“Cece guess what? Kelly’s coming back! She’s coming back to New Jersey! My best friend Kelly! And she’s gonna sleep over at my house!” —
My niece Emma, stoked about her BFF reunion with @kellybergin (via ipromisetowrite)
Today, in things that make me cry.
Having a four year old as a best friend ain’t bad.
I was reading my old posts because I am a procrastinating narcissist and I just realized:
I haven’t been lupus sick in like a month.
This is a record.
I am noting it.
-revised two essays
-wrote half an essay about what my messiness says about me, and then decided: nothing, you are not jonathan ames.
-watched four episodes of the wire
-tried to explain instagram to my dad
-cried over that VW dad ad approximately three times
-ran five miles
-took three naps
And that’s only today.
I’m having mixed feelings about going back East for part of the summer, but knowing I’ll be spending lots of time with this sweet face is making me feel a lot better.
Credit: Katie McKnight
[video]
I’m leaving LA for the summer, but today’s hike made it hard to remember why. (Taken with instagram)
From reading books about cancer.
I didn’t sleep last night, panicky about a recurrence, about the idea that the cancer could be slowly filling my body, the way my face fills with color when I’m angry and out of breath.
I don’t dwell on that time too often; it wasn’t very hard, having cancer. The hard part is when it’s over, and you should feel better but you don’t, because you will wonder for the rest of your life about when it will come back.
There’s some things you can’t move on from. You can only move through them. You can let yourself feel the panic and the anger and then you can take a deep breath and think about something else.
There’s room in my life for happiness and disease. There is. There is.
Can’t lose because then basic women’s rights would be in jeopardy! (Also, he loves Friday Night Lights.)Clear eyes, full hearts.
(via obamafamily)
Just a reminder.
Baby’s first 5K.
I wore purple shorts for lupus awareness. I wrote KEEP GOING on my arm. I listened to Hall and Oats and Jay-Z and I beat my time.
Today was a good day. Today was a day I didn’t think was possible a year ago.
I got this!
I sat on the beach a few weeks back and thought I might go for a walk. It’d started to seem like I moved to this great city with great weather yet I spent much of my time sleeping, or working, or reading in my bed. Watching marathons of The Wire as my muscles atrophied, as my body gave in to the disease. I sat on the beach thinking that I had come out here to find more, to seek more, to do more. I got up and walked a couple of miles and when I came back, I felt good.
I’ve always been fairly athletic but after a lupus flare or hospitalization, I tend to give up. To lay down. For a long time, I let it make me lazy. I let it take control. And I was tired of feeling that way, so after my walk on the beach, I went for a jog. And then a run. And then a hike. And it hurts but it hurts in a good way, the pain proving the change, the change I need.
Sometimes a good distance feels like a slap in the face to my sore muscles. So I stop and stretch my legs, pulling them, forcing the air into spaces tight and mad. The stretches feel like stopping for gas after you hit 100 miles and the E is blaring and you’re tired and thirsty and out of fuel. I stretch, switch the song on my iPod, and continue on. I look at my wrist: KEEP GOING, written in black marker before I left the apartment. I go higher.
Soon, I will turn around and go home and feel anything but defeated because even though I struggled and my breath was short and my legs are tired, I am doing more. I am pushing myself. I am seeing beyond the disease.
I am not my disease, I am me.
Stop googling Jett Travolta.
No good can come of this.
None.
Went hiking today, only played the lupus/cancer card once, slid down a natural water slide and breathed easier than I have in years.