Kill the flare, numb the symptoms

A very rare glimps into an actual real time convo about something not abstract for once:

I just paged my doctor

  it felt kinda weird dictating and having someone else type my msg

2:09 PM like... tables turn lol

  "Please call (insert name) at (insert number) Re: Urgent Post-op advice needed"

  that was my msg

2:10 PM If I can predict him he wud say 1. Up my dose of metho from 4 to 5 a week and/or 2. A short course of steroids to reduce the inflammation

  both I would protest to. I wud acquiesce to #1 ... and fight down #2 as much as possible

2:11 PM Steroids WOULD kill these flare symptoms instantly... and I wud feel on top of the world

  but the side effects... :( I made a promise years ago dat I wud NEVER EVER go back on it

2:12 PM I already had countless hydrocorticosteroid shots in d hospital.. but dat was to make sure I survive d surgery. daz life or death...

Why so urgent? Why so worried? - tramadol, acetaminophen and codeine in my system, bed-rest and 4 hrs later... I can now finally go into the kitchen and comfortably reach my cup to my mouth and swallow...

THAT my friends, is not good... not good at all. That's too much pain, too much time and way too much drugs :(

The sentence in my head... (continued)

... and it hurts sometimes. It makes me cry. It pulls and stabs and gnaws at places inside of me that I can't even reach to protect. The sting of sadness that evaded me before has now become a shroud... and a second skin like porcelain underneath my own. Right now I'm silent no more... but no one is here to hear me crying... and that's how I want it to be.

The sentence in my head...

It all comes down to this simple truth...that I love you...

You shake my soul

My first thought was 'omg wtf?!'

I'm trying to sleep, body exhausted but pain too much, mind drifting from thought to thought, haunted...tortured. I dream a little... I wake up and wonder if I slept at all. But I dreamt... so I must have... right? It's cold... It's dark... I'm under covers from head to toe, skin hurting & numb at the same time... then it happened!

THUNDER

Never in my entire life have I been that messed up by thunder. It came in waves... My heart instantly started to race! More and more thunder... the windows all around me started to shake. It was louder and louder and I don't know what the hell was wrong with me, but it fu(k'd me up.

I love weather like this. Love watching the lightening and waiting for the thunder. But not when I'm a cocoon in a dark room with heavy feelings, foggy thoughts and painful movements...

More thunder still... I think I'm pass the urge to cry. I think...

Noooo of all the songs to play... :'( I lose my fight

Green Room

I'm lying here in a green room with green curtains & a solid line of super sunshine peaking through the corner. It's hard to tell it's 4pm cuz of the rugs and sheets hung behind the curtains to keep the light out. It's no wonder that the 1 month or so I spent in my own bedroom was such an acclimatizing experience cuz it's so bright in there! Green curtains once again but so thin they may as well have been just a formality... and a skylight! Yes a skylight triangle of glass, squaring off the top of the window to the peak of my roof. I learned to sleep in the light in that room.. my eyes taught themselves to naturally close with glare and over the years, I became more comfortable sleeping with light in my eyes than in darkness.

Darkness brings me to life. Darkness makes me open my eyes to see what I cannot... & all my senses are piqued. Darkness brings all the thoughts and feelings out from their little box of conformity.

Darkness is you

The signal sleeps

My gosh... what a feeling! & no it hasn't passed!
I had to will myself to breathe...
Without the sting of sadness, tears forced themselves out... a single drop on either end, rolling down my face. Without permission... Without a thought of recognition.
Just feeling.

It's present continuous, present continuous!

What the ____ am I supposed to think?

A life waiting

I spend way too much time not saying what I want to say
I stay quiet
Pretending it will go away
I'm not saying
Not loving
Not crying
Not showing 
Not holding on
Not letting go
I want more than I let known
I need more than is shown 
I spend way too much time trying to be understood 
I ask questions
Needing to understand 
I'm only censoring
Only deflecting
Only denying
Only repressing 
Only holding back
I feel more than I trust
I think more than I express


Am I really that afraid? 

1 week later

One week post THR surgery ... I can honestly say my recuperation thus far has been so much better than the last time around (10 months ago). So much I can say and I'm thinking that maybe I should document it... 


