December 2011
52 posts
Sick.
Whenever I get very sick, all I want to do is curl up with Stefan and sleep. Of course, this desire would be greatly aided if he weren’t in London, wouldn’t it?
In any case, I haven’t been this sick for at least six months. Desperately hoping that there aren’t any hospitals in my future. I’ve managed to stay out of the hospital for 4 months now, and I’d like to keep that streak going.
November 2011
63 posts
- First snow of the season fell today. Pretty, fat flakes, but perfectly awful to drive through.
- Spoke to Stefan, very briefly. We get a skype date this week.
- Two weeks from today, I’ll have taken my last final and turned in all my papers.
- Our house has four Christmas trees now.
- Flare’s starting. I don’t have a doctor right now (The neuromuscular specialist and I broke up, and my rheumatologist isn’t returning my phone calls. I swear, my doctor-patient relationships are fraught with so much more drama than my le sexytime relationships.) It means I can’t get steroids, so I’m going to have to wait it out.
- Teaching my last lesson for the SAT kiddies on Thursday. They take the test on Saturday. Oddly nervous for my students.
“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion… love actually is all around.”
—Love Actually
Play
Everytime I think I'm getting better...
a flare starts.
I’ve started anthropomorphizing my immune system. My immune system’s a grumpy old man called Harold. And Harold can go fuck off and die about now.
Three weeks until Stefan returns.
After the happenings of this week, I’m counting down.
On the Occasion of His Grief.
I posted yesterday about Alex, Stefan’s flatmate who died. It was meningitis for sure; everyone’s been vaccinated and received perfunctory treatments, just to keep it from spreading. I’m not as worried about Stef physically. Meningitis is contagious, but all appropriate precautions have been taken.
However, I think the first time you see a peer die, it undeniably changes you. It’s one thing for a parent or grandparent to die. While unpleasant and undeniably tragic, it isn’t entirely unexpected. A peer dying forces you to face your own mortality and come to terms with your own vulnerability. As a child, or even young adult, there’s a feeling of invincibility. The first time grieving for someone your own age shatters that security.
I remember going through all of this when Ali died. It was a rough year, that one. About six months after her death, I met Stefan. It took me awhile to tell him about it. He never understood, at least not really, the gravity of it. I wished he never would.
Over the past two days, I have been talking to him a lot. Well, actually, mostly listening. I don’t know what to do from 3000 miles away. Frankly, I don’t really know what to do at all. Stefan’s always the one who fixes things. For the past four years, Stefan has been my constant bulwark. That is why I am so scared and flustered now. I cannot be for him everything he has always been for me, but goddammit, I’m trying.
FAVORITE DOCTOR WHO QUOTES
- The First Doctor: The least important things, sometimes, my dear boy, lead to the greatest discoveries.
- The Second Doctor: Well now I know you're mad, I just wanted to make sure.
- The Third Doctor: Courage isn't just a matter of not being frightened, you know. It's being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway.
- The Fourth Doctor: You're a classic example of the inverse ratio between the size of the mouth and the size of the brain.
- The Fifth Doctor: An apple a day keeps the... Ah, never mind.
- The Sixth Doctor: Planets come and go. Stars perish. Matter disperses, coalesces, forms into other patterns, other worlds. Nothing can be eternal.
- The Seventh Doctor: Yes, that's right, you're going. You've been gone for ages. You're already gone. You're still here. You've just arrived. I haven't even met you yet. It all depends on who you are and how you look at it. Strange business, time.
- The Eighth Doctor: I love humans. Always seeing patterns in things that aren't there.
- The Ninth Doctor: The thing is, Adam, time travel is like visiting Paris. You can't just read the guidebook, you've got to throw yourself in! Eat the food, use the wrong verbs, get charged double and end up kissing complete strangers!
- The Tenth Doctor: People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect... but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly... timey-wimey... stuff.
- The Eleventh Doctor: The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant.
