I hate the idea of being left behind. I'd much prefer to be doing the leaving. The worst part will be riding the 6 train to and from Hunter when my friends are riding fancy foreign trains. 

Atypical Tuesday

My world expanded today. Just a little bit. There is a new friendship on the rise, an old one perhaps rekindled (if I write it might I jinx it? I hope not).

I am stressed by a seemingly endless stream of final papers and assignments, but what is important is that they will be over, and when they are, I have people to love and to love me back. 

Today, a Tuesday, I felt it: the hunger to know and to be known, the latter being something I've so long doubted and so often question. 

Tuesdays are typically Tracy Days. Solitary, but necessary. A refuse, a mental escape. I sleep late. I peruse the web. I do homework in a leisurely manner if at all. Read for pleasure. Tuesdays are the only Tracy Days left in the week. Fridays and weekends I am home or at the hospital. There is gagging. There are needles. There is love, such love, but so much fear. Sickening smiles, but I am grateful for them nonetheless. It's not like I want the doctors and nurses to frown at me...but it is all an act and I know that. An illusion. A hellhole masquerading as something else. But it is hell. The sounds, the smells of sickness...it is fucking hell. 

The other days there is school, stress, Envoy. It is not hell but on those days I cannot help but recall hell, and so, hell finds me when I'm not looking for it, when I am just trying to get by, to live, breathe, and be normal. 

Today was not a typical Tracy Tuesday, but it was lovely, and a welcome change. Today was people. Today I took in others, breathed them in and held it. I will keep them in there. I will remember. I will try. I will know, when I am alone, that I need not be lonely. 

I am tired, so tired, and lack the energy to write anymore articulately. Without saying more, I'd just like to say that today deserved an entry so an entry did it get. It was a beautiful day.

Thank you. 

I don't want to countdown. Actually, I refuse. I need to enjoy the time we have now. It may or may not be short, but it is precious. 

I will love today because today is all I have.  

Today, my father and I watched Monty Python together. Today we played 20 Questions. Today Daddy challenged me with silly logic/math sequences. Today we talked and laughed. Today was better than yesterday. Today he thanked me for being with him and I told him, "anytime."  I hope he saw it in my eyes, how much I meant it when I said it, how much I need him to know that he is loved and treasured. I think he knows. He is not one to say "thank you" with such sincerity. His "thanks" means he saw what I saw, the love, the secret understanding that could only exist between Daddy and Tracy.

Focusing on the present is not my strong suit. I am a planner. A dreamer. Always have been. I no longer have it in me to dream of tomorrow. I will not accept a certain specific tomorrow, so I will refuse to permit it into my imagination. Though this is a concept I am still getting used to, I know that what matters is the now. 

Today was better, and today was our day, Daddy's and mine. 

I have grown so much through this. I do not like that I've been forced to grow, but I have, and I was fairly grown to begin with, but I was also hardened from years of being an adult while I was still a child. Now, I've given into my emotions, that is, I give myself space to have them. But I am slowly learning not to dwell. That is easier said than done, but I will say it nonetheless. I will say it because saying it is important. I will say it because I have found a place where fright, sadness, and anger can coexist with stability, hope, drive, and satisfaction.  It is not the perfect place, but there is light here. There is beauty here. There is darkness and ugliness, but all is not lost. There are possibilities. 

Alla says that you know you have something valuable when you realize how much you'd miss it when it's no longer within reach. Alla is right. I'm realizing this with my friends leaving next semester for study abroad. I'm realizing this with my father, even more, and I believe he is realizing it with me. We are putting past conflict aside because we see how much we love each other, how much we want to know each other. It is moving me to tears, to think this, but still I am grateful for this closeness, this unspoken connection we now seem to have. I wish it did not take something so awful and painful for this to transpire, but I am trying not to dwell on regrets. I DO have these regrets, though. It would be a lie for me not to say so. I hate missing someone who is not gone, wishing I could go back in time and change so many things. Wishing I could have made myself less selfish and more obedient, wishing I could have been a more perfect child. 

As though somehow behaving better or scooping the litter when he asked me would have changed the future and caused him not to get sick. 

As though somehow, if I had only been more cooperative, Daddy's colon would have been more cooperative too.

That is not how these things work. I know, I know. I could not have known, as an indignant fifth grader, a stubborn ninth grader, an independent college student-- I could not have known then what I know now. 

I know this much is true, however: I will never regret being the best daughter I can be NOW, because that is something over which I have control. I am within my power. 

Today has been the perfect example of how the direction of a seemingly doomed day can change with a positive attitude.

