Christmas is coming.

When I woke up this morning, I opened Photos and started working on editing pictures for my best friend’s wedding. It’s coming up in January, and as excited as I am to attend, working on the pictures made me incredibly sad, to the point that I started sobbing while editing. It wasn’t just because I found myself sifting through pictures of the two of us from before I got sick… I realised that I had missed some of the most important parts of her life in the short few months that I was completely out of it in the hospital. I remember one day, when she came to visit, she asked if my mum had showed me the picture of her wedding dress. She had texted it to my mother after she got engaged, which also happened while I was sick. I knew it was coming; she and her beau are perfect for each other, and I am so, incredibly happy for them. This morning, I finally saw the pictures from when he asked her to marry him. I hadn’t seen them before, hadn’t even realised that they existed. I’m sure that in the back of my head somewhere, I knew that such pictures had to be out there on the web. But I hadn’t thought to look for them when I got out of the hospital because life went on and there were wedding plans to be made and a bridal shower to plan and a ring to see and a dress to alter. I don’t mind that I jumped back into everyone’s lives, but I feel like shit for missing some of the most important moments of my best friend’s life because I was laying in a hospital bed feeling sorry for myself.

I’m not looking forward to the holidays. I mean, I’m looking forward to going home and curling up with my puppy and putting a fake fireplace on my Dad’s telly and turning off all of the lights except the ones on the Christmas tree. But the holidays are now filled with regret and sadness for me. I can’t even say that they’re full of memories; I don’t remember anything past Thanksgiving. When I awoke, I thought it was mid-December – it was January 10th. The New Year had come and gone and I was left in the dust, wondering if I would ever regain my memories. The feeding tubes were pulled out the day before I woke up, for which I’m grateful. While I remember them being pulled out, it meant that my mother has a lovely picture somewhere of me having my much-desired cuddle with my then-boyfriend before he departed back to England. I woke up on my mother’s birthday. I felt a bit selfish because I remember being asked a few times if I knew what day it was. The 10th, I knew, and I felt that it was quite a silly question until someone, my father, I think, reminded me that it was my mother’s birthday. And I felt that I had ruined everything. To wake up on the 10th meant that I had missed Christmas, had made my family miss Christmas, had made them miss an event that was truly important to them as Christians. While not a Christian myself, I respect others’ faith, and I knew that that was what was getting them through the difficult times.

When I go home, I know that there will be sadness. It’s inevitable. We’ll attempt to muddle through and tough it out, we’ll attempt to smile and love each other and face each day as it comes. We’ll decorate and we’ll eat tons of amazing food. But we’ll all remember that I nearly died and that Christmas day last year was probably the worst of the entire time that I spent in the hospital. I’ll be moody and sulk and hide in my room as much as possible. My mother will want to spend as much time together as possible. My father will likely try to get the dog to sit with me as often as he can, as he pretends to hate the dog. I’ll get to see my niece again, and I’ll realise that even though I’m better, living abroad means that life back in the States will continue to pass me by, no matter what I do or how often I visit my family.

I fear going home. I know that I need to, that I need to be closer to my family during this time, for my own wellbeing, as well as for theirs. And I cannot WAIT to see my best friend walk down the aisle and marry the man she’s absolutely and completely in love with. I can’t wait to share special moments with my loved ones and make better memories to replace the sadness I feel inside my very soul. I simply wonder if I’ll be able to keep it together or if I’ll lose myself in the depression that already threatens to overwhelm and paralyse me.

Because I can't sleep.

I hate nights when I can’t sleep almost as much as I hate the nights when I can. After being sick for a few days and drifting in and out of sleep, I curled up tonight expecting to drift off quite quickly, feeling feverish and exhausted. But I’m sad, and I can’t. I reached up above my head and grabbed my stuffed puppy and cuddled with him, and now I’ve resigned myself to writing for a bit. I doubt this will be too long, as I do feel the pull of fatigue, but I resist. You see, cuddling with my puppy, a cherished gift from a friend on my 13th birthday, reminds me that I’m mortal. It reminds me of a time when I was weak and dying. I love my pup, don’t get me wrong – memories don’t make me want to give it up. They simply plague me. As I cuddle with this soft creature, stroking its worn-down fur, I’m reminded that not even a few months ago, I was laying in a hospital bed, unable to wrap my fingers around it and hold it close to me.

I have a sore throat right now, and I feel like razors are scraping up the insides of my mouth. And I’m reminded of the pain of having feeding tubes removed. Do you know what it feels like when a tube gets shoved down your throat in order to keep you alive? Thankfully, I don’t. But I do have glimpses of the pain of having said tube removed after two weeks of it forcing my esophagus to form around it. They tell you to exhale sharply in order to ease the transition. But ease does not equate to appease, and I can still feel the obligatory tears forming in my eyes as it was done. The pain marked progress, but it’s hard to keep that in mind when you remember that you were paralysed at the time.

I can’t swallow properly. My uvula is swollen. And all I can think about as I try in desperation to pump myself full of fluids is that I had to see a Speech & Swallow doctor nearly every day for a few weeks to retrain my body how to function properly. I remember choking on an ice chip and begging her to let me try again. She declined, said we would work on it during her next visit. It was a long weekend. I craved something as simple as a tiny little ice chip. An ice chip that I would later come to associate with having seizures.

My mum had to grab me when I blacked out. At the time, I had a makeshift central line in my jugular in order to complete dialysis, which I needed due to my renal failure. I remember thinking, as I began to black out and felt my mother’s hand wrap around my neck and pull me back upright, that if it got ripped out, I would simply bleed to death. I wondered if that would be so bad after all. My mother had sat there by my side in the hospital and watched the life leave my body; life seemed to be re-entering my system and yet it drained out of me in other ways. No one should have to watch their child die. No one should have to see them through such pain.

I wrap my arms around my puppy and I remember the day my father brought stress balls in from the sports store in order to try to help me regain function in my right arm. I couldn’t move it at all. By the time he brought the resistance balls in, I could ‘crab-walk’ my hand over my body a few inches before I tired. When I needed to use the bedpan or I was getting my sponge bath for the day and needed to be rolled over, I would crab-walk my hand across my body and then use my left hand to throw it on the bed railing to grip and attempt to help haul my body in one direction or the other. Now I can roll myself. I can lie on my stomach. I can lie on my side. But I still don’t feel any more alive.

I fear sleeping almost as much as I fear being awake. When I’m awake, I remember. As I walk across campus and feel my muscles strain, I recall a time not so long ago when I was confined to a bed in a room in a hospital that I never thought I’d leave. When I pick something up, I’m reminded that the weakness still remaining in my right arm may be there for a while, and all I can do to make it better is just keep using it. When I cough, I think about how a cough landed me in this nightmare I’ve been living through for nearly a year. But when I sleep… oh, when I sleep, the nightmares really begin. Some nights are better than others. Some nights, I sleep and I dream of beauty and love and happiness. But most nights, I close my eyes and the darkness of my room cannot even begin to match the darkness in my mind. I remember, in just flashes and glimpses, the feelings of helplessness and weakness. I try in vain to fight monsters that refuse to leave me be. They are giants on a sea of sadness and the tide is pulling me into a current of inevitable decay. I can escape from the dreams. Sometimes they feel even more real than the world in which I awake.

I sit here typing, stroking my puppy, and watching Sherlock. I wonder what it would be like to escape into someone else’s life for a while. The closer I get to the next day, and the next, and the next, and the inevitable November 24th, the more I wish to stop time. The more I wish for the limbo from which I once hoped to break free. But I cannot stop time. I can only move forward and lay down and hope that tomorrow brings a relief which tonight does not promise.