Drive My Car

I don't want to write but I am compelled to write. Again my cup runneth over. I am overwhelmed by the reactions to what I wrote yesterday. Are they warranted? I don't know. Am I crazy? I keep thinking I am. Is that warranted? Probably. I got a message from someone I don't know who like me has a chronic illness and expressed her disapproval in my method of coping that to retain some dignity I must keep my pain away from others. She followed that by explaining, "[T]his is why I have self inflicted cigarette burns up and down my arms that no one ever sees." That shattered me a little bit because I hate that I have been so open about this. I have never been so open about anything and after yoga last night I was so embarassed with what I wrote yesterday. So embarassed for the feelings I had, so guilty for feeling so selfish and not grateful enough and for complaining so much. Should I just be burning my arms with cigarettes instead of sharing? I really have no idea.

I also received an email from my mother where she expressed her anger and emotion at what I wrote yesterday conlcuding by imploring me to research the surgery further. What should I do? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Something is being lost in the translation between me and others and between me and myself and between me and my "new" normal. I hope I figure it out soon. I can't have my mom be feeling that way, my stoic mother who even during the 30-40 minutes we waited for the results of my HIV test expressed no emotion and would have remained that way if the result had been positive. She would have stood by me and not shunned me or blamed me or been embarassed she would have taken care of me and done whatever it is she could. So you can see why I wouldn't want her to feel anger and emotion at what I wrote yesterday. She must feel like if I got the surgery it would put me out of my misery that she can't stand to watch. I don't believe I have arrived at the vortex where low quality of life meets with the level of risk the surgery involves (in reality or in my head, I don't know).

I keep trying to explain it figure it out decipher it. Why do I have this huge block around that. It feels like the hugest risk in the world to me. It feels like I could die naked on the cold steel of the operating table. I have had such shitty luck with all of this crap that to voluntarily venture into the operating room freaks me out beyond belief. It's a fear that can't be rationalised or analyzed or deciphered or separated into bitesize pieces. Just thinking about it makes me feel my heart in a vice grip and makes my heart pound uncontrollably. Just thinking about it makes me feel the chills up my spine as scratching my teeth down a blackboard would. Just thinking about it makes me want to smoke a pack of cigarettes, Marlboro Reds of course, and go to the nearest bar and drink myself into oblivion. Just thinking about it makes me want to run out into the snow storm no coat no hat into the middle of the street and go home and climb into bed and cry.

Seriously, how long am I going to live like this? Complaining. In pain. Annoyed. Frustrated. Unhappy. How long? As Dr. Lax says, I am not good at being sick. AC told me I wasn't a good patient. I know it. They're all right. I just spoke to my dad and he infuriatingly asked, "who is good at being sick?" People are. Some people happen to be more patient and more deferential and more accepting of their 'lot in life' and less defiant than I am. I am good at other things but I was not meant to be sick. It's like what V said after she and Fig broke up which stuck with me because it was such an interesting way to describe how she felt, she said, "I wasn't meant to be this sad." Now - sadness I can do. I'm a pro at being sad. I wouldn't say I enjoy it but I can say that her words resonated with me because that's how I feel about being sick. I wasn't meant to be this sick. So where does that leave me? The surgery option sounds too good to be true to me and nothing about this experience has been good. I can't imagine they just snip snip away and I walk out of there bionic and brand new back to 21 year old Briana who I was before I had this disease. I can't imagine it.

Whatever's meant to be will be. Que sera sera, right? I hope V's right, that she wasn't meant to be that said and therefore I am not meant to be this sick. I hope we both get our happily ever afters and some nice doctor knocks me out, cuts me open and removes all of the sickness, disease, evil, negativity out of me, all 1.5 meters of it and I get old normal back, taking only the drugs that I want to take, for fun. Or better yet that I go back into remission and no cutting needs to be done. And that V gets to be happy.

Strangers

I know I've written about this a million times and it's boring already. It's boring to me. I can see why it would be boring to you. As A. says, I go in cycles. It's like my life is a merry-go-round that isn't so merry. I keep thinking if I purge if I get it down on paper it'll be gone. It'll be out of my heart and on the page. But it isn't. It doesn't work. It's yet another quick fix. It keeps getting more and more acute and clearer and clearer. Like I am getting closer and closer to the hard part in the center of the jawbreaker. At first I was licking it. It tasted sour then sweet. Sour then sweet. I take it out of my mouth to see what color it is now. The color changes with every layer. I keep licking. Then I start sucking on it in earnest. I want to get to the center. I want to get to the hard part. I want to crack it open with my teeth and get to the bottom of it until there is nothing left of it besides the sour sweet taste left in my mouth. I keep thinking that's what's happening. That I am getting closer to the truth, to the center, to the end. But I'm not. Here I am here again. It's brand new and huge in my mouth all over again.

I just saw Dr. H, the psycho-pharmacologist. I didn't want to see her. I thought she could call in some refills and call it a day. She said she hadn't seen me since December and she needed to see me before refilling anything. As I stood on the crowded 6 train holding on for dear life I started coming down. I wondered where I was going to start when I saw her. A lot has happened since December when I saw her. Too much has happened since December when I saw her. And I started thinking of the big picture which is always bad. And by the time I got off the subway at 77th street there were tears welling in my eyes. I was 15 minutes early and took that time to write about everything I thought she needed to know. That I thought I needed something stronger. That when this all started I didn't know what I was getting into and now I am in the thick of it and I am lost in the forest of illness and when I see the forest I freak out but sometimes it's unavoidable and I want something for those times. I want something for when a beer used to do the trick. Now a beer doesn't do the trick. Now a beer does nothing but make me more depressed that it does nothing.

Fine. So I went so I could get the drugs that make my life bearable. I felt dirty and nasty just knowing that was why I was seeing her. I felt like a drug addict. I felt desperate. I am. It's the truth; I am not seeing her for my physical body. And nothing she could give me will make my physical body any better. I go to her so it's easier to lie to myself. I go to her so it's not as glaring how shitty my life is. I go to her so the amount of drugs I take for my underlying condition don't make my life a living hell by the havoc they wreak on my body in the form of side-effects. And that makes me feel like a junkie. I see a therapist. I have a million doctors. I am going to her for drugs straight up no chaser. Drugs. So I can more easily lie to myself. So I can dull the pain of knowing that my life isn't how I ever imagined it would be. So I can embody what she called the 'new' normal. When all I want is the old normal.

I want a cure. I want an answer. I want to be rescued. I want to believe there will be an end to this shit. I want to wake up and know this was all a bad dream. I want to stop taking all of the drugs. All of them, from the B12 shots to the steroids, to the clonopin. I hate it all. Toxins and poison rushing through my veins at all times. In the beginning I savored the moments in the morning when I was myself, before I took the drugs. Then my body quickly adjusted and I needed to take them immediately upon waking. I would be jittery and crazed and dizzy and just wrong otherwise. Now I don't know the difference. I don't know who I am. I am lost. I am completely lost in this maze of health and loss and who I was and who I don't know I will become and who I don't know I will ever be able to become again. Lost. This is a chimichanga go home early and take a bath day. This is a day where my head feels like it's going to explode. This is one of the red letter days where it all makes sense that it makes no sense and I hate it. I hate what my life has become. I fucking hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it. What about the fairy tales I grew up on? What about how being a good person will pay off? What about hard work paying off? Where the hell did I go wrong? Or is all of that shit just a load of crap that people tell themselves to justify going on. And Briana lived happily ever after. The end. Bullshit

With A Little Help From My Friends

Life goes on. Last night we gathered to celebrate BE's 31st birthday. Yes, the 31's are upon us. It's some wild stuff. It's especially wild to know the same people for much of those years and see them as pimpled 15 year olds and remember first cigarettes and first kisses and seventh grade teachers and bad haircuts and still remember everyone's parents' home phone numbers yet know none of eachother's cellphone numbers. In fact Farf mentioned last night that he could bank on remembering ML's mom's number when he's 100 on his death bed.

We've known each other for a long time. What can I say. I am happy that nothing has changed. It's nice to always have a place to go where everyone knows your name and you are always welcome and everything's always the same and you can do no wrong and you are loved unconditionally just because you're you. I don't think after this many years there is anything any of us could do that would change that. We have tested and pushed and stretched and pulled and angered and hurt and annoyed and teased each other already. We have formed differing alliances at different times. We are are true selfish selves in front of each other, no questions asked, no complaints made. Our quirks are endearing instead of annoying and we always give each other the benefit of the doubt. I can't say enough how lucky we are. We actually have a family dynamic but it's different than the family you are born into; we chose each other.

Sometimes I think it's weird that none of us have moved on, that you could strip off the titles and weight gain/loss and better clothing and find us doing the same thing, having the same conversations, playing the same way as we did at 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 31. We often talk longingly about a commune where we'd all live together and have kids with each other and grow old together. ML, V and I had fun at Barcade last week making fusion last names out of our last names and how our diversity as a group would make for some good looking kids. This is our utopia. This is what we all dream about and aspire to and wish was possible. If we could all live together on Roosevelt Island in the same apartment we wouldn't want for anything or need the outside world at all. Is that not crazy? Aren't we supposed to want more? Aren't we supposed to want the conventional life the career the spouse the kids the home? Are we just jaded because we've all been burned by our attempts at that?? Is this renaissance just a phase? I know I never feel more comfortable and complete than I do on these nights that I always wish were a little bit longer; like a lifetime longer.

At one point a couple of months ago A and I were feeling like like we needed to explore the outside world and forage for some sustinence that we were using this comfort as a crutch and should get out more; you know, find something to keep us warm at night, something less safe, something less guaranteed. We quickly realized that at the end of the day a guarantee is what we want. So we went out and looked but at the end of the day remembered where home is. At the end of the day who wants to work so hard and risk so much when nine time out of ten all your efforts are for naught. Anyway as D says, the right guy is the one who won't let you get away. I've had my share of guys who wouldn't let me get away but they were needy possessive guys, not letting me get away to save them from their insecurities; that's not what D means.

