battles

thursday....my last weekday off for a long time. the day is sunny and somewhat warm. i wake up to the sound of our volkswagon getting towed. in addition to the blown engine, the transmission has gone as well, and it's stuck in park so we couldn't even push it out of the way. goddammit. but the snow is melting, the sun is shining. i have so much to do. laundry. dishes. resumes. the house looks like shit. so i take the dogs out. i love spring....first things first. spiro gets a short walk, osky gets a long one. we enjoy our time outdoors inordinately. we track mud in the house when we get home. and the headache i've been battling all week long suddenly gets the best of me. the laundry will not get done. the dishes will stay dirty. i'm out of commission for the next eight hours. greg comes home and finds me in bed. "i don't have time for this," i tell him, and i'm crying, which doesn't help anything. because i never have time for anything. i especially don't have time for these headaches that leave me incapacitated and zombie-like for days on end. and i remember in college, when my friends and i sometimes talked about what we would change about ourselves if we could, and i never wanted to be pretty or rich or even smart, just never have another headache again. when i feel better i log onto the computer, and i have a message from my friend battling cancer, and i think suddenly that my battles are not so big anymore, after all. i've been sick, too, really sick, and i remember other days when i told god or whoever had control over such things, if anybody, that i would gladly have a headache every day for the rest of my life as long i could have that life to live. i think about how much my friend has probably changed in the days since her diagnosis; how you change in so many little ways that only you can know about. i think that when you deal with things like this at a young age, in a way it draws a line between you and others your age. you will never look at life in exactly the same way again. in some ways, it makes things nicer, everything seems more beautiful, and in some ways it makes things harder because it sets you apart, even if it's only you who really knows. i can cry almost any day of the week out of frustration at all i want to do and how i'd never do it all, even if there were twice as many hours in the day as there are. and it's funny how i never thought before yesterday that there was a time not that long ago when i would have given anything to have these problems.