thenakedredhead

My Friend,

Tonight–or was is this morning?–you told me you had it. Those three little innocuous letters followed by the word “Positive,” a word which is supposed to mean “happy, upbeat.” But the thing you have…though your doctor says it’s no longer the disease Adam White had, or the thing they sing about in Rent…means that–so far–you are on a different track than I am. A track that means a lifetime of being careful, of watching what you eat, exercising…of always wondering.

It’s different in America, I know. It’s not like those kids in Africa, or South America, who don’t really have a chance. But I still worry about you. I feel like–even though we will all die someday–that you are in fast forward now. That maybe you will leave me before I leave you, and I don’t know what to make of of that.

And I know it’s not nearly as bad for me as it is for you.

I understand now why the Broadway hit was such a phenomena, such a statement. I know it’s different in 2008 than it was in 1988, that people learn to live with their three letters and their plus sign for years and years, and yet I ache for you. I ache for what it means for each person you meet that you like…that you want to love, and there’s this thing…this thing that will inevitably exist between you and him, that doesn’t go away. It’s there. Always. And I hurt for the way some will react towards you…even though you are still you, plus sign be damned.

I hope you know that I love you…plus sign, minus sign, acronyms and all. I am not afraid to touch you, to hold you, to be your friend. Regardless of what happens, I am a better person for knowing you, for walking this path with you, for loving you no matter what…for having you in my life.

Let’s just take it a day at a time, you and me. Let’s cry in one moment and laugh the next. I will accept your “new normal” and be what you need me to be. Hopefully soon there will be days when we forget and we will have to say, “Oh yeah, things are different.” And hopefully we will chuckle when we think that, too.

We’ll be okay.

You’ll be okay.

Love,

Me

I believe my levels are off.  Which levels, I cannot say…just that “they” are “off.”

I have been swinging between complete hopelessness and anxiety with, well, myself, to brief moments of “I can do it!” accompanied by trumpets.  I don’t feel like writing, or moving, or doing anything relatively interesting except for maybe sleeping.  And perhaps I want to sleep because I haven’t been doing much of that lately.  This lack of sleep could be due to bad Feng Shui, or maybe just a couple of Satan’s kittens who believe that breaking votives in the middle of the night is a hilarious game.

And for all intents and purposes, I should be on Cloud 9 (or perhaps 9 3/4, which is way more cool and magical) since I just landed a new job which has kick-ass benefits, great retirement, and oh yes…pays for part of my school.  I have a great apartment, an amazing boyfriend and cute, fuzzy animals.  Instead, I just feel like crawling in bed for a nap, say, for the rest of my life.

I don’t ever remember feeling this run down or useless…and I spent a year at the Word of Life Bible Institute, which is sort of like a work camp for Baptists.   I’m checking into possible causes, and I’ve come up with some options:

1.)  a severe case of almost-thirty lameness (it’s very, very possible that I am just a boring individual, and I am just now coming to terms with this fact)

2.) a lack of identity apart from major life turmoil (I am not involved in the theatre anymore, nor divorcing anyone, nor making poor choices with my finances…so WHO AM I????)

3.) hypothyroidism (my mom and sister both have this, and dammit, I think it makes you fat)

Wait!  Wait!   And now I’m almost finished writing and I’m starting to feel a bit better.  No, wait…gone.

Maybe I’m just depressed because of Palin’s “foreign policy experience.”  Did you know she’s very experienced because sometimes Russian jets fly through Alaskan air space, and, you know, you just gotta, well, know what to do?  Or maybe I’m just super glad that the American people now own AIG.  Neat.

Post Script to last, er, post:

My birthday is this Saturday…so all of you well-wishers have not yet missed the blessed event of my glorious appearing.  You were wondering why you hadn’t heard the songbirds?  Why bursts of beautiful light had not yet crossed the orbs to your soul?  Why your nether regions had not yet tingled with a surprising forbidden delight?  That’s why…my turning over into this last fateful year of my twenties has not happened yet.

But you’ll know.  You’ll know.

Still without electricity.  Apparently, this all will be a good excuse to clean my refrigerator.  And as I clean it, the sound of a large cash register will “ka-ching” over and over, as I throw out perfectly good money food into the trash can.   It will be one of the most depressing things I will do all year.  Kinda makes me wish I hadn’t bought that sweater, because now that sweater represents money I could use to replace all my frozen broccoli.  DAMMIT.

In other news, I went ahead and purchased Proactive (2 frozen pizzas, a gallon of milk, some cheese and a loaf of bread) and Jessica Simpson is right…this stuff is awesome, and there’s really no comparison with the store brands, which I’ve tried.  I already see and feel improvement, which means I will be like Diddy in no time.

