aloneunaided

When I try to sign into livejournal FROM livejournal.com I get nothing but a little jpeg of some bald guy. I can only sign in through other peoples pages.

Anybody know what's up with that? I've tried two different machines and they both do the same thing. www.livejournal.com gives me either a picture of some guy, or the sign in screen. if I get the sign in screen and try to sign in, I get the guy. I can only sign in by going to someone elses journal and going from there.

WTF?


annoying. not funny. not clever. annoying.

sick as a dog. feel like death on a stick. i dont want to deal with anyone or anything. i just want to be left alone. this is my official notice. just leave me be.

Tonights update on Ryan. I just answered somebody's comment and fuck all recomposing anything, I'm pasting that reply right the fuck up here. I'll add a couple things to the end. It'll have to do.

His biggest problem right now is that he feels wrong. Literally everything feels wrong. It all looks wrong. Sounds wrong. It's RIGHT...but to us, not to him. We were talking today and he was telling me how weird everything looked and we realized for the first time that he's never processed things visually the same way the rest of us do! We didn't know, he didn't know! As far as he knew the way things looked to him were the way they looked to everyone. But how fucked up for him. He was pointing to the edge of the headboard of the bed and saying "That...that's the edge of the bed, and I can see that it stops here and the windowsill starts there and then that there isn't part of it, it's the lamp." I'm going "uh huh....whaddabouddit?" He looked all surprised and said "Well it didn't look that way before!" He explained to me, or tried to, how things looked to him, and all I can say is really trippy. Really really trippy.
Things all blended in together for him and he had no concept that one thing stopped and something else began. The world, to him, has always looked like one big thing with areas of it you could move around at will. He said the window was the lighter area, the lamp was the area that extended further up the wall, the bed was part of the wall that stuck out so you could lie on it...all of his visual perceptions were totally fucked. Of course they had to be....everything had to be with his brain like it was.

Unfortunately this hasn't been the great and wonderful miracle we all wish it would be. His seizures haven't come back yet, and his vision and visual processing are normalizing,his nervous system is normalizing, his memory is coming back..but he's got definite deficits too. That weird gelled area was doing something other than make seizures, seems like. His speech is all fucked up, he's having a lot of trouble finding words he wants. He's not recognizing everything he should be and he's lost the names of all kinds of things. He lost the ability to do anything with numbers years ago when he got a brain infection. He never knows how old he is, he has to look, he doesn't know his or anyone elses birthday, he cant remember phone numbers or house numbers...but he knew what numbers WERE. He could count, he could read and write them. He's lost all of it now. He doesn't recognize numbers, he can't count, he doesn't seem like he understands the concept of numbers.
It might come back....between the bruising, bleeding, blood clots, bone fragments and...wow, B words anyone?....brain removal, there's been a lot of trauma in there. Nothing right now is in any way set in stone. So we'll see.

He's so overwhelmed, though. His world was predictably unpredictable. He never knew when to expect things but he knew to expect them. Now he has no idea. Everythings haywire as far as he's concerned.

He's starting to feel better though. The last few days he just felt sick...and really weak and really done in. I had to keep reminding myself that not only did he just have major surgery but he just had his entire blood volume replaced and has a few not so minor injuries going on. Now his counts are coming back up, his pains getting better, and the depression is letting up a little bit. And he's still reassuringly crazy :) He kept complaining that he smelled fleas all day.

I don't think fleas smell!

His psychotic symptoms are fully functional..but they've also changed, and he's weirdly upset about that. What he's describing seems, to me, a lot less disruptive, but I guess it's all in what you're used to.
He still has voices, but instead of yelling and screeching at him he says they're more whispering "around the edges of things" whatever that means. He said it sounds like he's in a big theater full of people who are whispering. He can't understand what they're saying, also something new. Usually they're telling him how much he sucks, should die, doesn't deserve anything remotely good, and then they tell him all of the terrible things he should do to other people. They're not good company.
These voices aren't saying anything, they're just creating white noise.
He doesn't like it. He said that with the other voices he knew they were always going to be yelling the same old bullshit, and most of the time he could ignore them. He said, and it seemed creepy to me; "I don't know what these guys are finally going to say, when they decide to say something. And I don't know what they're talking about because I can't make it out. What if it's important? What if it's about me?"

Riiiiiiight.

To put it Dom's way "I'm more than sure it is!"
Fuckin Dominic, man. I love that....his "I'm more than sure". I also love his "For true!" He's so creole it's hysterical. I love him, he's kicks. He calls everybody baby, or as it comes out of his mouth 'bebe'
He's too damn funny.
Ryan better not piss him off so he leaves.

Anyway where the fuck was I? Voices.
There's also a voice missing, that they've decided was probably a seizure thing. There used to be a voice that would randomly, throughout the day and night, suddenly scream. When he...because Ryan said it sounded like a really big guy being really grossly gutted by something...screamed everything went black until he...Ryan, not the hallucinatory screaming gutted man, was in total tunnel vision. He said the guy would keep screaming and he'd be "in the tunnel" for a couple minutes and then the guy would shut up and the tunnel would go away.
As weird as it sounds, he misses that. He's perversely, insanely!!! worried about the guy. He asked me what I thought happened to him!

I almost said "Well probly he got sucked out through a tube and biopsied and flushed" but he looked so worried about it I couldn't do it.

These weird things...worrying what happened to the guy, thinking the voices might be talking about him, Dr D says those are typical schizophrenic symptoms, whereas a screaming man complete with tunnel who comes back several times a day is NOT.

So the talk now is what meds to put him back on. He was on Clozaril, and it was the only thing that ever helped him at all. It's also pretty dangerous and can cause some serious and sometimes fatal side effects. He has to have biweekly bloodwork while he's on it and there's a risk now that if he goes back on it, after being off, he'll develop this extremely serious side effect...I guess that happens.
It's been the medication that let him actually live a little, though, so of course he wants to go back on it.
But....since his symptoms don't at this moment seem as severe, and since a lot of what didn't go away with other medications, because of course now we know it was seizures, is now gone...they want to try him on something without the risk of a lethal blood problem.
Geodon worked second best for him....not enough to rid him of having to be staffed but enough to get him thinking and speaking coherently. Maybe now it'll be enough.
The debate is on.

Dr D still wants to wait a while longer before he medicates him. He wants to see where his moods go as he heals, all kinds of other things....he wants to see where he's at emotionally and physically before he starts putting drugs into him.

And of course we're all waiting to see if the seizures come back. The VNS is turned off....if he stays seizure free they're going to take it out. Dr D and the neurologist talked about four to six weeks. If he goes that long without a seizure, they'll take out the unit.
That's their goal for him.