For now though... I've been surviving on bouts of 2 to 3 hours of sleep for the last week. No more nice solid 8 to 10 hours of sweet slumber. Gonna see if I can get a little nap and maybe I would come back and write some more... maybe...


Now would be a good time for my pending a/c unit to miraculously appear though

Somewhere along the line, I must've got off track with you...

You're always crazy like that.
And I watched from my window,
Always felt I was outside looking in on you.
You're always the mysterious one with
Dark eyes and careless hair,
You were fashionably sensitive
But too cool to care.
You stood in my doorway, with nothing to say...

Well excuse me... think I've mistaken you for somebody else... somebody who gave a damn, somebody more like myself.... & these foolish games are tearing me apart... & your thoughtless words are breaking...my...heart...

My own hands

It's always a little disconcerting when I feel like I cannot fully trust myself with myself anymore... I am recognizing things... & I don't feel like stopping them... not right now

Simple attachment really

I just changed my blog template for the 1st time since I started it in 2003. 
I woke up from a short sweet nap, put on my laptop and opened my blog... I stared at it. I don't like it anymore. I never changed things back then for fear of loosing all my little widgets and customized html stuff. But as with everything, blogger has advanced and options are many.... so now we have it. Change is hard, it's also easy and very addictive. 

Choir of furies in your head...

So the preamble was downright emotionally humiliating! I couldn't have bared my soul anymore, laid it all down any more clearly and put myself directly at the mercy of another's God like control.

It was amazing!!! I couldn't have expected anything more. Perfectly imperfect with all the little moments of awe that flowed so naturally. Like nothing. Like everything. Leaps on the inside masked by serenity. Smile.

The aftermath was more than tears could cover. A flow like no other. Shock, hurt... an unbelievable feeling of hopelessness, regret and pretty much fury.

The Balance of Life! I do not know how I feel about this theory anymore. The truth in it brings either great unhappiness or sweet relief. The bad follows the good, follows the bad, follows the good. Sad, brings happiness, then comes sad, then happiness...

One of Sai Baba's teachings is that of Equanimity. I think I am finally understanding that in my own way. If the balance of life is inevitable, then to prevent the pivoting back and forth between extreme emotions, we should just practice equanimity.

Maybe I should be drugged up on the good herbs: remain in a constant state of calm, cool, detached observance. Nothing gets me excited. Nothing gets me sad. I just keep floating through...
I wish I was like that.

But my emotions run deep

I feel too much

I appreciate whole heartedly

I hurt hard as well

Such is the downfall of anyone who experiences an experience... & that I do.

Raindrops on my eyelashes

As I am typing this... there are raindrops on my eyelashes

I can barely being to describe what that felt like... One minute I'm in the kitchen eating a mango & then the very next I'm out the door just standing there feeling the rain fall on me. Such a sneaky moment of pure indulgence... so unexpected even to myself.

So I am there, spinning slowly and feeling the cold wet drops on my face... watching the slanted downpour in the misty street light... The clean dress I had just changed into was now soaked... I untied my hair from it's pony tail and just let it dance around my face and ears and neck and shoulders... wet and cold and ... embracing.

My cocoon of bliss was then breached by the screech of my mom's voice "Oh my God Child! What you doing standing out there?!" hahaha

But oh boy, that was so good

Sarah's Key

I don't think I've ever read a book that had me as disturbed as this one. I guess mainly because I'd never delved much into historical fiction before. Things based on true life tragedy always piques my interest and unravels my nerves a bit more than I would like. Sarah's key is based on the big Vélodrome d'Hiver round up in Paris back in 1942 where thousands of Jew's were killed. The 1st person account by Sarah left me hollow inside; so distressing... so SAD!! I couldn't stop thinking about this book... about her brother. Picturing everything so clearly in my head. I even googled images from that time and read up on it myself. This was a really good book! I felt however, that the despair of Julia was a bit drawn out in the end, but I guess the author wanted us to understand how much this REALLY affected her (Julia). It may be masochistic, but I have a feeling I would be reading more books of this genre.

