Remember The Red Silk Dress

Meh, good and bad this week, although it's certainly been packed full of stuff - enough that I haven't even managed to read my watched list, let alone comment or make new posts in here.

My bubba's (in case you're wondering, that's my brother) been back in the hospital again this week, for the fourth (I think) time since the summer. We thought it was another bad colitis outbreak, but yesterday they rushed him into surgery and whipped his appendix out. Oddly enough, he got sent home today. Good old English hospitals. *rolls eyes* With any luck I'll get to see him tomorrow.

Ugh, I know how self-centered this sounds (so you don't need to tell me, LOL ) but dealing with stuff like this is sooooo the last thing I need right now. Mom freaks out every time Tony gets sick, and I understand why, but it doesn't make it any easier to cope with. I'm just not the kind of person who can give constant reassurances to her. I deal with my worries by finding out as much as possible about them, by educating myself and figuring out the likelihood of any possible outcome, and when all my research says that the probability of a problem - whether health-related or not - being life-threatening is minute, then I stop worrying. Well, okay, I only worry a tiny bit. But Mom...I dunno, it's hard to explain. Logic doesn't comfort her. Research doesn't comfort her. I don't know what DOES comfort her in times like this, and she can't tell me, and because I don't know I can't provide whatever it is she needs. She was like this when I was raped - *I* was the one who was in trouble, and I had to spend most of my energy on holding her hand and making sure she was OK, and telling her that I was fine. It's not the same now, because it's Tony who's the one in trouble, so the fact that I have to tend to Mom's emotions doesn't strike up quite the same resentment in me as it did back then, but it's still hard to admit to myself that I have absolutely no idea of how to make her feel better.

I'm trying to be sympathetic, because I can see and feel how hard it is for her. I don't have children, at least not in this world, and therefore I can't understand how it feels when you're scared for them. I DO know, from talking to people, that when you're a parent it's far worse for you when something happens to your kid than when it happens to yourself, but as I can't experience this I can't entirely understand it.

Meh, what can I say. Sympathy doesn't come naturally to me, at least when it comes to my family. Empathy, yes, but not the whole comforting thing. For someone who considers herself a nurturer, I fail dismally when it comes to my family members.

Hmm, other news. I've been more-or-less sticking to my diet, and I went to the gym today and Monday, but I'm seeing no results from the dieting yet. This could be because it's not working, or it could be that PMS is playing a hand. I'm very pissed off about this, because I don't get my monthlies anymore, since I had the implant put in (which unfortunately needs to come out in the coming Spring; it's only licensed as a contraceptive for five years and it'll be five years in April) and aside from a couple hormonal mood swings - nothing compared to what I used to get - I only get the PMS symptoms (achy breasts, pain in my ovary and uterine and kidney areas etc) two or three times a year. And they usually last a couple days, instead of the couple months that they lasted pre-implant. But this appears to be one of those times, and it's annoying me. Plus, I think I'm getting a cold.

If it develops into a proper cold it'll drive me nuts, but if I could keep it at this level of coldishness I would, because when I'm just a little bit sick I feel better, as fucked-up as that sounds. I have an auto-immune disorder - my immune system recognizes normal cells as foreign tissue, and tries to kill them off, and it especially affects my nervous system - so when my immune system is otherwise occupied trying to fight ACTUAL foreign stuff e.g. viruses, it lets up a bit on the rest of my body. Although afterwards, I feel like hell for a month or so, until it stops overreacting.

What else happened this week? Ohhh...the red dress. I managed to get a red silk dress from Hobbs, that I'd been eyeing up for a couple months and never thought I'd get into, and I got it for £30 (instead of a probable £150-200) because it was missing two buttons and had a couple stitches that had pulled loose. Easy to fix, and it's a lovely dress - it's knee-length, with an unusual neckline that I don't quite know the name of, and a tiny keyhole cut-out (just enough to be sexy without being immodest) and a flared skirt, and when I've lost the inch or so I need to lose from my bust, I'll look fairly yummy in it. Here's hoping that with diet, exercise and a minimizer bra, I can get into it for any Christmas parties.

The Light of my Life, the one who married a girl in the summer and broke my poor vulnerable heart, is back in my life. When he got married, he told me to stay out of his life if I couldn't support him. I couldn't, so I stayed out. I don't know if it's a good thing or not that he's back - how many times can love be torn apart and then put back together again? Evidently many times, at least with him and me. Our friendship has survived many girlfriends for him, a couple of boyfriends for me, the attempted suicide of a mutual friend that he was dating (who I still see; he doesn't approve but generally keeps his mouth shut), him sleeping with one of my closest friends, me getting raped, me losing my memory, him believing I'd had a lesbian affair with aforementioned close friend, sleeping together and getting treated horribly afterwards (I thought it was because he regretted it, it was actually because he was jealous of another guy I'd dated a couple times, and thought that I just slept with him for shits and giggles), a boyfriend of mine who turned into a stalker, and our various respective neuroses, of which we have quite a few. Surprisingly enough, even with this disgustingly long list of things that have gone wrong for us, our relationship isn't generally tempestuous - most of the time we move along on a fairly even keel, it's just that when something goes wrong it goes REALLY wrong.

So there's that stupid, poisonous little hope, that this time it might actually work out between us now. I can't explain what I feel for him, exactly - I love him passionately, but mostly like a friend rather than a lover. Yet when he gets seriously involved with someone, it hurts. For better or for worse, I cannot imagine myself marrying anyone but him. Every time he gets involved with another girl I'm crushed, and eventually inflate myself again and come to terms with it, and manage to stay friends with him, and I think that I'm over him and that I'm not going to fall for him again - and then he splits up with the girl, and I fall. Normally I'd tell someone that if they can't work it out with someone, to cut their losses and move on. If something doesn't work the first time, or the second, let alone any times after that, why would it work now? But with him and me, I honestly don't believe that it was our relationship that was the faulty thing - it was the rest of the world, plus really lousy timing.

Instinct, and the Ancestors' gifts, tell me that he is the one I'm supposed to spend my life with. I've been told that since the first conversation we ever had, back when he was sixteen and I was seventeen. In dreams and visions, I've seen our whole lives together. Yet I don't know how much of this is reasonable, and how much is me hanging onto an outdated fantasy.

You can all tell me what an idiot I am, if you like. Maybe if I hear it enough, it'll sink in and I won't keep doing it.

But damn. The spirits of our children have been talking to me for as long as he has, and when he got married I thought that was it - but I still couldn't silence their voices, I could only quiet them down a bit. And now they're as loud and frequent as ever.

Mleah.

So yeah, that was my week. Or the vital stuff, anyway - the rest was just hack work, although plenty of it. I'm hoping that the next couple weeks won't be so packed, so I can get back to posting and reading, but I'm not holding my breath.