I am laying on my couch with an ice pack on my head, going through a mental checklist of things I need to do. I need to take a bath. I need to do the dishes. I need to finish my proposal. I need to re-ignite the petition. I need to eat. I’m shaky and my heart keeps beating fast and I don’t have an appetite. It’s interesting how hard it is to eat when you don’t have an appetite–just in the sense that like, you need food to survive and to maintain health and that sort of thing. I need something substantial like a sandwich, but that would involve going to the grocery store and hah.. hah..that’s funny, nope. Not happening today unfortunately. Oh look, a stray almond! I’ll eat that.

This day, my head, my house–all of it feels extremely dense to even process and insurmountable in the department of all the work I’m behind on. All the things I said I’d pick back up or start or finish. They’re just sitting there waiting for me, and I’m laying on the couch waiting for my brain to calm down. I probably need to sleep but I can’t, so I just picked up my phone and figured I might as well write these out of sequence, inconsequential thoughts down as I definitely do not do the things I need to do on my to-do list.

It’s a rough day physically but that was to be expected. We returned home from a trip to Salt Lake for my cousins wedding. I knew that I’d probably overdo it on the trip, but I so rarely get to see my family, sometimes you just have to live a little. But that almost always means you’ll have to pay a lot, with money you don’t have. (Sometimes you get lucky) Don’t ask me how this metaphor ends because I really don’t know. Traveling home yesterday was another clusterf*ck of overwhelming noise and sounds and airport personnel yelling things and security guards barking orders and that strangely depressing wait in line without your shoes or belt–so vulnerable! Laptop out of the bag? Fine, fine, whatever you want. There is also the very particular physical discomfort of flying– that pressure in your head, particularly taking off and landing, the loudness of the motor and that background, high-pitched white noise that makes everyone’s voice sound like it’s coming from a crappy radio. It felt like my brain was swelling, and hey, maybe it was.

By the time we reached our gate for the first leg of the flight I was so cognitively overloaded I was holding back tears. Cry baby! I actually wasn’t sad, I mean I may have been sad to look at, but it seems now when I get cognitive overload that’s what happens. Tears. So.. that’s cool. Then we stopped in Las Vegas– now THAT is a soothing, nice quiet airport where you can really decompress. OK but seriously they should warn you when you get off the plane that all of your senses are about to ignite and possibly implode from the inside and so here are some free ear plugs and a helmet so you don’t die from… I don’t know, too many sounds? I can hear the coroner now say it in a British accent: “Twas death from too many sounds.” It felt like a few tiny deaths. We had time to eat in that airport and even the wallpaper in the food court was overwhelming to look at. It dizzied me. It had diamonds, clubs, spades and hearts, which is very appropro for the destination, but it all just felt like.. a lot. By the time we came home I wasn’t even tired– I was somehow a little wired but enjoyed some silence for a while before more Parks and Rec on Netflix because that show feels like home. OK, this is getting boring.

The good news was how well I felt for at least 3 days of the trip–and they were the important days, too. Of course, I take enough pills to knock out a linebacker, so that always helps keep me somewhat functional. But in general I’ve improved functionally since August, which was a hot disaster with a lot of time being useless in bed. About a month ago, I began taking an anti-viral (Valtrex) for HHV6, Cytelomegalovirus, and possibly a virus that hides in the dorsal root ganglion and can cause a lot of head and face pain. (I’ve basically had a headache for seven years and it spread to my face roughly three years ago. Woo Woo!) So far the pain isn’t noticeably different but I’m moving with more ease, and in general, the right direction. Maybe it was the mountain air. It actually snowed while we were there. It was a nice, balmy 93 here today.

Maybe it was seeing a whole side of my family that I never get to see. And as much as I wish we saw each other more often, it really does make each visit we have together feel pretty special and end up epic in some funny, legacy-leaving way. Like that Christmas when my mom got mad at us for having a bonfire and said we were being reckless and stupid and someone was going to catch their clothes on fire. We laughed her off when she went inside, and then ten minutes later my brother-in-laws pants totally caught on fire. Pretty stupid to be waving lit palm tree branches around as they rained down fiery leaves, but, also hilarious.

My sister arranged for roughly 20 of us to stay in this ginormous house that I am convinced was used for a family of Sister Wives. There were just far too many weirdly placed exit doors with locks. Three too many kitchens. And living rooms. Too many odd rooms where it didn’t all make conventional sense. Hard to explain. Wait should I be a sister-wife? Then I would have help with my wifely duties! Need to think on that…

Anyway, all the love and laughter and piano playing actually energized me and I did better than expected. Major bonus: there was a piano in the house. Second major bonus: my brother Doug, professional jazz pianist and teacher, at your service. Add them together and you’ve got yourself a strange rendition of the song “What If God Was One of Us?” because apparently my brother Nick has really weird taste in music. Doug serenaded us intermittently with some improvisational  jazz, and like always, took requests. So of course, when everyone stumbled inside the house after the wedding, feeling nice and toasty from the matrimonial alcohol, it was only right that we all belted out “Piano Man” at probably an obnoxious volume, with some periodic hugs and a few sloppy cheersing of glasses. We toasted to the dead people and then played all the games they had downstairs, including ping pong, which I think I might actually be decent at. I’m not certain, I may have just played people who were really bad at ping pong. I do curse a lot when I play for some reason. Tisk tisk.

It felt good to be surrounded by people again, and experience the love and noise and general “togetherness”,  whatever that means. I just know it’s rare and fast and doesn’t happen very often, so I soaked it all up before returning to real-life, which is much quieter, and less cool. Waking up Monday was the first day my body said “OK no more though. Like really, I’m out.” And that was OK because there was nothing left on the agenda but to fly home which, was in fact the toughest part of the trip. (“First world problems” I know I know.) So now in the aftermath I lay like a pile of laundry, running through the things I need to do but will still most likely not get done. Dishes. No, eat first. But, no appetite. No real food. What a train wreck: get it together!

There is so much more to say but this is starting to feel like a bore and I still need to eat. How many times have I said that? Anyway, the search continues–how to be sick and alive in the loud, fast world– also how to let things go that you’re unable to do the moment you want to do them, without like, giving up on life. It’s only the day after, I guess the dishes can wait. They aren’t going anywhere.

Here’s a gem of a photo that my cousin Brittany took of at least most of us. It feels like an oddly accurate representation of us all. If anyone in the family doesn’t want to be on the blog…sorry…but you are. I was going to say I’d fix it, but we all know I wouldn’t fix it. I still haven’t eaten! I must eat. Can you spot me? I’m the idiot.

Health, Happiness, Recovery

Congrats Ryan and Wendy! We love ya.