HOT PINK CARGO PANTS by Ashleigh Stanczak

A story of mis-diagnoses, love, and unreturnable pants.

In 2003 I bought an expensive pair of bright pink cargo pants. Hear me out. I had just lost a massive amount of weight and was exploring my fashion. Who am I? Am I bright pink cargo pants? Maybe! These will be my fun pants, I thought.

I bought them at this boutique store on Newbury Street in Boston with my parent’s credit card. I get to say that obnoxious sentence now because a few years later I will essentially become an orphan with over $100,000 in student loan debt. I wore my bright pink cargo pants a few weeks later when I took a cab to see a neurologist who specialized in MS. We didn’t have google maps or smart phones back then, so what I thought was a 10 minute cab ride was in fact 40 minutes. I sat in the back watching the haze roll over Boston, and then Brookline, and then Newton. I was twenty three.

Photo Collage courtesy of the Author, Ashleigh Stanczak

The doctor had me do some finger to shoulder, finger to nose, finger to toes tests and had me walk up and down the hall. I sat down in a cold wooden chair while he causally said “you have MS and will be walking with a cane in 10 years.” He said it nonchalantly. Like he was telling me I needed more iron. Which I did, incidentally. How could he tell me this while I’m wearing my bright pink fun cargo pants?? About 2 months prior I had an episode of numbness and discoordination. My left leg, left arm and left side of my face went numb and I couldn’t complete the finger to nose thing that you see on TV and in sobriety tests. And my speech was off. My primary care doctor had me take an MRI and then told me to follow up with an MS specialist. I bought the pink pants somewhere in between.

I think I may have responded to the doctor with something like “huh?” and “vitamins??” and “I’m leaving.” And then I needed a cigarette. Shit. I had just quit smoking. I felt for the security of my pack on the outside pocket of my Gap jean jacket, which sadly was the only thing that paired well with bright pink cargo pants. How could I be so stupid as to quit smoking before being diagnosed with MS. All I had were these fake nicotine, tobacco free cigarettes called Quest that were supposed to satiate your need for a cigarette when all they did was make you angry that you weren’t smoking a real cigarette and crave one immediately. I stood outside Brigham Women’s Hospital in my bright pink fun cargo pants and lit up my fake cigarette. I don’t know how I got a cab. I remember it being hard, having to wait a long time. Did I peruse a gift shop? Maybe. I was mostly in the future imagining having difficulty walking and talking and using a cane. I’d be 33. That seemed like an impossible age at the time. All the characters on sitcoms capped at 28. The series ended when they were 30 and we had to imagine what the rest was like. When their purpose stopped being about having fun and became about getting a great mortgage rate. No one wants to see a show about that. But I never imagined any of them with canes. Fuck. I can never wear these pants again. They’re not fun, they’re fucking horrible evil pants that I’m sure are unreturnable.

I got home somehow. I may have asked the cab driver if I could smoke in the car. And he may have said “no.” And I may have said “but they’re fake.” And he may have said “what?” And I may have said “but I have MS.” And then he may have given up and just let me. I threw my bright pink cargo pants into the depths of my closet. At some point I called my parents and cried. I wish I could still do that. And my mom told me she’d have Harriet, Jim Edmund’s the orthodontist’s wife call me because she was a nurse and “she’ll know.” I was scared. I felt like my body wasn’t my own. That wasn’t the first or last time I’d feel like that. My whole life, I felt that my body didn’t belong to me. I was wrong just by existing. Growing up overweight and the daughter of a diet addict in the ’90’s, I was told my body wasn’t ok the way it was and that some new body that was ok would appear when I lost weight. Or “the weight,” as it was referred to.

The phone rang. Oh god, I forgot I had a boyfriend. Is he my boyfriend? It was only a few months and he lived in New York. If I don’t know whether or not he’s my boyfriend then I can’t tell him I might have MS. I was supposed to visit him that coming weekend. He was the first guy I’d ever been naked in front of, and the third guy…no fourth guy, I’d ever kissed. Instead of calling him back I went to see the Matrix Revolutions at a theater very, very far away in Cambridge in another long cab ride. Don’t at me with the cabs, Boston’s public transit system is a trolley that only goes in two directions and this was the only theater showing it. The movie was horrible. I expected it to be life changing like the original Matrix was but I may have never hated a movie so much. I was so mad at it that I forgot all about my diagnosis from earlier that day.

