…until i’m out of here. not permanently, but for a couple of weeks. and i need it.

it’s been a rough few weeks; the stress of being jobless continues lay heavier on me a bit more every day and frustrating thoughts and feelings have recently made it a bit harder for me to focus. though there seem to potentially be good things just over the horizon, at least with respect to a job, there’s a level of uncertainty that keeps me unsettled about it.

on friday afternoon i leave for st. paul to spend a couple of weeks with family. it’ll be a nice respite from my life here and an opportunity to clear my head a bit. while i’ve learned running to another state won’t allow me to escape my problems, even for a couple of weeks, the distraction will be welcome.

i hope to return to promising news on the job front and a more settled emotional state.

it’s strange how a dream can alter one’s perception of their reality and this is something i’ve been thinking about for the last few days and though this recent train of thought comes on the heels of a rather nice, but unsettling dream i had a couple of weeks ago. while i understand everyone supposedly dreams every night, i often say “i don’t dream very often.” what i guess this means in reality is that i don’t recall my dreams very often. it’s always been the case and imagine it has something to do with the fact that i’ve never slept very well.

because “i don’t dream very often,” it’s quite rare that i awake in the morning with a perception that is different from the one i had when i went to sleep. it’s so rare, in fact, that i can count on one hand the number of times it’s happened. now, while i understand that human beings dream every night while they sleep, i remember reading, or hearing, that dreams help us make sense of our days, our lives, putting thoughts and feelings in some order that makes sense. i’m not sure if this is actually true, or not, and given my limited experience, so to speak, with dreams, it’s hard to for me say that i believe that explanation with certainty. what i can say is that before this recent dream, i had one view, one understanding of my life, one perception of my reality and when i awoke from it, i had another.

referring back to a previous post, the dream in question left me questioning how i had previously seen someone in my life. we had been good friends, or so i thought, for years, but i never really looked at her in any romantic sense. when she moved away, i was sad to see my friend leave, but after a while and as a result of a lack of communication, i came to not miss her all that much. the perception of my reality was that we were friends at one point, but that friendship became faded by distance and time. after a while, my perception of my life didn’t really include her at all. and it didn’t bother me all that much. i mean, sure it made be a bit sad from time to time, but i understood my reality; we weren’t as close as i had once thought and i moved on with my life here.

then, one dream shook that perception. i find myself missing her more now. i find myself thinking about her more. i find myself questioning how accurate my previous perception had actually been. that one dream has so altered my perception i find both interesting and frustrating. the dream was a completely fictional story, one that wasn’t based even remotely on the reality of my waking life, yet that story, that dream has left me questioning so many things. and all those questions have resulted in a slightly more uncertain life outlook than the one i previously held; when one aspect of your perception is changed, so is the sum of that perception.

at this point, i’m not quite sure what to do with myself. slowly, this new perception is becoming more familiar, more comfortable. soon enough, i will have adapted completely and it will become my new reality, at least, that is, until another dream shakes me loose yet again….

yup. it’s been approximately one year since i first got sick and though i know it was sometime in august, i never imagined it was something i would spend the rest of my life with, so i never committed to memory the exact date.it’s been an interesting year in terms of both learning about and how to manage the disease, but also in getting diagnosed and receiving monthly medication without health insurance.

i’ve managed to find a place to get my prescription filled without it costing me an arm and a leg (no, not on the black market) and so far i haven’t had to pay for my visits to the GI doctor. hawaii has some of the lowest medically uninsured rates in the nation, thanks to the pre-paid health care act, but if you’re unemployed here, as in most places in the country, you’re screwed. trying to get a potentially deadly illness diagnosed when you don’t have health insurance is, to put it mildly, frustrating. for the first couple of months, i was playing trial and error with a very diligent physician’s assistant at a local community clinic, but when all her ideas proved fruitless, i was forced to spend nearly $800 on a CAT scan (i think that’s what it was), only to have it whittle down the possibilities to crohn’s or cancer, at which point i was forced to find a specialist, which included a consultation with a surgeon. fun stuff.

…more than three months, in fact, since i posted anything here. admittedly, i have, on more than on occasion, wanted to sit down and write, but when i did my brain would go blank. bright and shiny things would distract me, causing words and thoughts to scramble. ultimately frustrations would set in and i’d wander off to other endeavors.

so what’s different now? really, not much. just to get to this point in the writing of this post has taken more than three hours and there’s so much more to say. i’m intent on getting this written, if only because thoughts and images are swirling around my brain and i want them out! they’ve upset my normally calm and settle demeanor; they’ve knocked me off balance and caused the whole world seem a bit gray.

a confluence of things has brought me to this point: a recent frank conversation, a not so subtle comment made by a friend half a year ago, my persistent and ongoing unemployment, and a recent vivid dream that was simultaneously lovely and unsettling…. where to begin? as all these things have contributed to my current lost, lonely, and disjointed feelings, it’s difficult to find a starting point with so many confused thoughts trying to simultaneously occupy the same space in my brain.