He doesn't have a goal for himself.

Mine for him.....I just want him to get well and be happy.

Long shot odds, I know.
But what the hell, right?

Where to begin. As far as I'm able to tell there are only two or three people who are really going to want to know this stuff, and it's a lot to try to get put up in some kind of logical order. I'm wondering if it's really worth the trouble considering that as soon as everything here is back to it's normal state of chaos I'm probably going to abandoned LJ again anyway. I could just email a couple people. Buuuuuuuuuuuut then someone else might pop up and then they'd want to be kept in the loop too and I'd have to remember who and where and what and well fuck that.

Shit.

I'm much too sober for this.

Where to start. I should get some visual aids or something. Shit it's a quarter past 2. Damn. Ok, well I'll start anyway.

Ryan. Not too many people who know him in this particular venue at this particular time know much about him. In the past there were many who did, they're all gone, back to square one. My brother doesn't reveal much about what he, or his life, is really like. He tells people he's crazy and sometimes he demonstrates that absolutely unquestionably, but he doesn't tell people what's really going on, or what he's really like. Or what kind of a hell his life honestly is.
He just ignores it and figures what they don't need to know wont keep them up at night.

Those are his words, people people, "What they don't know wont keep them up at night."

Well...to appreciate the changes that appear to be happening, you'll need some background that he didn't give you.

First and foremost, not everything he's said about his past is true. When you're talking to someone who's delusional, things get fucked up.

The facts as they relate to his current situation would probably be where to go next, I guess.

Well most of the people who know him know he's schizophrenic. Diagnosed, packaged and giftwrapped. There's a lot of crazy in our family, we have our mom to thank for that (THANKS MOM!!) and there's no getting around it. He hallucinates, he's delusional, his thoughts are completely disordered a lot of the time, and his communication and social skills are just flat out weird. I, personally, like him. Other people tend to cross the street.

But....a lot of stuff that Ryan's had going on has over the years gotten lumped in with his psychiatric diagnosis and forgotten, even though it has nothing to do with that at all.

Ryan was born with what they then called a "global sensory disorder". Please google it so I don't have to explain. Aside from whatever else it might mean, his nervous system was hypersensitive and all cracked out. He could never stand to be touched, because anything other than extremely deep pressure actually caused him pain. He can't be hugged, or draped over, or tapped, patted, pulled, nothing. He can't stand to be touched. If he sees he's about to be touched and has a second to process, nothing too weird happens... he just hates it. If he doesn't know it's coming, his cracked out nervous system perceives it as an attack and he fights back. Shocking to walk up to someone and put a hand on their shoulder and get your face slugged off for your trouble. He's also been known to bite when people touch him unexpectedly.
He doesn't mean to do it, it's not a behavioral thing, it's a primitive kind of fight or flight response. I sometimes have had occasion to wish he tended more toward flight than fight but we don't always have things our way. While this isn't his fault, and isn't anything he can be blamed for, it does make it hard for him to go out, and it does make him assaultive. Having to constantly monitor yourself so that you don't inadvertently smack down some little old lady who bumped you with her purse is pretty fucking stressful. This of course just adds to his appearance as completely crazy, and most people have always thought all of this is just another sign of his schizophrenia.

It's not even related. It's 100% physical.

Wrapped up in this little problem is another one that makes it difficult or impossible for him to understand the internal physical cues his body gives him. You and I know when we have to pee...Ryan doesn't. He had to work out a system so he wasn't peeing in his shoe all these years. You and I know when we have a headache. Ryan doesn't. He knows somethings wrong but he has to sit down and concentrate and figure it out. It's no big deal when it only means he has to wait an extra few minutes to figure out he's got a headache and go get an advil. It's more of a problem if he's about to puke. See where I'm coming from? By the time he figures out what's going on things have become unfortunate.

This too is often blamed on his mental health. I've never been sure why, because what does not knowing when you have to pee have to do with sanity?

Alone those things would be bad enough, but he also has a serious, serious, serious seizure disorder that's almost killed him way too many times to count. From the time he was a baby he had dozens of seizures a day, and by the time I was old enough to understand what a seizure was, he was having hundreds. A lot of them were little absence seizures, which it turns out are causing him a huge problem now, but most of them were full on tonic clonic fall on the floor shaking and foaming classic like you see on tv seizures. He's hurt himself, badly, thousands of times. He's broken his teeth, bitten off part of his tongue, broken probably every bone in his body at least once, and though we didn't know it until last week, fractured his skull a whole bunch of times and has bled into his brain. He's also had more than a dozen episodes of status epilepticus, which is a seizure that wont stop. These involve trips to the ER for IV drugs to stop the seizures before they kill him. One of these episodes had him in a medically induced coma for six days. Fun times.
All in all this made him pretty non functional for most of his life, but a few years ago he got a VNS system, again please google that so I don't have to explain. Type in Vagus Nerve Stimulator.
It wasn't a magic cure but it helped a lot and cut him back to only ten or so seizures a day instead of fifty.

Ironically enough, the seizures were never thought to be part of his schizophrenia, but as we've found out just today (never mind that Dr D's been telling us for years and we've called him a retard. that's not important), a good percentage of his schizophrenia was really seizures. We'll get to that.

With the exception of the crazy he inherited from mom, most of these problems were caused by a serious brain injury he was born with. Cat scans and MRI's have always shown a huge section of dead/dysfunctional brain starting right between his eyes and running back up and off to one side. See why I need visual aids? This thing ran right through the sections responsible for thought, processing, sensory systems, language....he essentially had a large vacant lot in his brain, and if it had just sat there and done nothing it might not have been the huge problem it has been. It didn't do that. It didn't do anything useful, but it was hyperexciteable and irritable and sent out all kinds of rotten signals. We found out a few days ago that it was doing something else, as well. We'll get to that. Too. When he was little his neurologist suggested having it removed, thinking it was more than likely the source of his seizures. My parents were worried about his quality of life, and decided to go with options that didn't involve cutting into his brain.
So, he's had that going on all his life.

He also never laughed or cried, which is something most people don't know. It's not that he didn't feel happiness or sadness...he did. And it wasn't that flat affect you hear about so much with schizophrenic people. He had expressions, he smiled, he frowned, his face was mobile. But he never laughed and he never cried. Ever. In his life. Even when he was little.
I asked him once if he never found things funny. He said he did. Laughter just didn't happen for him. Neither did crying. A few times when he whacked himself a good one his eyes would tear up and water but that isn't the same thing.
Explanation? CRAZY.