The light on my landline blinked. A voicemail from the New York boyfriend (?) I felt a way about him. When I lived in Boston I exclusively dated guys who resided in New York. He wasn’t just some guy in New York though. He read me passages from books and sent me daisies and honestly it was too much and I wasn’t sure if I trusted him altogether. He wanted a wife and I was 23. I wouldn’t be ready to be a wife until at least 47. He felt like a soulmate which meant we’d never work. I looked up MS on Netscape while I sat in my overstuffed arm chair covered with a Bed Bath and Beyond floral slip cover. The original Tex-Mex fabric laid underneath as I listened to Jewel’s Pieces Of You. And yes, I had a bay window. Why do you think I needed the overstuffed arm chair?

Netscape recited the following symptoms of MS. Vision loss, numbness, vertigo, dizziness, fatigue, spasticity, and something called an MS hug, which did not sound like a hug at all. Vision loss?? I want to be a filmmaker and a photographer and a writer. Vision is essential for all three things. I looked at my phone with disappointment. Harriett, Jim Edmunds the orthodontist’s wife hadn’t called me back. She’d know. I needed someone who’d know. I had to book my train ticket. Boston to New York by train is about 4 hours and 17 minutes. I think part of the reason I dated men exclusively in New York was to ride the train. Now, for the protection of his identity and any lingering embarrassment that might overcome me should he read this, for the remainder of this story the boyfriend’s(?) name has been changed to Keanu Reeves. It’s not that he’s similar to Keanu or anything like that, except I guess theyre both tall? But there really is no other name that suits him other than his actual name, which you would agree with me on if I were to tell you it. But I can’t. And it’s on theme with The Matrix, so Keanu it is. When Keanu and I met I was a bridesmaid in my sister’s wedding which meant I had a Neutrogena fake tan lacquered on which meant I had to continue having a Neutrogena fake tan lacquered on. And it was staining my clothes. When he last visited me I woke up and my sheets were painted brown. A tragic misunderstanding could have occurred had I not swiftly thrown my duvet and 17 pillows against my fitted sheet.

South station platform 4. I looked for a window seat. I felt numb. Not because of the potential MS symptoms but because I knew my life was going to carry the weight of illness. I could feel it’s struggle coming to envelope me and I was annoyed. I was supposed to be normal now that I lost the weight. I zipped up my suede, brown jacket from Banana Republic that my mom had bought me. Next to breast feeding I don’t think there’s anything more maternal than buying your daughter a coat. I miss my mom being able to buy me coats. I watched the trees roll by in the opposite direction. Providence, New Haven, Stamford, New York. Mineola, Long Island.

We ate chicken on the hardwood floor of his bedroom. It sounds disgusting, but there were plates. The next day he played guitar while I pretended to write. He was testing me. The last time I visited we had a grande whirlwind New York City trip and he thought that’s all I wanted. The truth was I preferred the floor eating chicken and lazy Saturday. Going on a Central Park carriage ride, little Italy for dinner, a jazz club, a salsa club, The Strand, and a Long Island beach finger bang was fun, but it was a bit much. I wanted to tell him about the doctor and the cane in ten years and my unwavering notion that I will grow to be a sick person but how can I do that while he’s testing me? To make sure I’d be a good girlfriend. A good wife. A good mom. I can’t take that test right now. I just need a hug and more Jewel. So I scowled. Which never goes over well.

The next afternoon we went to visit his 15 Greek cousins. Another test. We hung out and played with his nieces and ate food and I possibly scowled some more. And then it happened. All 15 of them wanted to see the new Matrix. My face must have gone white. I cannot see that movie again. No one can see that movie again. I think I said something like “I can’t” or “I saw it” or “please no.” His family crammed into both of the building’s elevators. The doors stood open long enough for me to measure the distance I had created. Between him and his family. And him and me. The doors shut. He said nothing. I failed the test. I wondered if he would have had some empathy knowing what I was dealing with. I wondered if he would have had some empathy after seeing the new Matrix.

