Big Girls Don't Cry

Hands won't stop shaking. Jaw is killing me. It feels like I must have been grinding my teeth all night only I know I wasn't. This is just how I feel. I don't understand. My steroids intake has been halved. Why are these side effects coming back so hard? I know I shouldn't complain. I don't have any of the emotional symptoms that plagued me so much a month ago. I can engage in conversation. I have my mental faculties pretty much down. I am not screaming at people. I am not angry. I am not depressed more than I should be given the current circumstances.

These physical side effects started plaguing me before the trip and then hardcore on the trip. Despite them I had a great time. So great in fact that I believed I could return without my bad attitude and negativity returning with me. Apparently not. I just had a doctor's appointment. It was so depressing. I might be in remission, pending some more test results but again that is a false victory. It's not the remission I lived for the better part of 8 years. Instead it is the continuation of the steroids for another few months and then a taper while we increase the immuno-modulater, the chemo, which I will be on until I decide to have children. That's just devastating to me. I am in the 10-15% of people whose colitis gets worse than what they were diagnosed with. Great. I am never in the 10-15% of anything. I am always average or slightly above or below. Of course in this one stupid circumstance I am suddenly 'special.' It pisses me off because I keep waiting for this all to be done and over with and it keeps fucking kicking me in the ass. There is no end in sight. There is no end at all.

And talking about long term kills me. I don't do long term anything. It takes the living out of my life knowing how it's going to look; it makes it all feel pointless. It's like knowing what I am going to get for Christmas every year until I die and where I am going to live and who I am going to marry and how many kids I am going to have and whether I am going to fullfill all the dreams I have and I don't know ... I just hate it. I don't want to know what's in the crystal ball of my life. I am an adventurer. I want forks in the road and choices and surprises. I am not a long-term planner. There's a reason I haven't made any long term committments. And now I have one. I have to have a long term plan if I want any of this other stuff for my life. It's the ultimate catch-22. If I want any of these other unknowns I have to have this one known. It sucks. It pisses me off. It means this isn't over yet and will never be over. It's official. And I just had such a blissful week where nothing of this hell existed except for the pill-popping. I slept in the sun. I did yoga. I ran on the beach. I body surfed in the waves. I had three massages. I made new friends. I laughed my ass off. I had a pina colada, the best one I have ever had, made with real coconut. And I thought I'd come back with the coconut taste in my mouth. Insteasd I can only taste the bitter, chalkiness of the steroids that no sweet taste can ever diffuse. And I am just so physically uncomfortable that I can't be asleep on the beach or on a hammock or in my mosquito net covered bed that makes me feel like a princess; I can only be here, back on my island, jaw clenched with the anticipation of the next disappointment.

Every day in yoga we set our intention and mine is always to be strong. I am sick of it. It's hard to be strong when there is no end in sight. It's so easy to maintain strength for an ascertainable distance, the 26.2 miles of a marathon or the 3 months and 2 days of bar review and the bar examination. It is hard to just be strong for strength's sake, knowing you can never, never let your guard down. I wish I was the type of person that was okay with giving up or falling apart. But I'm a big girl and I came to work today and I will be at work tomorrow and I will rally and do what needs to be done jaw clenched the whole time hoping for a good night's sleep and reprieve in my dreams.

Surfer Girl

I got some great results yesterday. In fact I was told that I looked great physically on the outside and the inside; my colonoscopy revealed that I am almost healed. On the one hand it's great. I am out of the woods. But on the other hand, it isn't my body that healed itself. It was the drugs. Our agressive tactics worked. But the word 'healed' is really a misnomer; I am not healed. This is a chronic illness that only has one cure, removal of the entire large intestine. Nobody advised cutting back or completely ceasing the fun drugs that I am currently taking. But for the first time in months, I woke up today craving coffee and I took out my old friend, my Mr. Coffee coffee-maker that's been in hiding since August and made a pot of coffee, encouraging. I missed it. And I missed wanting it. Mornings felt weird without either my desire for coffee or actually having coffee. I wanted coffee viagra. It's been strange to have completely different likes and dislikes and habits and needs for the past three months. And I just got one back.
But I am confused. I don't know how to feel about these 'great' results besides taking solace in the fact that I have a great doctor who got me out of the woods. But I still don't know what the rest of my life will be like. Will it ever be back to where it was before this happened? Is remission in my future? It didn't seem very likely at the last 'state of the union' meeting between my doctor, my dad and I. At that meeting we discussed my three long term life options, none of which appealed to me. And after the horror and hell and insanity of the past three months, could I be ever the person I was before this happen. After this wake-up call. I'm afraid I'll be forever looking over my shoulder and paranoid about every slight pain or minor physical abnormality I experience. This is a hollow victory if it even is a victory.

So I leave for Mexico today. I am going back to the same place I went last year a week before my 29th birthday conveniently a wedged right between the time Illinois got married and my grandmother went into the hospital. On the plane I wrote:


"I am trying to let go of the sadness, resentment, anger, bitterness, victim feelings, heartache, despair, betrayal. I want to shrug it all off and live without. Now the next question is who am I without that. That's been who I am what I've done my identity above all to myself for the past ten months. It will be difficult to change who I perceive myself to be and scary to go out into the world expecting life and business as usual instead of the worst, most tragic things to happen to me. A challenge. I don't want anymore. I want to sit back and relax. I am out of energy. I am out of fight. I want life to be like the ocean. Waves coming in and out regularly, soothingly. Expectantly. Normally. I want the ebbs and flows of a regular life to return to me. I want this tug in my heart to go away. I want to to live in the present and no longer in in the past. I want. I want. I want."


I can't say I achieved "normalcy" in the past year since then but I have let go of all of the crippling, defeatist feelings that characterized where I was last year. I am in the present tense and not living in the past nor through the victim filter. My identity to myself has changed. I have accepted that I am not in control yet I continue to box on bobbing and weaving my way through this new set of challenges, still hoping for the regularity of waves coming in and coming out but knowing that there are devastating tsunamis and even waves are not always predictable like clockwork. And when life is predictable you stop really living; life is on auto-pilot and you cease noticing and reacting and absorbing. It is when life's circumstances take you out of your norm that you get a chance to actually live. That's when you are most aware. You get the chance to strut your stuff and use your tools and show yourself what you've got. That's called surfing I think. Maybe I'll try some of that this week.

Me and My Crazy World

We celebrated my grandfather's 100th birthday today. The family met at Katz' Deli on Houston Street and ordered all of his favorite food and had a massive feast where hot pastrami, corned beef, well done fries, celray soda, and some other unspellable Jewish delicacies abounded. We did it up in his honor. My grandfather died in August of 2000. He was 93. This was my dad's idea. My uncle came up from D.C. for it. The rest of us are pretty local but we cleared our schedules too. We didn't say anything in remembrance. We just hung out and ate.


I love Katz' but if the Second Avenue Deli was still open, we would have gone there and I would have loved that even more but I am of mixed minds about celebrating my grandfather's 100th birthday at all because he's dead. Remembrance is a good thing. But we didn't even talk about him. We just hung out. I know my feelings of confusion about the whole thing are tied in to how I am getting a taste of how mortality feels. I tried to have the death talk with my brother yesterday but it didn't go too well. I have had it with my sister, V., A., and AC so far with varying levels of success and stunningly different reactions.

K. says maybe I am not dying but living for the first time. D. said the same thing last night. She said being around me lately is inspiring. Not because I am sick and my spirit is prevailing or any corny bullshit like that but that I am living the way I want to be living. I am being honest with other people and with myself and letting my guard down and letting people in. And the writing. She is inspired that I am doing so much of it that I am finally in a position where my brain is free and open and I am going in there and digging and expressing and creating and I finally feel like I can stretch out in every direction, my world is no longer too small for me; it finally fits in that there's so much room to grow and it shows.


She was shocked when after dinner I asked her to, "put me into a cab," words that have never come out of my mouth. Never. I finally know that I not omnipotent or immortal and I had to go home and not to the party she was going to. As much as I wanted to hang out with her all night, I knew my physical limitations. Despite being a short subway ride from home and a long but beautiful walk home, we were in Tribeca, I asked her to put me in a cab. And she was impressed. And I was impressed too. Then when I got home, I was brushing my teeth when I heard my phone ring. Without even looking at the caller ID, I answered, "I'm okay, I'm home." That's my reality and it's alright. I normally wouldn't have answered, knowing it was her calling to see if I was okay would have been annoyed that she would even question that I wouldn't be okay. But it's cool. It's my reality. It always should have been. Even before this 'awakening' I haven't always been okay and it is okay if others know that and do things for me because of that. I do for them without thinking so I should be cool accepting it.

So back to my grandfather. He was a difficult man. It might be a good thing that there was no talk about him at his 'birthday' party today because it might have gotten ugly. We all had strong feelings about him some of which have become rosier since he's been gone, some of which remained the same. But, he was a man who wanted the best for his kids and despite maybe not knowing how to be a father in the modern sense, he was a provider who with his sixth grade education drove the M15 bus for a living and took every extra shift he could to put food on his family's table. He wanted to ensure his children were educated and would have a better life than he did. He succeeded.

So here I am maybe living for the first time; albeit in some kind of perverted Emerald City where my world is in color when it was always in black and white while physically who the hell knows what lies ahead. Either way, I am reminded of this quote from John Adams that I absolutely love, "Today we are politicians and statesmen so that our children can be doctors and lawyers so that their children may be artists and musicians." Of course, my bus-driving son of Eastern European immigrants grandfather was no statesman or politician. But he did everything he was capable of for his children to have more opportunity than he did which is why that quote speaks to me. And my father is a lawyer. Maybe this is really a rebirth for me and I am not going anywhere. Maybe I will finally be a writer, an artist, like the quote. Who knows. At this point, anything feels possible.