He also never slept. He's always had to be medicated to sleep and even then his sleep has never been normal. sleep is alien to him.

There's also the HIV thing, but I'm not going to get into that now. It's meaningless, since it turns out he's not HIV+. I might explain that all bullshit later on but I'm not going to do it now. It has nothing to do with this other than it was just one more fucked up thing in an already way too fucked up life.

How we doin' people. Are we with me? I'm not sure I am, it's now a quarter to three.

Fast forward to the present day....skip over years of staff, hospitals, meds that didnt work, a nightmare of a life. I want to add in though that being so tactile defensive and having such a hyperactive nervous system caused an issue none of us would like to have happen to us. It eliminates any kind of sex life if you can't stand to be touched, and a nervous system that perceives a hug as pain can do some real unpleasant things to an orgasm if indeed it ever lets you get that far. Just saying.

Ryans tried to kill himself multiple times. Always it was seen as just another sign of his being crazy. It wasn't until it was pointed out to us today that we realized how wrong that thinking was. If you lived his life, could you do it? Could I? Could I live in constant pain, confusion, and chaos with no relief, hope, or cure? I don't think I could. Could you live knowing that nobody will ever be able to comfort you, touch you, hug you, kiss you? While being in constant pain and under the continual threat of death by your own brain? It's something to think about.
Ryans suicide attempts weren't signs of his psychiatric diagnosis. They were reactions to depression and despair over knowing there was never going to be any help or any relief or any way he was ever going to really live. There were too many times when he just couldn't take it anymore. He's lasted a lot longer than I would have. I think every morning that he wakes up and gets out of bed is an act of bravery.

And for the record, he almost never left the house. He used to talk about going out....and once in a very great while he did...but he spent 99% of the time inside because he was too afraid of what might happen to go out.

A few months ago his memory started to do weird shit. He would forget things that had happened, and his mind would make up alternate versions. He reached a point where he had no idea what was a real memory and what was delusion. See subcategory: Zack is dead!

Couple weeks ago I guess he went out with some friends. He came back alone, soaking wet and freezing, in the middle of the night. He couldn't tell anyone what had happened, because he couldn't remember. He went to a doctor. Schizophrenic issue, he was told.
Every day that went by lost him more and more of his ability to remember anything. His short term memory was completely shot and I'm told he'd stand in one place for hours because he couldnt remember what he was doing or if he'd done it. He tried to get help and he was denied. He tried to go into a hospital and was turned away. He told doctor after doctor and when he couldn't remember five minutes ago long enough to tell them anything, he brought his friend with him to tell them. They all told him it was probably meds and he'd have to get them adjusted.
They just couldn't give him a bed anywhere so he could do that.

On top of the memory thing he'd developed some other problems. He couldn't swallow well, or close his lips around a cup. When he tried to drink he made a horrible mess and choked on it. He was vomiting many many times a day and he never seemed to have any idea he was going to. He says now that he doesn't remember ever feeling sick. He was having trouble focusing, couldn't read, couldn't concentrate.

Explanation? Crazy.

And so last week he gave up. He asked for help a million times, nobody would help him, and he couldn't take care of himself at all anymore. He had lost a few other basic things I'm not going to go into here, but his situation wasn't tolerable, nobody would help him, and so he wrote himself a note. In huge drawn letters like a little kid would do. It was instructions on where to go and what to do to kill himself. He had to write it down because he knew he wouldn't remember what he was doing.

He almost succeeded. He was found by an old drunk homeless man under a pier up off tchoupitoulas. He was still alive but barely. By the time the ambulance got him he was bled out, not breathing, nothing. Thank God for EMT's who thought it was worth a shot to try to fill him up and restart him. All in all he was without circulation and breathing for less than ten minutes, and they consider that really great. I consider it a fucking nightmare.
That he should have been driven to that at all.
Explanation? Fucking loon.

Some doctor apparantly turned him over and realized his fingers were sinking into the back of my brothers head. How's that turn you on?
As soon as they had him breathing and fully blooded again, stitched up, they did some kind of scan that wouldn't rip the vns out of his chest, and discovered that the back of his head was not only bashed in, but had been for some time. There were other spots on his head that weren't fully intact, as well. His brain was full of shadows that they said were blood clots, and they suspected he'd been actively bleeding into his brain for a number of weeks.

So, they operated to remove the blood clots and repair the skull damage.
While they were in there, they got a good look at the part of his brain that had always been suspected of causing his seizures. They discovered that it had the consistancy of threaded jello, and when they were suctioning out the blood in his brain, some of this jello like tissue that used to be his brain came with.

Long story full of neurosurgeons, explanations, opinions and permissions later they removed the huge section of gellid crap that wasn't a working brain, and they discovered that it had been doing damage to the rest of his brain all of this time. The areas where it abutted normal brain tissue were inflamed and they found long stretches of scarring. He's had this thing causing a chronic inflammatory condition in his brain for more than 20 years. He has scars on his brain.

They were happy to see that when they had sucked out all of the goo that wasn't a brain, the inflamed areas almost immediately started to calm down. The neurosurgeons were happy.

Ryan wasn't happy, because when he woke up he was still alive.

It's been a few days now. He's still in the ICU, but everyone's just fucking thrilled with how great his heads healing. No swelling, no increased pressure, no problems.
Thank god for whatever blessings he wants to give us, right?

It's been a few days now and a few other things have happened...or failed to happen.
Ryan hasn't had any seizures.
When he first came out of surgery his EEG showed a few little pre seizurlike thingys but those stopped and since then he's had none. Not even little absence seizures. He's never gone one day seizure free, let alone three. He's not having seizures.

Will they come back? I dont know. I don't think so, because I think his doctors were right. That bad goop in his head was the problem. Of course there's the scarring which could cause some problems. We don't know.

He's been sleeping...real sleep...the kind everyone does...off and on this whole time as well. He's never experienced real sleep till now.

His memory is improving by the hour it seems like.

Normally this would be a stupid chatty thing all full of jokes and all thrilled and happy...but I'm not that happy. I'm really not. I'm really fucking terrified for him.
Because I've seen him the last couple days, and while he should be so amazingly overjoyed at the relief from the seizures, the ability to sleep, the beginnings of the normalization of his sensory systems, because yes there's a tiny bit of that just starting too, he's not. He's terrified. He has no idea how to cope. He's getting no meds, because they want his levels to zero so they know what to medicate. What's going to come back, what might no longer need treatment, whatever.
He's experiencing a whole gamut of feelings and sensations he's never experienced before. His days are, as he put it, "SOOOOOO long" because he's never experienced sequential time without dropping out in dozens of absences. The way his body feels is changing, and it doesn't feel good. It feels, he says, creepy. He says the inside of his head feels like it's being shocked....I guess that must be what your brain healing feels like? He's had a bunch of scans and everything in there is good.

