Ouch.

When you are used to something, it doesn't precisely stop hurting, but the pain is less of a surprise. I was talking to a friend who suffers from migraines, and she was explaining her symptoms to me. She told me that the worst part of migraines was dreading the next attack.

As soon as one is over, you cannot stop wondering when you will be in pain again.
At the moment, I feel that I am coping with events. My mother's cancer has been removed, she is undergoing radiotherapy. My father's chronic illness and perpetual hospital hopping. My own mood swings. Ok, so I still spend too much money, I still fuck up, I still feel that it's so OVERWHELMING. But most of the time, I'm used to it.

Lately though, I feel like spring. I feel like an excited, crazy person. The sadness feels like a burden, like an annoyance. I want to run away and board a ship, I want to run another marathon until all the voices shut up, I want to hug a stranger, I want to write a song, I want my sister back, I want to wear braids and floaty white dresses, and I want to be free.

What I have been doing

Hi there! Wondering why I have been so quiet, apart from the major health problems in my family?

I've been co-directing this book!

This is an English book for 6th graders. It will be on the internet as well. The company I'm working for is a startup, so there was a huge amount of pressure on me to get this thing right. If this project goes down, it could mean jeopardizing the company.

It's going to the printer's on Monday. I hope it's good. And not only because I'm being paid by the sale.

I have a lot of anecdotes about my job, but I promised to myself I would wait until this was over so I would not be breaching any confidentiality agreement.

I need to finish up all the edits and write a 100 page project summary this weekend, as well as finishing my two finals for school, and then I will be done for the year, pretty much.

42,2 KM=26 miles=tired

Dear Diary,

Yesterday I ran my first marathon. It was in Marseille, a really pretty Mediterranean city.

It took five hours, about 5 liters of water, 3 oranges and 2 bananas on the way, a lot of cheering from nice Southern people, and a crippling fear of disappointing myself even bigger than the fear of actually crippling myself for life. I did think about it. Will I be a cripple for life? And then I thought that this could not happen to me. Or maybe it has. I can't walk at all. I have the strangest gait.

Four things gleaned from yesterday:

-Buy magic anti-rubbing creme! The ad said "great to prevent bleeding nipples" and you have to admit no one wants bleeding nipples. Except if they were weird desserts from France, where we can enjoy the "Nigger in his Shirt" and other non-PC delicacies. Even so, bleeding nipples!

-Become friends with innocent bystanders. I jumped on the mild-mannered person having breakfast next to me, and he squired me to the marathon start, helped me during the race and was ADORABLE.

-Eat like an ox the week before. Fun and useful!

-Forget music for running, my podcasts on mental disorders worked fine.

I feel terrible and a bit silly, I HOPE I WILL SOON BE PROUD AND BOAST OF A FIVE-HOUR MARATHON.

I just did, though.

Immigrant

My mother is the first French person in my family. She was born in France, studied in France, works in France. She pays money each month for retirement funds and social security and public policies.

My father is British.

My sister and I have "double nationality", but I think she as well as I would admit that we don't feel British at all, in the usual meaning of the word. We must have spent less than a month there if you add up our short visits. We never talk to our British relatives. Although I believe J would gladly live in America for the rest of her life, she is French.

So am I.

But not entirely. We speak English at home, albeit with a French accent in my case. We don't follow French traditions to the letter. My grandmother, who was half-American, half-Spanish, used to tell me she felt "European". My grandfather was half-Egyptian, half-Belgian, and died in London. Tricky thing, identity.

In France we are approaching our presidential elections, and never have battles about Islam and society, Immigration and jobs raged more violently. I know that I have preferential treatment compared with other second generation French people. I look European. My French is good. That helps to "integrate".

I am dreading the heightened racism, the insults, the dirty politics that await us here in France. Maybe because my father is an immigrant, and my mother the daughter of immigrants.

Spring musings

SPRING! Girls wearing skirts...Men in short-sleeved shirts. Hay fever.

PLans are being made here. My sister, after kicking ass at her senior year concert, is about to graduate and I'll be spending a weekend in America in the vicinity of Boston! Yes! Tired! Already! The book I'm editing and directing and co-writing will be done by then, I'll have done my finals, and in 4 months I'll be a researching and teaching professor.