Like A Virgin

So here I am. 30 years old. I live in a rental one-bedroom apartment alone. I have a futon instead of a couch. My job is contract attorney so I am never doing the same thing for too long. I am single. The amount of pairs of shoes I own is conversely proportionate to the amount of financial future planning I have done. I have absolutely no responsibility except to myself. It cracks me up. It's beyond liberating not to have to answer anyone in any area of my life. I never knew it could be like this. I can keep odd hours. I can do whatever I want. I am living the dream life of a teenager, which is kind of what I am, an adult teenager. I had to pare down my existence to get here, to get back here, I should say. I had to clean out my closet. My hopes and dreams and true self were buried in the back.

Getting past the twenties was key. Even in my twenties I wasn't an "I should be doing ..." person. But I did scurry around and there was angst in the knowledge that I wasn't doing certain things; like I never had the job that I wanted. As I've said before I always compared love and work. I spent my twenties dreaming about finding 'the one' job and staying in it forever, dreaming of days passing like minutes because I was so fullfilled living my passion. Well with all the moving around I did from job to job I never let myself in on what that passion was. And I knew deep down the entire time. But I didn't want to know. It was something that scared me. It was something that had no guarantee of success. It was something that would have necessitated me checking myself in so many ways that I did not have the strength ability confidence or awareness to do. So I kept adding things to my life to hide the fact that I wasn't doing or living the life I wanted to. Change jobs, change apartments, buy shoes, cut my hair, dye my hair red, shopping, traveling, boyfriends, 'boyfriends,' whatever, I made many committments to things that I knew weren't what I really wanted to be doing and now I have cleaned out my closet and simplified my life and found my secret box of hopes and dreams in the back. That is all I am keeping from the overloaded, disorganized closet. When I add things they will be carefully chosen; they will be the right things.

It's hard to throw out your favorite pair of jeans even when they don't fit you anymore. It's hard to get rid of someone or something in your life that has always made you safe but safe in a cloying way; not in a way that encourages growth and finally allows you to fly. And that's where I am now. Trying to finally fly. Trying to maintain focus trying to keep my eye on the ball.

So my transient existence with no stability or security is giving me what I never had before. It's giving me faith in myself. It's fulfilling me. It's making me finally feel stable and secure because I know that I can take my life day by day. I can support myself. Yet, I can change course and it won't be a big commotion. It won't be me accepting another full time job because I think it's the 'right thing' and then waiting for the inevitable drowning feeling I get when I start to suffocate from being in the wrong environment. It won't be dating someone so I can say I have a boyfriend. Right now it's me spending my days using my right hand clicking away doing mindless work leaving me to be the arbiter of how to flex and strengthen and stretch my mind. And I am taking full advantage. I am writing. And that's all I've ever wanted to do. And when I do it, days pass like minutes and I am fullfilled and living my passion. Here I am.

Running Down A Dream

Last times are confusing. You don't always know in advance that this is the last kiss the last good bye the last time you are having sex with someone the last time you will ever see someone. Sometimes I think it's good that you don't know. It might put too much pressure on the moment. You might lose the moment in the knowledge that this is the last time. But without the knowledge you forget to savor this thing that you love or are never going to have ever again. This person who you will no longer be able to call, "baby," or touch ever again without intention and awareness or this thing you will never be able to do again.

Staten Island and I had the best break-up that way. I was in a cab on my way home and we were on the phone having a screaming fight. When we were in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge the phone cut out and neither one of us called the other one back. That was our break-up. That was the last time we ever spoke. There was no foresight, no sentimentality involved. It just ...happened. You couldn't ask for a more perfect break-up.

But I wish I had known my last marathon was my last marathon. I am hoping it isn't my last marathon but I wish I had known it was last marathon for awhile, for the foreseeable future at least which right now feels tantamount to forever. I thought running marathons was something I'd always do and always be able to do. I crave the day after euphoria when everything is always right in my world and I am on a cloud of happiness of challenges met and huge endeavors fullfilled and body used up where relaxation is possible and deserved and I am just so happy.

As it turns out, running marathons isn't something I'd always do. I don't like crossing it off my list when I think of what makes up who I am, you know a reader, a writer, a lawyer, a sister, a daughter, a friend....etc. Am I still a runner? That was in the front of the list. It came before lawyer did on the list. And now? I don't know. I miss it so much it's hard to think about. I miss the breeze in my face. I miss the perfect vortex of the perfect song playing at the perfect moment. I miss strong legs and lungs taking me up Cat Hill in Central Park. I miss running over the Brooklyn Bridge and seeing the entire island of Manhattan on a clear day. I miss feeling like a warrior princess running through snow storms and rain and hail so hard it leaves marks in my face. I miss seeing a finish line and finding my reserve tank to hustle me through it. I miss setting up my day with a run. I miss night time runs when I would get the day out of my system with a run and be able to fall asleep with a clean mind. I miss training for a marathon and crossing training runs off the calendar and having something to frame my life around.

I want to run one more marathon. Just one. I want to prove to myself that I can. It would be the ultimate way to prove to myself that I am still myself, my best self, the self I like the most, my strong invincible self, the self who doesn't take no for an answer. Then I can be sick. Then I will know I am not weak. And I want to fully absorb that last marathon that I will know is my last. I want the crazy morning at Fort Wadsworth with runners doing all kinds of rituals before the run like praying and reading the New York Times and sleeping and smoking and eating weird combinations of foods and wearing weird combinations of clothing they will discard before they start running. Running over the Verrazano Bridge where it is like a game of Tetris because people of all different speeds are running together and you are bobbing and weaving to get through them. Running through Fort Greene where choirs and live music abound. Running over the 59th street bridge and hearing the roar of people when you exit on to first avenue. Running the marathon is a sensory overload of the best kind. And I want one more.

I wish I hadn't taken advantage of my strong knees and strong legs and endurance and equilibrium when I had it. I wish I had known my last was my last and I could have given running a proper good-bye. I wish I wish I wish I wish I wish. I just wish I could have said good-bye

Someone To Watch Over Me

When did guys my age stop wearing chain wallets and start sporting wedding bands. It's starting to freak me out. It's like they are no longer guys my age. They are now of another plane, another life, they have surpassed me and I am left with their younger brothers with the chain wallets. I don't notice the phenomenon with women so much. But maybe that's because I am not checking them out on the subway. It never ceases to amaze me when I see a seemingly normal guy my age wearing a cool outfit looking cute and then I see the ring. It's jarring to me. Maybe if I had more contact with married people that were not my parents and their friends I would be less weirded out by the whole thing. Suddenly this guy who looks like my peer transforms into middle-aged, responsible, married guy as soon as I see the ring. And I feel young and weird and strange for checking him out and then stranger for recoiling the way I do.

I don't fall into the archaic stereotype of the lonely, single 30-old woman with the cats, if there is one anymore. I like living alone. I like my space. My life is very full right now. Yet I have never been further from being in a relationship. So marriage seems to tantamount to Mars. I can imagine myself married right now about as much as I can imagine myself as a man. Impossible. I have no frame of reference for it. It's very strange. I wonder if I am the strange one locked in my present tense transient sick world. This is an existence I never would have expected for myself ten years ago, for example, yet I never was one to plan my future and my life out. I just thought things would unfold the way they do for everyone else. But I guess you have to be proactive and you have to want it and make it happen, which I haven't.

Things have never unfolded for me the way they do for everyone else and I have never been proactive about those types of things. I never remember that nothing 'normal' happens for me when I expect my future will be 'normal,' and everything will 'fall into place.' I have to make an effort to make the normal things happen; they don't come naturally to me. I didn't want to go to college straight from high school. My dad was appalled. College didn't feel right to me. I wasn't ready. I had absolutely no desire and I didn't buy into the aspirations my parents had for my future or feel any competition with my peers or have any fear of security in my future. I just didn't want to go and didn't get why that was weird or why my parents were so frustrated by my point of view.

D reminded me yesterday that I am really going at it alone with this sick thing; i.e.; that I don't have a boyfriend to hold my hand. And I don't. But I couldn't imagine having a boyfriend right now. It might because no boyfriend I ever had would have taken care of me in this my time of need. They would have made me feel needy and selfish and emotional instead of being a silent strength saving me from my fear and lonliness and helping me around the house. Instead I have my mom and my friends for that. Monday night my mom slept over after I prepped all day for the colonoscopy and Tuesday after we left Roosevelt/St.Luke's with me high on demerol and doubled over in pain she took me home, made me french toast and I went to bed. As I slept, dishes were washed, laundry was done, pictures were hung. All the while there was a scarf placed under the crack of my bedroom door so I could sleep in quiet. If that's what a husband is like, then I want one. But I have never had a boyfriend that would have been proactive and anticipated my needs and not made me ask for it and then grumbled while they were doing it. Is that why I can't imagine myself married? It's the whole 'in sickness and health' thing that gets me. All my boyfriends are the kind of guys you want to go out drinking with. They are all fun and funny. They make me laugh. They are all 'the center of attention' kind of guys. But then whenever something serious happens and I need them, they are nowhere to be found or what I am asking or needing is like the biggest deal in the world to them. And it really never is. When I had the abortion, for example, Brooklyn left me alone the night before to go to a concert with his friend and then came back to my dorm room drunk off his ass with his friend who slept on my floor, also drunk. He had to go to that concert. He didn't consider cancelling. And the same goes for after the abortion. He 'had' to go home right after. He did not stay with me to see if I was okay. He left me to my own devices and I needed him with me. I tolerated it because he was fun. And we had already been together for awhile. And I was in love. But now when I think of relationships and marriage I think of these experiences and they are all I know of relationships. And I have finally learned that a fun guy to go out drinking with isn't enough. But I don't know any of those sensible, appropriate guys. Or maybe I haven't yet trained myself to like them. So why would I covet a big diamond ring on my left hand?

