chapter sixteen.

i dreamt that i walked into two convenience stores, one after the other (why? what was i looking to buy that required me to enter two convenience stores within the same block? who knows! who cares!). both were owned and operated by an asian couple. when i walked into the first convenience store, the couple came to me in tears to explain that their rake had been stolen. had i seen it? when i walked into the second convenience store, the couple were crying and screaming and they showed me a drawing of their rake, which had also been stolen. the man had a mechanical hand in his flesh one, a hand that extended metal fingers to, effectively, rake, but only the width of a hand, nothing like their precious rake had done. i'm not sure what that rake symbolized, but i'm thinking that if people want to flock to me for help and guidance, i would rather be recognized as something other than the mother queen goddess of raking apparatus.

i also dreamt that i was covered in white mice. i was lying down and i could see them walking all over my body, but i couldn't move or do anything about it - all i could do was watch and feel their little feet on me. it wasn't unpleasant, not like i think it would really be (and my dream fortunately left out all the mice shit, so i wasn't covered in it as i would be in reality), just little fluffy mice walking to and fro, not nibbling or anything, just a slightly tickling massage of white furry mammals.

two last nights ago i asked the boyfriend to drive me to the cabin. his cabin. his family's cabin. whatever. all i know is that when we want to get out of here there is a place to go where we can be alone, or even where i can be alone. it's small and doesn't have electricity, so he's the only one of his family who ever goes, except for picnics and crap like that in the summer, which are well announced and publicized via the family radar screen and so we can avoid those days. most of the time when they organize a family affair of that kind it ends up raining on their ants anyway, and it makes me laugh and i don't really care that i'm being mean and not treating others in any way that remotely resembles how i want to be treated. do unto others my ass.

the lake was cold as hell but not quite frozen, which was a good thing considering that i spent a few hours sitting on the dock throwing up into the water. weird thing though is that even though the water is clearly not frozen, it seems to be thicker, its surface harder to break. as if there is some state between liquid and solid that no high school teacher has wanted to tell us about.

it was cold but i wanted to be there and see the stars and feel the wind on my face. and he built a fire in the fire place and i wrapped myself in blankets and we drank and i forgot that i hadn't had anything to eat since the day before and eventually everything became blurry and i stumbled out and he followed and i sat on the dock in the middle of the dark not quite frozen water and i cried as i puked in the thick water and it was like something snapped and i was able to let go momentarily and vomitting was good and lifted my spirits and freed me from some of the weight i'd been carrying for a long while. well that's how it felt at the time anyway. and the moon rose and i forgot i was cold for a while and i couldn't get up anyway because the dock is shaky, logically, resting on water as it is, and every time i tried to get up i'd swoon with nausea and have to sit back down and so i just laid back in his amrs and looked at the moon for a while and when i was finally cold, i was finally able to get up and go back inside and we ate soup and bread and butter and honey and i felt fantastic, just emptied out of all the gunk, and ready to start anew. except of course i wasn't quite all there and i was rather mistaken, but for those few hours i felt like a new me. no, even better, a new someone else. and his smile in the fire light was magical and i felt like i had stepped into one of those bad romance novels that i have never read but don't we all know enough about those without actually ever reading them? and we actually slept in front of the fire because it was the only warm place for us to sleep well and i actually did sleep well and one night like that can really make a difference for me, a difference i will feel for at least a week.

the next morning was just not that fun. the fire had died hours earlier, everything was cold, i was cold, he was cold, and although he had brought coffee, he soon found that one of his sisters (well, he assumed, since she was the only one and the last one to go to the cabin) had taken home with her all the possible ways of making coffee. gone were all the pots and pans, and gone the french press. no filters, nothing. i shrugged it off. i was cold and i was ready to leave - at least in the car i'd be warm. he got crabby very fast. started mumbling and grumbling about people like that, who don't think of others and who put their noses where they don,t belong, and he was going to tell her off, and how dare she take his stuff from there and who did she think she was and we'll see about that, i'll change the lock, i'll tell her there's rats, i'll flood the place with her in it. he was mumbling without interruption, pacing to and fro as he put stuff away and packed his shit. i was hung over and i just sat huddled in a blanket or four, my head resting on the wall's wood panelling. his coffee was a half hour away, at the nearest little hamlet, and his mood wouldn't change until we got there. so i closed my eyes and drifted off somewhat.

