hedy

it's almost 3 in the morning on a tuesday nite (wednesday morning?) and there's a great commercial on tv with the michelin man and his totally adorable michelin dog. having cable does bad bad things to my sleep pattern. i don't really need to watch a science channel show about oysters or another bette davis flick on tcm or another episode of roseanne. but i do anyway, 'cause it's there, and i can never sleep unless i'm exhausted, and it's tough to get really fucking exhausted when your knee is all swollen and red and yelling at you to lay down and slap an ice pack on it.

there is one good thing about cable" the scifi network. oh how i love thee. i've missed the majority of tv shows i love when they were actually on tv. i never watched star trek (any of them!) or firefly when they were new every week. the last time i remember actually anticipating the next episode of a tv show was in junior high/high school and the x-files was on. now i get all tingly and happy on friday nite, not 'cause i'm going out, but because there's another episode of battlestar! and doctor who and torchwood the nite after that. ack. my extended convalescence has turned me into, if at all possible, an even bigger nerd than before.

i need to keep in touch with my friends better. and that's probably the worst understatement i could possibly make, because i've treated them all like such shit the past two years, and they keep calling and writing and trying to hang out. i just never learned how to talk about shitty stuff, y'know? for years, whenever i had a surgery or was in the hospital or just told somebody that i had had cancer they would say something along the lines of "oh, you poor dear, you're so brave!" when i'm really anything but, and i would tell them how lucky i am to be alive and have people who love me and all of that. and i meant it, i truly do feel amazingly lucky at all of the relatively small things that added up to my being here today, literally against all odds. but i also wanted so much to make them feel better, especially if it was a friend of mine who didn't seem to know what to say. i wanted them to know that for all the baggage it carries, the fact is that cancer and fake knees are just life to me and that they don't need to feel sorry for me.

but now i can't stop. i don't know how to call somebody and say 'i still think about my dad every day, all the time. i don't know how to live without him so i chose to not move on after his death, to try to hold on to whatever fragments i could. and some days i wish they had cut my leg off, because i don't think i can keep doing this - the physical therapy, the constant pain, the nausea and lack of clear thinking from pain meds - and i just want it to stop.' how do i say that to somebody?! i don't want to complain, or bring anybody down. so i just keep putting off calling friends back, subconsciously waiting for that day when i feel like myself again, when i have fun stuff to talk about can be witty and laugh. but i know one of the reasons that day seems so far away is because i'm always pushing everybody away.

i've always been there for my friends. breakups, pregnancies, abortions, cross-country moves, family problems, extended army tours, arrests, bad trips, bad relationships. i always thought i was a good friend, that i was a shoulder to cry on. but i never let them see the bad shit i was going through. i guess i thought i didn't need it, but i do, and i don't think you can be a good friend if you're not able to open up. and now i just don't know how to untangle it all. i don't even know where to start.