My brain is broken

It's oddly quiet. I can always hear something out there, whether it be a siren (homeless person Od'ing again) the train, a car wooshing around the curve of my one-way street. Nothing. Not a hoo from our owls, nobody closing a car door, Hugo isn't crying next door from his parents practicing tough love. Absolute stillness. It's really fucking weird, actually. Not even the sound of leaves rustling in the breeze. Something has sucked the noise away.

I listen to music often, most of the time. All of the goddamned time. This conscious no music thing I've been doing is so I stop trying to escape my discomfort, at times boredom. Without music to distract and entertain me I have nowhere to go but inside.

I'm discontented right now. My discomfort level is about a 9. Not physical-- that is at about a 7. I am so confused. I'm having chest pain, and not long ago I felt my throat "flutter" like it had the heartbeat of a desperate creature, trying, trying, then giving up. My jaw started to throb a little bit and my stomach tightened, twisting, throat tightening, stabbing pain behind my right breast muscle. Wtf is going on? I had trouble breathing last week, ergo the E.R., but why are these symptoms up and roaring after having taken CO? Isn't this shit supposed to help with inflammation? My lungs are inflamed, supposedly, so...?

The familiar displeasure with food has returned. I thought cannabis oil was supposed to make me hungry. It's a lie. It doesn't do that. I just ate some mashed avo mixed with roasted Anaheim chiles I blistered in my toaster oven. Not bad, pretty tasty, not to be confused with actual goodness. It was the kind of "pretty tasty" that comes from observing the flavors as if I had entered someone else's body, was allowed to taste their food while they ate it, but not allowed to enjoy it. This is familiar. This game is all about texture. I used to eat based only on texture, since flavor was a foregone conclusion. So, it's not the high THC CO, it's all CO? Beautiful, can't wait to be anorexic again. As long as I'm alive, right? It's all worth it? This is a form of chemo, it has it's own side effects.

Anyone who has ever had the nerve to say doing holistic cancer treatment is the easy way out, I invite them into my life for one week. One day. I do both. There is no easy way to go, but this way is a lot more work, conventional is no work in the sense that it's all left up to the doctors. There is more time to sacrifice with holistic than conventional, and it's still painful, it's hard. There is no easy way to go about this. I am sick so much of the time. Sick, meaning nauseous, weak, sleepless, nervous, depressed, throbbing bones, headaches, confusion. Mainly it's a massive loss of energy that keeps me from wanting to even listen to someone talk, or engage in a relationship where there's fun to be had. Feeling like I would be the wet blanket makes interaction unappealing. And there's constant work to do on it, most days all I can muster is this kind of work with nothing left for anything else. Work to live.

At times like these there doesn't seem to be a way out. It's the worst time to look at any sort of social media. Human culture is narcissistic, I can't handle it. When dealing with real shit, the displeasure I feel from seeing the millionth selfie from the right angle. It's transparent, it's self-indulgence to the power of 10. The age of the Attention Seeker. It's this culture. Born into it, not buying into it.

This is what keeps me from wanting to share, especially in regards to cancer-- and that crap I deal with constantly. I don't share my pre-scan, at the scan center, post-scan anxiety, with the world, complete with pictures of me looking adorable in a hospital gown giving the iphone the "thumbs up". There's something desperate about cashing in on your malady. People know I have cancer, I don't need more sympathy, or empathy, or whatever it is. Documenting this 'day at Disneyland' will be saved for a book if I ever get around to dying a little faster I might feel the urgency to write one, slap a cover on it and call it a Life. I'm as ready as I'll never be.

I am not unaware, sometimes I wish that I were, but no, always been painfully overly-sensitive to being aware. The kid that couldn't just be a kid, I had to feel very sensitive to others pain. It's only not a burden when I am with like-minded individuals, or all alone in nature. Being, makes is hard to not be. It's a very lonely life at times. People come, people go. Many of them can be fake. That's where it can get painful, people are regularly full of it. They just tell you what you want to hear. It's never about you either. It's always about them, because really, that's what people care about most of the time. They are busy being fake as shit for people who like them for all of the shallowest reasons. For many, you are a stepping stone on their way to feeling validated. You have to be careful that you don't do that to other people too, sometimes when you're entrenched in watching out for yourself you don't realize you are actually hurting other people.