I just wish all the cute guys I saw around weren't wearing one.

When You Were Young

I love to shop. And part of what I love about shopping is the instant gratification. If it's grocery shopping I've just done, I ransack through the bags taste-testing while restocking the fridge. If it's clothing, I wear the new item immediately; if it's shoes, I usually wear them out of the store. But I haven't tried on 30 yet. It's my new age. And I haven't been wearing it. I was like this when I became a lawyer. Yes, I actually was a lawyer, just like I actually am 30 but I didn't feel it. I couldn't own it. It wasn't me yet. I didn't wear it. And it was new; so unlike me not to want to wear something new. I was 24 and went out a lot and was constantly meeting people who asked what I did. I fumbled around with different answers. I was a lawyer, technically. But I didn't feel like one. I wasn't wearing it. I was still wearing student, or kid, or irresponsible. I was unemployed, then I was second seating my dad's partner on a trial, then I was actually litigating but I wasn't formally admitted and hated my job and thought I sucked at it anyway so I didn't feel authentic calling myself a lawyer. A lawyer knows what she's doing. A lawyer is a professional. A lawyer is also my dad. A lawyer just wasn't me.

And 30 feels the same. I have taken it out of the closet and kind of held it up against myself in front of the mirror but I haven't really tried it on and I definitely can't wear it out of the house yet. Not to say that I am not thrilled to be out of my twenties. It was about time.

I never had a 20th birthday. I had two 21st birthdays. My first 21st birthday took place at Rolf's, this German restaurant in the east 20's. We said it was my 21st and I drank for free all night. I don't remember the meal at all. In fact I don't remember much of the night except the crazy, eccentric decor in Rolf's and the constant toasting to my being 'legal.' My 30th birthday was one of the best nights of my life. I savored every moment.

I feel like I am 20 again, like a clean slate before the frenetic chaos of my twenties. My twenties were fraught with dramatic break-ups and make-ups, crazy runs after crazy nights, marathons, all-nighters of all different kinds: driving all night, drinking all night, all-night conversations about nothing and everything, traveling all night, doing drugs all night, seeing many a last call and after-partying until daylight and ending up at a diner, studying all night, writing all night, graduating college, going to law school, studying for the bar exam and then passing it on the first try - a miracle, being in love, getting my heart broken, living on my own, getting to live with my best friends, moving in with a boyfriend, being pregnant and actually wanting to keep the baby, being engaged, losing everything, making money, making enough money to live a certain way, finally having that job that enabled me to own and wear the fact that I was a lawyer. But I was never settled. I never knew who I was. I was constantly looking over my shoulder, restless and rushed, making snap decisions about my next move, feeling like there was never enough time to do everything because I wanted to do everything, really because I had no idea what I wanted to do.


And now I am 30. And I feel clean and brand new, as if my crazy twenties never happened. Because my twenties steered me way off course and all over the map. I crammed everything in to my twenties. I ran around literally and figuratively and metaphorically in every direction and back again like a hamster in a cage and now I am back to square one. My twenties was me frantic, standing in front of a mirror, clothing everywhere trying on different outfits thinking some might actually be the outfit until I turn a certain way in the mirror and suddenly this perfect outfit makes me look fat and I rip it off and put on something else and it's all wrong too and nothing looks right and I hate what I see in the mirror and it's New Year's Eve and I am going to a fabulous party and it's 11:00pm and supposedly there are going to be a lot of hot guys there. I am back to where I was when I turned 20, before the pressure and mania and chaos of my twenties; only I never turned 20. I turned 21 twice. Maybe that's what 30 is, another chance; a chance to take it slow, do it right because there really is no pressure, only the pressure you imagine. So like what you see in the mirror, think about what you're doing and what you want and like and actually savor the moment. That being said, I wouldn't change a thing about my twenties. I loved every moment; it was all necessary. It got me here.

Life Is a Highway

I was so happy as I massaged ICY HOT into my torn right hamstring and the fleshy part of my right side just below my waist after yoga today. My sore muscles were exploding with pleasure and pain as I kneaded the cream in, massaging as hard as I could. And not only did I do Bikram yoga today, I also did a 9:30 spin class. I have never been good with moderation of any kind. I love to feel my body, pleasure and pain, as long as I am in control. It makes me feel alive and strong and real. The alternative is my brain and the crazy thoughts continuously racing around it in circles like NASCAR. I push my body so hard I can't think about anything but pushing. My brain shuts off. It gets a chance to unwind and relax. Pushing myself physically is better than the pints of ice cream I used to down as a teenager or the large quantities of alcohol and drugs and cigarettes I graduated to later on.

I used to run too. I got a lot of slack for my running. Boyfriends accused me of not making them a priority. My dad thought I did it at the expense of studying. Most other people just thought I was nuts. I would run a 20-miler on a Saturday morning at 7:00am no problem. Sometimes I would even go out drinking the night before. I like to feel strong. I like to feel like I am living to the fullest in every way I can. I like to push myself in every way possible. Before my first marathon, I wrote, "[p]eople ask me all the time why I am running the marathon. I never know how to answer. Is it to know that I am in the ultimate shape? Is it a means to an escape? I know there are other means of escape; sleeping, drinking, getting lost in other people's lives via reading or hanging out with friends. None of them sounds as official or as necessary as when I say, 'I have to run now.' I am a marathon runner, a marathoness and a runner runs to escape; the faster and farther the better. Running makes me more aware of my body and the connection between body and mind. Even though I am not using my mind, it is getting stronger while I run. During my second long run of 15 miles, by mile 4 I have gigantic pains in my arches. By the sixth mile, I take off my socks to make sure they are not rolled up. They are covered in blood. I throw them out. At mile 7, I take out my insoles and examine the huge holes in my arches. There is a severe heat warning and we get sprayed with water frequently. Throughout there are bagels, power gel, gatorade and water available. I try a chocolate power gel. Disgusting. I eat a raisin bagel before running to the bathroom for the third time. After completing the 15, I change into sandals and limp to the train a silly grin on my face. I just ran 15 miles for the first time!"

Now with this disease, things are getting very tricky. I can no longer run, a subject which is too painful for me to delve into. The drugs have taken away what little equilibrium I had. But I have Bikram yoga and I can spin. The doctors say exercise helps burn off the excess manic energy the steroids give me which means I can cut back on the Klonopin. That's a good thing. It also makes me feel like myself. That's a good thing too. But, I did end up in the emergency room just last weekend after passing out after a yoga class. I got two huge bags of electrolytes pumped into me. Intense exercise, the kind I crave is not good for someone who is perpetually dehydrated. But I need to feel real. I need the tangible. I need I need I need.

The newest way this need to feel real and alive is manifesting itself is a safer one. I don't think it's replacing my need for crazy physical exertion but it is tempering it. It's physical contact with others. I have always been very standoffish in that regard. I hate kissing and hugging as a form of greeting and whenever people in conversation would touch my leg or my shoulder for emphasis I always flinched. Now I am becoming affectionate and I love hugs. I love to feel other people. It reminds me I am alive. It makes me feel real. I love the necklaces I got from my angels and my parents so I can touch the people I love whenever I want to. I wish I had gotten the one I asked for from my sister and brother because I desparately want their special powers to be tangible and touchable whenever I need to channel them and they are not around. I am still a cerebral person. I am still a loner. I am still very private and guarded. But one more barrier between me and others has been removed. There is now another way off my island. A hug.

Have You Ever Needed Someone

I want to be 16 again and be lying in my bed with AC and know that there is no better place to be in the entire world. Those were the days; the two of us in bed in my parent's country house in Pennsylvania after a keg party when we were both learning how to drink. We'd have pre-partied at my house sucking down alternating vodka and water with straws out of ice cube trays and race to see who'd finish first. Beer took time getting used to. After arriving at the party and paying our $2, we'd each get our first cup of beer, usually in a big red cup and take it outside and start the ritual. We are on wooden steps leading down from the porch, amazed at the fact that we are at a party with all of the older kids, specifically the hot 18-year old lifeguards whom looking at was like looking directly at the sun. We'd each light a cigarette; hers a Newport and mine a Marlboro Red. We'd exhale and take the first sip of beer. Yech. We'd take another drag and take another sip of beer. And another. And another. After cup two or three, we'd peek inside from our perch outside on the steps and people watch. Eventually, when we had enough liquid courage in us we'd mingle. We were a great team.

We still are a great team.

AC came over to President Street where I lived with Illinois to help me gather up my stuff that first night. She fortuitously had an empty room available when Illinois and I broke up. Before I could bear actually packing and moving out of President Street, she came over after her brother, R. dropped me off from our night in Pennsylvania after he rescued me and took me to my sister. She helped me pick out the necessities to get me through the first night. It was a horrific experience. In the movie version a la Bridget Jones Diary 'Don't Leave Me This Way,' by Thelma Houston is blasting and instead of being one of the most pathetic moments in my life, it is a moment of female empowerment and strength and a group of dancers come out opening and closing drawers and packing while singing and dancing backup to my song.

