NaNoWriMo has started!

Maybe you know of National Novel Writing Month? Well, I'm trying it again. It's fiction based on themes and events I've experienced all mashed together.

Here's a snippet of the beginning:

"You left us 19 years ago today. The Grim Reaper plucked your soul from your soon to be lifeless body before the truck driver, drunk, ran through a red light…on Halloween of all the days. They’d pronounce you, Amy, dead on arrival at the hospital, dressed in a belly dancing costume to add to the ridiculous way you had to leave us. And I will always wonder who you would have become. Bright lights burn fast.

"As for the two of us that remained it wasn’t that much later that AIDs-related pneumonia would take you, Rod, to wherever that next place is. It was early still in the experiments with medication cocktails to extend life, and you joined dozens of others that I knew who lost their battles all around the same time. Dreams disappeared quickly and intentions gave way to funeral caskets. The Reaper walked with you for some time before your end came but it was still far, far too soon.


"And so it seems, I’m the only one left to tell our story all these years later – the story about that year where we ran to and from what might have been the end of all of us all at once. And I’m ashamed to tell you that one day, not too many years ago, I could hardly bear the pain of it all – a world without the two of you, stuck in a place wondering where I’d placed the compass we’d created from our brash and bold talks about where we’d be some day. But the Reaper didn’t get me that day. After all, one of us had to remain to tell the story of our year together, one of us had to live to tell about what happened after you’d both left. The restlessness of our youth has been my constant companion even as I’ve entered middle age, always reminding me of the two of you, of our accidental journey around the world and back again.


"This is the story of you, us, and me."

And while I won't be sharing all 50k word with you, I suspect you'll get a few more snippets here and there.

fix me...

41 years here in this life...4+1 major surgeries in a year...two decades past the that last birthday that was crazy fun that could never again be repeated in spirit or in health...41 stitches that i can count...4.1 steps is now slightly past the number of steps to arrive at the halfway mark between 5 yards of a football field...where am i? when you try your best, but you don't succeed
when you get what you want, but not what you need
when you feel so tired, but you can't sleep
stuck in reverse i've been here spinning, wondering what it is that i need even though i know what it is...i know...but i'm so tired...too tired some days to try my best...so i don't succeed...it feels farther now, farther from you and from me and from that which separates us by thousands of miles...and the tears come streaming down your face
when you lose something you can't replace
when you love someone, but it goes to waste
could it be worse?i lost the purpose, the point...the inner motor that would drive me to extremes until i burned it up again and again and again...and i'm still here because something inside me makes me love myself...but i'm stuck wondering how to make it stop going to waste...lights will guide you home
and ignite your bones
and i will try to fix youi will try, starting now, to fix me.and high up above or down below
when you're too in love to let it go
but if you never try you'll never know
just what you're worthi'm too in love with protecting myself and i need to stop, stop it, stop it now...let go...let it all go...it's all over now...all the ugly past, all the things that happened to me, that were done to me, that i did to myself...if it give up and don't try now, i may never know what i'm worth, my inner strength...my perseverance despite the insanity...lights will guide you home
and ignite your bones
and i will try to fix youlet the light back in, no need to hide any longer...i can fix me.tears stream down on your face
when you lose something you cannot replace
tears stream down on your face
and on your face i...i've only lost time...that's all that cannot be replaced...that's...all...tears stream down on your face
i promise you i will learn from my mistakes
tears stream down on your face
and on your face i...i have written volumes on all my mistakes...the biggest mistake? to keep focusing on the mistakes and beating myself up over and over and over about them...to learn from them now? the lesson is to let go...lights will guide you home
and ignite your bones
and i will try to fix you...at 41...i will try...to fix me.

[lyrics thanks to coldplay]

tired...so tired...

4:14 am when i'm starting this. i spend so much time on the social networking war between facebook and google+ that i forget to blog...and i forget to journal...and...i forget to live.

i'm not sure why i'm awake right now...i should try and sleep again...i think it's because chris is finally coming home after being in kenya for the last 11 days...although he probably won't get back to ny until after 3pm with customs...and i, of course, have physical therapy at 4pm...so i have the feeling that we'll have a "hit and miss" with the phone call before he collapses from exhaustion...like i should be doing now.

i'm so unhappy right now. i mean not because of anything happening *right now* but overall. i need to make some major changes in my life. i've shoved the art to the background. my research is on hold while i figure out the when and where of my latest medical saga. i'm completely broke. my heart is heavy because the love of my life lives so far away. i'm a little over a week from my 41st birthday. someone told me i should consider botox. oh ok. is that covered by my insurance? physical therapy has been going ok but i'm wondering what this weekend's hospital stay for the hernia that cropped up while i'm dealing with the incisional hernia will do to my PT program.

