Monday last week I flew out to Denver to visit my friend Adara (adarascarlet ) in what was my first flight in the last ten years and my first trip to Denver, well, ever, and stayed until Saturday evening. While I'd expected to have fun, the trip really shattered my expectations and was really an incredibly good time.

For those of you who don't know this, which ( Read more... )

i'll pretend because it's the right thing to do, it's polite to be oblivious, but i know exactly what i set in motion on this night. what else could it be? i've known that eventually this would come, just like it has before, just like it always does, and i even know exactly how it will manifest this time. i guess really it's just any wonder that it ( Read more... )

Today marks the five year anniversary of the bone marrow transplant that saved my life, as well as, coincidentally, six years since I was originally diagnosed with cancer and my life fell to pieces in the first place ( Read more... )

I don't want to write about it in detail, and I damn sure don't want to discuss it, but today a girl who's both a close friend and someone who once genuinely loved me romantically told me flatly that I'd "done it to myself." There was not a shred of mercy or sympathy to be found as I threw myself before her, in tears no less, all the while ( Read more... )

I have never even thanked the man who volunteered himself to an obscure international registry at only about my age now and was one day called upon to undergo a long series of daily shots and an unpleasant medical procedure called apheresis so that he could shed peripheral blood stem cells, all to give them to a boy he didn't even know, clear on ( Read more... )

Tonight, in what I would call a rare instance, I really and truly needed someone to talk to. It didn't really matter about what; I just wanted to have a voice on the end of the line. I call this a rare instance because, over the last six years that I've been sick, I've become something of a loner. I've gradually learned to internalize most of my ( Read more... )

Since then, not much worth writing about has happened. I finally got my ducks in a line with regard to surgery, something I honestly thought would be taken care of last spring, and I'll be getting a hip replacement this Thursday. Even though my left hip is the one I've complained about in this journal and is in worse condition from my actual ( Read more... )

The wedding itself was a great time. Unfortunately, there were some planning problems with regard to transportation and timing, and three friends and myself showed up very late; we walked in just a few minutes before the end of the ceremony and missed most of it. I really wish that hadn't been the case, but it was in some ways beyond our control. ( Read more... )

The next week we went to the actual wedding, which was preceded by a rehearsal dinner, where Matt asked if I would give a toast, which I of course agreed to. He asked me about a week in advance, and I spent the better part of that week in a panic, because I'm not much for speaking from memory, and I'm even worse at it in front of a bunch of people ( Read more... )

In July, my best friend Matt got married. Our friend Kevin threw him a bachelor party, which was great. It was pretty tame, I guess, but neither Matt nor most of his friends would have wanted a "traditional" bachelor party anyway. We went to a beer garden and a ball game, after which we sat around at a park around midnight, drinking liquor and ( Read more... )