It is pretty rare for a movie to hold my attention from beginning to end and actually have characters that I relate to on a personal level. This is especially true after the past year of dealing with this illness and growing to detest most of television and movies after spending hour upon countless hour too sick to do anything other than half watch the glowing box of mind numbing pointlessness. So when I write that I watched a movie today from beginning to end, and even paused it when I needed to answer the phone or force myself to drink something, that is saying something very powerful about the movie. I watched "The Cake Eaters", a movie I had never heard of before comng across it on Showtime. It is about a teenage girl with Friedreich's Ataxia, which they portray as a terminal illness. She is basically used as a tool for her mother (who can not see her as anything more than her disease) to gain attention as an artist, she is an outsider because to her healthy peers she is a "freak", and she wants to find someone to have sex with her before she dies because she is certain no one could ever love her. I am doing the movie an injustice in condensing it this way, but trying to summarize the emotional plot is difficult. I could completely relate to the girl in the movie because I have felt my entire life like "an other", and for years like I was somehow "less than" because I was born with a body that did not work according to factory specifications. I remember those years as a teenager wanting desperately and working so hard to hide the differences, the toll it took fighting to not allow anyone to see more of the monsters in my life than was absolutely mandatory. I have also felt like at times people have used me as a prop to garnish attention for themselves or been unable to see me as anything other than my disability. That feeling of exploitation, of being made inhuman and into nothing more than a diagnosis is something you never forget and that you rage against even if you rage silently inside. Most of all I related to her fears of never knowing love and not having enough time in life. I am all too aware that it is going to require someone beyond the definition of incredible to be willing to risk loving me, to see beyond all of the brokenness to see the whole person that I am beneath the surface, and to choose to enter the chaos that is my life. Whether or not such a creature exists is a puzzle to me.
Yet my biggest relation to the film was the sense of urgency, the sense of needing to live now because time seemed to be so elusive and so flimsy, like a vapor fading in the sunrise. I have a relatively creative and imaginative spirit, and I can see the possibilities where others see only the impossible. So it has always been frightening to me that in my own life I am unable to imagine myself growing old. I want to imagine it, I want to spread out my life like a time line and laugh at the little old lady with gray curly hair sitting in her rocking chair but I don't see her. When I think of my life and imagine it, when I dream of the future, it all becomes a haze around middle age and I can go no further. It is truly impossible for me to imagine growing old. This creates a sense of urgency in my own life, the need to live in every moment and to not waste this gift of life on the inconsequential things because I too can not sense a life that stretches into enough tomorrows to feel comfortable. I probably sound morbid and overly dramatic, like I am trying to work this thing for all I can, but anyone who knows me knows that I very rarely reveal anything other than the lighter side of this journey. I protect those that I love from the harder aspects, from the monsters that sometimes torment me at night and the harsh realities that have settled into the core of my being years and years ago. I don't waste time feeling sorry for myself too often because that is time I can not get back, and that time is a precious commodity. I am just processing all of these thoughts and emotions that arose from this amazing movie and seeing so much of what I have experienced - in terms of emotions and such- portrayed so incredibly. When I go to sleep tonight and dream of any countless dreams, I wish it would be dreams of growing old and rocking chairs and gray hairs. I wish I could even just imagine.

I have been pushing myself for the past two weeks or so, with my trip to Virginia and then having to immediately jump back in to my crazy life of medical appointments and such upon my return. While in Virginia I was smart enough to know when I needed to rest and not be too embarrassed to admit that I needed extra rest. Had I been with anyone else I would have kept my guard up and acted like I felt fine, but the friends I was with have seen me at my absolute worst and been there for me unconditionally so I trust them with the good, bad, and ugly of the realities of my life. Something - be it the delightful dysautonomia, the pleasant progressive spastic paraparesis/paraplegia, the lovely lupus, or a fun new friend - is slowly but steadily draining me of energy. Each day I find that I have just a little less energy than the day before and that I require a slightly longer (and I mean I am resting/sleeping for hours in the afternoon and evening) rest each day. It is like a giant tug of war with a monster in my body and I am sliding ever so slowly through muck and slime, unable to get traction. I hate when that happens! Besides, the monster is a bully with a serious attitude problem and he is interfering with my style here! I need to find some high octane fuel to help me yank that rope and send the monster flying into the giant pit of mire and muck and break this pattern of slip sliding away. It is coming up on holiday season again, and I refuse to be sick again this year!! I missed every single holiday last winter because I was so sick, and I want to make up for it this year. Starting with Halloween and going straight through St. Patrick's Day.  I want to celebrate life, hope, renewal, family, friends, love, memories, and all of the blessings in my life. I want to celebrate with the people who have been there for me, who believe in me, who have made this journey less lonesome and frightening and brought laughter and joy to it. I refuse to spend another season of celebration feeling awful, with no energy, and not myself. This is one battle I will not lose.

Tomorrow morning I return to my glorious life as a human lab rat as I undergo testing on my bladder and kidneys to determine what damage, if any, has been done by the fact that my body has decided I do not need to receive the nerve signals from my bladder all the way up to my brain. Apparently I need to learn to read the fine print about these tests before I agree to participate as I am going to end up having two tubes inserted into what I distinctly identify as exits only and electrodes placed on "sensitve areas" to measure nerve responses as well as having my bladder inflated like a water balloon. Oh the sick and twisted minds of the medical world, what will they think of next? I am not a fan of tubes, especially tubes in exit routes, let alone tubes in exit routes inflating me like a human baloon animal so this is going to be a miserable Wednesday morning. This makes the Kidney ultrasound seem like pampering at the spa afterwards! I so enjoyed my vacation from all of this medical stuff, and I am grumpy about having to come back to reality. Starting at 6am tomorrow I have to work hard at drinking clear liquids, but can not eat anything which I am sure will do wonders for my attitude when combined with the fact that I am going to be awake for the third morning in a row at an indecently early time. At least when I was little and had to undergo miserable testing I got bribe gifts of a new book and either a stuffed animal or other small trinket; now that I am an adult I have to just suck it up and deal, not even a sticker or lollipop. I really need to read the fine print because that just seems wrong! ;) Always, always read that fine print!