How to Take Care of a Bee Sting

I’m coming at you live with bee venom coursing through my veins. I could probably stop a truck if I wanted to. End a war. Fall in love with a man. Who knows! My omnipotence is growing minute by minute as my left pointer toe throbs. 

Today I was walking up a flowery hill, sort of appreciating small good things, when I got stung by a bee. I thought about how dumb it is that a bee’s method of self defense leads directly to their death. Why would this bee go through the effort of stinging me only to die moments later? Then I did some research and found that bees don’t sting to protect themselves, but to protect their leader. Wherever she was at 3pm today, I kicked one of her dudes and I guess he thought I might try to go and kick her so he attacked my foot. A small sacrifice for him to make in the name of honor, glory, and simping for his queen. In the moment, let it be known that I cried in pain and got ice chips from a food truck called “Mr. Tuna.” I’m glad that ice that was meant for encasing sushi grade fish was being piled onto my exposed toe in the late summer Maine air.

I love bees. I respect the fuck out of a bug that pollinates flowers, makes honey, and inspires a Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov composition. Yes I did just look up “who composed the flight of the bumblebee” but my brain only has space for 2010 Nicki Minaj lyrics, nothing else. I wondered why a thing I respected would hurt me. Did it know I was just talking shit about a guy I dated a year ago? Was this a karmic sign that I need to watch where I’m going both literally and figuratively? I find myself sitting at my friend’s parents’ kitchen table, searching for answers, as a golden retriever puppy cries softly in the distance.

I’m upset that I got stung, but it happened. It’s in the past. I can either run through the motions again of how or when I might've accidentally kicked a bee, or I can take 2 advil and move on with my life. I can read pages on the internet about this one guy whose bee sting led to an amputation or I can do literally anything, ANYTHING else. 

When I got stung, my friend Molly took out the stinger. I think its gorgeous that when a bee stings you it leaves its stinger behind. You have evidence of the pain it caused but the body of the thing has already flown away. I can still feel the pain when the bee has left, gone off somewhere to pass away. I’m sorry that the bee is probably now dead, but I’m grateful that for a moment, I could feel a rush in my toes and know that I am alive, and that I am fine. 

I put cortisone on the bee sting. I put ice on my foot and I called my mom to make sure I don’t have a history of bee-related anaphylaxis. According to my mother, my only family medical history is “insanity.” I think insanity is a word used by boring people to squash down people with cool, rad ideas. I’m not insane, I’m creative. I love to bake brownies and I cried in a public park today and I miss my dead cat. I used to be able to jump rope on a pogo stick, and I once went on a date with a Princeton lacrosse player. I contain multitudes, I am healing, I am learning, and my foot will be fine. In the meantime, will you please tell me where bees go when they die?