if everybody's doing it!!!

i'd like to start out by greeting my blogosphere associates. i miss you, i love you, and i thank you in advance for your warm welcome back into our wonderful web consortium. i would like to talk on the phone or write a letter to you soon. but, right now, this is what i'm doing. 

maybe to rip the bandaid off and save myself a little grief, i will share a little bit about my present circumstances. reader, they are not good! in july, i got sick. tomorrow is the last day of october. i am still very unwell. it is a strange sickness because to the naked eye i actually appear to be very well-- i do not cough or sneeze or drip, my voice and complexion are quite normal, and i can tolerate standing and moving around in small doses that you might encounter me for. i am not in pain. unfortunately though, my energy stores are unnaturally, gravely low. cleaning my home, walking distances even of a couple blocks, a particularly long set of stairs; these activities are all enough not just to exhaust me in the moment, but to cost me days of very unpleasant, often debilitating, fatigue. my heart pounds relentlessly, like i've been running, even after lying down for hours. my breath feels very short and labored. in order to avoid crashes such as these, there are strict limits on what i do, physically. my dear friends and family do all my errands, prepare much of my food, and provide door-to-door car service essentially any time i leave the house, which is pretty rarely. 

i have spent the last several months running the diagnostic gamut-- cardiology, endocrinology, rheumatology-- lots of blood tests and ultrasounds. the vague general consensus is something called 'post-viral syndrome' which doesn't really have a treatment program besides "rest and cross your fingers." i have been referred to a post-viral rehabilitation clinic at penn which promises some help and was granted their earliest available appointment, which is in february.

more bandaid ripping: i have been fired from my job due to my illness! i am moving back in with my parents! i've been a refugee from my own apartment for the last two weeks due to a flea infestation!

you will maybe be unsurprised to learn that i have become quite preoccupied, philosophically, with bad luck. the last calendar year of my life has been cluttered not only with strange illnesses like this one, but other freak misfortunes such as carbon monoxide poisoning, marketplace scams, the breakdown of my car, the loss of my singing voice, and an insane gynecologist leading me to believe that i was infertile for one very catastrophically sad month. all of these things at a time in my life which has already had a very dissatisfying baseline, misfortunes aside.

i share my woes not to garner pity-- know this!! rather, because i feel absolutely insane. i must ask: what is happening to me!!!!!! tana french wrote this rip-off of the secret history called the likeness, and in it, one of the characters says something that will live in my mind forever. he says: "take what you want and pay for it." this has been, for me, such grounding and satisfying way to make sense of the good and bad in my life-- a natural balance, an ebb and flow of fortune and misfortune. not in ways that will always be obvious, but there nonetheless. even awful tribulations like my mother's brain tumor and the whole gerd ordeal-- they were not easy, but they didn't really disrupt my worldview, because i felt (at least, at my most elevated self) like they were fair, when you really took into account everything else that i had. 

i've been finding it much harder to make sense of the circumstances of the last year. i understand that, on a global scale, i still have it really quite easy....... but i trust my friends to understand that my measly human brain isn't really evolved enough for that degree of grace. and on a local scale, my misfortunes really do feel disproportionate and lacking balance. and the tide just doesn't seem to be turning. it's darkly comic now to remember, in the week or two before my illness began, crying to my mother about how inordinately difficult and joyless the last year or so had been, how i badly needed a break where things felt light and easy. god said lmao! 

here are some places my brain goes when i try to make sense of what's happening to me:

• when i moved to philadelphia, i acted against a sacred gut instinct that i had hitherto allowed to guide me in all my endeavors. everything that has happened to me since has been the universe trying to shake me back into alignment with myself, and punishing me for trying to force something that Isn't Right
• the reason i was happy was because i was 24. this is just how it feels to be 28.
• i'm making it all up in my head. literally it's not that bad
• something is deeply wrong with me. 
• i did something wrong but i dont know what and i'm being punished
• i used up all the good stuff. it's just bad from here on out 
• there is a curse. i need to do something to break the curse but i don't know what it is.
• there is literally no rhyme or reason to why anything happens to anybody. when you extrapolate on the magical thinking that god is punishing you for something, or that there is a natural balance of good and bad that occurs to all people, you MUST conclude it is actually an evil, hateful, worldview that blames people for their own suffering.
• i have incurred the wrath of god for being ungrateful for my life
• this is merely a very heavy karmic loan. everyday of my 30s is going to feel like peaking on MDMA 

reading this might make you think you should like call my mom or run a wellness check on me or something. not unfair, but i promise, unnecessary. outside of Everything That's Happening To Me, i'm doing okay. or like, i'm depressed, but i know it's really only because of my circumstances. and don't worry-- i'm doing the right stuff! meditating, being with my friends, getting delivered to You Can See Everything twice in one week, etc.

i've had this fantasy in the last few weeks of writing all this up and sending it to one of those trusted advice columnists who gives a long, wise, answer that goes viral in a very nice, specific corner of the internet. like ask polly. because i genuinely feel like i need advice. i need wisdom! i had a therapist but i hated it. i tried wellbutrin for 3 days but it made me insane. i need someone to tell me how to make sense of this! i need someone to tell me how to heal my relationship with a future i have lost all trust in! what is bad luck? when does it stop being chance? what do you do when this is your life! why is this happening to me! cant emphasize it enough: i was the lowest i've ever been. then i got fleas.

this is all to say, if you read this and feel like mulling it over on your next long walk, or making it a topic of conversation with a particularly wise person in your life, or a round table of all the wisest people in your life-- purely as an intellectual pursuit! i would be interested to know where you end up. relevant parties will be made aware of my parents' mailing address, where i will be found from thanksgiving onward.... if you come up with anything good in the meantime, perhaps an electronic mail!