Sex

people seem to be interested in colin and my sex life, so i thought i should include a post on the subject. the reason i haven't written about this before is that since the whole melodrama of my illness began, sex has been pretty far from my mind. most of the time i am feeling way too ill to even consider it and the few times colin and i have had sex (before i knew what was really wrong with me) i would always end up having a convulsion and trouble walking. now that i know what is wrong with me, i understand why that used to happen. that much physical exertion, coupled with the rush of blood and endorphins an orgasm creates was and is the worst possible thing for someone with an AVM. my brain is having trouble circulating blood as it is so, the 'rush of blood to the head' sex causes would just be disastrous. add to that the fact that i am on every anti-seizure/downer drug known to man (exaggeration for effect ;-) and you have the perfect recipe for zero sex-drive. oh, and i stopped taking 'the pill' because the phenytoin was counter-acting it, so much so, that i wasn't even having my period at the correct time.

in fact, sex hasn't even been an issue to me, and colin, being the wonderful guy that he is, hasn't complained or mentioned it at all. again, i have been so self-involved that i haven't seen how hard this is for colin. he can handle the 'no-sex-thing', but recently i have discovered that he misses physical contact and intimacy. everything has been so much about me and my comfort that i had completely forgotten about an important part of colin and my relationship, physical intimacy. physical intimacy is not just sex, it is kissing and hugging and just general affection. everything in my life has changed so completely that i didn't even really notice or miss this part of our relationship, but recently i have been trying to be more aware of how colin needs it, and truly our relationship needs it. so now, if i am feeling up to it, colin gets a bit of 'attention'. right now, i am not too interested in getting some 'attention' myself. mainly because if walking around too much gives me convulsions, what damage could an orgasm do? i'd rather not find out.

writing about the physical part of colin and my relationship has made me realise that we have lost a lot of other parts of our relationship. we can't drink/party together. i can't even stay up late with him. it is difficult for us to even go out for a dinner together. in some ways we have become estranged from each other, which causes a lot of bickering. but in other ways we are closer than we ever were before. we now both know that we are 'in it for the long haul' and we are happy about that. we can talk about our distant future travel plans and know for sure that we will do them together. and the fact that we can still have fun even though we can't drink, party or have sex together shows that we have a deeper connection. we can still chat, laugh and generally be ridiculous together. and we still have our compulsive 'series watching'. Lost is finished so now we have Heroes (season 1 ;-).

basically we are just two, very flawed people desperately trying to climb the mammoth mountain that fate has chosen to put in our way.