I'm almost not a student anymore.

Other fun plans: buying an apartment...travelling to Mexico with my boyfriend...getting my sister back for at least two years before she shoves off to grad school...It's going to be nice.

About reading people's correspondance

My mother can't carry things. She can't cut, slice or dice; she can't do anything that could get her arm infected, since her operation removed lymph nodes as well as her breast. So now that she's organizing major remodelling in our Paris apartment, I've pitched in a little. We have a second floor which is half a very beautiful room, which used to be mine but will soon be my sister's since I'm moving to Lyon soon, and a large workshop where an artist friend of my mother's used to work. Now this space will be converted into a guest bathroom, bedroom, living room and the terrace will be refurbished as well. It's exciting to say the least, and I know my mother gets a lot of comfort out of the idea she is turning a new leaf after her parents' death.

Now a lot of this workshop was used to store shit. There is no other words. Piles, and piles, and piles of books we don't read or haven't reread in years (I'm talking in the hundreds here), dusty carpets and my father's stuff from the year my parents moved into this apartment together, in 1988. Yes, he hasn't opened these boxes in more than 20 years. Since he is still in the hospital, my mother and I decided to go through it so the workers could do the work next week.

My father is "an old father", being fifteen years older than my mother, and I haven't known him for most of his life. I'm always surprised when I see pictures of the young, handsome English chap and compare them mentally to the broken-down invalid I visit twice a week. I know they are the same person. It just doesn't feel that way.

Seeing all the boxes on the floor, all his life, now restricted to a hospital room, made me very sad. And when my mother started reading his private correspondance and getting angry at what she was finding, I was very depressed as well.

I don't like thinking about my things being opened after I'm gone, whether to the hospital or dead. I'm thinking about entrusting my web codes to a good friend so she can erase every account, every mail, every blog post. I never want my parents, family or friends to discover the random annoyance I may have felt at some point, the rants, the anger, the pissiness. People get on our nerves without negating the love we have for them.

Sometimes I'm at my boyfriend's apartment, and he's left his computer on. I could log on to Firefox and read his gmail account. Does he write about me sometimes? Does he complain? I read my ex's diary when I was convinced he was cheating on me and I regret this deeply. Not only did I violate his privacy, nothing I learned in there help me process the breakup or even his new relationship. All I read was bitterness, which is not illogical since the fellow was falling out of love with me and having to bear my unhappiness through cohabitation.

I can't lie. It can be tempting. But I won't.

We'll have fun

I love this picture of my grandparents during their honeymoon. They look so young, carefree and beautiful.

Now that they are dead the family is trying to find a new way, to regroup, to celebrate christmas differently, to be happy.

I miss them.

Rom Com

I have a tradition, when my father goes to his usual hospital: I donate blood to the blood bank. It's there, I usually have to wait three quarters of an hour while he is prodded/massaged/scanned/tested, so it's not a huge thing, just a habit. Every three months, I give blood. It's not the most agreable thing in the world, but it's hardly painful, and it strikes me as so laughably easy to help others in this way...Just lie down, hold out your arm, and then go eat cakes and drink from juice boxes.

Anyway I went this afternoon. Last time my blood pressure was too low, so they wouldn't let me donate, but this time I was fine, so I went in and just talked to the ladies in the donor's room while the nurse set me up. We were all people with this kind of routine apparently, people who go to the hospital twice or three times a week, who know all the nurses and doctors and who have what we think of as a secret hospital life.

It feels like limbo: the hospital is airport-loungy in atmosphere. Potted palm trees, people pushing carts or drips, people taking cigarette breaks outside.

The nurse came to bandage my arm and gave me a juice box. The nice neighbour I had been chatting to giggled when I asked her if she came here often:
"That sounds like a terrible pickup line. We should write a romantic comedy about people meeting at a hospital when they give blood."
"Or while donating organs."
"Or while waking up from an anesthetic."
"Groggy love"
"Yes, that sounds amazing."

We shared bits of our secret hospital lives.

It was nice.

Hospitals blow

My mother was dreading chemo.
I had forbidden her to read online forums, because I am WAY too used to the rather depressing state of mind they can elicite in you. She read them anyway, and everyday brought a new tale of woe from anonymous 36 on the WORST CANCER STORY website.