I was also too scared to sleep with him. Did I mention that? I took his family from him and the Matrix and now sex. Fail, fail, fail. I honestly never thought to give him a test. Why didn't he ask me what was wrong. Why I seemed sullen? He was making me race through his test because he needed to know now because he had an ex who was waiting in the wings who was ready to be a girlfriend and a wife and mom. And he wanted me to be all of those things. He just couldn’t wait.  Because what if I wasn’t all of those things. Then he’d be left with nothing. And what he wanted most was children. But I was 23 and possibly had MS and hadn’t heard back from Harriet, Jim Edmunds the orthodontist’s wife, so I couldn’t possibly understand any of that yet! He wanted all of me, now. But I had plans. Which didn't involve even thinking about being a girlfriend or a wife or a mom yet. The most exciting thing I’d done up until then was buy those bright pink cargo pants. And that’s just sad.

I didn’t hear from him for a few days after I got back to Boston. I knew it was over. And I think that’s what I wanted but I also think that I loved him. I pondered while I sat in my bay window and smoked my fake cigarettes. I felt this tiny piece of emptiness sink in. He had put me on a pedestal and then I swiftly fell off it. We continued to talk, though I knew we were not together. And then weeks later it happened. The official break up call. I think it was prompted by me complaining to my sister who complained to her now husband who complained to Keanu and told him to stop stringing me along if he wasn't serious. Before we got off the phone he said I would always have a piece of him. Ughhhh. What does that even mean?? I drove down to the local BP gas station and picked up a pack of actual real life cigarettes. Parliament lights. I immediately went outside on my parent’s porch and smoked one. Instead of creating the cessation of ease I was used to, the nicotine now made me sick with nausea and guilt. I didn’t want the cigarette, I wanted him. I smoked it anyway.

It was the summer of Bennifer. My first breakup. And I was on vacation with my family in South Carolina. I drove my dad’s Cadillac to who knows where just to sit in air conditioning and listen to break up songs, in awe of how much I now understood them. Jlo’s lyrics spoke to me as I rode my bike along the swamps and sweat. What did JLo have to make a relationship work that I didn’t? A few months later I’d be pleased to find out she and Ben had a devastating break up. Not even JLo could pass the test. We kept talking that summer. Keanu and I. One, because we were good at it. The talking. And two, because I badly wanted back on that pedestal.

In August I waited for him in the damp brick heat of Pittsburgh. We met at a coffee shop and sat outside on the edge of a sidewalk. He had shut himself off. I didn't know if the feeling of loss was about the pedestal or about possibly loving him. Maybe both. We kissed. He held back. Now it was really, really over. After we broke up he tried to brush off all the ways he had felt and all the things he had said. But it seemed like a cover. A protection. I didn’t know if he was the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, but the feeling I had with him was kind of indescribable. It’s like I remembered him somehow.

Back in March, Pre-MS and Pre-Keanu, I was en route to my sister’s wedding rehearsal. I was late, of course. GPS didn’t exist yet so I had to use my sense of direction, which directed me to sing Weezer’s Island in the Sun while I ended up in a Sears parking lot instead of the Duquesne University Chapel. I was wearing this pink paisley dress from Free People before Free People was Free People as he uttered, “so, you’re Greek Orthodox right?” I hadn’t been to my Greek Church since I was ten on Sundays to get free cookies and baklava and to talk to the coffee ladies, so I said “…uh, yea?” while I looked for my keys.

I could feel his gaze on me throughout the rehearsal and later at the reception. He chased me amid banquet tables and dance floors, but I was busy talking to friends and being charming and taking multiple trips to the chocolate fountain bar. I wasn’t used to being chased. I was used to being the chubby girl who had crushes on guys who “really liked our friendship the way it was.” I didn’t even know if I liked him but we had this chemistry and it was nice to be chased and fine, yes, he had beautiful brown eyes and it all made me so nervous and dizzy that I didn’t want to allow myself to be caught. In it, or by him.

Lady in Red came on and he asked me to dance. (Which at the time I thought was a big romantic song from a big romantic 80’s movie but I just googled it now and apparently it’s only been featured in American Psycho.) I said, ok. I had never danced with a guy before. Unless you count the sweat palmed dances with boys drowning in suits twice their size during Mr. Melodia’s elementary school dance class. I wish I could remember what he said and what I said but all I remember is how he held my hand.