I am complaining because I feel like it. I feel bad right now. It's going to pass probably, or it won't and I'll get the worst news of my life thus far, which is less than a day away. In this game, in order to keep player status, -- Oh, there's Hugo :( pick up your poor baby! .... one must learn to find silver linings. I am an expert level silver linings master. But I'm also human. I have bad days, worse than being fired, losing something precious, crashing the car, finding out you're being cheated on.. got that all topped and topped, and still I can crumble after so many days in a row of keeping it together. There is a limit.

The remedy is what? Keep going? Be in the moment? Right now this moment sucks. This is the cruel joke of being in the moment, but this is all anyone has, that's why the music is off. That's why I'm not in a bathtub. I'm letting myself suffer to see how bad this actually really is. My stomach is in knots, and it's hard to breathe. I'd love to get drunk off margaritas and order a pizza. I don't have the wiggle room to drop the mic, I am behind right now. I am down. Cancer blows, man. I want to toss it away, but it's not an option. Must always face it. Must always play make-a-deal with it everyday. Waver from the path and suffer.

Ya, so I don't need to anyone to look up to me. I could sit here and write pretty little crap that would make people love the fuck out of me. I could play my mini violin and the get off on all of the back pats and high fives, because everyone loves a cancer warrior triumphantly clawing her way up and over the charred remains of her former life, head high and fearless, smiling even. It is real, but it's a snapshot. We are all brave at times, I have racked up a big file. It's in my nature to want to be in charge of my own outcomes and fight my own battles. But, I also hate the attention I sometimes get for being brave. It's not a choice. It's a 'not-a-choice', choice.

True bravery is being who you really are, fearing rejection, and still going for it anyway. I have yet to do that 100% of the time. On one hand I am completely genuine,  I will tell you exactly what I think, regardless of what you think. As non aggressively as I can muster I will reign in my scary passion and share what is most important to me. Simultaneously there is a big wall that is always up.

We all inherit a job as an adult. We must figure out what is holding us back. Why is why, is why, is why, is why. There's no real handbook but everyone has a mf opinion on who you should be, as if they were in charge, as if they have been alive for hundreds of years, and have been very successful. If I ever find that person I am going to stab them in the heart with a wooden stake because they are a vampire and I am their next meal. Nobody knows shit. It's simple. It's true.
People are all just guessing.

Motivation is not knowledge, it's a form of primal intelligence. Insisting on your way and getting it does not make you smart, but having power gets you your way. True knowledge just leads to more questions. The smartest people ask the most questions because they do the most thinking. But think about it, if one is always asking so many damn questions how much do they really know? The elephant made it through, but his tail got stuck.

I loved that scene in Rumble Fish when Motorcycle Boy defended his denial as leader. Exasperated, he said, "If you're gonna lead people, you have to know where you're going." We are all on a solo mission. This is your quest, this life. It is a mission for one, don't think for a second that your outcomes are anyone else's responsibility. That's a facade. It is a comforting lie to put one's life in another's hand. We do it, but it's a lie we co-sign.

I am too tired and not making any sense probably.

Hello bed. I will likely lie there for many hours to come, awake.

But thankgodfornetflix
                                  hashtag later

Newport

I grew up in southern California where sunshine, salty eyelashes from ocean swimming, and yearlong tans are the norm. I grew up across the street from the beach, but then later moved to a very family-friendly city because my mother was pregnant with kid number three. Apparently, a tract home meant stability in the 1970's. I was 5 and a half years old when we moved. We only moved 12 miles inland, but at the time it felt like 50 miles.

I never stopped missing our cozy brick beach apartment. My mom used to brush my wet hair next to this little fireplace before preschool. The fireplace was tucked into a wall, in the kitchen. It was a micro fireplace that was arched on top. It looked a little like a pizza oven. It was put there for a little girl to grow fond of, to be forever remembered. I had a kitchen fireplace, and lived across the street from a giant sandbox bordered by the ocean on one side. What more did a child need?

When I was three years old my mother asked me while a tape recorder recorded us, "Out of everywhere in the world you've ever been, which is your favorite place to go?" Thinking I would say something like, "Disneyland!" Without hesitating I had said in my bubbly kid voice, "The pizza Place." I had meant Zinos Pizza, on the peninsula. I liked it because of the sign. Each letter had a different colored dot behind it. Not unlike the mat used in the game of Twister. Funny, what kids like. Interesting what makes it into the old memory bank. That pizza place is long gone, but I can still see the sign in my mind. I wish there were such a thing as a time machine.