i've been so bad at chronicling my life in greater detail than 140 character tweets and 520 character facebook status updates the last few years...when meanwhile i have paper journals and this blog that allows for a more full "writing as therapy" even if no one reads it at all.

well that's enough for the moment...if anything it's an attempt at a "restart" to this ten-year old blog...

after less than three hours of sleep, i'm wide awake thanks to the prescription of "v" that the doctor gave me for the back pain... that is, until the shots that are on the way... in which i might need more, as they are supposed to be painful -- depending on who you ask -- either during or two days after. of course my not sleeping well because "v" gives me insomnia and the travel may leave me with a cold... which will mean postponing it until that goes away. ugh. so i really need to try and sleep some more but the sun is open for business at my parent's house and there's no getting away from that. and i never sleep well the first night i'm in a different bed and this mattress is not my old one from the old house... and it's not my crappy one from my apartment... am i the princess and the pea, or what?

so tired... maybe i'd better just log off and try and get some more sleep... if i can?

after a while you stop marking the number of days it's been, the number of weeks, months, and even years...since you saw them that last time, the last time. they cease to stay at the forefront...they get shuffled in with the rest...those you lost in your 20s...in your 30s...in your 40s...sleight of hand,
jump off the end.
into a clear lake,
no one around.you hug yourself closely, tightly and you wish it were them instead. but there's no going back, you can't get those instances back, you can't get them back. and if you could get them back? would you change anything? could you change anything? would you be the same person that assumes that they will be there forever, or at least long past you? could you be anything else, honestly?just dragonflies,
flying to the side.
no one gets hurt,
you're doing nothing wrong.drink deeply, drink long...the only place you can see them is in dreaming...the only place you can cry is in water so no one wonders...slide your hand,
jump off the end.
the water's clear and innocent.
the water's clear and innocent.clear and innocent. remember that day?

[thanks to radiohead for the lyrics]

migraine season is just getting to be too annoying for words. if you go to an ER because the pain threatens to bore a hole in your head (by you), they tell you "well we know it's a migraine. we could give you a ct scan (again with the "i've had so many for so many things that i can be seen in other solar systems"...if it were still "2010," perhaps i could be that "second sun" that emerges at the end of the movie) but we know it's just a migraine. and the only things we can give you, you are allergic to and we can't give you narcotics."

i get so few migraines this bad a year that so WHAT if they give me a shot of a narcotic 4-5 times a year. but NO...in illinois they now shove a sheet of paper in your hands about things you can take there...and get this...HALDOL is on that sheet. yes, haldol...the major antipsychotic tranquilizer that can cause you neurological tics, uncontrollable drooling, and as close to the "thorazine shuffle" as you can get without taking actual thorazine. sure, that would probably make it better...you sure wouldn't remember the migraine. hell, you wouldn't even remember your name...

i'm allergic to, yes, benedryl [sp?], all the triptans (immetrix, etc), neurontin...in fact if the migraine abortant, fioricet, doesn't work for me, i'm screwed. my former go to drug midrin is off the market due to it never going through the FDA's efficacy tests (safety, yes, efficacy, no) because it's like 900 years old and there's SO MUCH efficacy ad hoc tests due to it being used SUCCESSFULLY for 900 years and the FDA didn't even have that as a rule (let alone exist...lol) when it went on the market...but, no, off the market because no one can afford to do the two year efficacy test (the only makers were generics because the patent was LONG gone), which would require it to be taken off the market while the tests were done, and then after that would simply allow all the other generics to manufacture it without paying...and no, we live in the world where they all just won't share cost so that they can all profit share...because there will always be ANOTHER generic that didn't play along to go run it for less....

and...blah, blah, blah, blah...

so i'm just sitting here with my head about to implode and trying to do anything to take my mind off of this because i can't sleep because fioricet has what in it? caffeine. and my head still pounds because it's storming and my head hates that. and i hate that. and i know better than to waste my time at the ER because they are jackasses (and i LOVE going there on a weekend night waiting in the waiting room forever with screaming and laughing drunks who fell and hit their heads while walking and are triaged before me because...well they hit their heads rather than the inside of their heads hitting them over and over and over...

so my choices are...stay up through the pain until i pass out from exhaustion...or go to the ER and get treated like a drug addict because i'm allergic to everything they give on their "list" for migraines...and that's all KINDS of fun...

