Some years I am more sensitive than others.
I wonder if PMS is a rarely-spoken of channelling tool. (I wonder if this is PMS, I should start keeping a calendar now that I no longer have the pill.) My hormones are all over the place but the end result is that I am a thousand times more sensitive. What I am suddenly wondering is... Is there the possibility of a positive aspect to this sensitivity? Maybe one day I will discern some secret for healing the universe with my ultimate PMS powers.
This year I can feel all of my ghosts tearing at the barrier. Since dawn this morning.
There are so many of them. They are beautiful in their way, not evil, and yet so overwhelming that I cannot understand their foreign-ness. I cannot see them in their entirety.
So I am frightened. I don't have the strength, the intelligence, the capacity to stand straight-necked and see through their eyes.
Not this year.
This year I am clouded by the bruises at my wrists, by my own fears, my own selfish problems, my over-extended goals and the drain of my ambitions.
Today I couldn't laugh quite as honestly when I brightened a little boy's morning as his mother slumped in her wheelchair.
Today I didn't quite giggle as hard as I should have at the efforts and costumes and enthusiasm around me.
Today I cracked jokes as hard as I could but my magic wasn't there. I left the nuclear ward filled with anxious technicians, resentful of me and my awkward veins.
The only thing dainty about me is hidden beneath my skin.
They were glad to see me gone. That is the most horrible feeling in the universe and will not leave me swiftly.
Renal scan take two took more from me than a little radioactivity.
They had to strap me down to take more blood from between the bruises. They strapped my arms so that the needles wouldn't slip. That's not what it felt like, though.
Four men with four needles, at each wrist and elbow all going simultaneously, raving the clock to find a vein before the radioactive injection wears off and the sample becomes useless.
I have never been afraid of needles before. I am gritting my teeth to not be afraid of them after this week. Is this trauma?
Is this all it takes to break me?
I am sorely disappointed in my own strength.
All hell is breaking loose in the office.
All hell is breaking loose in the hearts and minds around me.
I have to do a 48-hour urine collection which means that my gasoline can and I are inseparable for two days.
House-ridden.
I am only twenty six.
It is only for two days.
But it hurts. Just enough so that today the shame of it is more than what I can shrug away.
Just today.
Tomorrow is a new year and tonight perhaps this uber sensitivity will carry my strength across the barrier to help carry some ghosts to rest.
Tonight there will be rest. There has to be.
I made a little boy laugh. At least that was something.
...two hours later...
Last night I drew my first face and stuck my first knife into a pumpkin. It is awkward and crooked and silly in comparison to the great artistic efforts I've seen today -- but it's ours and I'm looking forward to becoming a practiced hand.