He's not eating. He's not talking much. He's not sure what's going on or what the end result is going to be. The only thing any of us are sure of is that he's still going to be crazy when all is said and done. THAT we can't blame on brain damage. BUT....even his crazy is changing. The one thing he knew intimately and with ultimate predictability, is changing. His transient, fleeting, weird come and go delusions that we refused to believe were seizures, were seizures, and they're gone. His strange dreamlike hallucinations and visions that hit and ran all day long are gone. They, too, were seizures. His doctor told us for years that schizophrenia doesnt act like that, but seizures do. We said waved him off....he was right.

And since right at the moment Ryan isn't actively psychotic....he has nothing but reality. He has no idea how to cope with reality.

I've never in my life been more worried about him than I am right now. He's in completely alien territory and he's scared to death.
I keep wishing he'd decompensate...a good old fashioned psychotic episode would at least put him on familiar ground.

Don't get me wrong. He's not cured.....he's still all fucked up. But he's not as fucked up as he 's used to being. He's experiencing a lot more accurate reality than he ever has before. On top of being exhausted and in pain he's getting more and more depressed.

Dr D says he expects that, and not to worry.
He's trying not to show that he's tickled to death about all of this. He says he's trying to respect the fact that Ryan's just been essentially thrown into foreign territory with no translator and not even a little book of words. But he's happy. He told me "Zack, if your brother could get through 25 years of the hell that was his life, he'll adjust just fine to his life NOT being hell. Give him some time, he's not even out of the ICU yet."
I do believe him, and I do have faith in him, and in my brother.
Jello head's a pretty tough guy, and he doesn't give up easy.
I just wish I could do something to help smooth it out some.

It's 3:30. Until next time, people.

My username came out of the great song lyric naming fest of whenever it was. We all had names that were song lyrics. Ryan still has his. No, people, "bubblegumsleaze" is not a reflection of his personality. It's song lyrics. I don't remember who the band was, but the line is "So who'm I trying to please with this bubble gum sleaze?"

So is "alone unaided". Semisonic, "The Great Divide"

I'm going to have to google up that song before I get off here for the night.

I went up to Baton Rouge today to make my sister come home. She pisses me off more than a little because she's playing up this whole concerned act, piling out cash for a hotel so she can "be near Ryan" when she won't have anything to do with him the rest of the time.

I don't really blame my sister for her issues with him. She went through a lot growing up with him and she's trying her best. If anyone had told me, even five years ago, that Cyri and Ryan would be living together I'd have laughed until I threw up. I would have then checked them into the nearest psychiatric facility to have their head examined, because no way would those two ever live in the same house again.
Imagine my surprise, right? She's trying. It's hard for her, though,because she really was traumatized. She's afraid of him, and honestly she has good reason to be. The last few years he hasn't been at all violent, but for the previous decade or so it was a good idea to stay out of reach. You just never knew. He'd come up to you and hug you and while he was hugging you he'd bite you. Or sometimes he'd just walk by and dig a handful of your skin off or rip out hair. I suppose it's hard to ever fully trust that someone who was once like that won't suddenly revert and rip your throat out.

It wasn't hard for me personally, but then I'm not known for my common sense. Please note the two big scars as proof. The first one should have taught me but no....

Anyway. Cyri's afraid of him, and because she's afraid of him she's guilty. To assuage that guilt she thought she would stay in a hotel in the city so as to be close by. That's bullshit.
I made her come home.

They wouldn't let her back in to see him anyway.

We went up today and found him very still and very quiet and very withdrawn. Of course we tried to jolly him out of it for a couple of hours before his doctor came in and threw us all out.
What I did notice, however, was that there are some things about my brother that have changed.

I'm so tired and I want this to all make sense. God.

Ok. Ryan's always been tight. He doesn't relax, his muscles don't ever stop being tense. His teeth are always clenched, his fists are always tight, he's never never just loose or chill or relaxed. Not even in his sleep, because of course he doesn't really sleep. Ryan has never slept without drugs. Even as an infant he had to be medicated to sleep. And when he does sleep it's not good sleep. He wakes up constantly. For a while some wahoo thought that his mental health issues might be caused by sleep deprivation. More accurately DREAM deprivation. That's not even in the ballpark. He dreams. He even dreams when he's awake. But he doesn't ever have normal sleep. I remember a doctor once pointing out to us on his EEG that even asleep his brain activity was more typical of someone who was half awake. He never really slept.
His body and his brain never relaxed.

I noticed today that there was no tension in him. Everything about him was loose and soft and sleepy. I've never seen him like that. He also fell asleep on us multiple times. He's completely unmedicated and he wasn't passing out or anything medical like that. He just fell asleep a bunch of times. I know his doctor well...that's another story for another time though, people. I'm too tired tonight. I pointed it out to him and he said "Yeah, cool innit? Look" and pointed out his graph reading. His exact quote is "Out like a light."

There were other things noted between his doctor and myself. He hasn't had any seizures. When he first came out of surgery he showed a couple of little spots of activity that looked like they might have been pre seizure according to his doctor. Those happened a few more times yesterday and last night, but he never had any kind of seizures. Not even tiny ones. Today there was nothing even remotely connected to seizure activity. His VNS is off and he's got no meds. This is absolutely the first time in his entire life that he's had even one seizure free day, let alone two. If he only has 12 it was a quiet day for him. I want to point out that this doesn't mean that he's cured, or that they wont come back. But it's a very encouraging sign. In someone who's had at the very least a dozen seizures every single day of his life, going two days with none is really a big thing.

His short term memory is working much better. He did repeat questions a few times, because he didn't remember we'd answered. He did get a little confused about what day it was and who was where. He's reminding me a lot of my grandfather quite frankly. However. He has total recall of the last few weeks and the last couple of days, and when asked to answer questions about this time frame his answers don't change to reflect some deluded false memory. He does remember and he seems to have some stability in what he remembers.


He's not decompensating as rapidly as we all feared he would. Yesterday, when he flipped out on Dom, I think we all expected him to very quickly descend into the nightmare he lived in for so many years. He hasn't done that. I think that yesterday he was just in so much intense pain that Dom having the nerve to sit there pain free was more than he could take. I think he hurt him not because he couldn't help it, but because he was just pushed too far to tolerate it. I honestly think he was absolutely furious and not about to suffer alone. He denies that he did it out of anger, but he also couldn't look me in the eye when he said that, and my brother has never once been able to lie to me effectively. He lost control, yes, but not because he was psychotic. Because he was in pain. I know not everyone will see the difference there, but I see it. So does his doctor.

