He’s too drunk to have a normal conversation, but there’s no way that I would ever bring this up when he’s sober.

“This is just the beginning of finding out the truth about him, Olive. He’s charming and cool but he’s a terrible person. I know that you’ll come around someday.”

I hate his certainty, and I hate my uncertainty.

I wish I could just believe him and not believe everything that they are saying about him.

But I don’t.

I don’t have any good reason or evidence, just my heart.

That’s enough, right?

For now, it has to be.

6

Olive

When I meet a stranger…

I have always been cold for as long as I can remember.

My hands and feet are particularly susceptible, especially in the mornings.

I just happened to mention it to a woman who lives a few doors down. It turns out that she has a PhD in Natural Medicine and it was she who mentioned that I should look into having my thyroid checked.

If I didn’t want to go to the doctor then I could take a thermometer and record my temperature every morning for three days in a row, soon after sleep and before going to the bathroom or making any movements at all. Then I had to add up the number and divide by three. If my body temperature was below ninety-eight degrees then I had a poorly-functioning thyroid.

When I got home and did a lot more research about this online, I discovered that I actually checked a number of different boxes regarding this issue.

I am always cold.

I am often tired for no reason whatsoever.

My hair seems to be thinning.

My skin is dry.

I have trouble losing weight even though I had been following a pretty strict Keto diet (in addition, substituting fish for meat and avoiding dairy).

My neighbor also mentioned that even though normally nuts are a good thing to have, they are quite fattening, especially walnuts, and if I had too many of them, they would slow down my thyroid function even more.

Furthermore, a few months ago, I cut out all salt thinking that my problem was that I was retaining too much water. Well, it turns out salt is essential for people with underperforming thyroids and that seemed to slow mine down even more.

All of this seemed to explain why my weight hasn’t budged even though I’ve put in a lot of effort to lose a few pounds over the last couple weeks.

Today is the third day of me taking thyroid supplements along with iron and iodine drops. I am still cold in the mornings but not as much as I used to be. And I’ve noticed that I have a lot more energy throughout the day.