Hours later he was in my hotel room and we were splitting a cigarette. He replaced the parliament light from my lips with a kiss and the weight of it was like a rip current that made me catch my breath. Or maybe that was just my asthma and all the smoking. He let out an exhale so deep, that I swallowed his breath and lost mine. I didn’t want to take my dress off. Mostly because it was a Vera Wang and growing up I had to wear dresses hand made by Iya the seamstress or from a rack in the plus size section of David’s bridal a mile back in the store. I loved it so much and I felt like a princess and I didn’t want that to end. I also didn’t know how I looked naked. I had lost so much weight that there were these remnants of skin. And I didn’t want him to notice and be reminded of being the girl who had crushes on guys who “really liked our friendship the way it was.” At some point though it was just too hot and too awkward to keep it on. I don’t remember every moment, but I know that he slept over and that all of our underwear stayed on. The next morning there was walking to his car and sidewalks and more kissing. He called me koukla. No one had called me koukla since my Aunt Koula at age 11 when she’d visit and teach me how to play poker. It was nice. It made me feel warm. It made me feel home.

That night is when I started having the symptoms that would lead me to MS and pink pants and fake cigarettes. Numbness and discoordination, etc, etc. Is this what happens when you dance with boys and kiss for 8 hours and sleepover in your underwear and feel an intense connection over parliament lights? There was no Google to ask, so I ordered a burger from room service and went to bed. In the morning I lacked the coordination to bring a spoon to my lips. I called my mom who made me a doctors appointment because, “you are not going back to Boston without seeing him!” But I had a paper waiting to write about the staircase scene in Psycho and possibly a message on my machine from a boy I just met. My dad got on the phone. “Take a walk down the hall. Just breathe,” he said gently. I wish he was still here to tell me to breathe. Because sometimes, I forget. My mom picked me up from the hotel and took me to the doctor and then took me to get a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie from Barnes and Noble. I called my landline to check my messages. Keanu had called. That night I laid in my teenage bed and watched A Maid in Manhattan from Blockbuster. JLo’s gown reminded me of my Vera Wang. I called him back. We talked. He invited me to New York. And I said, ok.

A few of our casual phone dates involved him reading a book to me over the phone. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. A super chill, lighthearted Chechyan tale about a philandering husband, a gal with anxiety attachment issues and a female sadist. It’s also about how we love. Whether we want our life to have the weight of love or the lightness of not love. I tried to read it but I was already taking several electives that required reading and writing and more reading. And honestly, the book went way over my head. I stopped reading a few chapters in when Tereza’s mom body shames her and she packs a bag to move in with Tomas only to have him cheat on her.

Years later I actually bought the book and I actually read it. And I discovered that Tereza had this thing where she gets vertigo and passes out. From the weight, it seems. Along with all the cheating from her shitty husband. I had ironically been reading him Franny and Zooey, a book that centers around a young woman who also faints. From the lightness, it seems. Just before our official breakup that summer, I was walking home from the gym one morning and became seduced by the smell of burning tobacco nearby. I bummed a cigarette off the guy attached to the smell, a Marlborough Red to be exact. I hadn’t smoked a real cigarette in weeks and I guess it shot my heart rate up because suddenly I was seeing stars and lights and fainted right there on the corner of Boylston and Clarendon street. After I got home from the hospital, where they told me my fainting was due to fainting, I talked to Keanu. He attributed my passing out to the stress of the weight. And he was right, I was stressed. In many ways we had never left that wedding reception. He was chasing me and I was busy chasing the life that he’d already had and was done with. He was ready for the weight and I was fainting from it.

After we ended that summer, October came and I moved into a new apartment. I was on the roof when he called. I don't think the building was zoned for being on the roof but in any case there was no reception and I missed it. I always thought about what he had wanted to say. I think I tried to call him back but I can’t remember if I instead tried to remain mysterious. I hope for the latter. But I’m pretty sure it was the former and he had shut himself off again by the time the phone rang on the other side. I layered myself in a few guys that Fall to get him off me, but all it did was make me cry. Except for the Scottish guy, he was fun. So I spent the winter alone, licking my wounds and watching the last season of Friends on Tivo. And then I went to Greece. Lived there actually. And Turkey. And Egypt a few years later. Portugal, Paris, South Africa. I lived a life. I became a photographer. A writer. A friend. A filmmaker. Won awards. Even fell in love a few times. And I would see him at my sister’s kid’s birthdays and christenings. With the girl who he’d had waiting in the wings all those years ago. I could feel his reach. To talk to me. Connect. Touch. And I fucking devoured that feeling as I sailed off.

