as much as i ever could

my earliest memory is a recurring nightmare so vivid that i'm not even sure sometimes if it was just a dream.

in the nightmare, i'm unsafe. my health is in jeopardy. i'm powerless to stop the person doing these things to me. they're after something of mine and i can't let them have it. they're after me in a way i can't understand. i'm just a child. it's 30 years later and that's the only part of my childhood i can remember fully. i can put myself there in a second. i can still remember the sounds of buzzsaw. the sounds of my screaming to no avail. i can still remember his face.

it's 30 years later and suddenly i'm presented with answers. answers that explain some things but not others. answers that change everything but also nothing. the world has been taken from me and i didn't even get to experience it. i'll never get better. this is the way things are now and there's nothing i can do to stop it. it's my nightmare in real life.

go back to sleep.

i forget what it feels like to be healthy

i'm still not 100% as we've now hit the fourth month of being sick.

i had an appointment with a toronto urologist on tuesday after i finished the remaining c diff antibiotics friday night. i never want to see, taste, or take another pill ever again. and i never want to wake up with a new side effect ever again.

think of the absolute worst hangover you've had in your life. the nausea. the body aches. the headache. then multiply it by about 1000 and there you have how i felt for 5 days. constant, 24 hour nausea. what's worse is that i had to take the antibiotics with food or else it would be bad. ever tried eating when you're nauseous as fuck? it's not good.

i told the toronto urologist about all of my problems and all he could really tell me is that it sounds like i've just had an extremely unlucky set of events in the past four months. his sympathy was greatly appreciated once he put it into perspective. and here, i thought it was just me. he scheduled me for a cystoscopy for next week. they're gonna look inside my bladder and see if there's something in there causing the infections.

before any of this started, i never had a dream that involved doctors, hospitals, or me being sick. a few days before i was hospitalized back in september, i had a dream that i was seeing a doctor who told me i had a "self inflicted STD" - whatever that means. it's stuck with me, even though it didn't make any sense. i hadn't been with anyone and well, let's be honest, hadn't really helped myself out much either.

before i met with the toronto urologist, i had a dream i was back in the hospital undergoing some kind of a procedure for an "embolism" - but they were sticking needles in my tummy. again, this is a dream that's stuck with me because my subconscious seems to know when something is wrong with me before my body does.

and although i'm back on the job hunt in the most minimal way and back to having stupid, waste of my time interviews (like the ones i had yesterday, amongst the other five hundred people looking to score similar positions by meeting with an employer for 5 minutes), i just want to be better before i get out there again.

there's no telling when i'm actually going to feel 100%, as i kind of forget what that feels like. it has been over four months since i've felt healthy.

i'll just continue to take this one day at a time.

say this sooner

i think about things a lot.

no, i'm not talking about those girly thoughts, making up every worst case scenario based on whatever is currently happening; but just things in general. self-improvement. self-awareness. things i can do to make myself more happy and more content, if i'm truly the decider of my fate.

i think about what it would've been like if i didn't leave new zealand. i think about where i'd be if i hadn't participated in numerous dudes' infidelity. i think about how i would have felt if one of those had actually happened, rather than coming to my senses and realizing that it wasn't who i wanted to be. i think about where i'd be if i didn't move to toronto, if i didn't spend two years in grad school, and two years searching for a job. i just wonder how things could have turned out, sometimes, had i went with the other decision. even for minimal things.

and as a way for me to grow up and continue my own self-awareness, i'm going to share two things about me that i feel like people in my life should know, if they don't know already.

1) it's extremely difficult for me to "open up" 

if you've been following me along in this blog adventure for quite some time, you might notice that each post kind of dives a bit deeper into various topics. originally, this blog was intended to help me with my post-graduation job search and keep me busy out of boredom. i've always had a passion for writing and it keeps me sane. in more ways than one, this blog has been my outlet for whatever is bothering me and i'm continuously reminded that, once i finish a blog post, i immediately feel better about the issue at hand and (normally) come up with a plausible solution.

i can count on one hand, the amount of people i feel i've shared myself with. this is nobody's fault but my own. this has nothing to do with a trust issue. this has nothing to do with my social and friendly demeanor. this is just how i interact with people. if i'm not comfortable with a person, i'm not going to open up with them as much as i should. this part kills me every time - because i can read people extremely well. i know who i can be friends with, within about twenty seconds of meeting them. i know who will last and who won't. i'm quite aware of people who take advantage of my generous nature and disappear in my time of need.

not being able to open up makes it easier for me to have a "professional" side and a, for lack of a better term, an "amber" side. it's always been this way throughout my jobs. there's only been two times where both aspects of myself were combined in a job setting. and that's either because i grew close to someone while working or ended up secretly dating a coworker for nearly the entirety of the position. but - to put the latter into perspective - even though i was with that dude for over a year (despite hardships, resentment, and anger), i barely shared myself with him at all. and that's probably due to the fact that i knew he was wrong for me and we would never last. and also that he told me he loved me like two months into fucking.

let that be a lesson to any potential dudes out there: if you tell me you love me and i'm not ready for it (i, uh, never have been before and have never said it back.. to anyone), it's not going to go over very well. and those words are going to be stuck in my head forever. and you'll probably make me never want to hear them again.

but, if you really want me to share myself with you, i'll give it a shot. as long as i know what i see in you. i've got some crazy stories locked up that are pretty amazing.

2) i dream. a lot. 

before you ask, yes, i've likely had a dream of you and yes, at one point (or another) it was probably sexual. this happens a lot, with people i know and people i don't. i dream about everything and everyone i've ever met as well as those people i've never actually met yet.

if i do dream of you in a sexual way and remember it, it stays in my head for days, weeks, months, years.. depending on how good it was. and i might act a little strange around you for awhile. but not all of my dreams are sexual, i assure you. i dream about my teeth falling out, about having to go back to high school, missing deadlines, work stuff, people i care about getting hurt, and occasionally, me getting hurt. i've died in a dream once - or what i'm sure was meant to be me dying. i woke up immediately after i died. i dream about throwing up or other people throwing up around me and i wake up feeling extremely nauseous. a few days before my hospital visit for a kidney infection, i had a dream i went to the doctor and they told me i had a "self-inflicted STD" -- whatever that means. i guess i should listen to my dreams sometimes.

i dream about people i've never met but interacted with. these dreams are usually vivid and have strange things happening in them. i dream about twitter. i dream about texting. i dream about exes. i dream about potential dudes and exes getting into fights somehow. i dream about fucking my ex and 2 of his roommates (though, not together). i dream in colour. if i'm outside in a dream, there's normally snow on the ground. for months, i had a dream about one of my twitter followers of which i've never actually met. but i never told him about it because it would be weird.

although not nearly as bad as JD, my mind occasionally day dreams, too. this is usually when my mind wanders after a sexy dream i remembered and it's all i can think about for most of the next day. all those times where i've just stopped what i was doing and kind of gaze off and don't answer? yeah, believe me - i'm somewhere i don't ever want to come back from.

so, there you have it. i've shared two things and i'm content. this might be a new, ongoing blog post theme. because i can. and there's plenty more where that came from.