In reality, it was the opposite of that. Watching me so unglued made AC cry. I scared her. I scared myself. She arrived and I was frantic. I was screaming and crying and hysterical. I was slamming drawers and cursing when I saw what was in them; his stuff, our stuff intermingled, I would announce, "matches from Magnetic Field, ASSHOLE," and slam the drawer closed or, "that's my FUCKING cellphone charger, get that away from his swiss army knife," and throw the swiss army knife. I was wild. She watched. She didn't know what to do. I was glad she was there because I couldn't be alone. My mind was disconnecting from my body and I was losing control just acting, raging, muttering, pacing. If I had been alone my mania and rage would have compelled me to pull out my hair to feel some other sort of pain or maybe break every dish and roll my heaving sobbing self dramatically into the shards.

But she was there.

And she asked me what I wanted to take with me to her place that would make me happy. I pointed to the "The world is my porkchop" postcard on the fridge and the magnet that I had just bought that said, "Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over it became a butterfly." She noiselessly put them into her pocket while I carried on. We left and brought my necessities home, to her place. Then she and her brother and I went back to President Street to bring my bed and a suitcase to AC's apartment and they took me out to dinner. I can't say I slept like a baby that first night. I don't remember going to bed that first night in her place, in my new room, in my bed that she and her brother R, made up for me. But I couldn't imagine a better place for me to heal.

The first few months were convalescence for me. I was recovering. Yet I felt at home and safe for the first time in years. Living there felt the same way as sleeping at my parent's house on Christmas Eve night when the whole family is together. Safe, protected from anything that could ever hurt me and unconditionally loved with no strings and with a lot of care and awareness.

AC and I are mirror images in our emotional style. We are not pursuers, we are distancers; we give each other space because we need it ourselves. We are not gushy and are understated when it comes to expressing how we feel about each other. But it's always there. Part of our connection is having that in common and seeing it in each other. We are always on the same page even when we're not. Our connection is primal, it is below gut level, below judgement, below thought. I can be in my head when I am with her without filter; I can never say too much, I can never say anything wrong. We are mirror images of each other in a special way which allows me to say anything to her, she will listen constructively to my every whim and every thought and give a completely honest response which might be disaproving yet never judges and always ends in complete support of me.

If I could be anywhere right now, I would be 16 years old and lying in the safe cocoon of my bed with AC talking about boys.

Don't Let Me Get Me

I keep complaining to K. about how I am not getting what I need from others. I know they have no idea what I am going through. How can they. They are my peers, they are young. They don't know about immortality and suddenly having to make untenable choices that will effect your entire future. This is scary to them. They feel like I must be different than I was and therefore they feel like they can't act the same.

They don't know about needing to make an excel spreadsheet to ascertain when to take what drug because I am on so many. Two I take at only bedtime. One I take twice a day, another I take four of twice a day. One I take every morning except for Monday, Wednesday and Friday where I take two. One I take four times a day. One I take three times a day. One I take once a day but only at night. And the last is discretionary; two before bed and one in the morning and the discretionary part is midday. I don't have them in front of me so I know I am missing one or two. The part that makes it really fun is that some you can't take within an hour or so of each other which is impossible sometimes or one will require water or a small meal and another that I need to take at the same time requires an empty stomach.

The friends who have given me levity are saving me. When I was in and out of the hospital and at orange high alert level and taking all of the uncomfortable tests, S. texted me, "Feel better, and think of it this way, bet no one else we know got it up the ass today!" Despite having no viable veins left and a fever of 102 and just being in dire straights all around, that made me laugh; and I needed to laugh. When I had my 'state of the union' doctor's appointment last Thursday and was given my three choices for the rest of my life, 1) removal of my entire colon; 2) the steroids, or 3) the chemo-like drug that causes birth defects, C. wrote,"fuckin..' a" - are you home? do you want company tonight? I think you are probably going to have to become a regular smoker of the green stuff." She validated the seriousness of the situation without treating me like I was going to break. ..n..n ..nMy favorite email exchange was between BE and I last weekend when we were coordinating our friend A..'s big 30th birthday present. Obviously there had to be some sentimental aspect, we had to drop some serious dough and we all had to agree. I was at my most crazy but BE got in there with me and worked with me: ..n..n..n..nFrom Briana to BE:..nSorry i am being difficult. i feel like the grinch. it isn..'t that i don..'t love A. or want to make the effort but I can..'t do it right now. my body..'s all fucked up and i am grumpy and ..nannoyed and all side-effected out and feel like complete shit. i am sorry to always be complaining and no fun. i am starting to..n hate myself and how i am treating other people. i think i am dying. anyway, i love you b ..n..n ..nFrom BE to Briana:..n..nGrinchiana, I have been racking my head for days on this opening song and your split second suggestion is the best thing I have so ..n",1]);//-->"fuckin' a" - are you home? do you want company tonight? I think you are probably going to have to become a regular smoker of the green stuff." She validated the seriousness of the situation without treating me like I was going to break.

My favorite email exchange was between BE and I last weekend when we were coordinating our friend A's big 30th birthday present. Obviously there had to be some sentimental aspect, we had to drop some serious dough and we all had to agree. I was at my most crazy but BE got in there with me and worked with me:
From Briana to BE:
Sorry i am being difficult. i feel like the grinch. it isn't that i don't love A. or want to make the effort but I can't do it right now. my body's all fucked up and i am grumpy and annoyed and all side-effected out and feel like complete shit. i am sorry to always be complaining and no fun. i am starting to hate myself and how i am treating other people. i think i am dying. anyway, i love you b

From BE to Briana:
Grinchiana, I have been racking my head for days on this opening song and your split second suggestion is the best thing I have so far! So please belligerantly rattle of some more for the CD..'s and ..nwe..'re set ;) ..nherman dont die before you get me those songs, thanks! ..nBE ..n..nFrom Briana to BE:..nAs for the toast, let..'s wait on the xanax kicking in otherwise the toast will sound like the one made by Adam Sandler in the beginning ..nof the Wedding Singer and I don..'t think anyone wants that. love,b..n..n..nSo many people are keeping their distance from me or from it. It..'s hard because everyone asks if I need anything. I want to be like, "I want you to stop acting so weird! It..'s me .... don..'t talk to me about glasses being half full or having faith in modern medicine or how strong I am or how I should be positive," I don..'t want any of that shit. Let..'s go out and get a drink or something. Let me watch you drink. ..n..n ..nI am not being negative about it but it isn..'t something I am happy about so I would prefer not to hear these canned responses that do not address where I am. I know I am going to get through it. I know I am strong. I know I am not going to die. I know it could be worse. But be here with me. I am so lonely and isolated in it. That is where the challenges are. It sucks that my health is precarious right now but I got some good doctors working on me. What I need is from my friends is to jump in here with me for a minute and hang out with the fear and listen to me talk about it and accept that there is nothing they can do to help, no wise words that will change reality. And continue to talk to me about your life. I miss hearing about it. It isn..'t all about me! I am sick of myself. I want gossip. I want to be included in your life too; I won..'t think it..'s frivolous compared to mine. I want to hear about you and the funny/shitty/annoying thing that happened to you today. And speaking of frivolous, my birthday is two weeks from today. Since I..'m sick I can ask. I want cupcakes. I want to be taken out to dinner. I want sexy lingerie. I want anything that isn..'t catscans or colonoscopies or hospital gowns or blood tests or daily doctor..'s visits or side effects or prescriptions or blood pressure tests or sympathetic looks from other patients or referrals to other doctors or not seeing an end in sight...n",1]);//-->far! So please belligerently rattle off some more for the CD's and we're set ;)
herman don't die before you get me those songs, thanks!
BE
From Briana to BE:
As for the toast, let's wait on the xanax kicking in otherwise the toast will sound like the one made by Adam Sandler in the beginning of the Wedding Singer and I don't think anyone wants that. love,b
So many people are keeping their distance from me or from it. It's hard because everyone asks if I need anything. I want to be like, "I want you to stop acting so weird! It's me .... don't talk to me about glasses being half full or having faith in modern medicine or how strong I am or how I should be positive," I don't want any of that shit. Let's go out and get a drink or something. Let me watch you drink.

I am not being negative about it but it isn't something I am happy about so I would prefer not to hear these canned responses that do not address where I am. I know I am going to get through it. I know I am strong. I know I am not going to die. I know it could be worse. But be here with me. I am so lonely and isolated in it. That is where the challenges are. It sucks that my health is precarious right now but I got some good doctors working on me. What I need from my friends is for them to jump in here with me for a minute and hang out with the fear and listen to me talk about it and accept that there is nothing they can do to help, no wise words that will change reality. And continue to talk to me about your life. I miss hearing about it. It isn't all about me! I am sick of myself. I want gossip. I want to be included in your life too; I won't think it's frivolous compared to mine. I want to hear about you and the funny/shitty/annoying thing that happened to you today. And speaking of frivolous, my birthday is two weeks from today. Since I'm sick I can ask. I want cupcakes. I want to be taken out to dinner. I want sexy lingerie. I want anything that isn't catscans or colonoscopies or hospital gowns or blood tests or white blood counts or hormone levels or metabolic rates or daily doctor's visits or side effects or prescriptions or blood pressure tests or sympathetic looks from other patients or referrals to other doctors or not seeing an end in sight...n ..nSo after you make fun of me for being on steroids and the fact that you soon may have to call me Brian instead of Briana, tell me about the fight you had with your boyfriend or girlfriend or your annoying boss and let..'s go get burgers. Food has never tasted so good. ..n..n..n",0]);D(["ce"]);//-->

So after you make fun of me for being on steroids and the fact that you soon may have to call me Brian instead of Briana, tell me about the fight you had with your boyfriend or girlfriend or your annoying boss and let's go get burgers. Food has never tasted so good.

Kiss Me on My Neck

I wanted something light and fluffy.
I got something light and fluffy.
I wanted to have fun.
I had fun.
I wanted to feel beautiful and feminine and sexy and not sick for one night.
I got my wish. And then some.

