Snapp is today. They give a special treat for you. You see, when our friends over at the podcast love me, when they share stories, we listen. And yes, they make stories about love as you may have guessed, but they gently don't bother with the boy needs girl thing.
Now, now their love stories come from a completely different place, like a next piece, about a man, a woman, and a spore. It was raining very hard that day. I remember her nice bright yellow coat. I told you that the rain is one of the things that makes the fungus grow.
And you said, Wow, is it growing right now? Can I see it? When I met Linda, I felt something staring inside myself for the first time in a long while. It turns out, there was something staring inside Linda too.
In Italian, the word fungo means fungus, mold, and mushroom. And my thing is all three. Linda has a fungus that lives in her knee. I was in Italian in 2004.
I was hit by the tsunami. My leg was torn apart by a piece of wood. And somewhere, somehow, this bloody fungus that usually lives in the seawater found its way inside my knee bone. But no doctor could remove it.
It was a story she had told a thousand times. The quick version to explain the scars on her legs. I'm used to hearing the whole poor little girl kind of reaction, but you didn't have it. You are curious.
I wanted to know everything about Linda. The story behind each scar, the tragedy that the tsunami must have been. But I didn't know if she would let me in. Healing from this.
Finding a way to keep the fungus quiet. Became the most important thing of my life. The first time we were intimate. I had to be careful not to pull Linda's leg too high.
Not to push against the fungus. Not to scratch the scars too hard. You see this long scar? From my knee to half of my shin.
They opened me. From here to here. The fungus is made by countless spores. And it's impossible to take them all away with surgery.
And the knee is a place where it's hard for blood to carry the proper drug that could defeat it. If Linda doesn't manage the fungus, it grows. And when it grows, it starts eating her knee and tibia tissue. When I'm really sick, Loretta gets stronger.
Did I mention I named the Linda's fungus Loretta? Remind me, why did you name her Loretta? I got the name Loretta from Monty Python's life of Brian that I saw at least 50 times in my teenage years while everyone else was out on dates. Some rebels are planning a riot and one of them comes out saying that he wants to be a woman.
And then, proud of her new place in the world, she says, From now on, I want you to call me Loretta. Loretta can be a very cranky roommate. When it's humid outside, Loretta grows in stretches. It feels like being blown up from the inside.
When Linda eats pizza, Loretta gets bloated from the yeast. And I don't want my knee to turn into a loaf of bread. Linda has to keep herself away from cakes, breast trees, sweet, and everything that contains sugar. Otherwise, the fungus will start to ferment.
No mushrooms because they grow stronger together. And no white rice or potatoes because they have glucose. Scent. Linda even had to give up her favorite hobby, salsa dancing, because Loretta isn't very athletic.
And no wine. And in Italy, it means that I have to start an argument with the waiter. Every time I see that at a restaurant table. Hanging out with Linda, I found out that she and I could never be alone.
Sometimes you thought I was pulling out Loretta just as an excuse because I didn't like you or I didn't want to do things with you. But it was just her. It was raining very hard that day. The air was full of water.
When random people found me after the tsunami, I was sitting completely naked on a mattress. That had been taken away by the wave. I rescued myself by climbing on it, pulling myself out of the water. I was trying to shut the hell up, but a toneless wiffle was coming out from my mouth.
Someone carried air through the wreckage to tell. It was one of the very few buildings left standing after the wave passed through the island. Her legs were devastated by open wounds. One of her rescuers brought her a muddy bad sheet so she could cover her body.
Somewhere, somehow, this bloody fungus that usually lives in the seawater found its way inside my knee bone. Loretta? You see this long scar from my knee? After I got back to Italy, it took me five years to walk again, to become confident in my legs, to accept my scars and to feel normal again, to open me from here to here.
My leg became the test for my potential relationships, letting people get closer. If I felt they could make my life easier, I'm pushing them away when I thought they were not brave, patient, or understanding enough to handle what I was going through. Sometimes I water the plants only in the spalcony, and I find some little mushroom in the plants' soil. It happened a couple of times that I started talking to them like a jealous father, protecting his teenage daughter, saying, Loretta isn't home, go away, she has to study, she doesn't have time for you mushroom boys, but sometimes even Loretta needs a bit of fun.
What do we have here? It's our anniversary, and after a lot of research, I found the most suitable cake for Linda to eat. It's an adaptation of the traditional torta tenerina. I spent seven years of my life trying to get rid of my fungus, even if I knew I had to live with it inside me forever.
But since you gave her a name, when Loretta knocks on my knee or starts to hurt me, I tried to find a way to get along with her. Maybe she's not so evil, she's not the one who tore open my leg. She just crawled in there, looking for a home. Loretta found a home in Linda's knee, and the home is what I've also found.
A home with a smart brave girl living inside, a fancy bright yellow raincoat in the closet, some plants to water on the balcony, and then all them to bake a cake once in a while, to make life sweeter for both of them, to make life sweeter for all three of us. Linda, Loretta, and me. Big love to the happy couple, and to the red of the fungus. Thanks so much to the folks at the Love Me Podcast, subscribe to them with a quickness, thank them for sharing their story with Snap, that piece was produced by mineral bird, lintonic, by crystal doohane, and jonathan cinity.
You can find out more on the Love Me Show and about jonathan's podcast on our website, snapjudgment.org.