how do i explain this to you so that it makes sense. it doesn't even make sense to me. I'm not sure if I'm me. i mean i don't know what parts of me are really me and what parts are all the drugs and everything else. these aren't side effects like fever or fatigue, these are side effects like paranoia and anxiety. I don't even know which thoughts are mine and which aren't. Everything that i'm feeling, physical and emotional, may not even be me, so is it still real? and how do i tell the difference? and how can i even try and think with this headache? what would be different with my life if it had been pure without all these chemicals and pieces taken and added to me? It's not just like a pill. it's an iv infusion of bits and pieces of other living things infiltrating its way into every part of my being every single 8 weeks. I'm made of so many different things i'm not even sure where i end and they start. I know people say your cells die and you are always being reborn. but at least it's with your own cells and not someone else's. Not saying life would be perfect without all of this, or that i wouldn't go on rants like this, but it would at least be my own life; my own rants.
i can't even explain what it's like to know that you're not you - to question every feeling, every thought, because you're not sure where it came from. and what if you know that you are hallucinating or you are being overly anxious. recognizing the feeling doesn't make it go away, it makes it bigger. some nights it just hits me harder than others and i feel like i'm made up more of medicine than i am of my own flesh and blood. i know that the images runnign through my mind are not my own.
i was one step off all day. maybe i would be like this without the medicine, but part of me knows that i know that i know that it would be so different. it's like those women who, after giving birth to their child in the hospital and the nurses have a mix-up and the woman looks at the child and she knows, she just knows it's not hers. you know your thoughts and your feelings. it's the only things you really get the privelege of knowing while you're alive. and i'm losing that.
i would be more stable, and sleep would come easier. i would lose this insane desire to cut off communication from everyone, even myself. the thought of never speaking another word aloud would not seem nearly as appealing. and i would be able to see a picture without blood crawling in around the edges of it. i could always take more drugs to counteract these, but for some reason that seems like an even worse idea at this point. at least the drugs i'm on now don't have the sole point of changing my soul, my heart, my mind.
since i can only be 100 percent of whatever i am, i feel like with each new iv dose i'm losing more and more of what was me and soon i'll be lucky to recognize myself at all.
even now in writing this i know most of this is the medicine making me question everything, making me go on this writing rant, making me feel like the walls are closing in... like i'm losing pieces of me. and i'll be fine in the morning, but shit it sucks. i'd feel better if i knew that it was just me that felt the walls were closing in. there's not room for anything else in me. there never was supposed to be in the first place.
i'd take fatigue and a fever over this any day.
so what, you say this is all in my head. i know. that's the problem. i'd rather it be anywhere else but inside my own head. it's one of the few places i have that's mine and only mine. this medicine runs through my veins. it's penetrated my core. it feeds my mind, breaks my thoughts in half, clears my slate midway through a sentence, turns 10 minutes into an hour and 10 minutes of which i have no recollection, seeps into my heart and changes the color-coded feelings i had before so now when i go to grab contentedness off the shelf paranoia comes out instead. and they are all lined with a coating of melancholy, which might have been there before, i'm not sure.
i know crohn's disease is a bad deal, but at least it was me, in my own body, dealing with my own pain. but this? this is something completely different. Crohn's is an auto-immune disease where your body attacks itself. adding these medicines has only changed the scenery of the battle.
i'll be fine, i just don't know if i'll be me.

