Some warm things from the past month
Hellooooo, we’re beginning this fine week with some fresh headache to go!
Edit: decreased after a coffee. Hmph.
Still cannot read about Danish or look at pictures from his funeral without my chest aching.
Also have discovered another breast tumour that will most likely — given my age — be benign like the others before. And a discoloured lesion-ish thing. It’s all such a bother: the minute I get off bed rest and can walk again, I’ll have to find an oncologist. I also have to see someone about my glaucoma. Then get a brain CT. A Pap smear. Find a new psychiatrist. This has been a wretched time, health-wise. Just terrible.
On the plus side, since my computer died (rip, she lasted for four years), I’m getting a Mac Pro. Finally.
Oh, also. I continue to dream about running into M and talking to him. I cannot. I just cannot. I’m very tired and in a lot of perpetual pain and I. Can. Not.
More vivid nightmares last night. I woke up early too afraid to fall back asleep. Also, I need to see a neurologist about having lost sensation in one of my fingers in the right hand (the little one!); nerve compression in the lumbar region — as in my case — should not be reaching the hands, so idk at all what this new drama is about. It could just be my neuropathy manifesting itself in fun and exciting ways.
I’ve had no alcohol in the (little over) one month that I’ve been back in India!
Might fuck around and take too many SNRIs and sleep for three days.
Morning update: I did not have to. The usual sedation from the usual medication knocked me out well enough.
Also have discovered another breast tumour that will most likely — given my age — be benign like the others before. And a discoloured lesion-ish thing. It’s all such a bother: the minute I get off bed rest and can walk again, I’ll have to find an oncologist. I also have to see someone about my glaucoma. Then get a brain CT. A Pap smear. Find a new psychiatrist. This has been a wretched time, health-wise. Just terrible.
On the plus side, since my computer died (rip, she lasted for four years), I’m getting a Mac Pro. Finally.
Oh, also. I continue to dream about running into M and talking to him. I cannot. I just cannot. I’m very tired and in a lot of perpetual pain and I. Can. Not.
I’ve recently had some absolutely delightful phone conversations with a senior from undergrad, Siddhartha, who was low-key instrumental in getting me interested in making pictures; he headed (and I think also started?) the photography club in the college back then. He’s a physicist now and works on things that sound very interesting to me — fluid dynamics and such — and has also recently moved back to India.
It’s nice to see what people get up to.
Reports of Danish Siddiqui being killed while on assignment. Some deaths just knock the wind out my lungs.
I keep looking at his Twitter feed and crying on and off. I don’t understand my response — what about this makes it so hard? I’ve worked in the field, I’ve spoken to refugees, families that have lost children to custodial murders, women who have been gang raped; I’ve written reports and taken their pictures. So I thought I wasn’t soft. But apparently, I am? I don’t know how to handle grief at all. I’m so broken over this.
Reports of Danish Siddiqui being killed while on assignment. Some deaths just knock the wind out my lungs.
Confirmed, as we feared. I spiralled quite badly today. I don’t respond well to news of death at all (who does?). B and everyone else in the newsroom must have been hit hard by this as well. A realisation from today: even though I’ve officially moved away from journalism, I identify deeply with the fraternity. This is why this hit particularly hard. Danish was a gem. A once-in-a-generation photographer. To imagine this loss makes me feel a kind of grief I can’t and don’t want to understand or verbalise.
An extension of today’s realisation: I wish I didn’t have to identify as this or that. Danish went from economics to journalism. I went the other way. I trained and worked as a journalist for years. At what point did i stop being one? Was it a conscious uncoupling? And how can I begin again? I want to begin again.
Reports of Danish Siddiqui being killed while on assignment. Some deaths just knock the wind out my lungs.
In other news, my computer is acting up again and I might need an upgrade soon. :(
Idly planning to turn the second bedroom in my apartment into a studio of some kind. There’s a lot of colour and material ideas that have been stewing in my brain for the last few months. But we’ll see if that leads to something.
Also, also, I hobbled around fixing things around the house today! I think it’s beginning to come together quite nicely and looks cute. I’m going to fill this house with so! much! art! :)
It feels like I’m on track for what I wanted: I’ve left the transient student life. I have a larger apartment now and the funds to furnish it how I like. My bedroom is warm, full of yellows with blue accents (one of my favourite colour combinations!); the art here is vintage botanical illustrations only — I’m obsessed with plants so no surprises here. Warm pools of light. Soft fabrics. The living/study space is almost fully open on one side with a large glass door leading to a balcony. This space has a bunch of blue too: robins egg cotton curtains, a dark blue couch. Here: a motley, eclectic collection of abstract art. I’ve never studied art history and I only have my sense of colour and structure to guide me. My current obsessions include Rauschenberg and Kandinsky for their particular kind of visual abstraction that very much appeals to my strange brain. Also some beautiful vintage Tate exhibition posters as a nod to some of my happiest times in London — a large A3 sized Hockney that goes well with my blue couch, and a series of Picasso exhibition invites in front of my work desk. I’m liking what I have so far, and I know that I want to rotate and get new art once or twice in a year.
I also have a corner with vintage “Visit India” postcards — I have always loved these so much. The watercolour art on them is phenomenal and the muted colours evoke delicious nostalgia for the magazines of my childhood. As always, everything is a mishmash. I don’t know what’s supposed to go with what, but I do know which colours make me happy. What shapes speak to me. I just want to be surrounded by beautiful things and I’m happy to be getting there.
This has been the worst day. I’ve been prodded and poked and scanned. In such terrible pain that I felt I could die. I can’t walk. I can’t even sit up. My mother refuses to talk to me to punish me. My entire being aches with heartbreak. I think my depression is getting worse. I’m so tired. Of this body. Of life. Of being in hospitals. I can’t stop crying. I’m so, so, so fucking sad.
There’s really no treatment for disc compression and so this will continue for the rest of my life; I’m supposed to make do with painkillers and periodic bedrest. Another event: after a full week of antibiotics, somehow my inner ear infection seems to be back? Also some kind of UTI? Now I’ll have to throw new l antibiotics into the mix or step up the dosage of my old meds — and who knows what that’ll do to my organs. I’m already being injected with shitloads of IV painkillers.
I just want to get back to my regular life. Why is that always so hard for me?
Thursday update: UTI thingy fixed. Ear infection’s kinda okay but still hurts occasionally? Idk what’s up with that. Anyway, I’m out of the hospital — still can’t walk much or anything, but if I am to be bed-bound, it’s nice to be in my own. Also, for mystery reasons, I have a migraine today. My patience is wearing so thin…
Friday update: Ear infection’s back in full force. New antibiotics will need to happen. Migraine continues unabated; terrible nausea — but I can’t throw up because it requires a level of flexibility my back does not yet have. But I can walk a little more than before and B’s around, which is a massive help. Nothing else to do at this point but rest and read in bed and wait and wait and wait.
Wednesday update (hopefully, the last one for this thread): UTI thing receded then flared up and is finally under control. I beat back the ear infection again. Looks like my immunity is not doing very well right now, but she’s trying. I can walk a little more than before and am aiming for more mobility by next week.