We didn't even know what kind of treatment she was going to undertake, and I already knew more about chemo side-effects than others, since I saw both my grandparents go through with it.

My mother called me up elated on Friday. The biopsy was OK, and the doctors saw that the tumor was unresponsive to chemo, so they are going to go with an operation and then radiotherapy. My mother told me gleefully that her tumor was just like her.
"UH?"
"Well, it doesn't want to do chemo."
"OK."
"Also it likes drastic measures."
"Right."
"This tumor is just like me."

My father had a really bad spell a few days ago and had to be hospitalized in intensive care again. I'm going to see the doctors today during my lunch break, but reports differ: some people tell me he's doing oK, others seem to think he is very weak. Tracheotomy is an option. Anyway, my mother was telling me about her operation, which is in two weeks, and will require a lot of after-care. A nurse will help me at home, but it will be a lot of cooking, hand-holding etc. I have planned to have family and friends help, but still.

My mother and I chat together, thinking about how it will work out. Then she thoughtfully says:
"I do hope your father won't get worse and worse while I'm recuperating post-op. Then what will you do?"

I still miss my sister a lot. It would be so much funnier to have her around, since she is funny funny .

I may start reading forums for people who hate hospitals.

Overloaded

I looked around the classroom. The teacher was still talking about the Millenium Goals to beat poverty. The students were scratching away on their note pads, or as it happens more often, compulsively checking their Facebook page on their Macbooks. I felt very, very far away.

That is the thing with so-called new technologies. You always want to be somewhere else, on another Firefox tab, texting someone new, escaping into another playlist.

This Saturday, I was running with the cross country team. We wanted to run 10 miles. So we did. We had to keep together. I realized how seldom I spend hours with people. Meetings between two work meetings, hurried lunches, drinks. Those take an hour. Running for miles means talking or listening to other people, no escape, unless you decide to run a bit faster and make everyone breathless.

Running means you have to focus. On the pain in your legs, the slight wheezing I get from asthma, so you never overreach yourself. This is also something I don't do enough of: the quiet assessment of my body's thresholds.

My mother sometimes talks about cancer being an opportunity to slow down and block out "the noise". This would be people ringing at home all the time. Yes, I am the human answering machine.

Have you noticed people always say "the noise"?

What's your noise?

The twisted road

I was finding it hard to write here. My computer got hauled off to undergo repairs. I'm trying to find a way to get my father in a retirement home, against his will pretty much, which does not make you feel like daughter of the year. I would look at my last entries: death, depression. It would make me say that as soon as I had something funny to write, I would do it. But I realize I have to make a habit of it. Because the strange turn of events making 2010/2011 a bad, bad time for my family has just continued impressing me with its motivational anger.

My mother has been diagnosed with breast cancer. DISCLAIMER: It's breast cancer, the most easily taken care of cancer, she's in good hands, it seems that she is OK, it's going to be chemo and an operation and all that, but the doctors have so far been optimistic and kind.

I'm so scared of not being up to the challenge. I sometimes resent the fact my father is always at the hospital or sick. I look at him and think that I want to be alone, not talk to him and have to watch him so diminished. Now my mother is going to be weakened and exhausted and I'm afraid of resenting it in the same way.

Also I feel so guilty all the time. Guilty that I'm trying to put my father in a retirement home because it is hard to care for him, but also because I have so much work and a part of me can just forget. Yes, both my grandparents died in the last six months, my father is still in the hospital and my mother has cancer, but in the end, I think I could get into the mindspace that this is normal. After all, I'm used to being worried.

The worst part of all is thinking about my sister. J and I are incredibly close. We have our own lives, but when things go bad we immediately start working together.
J is in America, miles away, and has to "enjoy" her last college semester while scouting for jobs, knowing that everyone is sick at home...And yet I want to rely on her. I want her support too.

This to say that I have given up on writing when things go well at the moment. This place is a shelter for me, and I need to accept that life can go twisted and dark, and that it doesn't make my blog "boring".

So we all go down the twisted road. I hope I'm a good traveller.

Rest in peace

My grandfather died yesterday, almost exactly six months after my grandmother, his ex-wife.

Obituaries to write, a funeral in Holland to organize, Ave Maria to rehearse before the ceremony takes place.