Things that left me confused (SPOILER WARNING):

• Why did Sarah's parents allow Sarah to lock her brother in the cupboard? She took full blame for it all her life, but she was only a child. Both her parents appeared to have known that they were not coming back 'anytime soon' from the moment the police came for them...
• I didn't quite connect with Julia as much as I tried to. She seemed overly dramatic towards the end. The readers know the 1st person p.o.v. story from Sarah, but Julia doesn't... why was she so tortured? Utterly and unbelievably tortured? I agree that the event itself allows for feelings like that and more, but her obsession with Sarah and her constant reaffirmation and convictions seemed very illogical. I never really critiqued a book, but honestly, her lamenting towards the end and Sarah's son as well, felt almost like an insult to her [Sarah] and what she REALLY went through. They would never understand, so why be personally wounded? It slightly annoyed me :( I know I'm being harsh :(

Where is the line?

Sometimes it seems to me that there is a fine line between being positive/hopeful and being blinded/naive. But there is also a fine line between being cautious/careful and being cynical/jaded. Where do I find the line? How do I not cross it? In reality however, being cautious and being cynical is 2 very different things... one comes from good sense and the other comes from good sense gone bad. I'm not sure if that made sense lol But yea... How do you recognize if you're being cautious or if you've crossed over to the next side?

The Secret - theory of attraction... it makes me wonder. You want something, you hope for it... you see it unfolding before your eyes and just as it becomes real to you, the fear of loosing it becomes real as well. Why do we become afraid of loosing something we don't even have? Why do we become afraid of having something we always wanted? Is it self sabotage or self preservation? Maybe it's a bit of both...

I want to jump into the waters of positivity head on! I don't want to be afraid OF myself FOR myself anymore...

THR vs RA

So this is rare and not very often I would taint my abstract streak to delve into personal matters as such, but here I am... and here it goes...

How do I find the balance?
I'm trying to find the balance between being a good THR patient and a good RA patient. Quite an unorthodox case for rehab the therapist told me... it's always that fine line I keep treading on.

Therapy is awesome! It hurts and it feels good. It gets me so snappy but so happy... wow, ok I didn't mean for that to rhyme, but it did!

I've neglected being a good RA patient in light of the THR rehab... and sadly that can boomerang on me if I don't get a grip on things now.

Thankfully, I got my grip! =)

It's a new year - 2010

2009 is over...
I don't know, I'm not sure what to say. Where is this transition?
2009 has been a very very eventful year for me. Writing this right now, I haven't yet fully reflected on everything, but the thought of thinking, is overwhelming enough to make me sure that this year gone by really has been saturated with events, adventures, pains, joys and many many choices.
The risks I've taken, the choices I've had to make... the countless twists and turns in directions, all essentially leading to the same general path... The intense catalyst moments I've encountered... Love & Life
Oh boy, 2009 has been so horrible and so wonderful. I am so happy to have experienced it all.
2010 is here... I think my new year is a 2 year project & I'm only half way through. More good stuff is coming...
xoxo

Random burst

Ok so is this like a delayed reaction or what?
I'm liking it...
Am I am able to differentiate the type when the degrees of intensity are the same?
Do I want to?
Sleep seems most effective right about now
hehe

Clench

I queued up an Evanescence playlist on youtube, letting the music play and nostalgia seep through me.

Lying here with my laptop on me, song #11 began playing and I took a deep breath, suddenly becoming aware, much to my surprise, that I had been clenching my jaw very tight this whole time. Took an actual effort to open my mouth after an almost air tight, locked down clench!

I could feel the pulse in my tongue

Snakes and Earrings

I think I'm gonna start using my blog for book ranting now :) It's all personal, not trying to convince anyone to like or dislike a book.

So... lets start with the last book I read: Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara

I enjoyed this book with such a sadomasochist version of empathy that it felt almost wrong! lol The prose is entrancingly raw & astonishingly direct... yet wielded together in such sound simplicity that it just works!

The duplicity of emotions I felt while reading this was astonishing to me... to enjoy something with such painful pleasure. Not unlike the story itself ;) The ending unraveled so forcefully, leaving a heaviness on my chest and lump in my throat... staring at the pages in almost disbelief - though I'm sure the author meant us to know, what we know, but won't say...& what Lui seems to be able to live with.