Hopefully I will see him again and soon and be a princess again. But even one night off from being sick-Cinderella is a gift. And I am so grateful to him for that.

His name is LG. We've dated before. We reconnected yesterday and went out last night. It started over email:

LG: September 20, 2006 5:22Hey what's up??!!
Date: September 20, 2006 5:41 PM
BRIANA: don't really know where to start on that one. nothing is a lie. but how much time do you have for the truth?? ha ha
how bout you?

Date: September 20, 2006 5:42 PM
plenty of time...let's hear it.....

Suddenly he was picking me up at my house and we were going out to eat and then we were looking for a place to get some dessert and then we were debating whether to go to the movies or rent a movie and take it back to my place.
After the summer I have had, going out with a guy has been low on my priority list for many reasons. First, before the drugs and the side effects, my body was so unpredictable that I didn't want to subject myself to the questions I would get when I would suddenly have to leave or decide not to go or need to stay and the consequent lies I would tell. The concept of running out of someone's house in the middle of the night without a warning, note or explanation was a possibility as was being in so much pain and just wanting to be alone in my bed and knowing that I would never feel comfortable telling them why. Then since I've been getting treated I've been unpredictable in a different way, my mania, my rage, my irratibility, my depression about this whole thing, the crying. How do you just dump that on some first date? So I have not done it.

It wasn't like that last night. I got to be both sick and a regular girl out on a date with a super-hot, super-cool guy. He got right in there with me, talking about the steroids, the crazy summer I've had, the side effects, the xanax, the no more drinking and the wonderful world of eating. And that's not the half of it. I have gained all this weight since the last time we saw each other. As he put it, "you were marathon skinny last time I saw you," to which I paused and said, "yeah, I've gained about 15 pounds since then." I wasn't really sure where he was going with the weight comment and my weight gain isn't exactly my favorite subject but I reigned in Bianca and waited. He said, "You look so much better like this, you gained the weight in all the right places." Damn boy!

Really, he is just a special person. We have a very nurturing, comfortable connection. As I said, we've dated before. He was the impetus for me quitting my first job out of law school 5 or so years ago. He made it okay by bringing into the realm of possibility. I remember being so miserable and complaining and complaining about it to him. No one else I talked about it with got where I was yet it resonated with him. He was like, "why don't you just quit?" No one else, me included, even thought about that option. I quit and never once looked back.

I am not sure why we stopped seeing each other back then. Maybe we are both free-spirited in a way that doesn't support some normal kind of relationship or maybe it was bad timing. I do know that we always got along, I always liked him and wondered what he was up to the past 5(?) years. Strange. We'll see what happens this time. Hopefully my tenure as a princess did not end when the clock struck 8:00 this morning when he had to move his car.

Look What You've Done

Illinois had broken up with me days earlier and I was finally going to get to really talk to JE about it. Walking home from the subway after work I eagerly dialed her number and we made plans to meet tonight at the bar. I needed her to be my mirror and reflect me back to myself and remind me of who I am and what I want; I am so lost I cannot see myself. I trust her advice will be well thought out and honest. Her voice will be a balm and a heating pad soothing my injured heart, reducing the swelling, enabling it to beat normally again. I rush home, change and rush to the bar to meet her and we drink wine.

Then I switch to Bass.

We talk about me moving to my new place and not staying in the apartment Illinois and I were living in together.

I need her so badly. I need her to be my friend and my comfort and my rock and my cushion and listen to me and calm me and I trust her advice and her wisdom but she doesn't ask me how I am. She steers the conversation to other topics. I can't keep up. She makes me feel greedy in wanting needing so badly to talk about myself. But I am going through a major life upheaval. It is a lot more than a regular stupid break-up. Does anyone understand that. No one seems to. She doesn't ask me how I am.

Then Illinois comes into the bar.

I go to the bathroom. I come back and they are sitting together.

JE walks away and leaves us alone. He asks me to go home to Illinois with him for Thanksgiving. Is he crazy? Of course I still have my ticket. We were supposed to get married in Illinois the Saturday after Thanksgiving. He told me two weeks ago that he didn't want anything that serious with me. Yet he wants me to go away with him to stay with his family whom I love and who love me for what was supposed to be our wedding. I tell him that I will have too much fun there. That I have been looking forward to it for so long that I can't bear the thought of us having such a great time and coming home to separate houses. And to this horrible situation we are now stuck in. Or at least I am stuck in.

Incredulation.

Am I crazy or is he crazy. I am not completely sure.

JE returns.

Apparently they have discussed this. She thinks it is a fabulous idea and encourages me to go.

Whose friend is she? Doesn't she see that I am broken beyond repair? That my heart is strewn on the floor of the bar in a thousand million pieces and I am barely holding it together enough to sit there and drink my Bass? Doesn't she see that I need her to listen to how I feel to try to understand me for a second? She has become a stranger. All of a sudden one of my best friends in the world who I have loved and trusted and cried with and laughed with and taken walks with and taken runs with and gotten drunk with and studied with and defended and who has defended me and who I have been faithfully loyal to and relied upon and needed so badly is a stranger. I am so alone. I am with someone I have always felt safe with at my ugliest moments and now she is a stranger. And I need her so badly. I have never needed a friend so badly before. And she is with me yet she has somehow become loyal to him.

She leaves Illinois and I alone again.

This time she actually leaves the bar.

I keep waiting for her to return.

She doesn't come back because she has gone home to her new apartment with her new boyfriend and her perfect relationship. They were moving in together last week as I was moving out. I tell Illinois that I cannot go to Illinois with him for Thanksgiving and I go home. I never hear from JE again. I call her. I text message her. I call her. I e-mail her. I call her. She refuses to be my friend. Just like that.

We met in law school. I noticed her during our first year where fate placed placed us in the same section, section B. I noticed her for the same reasons that everyone else noticed her. She was loud. She was opinionated. She was smart. She asked questions the professors didn't always know the answers to. Rumors swarmed about her. Supposedly she didn't buy the textbooks because she didn't need to read to keep her 4.0 average. Supposedly she took great notes and remembered everything that was said in class. Supposedly she smoked pot every single day. I admired her because she was so unlike me. She was fearless and was never afraid to ask a question or talk to anyone, even a professor, even the dean. She could be placed in any situation with any group of people and always land on her feet.

Flashforward to our second year in law school. I am at North Moore Bar with my new boyfriend, Staten Island, who is a third year law student. No one from my year is there. I don't know any of the third year students. My boyfriend is the only person there that I know. He introduces me around and then leaves me at a table with his friend GM. I have nothing to say to GM. GM interviews me to determine whether I am worthy of dating his friend or being in their presence or at their bar. I squirm. GM is taking his role as Staten Island's protector a little too seriously. JE enters the bar. She makes a beeline for GM and I. Thank God. As intimidated as I am by JE, three is better than one on one. I eventually extricate myself and leave them alone. The night plays itself out. Staten Island spends most of the night with his friends and I spend most of the night trying to foster conversation with people I don't know and don't want to meet. I escape to an empty stool at the bar and take a break from the small talk. Suddenly JE hops onto the empty stool to my right with tears brimming in her eyes. She tells me her boyfriend is ignoring her. I didn't know she had a boyfriend. She confesses that GM is her boyfriend and immediately a bond forms between us. What a lucky coincidence. Unlike me she is unafraid to express her hurt feelings and outrage at how GM is ignoring her. Unlike me she knows she deserves more than the scraps we were both being given that night. We do a shot of tequila together. In minutes we are laughing at the boys that brought us together and the catch 22 we are both in; we love them but they don't treat us well. She's making fun of GM now and how he calls himself the 'mayor' of his class and how he tells her it's his obligation to mingle. Staten Island and I leave the bar and he spends the night with me for the first time. JE and GM stay outside the bar until after 2:00am arguing until she tearfully goes home alone. JE and I become friends that night. Just like that.

On my 24th birthday Staten Island breaks up with me. When I ask him why he couldn't have waited until after my birthday he sneers, "You'll have other birthdays." I tell JE this as we sit outside and smoke cigarettes and I cry on a bench in Tribeca across the street from the North Moore Bar. She laughs. His cruelty is so outrageous it's funny. I laugh too. Her relationship with GM is also in trouble. What's wrong with these guys we wonder. What's wrong with us for loving them. We get drunk and scour the East Village peaking our heads into their haunts and sometimes doing a shot or having a drink reminiscing about nights spent there with them and wondering what they are doing at that exact minute. Are they at the bar we just left; should we stay and play a song on the jukebox or smoke another cigarette here; if we stay long enough might they come in. Sometimes we actually find them. The best nights it is just us laughing and crying into our beers. On one of those nights she supports my decision to play, "You Sexy Thing," by Hot Chocolate on the juke box and leave it on Staten Island's voicemail. On another of those nights, I support her decision to get GM's number from an old phone bill she just happened to have in her purse and call him to say we were at the bar across the street from his house what a coincidence he should come meet us. Meanwhile we were at a 24-hour diner across the street from his apartment.

Post law school our friendship survived its ebbs and flows. We weren't in constant contact when she spent a year living in California. As soon as we reunited it was as if no time had passed. What a funny coincidence when we reconnected that we were both dating boys from Illinois who wanted us to move there with them. She broke up with hers and moved back to New York. Mine decided to stay in New York with me. I got laid off days after Illinois and I signed our lease together. JE got me contract work at her law firm. We worked on some cases together and suddenly it was like law school all over again and we were seeing each other every day and once again in constant contact. I told her when I heard that GM was engaged so she would have time to prepare an official comment when she inevitably heard it from the law school crowd. I invited her to a party with Illinois and I and our friends to cheer her up, and she hit it off with his friend SC. Our friendship hit its peak where we lived on the same street and worked at the same law firm and dated friends. On a typical day we had a few conversations running at once over email and would meet for lunch and cover another topic entirely and would then meet up for drinks after work with or without our boyfriends and reminisce about the GM and Staten Island days and how crazy we were and how thank goodness for them because they brought us together. She was my soul. She was my heart. When Illinois and I announced we were having a baby she cried louder than anyone. She was so excited for me.