So much to do, so little time to think. It's been a good year and a hard one, a beautiful time and a painful one. I feel ready to turn a new leaf and take time to grieve.

I wish everybody a wonderful 2011, with all my love.

Writing a book is hard

Thank you everyone for the lovely messages and support.

You are wonderful.

I'm currently working for a fledging company that publishes school books and co-directing the English book for beginners. This is complicated because 1° I didn't learn English at school and 2° working is complicated and 3°I'm working for very bureaucratic people and I'm a bohemian freelancer who needs hours off to help tidy up apartments, empty houses and other fun tasks.

My partner is called F, and he is sweet, befuddled and very, very clever. He is learning Persian and spends his time comparing English to Persian (NO) and telling me amusing adventures of his youth. I like him. It's fun going to his apartment and working on the book, imagining the drawings and the dialogues and which accent to pick, AMerican or British? And which American? Which British? Lots of questions like that. It's great.

When we first met, he shook my hand, pecked my cheek and told me earnestly :"Don't fall for me, because I'm tired of girls falling for me." If you had told me I would come to be very fond of him then, I would have rolled my eyes.
But I am very fond of him. He's such an old romantic, always falling for the wrong guy, always depressed about love, and then incredibly perky and stimulating.

I'm very grateful to him for bearing up with my moods.

Can't wait to finish our preliminary work. How fun will it be to see the finished product!

Still looking for a title. It seems that every thing is taken: Connect, Listen up, New Springs, Apple Pie, Enjoy, Teamwork, Borders, New Borders, Discover...

If anyone has a snazzy suggestion, I'll send you delicious French sausage. Now if that isn't tempting...

Watching

This is the time for contemplation. After my grandmother's death in July, my grandfather took a turn for the worst and called my mother up yesterday to tell her he was dying and had only a few weeks left.

I watch my mother cry on the phone, feeling helpless and bruised and lost.

I watch the world, a little slowly, retreating inside myself.

I'm still here, on the sidelines. I feel like asking for help, but I realize I can only help myself; that when my sister comes home for the holidays, the person who knows me best will be there, understand. No need to talk.

Snow everywhere.

I feel frozen.

Being yourself

I hate that sentence. Aren't we all a dozen different people every day? Aren't we all bits and pieces and experiences and unexpected reactions?

I'm not doing so well at being myself at the moment. I feel like I'm too tired to make the effort. Yes, I am a well-oiled machine: I have my social niceties, and my small talk, and even some ammunition for the big, difficult topics of life.

I'm tired. I'm afraid that I can't be happy right now because I don't feel the bounce. I want to be. But I'm just exhausted. Can we wait for a few months? Can you let me sleep this bad moment off? Then I will be Sara again, or at any rate the Sara I can be when social and active.

Phi Beta Kappa

Now I'm not good about American Universities slang, or lingo, or whatever you might call it. So when my sister called yesterday to tell me she was invited to her college's Phi Beta Kappa society in the fall of her senior year, this did not ring any bells. In fact, I thought she meant she was entering a sorority, although that also made no sense since her college has no sororities.





My mother, currently with me in Berlin, seemed to know and was incredibly proud. I resolved to google after dinner.

So I did.

You get a golden key! I'm not sure why! But it's amazing.

I may burst with pride.

Ubuntu 4 ever

In France we don't have geeks. Geeks are that quintessential American creation. Sure, we have computer engineers, physicists, mathmos with an intense manga obsession, but we don't think of them as geeks.

My first ever boyfriend was a geek. He liked writing computer programs at a time when we didn't have broadband internet at home. I then befriended a World of Warcraft fan who let me watch him plan world domination and organise druidic poetry competitions. But X was in so many ways (video games aside) the perfect geek. He is a chemist with an unhealthy love of lolcats, a collection of punning tshirts, and can spend hours fiddling with Linux; oh, I got him hooked on Battlestar Galactica. He switched my computer from Windows to Ubuntu back to Windows. It never did recover!

He would hate being called a geek.

But he is.

So now that my boyfriend has introduced me to the sitcom The Big Bang Theory, I am obsessed. It's clichéd and predictable, but it reminds me of all the wonderful geeks I've known in my life. The ones who pull all-nighters to join their American guild and live a jetlagged elf life, the ones who discuss how many microwave ovens you would need to power a jet engine, the ones who read comic books, and of course, all the wonderful computer obsessed people out there.