lecture? or stay here and save the $40 in cab fare? oh as if i'm gonna get a cab at 2:45 am here within 3 hours...

guess i'm staying here.

yeah, yeah, the song landslide's been used lately on everything from glee to south park (seriously? how does a cartoon character - stan - LEAVE the show? was butters being too much of a diva?)...

but it reminds me of a complicated relationship...that, well, i've had all my life, literally...and one that even seven years of intense psychotherapy couldn't even begin to tease apart...too bad we never thought of this song...i took my love, i took it down
climbed a mountain and i turned around
and i saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
till the landslide brought me downthey wondered what landed me there, what took me to the place that in the end had me running out into the pouring rain as if it were the sun...oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
can the child within my heart rise above?
can i sail through the changing ocean tides?
can i handle the seasons of my life?the autumn of my life...can i handle this next one? maybe better than i could the others...autumn, the dying season...was always my favorite...the season of my birth...well, i've been afraid of changing
'cause i've built my life around you
but time makes you bolder
even children get older and i'm getting older tooan old friend told me tonight that it's the errors of omission that we carry with us from our parents, our families...the things we needed emotionally that we never got...and, frankly, never will...even if its not too late. as the therapist said "we've gone as far as we can and our time here has come to an end." the trouble is? no one has ever gone far enough...and no one ever will...who can? who can fit that bill when we can't even invoice it ourselves?oh, i'm getting older tooand there's no time for sorry. what would it mean if it was given anyway? the stupidest line in any movie is "love means never having to say you're sorry." love too often means that you can't ever possibly say your sorry. lord knows i've tried. i've tried to say that i'm sorry for all that i've fucked up, all that i am...but they disperse into the air as quickly as they are out of my mouth...a signal that it was all my fault, that it's always been all my fault...and that can't be true...i didn't raise myself. or did i?aw, take my love, take it down
aw, climb a mountain and turn around
and if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
well, the landslide bring it downand as i said tonight, there are horrors to be found wherever you look in this world...don't talk to me about beauty...not right now. don't be trite. because that's not what i'm talking about...

[thanks to stevie nicks for the lyrics]

1:10am and day 63 (?) of pneumona? i feel the dark clouds coming down around me and here we go around...and around and around. i have to ask myself why i'm even in illinois right now. i guess sick is sick anywhere but if i were in NY at least i'd have my sweet guy and my catties. and let's face it...it's not like i'm getting anything done...pneumonia = fevers, coughs that keep me up all night...but there's something else. something familiar, something dangerous. some days? i feel like i'm too sensitive for this life...

i'm kind of inventing my own genetics version of the kevin bacon game. well, ok, "the game" is what most people call genealogy. but, anyway, i never ventured out too far into my family tree until now. it seems like we've got just about every major religion covered -- so much so that to get both my mother's and father's sides together we either achieve world peace or launch (yet another) holy war. of course while i'm at it, i'm probably boring thousands of people on facebook that happen to see my comments in their home feed.

so where am i now? not with regard to my family...just in general. i really don't know. i know that i'm tired of being sick. and i'm tired of people dying. however the reasons why i'm in illinois right now rather than new york seem to dwindle every day and i wonder if i care anymore about the things that have me turning circles? i just don't know that i do. but is that lack of caring because the roulette wheel landed too far from fate's number for me or just (*just*) because i'm worn out?

it's a silly thing to mention but does it mean anything that i grabbed the proof copy of a survey and on the back wrote up a list of things that i need to *manufacture* in an online game to level up...thus meaning that i've got to go print out that page again. a seemingly small penalty but why haven't i done that yet despite it happening over 24 hours ago?

where does that leave me?

new york is lonely. i wish we could live in the city but we're in the nyc "greater area" right now because it's where chris works...five minues from the bronx but nowhere close to a train...and i have no car.

my shrink fired me after the stunt i pulled in september and since then, even in illinois, i haven't had that support structure in so long that i can hardly remember what it was like. and it seems that all the good programs and therapists are in the city and require the 4x/week kind of analysis...which is great but if i do it? that would become my life. i thought about calling columbia tomorrow about their program there...not sure it's feasible but i'm not sure that NOT doing it is feasible either. especially when my mind flashes...when my mind thinks of the bridge, THAT bridge...tappan zee...and how close we are to it.

black clouds in my brain...eyes dialated...the world seems to cave in and i think of that free fall...i think of it all day. i think of it all day...day after day.