sickness and health

i am one uncomfortable blog proprietor today. let's just say that between the bar exam drama and the life drama, i ignored a little problem until it became a full-blown disaster, and i spent all. damn. morning. hanging out in the urgent care clinic. nice. so after much antibiotic and painkillers, i am now in bed, about to start the sleep i missed out on last night.

haha. last night. see, here i thought i was going to prove to myself that i could be a big girl and stay in. yeah, that didn't happen. i ended up at a friend's place, watching TV until all hours of the night. i felt a little under the weather, but nothing i couldn't handle. we watched "the hangover" again, just some mindless entertainment, and before you know it, oh-ho, it's 3:00 AM and the trains aren't running anymore. oh, damn; he's been drinking, so he can't drive me home. looks like i'm staying out here tonight.

i don't think i need to tell you what happened next. i mean, nothing earth-shattering; he's not my sexual crack cocaine boy (from whom i am abstaining at the moment - another time), so it's not the kind of experience that needs to be recounted in great detail. but it was a nice diversion from the stress of the exam. i dozed off in his bed around 5:00 AM... only to awaken at 10:45 AM in some of the most intense pain it's ever been my misfortune to experience. so i did what every red-blooded american girl would do in this context: hey, friend i just slept with? lend me your car so i can drive to the doctor. it's best to do this when the boy is sleeping, so his defenses are down.

so that was my day: hours in the doctor's office, cursing my own stupidity and trying not to curl up into a little ball and throw a temper fit out of pain. lovely. but it's funny; when i returned the car, he was still asleep. i walked up to his room and woke him, mostly to tell him about my misadventures, and he said, "you shouldn't take the train home. i'll drive you." now that's what friends are for.

in sickness and in health. hmm. maybe that's not just a throwaway line from the marriage vows the churches lay on us. maybe it's more like the governing rule of friendship: stick together, sickness or health, no matter what. that's a nice thought, and he's a nice guy. i'll have to remember that...

the end.

man, there's really nothing like being a grown-up for just total buzzkill sometimes. i mean, not having to deal with parents, being able to drink legally, all that stuff? totally fabulous. but then there's... well, there's the fact that you have to think about end-of-life issues. not just for yourself, either, but for everyone around you. death stops being this nebulous reality without a real meaning and starts becoming another thing to PLAN FOR. i swear, if anyone was ever going to take leave of any rational sense and allow me to mentor the young, that's how i would describe adulthood: a never-ending parade of events for which you must plan, up to and including the big sleep itself. so that's how, tonight, i found myself going over end-of-life plans with someone very close to me. wow, that's a conversation you don't anticipate when you're running around the playground with someone. but it is what it is.

part of me is honored; how could you not be, when someone trusts you to be the one to handle things for them when the end comes? but it's just so... i mean, we were just teenagers not that long ago. we were driving around the wilds of the gulf south in late-model import cars, talking trash and acting silly. on summer nights like this, we were most likely on our way home from some late-night road trip to the beach, not getting ready for work and class. but that's where we are. i'm thrilled beyond belief to still have these people i've loved so much for so long in my life... and i guess that's the opposite side of that coin. having people in your life who you plan to keep there forever means that you inevitably learn that every "forever" has an endpoint.

cherish it all. that's the takeaway, i guess. there's a period at the end of every sentence.

big brother

oh, the sine wave that is my life has thrown me all around today. but as i get ready to fall asleep, i feel okay at last. i was up earlier in the morning; went to class, got some studying done, all is right with the world. but of course, as always happens on the weekends, the evening rolled around and it slowly started to dawn on me that i had no plans. i should be at a point in my life where a friday evening in isn't a problem, and yet i always get this sensation that i'm the least popular kid in high school when this happens.

enter my beloved big "brother." i am an only child, of course, and so is he. but this guy and i have grown up together, literally. as in, knew each other before puberty grown up together. through thick and thin, no matter what, he's always had my back. it's almost like he can sense that i've been on emotional tenterhooks for the better part of the month, and unbidden he came in and said, "hey, let's all go to dinner." excellent. it doesn't take much to get me settled down; all i need is some place to go and i feel human again.

the weirdness that was dinner was another story. it's almost ancillary; i'll get into it another time. we said goodbye to our other friend and big bro and i went to hang out at his apartment. slowly, surely, he worked out of me all the crap that's been clanging around in my head. and, not only did he listen, but he offered feedback. solutions. things to think about. strategies to consider. y'know, like any good friend would. not only that, but it was so personally tailored to me and how i operate that i instantly felt a weight lift off my shoulders.

that, my friends, is a "brother's" love. and i wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.