Weak

I feel weaker this time. When I walk up the stairs I feel my legs saying um. The nausea has a different quality too. Instead of a strong feeling of oily hateful disgustingness, this time I feel more straight up nausea like I could, you know...actually throw up. Everyone wants so much to hear that I'm doing so much better this time that I don't want to write my blog or talk to anyone. I'm not anyone's cheerleader.

Yes parts of this cycle are different and maybe a little better, but it's still the drecktitude of chemotherapy and it has me down. 

You know the Bee Girl song by Blind Melon? Called No Rain. Go watch the video if not - it's pretty cool. The song is about depression. I like it. I don't like our society's response to depression - smile! Cheer up! Get over it! Don't feel that way. People actually tell other people: don't feel your own self. Amazing. We are really embarrassingly crude in some ways in our culture and I'm curious what they'll say of us in the future. Sometimes, many. times, it is appropriate to be depressed. Acknowledging this is actually uplifting and can make you feel much better. I try to live in a way that is happy and celebrates life - I think I do. But now...I am temporarily flattened. Ok?

All I can say is that my life is pretty plain
I like watchin' the puddles gather rain
And all I can do is just pour some tea for two
And speak my point of view but it's not sane, it's not sane

(Blind Melon)

I can take a ton of Marinol and Valium and Compazine and be stoned and flat and sort of ok if I don't move. But through the waving foam of stone there's a feeling of cancerous dread and black despair - it's not fun. Not a good buzz.

I just want someone to say to me
I'll always be there when you wake
You know I'd like to keep my cheeks dry today
So stay with me and I'll have it made

Went to campus yesterday to return papers to students. I rallied pathetically - showing up in ripped jeans and a HELLO THERE sweat shirt. A lot of my students showed up and I said "have a seat in my office" from my slumped position on a low flung couch backed up to croissants. They all crammed in around me - I felt like I was having a salon from my divan. I had crumbs all over me and bad socks. I noticed the rip in the right knee was actually more like a gulf, about a foot long and flapping - my entire unfortunate dry pale right leg was on display. I have pretty good legs but showing the 3 inches below the knee, the knee, and three inches above the knee is not generally considered an effective way to feature a good gam. I felt that any respect they may have had for me was previously earned and, if it were valid, would bear this latest minor assault. There were lots of words and hugs and I was sad to say goodbye. It was lovely. But it about did me in. Leila drove me home and helped me thank you. Have barely moved since.

And I don't understand why I sleep all day
And I start to complain that there's no rain
And all I can do is read And I don't understand why I sleep all day
And I start to complain that there's no rain
And all I can do is read a book to stay awake
And it rips my life away, but it's a great escape, escape, escape

You know that creepy dead girl in The Grudge? Who slithers around on the floor, head first? That's how I get around now.

We are having our house cleaned today - a luxury. Rare treat. To prepare, we usually straighten up first, doing things like getting wet towels off the floor in the kids' rooms, picking up loose detritus everywhere, and oh, say, GETTING DRESSED and geting out of the house. But today. I don't know if I can. Do any of it. They may find me here in my bed, and fold me, spray me, make me into the bed, or recycle me. Trash me. I should be embarrassed. But my brain molecules are not sufficiently excited to generate the energy of embarrassment. I lie in wait. Must move.

I hesitate to write this stuff - I know I let my readers down. Don't think I'm asking for sympathy - and believe me when I say: this is very worse on me, for me. I am disgusted with my own self, my own skin and bones and head and face and arms and mouth. A feeling of hatred chokes me yet I cannot escape this housing even for a second. It's like a sick claustrophobia inside a rotten locked gas station in the dark. I don't want to like my bald head or to think I look good - I want me to pulverize and come back another day. I think the poison has gotten into my psyche. But not my mind. It's still sharp.

Sinking deeper into the bed. I want the maids to lightly hold me, clucking over me, turning me this way and that as they efficiently and quickly spray me with lavender and pat me into the cool crisp bed while chattering brightly to each other "oh esta chica, sólo tenemos que arreglarla."