There were no massive revelations today. Nothing inherently happy. Yet, I pushed myself in class. I forced myself to raise my hand. I chatted casually with classmates. I bought a book I've been wanting to read. I returned to my friend salt that I borrowed to cook the other night, not at all intending to stay and chat, but did so anyway, and it was satisfying (we hadn't talked in a while. space really does do wonders even when it's not intentional/you don't realize that you need it). I spoke with Alla on the phone, something which almost never disappoints because she gets me more than almost anybody. I ate a mango, too. Yum. 

This all from a day that started out with spills, failing printers, rushing to buy a book for today's class that I thought I'd already purchased (turns out the professor never sent them to the school bookstore but he/the store did not bother to tell the class. humph). And yesterday I got fricken stuck in a staircase. It seemed fated to happen. I in fact knew it would happen before it did (it's so weird how one knows these things, like when I knew, just knew, that my father had colon cancer before he told me so). It seemed like everything that could've gone wrong, did-- little things, on top of this huge thing that is constantly there. Granted, nothing that happened today is amazing. But it's a start. Yet another start, in this endless circle: this cycle of gathering my positive energy, building up strength, and then losing it all when I return home at the end of the week and am confronted with reality. But "they" say two steps forward one step back, right? Well, at least I'm trying to make progress. I believe I have it in me to deal with this because the alternative is suicide or conscious death (which is essentially the same as suicide). 

I'm not fond of any of my options, but finding some form of strength within to trudge through the next few months is really the only one I can choose. 

I can do it! Even if I don't know that I can, I am choosing to write it! I am choosing to believe I can, because I CAN! I have been strong before, and if anyone can do this, it is me. I just need to remind myself of that more often. I need to remind myself that I am loved. I will be OK. I am me, therefore I am OK. I am not perfect, but I am trying, and that is all I can do or ever hope to.

I am SO tired of people telling me what I "have" to do! Fuck "you," I don't have to do anything! Try being in my shoes, geeze. What is the point of ranting to people if all they do is tell me I need to be strong, I need to fight it blah blah blahity fucking blah. If fighting it were so easy don't they think I would do it?! Not that I'm not fighting, I'm just not always winning! And when I do lose, I'd rather not have it rubbed in my face! Can't that be OK...to give in...sometimes I need to be allowed to subsist in my dark place for a while, because darkness is the reality. Sure, maybe it's healthier to be deluded but unless people see what I see they have no fucking idea, none! And I'm tired of feeling like I have to defend myself for wanting to give in. 

I hope none of my friends ever *have* to understand, but I also wish that I didn't feel so alone right now. And I am fed up with trying to reach out to people who care, but won't ever get it (inshallah). 

I think it's best if I find the strength within myself. I'm tired of turning to others. It's ironic, but they'll be getting their way; I'm going to start being "strong."

I'll fight it, alright, but it looks like I'm fighting alone. 

That's all I have in the end. Me. Some well-meaning friends, maybe, but that is ephemeral: always. I, however, am stuck with myself for good, so I guess I better start coming to terms with that.

Goals for this week:

1. GO TO CLASS

2. Do my work, make to-do list for the next month

3. Read for pleasure

4. Do laundry, wash dishes, clean room

5. SLEEP

6. Exercise! 

7. DO IT ALL BY MYSELF

egypt seems so long ago, now. it was only a few months ago. ages ago. i ache for egypt, for that summer of blissful ignorance. it was beautiful. only i didn't know how beautiful then. 

i cooked egyptian food two nights ago. it was pretty decent, and soothing to cook because i haven't really cooked at all this semester. too busy eating hot dogs and beef patties from the street carts. too busy stuffing hunter college cafeteria pizza into my face between classes. too busy eating the hospital's free lifetime supply of graham crackers and pretzels. too busy forgetting to eat entirely until my stomach sends a nasty reminder my way. too busy, never busy enough to forget. 

i haven't done laundry in ages. everything is in disarray. i might be dating someone right now. i might not. i don't know. isn't that something one usually knows? how odd. how very odd this all is.

things are better. they are not good, but better since i last posted, at least. i am starting to re-socialize. i've talked things out with some. strange, though, how grateful i am that we talked, and how much i love my friends...yet, i don't quite feel ready to end the freeze out. i don't know why i'm doing it. i simply want to hate people. 

my father seems more like himself than before. but he paces a lot. we are all so uneasy. nobody can sleep. i haven't even tried yet tonight. my father came down in his robe twice already. just a few minutes ago, at 3 am, he sat down with me. at least i see him maybe trying to survive now. a social worker today taught him some breathing techniques. i think we could all use that. it's crazy, how basic instincts need to be relearned. how i wish for a time when we all still knew how to breathe...

no time for papers when i dont even have time for goodbyes