i woke up at home. freakiest thing. the boyfriend was sitting next to me on the bed, wiping the sweat from my forehead. he looked worried. i was confused and couldn't figure out what time - or even what day it was. i knew i shouldn't be at home, but i didn't quite know just yet where i expected to be. my head hurt. my skull hurt. he said i banged it. i got up apparently at some point and then collapsed again and my head collided with the balcony post at the cabin. it had worried him but i had laughed it off. i have no recollection of that ever happening, although i do not doubt that it will become a memory in time, like all those stories you were told over and over as a child, that now you see the images in your head of all those events really happening, but if you think about it, you can't be sure whether you were there or whether you just built it up from everybody else's accounts, and either way it is now a part of you, a first or perhaps second-hand memory, engraved and ever changing.

i've been passed out for over twenty-four hours, apparently. i guess it's my longest black out ever. i woke up just in time, too, because the boyfriend said he would have taken me to the hospital in an hour or so if i hadn't come to. he didn't right away because he knew i'd flip. and i'd be angry at him for a long time. and he knew going to a hospital has never solved anything for me. quite the opposite. and he also knew i've blacked out for hours before, and it's not much to worry about.

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i'm probably the opposite of a hypocondriac. i never care why i hurt or how i'll get better or what this may be a symptom of, that a cause of this. first of all, asking those questions is the type of mistake that will land your ass of a crappy flea infested couch in some stupid musak playing gray carpeted and green painted waiting room for six to eight hours, where you will have enough free time to ascertain your chances of catching something from some other impatient patient sitting next to you with their unwashed hands and sneezing infants, and enough free time to go home, get all the rest you'd need to heal, and go back to sit your ass on the gross couch. call it an allergy to doctors, to their smugness, to their high opinion of themselves, whereas, really, they're just lawyers who happened to be good at math. i hate their cold clammy hands, their refusal to discuss anything that is not contained in one of their leather bound tomes and that hasn't bee taught by doctor so and so the famous expert in expertology. fucke them. life is so much bigger than doctors think. and so is health and so is my body. i enjoy saying keep your laws off my body, as any woman should, but it's also keep your fucking western mysogynistic bastardized medicine off my body. and keep your doctors off my body. and keep your super germs and super infections and super bacterias in your hospitals if you must and off my body, period.

the boyfriend took the day off, stayed with me. he's pale and shaken and his eyes are red. poor guy. he'd never admit to me that the whole thing is hard for him, but i know. and he'd never tell me because i could make fun of him. i probably would. i'd say he's weak, or if you can't take it you know where the door is, or something equally friendly. i'm like that. if he makes me notice that perhaps i need him i'll push him away. and i'll hurt him. and the fact that i'll regret the words even before i utter them won't make much of a difference. neither would my apology and his forgiveness. we've been over this before. so he hides his tears and he hides his fears and i allow myself to be comforted and treated like a sick princess. in truth, i know this is harder for him than for me. especially the black outs, but that's rather obvious: why would being unconscious be hard for me? it's only harsh for the one staying behind, who doesn't know what to do or what will happen, and needs to get this heavy body in the car and up the stairs and in bed, and has to take all the decisions and make sure he makes the right choices, or else he'll have to face the consequences whenever i wake up. i know i'm harsh. i am not sure there is anything i can do to change that completely. i've come some way. a long way perhaps. but still. i'm dangerous to love. i can hurt without wanting to, and that's already bad, but sometimes i hurt and i know i do and i want to, and that's when i'm the most vicious. and i wouldn't want to face me when that happens.