In a conversation with 31 the other day when we were analyzing why we never hooked up in law school he said something about there never being an opportunity and I responded that of course there was. I realize now that he must respect me and wouldn't take advantage of a drunken night at the Reade Street Pub and Ale house as his opportunity. (Although he did do that shot off my back that he claims to have forgotten). Back then not trying to hook up with me when I was drunk meant disinterest to me. I didn't know from respect. That's something new I've added to my list at the sage old age of 30. Let me know you're actually interested in me. Put yourself out there, don't let me get away, don't wuss out and make your move when I'm drunk. Treat me like a woman. Although we're equal, we're different and there is a dance that we're supposed to engage in. You lead. I've always resisted it because I didn't understand the nuance of equal yet different. I thought that you thought you were buying me, not my dinner, so would refuse to let you pay so I could maintain some control. I interpreted a door being opened for me or you offering to hold my heavy bag as evidence that you thought didn't think we were equal, realize I was smart, and that you were playing a game with a goal in mind and I always wanted to be your equal partner, nothing less. Now I understand the dance. It means that you ask me out. You pay for dinner. If we go outside to smoke a cigarette and I don't bring my coat as I invariably won't, you give me yours. That's how you show me that you like me and respect me. Actions speak so much louder than words. So many women accept less. So many woman are skeptical of a guy who offers his coat because it's so rarely done these days. That only serves to discourage guys from being gentlemen as one of my co-workers says because when the reception is bad and not grateful when you offer the seat on the subway, offer the jacket, open the door, you are less likely to do it again. That leaves women and men in a weird place where miscommunication is a guarantee and if you have a safe place like I do, you are likely to take refuge in it.

So I went to BE'S 31st birthday without a plus one and then to a bar where I was able to dance as provocatively as I wanted to knowing I won't be taken advantage of or perceived any differently than I have always been. In fact ML had me up against the wall with my leg around his neck at one point. I couldn't do that with anyone else. Who wouldn't rather know she can pick up anyone's jacket and wear it outside or steal a cigarette or cuddle up to someone in a vestibule because it's cold out or hold hands with two hot guys at once, Bak's coffee with some cream green-eyed good looks and ML's tall, dark and handsome charm made me the luckiest girl crossing that street, all with the knowledge that it's all good. It's all gravy.

Though it may be all good, the 31's are upon us and we haven't changed since we were 5, 15, 25 and 31. What does that say about us? We'd be lucky to all end up in our commune. But it would be nice to try on convention for size too.

Watching Me

I've never been a proponent of pointing out my bad qualities on the off chance that the respondent hadn't yet noticed them but it is probably glaring to you as it is to me; my writing has lost some passion. It's like I'm phoning it in, as they say in Bikram yoga, a euphemism for going through the motions. I am trying to figure out why that is. I am not completely numb although I am less prone to the extreme emotions I had been feeling. Many of the fears are old hat. I've built up defenses I didn't have before; defenses are like muscles and what I wasn't in emotional shape for in September is cake to me now; like running over the Brooklyn Bridge or camel pose in yoga class.

I won't lie; I cried the cries of hopelessness and despair when I received the information for Remicade in the mail (Remicade is the only colitis drug I haven't tried; it's like dialysis, you go to the hospital and get it intravenous every week) which according to their checklist, my level of illness makes me eligible for. Then I promptly threw the literature out. Same thing when I got the bill for my hospital stay which informed me that my insurance had decided against covering it. What else am I supposed to do? What are my other options? Regarding the hospital stay, I was told they were 'keeping me.' It wasn't like I decided to sojourn in the hospital for fun. It wasn't like being in a spa as my sister tried to convince me. And I don't care about what my insurance company says; I'm not paying. I can't get all up in arms about this stuff because it keeps happening. It keeps happening and I've stopped being surprised, stopped feeling victimized by it, stopped caring. So the fuck what. It doesn't faze me. And not because I can't allow it to but because it is relentless. And you can get used to anything if it it is relentless, unstopping and out of your control. Like when it rains every day for weeks and weeks you stop being surprised by the weather and stop cursing whenever you umbrella flips inside out. Gradually without thinking you mold your life around the new addition while trying to keep your life as normal as possible, normal meaning not giving the new addition too much time and too much thought and too much control.

Part of my loss of passion is that I am tired. I've mentioned that exhaustion is my latest manifestation of the disease. I have many theories for that. Number one is that it is validating to be told you are supposed to be tired that it's normal to be more tired than the average person when you have my condition. Suddenly years of faking it have come to an end and I can finally 'be' tired. Additionally, there are the after effects of the pneumonia. I know it's been a month but supposedly I am still in the recovering time frame and I've never been more bone tired exhausted than during the pneumonia and the weeks since. I also believe K's theory has some credence, that I've exhausted myself. I've been relentless and unstoppable since August. Life has thrown me lemons and I've exhausted myself catching them in my bare hands, bobbing and weaving and allowing them to hit the ground, I've managed to pick up a glove and put it on to weather the force of the fast ball, I've tried to employ pinch catchers, I've tried to convince people that I am being thrown lemons; sometimes it seems like no one sees them but me. I've used the lemons for tequila shots. I've thrown them back too but as I have no aim and 'throw like a girl' and can't see through the fog where the lemons are being thrown from that hasn't been successful. Ultimately, I've also made some bombass lemonade. I now drink lemonade without thinking, without tasting. It's like water to me now. It's just part of life. I would be more surprised were there to be no more lemons than I would were there bigger, sourer ones thrown at me. Throughout it all I have worked at being a good friend, grateful daughter, loving sister, runner, yogini, lawyer and writer.

It's kind of like my computer being broken. Suddenly I can rest. Suddenly when I get home there isn't the pressure to record. And I didn't know how much I needed the rest, how tired I was, how refreshing and restorative this rest is for me. Not having the computer makes it alright not to write. I can't watch television when the computer is staring at me; I must open it up and write. It isn't a thought process; it's a compulsion and it is gone now that I don't have my computer. Now I can read and watch my Netflix movies and wash my dishes and go through my closet and pick up my laundry and sleep. When I got diagnosed with the pneumonia after weeks of feeling like utter shit suddenly I allowed myself to complain and feel how I actually felt. I was tired. So tired that getting out of bed didn't feel natural, getting dressed didn't feel like something I should be doing, leaving the house to go to work seemed risky. But I did it. And up until the night before I was hospitalized when I was on the phone with my uncle who asked me how I felt, I gave my standard answer, "That's a loaded question, you know," and he pressed, so I added, "you know it's all relative; I've felt better and I've felt worse." Without the validation of a new diagnosis why detail the the fact that I was too nauseaus to eat anything until noon-ish and then had to force it and food tasted weird and I felt I was moving through pea soup or peanut butter, that I had tremendous shortness of breath and dizzy spells and the unbearable, unbelievable fatigue. Meanwhile when I asked him the same question he told me he had been nursing an upper respiratory infection for six weeks. I told him to feel better and then passed the phone to my father who had hours earlier arrived home from the hospital following his heart surgery. The next day probably because I could no longer put off my feelings as my dad had safely arrived home from the hospital, my feelings forced themselves out and I went to the hospital and was immediately diagnosed with pneumonia. As soon as I heard the diagnosis I let my head drop on the stretcher and allowed the nurse to cover me with a sheet and I fell into a dreamless slumber one which I had been dreaming about for weeks and weeks and weeks, waking when my mother showed and immediately falling back down after greeting her.

So it isn't that I don't have the passion per se, it's that I am taking advantage of the opportunity my sick computer has given me. I am resting. I am napping. I am living outside instead of inside my head. I am storing up stories to tell once I get my computer back. I am giving my soul a break from the contant stretching and flexing and scraping I have been doing to it. It is weary. I am giving myself a break from trying to convince my family and friends to come for a visit to my world. The less I have to focus on where I am, the less disappointed I can be and the less I am forced to realize over and over and over again that I am here alone. So fuck GHI and Remicade and Dell; they didn't beat me. I'm tired but I will be back; every time I run no matter how rare it is it never fails to be a warrior princess run. Whenever I miss yoga a few days in a row, I come back stronger. I kick ass. I'm not worried. So let me sleep and don't judge my latest publications as a testament to my writing. I'll be back and I'll be stronger than I was before.

Lonely Stranger

Look, I am dealing with it. I am not happy about it, never will be but I am dealing with it. There are certain manifestations that are crippling. The latest one is exhaustion. It's not the type of tired where I'd 'rather' be in bed (who wouldn't 'rather' be in bed!); it is the type of exhaustion where I feel like I pulled two all-nighters in a row and I cannot keep my eyes open. Actually it's worse than that because I get loopy with all-nighters; I get this crazy, manic energy. I have none of that. Instead I have burning eyes that just want to close. I can't stop yawning and I want my bed. I keep stretching and cracking my neck, elbows and wrists. I just want to go home. I just want to go to sleep. It's like I'm not even here in the land of the living, of the awake, of the alert, of the "I need a cup of coffee and I'll be fine." Not me. No siree. I need a three hour nap. Then I'll be okay for about two hours. Then it'll come back. At first, a few weeks ago when this started I thought I was still recovering from the pneumonia. They say pneumonia's pretty serious. I guess it is. Especially the kind I had. But still. It's now been a month. And whenever I don't let myself sleep and try to push through the work day or a night out, obviously mistaking myself for December Briana, I start to feel the inklings of some sickness blooming. So I sleep. But the thing is the beast is never full. I can't seem to sleep enough. I am always tired and so tired that I can't leave my house. I end up eating random shit because even leaving the house to forage for food requires energy I don't have and can't muster.

Part of me loves this new ability to sleep. The real me is neither a napper nor a snoozer. Those have been two constants my entire life. I bound out of bed at the first sign of the alarm. When I share a room and the other person has to get up earlier than me, I usually end up staying up. But no more. Now I can nap. Napping is the most self-indulgent beautiful feeling ever. Sleeping during a work day feels like blowing off work and getting drunk; so wrong, yet so right, so restorative. Waking up hungry, eating and then going back to sleep like I got away with something. At first it felt like the missing link to my life. If I had only had this ability in high school when I used to sneak out at night and actually feign sick to get a cot in the nurse's office and catch up but could never relax my mind enough to nap. Or all of those hungover Saturdays where I had to go out for the second night in a row and wished I had been able to nap all day. Well now I can.