Anywayssss... Descriptive, raw, direct, real, rated, seductive and simple. T'waz a good read for me :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snakes_and_Earrings

Morning... Mourning

This morning I woke up before my alarm, about 20 minutes before.
I woke up sad.
I remember dreaming, a lot of dreaming, but nothing like a nightmare per say or anyone died or anything, but I opened my eyes and all I could feel was an overwhelming wave of despair creeping up on my faster than I could control.
Getting lost in the feeling was the last thing I could afford, so I tried to find reasons for it, but my mind won't let me. I couldn't think. I lay there staring at the ceiling, the cupboards, the windows, my pillow, the million and one pieces of clothes piling up on my desk and nothing seemed to make sense. The calm and panic all mixed into one, no sieve of reason or understanding to save me.
My chest was heavy, my body tight with tension and pain... I felt weak, emotionally and physically.
My throat felt like it was burning... then I realized I was holding my breath.
Tears came to my eyes... what's going on? How could this be happening with no known reason? Did I dream something? Is something going to happen?
Yes, maybe it is.
...
Mom came into my room to bid me goodbye before heading to work and I just hugged her. My body was hot. Or she was cool.
...
I remember having breakfast. Watching the table in front of me and thinking it's so far away. Do I have to make the effort to move towards it? I feel drained. I don't want to move.
...
I made coffee... maybe this might perk me up. I took happy pills. I took a warm and a cold shower. I made my eye makeup really pretty wit shimmery silver blending into shimmery black.
...
I put on drab gray & black clothes and was off...

!

I want out

Deny

Maybe I would have changed things,
had I know that this was what was going to be
and the mere fact that I know this is so very wrong;
Why did you even have to tell me?
How am I supposed to possibly accept
that my existence is going to be denied?
and despite all the honesty, or pseudo truths
I can assure you, this time, you should have lied.
It's going to be hard not to resent this fact
as the hours and days pile on
but I can only hope that this feeling wouldn't project onto you
until the memory that feeds it is gone...

Flower

Simple kinda life

I'm tired
When did everything become this complicated?
Why is it all interrelated?
I'm jaded

... & that's probably worst

Odd

I need a new outlet, not another shoulder. I thought to myself, I need something, something else... and my mind came right back to this. It's not new, but it may as well be, since I haven't been expressing myself much here in awhile.

Everyone needs a fall back plan.

I think I realized this when I found myself blogging in my head. I thought to myself that talking to myself in my head, is not entirely healthy... and worst yet, telling myself that I'm thinking that talking to myself in my head is not entirely healthy, is even worst.

I can be a recluse, I know. I can't ignore the fact that this does not affect me and me alone. But a small part of me wishes it didn't.

I end this with a quote from the book I'm currently reading "Forever Odd" by Dean Koontz:

Loneliness comes in two basic varieties. When it results from a desire for solitude, loneliness is a door we close against the world. When the world instead rejects us, loneliness is an open door, unused"

PS: The link takes you to the official Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas series page! It's kinda cool.

Let's chat till the cows come home!

Who's on your Mylime?

So Bmobile is offering it's Mylime customers unlimited free text messaging and calls between the hours of 10pm to 6am, Sunday to Sunday. I must admit, it's one of the most wonderful feelings in the world getting something free from TSTT, no strings attached!

I'm wondering however... what are the implications of this new promotion? Not to Bmobile themselves, but to us, the citizens of T&T. In economic terms, nothing is free...there's always some opportunity cost attached, in some indirect way we're paying for it all.

As a population, I can almost guarantee that the aggregate amount of sleep hours has dropped. 10pm to 6am... sounds like a good time to be awake on a Friday night perhaps, but 7 days a week? Hundreds of us out there are on the phone this very instant (2:30am) chatting away with friends, family. significant others... or sending random messages. Its the lure of doing something we don't have to pay for. Except with lack of sleep of course. Maybe, if there was a way to know, work production has decreased during the day because of more people spending time on the phone during these seemingly ungodly hours.

Oh... T&TEC will surely benefit from this. Can you imagine how many times we all need to charge our cells now? We're gonna be seeing cell phones plugged into walls constantly during the night to facilitate this unlimited talk time & insatiable need for communication. Our electricity bills might go up, but who's going to notice that? Probably only T&TEC.

