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It is the end of February. I am 28. I am not 22, the age I was when I started this blog. A few weeks ago, I was surprised to see I net more web traffic than ever before. I post here rarely; I'm not sure what to say that hasn't been said. Who am I now that I wasn't 6 years ago?

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Scar tissue.

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There's been organs lost and battles waged on the inside. There's a decline in health and a rise in self-awareness. I drink less. I do less. I swim more. I travel more. I dive headfirst into either everything or nothing.

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This week I slept three straight days. My Jawbone UP band told me I took 324 steps yesterday. I think that was to the bathroom and back into bed. How pathetic! I write these updates and I look back and some of them are so similiar; I feel powerless, I try, I fail, I whine.

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Movement.

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On February 8th, I moved into an apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I haven't lived in the city since July 31, 2011. Nearly three years have passed since I called NY home. When I lived in California, I was certain I'd never go back to New York City. There was so much air in California. I had my Lost Days, the days where I slept, but it was with the windows open and the sunlight streaming in, fierce. It was beautiful and it was lonely and it was hard.

I had to make myself do things. I had to make friends.

Moving back to New York...that first week reminded me of moving to LA. I have plenty of friends in New York, but I hadn't connected with them, really connected with them, in some time. You can't just go back. Things have changed. People have changed. In New York, everything changes, and the city forgets you.

You forget the city too. You walk West when you mean to walk East. You transfer subway lines and end up going the wrong way. You learn about new ways to travel, a ferry that goes right across the East River...perhaps these things had existed in the 7 years I spent in New York, but I'm relearning them.

I'm relearning my friends, and my relationship to this town. I had a good first week back.

And then Claire visited, and I stayed with her and my new pal Aidan, and we had a great long weekend, snowed in on the Upper West Side.

My friends threw me a birthday toast, and I took the train home on the 17th to NJ to see my family.

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I've been home in NJ for 10 days now, almost half of the month. I spent half of the month in NJ, napping with Sadie, napping with the dog...napping.

My friends and I spent last weekend in the Poconos, swilling cheap beer and shopping at Wal-Mart.

That's a lot of money to waste on not being somewhere, and I've come up with a thousand reasons I haven't gone back.

But mostly, it's hard to reintegrate. It's hard to admit that! And I have been so tired. Sleeping, managing an out-of-control diabetes, bronchitis, and mouth ulcers. I have been sick and I have wanted the comforts of my bed in NJ, my parents 100 feet across the yard, the dog asleep at my feet.

Maybe most people want the comforts of home. Maybe I'm not cutting myself a break. Maybe I don't push myself enough.

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Tomorrow I'm getting on a train and going back. I feel a little bit better. The sores have receded and the cold and diabetes...well, I reckon they'll stay for sometime. I've made plans for the weekend and next week.

If I need to go home to NJ, I will.

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There are different parts of me, and they all want different things. My brain wants my body to get its' shit together, and my body so does not want to do that. It's all "fuck you, brain." Stupid body.

And my heart. My heart belongs in two places, maybe three. And I'm strung out, hoping to touch them all. But I'll try. I'll run headfirst into this adventure, this year of 28.

What else is there to do?

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Thanks for reading along the way.

kb

Dig In

A Day in the Year of Healing

I have been coughing all night. Before I slept, I texted Ashley to see what drugs I could mix with NyQuil. It turns out, not many. My ribs hurt and my body cracked and creaked. I'd slept all weekend, like my body was shoring up energy for the storm that is coming, the storm that sends out signals in between waves of coughs. Cough, tremble, inhale.

I slept for a good ten hours Sunday night, despite waking up at 4pm. I woke up and the dog was wild, licking my face, begging to go out and for food. I tried to ignore her and my bladder; here, I was unsuccessful. I fed her the banana I've been meaning to eat. Still, we were up early. Dogs are exhausting, and I don't even do all the stuff. 

My mom came back with Sadie in tow. I hadn't seen her in 12 days and she was happy to see me, though she grew happier with me as the day wore on. For lunch, I fed her broccoli and pasta and artichokes and spinach. She ate so much broccoli that I started humming a tune. Broccoli monster, Broccoli MONSTER!! I sang it at her and she started laughing. So hard I was worried she choke. Broccoli monster! I tried to take a video but she shakes her head at my camera now. She's 16 months old and she's starting to really interact. She listens to directions and brings me what I ask. She loves to play basketball, feed her baby doll Max, and climb up the stairs. Every age, I think it's the best. I'd like to capture her here for a little while, but she's already toddling off, leaving me behind in Gymboree class, in search of big kids and whatever toys they've got.

In between all the moments, I could not help but think of my friend Lauren. Her dad died yesterday. Her family has suffered two deaths in 14 months. A family of four, whittled down to two. You never want to believe that life is that precious, that fragile. We say it all the time: YOLO, hold on to this moment, live here now, but I know I often refuse to accept the fact that my family won't be whole forever. And it devastates me to see it happen to a family I love and care for. The whole thing reeks of unfairness, except isn't it just what life is? We live and then we die. But to lose a daughter and spouse in 14 months is still, still unfathomable. 

Sadie was wiped after Gymboree and Target and went down easy. Boom, lights out. I came up to the apartment to sleep but found I could not. There is so much I am failing at. I'm not taking it one day at a time. I'm not eating the fucking bone soup! I'm walking but not as long as I should. I'm getting up but only some days, the rest are spent asleep.

I'm trying to look at the big picture. It looks beautiful. Full of adventure and extra pages in a passport. It looks so full. I'm not tired, I'm not sick. Everything is a little bit easier. But I'm not entirely on my way there, no matter what I say. I keep thinking: I'll do better later, later. But later is stupid. Later is not now. Later will come and I will be here, the same. 

And I don't want that. I know life is this precious, this fleeting, this fragile. It's fast. It's toddling away from me.

What I guess I am saying is this:

It's time to dig in.

New piece on Thought Catalog

The cracks in my ceiling are a mountain range, but I’m not sure which one. The dust above is fog, crawling in to obscure the view of stars, made of smaller cracks in the plaster. The smoke detector is just some random UFO, nothing to worry about, nothing to be alarmed about.

On the days I call myself a writer, I invent stories. And like the world living above my bed, I memorize them, add to them, edit them and invest in them. But the dusty world above me has been my greatest material these days, as I fight anxiety when I long to sleep.

Link here: http://thoughtcatalog.com/2013/waiting-for-a-disability-check-watching-the-cracks-in-my-ceiling-grow/