two weeks for classes though and then we can do all the fun thinggssss!!! Can’t waitttttt!!!!”
Still too bleary eyed from my Ambien to overthink my own words, I responded almost immediately.
“So much funnnnn!!!! Have the best time!! I can’t wait tooooo!!! And Kona? Who is Kona?”
Her résponse was almost instantaneous as our chat filled with picture after picture of a beautiful, beaming brown lab on adventure after adventure.
“Ahh I forgot to tell you! Kona is my dog! She and I can’t wait to hug you when we’re back!!!”
The tightness in my chest was quick. So was the incontinence.
OMG Kona is a dog. She has a dog. She. Has. A. Dog.
My body immediately defecated, over and over, at the thought of this dog and the contamination that she would bring to my life.
I jumped into the shower with multiple bottles of Tecnu — the powerful poison ivy scrub I obsessively used to sanitize myself — in my hand.
This is a total disaster. I mean, it’s one thing to hug a human. A clean human. But a dog? A dog? I am barely brave enough to hug my parents after they shower off the poison ivy of the world — But to hug a dog, to touch a dog, to be near a dog that I don’t control or watch or monitor for their contamination quotient, how? How would I ever? That would be straight up insane.
My fears cascaded over me like the cold water as I processed how I could hardly even pet our family dog Sophie anymore, even after she had loved me through some of my darkest hallucinations.
My current approach was to make touching Sophie a “scheduled event.” I would only touch her right before I was leaving my parents’ house. I had to make her feel loved and seen, of course, the exact way she had done for me for all those years. But I also had to do it on my terms — where I was guaranteed enough time for a full detox routine afterwards — three one-hour cold showers in which I used three bottles of Tecnu and three full bottles of blue Dawn dish soap on every part of my body.

As I engaged in my detox routine right then and there — scrubbing my foot in rounds of three, my calf in rounds of three, and my thigh in rounds of three — I processed the catastrophe this new piece of information brought to life.
But as the Tecnu eXtreme was cleaning off the nonexistent poison ivy oils I imagined, it also broke my upper thigh skin into bloody streaks (the sign of a cleaning well-done) I was reminded of the blood that sprung from my dad’s finger when he moved me into my apartment a week or so earlier.
The incident had happened during the couch move. My dad just stubbed his thumb on the door knob but the blood fell in the bathtub the exact same way that mine did now. And when it did, I realized that the fragility of his skin and the wrinkles that adorned it — they were my fault. They were because I had been sick and suicidal for so damn long.
So as I moved to the other foot, and then the other calf, and then the other thigh as more and more of my blood pooled at the bottom of the tub, I weighed my fear of this new dog, Kona and its contamination against the torment I had caused my parents for so damn long. And then, I weighed my fear and impending contamination against my desire for a friend.
Gosh, I wanted a friend. So badly.
Rather, I needed a friend. I needed a friend because Maura was gone. I needed a friend because I promised my dad I would get one. I needed a friend because I couldn’t fail Maura and end up locked at the residential psych ward farm in Western Massachusetts and doing it alone. Surviving alone was not working.
So, after finishing my decontamination routine, bandaging my now scraped-up thighs with Neosporin and gauze and cleaning the bathroom in full to cleanse the theoretical arrival of Kona the Dog in my life, I did the only thing that was left to do. I got out my phone and set out to make the call – to book the appointment with the one doctor who was willing to see me — Doctor Cortado.
After all, it was him or my freedom. It was him or my parents’ heartbreak. It was him or the end of my life as I knew it and even though my legs stung and my tears still silently fell down my cheeks at the terror of what his therapy might involve, I knew I wasn’t ready to give up on me yet. No, I was not ready to give up on me and my chance at freedom just yet.
Thank you for being here.
I’ll be honest, I wept reading this chapter before preparing it to send out. I mean – how could I not with all I have fought my way through?
Slowly, slowly, I am beginning to claim how darn hard I’ve worked my whole life to live the life I now have. I hope you too can honor how much resilience it has taken to get you here because holy heck, it counts.
And now, a cold plunge and then, more rest for me.
With love.
Kindly,
Kate
I always love reading your work and your world... it recenters me in the truths of the world around us and how we carry all versions of ourselves as we move forward. I am me now , but I also carry 16 year old me not realizing I was debilitated by anxiety, 19 year old me who dealt with SA, 21 year old me falling in love, 23 year old me in my first classroom, 27 year old me debilitated again, 28 year old coming out to my family, 29 year old me pregnant, all carried and needing to be honored
Simply put. Honored to be a subscriber ❤️💜