Why the State of Utah Should be Paying for my Therapy Bills

I received a letter in the mail yesterday from the Utah Department of Health. This shouldn’t be a huge deal, but with my imagination and anxiety it was.

I walked into the house and sat on my couch just staring at the ominous white envelope, imagining the very worst. I couldn’t bring myself to open it. Once that letter was open whatever bad news it had to offer would be real.

Was this about the flu shot I stole last year? Some co-workers and I went to the offices next to ours and pretended to be employees, when they were offering flu shots free. I talked myself out of thinking it was wrong when my very Mormon friend, Kirk, didn’t seem bothered by it. If there was a place in Mormon heaven for him, then surely I wasn’t going to end up in hell over this one little thing.

There was that sketchy boyfriend with all the tattoos from my early 20s. With that much body art it’s entirely possible he contracted some fatal disease from a tainted needle. I haven’t heard from him in years—he could be dead for all I knew. At this point I felt numb all over.

Numb extremities are never a good sign. After a quick online consult with WebMD I decided I was dying. Diabetes was the number one search result. My father is a diabetic, and somehow the health department was able to diagnose me before any doctor had. I jumped up and ran into the kitchen. I was bound and determined to eat every last drop of sugar in my apartment before finding out I was indeed a diabetic, and that I was forever banned from sugar.

One zillion calories later I knew it had to be done. Whatever was inside that envelope was something I could deal with. Something I had to deal with. I was ready.

I opened the envelope and found a copy of my birth certificate. That’s riiii-ght, I ordered it online last weekend when I couldn’t find the original.

Now, I have a birth certificate, enough calories to double the size of my ass, and lastly an understanding that while the health department can’t diagnose your insanity, they can certainly be the cause of it.