The flip side is that I can't seem to feed the beast. The more sleep I get, the more sleep I need. I know that I can't go out two days in a row. And I don't even mean going out like I used to go out. I can go out like I used to go out but it takes many early nights to recover. It's worth it once in a while. Even going out to dinner two nights in a row is too much. I fight it and I start to get sick. I give in to it and it's never enough. Last weekend I slept and I slept and I slept. It was unreal. I left work at 8:30pm on Friday night, got home at 9:00-ish and went to bed. Saturday I went to 10:00am yoga, brunch, Bloomingdale's and home to bed with plans to go out Saturday night. I woke up but just so I could text A and Liverpool and tell them that I had to go back to bed, that there was no way I could rally; I needed more sleep. And it's not like I am catching up on my sleep ever, I am perpetually tired no matter what. Catching up doesn't work. If I sleep all week, I will still need more on the weekend. If I work on Saturday and go out Saturday night which I plan on doing, Sunday will be a complete wash, even if I do stay in Friday night which I hope to do even though I slept all afternoon yesterday even though I stopped setting an alarm so I can allow myself to get as much sleep as my body needs, Sunday will be a complete wash.

The other flip side is how ridiculous this must sound. I don't want people to think that I am using my illness as an excuse not to do anything. It must seem like I am. Especially since if I can't keep up with the manifestations of it, how should I expect them to. Especially since if I still feel like a visitor on this island, still getting acclimated to the time zone, the weather and dress code, how can I expect them to understand where I am coming from when I come to them with excuses I've never used, saying things I've never said. I hate it. I hate it. I wonder if they think I'm a big wuss or worse if I am lying.

Tired as an excuse. It's never been one I've used or recognized. It's been one I've scoffed at when other people used it. You're only tired? So you're not sick. Come on. Get a few drinks in you, you'll be fine. But this is another animal entirely. This is the newest installment of Briana's Reality Show. It's like the annoying neighbor. Hopefully he'll leave soon. Actually I am sure he will. For a few months there, I had such bad insomnia that I was lucky to sleep for four hours a night. Wild, right? And now I can't keep my eyes open. They are so tired they hurt. This is the lonliness. This is where I wish there was some sick/well dictionary I could hand out so people would get where I am coming from and I wouldn't be stuck with my uncooperative body giving people this ridiculous tired excuse as a reason why I can't eat dinner with them. My relationship with my body has degenerated to the point where she completely ignores me and just does her own thing without my consent or consideration. She doesn't care about my job, my relationships, my goals. She doesn't care about me. Yet I am stuck with her. And we so don't get along.

End It On This

Talking to 31 yesterday. Got some light shed.


From: briana
To: 31
Sent: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 7:15 PM
Subject: Re:
31 is a ticking clock. i have forever memorialized you as 31 so we'll need to take some pics on Sunday (before you turn 32 ha ha). but just as blog briana is not me i guess 31 is not you. whatever that means. am i speaking jibberjabberish?

From: 31
To: briana
Sent: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 7:16 PM
Subject: Re:
it sounds like some sort of deep thought process you got going on there.
From: briana
To: 31
Sent: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 7:20 PM
Subject: Re:
i think i am just losing my mind. nothing deep about that. well blog briana isn't me. we got a lot in common but she isn't me. and I am sure you don't always love how I've portrayed you or own how I've on and off perceived you so you wouldn't say that 31 is all you.
From: 31
To: briana
Sent: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 7:22 PM
Subject: Re:
31 is pretty close
From: briana
To: 31
Sent: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 7:35 PM
Subject: Re:
really. that's interesting. because i've done a lot of pondering about you as you have seen. hopefully the outrageous comment i made about you being my friend all these years so you could eventually sleep with me wasn't true. but i did counter that with, "but that's just insane," alluding to the fact that I didn't think you were friends with me to sleep with me a few times and then discard me. That's one of two things that I wondered about a lot. but a lot of him being pretty close is because 31 has spoken for himself very often via text messages and emails. and I've known him for years and years and years.

From: 31
To: briana
Sent: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 7:39 PM
Subject: Re:
yeah that part wasn't true. I didn't hang around all this time as some sort of quest.
-----------------
Thank goodness we got that resolved. As my devoted readers will know, I have been racking my brain for months wondering what the fuck I did or didn't do or what flaw he has or did things just get too intense with me being sick or did me being sick freak him out or was it that he witnessed the Illinois stuff and how hard it hit me and didn't want to risk being the arbiter of more pain in my life or did he always just want to sleep with me. Good to know it wasn't the latter. Great to know it wasn't the latter. I didn't really think it was the latter but when you have absolutely nothing to go on but imagination, you mind starts to wander a little bit.

Then last night while doubling back on the Brooklyn Bridge I wondered why I told 31 that blog Briana isn't me. Of course she's me. I don't make this stuff up. I mean come on, could you make this stuff up? But at the same time, each blog is a moment in time, one side of the story, not the whole story and I am extracting a thought, feeling and making it the arc in a story with a beginning and an end. When there is another person involved I am seeing them at a moment when they gave me pleasure or pain or saved my life or destroyed it but clearly everyone is three dimensional and someone who gave me pain for that story might be giving me pleasure in another. For example the above is an ending to months of pondering about 31. But he has been portrayed many other ways all in stories that had their own endings and beginnings.

That's the thing. Life isn't neat. In reality, these moments spill over each other and overlap and there are no endings or beginnings, except birth and death or the socially constructed endings and beginnings like graduation, marriage, new job etc. But the moments I want to write about aren't, "About my summer vacation" in a capsule. If it was that simple, I'd have no need to write at all..

My sister and I always disagree about this. She can't see blog Briana as a character. I wish she could on the one hand but on the other I can't imagine what it must feel like for her and other loved ones of mine to read this stuff. When I first started writing it I was very conscious of that. Like, I don't know if I would want to know certain things if I were them. Or as interesting as it might be, it's too much information when it's your sister or your daughter or maybe even your friend. My feelings have since evolved. Partially because as the blog has developed it has become a story and Briana has become the main character and sometime narrator of the story. She isn't me. I am not my hair. I am not blog Briana. I am not sick Briana. These are all parts of me combining to form Briana. Depending on the day I may inhabit one of these sub-personas. In that way we are all schizophrenics. These are just moments that I've framed. They are all me; I am all of them combined in varying degrees at varying moments. But I can see how the power of these moments can be scary and shocking and intense when read and scary and shocking and intense when it's your sister, daughter or friend. I want them to be scary and shocking and intense but I also want those close to me to understand that I am exploiting these moments. I am distilling them and framing them and thus giving them more power and intensity. In the day to day when a million things happen all at once, those moments I write about are not so remarkable. Out of one person's life there are many stories happening simultaneously. To tell one, you have to leave out the others and let the one you chose have its own spotlight and singularity so it's given justice. So as messy and 'real' as my blogs are, the blog gives me a forum to get out one thing at a time, tell one story at a time; to give every moment its due.

I am also honored to have someone like 31 in my life who despite maybe being cowardly when I was sick or not ever truly owning what happened between us is still here and has let me rant and rave and ponder and speculate about him in every which way allowing me full artistic right over my moments that include him. It's like pictures, some you look good in and some you don't. And he's allowed me to show both the ones that flatter and the ones that don't. Other people aren't so liberal. I've had people disgree with how they've been perceived, as if by me portraying them a certain way in one blog I am setting their whole identity in stone. I have been forbidden to use their exact words, I have been asked to change someone's longstanding nickname out of fear that it was no longer protecting their identity and more. So trust me, the freedom 31's given me over his identity in this work, that's rare. And the fact that he didn't befriend me to sleep with me is good stuff too.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

I am having this craving to go back to the gym. I haven't gone yet in 2007. The snow is making me hanker for the gym. I am getting more of my former self back and the fact of the snow is proof that time has passed and I am no longer in the same place. Progress has been made. Seasons have changed.

I was actually going to cancel my membership. I haven't done it yet. I didn't want to do anything rash. I have been a member of that gym since 2000. To cancel just seemed crazy. But I have never not gone for over two months. Never. If I was given access to my attendance record in the past six and a half years you'd see days where I went twice and you'd see a rare week when I went less than five times. In fact I could probably identify those weeks right now off the top of my head. I missed two weeks when I had my tonsils taken out in April of 2002. I missed another couple of weeks when I first injured my knee in April of 2004. Then I missed another couple after I had knee surgery in July of 2005. Other than that the gym was my religion for all the duration disregarding my eratic attendance between August and now. For much of that time, especially the beginning I did not accept my body's limitations AT ALL and was still going to the gym or trying to but usually not getting very far. Then I was on a crazy high dose of steroids and was at the gym at 6:30 every morning for wont of anything else to do with the time and my energy and mania. Gradually I got back into yoga in September of 2006 and slowly have been easing back into running but it's outdoor running I've been doing, never treadmill.

I joined the gym spontaneously. I used to run in Central Park often after work at the United States Attorney's Office, Eastern District. My friend Dallas was working at the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office and we'd meet up after work and go to the New York Sports Club on 73rd and Columbus and change and then go for a run in Central Park. She knew everyone there so they let me change into my running gear before our runs despite my lack of an actual gym membership. At a certain point I spontaneously joined. It made our runs a lot more flexible. And we could go spinning before or after. When I bemoan the loss of my 23-year old body I also bemoan the discipline I had. Part of me does at least and part of me now knows that working out makes me feel good. I do it purely for that now. I always did, even at 23 but at 23 there was more to it than that. It was partially the mania of being 23 that compelled me to do it; the insecurity, the fear about my future, the way it made me feel powerful and strong and in control, what I now know is all an illusion.

We had a run we called the Manhattan run that started at either her house or my grandmother's house (12th between first and second or 10th between first and second) where we skimmed the East River. We ran down to the Staten Island Ferry hugging the water as we talked about school and boys and who the best sex of our life was and why and traded crazy stories from before we knew each other in college. We'd run up the West Side, the Twin Towers dominating the skyline sheltering us from the rest of the city as we ran past the volleyball court and the beautiful boats and roller bladers and dog walkers and couples canoodling on the grass. We wondered what we were doing in law school. We'd get to Christopher Street on the West Side Highway and scrounge around for change and buy a gatorade and guzzle it down. Then we'd bear east and run back along 10th street to where we started. We passed this restaurant we always talked about going to and never did. Sometimes we'd go for a spin after that 9-mile run. Sometimes we'd get sushi and beer and marvel over what cheap dates the crazy running made us. Those were some fun days. Sadly my one-day older Libra sister, Ms. Dallas has arthritis in her knees and can no longer run. Gotta pour some beer out for the girl I always felt was the more condensed, real McCoy version of me. Blonder, taller, bigger boobs, greener eyes, longer legs, more freckles and skinnier. Cool as shit and more of a warrior princess than I am. She ran her first marathon at 17. She took the train alone down to North Carolina (correct me if I'm wrong, girl) and lied about her age so she could run it; you have to be 18, ran and got on the train and came home. She is a true warrior princess who more than me burned the candle on both ends and in between from running, drinking, trysts with boys etc all in a 24-hour period, the girl never stopped. Big up.

