sometimes i remember...not to plan things.

sometimes i remember when i was sure of what was real, when everything i knew about life was in the crook of my mother's elbow and the smell of her hair.

when i was ten months old, they told my parents that I was sick and would stay that way.

still, i was sure of what i knew until i grew and my ailments did too. i sprouted (not too tall) and grew new wings and things and then...i missed 87 days of my junior year of high school. i spent a semester of college with cancer. my friends looked at me, awkwardly.

i know hospitals and cups you pee in and how to break this radio silence of sickness with a joke.

between childhood illness and what is now my Reality, i have done things. things i know and am sure of. i have traveled, failed at skiing, made jokes, written stories, gotten hangovers, and messed up a solo in my 4th grade chorus. i have drunk-dialed. (oh, how i've drunk-dialed.)

i have been in love and packed myself in tight with friends and mistakes and memories.

none of this is linear. none of this can be predicted, for any of us. and especially for me, when my health often hangs so precariously in the balance between the Outside and the Inside; between my Bed and the Bar.

and so, because of this, i don't plan long-term. i don't plan short-term. it's not because i think i'm dying. (i'm not.) but with just a cut in my mouth, a tooth abscess--my whole body, my whole weekend could fall apart.

i have "commitment issues", with everything from drinks plans to meetings to brunches to concerts to vacations. flaky, one or many or everyone has called me.

but now, tonight-- now i am looking at calendars and thinking: i want to go away but i'm not sure, and i need to go to work, and there's this party i wanted to go to, but i just don't feel...up for it...

so.

instead of these ideas, tangents, hopes, invisible itineraries --

i'll just plan to get up tomorrow. move around. walk the streets. try to get to work.

live.

right now.