snails move too slowly

Last night was hard. I cried about missing so much school and being afraid of not being able to catch up. I was doing so well and everything was on track. And now the train is derailed. For the time being, anyway. Sigh. I'll have to get incompletes because the semester is almost over. That's fine. That doesn't necessarily bother me. But still. I'd rather go to class. But I can't. Even though I feel like doing a bunch of things, I can't. My job is to stay put and rest because I had major surgery not too long ago.

But I want to go to class tomorrow. And I can't. It's imperative that I don't push myself. Class is too much right now. I am on bed rest (or chair rest, couch rest, whatever). I have a stomach full of staples. I'm in a lot of pain, still. But I'm still plenty bored. Class would be less boring. It's a pull, you know. I am desirous to be normal again. But I can't speed things up by pretending I'm more healed than I actually am. It doesn't work that way, unfortunately. If it did I would be back to working and classing and playing and Emily would be dancing all night and running her 80 miles a day or whatever she used to do before her surgery. Alas. Bodies are fragile little creatures. They need coddling.

I woke up in the middle of the night in a lot of pain and cried some more and that was fun. I didn't take any pain meds right before bed. It makes me realized how not-fully-well I am and that sucks. Sometimes the Lor-Tabs make me think I'm fine and dandy because I'm foggy and can't feel the incision so much. It is a HUGE incision, too. I should measure it. It's at least six inches long. And I have two drain holes and another cut for the laproscope they tried at first before they were like "Holy shit this is one extremely inflamed, infected, angry gallbladder."

I mean, It was bad, you guys. Real bad. Like I had been living with the pain and ignoring it for a long time. Months, probably. Which is fucked. It's fucked that I do that. My pain tolerance is really high because I always have pain. So I just waited until I hurt so badly I wanted to die, and even then I didn't want to go to the doctor. Mom cajoled me for like two days before I finally agreed to go. And I had been hurting pretty badly for longer than that. I just didn't tell her.

This whole mess just makes me realize that I don't treat myself kindly. I punish myself for weird supposed sins, and while I've learned to listen to my needs emotionally and mentally, I ignore what my body tries to tell me a lot. Besides hungry, tired, thirsty. I feel like the pain is my own damn fault and I need to just suck it up. That is so fucked. I can't be healthy if I'm always punishing myself. I can't be healthy if I don't listen to my body. I can't be healthy if I'm still hating on myself all the time. That's what this surgery fiasco has taught me. Now I just have to apply that to my actual life and be better and kinder to myself. I deserve it. I owe it to myself. I am a good, nice, loving, caring, wonderful person and I wouldn't let other people treat me like this so why do I allow myself to do it?

Everything is interconnected. Mental, physical, emotional, spiritual. You can't just work on one. You have to address everything. And I'm slowly, slowly understanding that for reals. Everything takes time, though. I can't be perfect overnight (or ever, really, perfection is a myth, unless you are meaning perfect-in-your-flaws).

It will all come together. Sigh. It's hard, though. It's hard to reprogram yourself after 25 years. But if anyone can do it, I can. I've overcome so much already. I'm always growing, never static. It'll happen. I know it will. And it's not a light-switch type of thing, it's an evolution, revolution sort of movement. The unstoppable force of progress.

But for now, I am all about the resting.

maybe some tiny shiny key will wash up on the shore

I am only writing because I don't know what else to do. I can't not write. I'll drown. I am going to write about living and dying. It is heavy, heavy on my mind lately and writing relieves the burden as nothing else can. I hope not to be dramatic, only matter-of-fact about it because it is a reality that none of us can escape and is just as natural as birth and change and the unstoppable force of progress.

In a sense, we are all afflicted by this disease called Life, which we will all die from. It is the most beautiful terminal condition because there is nothing better than truly living. And you know deep in your heart of hearts if you are truly living or if you are just a ghost turned flesh. You know. You can see it in your eyes and feel it in your bones.

We all know what dying feels like. Parts of us are dying and regenerating all the time. It's normal, except when it's not. It's normal unless your whole self is dying, emotionally or physically or both. It's normal as a cycle of ebb and flow, but not when you circumvent it and stay ashen always. You can't live in winter forever. Or, actually, you can, but it's not really living.

I guess what I am trying to say is that we are all dying, so we may as well live as much as we can because you can't take even one single day for granted. And I can sit and be sorrowful about the alleged (supposed, possible, questionable, something) brevity of the lives of people I love, or I can just be with them as much as I can and enjoy the living we have left to do, however finite.