once a nomad, always a nomad

venting post
i realized today that this is my last week in lincoln. ever. and by last week i mean last 5 days. i don't know why i hadn't realized this sooner. i was so busy writing papers and finishing projects and finding apartments and whatever else that it wasn't until my soul had a minute to rest in church that i realized how few days i have left here...and i started crying, being the big nancy that i am...
I would love to make the most of it... if it weren't dead week, aka hell week. trying to squeeze in all the last pieces of homework and projects that remain to prepare for finals, while at the same time trying to find time to spend with the friends i love is proving challenging. i'm realizing now the importance of spending time with the God i serve not when it's convenient and i have the time but when i feel like i don't even have time to breath let alone sit down with my bible and try to shut off my brain from planning out the rest of my day in 15 minute increments. i just want to take full advantage of this week and am trying to decide on the best way to do that without completely exhausting myself before the 6 hour drive to wyoming(for which i am beyond psyched) ...weather permitting...
mom came down this weekend and saved my life- helped me find great apartments for guero and i, cleaned jm's house so they can take pictures, and managed to make me laugh so hard i cried twice. she rocks.
i want so badly to be able to think about the future, plan my life, dream about possibilities, but the pressing assignments and errands of the here and now refuse to leave me alone long enough to have a moment to myself. i know this is where the Lord wants me, and I'm thankful, but i won't say it's easy. greg talked this morning about how when Jesus said "take up your cross" he was really saying be prepared for a horrible and gruesome death. the cross was not a symbol of redemption to these people, it was a device of torture. that's huge... i had never really considered the shock-factor of that statement.. why do i so often think that being a christian is the easy way out? it's the free way out, but no one ever said it was easy.
lincoln has been my home for three years and it will be difficult to leave. it makes me question my nomadic instincts... do i really want to be a wanderer the rest of my life? what about my family -present and future? do i want my children to grow up with the same miscontrued concept of home as their mother? do i want them to see their extended family once a year if i'm lucky?? what is the benefit of being grounded and does it outweigh the adventure and growth you find in moving from place to place? where does my stability come from? and what about the friendships i have made here? can i really excpect to maintain those from halfway across the world, moving whenever i feel the winds change? how can i expect the new people i meet to be as amazing and kind as the community of friends i have built here? and what about timing? i can't dedicate three years of my life to any one place to build these deep of friendships and relationships. I couldn't even stay in lincoln more than 2 years straight. i love being a "free spirit" or whatever you want to call it, but it's not without its dowfalls.
i leave for wyoming to visit guero for the weekend-ish, back mid-next week for my finals, then moving to omaha to join him. I'm excited but i get so exhausted when i think of what i need to get done before all of this takes place. it's not like i won't get it done, i just want to be awake enough to remember moving to omaha and christmas... speaking of which, anything that happens after december 20th is up in the air, besides christmas being on the 25th..i hope?
i'm so busy dealing with now i can't even see 12 days in advance... when did my life become like this and why can't i get it to stop until friday? it's one thing to have a surprisingly insane day, but to know that you are headed into an insanely busy week and not be able to do anything about it... that's not fun to say the least.
i do get to see the beloved bethy soon though, and i will be in the same city as k-buh and skoops, along with FINALLY being in the same city (let alone state!) as guero. it has been a long time coming... i mean, long-distance is fun and all...ok so actually it's not fun, at all. this week will be the hardest for us yet but after building this kind of foundation, we're basically indestructable.
why is it that knowing all of the awesomeness that will occur after this week doesn't make this week any easier? if anything, it seems harder now.
i have a meeting with a professor tomorrow to discuss the fulbrights scholarship i'm considering applying for (it's a big deal, and i'm not sure i want to dedicate hours of time to something i probably won't even get) but if i do decide to do this, that would move spain to january. jennica, what are you going to do for the 6 months-ish between graduating college and going to spain? good question. i was thinking new mexico actually...

worked this morning, had class, had practicum at southwest in which our teacher informed us we were having a pop quiz...as teachers...(aka here ready? teach this!), ran some clothes to sal's, got some shtuff at barnes and noble for kaitlin's birthday and for my...birthday...whatever, i do what i want, tried to get a harness at moose's tooth but they didn't have my size, set up apartment viewings for friday at 2pm, 3pm, 4pm, 5:15pm, 6pm, and 7pm. holy moly. deposited a lot of cash, ended up getting a money market account and a credit card too, cool huh (the banker who took my cash said i had too much money in my non interest earning account haha), returned a stellar movie, went to another class, glazed my ceramic tea pots, went grocery shopping, and made a tuna salad with avacado that goes into a pastry puff - i've never had a puff, it just sounded cool so i made it. looks cool to. and it's only 9pm
what's left?
a 20 page paper, of which i have 8 done...
a spanish translation of an article in english with words i don't even know in my own language (whatever that is)
a poster...crap i was gonna get that today. poo
a lesson plan or two
trying to clean up my computer
trying to clean up jm's house for the realtor (thank goodness for moms huh)
trying to keep myself from daydreaming about things to come
not crying
not answering any more calls from student athletes
consolidating
finishing a sped paper that's forever long and apparently not long enough (?!)
reading 3 articles on writing in the foreign language classroom and applying them to my research
trying to read kaitlin's present before i give it to her in true best friend form
breathing
oh breathing is good...
busyness is overrated but getting a ton of things done feels good sometimes. especially when they're little things that i can do by myself.
kaitlin i hope you don't read this before your birfday, but if you do that's ok -
6 word memoirs - hemingway wrote a story in 6 words -- for sale: baby shoes, never worn
what would my 6 word memoir be?
today it would be: always living inside my own head