Because the truth is, we all spend ridiculous amounts of time online, but these guys actually KNOW what they are doing.

Here's to all the geeks who have let me use their science and enjoy their company.

SURPRISE

I'm coming home on Tuesday and have packed nothing, prepared nothing, have to find gifts for everyone, write cards, welcome my mother, clean the apartment. I have made a list, which depresses the hell out of me, so I ignore it zealously.


Well, on Wednesday I was supposed to have dinner with my boyfriend for the first time in more than a month.

And then I got an email in my inbox.

"Let's all celebrate Sara's return to Paris on Wednesday evening!".

A class friend sent this email to about thirty people.

I can't really express how stunned I am. All I can hear is my sister's voice lovingly and sarcastically saying that I've become Miss Popular. YES I HAVE J!
Well, most of the people invited to this thing don't like me, so I suppose I'm not Miss Popular, but Miss Good Excuse To Get Drunk. And that works for me.

I called AD to tell him our plans were cancelled due to my huge and out-of-control fandom.
We are having breakfast together instead. Meal of Kings.
Oh, and I'm getting a set of keys to his place.

THE LIST THE LIST THE LIST is taunting me. If you think this post makes no sense, wait until Monday sets in.

TEDIOUS RANT

One of my colleagues doesn't like risotto...doesn't listen to any type of music...has been in Berlin for a year and hasn't visited a museum...thinks men should be "manly" and women should earn less so as to not scare prospective suitors away...is worried that she is putting on weight and keeps talking about it, no matter how much you tell her to relax...

It's hard.

I think I'm not very tolerant because I so often want to brain her. It's because I'm a snob, right? The fact that she thinks Twilight is the most romantic book ever should not arouse any wrath, or should it?

Berlin is a city with three major opera houses, a million art galleries, lots and lots of beautiful streets, great theatres, innovative design. This is a place where things are happening on a large scale. And she could be living in the middle of nowhere. It's such a waste!

I'm a snob.

OK, what about this? She's going off for a six-month sabbatical with her BF to the other end of the world in 8 weeks and she hasn't cracked open a guide book? How can you be so passive?

I'm intolerant.

But she is driving me crazy and WHERE CAN I VENT? Not at the office because the sole topic is how often a week is too much argh argh don't want to go to work tomorrow.

I'll settle for this. Don't talk during the entire day. And I won't rant anymore.

Yeah.

The Depression Whisperer

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

I'm going to say Macbeth suffered from depression. Just a hunch.


I'm one of those people. Tell me you've been having problems, family problems, work problems, any problems, and I will lean over intently, gaze into your eyes and say:
"You're probably depressed."

I am a shameless arm-chair diagnostician and my friends, I WILL DIAGNOSE YOU WITH DEPRESSION.

October is National Depression Awareness Month (Poor October: Breast Cancer AND Depression). Sara is National Depression Awareness Blatherer. Anyone unlucky enough to cross my path will get a lecture on the topic.

Why do I do this? Apart from adoring the sound of my own voice?

Because I believe this is still a taboo topic.

Depression is not cured by "a nice long walk". Depression does not mean you are lazy. Depression does not mean you are a failure. Depression is a mental illness that can make you lose your family, your friends, your job and ultimately your life.

However I also believe we can fight against it. We can decide to get better. Don't get me wrong, it is a long, difficult decision to make, and people in the throes of depression are often not in a state to accept those efforts.

Yet there are therapies. There are ways.

Watch the people around you. Do you know someone who has been unhappy for a long time? Withdrawing into themselves? Do you know someone who is no longer themselves, for lack of a better word? It could be a midlife crisis, could be a bad patch, but if it is depression, what do we have to lose by asking that person how we can help, if they are in need of comfort, or advice.

It is hard to reach out to depressed people. They don't want your help. They want to die.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

To anyone who stumbles accross this message, if you feel you are depressed, please see a doctor. Please talk to someone. It's so hard to do this alone.

I have been greatly helped by people sharing their testimonies and stories with me throughout my own battle with this disease. If anyone should want to talk to me, please do not hesitate to do so.

Depression can happen to anyone.

But I promise: you can get out of it.