Heartbreak and death are inevitable. And anorexia and cardiomyopathy are hard things no one should ever have to suffer. And yet, they still are. Many, many things still are. Such is life. And as I am just another soldier in the army of Love, I will simply live fully, love fully, give fully, experience fully, be fully, do fully, and cry when I need to. That is all I can do.

but i guess that this is the price
that we pay for the privilege
of living for even a day
in a world with so many things
worth believing
in
- ani

i'm afraid i've said too much, i'm afraid someone has heard me

My shower was really important this morning. I mean, beyond the hygiene part. Just like the compulsive hand-washing is a guilt thing (thanks for telling me that, Mom), I felt today like my shower was cleansing my guilt. Guilt for my thoughts. Thoughts that would make me a bad friend or a bad person so I just keep them. Until this morning when I let them roll off and slip down the drain. They are still there a bit, in that persistent way that is characteristic of a lot of my thoughts. But they are diluted, at least, for now.

And they are not bad thoughts, really. Just thoughts. Unkind thoughts. Things. But this is the first time in a very long time that I haven't felt comfortable sharing with anyone, not even my closest friends. And that is weird for me. This is why I think I need a therapist. I'm an open book, usually. Except now I have ripped a couple of pages out and I don't know what to do with them.

I think it's the perfectionism thing. I can't just be a good friend. I have to be the best friend. So anything that would mar my sterling reputation as the consummate friend is unacceptable. The problem, though, is that not sharing, because I have a compulsion to share (silence = death, right?), not sharing is making them worse. What is that fancy psychologist concept of whatever is not addressed on the inside manifests on the outside? Is that a thing? I think it is.

And sometimes I feel like you guys know all my secrets anyway, so all of this bullshit about trying to hide things is pointless because you can read it in my eyes and that actually scares the shit out of me. Secrets are poison. Why do I insist upon having them? Most of the time I refuse to keep them. But these are too close to the bone, I guess.

And I'm building it up like it's some horrible secret, but it's really just feelings, normal feelings like everyone has. I just need to be kind to myself about my feelings. It's hard though.

I let the water wash over my face this morning, tried to coax out some of my own tears, to no avail. It will happen when it happens. When it's right. And it will be good.

you were smoking me weren't you, between your yellow fingers

Today is Valentine's Day. I will say that right now, at this point in my life, I hate Valentine's Day. I will not go so far as to say I hate Valentine's Day so much that I would use it as an opportunity to sabotage any relationship I am in. That is the difference between me and fucked-up people. My feelings are temporary due to a raw little heart, which will hopefully heal up just fine with time.

Speaking of hearts, mine got nicked a bit last night in a weird way, which I hate, of course. I think I was just tired and drained from two nights in a row of interacting with people I don't know, which I also hate. Because I still, even now, feel my chest clench in panic when I'm on my way to Deaf events. The old me would just not have gone. Cried about it. New me goes but still freezes up. I can't be hard on myself about it, even if I fail Deaf Culture for it. I am only me. I can't be more or less. Plus it will will will get easier. I will be able to engage fully instead of sitting on the fringes, at some point. Part of it was there were less people that I know there than usual.

The lesbian from my class came, and that was cool. She went to Deaf, Deaf World last semester, the early one. I told her I went to the later one and so did my ex and it was terribly awkward. I asked her if that's where I remembered her from and then she informed me that actually I helped her with her laptop once (which I have zero recollection of at all). She also said she went home and told her girlfriend "I think a gay girl helped me today." Which was affirmed when she saw the button on my bag the first day of class.

Then there was this girl who came who I ended up talking to for more than an hour. She was totally straight though (I think). She read straight, especially because I was attracted to her. Because I am attracted to straight girls. Cute girls. Girls. God. There are just so goddamned many of them it's hard not to like some of them. Anyway. We were talking and she told me my name was beautiful and "rare nowadays" and touched my arm repeatedly and I think it's bullshit because if she were a lesbian those would totally be come-ons. But she's just a cute straight girl from what I could read of her. I was attempting to feel her out, "Did you move here by yourself?" and so on, but the conversation never quite got there. But I hate that shit. I can't just hit on someone. I do not chase straight girls. I don't hit on them. I'm paranoid about it. Probably because I don't want to be the creepy predatory dyke who goes after all the innocent vulnerable girls. (Wow. I have self-image issues, don't I? This is why I think I need to be in therapy.)

And girls are socialized to be flirtatious, anyway. Straight girls, if they know I'm a lesbian, flirt with me more than they would if they thought I was straight. For them I am probably a safe person with whom they can act out their latent homosexual feelings a bit. (Seriously.) They immediately categorize me as "harmless" because I'm shyish, nice, and a little awkward. Whatever. But. I'm still calling bullshit on it.

Fucking context, though, right? Christ. If you don't know the context then you're pretty much fucked.

Blerg.