Again, I want to point out that I'm not suggesting his schizophrenia is gone. I'm not suggesting he's cured. He's not. He clearly still hears voices, and it seemed obvious several times today that he was seeing things the rest of us werent. But he was lucid. He was perfectly able talk to people and he seemed pretty coherent. He wasn't violent and he wasn't even verbally abusive, which is really his MO.
He asked where Dom was...and agreed that I was right to have made him stay home. He's worried about what effect all of this will have on him, which is also unusual. Ryan, medicated, is just sweet. He's a sweet, sweet, person. He's concerned about everyone, he's very careful and gentle with people, he goes out of his way to not hurt peoples feelings. Ryan, unmedicated, is an evil son of a bitch. Think that little girl in The Exorcist. It's entirely reasonable that people used to think this kind of thing was possession when you get a look at how his personality changes.
Today there was none of that. He was confused, yes. And he was hallucinating and thinking weird thoughts. But he was still RYAN.

It's hard for me to find that anything other than really encouraging.

It won't stay smooth sailing, we all know that. They want his levels down to zero so they can see where he's at. Which things are psychiatric. Which things are the result of brain injury. How much effect did taking out that junk in his head have. Will his seizures come back.
I know Dr D, and he won't let him get to the point of absolute living hell, but I still hate to see him go down any further. He's pretty good now, I'd be all about going up rather than down.
Still, they have to do what they have to do.

His state of mind, given how good things are looking physically, is shitty. He's very withdrawn, and extremely extremely depressed. He's barely speaking, won't look at anyone, and he won't eat. In all honesty I was totally confused by that. I would have thought that the absence of seizures alone would have had him overjoyed. I was worried about it and I asked Dr D. He looked at me as if I were utterly, utterly retarded, and said "Zack for the love of God! The man just had brain surgery! He had something taken out of his brain and everything in his system is trying to adjust to that. He doesn't feel good!"
Ok, well, I felt stupid. Then he pointed out that prior to having brain surgery he'd made a good haul at killing himself, and in fact had succeeded for a short while as he was empty of blood when they put him in the ambulance, had nothing for cpr to circulate and nothing for rescue breathing to oxygenate and had to use a pump to actually transfuse him. Thank god he got the EMT's he got, because they told us that most people (I have now typed "poople" six times in a row. I think I'm getting too tired to type) would have declared him DOA and not even bothered. God bless these guys who pulled out all the stops and brought him back.

Only he's not really saying God bless them. His feeling is "Fuck you you stupid assholes."
He'd given up on anyone helping him, and his life was intolerable to him. I understand that, it would have been to me, too. He's not in any way happy about still being around because he's fully expecting everything to just go to hell. He has no faith that this time he'll be ok. He's kept the faith through countless other setbacks, but he's finally gotten good and tired and I understand that. He gave up and he wanted to be done with it. Now, for good or ill, here he still is and in an awful lot of pain to boot.
He's not happy. And he's not being unreasonable in not being happy.

He's on a suicide watch entirely. There's somebody in the room with him at all times, and he's fully restrained so he can't touch himself or anything else. When they have to untie him they make sure there are a lot of people right there, just in case.
My personal opinion is that he's not going to try anything, at least not in this stage of cogency.
He's resigned to trying again, even though he doesn't believe much will change. He's miserable, depressed and withdrawn, but...I know my brother. He's saying things about it. He told us he was tired, and he told us he can't live the way he was living. He said he can't live with no mind, with no memory, with no idea what's real and what's not. He said he doesn't feel like he has the energy for another round and he just wants out of the ring. He's tired. He's frustrated. He's scared. And he's deeply, deeply disappointed. Crushed. He was doing so well, he had so much worked out, and then it all fell apart on him. Again. He gave up. Sooner or later you have to throw your hands in the air and say "Enough!"
He did that. And the powers that be pointed at him and said "Oh, hell no!"

He'll try again to live. Right now he's exhausted, deeply depressed, frightened and in pain. But he's not having seizures, and he's sleeping. He's able to relax for the first time in his life.Those things are going to make him feel a lot better, fast. He'll start to feel better and that's when he'll find himself recommitted to living. My brother may have lost faith in life, but I haven't lost faith in him.

More importantly, Devyn says he's ok.
Devyn has never once been wrong about Ryan. He knew he was in trouble this time, and he told me long before Cyri called me. I already had my flight booked by the time Cyri called.
And I called him today and he said "He'll be ok."

Devyn somehow sees right into him, right into his soul, and if he's not worried, who am I to doubt?

I'm so tired now I can't even see straight, so I'll post the rest of what I found out today sometime tomorrow.

People....PEACE!

How many years is that? Almost three? The last time I posted here my brother Ryan had just tried to kill himself in the most horrific way I think anyone could have imagined. I still don't know how he didn't die. Nearly three years have gone by and a lot of life has happened during that time. I've nearly died, discovered I have a chronic lung disease that will always be a huge pain in my ass, become a drunk, had my face permanently mangled by my brother, finished school, gotten sober, gotten married, had a son. Not such a long time for such a lot of living. I haven't been online, haven't emailed anybody, haven't been on AIM, haven't bothered with the internet unless I needed to look something up. It was a remnant of an unhealthier time in my life that I'd wanted to put behind me.

Unfortunately sometimes the need to express outweighs the need to maintain good sense. The last time I posted here a guy from the MBTA had just found my brother hanging from a tree, somewhere off the rail line in Somerville, with not only a rope around his neck but his arms shredded from wrist to elbow.

They saved him and for three years he's kept his shit more or less together, at least from everyone elses point of view. He got a great doctor, got on the right meds, took over his own guardianship, moved to New Orleans, got a job, an apartment, friends. It all looked great to the rest of us.

His suffering he's kept to himself.

A few days ago an old drunk found my brother unconscious and mostly bled out under and old pier behind a levee in New Orleans, with his arms slashed open from wrist to elbow. One of them he dug so deep the knife came out the other side. They saved him and now he's in a hospital in Baton Rouge going through hell.

Over the years he's had thousands of seizures and he's hurt himself pretty badly quite a few times. Years of banging his head into concrete and other hard surfaces caused a lot of internal damage none of us knew about. He tried to tell people things werent right, but they blamed it on his mental label. He was right, they were wrong, andafter years, and then months, weeks, days of things escalating at high speed to the point that he was no longer able to manage on his own, he gave up on anyone ever helping him and tried, once again, to end his life.