I went to the 14th Street New York Sports Club with Staten Island. That gym reminds me of Sundays and he and I meeting in the AM for brunch and them ambling around the city culminating with us going to the gym. Him to lift weights and me for my 5:15pm spin class. I would always get a bike near the window of the spin room and stare at him throughout the class. He was delicious. I loved watching him. But then reality would set in as we left the gym, went out to dinner and fought the entire time.

At the Wall Street New York Sports Club in April 2004 I fell and permantly damaged my knee. ( http://www.runningtimesmagazine.com/rt/articles/?id=3760&page=1 ) I did go back there. And I did run there again. What took me forever as C will attest was taking that escalator. That steep-ass escalator that I fell up. But we went there. I went there in the mornings before work at the big firm. I went there at lunch. On Friday evenings C and I were devotees of Rob's spin class. We'd trudge there in the snow past the stock exchange up the beauty wonderland that is Broad Street in the winter and then get to gaze at hot Rob for 45 minutes and go back to work glowing. I got my legs back there. I got my legs back. I ran again for the first time there. What miracle was the first one mile straight that I ran.

Then I spent a lot of time in 2005 at the 36th and Madison New York Sports Club. That was when I was working at the criminal defense firm. It didn't matter how much time I spent there; I could never spin fast enough, run far enough or lift enough weight to ever benefit from the transformative impact I usually got from going to the gym. In a Total Body Conditioning class one Monday night with a 10 lb weight in each hand, I kneeled down to do a squat and heard a pop and there went my knee. Again. Knee surgery followed soon after.

I could go on. I have stories about the two gyms near my house, Cobble Hill where I famously fell off the treadmill, not the first time I've fallen off a treadmill but the first time at a real gym and not the one in my parents' building. I have stories about the gym at Irving Place or the one in Battery Park or on Reade Street where I logged my fastest 5-miles to date, 39 minutes in the summer of 2001 and the gym in Forest Hills I used to sometimes go to when I worked at Legal Aid in Jamaica, Queens in 2002. Am I ready to quit?

I joined when I was 23, the summer of 2000. I am a different person now. I have let go of many other of that 23 year old's ideas and habits and hobbies and theories; why not one more? I am closer to 33 than 23; that speaks volumes. The truth is, I haven't gone in over two months. I don't know if I went in December. I didn't notice that I hadn't been in forever until the new year began. I told myself if I didn't go during January I'd quit. I didn't go in January. Then I gave myself February. Well February is almost up. And I bought myself (because I am so good to myself, carpe diem right?) a year of yoga so should I really be paying for both when I can run outside and haven't gone spinning or to any other class at the gym in ages? But what about the hankering I had for it tonight?

Bottom line is, despite the hankering I went running outside tonight; not to the gym. Bottom line is I am not 23. I am 30. Maybe the gym isn't me anymore. Maybe the gym has gone the way of tube tops and arguing with my parents and doing nasty shots just to do them and smoking in bars and taking the train home at 4am and breaking night and closing out bars way too often and second guessing myself and doing things for the wrong reasons. Maybe I have become more organic and mindful in the way I like to exercise. Maybe I have just become more organic and mindful and let myself be, no longer forcing the gym on myself and putting the pressure on myself to run X miles a week, spin X times a week and lift weights X times a week. I am not down with the shoulds. I am down with doing what feels good. And lately that hasn't been the gym. It's been either the hot room and the focused movement of Bikram yoga where I found my eyes and finally accepted what I look like in the mirror or the cold air and beautiful cobblestone streets of DUMBO or 'No Sleep 'til Brooklyn' runs where I always find the missing puzzle pieces in my brain. I guess I'll have to have faith in my mindfullness and trust in the organic process it took me six and half years to learn to make my decision.

Do You Remember?

"Don't worry you don't need to remember his name because next time you're here, he won't be around," Joyce said to Liverpool after she introduced him to her latest paramour. I almost hit the floor when she recounted that to me laughing so hard. She's been saying that about him since day one. And day one was months ago. She's gone back to the land of not believing, just passing time. Last night she bumped into L., the guy she tripped and fell madly in love with mere months after her breakup with GG. Now she can't stop thinking about him. Their relationship combusted blew apart after it became long distance and commication went from loving and missing to manipulative to cruel. She ran into him in the street yesterday and is left with the memory of the feeling she had in the beginning. The feeling she had never thought she'd feel again after GG. The feeling she never had before GG. And despite how ugly things got at the end, it's hard for her not to remember what brought them together in the first place and to second guess herself and her perceptions of his nasty long distance emails.

There's been a dearth of romance lately. It's like we forget that we ever felt it and forget what it felt like and don't even aspire towards it we are so far removed from it. ML, V and I talked about it while watching a couple canoodle at Barcade in Greenpoint. We half had no idea what it felt like and half did. We agreed that sometimes we just didn't want to remember. And sometimes the memories washed over us unwillingly, taking us off guard at the most inoportune moments, crippling us. When the moment passes we are transported back to the here and the now, the only believing in what we can see, smell and touch where being in love is like believing in Santa or the tooth fairy. Come on. Simultaneously I have been pining over Brooklyn like it's my job and Joyce is now pining over L.

Hanging out with Joyce and Liverpool last night at Bar Tabac I was reminded of High School and how we were all relationship cynics and love cynics. We didn't get it we had never felt it and even me who was bit by the Brooklyn bee right before high school didn't really get it until he penetrated through my sheild of self-protection when he told me he loved me after high school graduation. Up until that time I was lovin' em and leavin' em and feelings were never something I had. I remember when Liverpool first fell in love. I felt like we suddenly living on two different planets. How could we still be friends when the philosophical cynicism our friendship was based upon no longer existed. The night before a major math test Katri and I were at her house with the pretense of studying but instead had raided her parents' liquor cabinet. We invited Liverpool over to try to drag him back on to our team. We didn't want him to be in love. We didn't believe that faith preceded knowledge. We couldn't feel, see or smell love. Love didn't exist to us. Sex existed. Lust existed but Love? Hell no. So we proceeded to do everything in our womanly powers to drag, pull, coerce, pressure him back to our world. We teased and tortured him into fooling around with both of us to prove that he was still as laissez-faire about all that stuff as we were.

After Brooklyn, I became a love sucker. I was suddenly the biggest romantic ever. I was smart about it most of the time. Or at least D tells me I was. Supposedly I gave good advice and always managed to get who I wanted so I must have had some smarts about it. Either way, despite not always wanting relationships, or usually not wanting relationships I was a romantic. I had feelings. I got caught up in moments. I could turn a night where I hooked up with a random dude at a bar into a story of unrequited love in the retelling. I had it with LG. I had it with 31. 1982 was a magical miracle of an experience. I'm not there anymore. It bothers me that it's gone. The last guy I had it with was New Year's Eve guy. The sex was transcendental. We clicked and I hoped to see him again. I liked him. Nothing materialized and the switch went off - as mysteriously as it had gone on years before. It's like my life went from color back to black and white.

So I think about Brooklyn and I remember all of the flavors, colors, tastes and smells and texture my life had. I think about Brooklyn and despite all of my new powers of not getting ahead of myself or daydreaming even when I don't like the guy, which I used to do to just kind of 'try him on,' like hmmm ...what would that be like; I am thinking about Brooklyn. I can't stop wondering. And that's what Joyce is doing. How can we be staunch non-believers yet be nostalgic for when we did believe all at the same time?

I wonder if that is why I can't stop thinking about Brooklyn. He was my first foray. And I still can't explain it. There aren't words. There are only conflicting theories and emotions that I can't boil down into logic and reason. Once I got stung by him, my protective shield was penetrated. I instantly became my worst enemy. I betrayed my former self. Suddenly I had these feelings that I couldn't explain or understand but I knew that I was drawn to him in a way that I had never been drawn to anyone before, I was completely taken off guard and suddenly got it. I don't know if I miss him or whether I miss the feeling. It's like as quickly as I became a romantic - the Brooklyn bee sting, hearing him say, "I love you,' for the first time; the switch was flipped back the other way just as unexpectedly. And here I remain feet firmly planted in the world of logic and reason and explanation until the next bee comes my way and stings me so hard I am seeing colors again.

I Can't Live Without My Radio

If you hadn't noticed by now, every blog is a song title. My life has a soundtrack. When I reminisce there is always a song attached to every memory. I know song lyrics the way my dad always wished I could memorize the reasons for World War I (militarism, imperialism, globalism and ?) or the quadratic equation. Something devastating happened today. My baby, my best friend, my most treasured piece of technology has passed on. He had been on the fritz for awhile. I got him for Christmas in 2004. He completely changed my life. Suddenly I had access to all of my music at once. Suddenly no matter where I was I could listen to whatever I wanted. Suddenly I could purchase music and have it immediately on my I-Pod and listen to it immediately. I could pick the live version, the remix or the radio version. I could buy all three. I could listen to the first 30 seconds to determine if I really wanted it and then decide whether or not to make my purchase. Now not any more. Now my baby is gone gone gone gone.


I got a few blips out of him yesterday. Then at the end of the day the screen said something about disk mode and I couldn't get it to restart or play or turn off. I couldn't get it to do anything. So I brought it to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store next to FAO Schwarz this morning. I had high hopes. They are geniuses and all. While I proudly characterize myself as a 'tech-NO;' they can fix things. They aren't scared of breaking the gadget. They don't get frustrated and want to throw it against the wall. They don't get frustrated and curse at it and then get scared they broke it more. I do. The peril of being impatient and technologically retarded is that you actually try to fix these inanimate objects by pressing different combinations of buttons, yelling, restarting a thousand times etc with no clue what you are doing. I am too impatient to consult the manual and too impatient to wait on hold for the next available representative to assist me. So I believed that I did something stupid like I do and that the geniuses would be able to fix my baby. I was wrong. It didn't take more than a moment to get the diagnosis. The genius tried to restart it. He hooked it up to his computer. He held it to his ear. Then he told me he was sorry to be the bearer of the bad news. He's not going to make it. He's gone for good. I impressed upon him the importance of fixing it NOW - my computer is in the shop, I have no access to music if I don't have my ipod and not having access to music is not an option. "What do you expect me to do, listen to the radio?" I asked him?! Come on! I NEED MY MUSIC. He smiled at me, told me he was sorry, but there really wasn't anything he could do.

