On dictatorships of the loving

Yesterday afternoon my cold took a turn for the worse, and I was stuck in bed with a fever that made my brain slow and slug-like, which sucked. Hemingway came over after work and started playing nurse/dictator to help me get better. But when I whimpered that I wanted hot chocolate, he told me "No, sugar's bad for your cold. No sugar for you," which is a fate worse than death. No sugar! What else am I supposed to live on? "But that's bullshit!" I protested. "Not even my parents have withheld sugar when I was sick. And ice-cream's cold, it must be good for fevers." "No sugar for you for the rest of the week! Now no more reading, go to sleep." and suddenly I knew what communist dictatorship must feel like.

So I pouted for a bit and decided that I'd sneak some sugar into my system while Hemingway was at work, guerrilla style, but when he came back from the store it turns out he'd bought ice-cream, chocolate and cookies, so I was placated. Also, he cooked a really nice dinner I ended up hardly eating because of the lack of appetite that always follows my colds and kept making me drink some tea-like thing with pieces of pear and honey in it for my throat. Before he left this morning he ordered me not to leave bed, which is something I can live with. I love bed. Hemingway can be a bit overbearing in the way he says things, but I really love how sweet he's being in taking care of me. Aw.

T told me today about how a friend of his has developed stage four cancer. I don't know the guy at all, yet I feel completely heartbroken. 27 year old men shouldn't die and leave a wife and a Kindergarten age kid behind. I've had people die on me before, but I can't even begin to imagine the hopelessness when the man you saw yourself growing old with is dying when life is just beginning. It's heart-wrenching, and there's absolutely nothing that can be done.



I wonder if the sadness that has rested over the apartment lately like an oppressive shadow has led me to read more sad books and watch more sad movies lately - now that I read that back, yeah, it probably has. I finished Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood for the I don't know how many-th time, and I'm just finishing up John Green's Looking For Alaska, which portrays the infinite pain of losing someone you care about in an unusually potent way. It feels just like he writes it, and in reading it you kinda feel it all over again and it hurts, like poking a bruise. It's an amazing book, but I at least needed to put it away every few chapters because of all the feels.

A lot of people may think that because I feel less visibly and, a lot of the time with less intensity, that I don't feel at all, but they're wrong. It's just that I'm far more selective about who gets the dubious honour of making me feel my insides are being pulverized and that my heart is broken, never to be fixed again.

Of course, nowhere near as heart-broken as that poor woman losing her husband. I keep coming back to that, and I keep getting struck by the unfairness of it all. See, even when I try to be melodramatic like regular people I end up changing my mind and going for a more rational approach. Shit, I can't even do proper drama right.

All other things aside though, sad stories are beautiful. I find them to be far more truthful than stories where things work out in the end. It's like my favourite relationship movie being Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - things always turn to shit. I don't know if that makes me an overly negative person or whatever, but I don't know if I necessarily think that everything falling apart sooner or later to be something all that terrible. Nothing lasts forever, and eventually we, and everything we've ever done or will ever do, will disappear too. T described his friend as being very strong, showing no weakness, and apparently seeming to accept his fate. I don't really know if it's possible to be that stoic, but I feel so much for this, to me, nameless and faceless individual, and I sincerely hope he finds some sort of peace.