Sidetracking

So, little known to most people, with Carbon Monoxide poisoning comes a myriad of health issues if a person doesn't die from it...which I clearly did not.  These include the following:

• Exhaustion and fatigue
• Reduced muscle coordination and balance (instability when walking)
• Involuntary muscle twitching/jerking
• Tremors and Parkinson like symptoms
• Problems regulating body temperature (particularly hands and/or feet)
• Change in movements/body language
• Reduced bladder control/increased urge to urinate
• Headaches
• Irregular heart beat
• Problems writing (including assembling thoughts/thinking clearly)
• Changes to hand writing
• Sensitivity to light
• Difficulty processing visual information, particularly faster moving images
• Spots in vision and/or blurred vision
• Difficulty hearing
• High pitch noise in ear(s)
• Memory Loss
• New or increased food sensitivities
• New or increased allergies
• New or increased sensitivities to chemicals
• Disrupted, disturbed, or poor sleep
• Sensitivity and/or changes in smell
• Sensitivity and/or changes in taste
• Muscle/joint pain/cramping
• Hair loss / hair thinning

All of which I have experienced in the nine or so months since the fire.  The three that are persistently pesky however are the memory loss, the fatigue, and the difficulty regulating body temperature.  (I've always had a problem with the last one there, and some memory issues in the past, but not like they are now.)
I mention this because I've been needing to write lately but have had the hardest time getting anything out.  Even this is difficult to be honest.  And, maybe because I'm so used to having some kind of audience for my writing-- be it friends, professors, or blog readers, I can't seem to force myself to write anything just for me.  I think constantly about what someone else will think when they read it later...even when it's in a journal.  That's so silly and I know it is but I can't stop the thoughts.  I won't pretend though that I've even attempted writing anything in a journal the past nine months.  The thought actually terrifies me a bit.  I got into the habit when I was younger of writing almost only when I was upset about something, in my journal I mean, so I have twenty books filled with angsty ranting and the tortured thoughts of someone who felt such extreme emotions without having really experienced something to warrant them.  (Ooh would my therapist ever frown on that statement!)  To clarify!  My childhood was a little rough when it came to other kids because I was smarter than them and had unknowingly learned from my father and implemented in my life the wrong ways to interact with peers.  It was difficult for me to relate to anyone and when I did they always ended up disappointing me.  Of course some of that had to do with them, and some with my unmeetably high expectations when it came to their common sense and concepts of right and wrong.  But now, something really fucking horrific and tragic happened and I can't bring myself to crack a journal and write about it.  I remember when I was younger being so miserable and feeling like I had no reason to be.  Wishing in a fleeting, day dreamy way that something terrible would happen so those feelings would have some reason for existing while also being terrified something awful would actually happen just because I put that energy into the world by thinking it.  So!  Coming back to what this paragraph began explaining... I'm a writer, good or bad, I need to do it.  But because I'm used to an audience I feel like I have to write on the internet whether or not someone's actually reading it.  And I keep fucking forgetting that I actually have a blog that isn't completely filled with young person angsty stuff that I can write on and not be embarrassed about.  And I have to write.

The past couple months I've been this empty thing, seemingly devoid of personality.  A shadow of who I was, I have actually found myself asking,"What would I say?" "Would I be upset?"  "Would I laugh?"  Kind of like living in a dream I suppose.  Things matter, but not really.  I'm not happy but I'm also not necessarily sad-- just a void it seems. I'm ashamed to admit that I have "watched" eleven seasons of Law and Order SVU, the entire Hoarders series, most of the Intervention series, the entire Grey's Anatomy series, and so so many other reprehensible things, consistently since I moved into this apartment alone.  I love my place, but having no roommates and no one to talk to whenever I need to or bump into in the hallway, or share food with leads my brain to thinking about how much I miss the house and my friends, as flawed as they all were.  Makes me think about how one of them died, how I almost died, and how the rest of them are irreparably damaged because of it. Leads me to feeling guilty for still being here and for not being able to finish the two semesters I have left of school-- for doing nothing with the miracle of my continued existence but getting fatter and watching bad TV while I play Bubble Shooter or some other pointless endlessly repetitive game that satisfies my need to compartmentalize and organize.  Or think about how I haven't had another person's naked skin on my naked skin for almost three years, how abnormal and strange that is and how I wish I could fix it but it seems hopeless and I'll probably be alone forever.
If my brain isn't constantly engaged by something mindless it immediately heads somewhere I can't always handle being like the above, or the hospital, which is even worse.  I don't think a person can really comprehend what that's like without experiencing it.  Time in a hospital, especially drugged up and confused as fuck, is so remarkably dreadful.  Add excruciating pain, discomfort, sorrow, and grief to that, and the recollection of that time can be tortuous.  Those specific thoughts attack when it's time to sleep most specifically.
So I stay awake until I can barely walk into my bedroom and I put on whichever Sandra Bullock movie I'm in the mood for that night and I lay in bed waiting for my favorite lines because I know they will always be there and I can fall asleep knowing Harry Connick Jr. will drive her off into the sunset in one of those ugly old Jeeps I've always wanted, she'll dance in Louisiana with Ellen Bernstien, she'll marry the cute cop from down south and they'll live in that big ole New England house and do magic together, she'll save the beauty queens and send Candace Bergen to jail, she'll marry the guy whose brother just got out of a coma and who she's had a crush on for years, or she'll get out of rehab and finally get the damn horse to lift his hoof.  Something about that woman gives me comfort I can't explain or express. I've "seen" those movies so many hundreds of times...
And now it's full on daylight, 28 Days is almost over, and my mother has been at work for almost an hour when I haven't been to sleep yet.  I love her so much.