So here I am, no way to get the music off my corrupted i-pod, no access to the music library on my computer. The genius told me I had a couple of options. In exchange for my corrupted I-pod, I could get 10% off a new one or I could buy a refurbished version of mine at a discounted rate. As it turned out, a new one was cheaper than a refurbished version of mine. I waited on line. A cute boy was at the register. I handed him my I-Pod. He said, "people get really attached to their i-pods, but think about the environment, you're recycling, we're going to use your i-pod to fix other i-pods." Was that supposed to make me feel good? It didn't. I said, "I feel like I am donating my organs." My computer, my i-pod and I have been together since December 2004. They were both part of my new, post-Illinois, post-losing babies, post President Street, post big law firm life. And now they are both gone.

How could I be without music? You may as well take my organs. You're taking my baby's organs. This is tragic. This is inconvenient. This is unreal. I no longer own a CD player. I don't have a casette player either. Everything is on my I-pod. Everything is on my computer. My music and my lyrics. My life story. My life. Me. How can it all be gone? This is like the dichotomy between sick Briana and Briana. Yesterday Dr. Lax told me that I am not good at being sick. I said,"you're right, I can't live like this. This isn't me" I told him that I am starting to get depressed realizing that I will have to deal with annoying side effects, constant vigilance, toxic drugs and lots of them, and ER trips for the rest of my life. He reminded me that there is another option. Surgery. Removal of my entire large intestine. Scary Scary Scary. And anyway, I had knee surgery thinking I would end up with a bionic knee. I don't have a bionic knee. My left knee is better than it was pre-surgery but it's no bionic knee, far from it. Anyway the surgery may effect fertility and until I've had babies I refuse to mess around down there anymore than I already have.

It's all about accepting what you don't want to accept. Understanding on a deeper level that certain parts of your life are over. Hoping that new, good things will replace them. Having the courage to try instead of feeling angry at the world and defeated. Being able to take no for an answer instead of fighting a losing battle. See none of that is me. I don't accept. I have refused break-ups. I have refused everything I didn't want to be true and fought for what I wanted as hard as I could despite advice to the contrary. I've finished races with my feet bleeding. When I know I've fought my hardest, then I know I can fold. Otherwise, I have trouble doing so. I never want to blame myself for not achieving something. I want to be able to console myself with the knowledge that I fought the good fight. But what about when the war is amorphous? My I-pod is something I couldn't begin to imagine how to fix. If the genius says it's over, I have to believe him. I don't want to but what else can I do? I have no other options! Same with my health.

This is not my comfort zone. I like to be in control and I like to feel omnipotent. What the hell am I going to do with no music? Obviously I am going to have to deal and find something else - this coming from the girl who wears her I-pod on the train ride home and upon entering the house plugs it immediately into the speakers. Not cool. I have to accept it, being angry won't help. Anyway, I've been angry all morning. I've been angry and upset and frustrated all morning and I was angry and upset and frustrated yesterday after leaving the doctor so much so that I didn't go back to work. Enough. But I can't LIVE WITHOUT MY RADIO. Music would help with this. It's like how when I needed a run the most, I was on crutches. Why the constant challenge? I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT MY RADIO.

I Ain't Goin' Out Like That

In case anyone thinks I am about to jump off the nearest building I am not. That's not where I am headed. When I am depressed and scared and lonely it's because I love life and I don't want it to end sooner rather than later. I love feeling my lungs expand as I run up cat hill in Central Park. I love when I can make it the full minute in standing bow pulling pose in yoga. Nothing makes me happier than a burger with everything, fries and a brownie from 'The Burger Joint' in the Parker Meridien. And adrenaline filled nights when the cutest boy at the bar comes up to me and it turns out he can also make me laugh. I love the taste of a soy mocha from Starbucks which always reminds me of law school and the Starbucks on Chambers Street I'd go to. The first snow. The first warm day. Finding the perfect word to make the perfect sentence. Prosecco with AC at MiniBar where we toast with every sip. Kir Royales with A and V where our pretext is to go out and meet boys but we always end up together, going from party to bar to party, unable to get enough of each other, taking cellphone pictures in the back seat of a cab. BE and her contradictory mix of kindness and unflinching honesty and unending generosity. Kvetching with S. Eating with C. Being so happy that D is getting married, everytime I think about her I smile. My family and our secret language and bond deeper than blood or water.

So that's where I am coming from when I write about death and lonliness and terror and frustration. I don't want my life to end sooner; I want it to end later. And I can't escape these feelings like what if this is the last time I ever get to do X. What if I never see Y again? I better seize every moment take every opportunity and I get so angry when I can't. When I am sick and I can't go I am miserable and hate my body and hate that I have no jedi mind control over my body. I hate when I am sick and I miss something or someone. I signed up to be in the lottery for the 2007 New York City Marathon. Hopefully I get in and can run it again. I want to be able to plan for my future. I want to feel like I can settle in and get comfortable. I want to believe that something good will happen to me and sometimes I don't believe it ever will. Sometimes I forget to understand that my life already contains all of the ingredients for a happy life. I know good health is an illusory truth for all of us and we really can't count on it but for me takes center stage putting everything else in my life in the background, low on the priority list, making it unclear I will ever get to any of it. I object. Other people wonder what they're doing next weekend; their health is not part of the equation. What can I say. I want to be like everybody else who gets the flu and can ride it out and knows the pattern of it and can kind of ignore it but for the discomfort it provides. But I am not that girl; when I am sick, there is no pattern.

I get in my funks and I panic and I feel so far away like I am floating on a raft farther and farther away from the land where my life and loved ones reside. I have to remember that as long as I can pick up the phone, which I don't do enough of, I will remain safely on land. It's true. The more time I spend with my people, my angels, my family, the better I feel. As much as my alone time makes for better writing because it enables me the time to dig deep and scour my soul, scrape out the dregs of my crippling fears it also forces me to feel them. I could use a little less of that as much as I believe in the organic process of emotion; trusting myself when I am sad to be sad that I will stop being sad when I stop being sad and I will definitely stop being sad. Trusting myself when I haven't worked out in a few days for no reason not to beat myself up, the urge will come back. Trusting myself when I've been binge eating to enjoy it and not feel guilty because I will be back on the healthy wagon soon enough. Same thing with my emotions. I believe that I will always regain my balance and my control but I know that a little comic relief never hurt anyone and I never fail to get that when I am with any of the above people.

And remembering that I say that now when I have regained control over my emotions but when I don't have it, I really don't have it and making that phone call can seem like the hardest thing in the world. Either way though, there is absolutely no risk of me ever jumping off a building. I would not consider cutting shorter what I fear will already be too short. Not a chance. And also realizing that I probably wouldn't be able to count the amazing gifts I have been given in the way of my people and experiences and my ability to delight in the simple pleasures of life if I didn't see death, if I wasn't so sick. Silver lining? So sky diving maybe. Hang gliding of course. Jumping off a building, not a chance.

Don't Stand So Close To Me

I think I broke my dad's heart yesterday. Or maybe it was my own heart that I broke. As I delve deeper and deeper into my new body and new identity and new persona I am trying to impress it upon those close to me. I want them to realize that I have changed. That what you see may be the same but what's inside has changed. I need company where I am. It's very lonely where I am. Realizations are washing over me like waves, rhythmic and unstoppable. Each one worse than the last. Each one convincing me more than the last that who I was in the past is not ever who I will be again. I know too much. I have seen too much. I have been in denial for too long. I have been in denial since 1998 when I was first diagnosed. I had the luxury of denial back then. I was young and strong and the disease hadn't spread so remission made it easy to be in denial.

Now not so much.

Defining life changing moments have peppered my life since this summer, some more meaningful and memorable than others. The day I went to the pharmacy and picked up my first dosage of chemotherapy was one such moment. I had just been to the doctor and he was telling me about it but something was lost in the conversation and I didn't realize he was calling it in to the pharmacy that day and my disease was at a level mandating it that day. When I went to the pharmacy to pick up my prescriptions and I had three instead of two I was confused. The pharmacist offered to explain. She took it out of the bag and started to read aloud and when she got to that word, chemotherapy, she stopped reading and looked at me pityingly and I just took the bag out of her hands and left. I didn't want her to have to go through that. I left CVS and didn't know what to do with myself. I called A and left her a rambling crazy message. That was the day of the chimichanga quest. I found a place that made them and as I was sitting at the bar in Mezcal's waiting for them to make it I kept wanting to say, "do you know what I have in this CVS bag? Chemotherapy. Make that chimichanga a good one and make it quick. My life just changed. I am not who I appear. Be nice to me or I might start crying right here right now at your bar" Awful. Awful. I was reeling, my mind was spinning so fast I didn't have thoughts. I am surprised I didn't get run over by the B61 bus on the way home. I am surprised I made it home. I could have pulled an Anne Heche and shown up rambling outside someone's door. I was that out of my mind.

The next time was when I went to the inflammatory bowel specialist who compared my colonoscopy results to a third degree burn and explained that only 15% of people who have ulcerative colitis get worse, me being one of them and then he touted 6MP - the chemotherapy for much of the visit explaining how 2/3 of people who stay on it for only six months flare immediately upon stopping. People who stay on it for a only a year have a 1/3 chance of flaring immediately and so on. Again, my mind was spinning with all of his statistics. I told him that since I had started taking it I kept getting fevers and flu-like symtoms. He said to avoid antibiotics and ride out the infections and just wash my hands more often, drink a lot of fluids and stay away from sick people. He told me I would be on it for the rest of my life. Unlike my doctor, he didn't advise getting off it when I decide to conceive. I was floored. My fate was sealed. I had gone to him as a second opinion. I trusted Dr. Lax but Dr. Lax is a gastroenterologist and this guy is an inflammatory bowel specialist so I hoped there were some nuances that Dr. Lax had missed that this guy would see. I believed he'd crack the code and it would be signed, sealed, delivered and over after my visit, relegated to the past - a near miss, a big scare, but not my life, not my future and I'd finally be able to exhale. But instead, Lax's diagnosis was confirmed and my future was now paved.