Illinois called me out of the blue the other day and told me that JE and SC are getting married in a few weeks and they want him to speak at their wedding because if not for him, they never would have met. It's as if I never existed at all. She is perpetratrating a revisionist history of her life that doesn't include me. The lawyer in me feels like she is making an official record of my non-existence. Meanwhile I can't imagine the past seven years without her. She is an integral part of my life story. If I left her out, the story wouldn't be complete. If I left her out, I wouldn't be me.

Maybe surviving this without her by my side is something I should be proud of. Her abandonment of me forced me to be strong on my own. Maybe had she been there to put her healing balm on the bloody mess that was my heart I would never have learned the lessons I learned. Maybe she believed my bad luck would taint her hard earned happily ever after story. Maybe she felt that it had been me who had more luck in love until Illinois and she wanted some for herself. I don't know. Despite my overtures, she has never told me why she couldn't be there for me, why she chose that time not to be my friend anymore. Until then, her place in my heart remains vacant. She is irreplaceable. There is a part of me that will always remain dormant because it is only awakened by her.

Or maybe our friendship just ran its course. I met her when she was crying over a guy and she left me when I was crying over one. Full circle. Better to get off the Ferris wheel when you're on top.

A Deeper Shade of Soul

I received this email yesterday.

To: briana

Sent: Sat, 23 Sep 2006 12:57 PM

Subject: hello briana

hi. i know you probably do not want to hear from me and so i'm sorry if i'm overstepping some boundaries here. i don't expect you to respond if you do not want to. and if you do respond andtell me to screw off, i will understand that too. as for other stuff, i know you probably have your own ideas of what happened between us. i've always suspected that you thought i ditched you for him. i didn't briana.
i have not been able to stop thinking about you and i had to getin touch.

love,je

Shock.

The truth was I never stopped thinking about her. As much as I tried to convince myself that the JE I knew and loved who was my friend has ceased to exist, it was so hard to perceive her that way. I missed her constantly. I was able to process and deal with my break-up with Illinois. And as shocked and appalled and shocked and appalled as I was when I found out he got married a mere 8 months after he and I broke up, I dealt with that. Somehow I found a way to wrap my head around all of that and put it to bed. It never haunted me. It hurt a lot but it never haunted me because in some deep way, I knew it was right. I knew life would suck for a while but things between he and I were the way they were supposed to be. Things between she and I were not. She haunted me. I was abandoned like a newborn baby left to die in a dumpster by a teenage mom. I could not get my head around why. The JE I knew would never do that, not to me; it was maddening trying to figure it out. And I tried being mad. But I couldn't be mad without answers.

Once again, like when she left me, I am again in a place of great need. Being sick these past months, I have relied on people in ways that I have never had to or been able to before. It is very difficult for me to express need and to ask for help and accept help. But I have had to. And it doesn't get any easier. It is uncomfortable and unnatural for me. Suddenly in my inbox is an overture. Someone needs something from me. Finally. A welcome change from all of my needing. Not only that, it is the boldest request I have ever received; it is a request for forgiveness.

Suddenly in my inbox is the answer to almost two years of questions and lost sleep and missing links and torment and hurt and anger and confusion. Do I delete the email or do I do what I am scared to do but need to do; hear what she has to say. Am I strong enough? Do I need to want to go back there? I have come so far. There are things she needs to hear from me as well. And I've been waiting for so long to say them. Not doing so would be cutting off my nose to spite my face. I am doing this for me. Not because she's asking. I need to know why. So I can finally heal correctly. I have been walking around with my heart half closed because of my botched attempts at coping. Once I know the answers I can heal properly seal the wound and breathe again, whatever the answers are. I just need to hear what she has to say. I wrote her back.

On Sat, 23 Sep 2006, briana wrote:

i have missed you and thought about you every single day sinceNovember of 2004. But that doesn't mean I could ever trust you again to be my friend. Because when it came down to it and I needed you, you weren't my friend. I am not angry. I am confused and I don't understand whathappened and I am still very hurt. You broke my heart much worse than Illinois did. Much worse.

We emailed back and forth for the rest of the day and decided to meet up last night. Despite my trepidation I knew she was sincere. I couldn't get out of work and through yoga and back to Brooklyn fast enough. I had cancelled really fun plans because I felt like shit and suddenly I was getting ready like I was meeting up with some hot guy I couldn't keep my hands off of, excitement and adrenaline and nerves all converging in my stomach. I couldn't see her soon enough, despite the two years of hell and confusion that she caused me. I knew she had a lot of explaining to do. Yet, it was almost like we had come full circle, back to that November night in 2004 when I needed her so badly. She was here for me now and she was ready and I knew she would finally give me what I needed.

The bottom line for me is that it wasn't about her 'answers;' it couldn't be, my need was so vast, my disappointment so devastating, there wasn't anything she could say to fill that void. It is her sincerity, integrity, awareness and courage in coming to me now to make her amends and right her wrongs that is paramount. That takes a certain kind of person. That takes the JE that I once knew. Hopefully my instincts are right. Only time will tell. I must tread slowly and carefully.

Morning after: I feel so exposed and vulnerable and my heart is aching but at least it's breathing again. It's like air is flooding to this dark place that had been hurting so much but I've kept wrapped up so tightly. I am on emotional overload because being with her last night flashed light in a dark place and I am on so many drugs I don't know what's me and what's not me but I do know that being with JE last night after two years is me.... I am reeling. I don't know how I held it in that long. I don't know how I let it fester for that long. It's mind boggling. That's where I am right now. Happy to be in touch with JE again. I feel wholer than I have since that awful night.

Is that forgiveness?

Freak Like Me

Being sick is completely infiltrating me. I remember a couple of months ago when 31 and I were working together and I left work mysteriously to go to a doctor's appointment and he asked how it went down once I returned to work. I responded, "well, I'm not dying." All very cryptic I know, but that's always how I've been about my colitis. Not a very sexy disease and I don't want to be perceived as diseased anyway. I wouldn't even want to be perecieved as diseased or damaged or not strong or not normal even if it was something romantic like TB where I had to go to a sanitorium or something. But now things are on a whole other level. First of all it is impossible to hide. I am not myself. The other night I was on Roosevelt Island and I know the girls all know the up to the minute news but I don't know how much the guys know and I was sitting next to MY on the couch and he could not stop focusing on the fact that my lips were moving but I wasn't talking. He was like, "check out Briana's lips, Briana what do they have you on?" Mercifully, V came to my rescue like she does with a, "oh, it's not that bad, she's fine." She's so cute, I love how she is such my protector and defender.

In truth though I'm not fine. And it's starting to really sink in for me. If I was fine, why would the doctor suggest moving up my next colonoscopy from October 17 to tomorrow (which I refused to do). If I'm fine then why am I now seeing an endorcrinologist for what was supposed to be some routine inbalance in one of my blood tests just to be on the safe side which turned into another, 'we need to go to the next level,' conversation once my irregular, abnormal results came back. The next level consists of two days of tests. I asked for sometime in November. He said, "how about the soonest time they can squeeze you in." Yeah, I'm optomistic. Yeah, right. I'm starting to get really scared. I don't want to get sick and die. My quality of life is already getting lower by the day. Come on. How low can it go. I don't know who I am anymore. I really don't. I don't have any pep in my step except when I am bouncing off the walls from the steroids. My appetite is erratic. I don't crave coffee. I have no attention span. I am near tears most of the time. I am mean to people. My favorite things I can't do. I would kill for a good run but the whole equilibrium issue poses a serious problem. I am not allowed to drive. I am also not allowed to drink. And the drinking thing, what the fuck is that all about. I am on every drug known to man. All of them prohibit drinking, from the xanax to the cipro to the ambien to the zoloft to the nausea shit to the regular colitis drugs but the kicker is that the chemo drug specifically states that drinking on it will make my stomach bleed. Isn't my stomach bleeding anyway? Isn't that what the problem is? Then who the fuck cares if my stomach bleeds. It's just doing what it does. The tragedy is that alcohol holds absolutely no appeal for me right now. Not an iota. How is that possible? I AM NOT ME. I AM NOT ME. I like alcohol. I LIKE TO DRINK!

Who am I? I don't know. An insane ranting lunatic yes. But I AM NOT ME. And I get all of these comments from people about my new self like when I complain about having no focus or too much energy or too little energy or my moods are unpredictable or I am depressed or I do crazy angry things like, "oh, I do stuff like that all the time." But I don't! Again, trying to make me feel better is a good thing. I appreciate you for that. I love you for that. Thank you so much for that but those qualities that YOU may have, I do not. And all I am saying is that I want mine back. I don't know how to do this body snatchers thing. I had enough trouble being me. And again there seems to be no end in sight. I am just so fucking sick of it. So sick of it. I want to know now what the future holds. Is the best it's going to be? Is this my new life now? Am I going to get worse? Am I going to be able to get married and have kids? Am I going to go back into remission? Am I??? How long is this going to last? How long can I do this for?