Again he almost succeeded.

This time he may have succeeded in saving his own life, because a scan of his head found unsuspected by anyone but him, but entirely fixable, damage. He's had old blood clots removed from inside his head, he's had old skull fractures plated over, he's had new injuries dealt with, and a lot of bone splinters picked out of his brain. He's also had the section of his brain that has always been dead since the day he was born, removed.

Our parents never wanted him to have that done...it was offered as an option when he was little and they were worried about is quality of life. They were told it would lesson, might even stop, the seizures that hit him hundreds of times a day. They went with less intrusive options, afraid that cutting into his brain would disable him more than he already was.

Well, he hasn't had any real quality of life, even when it looked good on the outside. And when neurosurgeons went into his brain to do what they could about the damage there, they discovered that that swatch of brain was so unviable it was the consistancy of jello. When they suctioned out the old blood, a lot of dead brain came with it. They went ahead and took the rest.

That bothered me when they told me, because I imagine Ryan as some kind of brainless zombie unable to do anything, and for all of his pain and all of his trouble, Ryan when he's well is an amazing person. He's not somebody who should be lost.
They explained to me that that part of his brain had been doing nothing but possibly causing all of these seizures all of his life, and taking it out would not be taking anything away from him other than possibly some symptoms.
And they had no choice, it just sucked away when they removed the old blood.

He's in pain now, and he's completely insane because his doctor has taken him off all of his meds. They want to know what to medicate with what. It makes sense. But it's not going to be easy. The fundamental symptom of his disease is his own destruction. He hurts himself and he hurts the people around him, because having hurt them causes him more pain than anything he can do to himself. He can't control it, and as he decompensates he can't express his remorse to anyone because he's too busy being screamed at by voices telling him he should die for what he did.

Living hell for him and for everyone around him.

He hasn't had any seizures, though. And the insanity will pull back when they get him back on his meds.

Or maybe it will pull back on it's own. Who knows what other effect pulling out a huge swath of dead brain will have?

Time will tell.

Once again I'm blogging something because I need to say it. It's safer this time for me, because nobody reads this journal anymore. Why would they? It's been dead for three years.

I'm in New Orleans now. I'll be here until my brother is home and we know where he's at.

Until next time, people people.

Zack

I last wrote in this thing, if you dont count a few minutes ago, in September of last year. I guess I haven't had much to say since then. Or maybe I just found other, more realistic forums. Life. Living ears. People with faces I knew would be there every time I picked up the phone, or went to their doors. People who knew I would do the same for them. I've always known that there was a reason I didn't really get close to people online. A reason I didn't give out my number, give out my address. They show me that reason, and solidify my satisfaction with it, over and over and over again. To date, there is one person I've met online who has always, ALWAYS been there for me, with a kind word, or with a scathing verbal slap in the face, depending on what I needed, no matter what. It doesn't matter what's going on in her life, what time it is, what she's doing, or how much of an ass I've been. She will always answer me, even if she has no advice to give. She will always listen. She will always come to me knowing that I will listen, too. There are no false platitudes, no lip service. Maybe that's why she's the only person I've met online that I've also met in person. Maybe that's why she's my friend.
I'm finding though that even to her I can't verbalize what just happened. Suffice to say that everyone is alive, and while I can't say we're all well, we're all doing what we need to be doing. I need to talk about it. I need to tell someone. For me I need to do this. I just can't do it right now. All I can see are images, and all I can hear are our footsteps on the path, and Devs voice screaming at people. I can see him with a bloody knife in his teeth climbing that tree, and I can see hands with the nerves cut just hanging there. I can see every moment, every image, hear every sound, I can not only remember how scared he was, but I can feel how scared he was, how scared he still is. I can remember every word of every conversation, and I can remember how it felt when we tricked him into admitting what was really going on. And I can tell the one of you I know is reading this that all the hims in this stupid ramble aren't the same person. Me, Dev, Ryan, that guy from the train, EMTs, Dr E...I can't even differentiate now between them, not for you, not for me, not for anyone. Not yet. I'm afraid to sleep because I know I'll dream. Instead of getting better as each day goes by it gets worse. We both wake up in the middle of the night, sweating and shaking and wishing we could just never sleep again. I have to talk about it, I have to tell someone, but how do I make the words happen? How do I rip out of me what so obviously is hanging on trying to hide from the light?
Half of me is so hesitant because I don't want to upset any friends. I'm thinking of specific people who would be so upset, so worried, so traumatized if they were to get the full brunt of this scene. Then I think "No. I sent all of them messages and most of them couldnt care less. It's not them I'm afraid of traumatizing, obviously they won't be traumatized, because obviously they don't care. It's me I'm going to traumatize."

I'm stalling now because I don't want to go to bed. I don't want to dream.
Look at it this way. At least we're all still alive, and all of the hidden pain is now out on the table and being dealt with and cleared away. All for the best?

That's what they say. So, I guess I'm writing in LJ again.
Peace

I find it revealing that when something happens that's so traumatic it threatens to shake loose the foundations of an entire family, it's a very isolating thing, no matter how much need there might be to talk about it.

I've been online for the first time in months, specifically to deliver, to my brothers "friends", news about him and something that's happened to him. I've left at least a dozen offline messages. Two of those people have responded. The one he was the most concerned about hasn't, and though I saw her online and tried to talk to her, she didn't respond.

Reality check. Who really cares?

I'm finding that I want to talk about it myself, not for him but for me. That the experience and all of the emotions that went with it are a lot more than I can just sit here and think about, and the effect on other people close to me is shaking me, too. Yet there's nobody who want's to listen. Nobody who answers back. I'm met with silence. Silence. It shows you how unreal it really is.

The most traumatic thing that's ever happened to me has happened to me. And to Dev. And to Ryan I'm sure. And there's nobody to talk to about it who's not intimately involved. I really need an unbiased, unconnected ear. Somebody who can maybe see through the emotional connection and be sane about it.

Too bad there's nobody who fits that description. I thought I had friends here. That internet variety of friend, pen pals for the 21st century. Think again, loser.

Real word: Nobody fucking cares.

