And Yet Somehow Life Goes On

I'm sorry for the melodrama (GETTIT? GETTIT? *MEL*odrama? BAW HAW HAW!) of the last few posts. Losing a long-term friendship that was more in your own head than in reality, and then finding out that it was more in your own head than in reality, can tend to unhinge you.

Okay, not you, me, but you knew what I meant.

In other news, since I reallyreallyreally don't want to go into that at all, I finally had to break down and go to the hospital for the tooth situation. Those of you who've been following the bouncing ball for any amount of time will know the story - I have very bad teeth, and one very bad tooth in particular. I've been self-medicating with alternating doses of Tylenol and Motrin for over a year just so I can function.

(Hey, guess what the ER doc said about that? He said I had been systematically overdosing myself for ages, which could have killed my liver, and that I was very very very lucky the tests came back fine. READ THOSE LABELS, FOLKS, AND DON'T GET COCKY.)

(Oh, god, how they tested me. Also, a CT scan. Good thing I'm poor enough to qualify for financial aid, because otherwise I'd be hyperventilating right now.)

ANYway.

My tooth got so bad that it created a swelling along my entire jaw that stood out a good two, three inches from my face. Yeah, sexy, right? So I caved and went to the ER on Friday, since I didn't want poison in my brain or an eaten-away jawbone or a heart attack because of poisons in my blood stream (all of which oh, so many people delighted in telling me about over the last year, thanks guys for the paranoia).

After a blood test, a pee test, and a scan, it appears that I am a lucky, lucky sunuvabitch and that I may yet escape death because of my teeth. Also, that I'm way healthier than I deserve to be. Also, I'm not allowed to take Tylenol for at least 6 months, and Motrin only in a pinch. Also, Oxycodone will indeed make you barf if you take it on an empty stomach with Penicillin.

Long story longer, I got a list of places that will take me on a sliding scale (FINALLY! Some light at the end of the tunnel. I guess all I had to do was potentially bankrupt my ass to find out where to go), and so what I'm doing tomorrow is calling all these places to see who will see me and help me get back to a decent level of dental health.

Hasten that fine day.

In the meantime, thanks for being there and listening to me. You guys are the truest friends I have. Except my brother, who is just the best, most loyal and true friend I've ever had. It only took a minor emotional apocalypse to figure that one out.

And The Hits Keep Coming And Coming

Problems with the rent check. They need their money NOW. As far as I can tell, we've paid these dickwads every cent they were owed, and now? They're after us for HOW much more?

I can't stand it.

I'm thisclose to laying down and giving up. And I'm not a big one for giving up.

On the surface, I'm calm and serene. Under all that, I want to throw chairs and kick holes in the walls.

I can't stand the idea that I was worth so little to someone I would have gone to the wall for. I can't stand knowing that this person would crawl over my dying body to grub for a dollar.

Sick. Sick, sick, sick.

But it's nothing new. I really need to reevaluate my friendship criteria.

Silence

I really wish I could say things here in interesting ways. I wish that every time I sat down to these keys and confronted this blank space I could write something worthy of your time and attention.

I can't.

It seems like every time I try, even on those days when something noteworthy has happened, I become overwhelmed by this colossal sense of futility, this absolute certainty that my words are nothing more than noises off, that my presence in the ether is just that - ethereal, ephemeral, futile, fleeting.

I tell myself that words have weight, have value, that the words I put out here are a sort of triumph over the entropy of my day-to-day, that writing online at least has the merit of telling the world that, as Celie says in The Color Purple, "I'm here. Dear God, I'm here!"

But I don't believe me.

This whole world of words and web logs and forums and chat rooms and memes and viral videos and all, all, all of it - well, hell. It's so transitory, it's so easy to erase yourself. And when I erased myself, I made myself sick inside. I tried to carry on, but there was a ghost at the feast. I was sick, sick to the heart about all the things I just decimated, let go, eradicated. I thought drastic measures might help.

I killed my MySpace account. I didn't feel better.

I killed my Twitter account. I still didn't feel better.

I think I know what the problem is here, why I can't seem to fall in love with the words like I once could. I am still so furious that my words could be taken from me, taken by my own hand, even, and just removed from the place where I thought they'd live forever, floating eternally on a sea of bits and bytes and swimming on the surface of an ocean of pixels.

I am betrayed by my own hand.

I am a coward and a fool for letting someone drive me off my own ground.

I want my blog back. I want my identity back.

And, now more than ever, I can't have it back. Because now someone I loved so deeply they were like a part of myself, someone I trusted and knew online and off, someone who could and did read that other space, is no longer someone I trust.

So right when it would be the best thing in the world for my well-being to reclaim my space, I can't.

My heart, my heart. I feel like I'm alone in the world and my dearest friend is the one who cut the lifeline. And I can't go to the safest place, the strongest place in me, my words, to heal the gaping wound.

I hate this. I don't even like this template. I want my old cruddy gray one, and my Flickr badge, and my blogroll (and oh my GOD, that's gone forever, FOREVER), my comfy, ratty sofa, my armchair with the stuffing exploding out of the back, my threadbare carpets, my portraits on the wall.

See? Disjointed mess that I am, I can't even be kind of cohesive. This is going nowhere. I'm stopping. I am stopping.

But oh. Oh, how this sorry state of exile is making me sick with silence.