On the bright side though... we're having more communication! Finally people are not faced with having to say or hear "girl, I have only 5 mins left before meh hour up eh, so finish up wha u saying quick!". Since the pressure of paying is off, I'm sure a lot of relationships have miraculously developed, endured and flourished! All because of increased communication. Maybe in some small way, we're a happier bunch of people! (unless the lack of sleep offsets it)

Can there be too much communication? I can imagine those of you who are now forced to switch your cells off or turn them on silent because of the unnecessary barrage of messages shattering the silence of your 3:53am sleep. I'm going to guess that if this is the case, then you should count your blessings to be privileged enough to be one of the limited 5 of your friends Mylime list. Friendship is always a blessing.

So... I don't know. Maybe we're sleep deprived & wasting time on the phone, but maybe we're also more socially satisfied & gaining appreciation of the people in our lives. Who knows...

I'm not going to weigh the pros & cons... but I do wish the promotion will be extended to way beyond June 15th 2008! :) *crosses fingers*

A twist to the tunks; we're all human

I heard an interesting comment today. It had me thinking... hmmm
I'm accustomed to having the following happen to me:
I say: oh man! I'm totally breaking out! Got a zit right there...
Friend say: Oh shut up! You have like perfect skin! Unlike mine...

However for the first time I got a different response to that situation:
I say: Geeze, I got a zit on my chin! A real one!
Friend say: For me that will be nothing, but with perfect skin like yours, the
slightest thing will show up, so I could imagine how you feel

*hmmm*

It's strange to get empathy, but the point is interesting... the person is
right. If someone is accustomed to having acne, then 1 extra zit would
generally go unnoticed (to others). However if you're accustomed to perfect skin then
the slightest blemish or flaw will stand out...

But showing up or not... I won't use this observation to invalidate how it
affects anyone... only the person themselves will know how much a break
out affects them, DESPITE what others will notice or care or not.
But it sure was nice having someone actually empathize with me instead of
brushing off my comment as silly in the light of comparison...
Thanks hun

The revelation of S&F

I have a bit of an addiction to Search & Find word puzzles. I started loving it at age 10 & then somehow never really invested on buying the books until I was doing A levels at age 16. Since then I've gone through countless books; word by word, page by page. I sometimes save the time I finish each one, together with the date & my signature. Nowadays, I just save the date since there's no need for my signature anymore... It's become such a ritual in my life & I'm so accustomed to my own style of solving it, that if someone decides to do 1 or 2 words from a puzzle, I would know... There's no hiding it from me! hehe

I knew I was getting too good @ it when I started finishing entire puzzles in less than 2 minutes. As soon as I cross out one, the other word becomes visible to me... there was no pause. It's like I'm in a sort of trace...

I have a preference though... I prefer puzzles that are square with the letters evenly distributed & not different spaces between rows & columns. When they're even, I just have to blur my vision & I can see all the words jumping out at me. Also, I always do them in order, from word 1 until I reach the end... I don't jump around. It takes a certain level of self ctrl to see a word & not circle it only because its further down the list.

Anyways... while doing one of the puzzles today, I just couldn't find the word 'frog'. I searched searched searched & just could not find! I reverted back to my childhood technique of going line by line, top to bottom, bottom to top... & I still couldn't find it. And then I got a revelation about life! hahaha I can think of life as a S&F puzzle... Looking @ it in the beginning, everything looks jumbled, mixed up, no order or understanding... & yet we're given a list of words to find, a list of things to fulfill, in the order of which life means it to be. Sometimes finding what we're looking for is easy... & sometimes, no matter how much we search, we just can't find it! So we think 'Maybe it's not there'... but it's there alright! Amongst all the apparent confusion & randomness, it's there right out before our eyes, yet we can't see it. So we skip it over... move on to something else in life, ignore the feat we couldn't accomplish thinking its a lost cause... When we reach the end of the list & we've ticked off 'school' 'marriage' 'job' 'child' 'icecream' 'hurt' 'pain' 'loss' etc we may think to ourselves ... 'there is just no happiness' :( But if we look closer... its there.... its meshed into & in between; the 'h' in hurt... the 'p' in pain ... the 's' in loss... It's there... but sometimes it's part of something we never thought it could be... it was there all along. We just have to find it!

I need to fly

I'm sitting in front the pc, checking mail & come across one that shows the top 15 skylines in the world. Suddenly I have this overwhelming feeling, screaming inside of me saying "I want to travel the entire world!" There is soooo much to see on this little earth of ours. 6.7 billion people... 6.7 billion lives! Amazing! I fall in the little teal colored part of the chart below.