PlazaJen: Passion Knit

* We still don't have a diagnosis. It's unsettling, we were first delayed from Monday to Tuesday, then on Tuesday to Thursday. It's a little like someone you don't know juggling with your soul & the souls of those you love, waiting breathless and praying they don't drop them. It's a lot like sucking.

* I am perfecting the click of my eyes into the 1,000-yard-stare. Sometimes I look right through people.

* My most common reaction to things that would ordinarily send me screeching (and blogging) is succinctly captured in the form of two lines from an Eminem song:

Screaming "I don't give a fuck!"
with his windows down and his system up

Because, in fact, I don't give a fuck if the spot ran wrong or you want a schedule to start on Monday or you need a plan. My father has cancer. He told me yesterday it's Stage IV. But that it didn't mean anything, it only meant it's in more than one place. Well, there's no Stage V, no matter where you google. So. How do you know it's Stage IV without a diagnosis of what the cancer is? Does this give you a glimpse of what the hamster wheel in my head looks like, the one I climb on and run at least every five minutes, the one I can't shut off at night unless I take something to sleep? The one that spins the tears and the hope and the futility and the helplessness? The hamster wheel I cannot leave, until I have more information, I cannot separate it from my head or my heart, I cannot turn it off, I cannot let go because it is sometimes the only thing that keeps me going, when I want to collapse in a heap, when I want the one person who could fix everything when I was a kid to give me answers he doesn't have.

* Do the right thing. This has been a common theme on the hamster wheel. To go home now, to wait. To respect my father's needs & wishes, to care for my own as well. (He is already exhausted by the people & family there non-stop streaming into his home & through the phone.) None of these can truly be answered until we know what we're dealing with. I know my presence would be a drain, it would also be a benefit. Being the only child is an enormous trump card that bears great responsibility and great wagering. The only thing I've done is start to knit him a pair of socks.

*Breakdowns are becoming a daily way of life. A junior AE tried to set up an interview for our department intern & called me on the phone to see if I would be available. I burst into tears. This is my new way of telling people what is going on, it seems to be working. At least it's effectively communicating "GIRL IS CRAZY". Which in the end, is what I want to leave people with. Ayup.

That's all I've got. It's an effective snapshot of pretty much every ten minutes in my head. If only my hamster wheel were a good fat-burning device, instead of a crazy-sobbing hope-despair track to nowhere. I'm getting there fast, that's for sure.