Anniversary

yet another month has passed and yet another anniversary must be marked. it has now been 11 months since i was diagnosed with an AVM on my brain stem and since i stopped smoking. the moment that my life changed forever was almost a year ago now, but i can still remember it so clearly.

i dont even need to close my eyes and i can find myself back in that hospital bed with the doctors around me trying to 'break the news' and then explain the news to me in their broken english. i can still feel my panic and terror when i finally understood my situation and the desperation i felt as i tried to phone colin and then waited for him to come to the hospital and help me before i dissolved in a pool of tears.

i distinctly remember the last cigarette that i ever smoked. how cold it was outside and how awful the cigarette tasted. how the stupidity of the habit was revealed to me ... why spend money on slowly killing myself when i had actually been born with something that would do the job anyway!

and now? i am still playing the waiting game. it is an exhausting mind game where boredom, loneliness and depression are battled for an eternity, the entire day and often the night as well. night thoughts can be the most destructive, the most deceiving. small problems become impossible mountains, little mistakes (mine or others) herald the beginning of world war 3 and the collapse of life as i know it. but that is how i have to do it, day by stinking day. just get through this day, just get through this day, just get through this day, and somehow, magically, all those days will suddenly coalesce to form 2 years of memory and i will be normal again.

but i am being a killjoy. i am doing better. physically i am slowly recovering (which i will talk about at greater length in another post) and i have small joys to look forward to. christmas is coming and that means family. and this is a special christmas full of family; cousins, uncles, aunts that i havent seen in 10 years! my first christmas at home in 3 years! there's anther post all to itself. today is a good day! maybe this time i will be able to hold on to this feeling and replicate it over and over and over again for an eternity.