Stream of consciousness

I left the house this morning for the first time since Tuesday. Which Tuesday is not important. Pay attention. There will be A Test.

With a head full of fog, steel wool, cotton candy and all manner of obfuscating material, I rose from bed against a panoply of better instincts, all of which were screaming at me in No Uncertain Terms that I should go back to bed and stay there. I politely told my better instincts to fuck themselves lightly and with tenderness, then I put on pants.

In the kitchen, our cramped kitchen, all in white and unwashed dishes, I took my Little Pink Pill and drank my wake-up juice. I'm not sure the wake-up juice is working anymore, it's been so long since I started taking it, but I remember it used to make a big difference, so I keep taking it Just In Case. The pills are for my skin. Actually, the pills are for a medical condition I don't have, but the side effects are pleasant, so down my gullet they go, chased by a glass of berry coloured froth. The pills were prescribed for their side effects, I should point out.

I hate the way my head felt.

I had a very strange dream in which I lived in a house where I did not actually have a bedroom, instead dragging my mattress around to wherever there happened to be space for it. My roommates where Unseen, for the most part. Conceptually, I was aware that they were men that I worked with. My grandfather was the seen roommate, and he was an unpleasant drunk who was in the process of acquiring a Gross of alcohol through unspecified means. From what mom says, this might be an accurate portrayal of him. I remember him as a man in blue coveralls with a nose that would strike fear in God's bowels, who would smile at me and pack an ice cream cone to the very bottom with Blue Boy Vanilla. I like that memory.

Aside from the weird place In My Head where I spent part of the night, sleep was as elusive as innocence and virginity in a university dorm. The ability to form complete sentences gradually returned in time for the walk to campus with my roommate. Not entirely, but I could at least pretend to take part in an honest-to-goodness conversation.

Suburbia, in winter. This is what greeted my nonfunctional cranial space past the hermetic seal of the front door. Every picture of generic suburbs in winter that you've ever seen, resplendent with hoarfrost and just enough chill and snowfall to casually turn down the volume of the world, like things are happening just down the hall. It was pretty. It was also mostly wasted on me.

Phototherapy beckoned, the mistress I'd been neglecting. I really must pay her more attention. After all, she keeps the fucking cancer at bay. My life for the last week has been something that would have made a pretty good vacation, if it'd all been my idea. I spent it sleeping twelve hours out of every twenty-four, and most of the rest sitting watching Television and playing video games, until I felt like sleep would accept me again. But of course it wouldn't.

I was having complications with my body.

This happens from time to time. After I've been doing well for a while, I get cocky and try to do the things I used to do. My body then rejects my reality and substitutes its own. Fuck You, my epidermal layers say, We had a Good Thing here, why are you doing this to yourself. Time to learn you a Lesson. I wonder how many times I'll have to pay for the same information in minor organ failure before the lesson becomes a lesson learned.

Probably a few more, but it would be nice to think that I'm smarter than that.

I had my phototherapy, and I clawed against the sleep that I craved to make it to class. An Assignment was due, and I needed to explain my absenteeism to my Professor. He's a good man. “I have cancer.” That was pretty much all it took for him let me off the hook, he didn't even want a Doctor's note. It occurs to me that I don't trust people enough anymore. I did not expect him to be quite so agreeable. I think I'm turning into an asshole.

Then I came home through that Winter Wonderland. It looked prettier this time around.

I ate, I slept, I awoke with the proverbial new lease on life.

Oh, I'm still knackered, but my outlook is very much better. I'm happy.

Also, I've been reading things that affect my writing style. I should know better, but I've been lacking inspiration and they certainly do have the effect of spurring on this sort of verbal expunging of the bits and pieces that are clogging up my word stream.