December 6, 2008

Apologies for the annoying whining. It will cease.

I’m scared to admit how much I love you.
Look at me.
I wear my heart on my sleeves. I am ______________, I’m just a lonely kid who’s pretended to not care about being alone for so long its become half the truth. Now I’m just leaning over the edge, thinking about falling in. I’m scared out of my mind at losing control.

You know the difference between saying I love you and I’m in love with you?
Their’s a thick line in between. To love is to simply care about you.

To be in love is to build a special place in my heart and put you their. Loving you is being happy to see you. Being in love means having my heart beat faster, trying to catch your eye, and being crushed if you don’t see me.

It’s the special place reserved for the reasons I wake up wanting to wakeup. It’s the place where I go when I’m so tired of life that everyday seems the same and I can’t even remember what day of the week it is. Today is Thursday. I remembered that. I love you, and I am terrified of falling in love with you. I am terrified of holding you so close, so tight that you run away. I am terrified of needing you to wake up. I am terrified of not remembering what day of the week it is again. I am terrified at not knowing how far I fall before hitting bottom. I am terrified of letting go and letting myself fall.

Dammit all. I love you. Mahal kita

I may still be holding on, but I’m damn sure I’m falling.

I am terrified of how far I will go for you.

Bless me e2, for I have slacked.

It's been quite a while since I wrote a new node. I'm not sure when, or what, my next serious node will be, but it'll probably now be sooner rather than later. Meanwhile, here's a news update on the World of the Tiefling. Since I was last really active here, rather more than three years ago, a lot has happened:

• I moved out of the family home and rented a flat
• I started dating in earnest, and have a wonderful girlfriend
• I got a new and better job
• I came out as bisexual to my parents and workmates
• I have just bought, and moved into, a house with my partner

And right now I'm finally settling into my new home, and beginning to feel like I'm in control of my life again.

Five down, seven to go...

Chemo went pretty easily yesterday. I think we've finally found the right cocktail of drugs for most of the symptoms. It's so weird - I have a BOWL full of prescriptions in the bathroom, this for the girl who usually is reluctant to take ibuprofen.

I get tagamet (reduce stomach acid), kytril (antinausea), benadryl (prevent allergic reactions), dexamethazone (a steriod to help reduce inflammation from the taxol) ativan -a benzodiazipine- (to make me all happy/stupid - also antinausea, also helps reduce the jitters from the aformentioned steroid), tylenol, and then finally taxol - dripped in over 2 1/2 hours. The whole schmear takes 5 to 6 hours, depending on how easy it is to access the port, and other stuff. I usually sleep after the first hour or so, since the ativan makes it so I can barely walk, I'm so spacey. Just as well.

Then I have oral versions of must of these at home, also psyllium husks and lovely things like that, since it messes with my digestive system at the other end, as well. wertperch is making me fresh juice three times a day, which really helps - gets a little fiber into me, and because it's juice the nutrients are much easier to digest. I've lost somewhere around 6-7 pounds so far just from the chemo - there's days where I eat normally, and days where I want to eat nothing whatsoever. This is usually caused by reflux, where even drinking water give me painful heartburn. I don't remember this side effect from the last time around, but I wonder if it's also contributed to by the tumors along my trachea. Extra bumps right at the lower end of the esophagus.

This quite possibly is TMI.

So last night the imp was off with friends, and wertperch and I get into the hot tub - what bliss! - and I know, so seventies. I'm going to get wertperch a gold coke spoon to dangle in his chest hair for christmas. But I'm telling you, it is helping me get through chemo more than anything else. (The hot tub, not cocaine...) Then he went off for a beer with our friend Tom. I was sorry to see him go, and yet glad. Last time around I think he didn't take good enough care of himself through the whole treatment, and by the end was horribly run down and exhausted, and suffering from compassion burnout. I think he forgets that if he doesn't take care of himself, ultimately he won't be able to take care of me.

I puttered around the house, not accomplishing anything much, but I've got an art project in my head, and I can't work on it until I clear the decks a little bit. I even (bravely) drank a small glass of champagne. That's the trade off for acid reflux, if I eat other stuff that's really soothing, I can enjoy a glass of wine every once in a while. Probably on top of all the other junk, I had quite a buzz on, but it felt like a HUGE treat.

But back to the puttering. We have a formal living room that we hardly use (so it turns into a big ugly storage space for junk) but I'm slowly trying to turn it into an art studio. Next thing is a big ikea table, right in the middle of the room. yay! I've been doing small collages, and I want to experiment with bigger ones, and more mixed media - both collage and painting. I'm sure the first few will be hideous, but I don't care. If anything is even interesting, I'll post a copy.