It doesn't matter anyway at this point who stayed or who left or who hung on even when it got tough. What does loyalty get you? All the key players in this fucked up tragedy of his life are dead now anyway. The lucky ones are the ones who got out while they still could. They were smart, they're still alive and sane. I'm still alive too but I don't think I'll be around all that much longer. Look at me, I'm so fucking ruined.That's how it works when you opt to be a player in his game. You end up dead or destroyed. I'm the only one left. Unless he's still alive, but God only knows if he is or not. He destroyed everyone he came in contact with and then packed a bag and took off and now I don't know where he is or even if he is. He could have just taken off to find a new set of people to rip apart, or he could have just gone away to kill himself and finally end this fucked up, twisted, travesty of a life he choked us all with. The pathetic thing is I don't know which way I wish it was. It doesn't even matter at this point. It's fucked up and useless. I'm fucked up and useless. Not dead, but not alive. I'm told I can put my life back together and that it doesn't have to be this way. I don't think I even have the energy to try. He wins, we lose.

There's a lot more strength in my brother than I realized. I've been watching him this past week, just kind of waiting for him to break. His major support is gone, his best friends life and sanity are not such sure things right now, he's not only standing alone but he's having to support the person who always supports him. He's been so sick, so often this winter, he's not at his best anyway. And now this? There's all this other stuff going with it. His caseworkers are all gakked out wanting to find him someplace else to live, his coordinators are all gakked out because he's supposed to be a two/one and all he has is ZZ and that makes him a one/one and they're violating all kinds of regulations and continuously talking to him about it. None of them have really looked at him through all this. They; WE are all waiting for him to crack, and it's not happening. His caseworker wants his doc to up his meds. His doc won't do it. He says he doesn't need them, he's fine. That's the freaky thing, he IS fine. He's very quiet, he's very SAD, but he's not psychotic, he's not suicidal, he's not depressed, he's not having any weird problems at all. He's fine. And he's showing a lot more steel than I ever thought he had. He's gone to see Pat every day they'll let him, and he's just completely there for him. He's the strong one now. Pat's leaning on HIM and Ryans not having any trouble holding him up. He had to deal with me a couple days ago, being a moron and getting all messed up. I was there to make sure HE was ok, but he was the one taking care of me. And there are no signs of trouble for him. No voices. No visions. No delusions. I asked him about it, and he said "I don't know if any of you people have noticed it, but I kick ass in a crisis." and when I thought about it, yeah I had noticed it. He really does. Then he said "Y'know, you're all really pissing me off. You just assume that because of my schiz I'm going to go off the deep end every time life happens. I'm not gonna do that, I can do life. I can handle stress. Stress has nothing to do with anything, as long as my chemistry is fine, I'm fine. The only times I've gone off the deep end have been when I've fucked around with my meds or stopped taking them. I haven't done that, I'm not going to do that, and this is not going to send me around the bend. I'm fine. I think it all really sucks. I really really really miss him. I'm really worried about him and I'm scared to death, but I'm fine. Zack, I can do life. You guys just need to give me a chance."
It's a really simple statement but it really made me think how much more like the rest of us he is than he's like Justyn, who we always seem to compare him to. The two really crazy ones. But he's right. He doesn't fall apart when life happens. I do, often. But he doesn't. He was solid as stone when Justyn died, he was right there with Jay, making sure he was ok. He was there for me when I got back from school, all tweaked out and fucked up. And he was sick as hell too. Now he's there for Pat, and it's so hard for him to see him like this. He comes back home every day looking sick and scared and exhausted, half the time he's crying, but he still goes. And he's still ok. He's a really really strong person, I guess I never really gave him credit for that. There's a lot more to him than his craziness. In fact right now he's not crazy at all. I kind of feel like we've treated him badly, just because we have all always assumed that he had to be so totally protected and sheilded. Like if anything rocked his world he'd just drown in it. There was a time not too long ago that I kept dreaming he had died. It was a horrible dream. In it, I would find his dead body, he would have finally killed himself. And in the dream, just before the horror set in there was this huge relief. Like, it was finally over. Then the horror would set in and I'd wake up. But the part of it that always bothered me the most was that feeling of relief. Because somewhere inside me it seemed to me that that meant I wanted him to be gone. I told him about it, I don't know why I did, and he told me he knew he was a big strain on us, and that he thought if he died we probably would all feel relieved for a minute. He told me he was working on it, because he wanted to be something other than a burden on everyone. If I had opened my eyes and looked back then I'd have seen that he was already a lot more than just a burden on us. Yeah, we have to deal with his shit, but look at how much of ours he deals with all the time? And he never bitches about it like we do. He just deals with it. He takes phone calls in the middle of the night even though he hates the phone, hates to talk. If we need him he's there. He will always help if you ask him to help, he will do just about anything you might need him to do, and he'll listen forever, even when he's sick. Even when he's crazy. I stop and think a little bit and I realize just how much he holds us all together. Some of it through his actions, and some of it just because he is and because he needs us all so much. There are a lot of times that I think if it wasn't for him any one of us would be dead now. Because things get bad. Sometimes they get so bad....but then you think about Ryan, and everything he has to deal with every day, and about how much he needs you, and you have a reason again. And a perspective to compare it to. He's like the cornerstone of the leaning structure that is our family. If he weren't there we'd have all collapsed a long time ago. Just watching him now makes me think of all this, and realize that my brothers a very cool guy, and a very very strong person. I have a lot of new respect for him. Today's gonna be a really rough day, we're already bracing for it. A couple of weeks ago I would have been really worried about him and about how he'd get through it. Today I feel really bad that he'll have to get through it, but I know he will, and I know I will, and I know we'll be there to lean on each other. I'll be there for him if he needs me...and I know without a doubt that he'll be there for me when I need him.
I feel like I've been really discrediting him and I feel really bad about that.
Now it's set down. I know later on he'll read it, and maybe this is really for him. Because I'm not good with saying what's on my mind. I can say it here and pretend I'm the only one who will see it, and that works. He'll see it later, and maybe he'll say something about it and maybe he wont. It doesn't matter.
I've said what I need to say.

I could not be any more pissed than I am right now. One of my closest friends is in the hospital where he will be for one fuck of a long time because he finally couldnt take it anymore and set out to pick some fleas off him once and for all. He should have done it. Instead he caved in to guilt and tried to kill himself instead of the people who dearly fucking need to be killed. Here he is, such a fucking sweet guy, and he's suicidally eaten up with guilt because he wanted to go kill a couple of assholes who've done nothing but everything they can to ruin his life. Yeah yeah it's against the law to kill people. Yeah fine fuckin whatever, killing people is wrong. Yeah it's murder. Yeah it's bad. No, I suppose he should never have been thinking it let alone planning it, and yes yes yes fine fine fine I'm sure it's better that he didn't do it. But he doesn't need to be so fucking deathly guilty over it. Doesn't he see that that means they win? The nice guy dies, we all have to be without him for the rest of our lives, he misses out on the rest of his life, but those fuckin jerkwads just go on as usual happy knowing they finally are rid of him. Does he NOT SEE how warped this is? He needs to have some facts explained to him.
YOU=GOOD GUY. GOOD GUY GETS TO STAY AND BE HAPPY
THEM=ASSHOLE MOTHERFUCKERS. ASSHOLE MOTHERFUCKERS GET WIPED OFF THE PLANET.

