Memories, like bullets, they fired at me from a gun

Things that are true:

• Harry Potter 7 releases in less than a month and I am beyond psyched.


• Without fail, the more you anticipate something (such as a turkey and bacon melt) as wonderful, the more disappointing it'll be. Stupid soggy disgusting mess.


• Adult life requires the hanging up of several cherished youth habits - such as staying up until midnight every night - for the sole sake of your health and well-being. I think the useless zombie I turned into yesterday after a mere 3.1555 hours the night before has finally cured me of the notion that pulling all-nighters for the hell of it is functionally acceptable anymore.


• In 15 days, I will turn 23.

At first, I was going to write about how boring this birthday will be because it won't really mean anything or cross any milestones. But then I thought about how much my life has changed in the past year, and I realized something. While turning 23 won't actually mean much, it should still be celebrated for the singular fact that I almost didn't make it to this birthday.

A little over a year ago, I was in the hospital with multiple blood clots in my lungs. I've spent a lot of time mentally downplaying it to cope, but that's actually fucking frightening by itself. I spent the next month and a half of recovery battling the flu, including the much-hyped H1N1 virus, three times. For 9 months, I ingested varying amounts of rat poison every day to keep more clots from forming and made a weekly trip to the clinic so they could extract my blood. It got to the point where scar tissue built up in the crook of my right arm from having so many needles stuck into it.

Despite all of that, I didn't even remember until three days later when the one-year anniversary came around because I was too busy living.

Over the last year, I have fallen head-over-heels in love with Jack's Mannequin. I was already a huge Something Corporate fan, dating back to my early high school years. But Jack's Mannequin has managed to parallel my life during this time period in that magic way that a musician's catalog can every once in a while. I am still kicking myself for missing their show at SU a couple of years ago - inexcusable.

Their second album, The Glass Passenger, was written during/after frontman Andrew McMahon's (successful) battle with leukemia. The lyrics are rife with the fear, doubt, happiness, confusion, and myriad of other emotions that come from dealing with something as huge as fighting for your life and coming out on the other side okay. And hope.

"The Resolution" is my go-to song these days whenever I start feeling down because it reminds me why I shouldn't be: I'm alive, I survived.


(The video, apparently written/co-directed by Stephenie Meyer, is sadly too terrible to post - but here's a fantastic live acoustic version.)

The first three lines, especially, have been my mantra the past couple of months since I received the "all clear" from the pulmonologist.

And when I need to be down, or can't lift myself out of it, I have "Hammers and Strings (A Lullaby)".



To the sleepless, this is my reply: I will write you a lullaby.

Thank god for people like Andrew, who can take their amazing talent and turn a personal nightmare outward to expose it to the light so people like me can have a way to articulate and work through our own nightmares - to cope. Or, at the very least, feel comforted knowing someone else has been there.

I mostly feel like my experience last year wasn't as big of a deal as it might sound. After all, I didn't really feel sick - if it wasn't for strange, recurrent chest pain I never would've gone to the ER because I honestly just thought I was dealing with a minor chest infection. I felt slow and stupid having to take the medical transport to class, and foolish asking for extensions on my work. What I went through certainly was no lukemia treatment.

But it was something that has majorly effected the way I approach life (and death, to some extent). I still fear the unknown that might lurk around the next corner - what time bomb might currently reside in my body, waiting to explode when I least expect it? But for the most part, those fears are quelled daily by the one short, beautiful life I have to live. I'm certainly going to try and live it as well and as much as I possibly can.

I swim for brighter days despite the absence of sun...