I have this fantasy of doing enough work to have a group show at our local art center, all on the subject of cancer and body image. I've got at least three things in mind, but they all would have to work to be the basis of a show. Both wall art and sculpture. Have you seen any of my tit bits? (Knitted...)

A thousand thank yous for all of you who pitched in for the hot tub - I'm sometimes in it three or four times a day, and off and on in the middle of the night, when the insomnia gets really bad. Lately it's been foggy here, and we have these great mysterious nights - very Jane Eyre.

That's it for now.
Love to all,
Chrisgrundy

I'm having a very meh-feeling day.

No, let's be honest-- "really goddamned shitty-feeling" would be more accurate.



It's probably all just hormonal-- I'm currently bleeding like a stuck pig, which often causes me to wig out for a few days. But I haven't felt this bad in a very long time. My old friend body image issues came back for a visit, and boy, did he have a lot to say. *sighs*

It's funny-- just a few days ago, I was annoyed because I'd lost enough weight that my pants were starting to fall off again, thereby necessitating the purchase of new pants. Now I'm staring at myself in the mirror, poking and prodding, judging and finding myself wanting, as usual.

I think part of the reason I'm feeling this way is my obligatory visit to my "office" Christmas party on Thursday for the newspaper. I was the only woman there who wasn't wearing a dress. The. Only. One. I was wearing a button-up shirt, jeans, and my new stompy boots, and everyone else was wearing a goddamned cocktail dress and enough makeup to stock a clown college. No, there was no dress code-- two of the girls felt like dressing up, so all the rest of them decided to follow their lead. Every other woman there was also about a size 2, with one exception. Guess who was forced to participate in fucking group pictures? 

*sighs*

I look like a fucking corpse in most pictures, especially now that I've been bedridden for most of the past three weeks, and especially if you use a flash. I looked like a bloated, white, dead thing standing next to a bunch of sorority pledges in the shots I couldn't escape.

Also, unlike everyone else at the party, I didn't want to have anything to drink, since alcohol and death bronchitis are generally not a good mix.

So. Imagine me trying to carry on a conversation with a drunk girl whose most valuable feature is being held up by a lot of tape and hope. Yeah, like that. Top it off with being pestered by our new business manager, who apparently was striking out with Miss Hey Look at My Tits, because I can't figure out any other reason why he'd try and hit on me, other than the mistaken idea that fat girls must be desperate.

*headdesk*

I left the party as soon as I reasonably could, which wasn't soon enough. It still did plenty of damage.

And now I'm sitting here, two nights later, crying and wishing I could change the way I was built. Again.

I hate being a woman, sometimes. I hate irrational, stupid feelings like this. I hate giving a damn over whether I fit into some ideal or not. I hate my inability to suck it up and be happy with what I've been given.


...Fuck it. I'm going to go play with some yarn.

I was thinking of writing this as something other than a daylog, perhaps under the title "This is a Heck of a way to run a Recession". But, as of yet, I don't have any complete thoughts on the matter, so this if merely my random observations.

I have volunteered for a long time at Free Geek, and recently, since I am mostly done with graduate school, I have been spending more time there. This Saturday, I showed up bright and early for what I knew was going to be a busy day. December is Free Geek's busiest month, as people clear away old electronics in anticipation of holiday purchases, and towards the end of the tax year. So December is always busy, but this Saturday was also the day of a clean-up event, where people would drop items off-site, which were then driven to Free Geek in our truck, over and over. So I spent all of my unloading trucks of computers, monitors, printers, and everything else. I actually enjoy doing this, there is a type of total concentration in the act, because it is fairly unambiguous and simple, while still being diverse enough to stop from getting boring. Moving stuff around is one of the great loves of my life.

But, other than that, I have to think about what it means that so much stuff is coming in. As I said several times throughout the day "this is a heckuva way to run a recession". Although the current financial crisis is billed as the worst since The Great Depression, I find it hard to compare them, because the physical state of our economy is so much different now. In recent years at Free Geek, it seems people are a little more savvy to the value of their old computers, but Saturday was a return to old form, with people telling me, with total good nature, that their Packard-Bell pentium computer works well, besides the CD Drive needs to be jiggled a little bit sometimes. Which makes me think that many people, including probably many people making decisions about economic policy, might be a bit out of touch with what is really going on in the United States. Apparently, recession or not, people are still willing to give away 422 computers and 293 monitors in a day, and to pay for the privilege of doing so.

This is just some observations and ruminations. I don't think that just because a computer recycling center in Portland, Oregon has lots of computers lying around, Lawrence Summers needs to totally change his game plan. But I do think that it is worth noting that even in the middle of a recession, the material productivity of the United States is still very high.