It's been almost 2 months since I traveled to Colorado and Las Vegas. But in 8 days I head to Friday Harbor off the coast of Washington.

This lupus flare has had me back at home in NJ for almost a year now. I worry that I'm regressing, watching my friends bolt forward while I remain stationary.

I don't think I'd survive if I couldn't travel and write. They're the only way to get out of my head, and my body out of my bed.

One week, one week and I'm in the air again.

Location:Flight

National Magnetic Poetry Month Continues: God Edition

I wrote another "poem" at 5am, you know, because drinking a Monster energy drink last night was a good idea.

This one's a little God themed, but let it be known how I don't plot these, think about them, or even have an idea about what I am going to shove together on a magnetic surface until I sit in front of my sad, 20 year old mini-fridge. So maybe it's about God. Or maybe it's not.

Who knows? It's just magnetic poetry, yo!

Text as I'd have done it:

Some life
never needing
your coffee dark
or the
sky blue

It is almost
like asking
to laugh
to explore
to want
would poison
your sacred
vision of the
after world.

You are steel.

But you
must bleed.

For to be
healed
is to
trust
God.

and you must
embrace this
wild, broken, brilliant
present.

National Poetry Month

UPDATE: I'm free from the hospital. Thanks for the good wishes. Carry on.

It’s still National Poetry Month, or I have renamed it: National Magnetic Poetry Month Using the Geek-Themed Set I found at Target for a Dollar in College.

This was my attempt at romance but ended in a ode to food, as most poems do.

This here below would've been the actual text if I'd had more prepositions/control of my brain.

(I'm in the hospital because lupus may be attacking the old noggin.)

Anyway, here it is:

NACHOS: A LOVE STORY

Stun my

cloudy brain!

Boost me up!

Set fire

to this

native world!

But protect our love.

So we can be

content in this,

our new planet.

With you,

there is joy

and

love

and

nachos.

National Poetry Month

It's National Magnetic Poetry month!

Or just National Poetry Month.

Here's my contribution. If you can't read it, I'M SORRY. I sat on the kitchen floor during my insomnia (still haven't slept yet, hi drugs)...so here's the text. I really missed having more words but I only have the "Geek" version of Magnetic poetry that I bought at Target for a dollar.

I'm a pretty serious poet, guys.

Here's the text as I would have liked it:

If you need
to get out
of this world

Do it.
Battle evil,
live in action,
and write about the war.

But then, will you
please come home to me?

For I, too, am fire.

And together,
we are
love
light
and joy.

New Huffington Post Blog

Read here!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-bergin/chronic-pain-and-pep-talk_b_3047579.html

Happy Birthday, Dad!

After my mom, sister and I take a walk, the baby naps in the Pack and Play upstairs in my sister’s childhood bedroom. I sneak away into my apartment over the garage. My sister is on the phone with her fiancee.

I kick and roll and beat on the comforter, I whine and moan and scream no no no. I pour Vaseline into my nose, my mouth, the Anbesol a coat for one gust at a time. I see there’s no choice: the roof my mouth pulsates so I take a Diaulidid. The sores in my mouth and nose bleed, bleed, bleed. They wrecked my pillow in Vegas the other night. I am so exhausted.

My mom texts to tell me it’s time to come back because we are eating for my father’s birthday. I cannot and do not eat but I sit at the table (I have always been made to for which I am glad.) Sadie cries. I pick her up and bring her downstairs, careful to walk slowly, careful not to fall.

We eat dinner and my father is happy, my parents back together, always in love (they have never stopped; there was just so much more than love). My mom is not drinking. I am slightly under the haze of the drugs.

We FaceTime my brother and tell my dad we bought a new canoe for the lake. My sister presents the flourless chocolate cake. I burst into tears accidentally because a piece of my dry lip falls off as I brushed my hand to my face. I get it together. We cheers. We sing. We adapt and adjust like we always have.

The baby is 6 months old and she waves and I love her, and them, and the way we could be perfect, even though I am always broken, I am always making them wish I could be okay.

This is how we have always been, me the oldest, the younger ones knowing how to handle my sickness. They are the closest thing to understanding it without having it. They are family. The best family. They are love.

First Descents

I'm in a bed in a lodge near Vail, Colorado. Next to me sleeps one of my fellow campers from First Descents (FD).

There were about 15 of us on that trip I took to the Outer Banks in June. We learned to surf. Our ages ranged from 21-38. There were more girls than boys. We kayaked and swam and at night played games and eventually we could talk about cancer, how it had ruined and invigorated us, how we were trying to live our new lives as survivors and patients. How to raise children and buy houses and live like our life expectancy hadn't been trimmed the day we were diagnosed.

We had an amazing week. It was special; we all felt it. A few months later, the organization (which is quite large and ran 50+ kayaking, surfing and climbing camps last year) announced our camp had won the Golden Paddle Award. Usually awarded to the highest individual fundraiser, our camp was the first collective recipient. First Descents believed we embodied the spirit, the connection and the dedication to the organization.

The award will be given out tomorrow night at the annual FD Gala. I've been tapped to accept the award on stage and ask the partygoers to remember Hardcore, our beautiful friend and fellow camper who died last week. I will also ask the gala to stop for a moment and remember the campers who have died from cancer.

Tonight, as we drove home from an FD-sponsored happy hour, I felt sunk, instead of buoyed by my fellow FD-ers who had been able to make the trip.

Although we text every day, physically witnessing friends who have become so close to me struggle in pain is awful, heart-wrenching and nauseating; I now have an inkling of how my friends and family have felt watching me. Knowing that some of these friends I've made will succumb to cancer before me guts me as well. These are people who I have known 10 months yet am closer with than friends i've had for years, for the simple reason that they understand. Simply, very simply: they have been there, and they understand.

When I met my friends at the gate in Denver today, we immediately started up laughing and joking, discussing painkillers and poop, and tearing up over the loss of Hardcore.

This community has changed me. It has changed my life and the lives of others for the better. And it has taught me loss. It will keep teaching me loss.

Tonight, as I looked around at sick friends at the bar, I cursed this fucking disease. And I remembered life isn't about big moments; it's about these connections and the hope they give us. It's about the small moments of love and connection that become so large when you look back on your life.

And that's what I'll say tomorrow night as I accept the award on behalf of my camp. FD is hope. FD is power. FD is love.