I feel like I am trying to squeeze everything good into my life that I know of. I don't get joy out of things I used to and I am scared that my health is going to remain precarious so I need to see everyone. I need to love everyone I love. I need to be close to everyone I love. I need to get pleasure where I can. My LG night was a gift. I need more nights like that, being with him like that was so healing. I try and cram in as much good shit as I can and then I start to shut down, like Friday night on Roosevelt Island where I had to leave early. I needed to be home. I needed to be alone. Then when I get home I can't sleep, despite all the drugs that should induce me to sleep. Good that I am never bored. I don't watch tv. Netflix, which I thought would save me from my sleepless nights is my nemesis and the voracious reader that I am, I can't read. I can listen to music and I try to keep myself happy with my 'I am a badass motherfucker' playlist and my 'what's my motherfucking name' playlist but somehow I end up listening to 'growing pains' and 'rainy day music' more often than not. But I feel safe at home. I don't know what to expect from myself when I am around people and it is exhausting to worry about and it is exhausting to try to control. Especially because I usually can't control it.

But I have to say that it was the nicest thing in the world to be on Roosevelt Island among my Roosevelt Island family and be as crazy and erratic as I am and just let it out. MY noticed my leg shaking and like my spontaneously moving lips he couldn't get over that either. But he loves me anyway. All of my Roosevelt Island peeps love me. And thank god for them. They love me for who I am right now, not only who I used to be (and hope to be again). Or thank god for them for making me feel comfortable enough to be my bad self in front of them. Aw Shiiiiit.

A Family Affair

A sibling may be the keeper of one's identity, the only person with the keys to one's unfettered, more fundamental self. ~Marian Sandmaier

Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply... ~Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, 1814

It's my birthday on Monday and I am having this whole party dinner thing. Even my parents are coming. It's not what I usually do for my birthday. Usually my birthday is some big drunken bar bash but this year my sister organized a really nice dinner for me at a really cute restaurant and it is going to be a very special, different kind of celebration this year. We decided that 30 should be different and special. And she contacted the restaurant and put it all together, from the menu to the evite ... to everything. Yes, she loves that stuff. Yes, she wants to be a party planner but she really took the initiative here and thought about me and what I would want and made it stress-free and special all for me. She started planning in June. My birthday is Monday. That's how much initiative and how proactive my sister is when it comes to me and how special my sister wanted to make my birthday.

Every year since I don't know how long, my parents' birthday present to me has been dinner at Peter Luger's. I have steak on my birthday every year and our immediate family, sometimes a straggler or two and whoever has a boyfriend or girlfriend at the time attends. This year got complicated because my actual birthday is on Yom Kippur. We first decided to do Peter Luger's on Sunday. My sister made the reservation for 4:45pm. That was too late for my dad because of Yom Kippur. Fine. We decide to change Luger's to Saturday night. No dice, they were completely booked. The end result is dinner at one of our favorite Greek places in Astoria on Saturday night the theory being that the family dinner is paramount; not the steak. I guess I am maturing. Ha. Everything seemed to fall into place lovely after that blip. Until recently, I didn't even think I'd be able to eat steak so the Luger's thing wasn't a big deal and the family thing is so ....

Weeks go by.

Yesterday evening I receive an email from my sister stating that she just received a call from a friend of her old college roommate who is planning a surprise bachelorette party for the college roommate on Saturday night. My sister says she feels obligated to go despite the short notice and PLANS that she has because she bagged her old roomie's bridal shower. I don't know what to do. How am I supposed to feel? How do I feel?

Being sick is like being a celebrity. Sometimes your family treats you the same. And sometimes I think they resent the attention and feel like they've given you enough and everyone is giving you so much and it shouldn't all be about you and don't they deserve a break from you so if they miss this one thing, there is enough going on celebrating you and giving you attention so they can miss it. Part of me actually feels that way; that my sister just needs a break from all of this. I have been a full time job lately. She definitely deserves a break. But does it have to come now on my birthday? I know that isn't her style. I know she isn't trying to take a stand. She isn't vengeful and I know she isn't trying to make a point but she does deserve time off and to do something for herself. So I am torn.

I also know how my sister is about feeling obligated. We're very different in that respect. I have to force my self to feel obligated and remind myself of committments I've made. She has to remind herself when plans are tentative. She focuses more on the committments she's made than the people she's made them to. I am the exact opposite. Unfortunately, we never see eye to eye in that respect and I think we are both a little off the deep end in our extremes in that regard.

So here we are. At an impasse. My feelings: It is my birthday. I want my family dinner. I changed it from Sunday night for my dad. I changed the restaurant we've had it at from time immemorial. For other reasons, Friday poses some problems. What do I do. How am I supposed to feel? How do I feel? I can't be happy if my sister's not happy. But it's not my birthday dinner if my sister's not there. And I want my birthday dinner.

Enter my brother. I call him to find out if I am being selfish. Am I being greedy. Am I being immature. But does my sister really have to be there for the surprise part of the bachelorette party? Can't she catch up with the party after my dinner? They gave her no notice! Come on now: A) the no notice thing, they can't expect her just to be free or at the least, they have to understand if she's not; and B) her plans are MY birthday dinner, her sister. I think her old roommate would understand. My brother listens to everything I have to say without interruption. He is patient and open. My brother mulls it all over. We try to think of other solutions. He doesn't take a side. He listens patiently to my story. He evaluates hers. We both know how she is about feeling obligated. We don't bash her. We discuss other options. An early dinner on Saturday? No, because I have a hair appointment. Should I cancel it, I ask my brother? He says no, out of the question. I am not sure whether he is sympathetic to the family dinner aspect or whether he is being ultra-sensitive to me because I haven't exactly been rational and even-tempered lately. But either way, he is a soothing force and he empathizes with me. And he's my little brother. He's always going to be on my side and I don't care what it is that sways him, and he is always going to be on her side as well. He wants to faction a plan that accomodates us both. See, he's her little brother too. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

The mildest, drowsiest sister has been known to turn tiger if her sibling is in trouble. ~Clara OrtegaAfter a girl is grown, her little brothers - now her protectors - seem like big brothers. ~Astrid Alauda

A Moment of Clarity

rowasa, zoloft, rifaximin, trazedone hcl, cortifoam, clonazepam, pentasa, alprazolam, ambien, mercapturine, prednisone, ferrous sulfate, famotidene, ciprofloxacin, sulfasalazine, and medroxyprogesterone. Two new prescriptions today. Ordered two refills today. The drugs keep me locked in the present tense and the drugs keep me locked in a routine.

The drugs are a constant reminder that my life is over. The drugs are keeping my body functioning while at the same time reminding me how precarious my health is. I am one missed pill away from a relapse. So much happened this week yet the disease and the routine of taking the drugs holds me hostage like a ship stuck in the middle of a storm. The drugs and the disease keep me focused on now.

My only option right now while I feel my immortality slipping away and sober mortality replacing is to become the best person I can be and make peace and rise above. Some good things have come out of this new me I have been forced to become.
Life is flooding and rushing where it used to be still. My tools are absorbing and getting the most out of each moment, trying not to fear and aiming for clarity and taking full advantage of opportunities when I have them. The night with LG is a perfect example. I drank that night up like it was my first milkshake. It was cool. It was refreshing. I felt the sweetness travel through my veins from my mouth through my body to the tips of my fingers and toes and I let it envelope me. I drank every last drop and savored every perfect moment. I took full advantage of the opportunity I was given to surrender to the moment without thinking of the future or the past or allowing my negative thoughts remove me from the night. Clarity. Present tense. No fear.

Clarity. I gave my sister my blessing to not attend my family birthday dinner. I would previously have perceived that as either giving up or giving in but now I see it as letting her be her. I know she is wrong. Everyone does. It doesn't matter. She has a relationship with obligation that is skewed and warped and this isn't about her college roommate versus me; her ties with her old roommate are not strong and her ties with me are. This is about her relationship with obligation and promises. This funky quality of hers is endearing because it is so uniquely her. When it comes between us it always causes strife. Now I am letting go of trying to have my way with it; it is her issue and I am not taking it on anymore. Let it get in the way of her other relationships; it will no longer get in the way of ours. This is a step in a direction I would never have gone had I not been sick. But I have my blind spots too. So I should allow her hers.

Clarity regarding AC. I had no idea of the feelings she had about JE. To think she allowed my feelings to consume 50 Carroll Street when she had so many of her own. She listened to me agonize and complain and speculate and never spoke about her own pain or issues with JE. Only now her feelings are coming out. She told me that whenever she thinks about seeing JE at my birthday party she starts to cry so she'd like to take me out to celebrate some other time and not attend my birthday party. That is so AC. She isn't being passive-aggressive. She isn't being a martyr. And maybe I would have taken that easy way out at one point and not stepped up to the plate and chosen to disinvite JE instead. But I am aware of how AC saved my life. I am honored and grateful to have the opportunity to pay back something of the large debt I owe her for all she's done for me. I am have been given a gift; the opportunity to do something meaningful for AC. The couple of beers and a dinner here and there does not compare with a life saved.

Fear must be overlooked when I ask JE to understand. I have never done anything like this. And it has nothing to do with how I feel about JE and all to do with how I feel about AC. The JE that came to me with humbleness and an open heart the other day must be willing to trust me that this has nothing to do with the past or revenge or picking AC over her and everything to do with an obligation I have to AC. If she wants this friendship with me she has to trust in me that I will keep her safe and I am not trying to hurt her. If I were thinking of the past in making this decision, I would not even have responded to her email or invited her to attend my birthday party. I hope it will help JE and I navigate through our new relationship. In the past two years our lives changed a lot; messes were made and we have a lot of untangling to do. We are not going back to the friendship we had unscathed nor are we bringing the past two years with us into the future. It is a delicate balance we must find as we acclimate to the water together.

