I Send My Best Regards from Hell in Magical Realism

Busy season is over. No more 100 hour weeks, no more planes, trains, automobiles. This is the time of year when the body takes over, and my mind hibernates. All I want to do is sleep, work out hard, swim, take baths, and sleep. A novel in the bubble bath, a glass of champagne, these are my welcome distractions. A prepares me elaborate salads, packed with nutrition, for lunch, or I eat smoked turkey and candy corn, because I just can’t deal with it anymore. I used to look forward to food and meals, so much. Now everything tastes like dirt. Sometimes I crave a hot meal just because I am so cold, but a cup of hot water and a cup of tuna does just as well.

Speaking of water, I go into the cold water, again and again. Similar to my full-throttle workouts, I can’t go into the sea this time of year without complete focus. Packing, preparing, stripping down in these temperatures to go into the cold water, it takes of all my mind. I appreciate that. So much. I’m failing at my swimming too, but not any more than anything else in my life right now.

The rest of the time, I continue to do stupid things. Music too loud. Lana, Marina, Paloma Faith on loop. I’ve watched the Taylor Swift “Blank Space” video 142 times and counting. I love Tove Lo but hear that “Habits” song and get a lump in my throat every time. Even the techno version. At the gym. Especially at the gym. Procrastinating on everything. Not encouraging but not discouraging the flirty messages from a dangerous stranger halfway across the globe. He says he looks forward to seeing me soon. I’m not sure if I even want to see him. I can’t handle anything complex, and he is beyond complicated. I show A the messages, his and mine, and I think the showing makes him more nervous than an omission would. But I’ve never hid this sort of thing and not about to start now.

At the same time, we (A and I) are overindulging in each other. I never write about this, and still not going into detail, but feel it’s important to note. After 14 years, our average is once a day, once every other day, sometimes twice on weekends or another lazy day. Lovely. Healthy. Everything else not encompassed in a neat adjective. But since September, it’s routinely been twice, sometimes three times a day. Routine is not the word…it’s involuntary almost. We wake up in the night to ravage each other, make each other late to work, etc. I cannot correlate this to my father’s death, or even my cancer diagnosis. It started two to three weeks prior to both, like a seismic shift. I’m not complaining, just observing.

Memorial dinner for my father and with everyone drinking a bit too much, it becomes apparent how much I am the black sheep in my own family. No, there’s nothing sordid I am hiding here, but that is just kind of indicative of how ridiculous it is that I am any family’s black sheep. Thanksgiving I am stone-sober at least, and it’s even worse. I can’t do this anymore.

On the plus side, I find some pictures of my paternal grandmother at the beach, the glamorous flapper/smoker/dead ringer of me when I was 13. I love the bathing costumes and seeing my own face reflected back through the mists of almost 100 years ago. I find out another story about yet another example of why my father was a ridiculous hero and when I research the details of the crime he solved, it explains a recurrent nightmare I had, for so so long. Don’t ever think kids don’t hear every word you say, even if you think they don’t understand. I was only 1 year old, 1 month, but apparently I heard.

Anyway. TL;DR - I’m messed up, but still functioning. I am still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Bad things come in threes? I did all my appointments and scans and everything is clear for now (thanks to everyone for their concern, I am not much of a rebel so only delayed what I was supposed to do by a week. I maintain I needed the extra time. The morning I went in for the result of my scan, I had a complete meltdown freakout moment of “What if this is the last time I can feel normal…before?” All the doctors are very concerned and (professionally) freaked out that it even happened to me in the first place. Me, myself, I think it’s unfair but am not surprised. If you ever told me, even a year ago, that I’d be a semi-professional athlete, in great shape, with sponsorships and free trips all around the world, I’d be thrilled. But right now with all that come to fruition, I am just maintaining.

Today I went to brunch and had fun with friends. On the way back I got perhaps the best pickup line I’ve ever had. (This probably only works for guys over 6‘5.)

“Isn’t it great to be tall?”

“Yes, yes it is.”

Last updated November 30, 2014