Last night I went out to dinner with my dad and my brother and then my dad and I went to the movies. I felt crappy all day but the thought of cancelling and going home to my empty apartment was too depressing. I knew I needed the company. In the cabride back to Roosevelt Island (I slept over at my parents' house), my dad said, "Briana, you said something that was very true in your email. Illness is a lonely experience. Only the person experiencing it really gets it." That completely changed the tone of the conversation we had been having thus far. I explained that that was why I sent each of my family members a copy of The Lonely Patient by Michael Stein. I need them to get it. I hope they are able to absorb Stein's words. When I read the prologue in Barnes & Noble on Valentine's Day I started crying. It was the first time in all of this that someone reached that corner of my heart that's been crying out for company. It was so validating to discover that my emotions were normal and not crazy. Anyway, our conversation progressed and we discussed me being the executrix for a family friend's will and I made a comment about pre-deceasing her. My dad vehemently disagreed that that was a possibility and I said, "Dad, I am not Jane Smith, healthy 30-year old female," and he said, "anyone could die. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow." In my quest for someone to admit to me that they are aware of the situation instead of hiding behind their packaged words of encouragement I pressed, "Dad, come on, you know my chances are higher. You can admit it or not but that won't make it less true and it won't make me fight less. You may want to lie to me or lie to yourself but it is a fact and I prefer to face it rather than live in some kind of a fantasy world." He softly said, "I chose not to accept it."

And my heart broke in half.

I didn't realize how much his words would effect me. I shouldn't have pushed. That was selfish of me. Just because I have to accept certain truths doesn't mean I should force others to accept them. Isn't one ruined life enough? It's my hell; I don't want anyone I care about to join me here. It's like how I didn't ever tell my younger siblings that Santa didn't exist and ruin it for them. What kind of jerk would do that? So what was I thinking in forcing my dad to go there in his mind? On the other hand it's so obvious what I was thinking. I was thinking about Illinois being able to leave me and the 'serious situation' we were in and how I couldn't leave the situation because it was my body that made the situation serious. And here I am again, my body has once again betrayed me and put me in peril and since it is my body I am the only person who has to deal with it; everyone else can come and go as they wish. When I am mired in it it's unbearable. I need need need someone to hold my hand and walk me back out of my head into the sun. I would take the physical pain and symptoms times a thousand rather than the emotional ramifications. That's how bad it is to be inside the new truth, the new future, the new reality, the new limitations, the new fears, the betrayal, the loss and to be here all alone.

I look great. When I feel good I can fool anyone. And I think people like to cling to that vision of me. Maybe it's time to stop convincing others that I really am sick, that I am rightfully scared, that it sucks here and I need the company. That's just mean. It's selfish and mean and I don't want my loved ones to feel an iota of what I feel. It's my body that's broken and stupid and killing its own. It's my problem. I am not in the business of breaking hearts. Let my heart be broken but I will keep on putting on my good show because it's been working so far despite how hard I've been trying to convince others' otherwise. And let their bodies remain whole and beautiful and their futures intact. I don't want anyone to understand anymore. One broken body is enough. One broken heart is enough. To everyone else now: DANGER! NO TRESSPASSING!

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow

It's happening again.


The slow descent back into the illness. Some illness. Don't know how it will manifest itself this time.

I felt it last night when I had plans with AC and wanted so badly to climb into bed at 8:30 instead of meeting her at Cube 63 at 8:30.

But I met her. After dinner, I went straight home and straight to bed at 10:30 on a Friday night.

Today I woke up with the headache and eye strain and nausea and lower spine soreness that characterized the early phases of pneumonia. But my eyes are twitching more. It's a little different and I still never know what is a warning signal and what is a side effect. So I wait. I went to 10:00am yoga and now I am at work.

I didn't think I was going to make it to work without throwing up. So nauseaus. So nauseaus. I had no food in my body but all of the smells on the way to the subway served to only make me feel more nauseaus. The smell of bacon wafting out of a diner. The smell of pizza as I walk by a pizzeria. The smell of hotdogs and other street food as I walk by a vendor. I love those smells. Those smells make me hungry. Those smells make me want all of those things all at once when I am healthy Briana, that is. Not today. I knew I had to eat so I got my safety standby - pb&j on whole wheat. I also got coffee to see if maybe that's what my headache is all about. I hope it works. I am drinking it like I used to drink beer when I first started drinking and hated the taste, little sips.

Being well when you are chronically ill is like being granted furlough when you're in the army. You want to taste, smell, drink, have sex, stay out all night, see everyone, eat everything, you want to cram your entire life into a few days. Because you know this freedom is fleeting. When you least expect it, even though you are always expecting it in that layer right below your conscious, you are kidnapped in the middle of the night in your sleep and you wake up in that other place, the place where illness reigns supreme and your body is once again your enemy.

I crave rhythm and predictibility. I crave warning. But it doesn't work that way. Instead of having the predictibility of the waltz, a three-step; this dance is impossible to follow. I am never out of the woods. If I could learn the steps, I would have half a chance. But I am never safe because the warning signals are different every time. The enemy never strikes the same way twice. So until it is at the point where I can no longer make it to work or make it out of bed, I don't call the doctor. I can't. I would be on the phone with him all the time. Compared to how I used to feel two years ago, I am always sick; I always feel like crap. Compared to how I felt two weeks ago, I feel amazing. People ask me how I am and it is such a loaded question. Even when I do feel well I don't. I am perpetually on the run from it and I have close calls and near misses and I can never fully relax no matter how much I disguise myself and distance myself she is always lurking closely nearby waiting to attack, waiting to win and I am always scared.

My life is shaped by dramatic highs and lows, near misses, tragic losses, obstacle courses, impossible climbs, roller-coaster rides, ecstasy when I can feel normal and be the person I used to be, victory when I wake up and love the smell of coffee and go on a victory run in the snow. It is exhausting. This isn't a way to live. My life is action packed. When people ask me what's been going on, there is nothing I can tell them that would mean anything in their world, no exciting job, no new boy, no crazy night to recount, but in my world, the world of the chronically ill, the twists and turns of my health are earthshattering and keep me constantly on my toes. I am never bored. There is always something going on. Just nothing I can share which make my victories like enjoying a cup of coffee, huge in my world, tantamount to a $10,000 raise in someone else's, meaningless and something I must keep to myself. If I recount the miracle of my pre-Valentine's Day run and how miraculous it felt, they look at me like I'm crazy, saying with their eyes, "uh ... you've run six marathons, why is that such a big deal?" Because the rules have changed. Because my body and I are no longer in sync. We have a very volatile relationship. Because anytime I can do something I used to do with no problem, without even thinking about it, I feel like a rockstar and I feel like it is a miracle. But no, according to what you consider new, nothing is going on with me.

Is it in Alaska that the native people there have over a hundred different words for snow? I think about that when I realize how few words I have to describe how I feel and how my new life is. I was trying to describe it to AC last night and I can't. Even with metaphor I can't. There aren't words to describe sickness and the unpredictability and the departure from reality and the not caring about things you've always cared about and being obsessed with every little twitch in your eyes or pain in your head or mistep you take.

How do I describe how it is to be a normal, pretty, healthy, fun, funny, smart, athletic, adventurous, laid-back regular girl which is still how I appear when I am not many of those things anymore? And when I told AC how sick I was, she didn't understand. She marveled how well I looked in the hospital when she came to visit. Part of that was my talent in putting on a good show. Part of that was the very close call, I had been told I had HIV and then told I didn't within a half hour. Not looking sick is a hindrance. People can't get their head around how I could be as sick as I claim to be and look as healthy as I look. Yeah I look good. Steroids make your face flushed and rosy. Immuno-suppressants make you lose weight and your skin glow. So is it really a compliment to tell me I look great? And anyway, what does that have to do with anything? It's like when people make anti-semitic comments in front of me and then I announce that I am Jewish. "Well you don't look it," they always say before apologizing.

The truth is that once death becomes more than an abstract notion and you can see it happening because you've had your nights where going to sleep you didn't expect to wake up the next morning and you have been told time and time again by various health professionals how sick you were it is hard to ever think about life or death the same way ever again. It's hard to feel immortal. It's hard to plan. It's hard to save money because why are you saving it when you know death is certain and may happen the next time you flare or get a related illness. It's hard to do anything besides what makes you feel good, when feeling good is a possibility. It's hard to do anything that makes you feel more bad rather than less bad. That might mean no cleaning the house and spending all day reading and writing instead. That might mean shopping instead of going through your already overloaded closet. That might mean ordering in instead of cooking. I am always treating myself. Before I had to justify it. Now there is no justification necessary. What baby wants baby gets. As outrageous, nonsensical, wasteful, meaningless as it may be. My Missoni dress being a perfect example of that. Or how I've stopped eating oatmeal for breakfast every morning and now eat cocoa krispies. If my body doesn't absorb nutrients why do I bother eating healthy? I love chocolate. Why not incorporate it into breakfast. And I never got the sugar cereals as a kid. Why not now? Why the hell not?

You see, I'm so exhausted, so drained from the emotional stress that I can't even finish this blog. I am tired from contantly trying to outsmart my body. I am exhausted from translating my state of being into something others can understand. I am weary from being constantly defeated in both endeavors. I want to curl up into a little ball inside my grey flannel sheets and cry myself to sleep at the injustice of this fate of mine. Or maybe a hot bath. First I will get something exciting for dinner. Maybe some brownies. Maybe a cupcake or two. Why the hell not. I am so exhausted I don't even feel like shopping.

Dance Me to the End Of Love

The sun is shining. The whole world is brand new. I am 15 and I am in love for the first time but I don't even know it. All I know is that I have this feeling in my stomach whenever he's around. All I know is that the sound of his voice gives me goosebumps. He says my name like he invented it. And his smell. When it's raining and we're outside swim team practice waiting for our parents to pick us up I stand under his umbrella with him and being that close to him is intoxicating. He wears Brut deodorant and it wafts off of him like the most powerful aphrodesiac I have ever experienced in my young life.