A few years later my dad died. I wish I had spent more time with him that summer instead of belting out bad love songs to myself in his car and talking to a guy who I wasn’t sure loved me. I wish I had known that those summers were not infinite. I’m glad my sister talked me into going on that fishing trip with him. And that island beach walk where we picked up seashells and felt like we had discovered sand for the first time. The year after my dad passed I saw Keanu at my sister’s going away party. We went out and drank and laughed and he drove me back to my hotel. It was nice. It was light. He told me that if I ever needed anything or anyone, to call him. That he’d always be there for me. I knew he meant it. And I did call. And, he was there for me. I think he did carry a piece of me with him. I think we carried pieces of each other. And those are the times that I ask myself, would I have preferred to have been a girlfriend, a wife, a mom. And not a photographer, a writer, a friend, a filmmaker. Could I have had both. Could he have waited for me to be both. I don’t know. I only know that I now miss the lightness as much as the weight.

Back in that same October, I ended up seeing another MS specialist in Boston. A second opinion. She was at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital which much was closer and didn’t require cabs or pink pants. Her hair was always frayed and coming undone. Her shoes a thick patent leather quarter inch heal. She had a mid-atlantic accent and was in her late 50’s. She told me that she did not in fact think I had MS, but probably a structural, neurological disorder. That we would monitor symptoms and MRI’s, and when and if I did present with MS, talk about medications.

I continued to get episodes of numbness and discoordination. And exactly ten years later I oddly did need a cane. Or crutches to be exact. I broke my foot and sprained my ankle while just taking a step off the sidewalk. My leg had been going numb and I didn’t feel the footing of the cement. I went to an urgent care who sent me to a podiatrist who told me I likely had a pinched nerve in my back that was causing the numbness. Obviously I had thought of the pinched nerve thing before and had told doctors, but they instead preferred to diagnose me with MS or just shoulder shrugs. Another ten years later I was diagnosed with Chiari malformation. Which is essentially when your brain sags below your skull and it throws off your spinal fluid and causes all the symptoms I’d been having my whole life and it’s terrible. Turns out, MS and Chiari often get misdiagnosed for each other. And it has affected my eyes and my vision. Like I predicted. Like my body told me. A lifetime of illness that did in fact greatly annoy me.

I’d give anything to go back to the before times of Bennifer. Where I wasn’t as sick. Before I went and saw the world and it gave me all the moments of beauty and grief and at times made me end up feeling all alone. When I belonged to my parents and not the world. Innocent and not understanding the lyrics to all of those breakup songs. To eat dinner with my dad again. For my mom to be able to buy me a coat. That kid time where there was no illness and if there was I had a parent’s roof to return to and mom to buy me a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie at Barnes and Noble. They still sell them, you know. And whenever I’m there I stand in a strangely long line where everyone is depressed and pretending to buy a magazine when all they really want is a cookie. When half of my life was in front. When I could wear really, really short jean shorts. And to take it all for granted. It’s the vastness I miss and the return to home. And then I think, in 20 years, 40 years, I will be thinking that very same thing about this moment right now. There will be more loss, more illness. And I’ll be envious of this body in this time. And I remind myself that I need to, in the words of the original, perfect, never should have been repeated movie The Matrix, “get up.”

I’m not sure whatever happened to my bright pink cargo pants. I definitely tried to return them. And they definitely would not let me. Could it be they’re sitting in my storage at 1313 Brand Blvd in Glendale, CA where Avi the manager gives me a good deal? Maybe. But I’m pretty sure I gave them away or lit them on fire. One of the two. In either case they weren’t really me anyway.

Ashleigh Stanczak is an award winning writer and director of mostly comedy. As a writer, her pilot “Kill Me?”  was recently awarded second rounder in the Austin Film Festival. Her feature script, “The Life of Fat Girls,” was also a finalist in the Austin Film Festival.

As a director, she is the proud recipient of the 2019 HBO Women in Comedy Audience Award for Parent Teacher Conference and a 2018 semi-finalist in the NBCUniversal Shorts Fest for Girl Brain. She was a director on the Funny or Die series Coach Von Pidgeon and also co-wrote, directed and sold her short New Hair to Funny or Die.

She’s written and directed for Refinery29, UCB, and was head writer and director for iO West Comedy Network. Several of her shorts have placed in the LA Funny Women’s Festival, The Austin Short Comedy Fest, the Colorado Short Circuit Film Fest, the Philly Short Comedy Fest, and the Houston Short Comedy Fest. But, her greatest accomplishment remains at age eight when she taught her guinea pig to roller-skate. Butterscotch died the very next day. You can find more of her writing here and some of her shorts here.