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so here’s how that independence campaign is going:

day 1:
wrote that post and went to bed at 10pm in a fog. sometimes i’m still depressed.

made an appointment to give blood, because that’s the fastest, most productive way i know to put my life in perspective. in the chair, i watched the rain hit the skylight and was thinking that everything was going to be ok when the man across from me passed out, eyes open but completely dead. the whole staff ran to attend to him before one returned to put the needle in my arm.

I give blood all the time, but this time it felt different. it hurt a lot. I thought about my breathing and played number games in my head the way I did during erg tests in rowing to distract myself from pain and the fear of more of it.

I caught out of the corner of my eye a head nod in my direction, and a man came from the sidelines and asked me if he could look at my “needle site”. The short version of what happened next was that they had to take the needle out, someone got yelled at for messing up my arm, and I was instructed to keep ice on it for a long time. The bruising was not as bad as I was warned it would be, and it didn’t hurt much after they took the needle out, but the whole thing felt very defeating. i tried to tell myself that maybe that’s the ultimate kind of donation…not every person can donate successfully every time, so maybe i just took one for the team.

but that didn’t make me feel better.

as almost everyone who reads this blog regularly knows anyway, joe and i decided to call it quits that night. though actually, i didn’t really have very much to do with that decision at all.

since my dad died, the way my emotions manifest themselves is totally different. it’s like after the breakup, i cycled through the exact same symptoms i felt for two months after dad’s death, except all in two days. At first, there is a horrible, heaving pain, where you want to throw up and you feel like your body is going in all sorts of directions, and you feel like every second that passes is a mile further away from your ability to undo what’s happened. And then your emotions go totally dead as you realize that some things, like death or the experience of being undervalued by someone you respected, can’t really be undone…but you feel really sick, and you still can’t eat, and you get headaches because that’s what happens to migraine brains when they don’t get regular shots of glucose. And then that starts to fade and you get some perspective, and this is about exactly where both mourning curves meet. Which isn’t to say that I’m feeling great about either situation, but i’ve progressed at lot faster than I would have expected. good friends help a lot, and baby, i’ve got ‘em.

I wrote about scars some time ago because I frequently find myself wondering what my body will look like when I’m old, what experiences i’ll have in my life that will change forever what i see in the mirror before i shower. The Red Cross worker who pricked my finger to test my iodine levels looked at my latest—the one on my wrist—and asked what had happened. I felt sheepish because it really looks like some self-mutilation or suicide attempt and the story of how it actually came to be doesn’t always seem all that plausible, especially to someone who doesn’t speak english well. i muddled through it, took my paperwork, said i didn’t mind a right-arm donation, and took a seat in the chair to which i was directed.

The writing, really, was on the wall by that point, and that’s what I was thinking about as i watched the rain hit the skylight. I got that scar the day we decided to be exclusive, and as I came to the realization that it wasn’t going to heal completely cleanly, I thought it would probably always be one of my favorites. It was in acknowledging that that I realized I had done exactly what I promised myself I wouldn’t do with this relationship or any other ever again: I let myself believe I knew where it was going, or at least where it was capable of going. And that is something I think you must never do. I know that i am outrageously bad at staying out of relationships, and though I think i’ll try for a while, please, as my family and friends, do not let me entertain such foolish talk again.

Despite everything, I’ve always wished for myself that I would be brave enough to feel all the love and pain the world has to offer, to drink life in fully and hopefully live long enough to appreciate that. And maybe that’s what I like about scars, that they pretty much always remind you of some kind of love or pain. And sometimes one at first, and then the other, and you never really know which way it’ll go.

But i think that’s sort of the point. And if today’s blog title didn’t make any sense to you, you really need to go download “sleeping with the lights on” by teitur.