He wasn't my first kiss but he may as well have been. Because after that kiss my entire life changed. I was his the moment our eyes met in the downstairs of the Steerbarn during a teen-dance. But after that kiss he owned me. I was his prisoner. I was addicted, obsessed, enslaved, in love. We became inseparable. We spent hours on the phone talking about everything and nothing. Minutae half the time but it was the first time I had someone who fullfilled every need. He was a one-stop shop. He was my best friend; I could tell him everything, be everything in front of him and be attracted to him and him to me. We were comfortable in front of each other. Before he told me he loved me, as a preview I guess, he told me that you know when you are in love with someone when you can take a shit in front of them. And we could. And we did. There were no boundaries between us.

I was one of his friends in his group of friends. He was in my group of friends. Even there, we were accepted by our respective friends the way we accepted each other, unconditionally and unapoligetically and without boundaries. We were part of each other's groups. I had separate connections with his friends that didn't include him. His friends are some of the best friends I've ever had in my life. He had similar connections with my friends. I was him and he was me. We were a team. We were interchangeable. We were Briana and Brooklyn. I couldn't ever tell where I ended and he began. We had our own language and our own routines. I'd call him and he'd say hello and I'd say hi. Then he'd say, "who's this?" And I'd always answer, "your worst nightmare." Every time I called.

There is something about first love that never gets replicated. It's like how my dad talks about his local pizza place as a kid and how it was the best pizza to this day that he's ever had. I wonder if he was subject to a blind pizza taste test with all of the reknown pizzarias submitting slices whether he'd pick the slice from growing up. I think he believes it was the best pizza because it was the first pizza and he had it when he was experiencing every other first in his life and all of the firsts are the best. It's the nostalgia factor borne of wonder.

When Brooklyn and I broke up I knew that I'd never feel that way again; I couldn't envision ever being with anyone else and being in love. When Illinois and I broke up I knew I would. It was almost like despite how despondent I was and the despair over the dire turn my life had taken after Illinois, I already knew the drill; I would eventually fall in love with some other dude and maybe it would work out and maybe it wouldn't but it was all old hat by then. Not at all like it was with Brooklyn. With Brooklyn, the first time we broke up was in November of 1995, days before Thanksgiving. It was excruciating. I was living in Boston at the time. He was living in the School of Visual Arts dorm on 23rd street. I came home for Thanksgiving. On the Friday night that I arrived we bought a bottle of Jose Cuervo and a pack of Marlboros and sat at his card table across from each other. By the end of the bottle we were going down from the 9th floor, his floor to the 6th floor for him to introduce me to Long Island Lolita, this girl he was 'supposedly' just friends with, even though they sometimes slept in the same bed. He assured me that nothing had ever happened that they were just friends and that she'd love to meet me because he talks so much about me. We get to her room. They are friendly and comfortable and I sense something I don't like. They are too friendly and too comfortable and then I notice his pajamas folded up on her bookshelf. That is all I need to see to confirm what my instincts have been telling me since the first time he mentioned her name. I walk out of the room and wait for the elevator. He follows me. We are wasted. In the elevator we run into a friend of Brooklyn's who's tripping on acid and says, "you guys look like separate people. You always looked like a unit, like one mind and now you don't." And that's how I felt, naked and cold and missing a limb. I took the elevator to the lobby and ran outside crying hysterically in the night arriving at Madison Square Park, no coat, no cigarettes, no ID, no wallet, not even a quarter to make a phone call. Just me and my pain. I squatted down and peed in the park, crying and crying.

Eventually I made my way back to his room. His roommate was there. We went to the staircase to continue our conversation. It was awful. It was sad and pathetic and painful and gut-wrenching and I truly didn't believe I could exist in this world without him by my side. That conversation in the staircase marked the first and only time I ever saw him cry. We went back to his room. He slept. I cried all night. As soon as I woke up I called my parents. My dad answered. I asked my dad to come and pick me up. He said, "don't you have the car, didn't you drive there?" "Yes," I explained, "but something bad happened and I can't drive right now." "Are you pregnant?" he asked. "No, even worse. Me and Brooklyn broke up." My dad sighed with relief and said he was on his way. That night I slept in between my parents in their bed.

I fell in love with Brooklyn the instant I locked eyes with him at that dance. It was July 13, 1990. Our first kiss was July 29, 1990. He told me he loved me the summer of 1994, the night of the OJ chase. Our relationship was turbulent but our love was strong. We were both passionate and lived life to the fullest yet acted our ages, which meant that we often said and did things that were hurtful to the other, we were reckless and didn't understand the work that must go into sustaining a relationship. We were experimental, adventurous and artistic. We couldn't stay away from each other. After our break-up that Thanksgiving, we decided to not see each other or speak for one month. As soon as we saw each other again, we were catapulted immediately back into our old routine of late-night phone calls, the play by play of our days, telling each other everything our friends had told us in private, making plans for the next day, seeing each other as often as possible. Yet it wasn't for ages that he acknowledged me as his girlfriend again. Once he did, we confessed to eachother who else we had fooled around with during the time we were 'unofficial.' We had talked and talked about the Long Island Lolita ad nauseum. I finally had come to terms with the fact that nothing happened. It had been years and his story hadn't changed and I had no proof besides my gut feeling.

In our big confessional, I told him who I hooked up with and he surprisingly didn't take it too badly. Then I asked him. His answer, "Long Island Lolita." I laughed, "No really, who? Anyone?" He said, "Yeah, Long Island Lolita." "Okay, whatever, if that's all you got, let's go to bed," I responded and we did. When we woke up in the morning, he exclaimed that, "I can't believe how well you took that." "What?" I asked. "You know, that I slept with Long Island Lolita." "WHAT?!!!!! I thought you were joking." And then ensued a very long conversation I won't bore you with where I insisted on knowing everything from time of day, how many times it happened, what precipitated it, what positions etc.

This isn't a 'trust your gut' story even though it kind of is. It's a story about young love, first love, how you don't know what you're doing but you put everything you have into it. You are able to do that because you have no clue how much you stand to lose and how searing that pain is, how only for the first 5 seconds when you wake up in the morning are you without it, until it hits all over again and you spend the whole day in a fog until you finally fall asleep and you get that precious 5 seconds of normalcy the next morning until it hits you all over again. After the pain of losing, it is near impossible to ever throw your cards all out ever again. But that's what I want. I don't want to play it safe like I have been ever since Brooklyn. I want to risk everything. But this time I want to risk everything and win.

Simple Kind Of Life

"Girl, you better watch out, you're gonna catch pneumonia," he screamed to me as I passed him outside the Family Court building on Brooklyn Bridge Boulevard. I looked back and laughed, "I just had pneumonia!" feeling strong and reckless, feeling like me. I crossed Tillary Street and ran up the incline on to the bridge passing Brooklyn's building on Adams Street and looking at it trying to remember what his apartment number was and wondering what he'd do if I turned around and went to his house instead. Of course I didn't do that, been thinking about him lately and almost called him last week when I was sad but didn't; that's a Pandora's box I am not sure that I want to open. I ran over the bridge revelling in the beauty of the Brooklyn Bridge at night in the snow. There is nothing like it. I was going to go to yoga last night but when I left work and saw that it was actually snowing (I am a weather cynic, I doubted it would snow), I knew that a warrior princess run was in my near future.

I got home, devoured one of my 'magic' brownies at the suggestion of Maguire who opined that it could make for a good run. I did a quick change and was on my way. It was a transcendant experience. Memories flooded my mind. I remembered my first winter in Brooklyn, winter of 2002-2003 which was my best winter in Brooklyn. I was living on Sackett Street with A and MO and just starting getting serious with Illinois. I was working at the liquor store and between us, we all had flexible, weird, free schedules. It snowed like crazy that winter and we had a blast going out every night or staying in and drinking wine or smoking pot. The snow made everything we did feel like an adventure. We played in the snow and rented movies. That was the winter of the famous 'honey brother' contest where we got very high and turned the honey jar upside down and made a bet as to how long it would take for the honey to follow. A. won. Because she won she decided we all had to pick a goal to complete in the next month. Hers was to sign up for acting classes. Mine was to get a real job. MO's was to stop making out with so many guys. Illlinois' was to only stay at the bar for a maximum of one hour after he got off work. We all made good on those goals.

As I approached Manhattan and turned around en route back to Brooklyn the vision of the bridge in all its majesty with snow falling and the flag waving and Brooklyn in the background made me proud of my last five years living in Brooklyn where I realized who I was, where I became who I am, where I reclaimed what I had lost and had some of the highest highs and lowest lows; I really lived, for the first time ever I really lived. Of course I have a lot of it to blame on my health. Having a chronic illness makes you feel more alive as everytime you feel 'normal,' it feels like some divine being is smiling down on you, like the sun's shining for the first time and it's shining on you. And everytime you are sick, you're so sick you think you will die. So you feel like you're really alive and it's ironic because you are closer to death than people who never feel as alive as you feel. And I love it. What a Valentine's Day treat to be running on the Brooklyn Bridge at night in the snow at the mercy of the most beautiful vista spread out before me in all it of its glory and with my amazing body full of toxins running just the same as it always did. Each stride a miracle and each stride my miracle, my body. I can hate my body all I want but when I run and do yoga I love my body simply because it still works and because I am in control when I'm running. My body is at my mercy instead of the opposite. In fact, my diseased body can do more than most healthy people's can (when I was in the hospital and had an x-ray of my lower lumbar I had to bend forward and backwards and the technician told me she'd never seen anyone bend that far). I am still a badass motherfucker running on the Brooklyn Bridge at night in the snow big smile on my face listening to crazy hip-hop reveling in how great my life is how much I have overcome how lucky I am how I have never been happier than I am right now.

No boyfriend. No real job. No health. No money. No book deal. But I am thrilled. When you lose everything, you see how much you actually do have and how precious these things are. Like when I go through my clothes and get rid of bags and bags and oddly finally have something to wear. I didn't buy anything new; I can finally see what I have is all. I ran over the bridge and back. I ran into DUMBO. I ran on Furman Street until it turned into Columbia. I took a right on Carroll Street and saw that my old apartment was painted green. I took a left onto Van Brunt Street and ran until I hit the river, Lady Liberty was proudly raising her torch off in the distance. By then, my I-Pod had run out of battery and I was singing to myself. I laughed realizing I was out of tunes (and tune) and very far from home. Then I noticed the sound my feet made in the snow and the slush slush of cars going by and I was fine. The tenor of my run changed but my run was still glorious.