I also stocked up on a few books this weekend (2 1/2 gallons of soy milk, 2 packs of bagels, 1 lb chicken breast) and have been enjoying, quite thoroughly, some short stories by Neil Gaiman.  Each little tale is just the slightest bit creepy, and often displays the baseness of humankind, while sprinkling in just a bit of the heart-warming so you won’t have weird dreams at night.   This has been one of the perks of the power outage (besides lots of boning).  Each night, we come home, light a million candles and read until we fall asleep.  It’s terribly romantic and sweet…the low light and the way it softens everything and makes me look not-so-fat, the way all the animals huddle and cuddle with us, and the way I am inspired by good storytelling.

So, even though the lack of electricity has been a major inconvenience and I’ve lost well over $200 in groceries, it reminds me that “simple” is okay sometimes.

It also reminds me why the Amish have so many kids.  Seriously, there is nothing else to do…

Okay, so maybe I’m totally PMSing, but everything sucks and I hate life.

Kidding. Things aren’t that bad:

The boyfriend’s dad woke up and is doing well! He is slated to go home in the next day or two.

We got a great deal to a local gym and my ass is sore, but in a good way.

My accounting class is ALMOST FREAKING OVER.

Here’s what’s not the best:

Our power was knocked out Sunday around 5 pm. It has not yet been turned back on. It’s not a huge deal, since at least we still have warm water and I recently purchased giant packs of tea lights at IKEA , but yeah…I did spend $100 on groceries on Friday? And like, now they’re all ruined? And we are spending loads of money eating out, or totally constipating ourselves with way too much bread? Sweet.

My birthday party was pretty much a spectacular disaster, due to it being HOT AS BALLS and none of my guests (except for the ever fabulous Christopher and the hilarious Laura) showing up. I didn’t even throw up or fall down any stairs. And what’s a birthday party where the birthday girl doesn’t get to make a total idiot of herself? Instead, I just sweat a lot, and made nice with all of Lisa’s fiancee’s friends’ girlfriends…who are all really nice, but a certain level of decorum was in order, I suppose. Let’s just hope the whole ordeal is not indicative of the way my funeral will be attended, because it’ll be me dead, with all of Lisa’s friends there like, “Who’s the stiff?”, and all of my friends will text me posthumously to say, “SORRY. SO DRNK! C U SOON!”

Is it bad to want–to really, really want–to go to bed at 10:13 pm on a Friday night?  To maybe swallow down a sleep-inducing allergy pill, wash it down with a beer, remove all my clothing save a comfy cotton t, and snuggle down in my awesome platform bed?  Is it?

I mean, cuz today I forced myself to go to the grocery store for the sole purpose of buying my neurotic dog some food, and $100 later, I walk out, fully stocked…with everything BUT dog food.  And that, on top of everything else, deserves a little down time, I think.

I’ve been dealing with a shitload of awesomeness lately, namely being disgustingly full of mucus, and the sudden very serious life condition of my boyfriend’s father. One is easily cured with Mucinex and a pile of Kleenex, the other…not so much.

Also, my accounting class sucks balls.

So, instead of whining for paragraphs on end about how I’m not sleeping and my house is a mess and I don’t know how to help my boyfriend get through this, I’ll just list a few movies I’ve seen lately. Good times.

-Kabluey–Has Lisa Kudrow and a giant blue corporate mascot. Very sweet and funny.

-The Promotion–Stiffler’s in it. So is John C. Reilly and Pam from the office. Don’t buy the previews that it’s a raucous comedy. It’s not…and it’s better for it.

-Dan in Real Life–Again, not like the previews…thankfully.

-Baby Mama–Actually…a tad slow, I thought. The concept is cute, but I found the laughs to be farther apart than I anticipated. Also, most of those laughs were in the previews. Oh, and Tina Fey is hot and has a nice rack.

-Ironman–Nice pace, witty dialogue. Still annoying.

-Zombie Strippers!–This movie is incredible in that it actually makes you dumber. I am really not sure why we watched it. I think we were drunk. Yes…yes…definitely drunk.

FORTUNE COOKIES ARE REAL.

The other day, the bf got a fortune cookie (from the amazing Bistro 86) that said “an unexpected fortune is coming your way (in bed).”  Of course, we laughed and scoffed…and secretely wished that we were the least bit superstitious.

Well, THEN, yesterday I went to S-bucks and ordered a grande Double-Shot on ice.  I get to the window, and lo and behold, I’ve left my ID and my debit card in the pocket of the jeans I wore to Tip Top the night before.  Naturally, I feel like a total ‘tard, and I’m about to pull away from the window in shame when the kindly gay barrista says, “Hey!  It’s, uh, LABOR DAY!!” and then proceeds to give me a GIANT (read:  “Venti” in Pretentious Over-priced Coffee Speak) coffee.  …which kept me awake and jittery for the next 13 hours, during which time I wrote my entire life’s creed and vowed to be a better person.  For real.  It reads like a bad Oprah Magazine article.

Awesome.