He doesn't get it. He argued it all with "They gave me life!" and we countered it with "Yes and that was the only decent thing they've ever done in their entire existance!"
He's not havin it.
He's fucking retarded.

Chris keeps telling me she's a little concerned about this violent streak in me. If she only had been there to see what kind of people we're really talking about.
She's replacing my Trazadone =P
And she keeps offering me Valium.
I have a better idea. I'm not goin' to work today. I'm gonna go out now and get as completely wrecked as it's possible to get. I'm gonna get pass out behind a dumpster totalled. And then when I wake up I'm gonna do it again.
Cheers.

the new place has benefits i never even dreamed of. i moved in sunday and decided to celebrate by getting me a 12 of all the new winter ales. but there were two brands i wanted, right? so i got a 12 of each. drank 'em all and then realized that when you get vomiting drunk and you don't have your own bathroom it's going to be awkward. next to the bathroom is christy. i guess she finally just wanted to know what the fuck was going on in there, because i'm halfway to unconscious and puking my stupid brains out and suddenly there's this person who later became christy. i wish i remembered what happened between "who are you?" and 12 hours of really good sex. i wish i knew how i went from mad sick to fucking wonderful without ever hitting hangover. i know somehow there was a shower and a toothbrush involved but i can't remember. everything between barf and orgasm is sort of a blur. but she was there all sunday night and a lot of this morning and she came back about half an hour after i got home from work and the only reason i'm online right now is because she's asleep. from 7 to now has been pretty much mad sex. what an incredible welcome to the turner block. it's weird. very weird. she's tough and funny and sweet and beautiful. and she took care of me when i was too drunk and sick to take care of myself and she didn't even know my name. if we'd never ended up in bed it would be ok, just because she did that, that kindness isnt something too many people show. but we did and i dont know how and then we did again and i still dont know how but it's good and i hope it lasts a while. she's something i could get used to.

ryan gets home tomorrow. i'm not sure about that. he was really sketchy over thanksgiving, and now they're sending him home. i'm also moving monday, which is just going to make it all a little bit more chaotic. i keep thinking maybe i shouldnt move. i was really happy over getting the room, and it's such a cool room, but i dont want him to feel like he was abandoned. and what if they need my help? i know it's close by, walkable in under five minutes. i know my being here sometimes adds stress, because it's crowded and i'm in the middle of everything, but i worry about leaving them on their own with things like they are. i've lived with him my whole life, there aren't too many people who know how to handle him like i do. pat does, but look at what happened last time? he makes as many dumb mistakes as anyone. i suppose i do too, it's not like in 18 years i havent had incidents happen with me too. i dont know, i'm just really feeling ambivalent about all of it. i dont know if he should come home. i dont know if its safe for him to come home. i dont know if i should leave, or if i should stay. i just have this feeling i dont like, this sort of dread/doom feeling, like it's all gonna go down all at once and we're not all gonna be left standing. i feel like somewhere someone is making a big mistake but we'll only see it in some sort of tragic hindsight.
lack of food and sleep might have something to do with that.

i found out why ryan worries so much about ebo. we were talking thursday night and he mentioned sam, and gradually it came out that since nobody saw it coming with sam, until he was already so far gone there was no turning back, he's afraid it'll happen to someone else he loves. and there are a lot of parallels to them. ryan really loved sam, and sam just accepted him for who he was without any judgments or prerequisites. he didnt require anything. ryan was so hung up on him though, i can remember sam trying to get him to play around and joke with him in chatrooms, and talk to him on pms, but ryan was so afraid of sounding dumb in front of him that he'd just clam up and not say anything. he'd been + for a long long time but he was ok, and it gave ryan a lot of hope. when he started to act erratic and weird, and ryan kept asking him if he was alright and he kept saying he was, i remember how scared ryan was. it turned out later that sam had brain cancer. he died just a couple weeks after he first started to act weird. i know ryan still thinks about him all the time. but that's why he worries so much about ebo. ebo's around the same age sam was, he has the same attitude toward ryan and toward things in general, they're just similar. and they both always answer "how you doin" with 'fine' even if things are not fine. so i can see why he worries.
doesnt want to lose someone else. its hard to make friends online, especially on the terms ryan sets, so when he finds one he doesnt want to lose them.
so he worries.

i had wondered about that, why he seemed to be so skeptical of ebo saying he was fine. so i dont wonder anymore.

he doesnt have shit all on me when it comes to worrying though. no way. he worries about one or two people. i worry about everyone and their pet mouse.
i need to stop it.

i'm late for work now. i dont care.

lookin good. not a drifter anymore. i went today just to look at a room on winter and walked out with a home. it's a pretty cool room, kind of expensive and it doesnt have its own bathroom but it's got great atmosphere. it's close enough to everyone else that i can get wherever i need to be very quicklike, so if anyone has any emergencies i'm not far away, and if i have one neither are they. it's good. and the landlady says the fireplace works!!!
christmas with a fireplace.

i have this headache i can't shake. i dont know what kicked it off but i'd like to know what will kill it. i think it was the dream. i dreamed someone i love died. that would be bad but there was this moment...right before the whole dread/fear/loss/painpainpain/grief/horror AWFUL feelings that hit when i discovered this person dead on the floor, when the thoughts and feelings were not dread and pain, but were "thank god" instead. for that one split second before the pain hit, what i felt was relief. i know it was just a dream, but i think it's probably pretty true. all kinds of my friends have told me that it's perfectly understandable, and that they've had similar thoughts about this person we all love so much, and that they've even talked with him about it and he doesn't get bent about it. they told me that if the feeling had stayed relief, then maybe i should sit down and do some soul searching about my actual feelings, but that since it was just a split second and didnt last, i shouldnt even waste my time thinking about it. but here's the thing, it was that first thing. it was a gutfelt kneejerk sort of instant feeling.
i dont like that. i dont like that i'm capable of that, no matter how understandable it might seem to be.
and thinking about it all day has this headache going on.
i need a hobby. or a girlfriend.
something.
i sit around and brood on things too much.

Ok, so I broke down and did the lj thing. At least this means I have my own place to bitch instead of bitching in Ryans all the time. Whoya.