The lesson in all of this reminiscing and musing last night is that I am happy. Happiness has nothing to do with a job a boyfriend or any of the above. My body works despite how fucked up it is. I am enjoying my apartment, my neighborhood, my writing, my reading, my family and my friends. I am enjoying being me. I am enjoying the control I feel over my future, just in finally knowing what I want it to look like as blurred by the snow as it still is. It snowed for me today and I spent almost two hours running in it. That's love. That's Valentine's Day. I couldn't have had a better gift.

Feel Like Making Love

I did everything I could. I pulled out all the stops. I tried things I've never tried before. I used toys. I improvised. I talked dirty to him. I turned him on. I turned him off. I turned him on again. I cooled him off. I got him all hot and bothered again. I touched all of his buttons. But all I got was blankness. I opened him up and went inside him. I touched parts of him I have never touched on anyone before. Nothing worked. After all of that laboring and heavy breathing and frustating silence and having my arms elbow deep in him focusing completely on turning him on making him work looking in manuals and asking for professional help and using more tools and even my hands and my teeth afraid that I would break him but because he couldn't make a sound, I'd never know until it was too late. I did everything in my womanly powers but the prognosis isn't good; I'm going to have to send him away. It might not work out between us after all.

After all the time we've spent together. After all of the secrets we've shared. Actually, until tonight, he knew me a lot better than I knew him. Until tonight, I have never taken him apart and put him back together. I have never really known what goes on inside him. Meanwhile I've poured my heart out to him. He's seen pieces of me that no one else has. He's been my salvation, my confidante, my best friend, my entertainment and my sanity for the past two years and one month since we've been together. I was so excited to have gotten him all on my own. It was one step closer to being an adult and being independant. This is something that you usually have help with. But not me, I did the research. I figured out what I wanted. Even though I don't know much about them I have been using them for umpteen years and basically know what I want. I will never know all of the nuances I want to know and maybe will never really know how to handle one like an expert but I was proud for picking out the one I wanted without advice and making him work for me.

And now for the first time in two years and one month we are going to have to spend time apart. I have become co-dependant. I have needs too. I don't know if I am going to be able to handle this. Who am I going to come home to at night? Who am I going to play with? Who I am going to cry to and laugh with and handle with love as we make the most beautiful music together. Hours pass as we make beautiful music together. Sometimes the tv is on. Sometimes we are listening to music. Often it grows dark and we are still at it and don't even realize we're sitting in the dark. My hands love the feel of him. Just being around him calms me. When I tell him my deepest darkest secrets he always listens. He is patient while I try to come up with the right word to express my intention. What shade of blue was it? The blue a newborn baby boy wears on his hat on his way home from the hospital? The blue of the night sky in the country? The blue of my mother's flight attendant uniform? He waits patiently until I figure it out all the while I am slowly relaxing and decompressing and letting the day's woes dissolve.

We have done it everywhere. We've done it in my bed on Carroll Street. We did it on the kitchen table. We've done it on my bed on Pacific Street. We've done it on the dining room table in the Pennsylvania house. We've done it on the leather couches in the living room in Pennsylvania and didn't care who was watching. We also didn't care who was watching on the warm September evenings where we did on my stoop on Carroll Street. We've even done it on my fire escape in broad daylight. Now we are in a routine and always seem to do it on my couch futon. I guess routine happens in long relationships.

In the summer he'd get so overheated that he'd just shut down and leave me hanging and I couldn't always turn him back on. I'd get so frustrated because it would always happen when I was so close and would be waiting and waiting for him to get turned on again. It drove me nuts. When I was in Mexico, I had to do it the old fashioned way. I hadn't done that in years. I was a little rusty. It took me longer. My hands didn't know what they were doing. They used to be so good at it but ever since college I haven't had to do it that way. So he's getting picked up on Thursday and they say it'll take about a week. Hopefully when he comes home to me, we will fall in love all over again; we know more about each other now than we did when we first met. I know what goes on inside him now. So I will be more patient with him. I can't wait to give him song lyrics and then get him to tell me the name and artist of the song. I can't wait to confide in him. I can't wait for him to come back to me.

Get well soon Dell Inspiron 5160.

Been Caught Stealing

Am I being selfish? Am I being greedy? Am I being overly dramatic? Should I be more grateful? Should I be more positive? Should I accept my lot in life and plod ahead without fighting for the life I really want?

I got an email from my cousin where she expressed her profound dissaproval in a blog where I stated that my needs are not always being met by those close to me. She reminded me that I have a loving family who'd do anything for me and incredible friends. I don't deny any of that. She gave examples of two situations where my family has adjusted previously made plans for me to support her argument. It saddened her to know that my loved ones are reading this blog and sometimes it appears to her that I am blasting them.

For anyone else that is as outraged or offended as she is; I am not blasting them. I am one of the lucky ones. My entire family puts their lives on hold when I am sick. How many times have they been mobilised on my behalf. How many times have they had to put their plans on hold while they continuously check in with me to ascertain whether I need anything and how much of their day must be forgone for my benefit. I am all too aware of that. And unfortunately, there is nothing I could do for them to ever fully express my gratitude for all that they have given up on my behalf, for the many mixed emotions they must have about my illness, for the inconveniences I cause, for the constant attention I require, for the frustration they must have about this. I have sent heartfelt thank you cards. I have bought thank you gifts. But again, these material things do not compensate for what they have done for me. They can't. My father keeps telling me to stop spending my money on them, that it's not necessary, that what they're doing is what family is supposed to do and I needn't say thank you in so many ways, so many times. But I can't help it. I need to express my gratitude. I don't know what I would have done without them. That's the truth and I think they know it.

As for my friends. Again, where do I start. V has saved me countless times. She famously brought the emergency room to my house on more than one occasion. She came to the emergency room with me another time and sat with me through every test and talked to every doctor that came to see me. BE sends me cards to lift my spirits and show me she's thinking about me. She buys me little presents like the Maya Angelou book and astronaut ice cream and bee propolis. A has baby-sat me twice, saving me from myself, making sure that I follow the doctor's and V's and my parent's orders and sit home and sit still and rest. She has gone grocery shopping for me. She has done my nails and sat with me on my futon or in my bed just keeping me company. AC spent so much time with me at the hospital. She brought me her super warm super comfy downy slippers. She brought me peppermint tea, my favorite, and extra tea bags. She brought me a paint-by-numbers kit. Her brother, RC, visited me in the hospital as well and spent a couple of hours with me. When I told him I was bottomless because my mother believes that you don't wear underwear in the hospital, that there's a reason they give you a gown and only a gown, he took the fleece pants he was going to use to work out and handed them to me insisting that I take them. That's friendship. I have amazing friends.

The thing is, and what my cousin objects to is that there are certain needs that aren't being met and I make that fact public. Maybe those needs are more frivolous because they are my emotional needs and maybe she thinks that with all I am putting everyone through, bemoaning having no one's arms to cry in is asking too much and being straight-up greedy. Maybe she's right. I don't know. The closest I get is with S. She, like me has one health issue after another and we often joke around about starting a nursing home for young singles. She hysterically found a website called prescription4love.com which is where people with health issues can make online love connections, Tragically, everyone on that website is decades older than us. She understands the fears I have about my future because she has them too. I can be brutally honest and 'woe is me' with her because she gets that sometimes it is difficult to put on a happy face and not be overwhelmed and it can be difficult not to see the trees and only be able to see the forest. And the forest is scary. We joke that every time we make plans to hang out one of us is either on drugs or has to cancel due to some ailment. But most people can't get their head around the dramatic turn my life has taken. That unlike them, I may or may not be in a race against time. That unlike them, I will be on chemotherapy for the rest of my life leaving me prone to infection and making it more likely that my children have birth defects. Unlike them, I have to be constantly vigilant. Unlike them, I have to lean on my family and friends and ask more of my family and friends than I ever thought I would have to. Unlike them, I always feel guilty for putting those I love through this, that they are victims of this disease too and I wish I could shoulder all of it and they didn't have to be affected by it as well.

So, for my cousin to call me dramatic may or may not be true but I am giving the situation I am in justice in describing it the way it actually is. And I am in it; she is not. Somehow I doubt most people would handle it as well as I am. Again, my doctor describes me as one of his 'saner' patients. Additionally, unless people are lying to me, they agree with my doctor. I have received countless emails about how strong and positive I have been in the face of this. I don't know what that says but it definitely says something. Maybe she doesn't realize how sick I really am. Maybe in witnessing the devotion of my friends and family she thinks that those relationships should somehow make up for the fact that I am sick. Like in a, "you can't have it all," kind of way?

Either way my mother has written, "I'm really proud of how you were able to get yourself through the past several months. It is just wonderful." Alpha Taurus acknowledged that, "I can only imagine what it must be like to have your future taken away and replaced with mostly crap and you seem especially ambitious, so it must be twice as tough." Katri observed, "I had no idea what you were really going through until I read your blog - and you made a decision to throw off that anger and fear and you did it and were radiant and so full of love ..." JE wrote, "I never understood the toll your illness took on you. I never really understood how much anguish you were in. I never really understood that you needed your friends as much as you do. I got that from reading the blog. When I started reading it I saw you in a light I had never seen before. I began to understand you for the first time in my life." From D, " Love your blogs. Love them. Even if I didn't know you I would love them. So universal. I am so amazed about the truthfullness about your disease. Briana, I had no idea what you've endured and continue to endure all these years. It's really humbling and I really am so inspired by your outpouring of emotion and information because in many ways I am just like you; hiding stuff. On the outside I am loquacious but I feel like I always say what people want me to say. I am good at cocktail talk. You are showing me that how being honest with oneself is very liberating and its the only way to be an artist or a writer, at least a writer that is respeected. People respond to truthful art."

I don't understand exactly where my cousin is coming from. She has known me her entire life but maybe never really knew me and the real me is disturbing her perception of who she thought I was, from the awkward, surly teenager to the carefree, fun, well-adjusted adult. That teenager is inside this smiling adult. That teenager had a lot of feelings she couldn't express and couldn't explain and she learned how to mask her feelings under a smile. Now that teenager exists in my blogs. She cries, she complains, she is overwhelmed, she is scared, she is greedy, she is misunderstood, she feels guilty, she doesn't feel pretty enough, she wonders if she's smart enough, she second guesses herself too much and she spends a lot of her time being angry at herself. Sadly, my cousin's email and her disapproval validates everything that teenager inside me feels. I am asking too much. I should be more grateful. I am alone. I am misunderstood. I guess the truth is out. I'm a bad person.