Then today, someone gives me a $100, just for being awesome.  Okay, well, maybe not exactly for that reason, but they did give me $100.  WHAT TO DO WITH MY FORTUNE???

I’m guessing, “buy food so I don’t starve.”

Or a birthday outfit.  Whatevs.

Oh dear god…I hate accounting. Hate, hate, hate. That’s one of the big reasons that I haven’t been writing lately…accounting homework and the sheer amount of numbness that it causes my brain to feel.

I think I’d have the capacity to learn accounting, but the course writers have decided that we–communications people, i.e. non-numbers-that’s-what-the-accounting-department-is-for kind of people–should learn the contents of a twenty-eight chapter, 900 odd page book in six weeks. SIX. WEEKS. If you’d like us to read from the book out loud, or say prepare a power point presentation about how accountants often attend school for five years to learn this shit, or perhaps we could give the accountants some back rubs after performing a trust fall, then yes, we can do that. Anything else is laughable. Seriously. I laugh at myself in digust at my ineptitude. It’s sad. It’s that kid in third grade who still had to read with his finger along the words and couldn’t pronounce anything correctly…it’s that kind of situation.

I’m thinking that perhaps they believe this will humble us. Make us more aware of how awesome writing papers is. If that’s the case, I’M THERE. Gimme a paper, please…anything besides calculating a company’s break-even point and generally feeling like a jackass anytime I open my book. Thanks.

Other than that, life is getting away from me. I feel like a very wasteful person with my time. I sleep too much, eat everything possible in the wrong way, don’t exercise enough and spend a majority of my time wallowing in self-loathing…and being overly dramatic about how I feel at any given moment about things. It was pointed out to me–rather inadvertently, harshly and with an overly snotty tone–that I complain too much about school. Yes! I do! It’s all I have right now! And a million other things that I can’t say no to (and one thing–a cool play–that I did and regret it). Nonetheless, I don’t wish to be (too) annoying, so apart from this post, I will stop complaining about school.

But then what will I blame my lack of socialization on? How can I justify routine laziness without pretending to be studying? How can I continue to avoid working on things that are excruciating but undeniably rewarding?

I realized today that I had the germ for my little book idea nearly ten years ago. And guess what? I wrote two chapters. And then it was STOLEN for a big-screen feature film. All right, not stolen, but good ideas only last so long, and if you don’t capitalize on them first, someone else is bound to think of yours. And ever since then, I’ve been bitching and moaning in my little pea brain about how hard writing is, and no one will ever read it anyway, and it probably won’t be that good.

Oh dear god…I am annoying myself. Please stop reading, because this was just the grossest post ever. This was so, “Dear Diary, Why haven’t I started my period yet? Why can’t I be pretty like the other girls?”

I am over myself. Barf.

Lots has been happening lately, not the least of which is my mom was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. The diagnosis comes with little surprise, since her mother also suffered from the disease. My mom has been very ill for the last couple of weeks…so ill that she actually cried, which I’ve seen her do maybe, um, twice. Once for each parent.

Well, you can’t count horrible romantic comedies as “crying.” She loves those. The sappier, the better. Oo, and someone should beg someone else to just “love them the way they are,” or someone should die. Perfect.

It’s weird, watching her deteriorate. We are very much alike in a lot of ways, one of which is we hate to be incapacitated. We hate feeling helpless and useless, and most of all, we hate waiting for things to get better. So in some respects, I understand her frustration, but in other ways, I will never understand her pain or her fear of this disease.

Her mother was in pain most of the time my mother knew her and I only ever knew my grandmother in a wheelchair or in her bed, often too gnarled to hold a fork or change the channel on the remote. My grandfather cared for her selflessly for years, never seeming to mind that her pain turned her into a nasty, biting woman; a twisted, poisoned thing that rarely spared a kind word or gesture of thanks for the multiple times a day he fed her, bathed her, washed out her bedpan.

I think my mom is less afraid of the pain of RA and more afraid of the way it may change her. I don’t know that anyone would immediately describe my mother as a kind woman, but she is fair, even-tempered and practical, a woman whose good deeds are always seasoned with a bit of gruffness. She has taught me a great deal of what it means to know who you are and to make no apologies for it…only work to compensate for weaknesses…though, why be weak when you have so many great qualities.

She and I used to be very close, until her practical nature was affronted by my divorce. She still does not understand why we “just didn’t work it out.” There are actions she took in the name of “tough love” that still rip me to my core when I think of them. There are slights in the form of withdrawal and silence that I will never quite recover from. And yet, she’s still my mom, and it hurts to see her hurt.

Family relationships are often sick like that.

The whole ordeal has been strange, watching a parent seemingly fall to pieces. There are more tests to come, more worries that have yet to be assuaged, and of course, more sitting and waiting for results. We can only be patient for her.

Saddest sight in the world?  No one signed in to G-mail chat.  Siggghhh.

Also, Facebook is hurtful.  Stupid “Compare Friends” application.