Life as I knew it is over and all of my happiness might be in the past. And I didn't appreciate it when I had it. I don't know what my future brings. Or if I even have one. So I stay completely locked here because I know this is real and I know I have it. Nothing else is certain. So let me go, I need to take 4 Pentasa, a famotidene, a cipro, a trazedone and my birth control pill now.

I am a Rock I am an Island

I have to quit it with this going at it alone thing. It's becoming old and ridiculous and I am starting to finally see that after almost 30 years maybe it doesn't work for me.
I never get unglued in front of people. I am not the messy friend. I am not the friend who you see on your caller ID and you're like, "shit, not again, isn't she over that already, what does she want NOWWWWW" And lately I have been upset a lot and I have wished I had someone to call. I have wished I had someone who I could ask to come over who would put their arms around me and just let me cry. Instead I have been alone. Going at it alone. The last two nights I have been able to hold it together on the subway but as soon I exit into the darkness the tears come. Then I can't unlock my apartment door fast enough and it just pours out of me. Heaving, coughing sobs brought on by the worst thoughts imaginable. I try to throw it all on the page. I try to excise it out of me, tears streaming down my keyboard as I sob and cry.

Last night my sister slept over. She offered to sleep over. I was trepiditous about it. I told her that I didn't know if I wanted her to be privy to my 'night' life or my morning routine. I hold in all my feelings all day and let them out all night. My sister is a victim of my disease as much as I am a victim of it. My whole family are victims. I want to shelter and shield them from it as much as possible. She insisted. She said, "I'm your sister, I'll be fine, I'm coming over." While I waited for her, this is what I was writing: ( P.S. It was dramatically entitled, I Want to Kill Myself Right Now)
"I got a special prescription in the mail today for my trip to Mexico that I haven't told anyone about. (I was hoping it was a birthday package). The doctor gave me special drugs to take while I am there so I don't relapse. I am starting to wonder whether relapsing isn't such a bad thing. I can't do this anymore. I can't. This is no way to live. This is hell. This isn't for me. It is taking everything out of me. I don't know how to do it. I am a fucking mess.
Why did all of this happen? Why am I going down like this? I don't understand. I can't do anything. I am a slave to my body. I have my own emotions and a whole host of others that aren't mine that I don't know how to handle or what to do with or when to expect. Do I give up? Give up on what? The dream? The fight? I had started to believe again. Now what. Do I still believe?
I hate that I am constantly popping pills. I hate that I don't have my life anymore. I hate that nothing makes me happy. I hate that nothing penetrates through this moment I am stuck in. I hate that I can't be normal anymore. I hate that I don't know when and if this is going to end. I hate that I can't go out and have fun and that everything sucks and that this is hanging over me like a dark cloud it keeps fucking following me around everywhere. I can't stand it. When is the sun going to come out again.

Where am I in all of this. Supposedly I am the carefree one. Supposedly I am the happy one not the angry one not the sad one the happy carefree lackadaisical even- tempered laid back one. Who am I now? I am sad. I am scared. Life is too real. It should never be so real. I hate the new unknowns I am facing. I hate not feeling safe. I hate not having my health. I hate knowing how true that cliche really is. This is so fucking crazy and wild. It makes all the other stuff so much more important and so much less important at the same time. It's incredible. Absolutely incredible. How do people reconcile their old self with their new circumstances? Are they just stronger than me? They must be. It hasn't even been that long and I am despondent and I am scared and I know I can't handle it.

Every day is a surprise. Every day is a struggle. Every day I wonder how I will make it through. Every day I hope the nightmare will end the next day. And to think that physically I am so much better. But it is a sad illusion. My body isn't any better; the drugs are doing all the work my body should be able to do on its own. My body that once ran six marathons and couldn't carry two babies can't do this either. Am I going to die? Am I going to be able to have kids? What the fuck. What the fuck. My whole life is pointless now. Everything was leading up to that stuff. And now there is no that stuff. Was Illinois my one chance? And now I am the almost 30-year old woman living in her coveted apartment alone crying every night for the life she'll never have.

I don't cry for the old life, because I lived it big; it is the future that I always assumed was mine that I cry for. The one that I banked on. It's like I am dying even if I don't, even I am really not, it feels like I am. All of the flavors of life that I have loved I don't taste anymore. My morning coffee, Prosecco, a cold beer, a good sweaty run, cooking, reading, my fun food cravings, sleep, being tired, falling asleep naturally because I am actually tired. I don't know. Too many to list. Nights out with friends where I just let go and let the night carry me away. Can I ever let the night carry me away again? I don't even get joy out of my people the same way anymore. I just don't. I feel like I am in such a different place than everyone else I don't feel connected. I want them all around me so close to me but then I don't feel connected and I just want to go home and be alone in my private hell where at least I know the rules and I know the reality. And the reality sucks.

So I am caught between two realities. And I just want some answers. I want to feel safe. I guess it was always an illusion that I was safe but I want it back. I never knew for sure that something like this wasn't going to happen or that I was going to get married and have children and live a normal life but I believed it so it was real for me. I feel like my growth just got stunted. Party's over. Last call. And I can't bear it. The sick thing is that I think these are all my real emotions. And the sicker thing is that my doctor says I am one of his saner patients regarding handling the emotional side of this disease. Maybe he's the insane one. And tomorrow I have to go to my fake, family birthday dinner and pretend I am happy it's my birthday? My birthday is supposed to be a place of suspended disbelief. That's always how I've viewed my birthday and why I love birthdays and it won't have that birthday magic this year because I will still be stuck here. 30 means nothing. Last call. The buck stops here. 30 will be a number. I am just a girl who is 30 or 29 or 31 or whatever but I am never going to make it further than where I have. And I am sane? Who cares that D and my sister and JE are missing it. I will be missing them but they won't be missing anything."

So my sister enters my apartment tonight and I have swollen eyes and mascara streaming down my face. Ugly, ugly, ugly combined with my steroid induced moon face which gets doughier by the day. She comments on my haircut and expresses her usual surprise about my face. Then she asks me what's going on. I tell her. I tell her all of this. And we go out to dinner and we come back to my place and we go to sleep. And I feel better. I told someone and she didn't close up or clam up or get all corny and I actually feel better. Why don't I ever do this? I do need people. And I have people. And I am learning that I don't give them enough credit. Maybe they won't understand exactly what I am going through; they are not in my situation but they will listen to me and they will hear and they will try their hardest to be what I need. The other night when LG slept over, in the morning he asked me if I slept. And miraculously, I had slept. He commented that sometimes it's nice to have another person there. And it is. And I never do. JE said the same thing in one of her recent emails regarding the past, she said that, "if i had known that you would have wanted me there to hold your hand i would have been there in a second. that's just not the way you ever came across. i wish i had known what you needed from me before it was too late." Maybe things would have been different for me if she had held my hand back then. But it's not too late now. One of my father's many mantras to me because I have always been one not to ask for help and to stiff-upper lip everything, and go at it alone was, "Briana, like the song, you're not a rock, you're not an island. You can ask for help." So ... HELP!

Alright

Today is Yom Kippur (Hebrew yom hakippurim, "day of atonement"), the most sacred holy day in Judaism. It falls on the tenth day of the Hebrew month of Tishri. Yom Kippur is a day of confession, repentance, and prayers for forgiveness of sins committed during the year.

And today is my birthday.

I woke up this morning feeling clean and new. Like waking up to a sunny day after weeks of storm. And weeks of struggle. And weeks of trying to navigate my boat through a storm so raging that I couldn't see my finger in front of me. And today it's so beautiful and clear, I feel like I imagined all of it, like being dropped off in Emerald City after a tornado. Here I am, unscathed, unscarred, beautiful and happy and light.

I don't know how much of that has to do with either Yom Kippur or my birthday.

I think my blog on Saturday was a deep cleaning of my soul. I think the unexpected events of the recent weeks that I have had no control over have been a whirlwind turning my life upside down and inside out and helping me find myself; my inner anchor, which is all I need to get by in this life I have. As long as I have it, I will be fine.

I can't say that I didn't spend Saturday night watching the door to see if my sister would show up. I would be lying if I said that I suddenly accept the course my life has taken or that I am not scared anymore.

But days like yesterday make life worth living.

I spent the morning with my cousins and my sister. We had one of those all morning and afternoon brunches; we might as well have stayed and ordered dinner. There is nothing like family. And as the oldest in my immediate family, it is nice to have two older cousins that I feel such a bond with; it's nice to feel insulated, my brother and sister on one side of me and my two older cousins on the other, paving the way, keeping me cocooned and safe. It's a warm and cozy and cuddly feeling. A feeling that even my contrary, stubborn, independant self even needs sometimes.

Then I picked up my parents' birthday present from Tiffany's. It's a heart to wear on my heart. When did I get so corny and mushy I don't know but life has new meaning now that I am sick. I am more alive and aware than I have ever been and I wanted something from them that I would never take off and would have meaning to me. So a heart on my heart fit the bill.

I went to work to tie up some loose ends and planned on hitting a yoga class until I got a drunken phone call from AC and C. They were at Panino'teca on Smith Street. Yoga plans went out the window and I jumped on the train. They boozed it up while I had about 6 pots of peppermint tea (birthday girl's got no voice). I can still have nights like that. I can still be spontaneous and go out with people who are boozing it up and drink tea and have a blast and get just as drunk as they do without alcohol. Exhale.

Anyway, I am feeling cleansed and at peace with the world and myself right now. It's a welcome change after the storm of the past few weeks. I may even be excited for tonight. Right now I am happy to be me and happy to be alive and alright with everything. Let the games begin.