Panic

I don't even remeber if I used this title once before in this blog or not, but I am absoluetly overwhelmed and brimming with emotion, fear, sadness ... you name it, I'm feeling it, and all at once. And nothing can get me out of it right now, not work or sport or sex or food or a cigarette, nothing. I don't know why this is happening. It's not the hormonal thing cos I am not PMSing, it's something beyond, an accumulation of the past months, years maybe, that is threatening to break through the dam.

I slept OK, I was in this mood last night too after writing here and rushing out to meet E., my former teacher. We had a very hasty dinner, because I was supposed to meet two other people for The Devil Wears Prada. Even the movie, which couldn't have been any lighter and giddier, only reinforced my uncertainties, my fears. The horrors of a workplace, the dependency on the whims of egomanical superiors. But I am not just afraid for myself for a change, but for everything and everyone, the whole world really. E. was prepping for a job interview this morning, she is semi-employed and being hassled by the authorities, who, in a typical way of beaurocrats everywhere, make unreasonable demands in the style of the American Work for Welfare program and the like. At least she is able to get benefits, something I won't be entitled to if I want to stay here and am out of a job, because my job is not "quite" a real job. E. knows that I am sick, since I was forced to miss a few of her classes, but she doesn't know what it is that I have, only that it's serious, and that I'm worried, and that I am here partially for the healthcare, and that my social security/NHS back home won't last as long as my contract here. I mean, this was not the reason I came to the NL, it was just a stop en route for me, but I happened to be diagnosed while staying here and I thank my lucky stars for that sometimes. Anyhoo, we had this whole depressing discussion while I dug into a steaming bowl of Japanese noodles, and then I rushed to the cinema. The two girls that I met there, L., one of them works at my hospital, in the Health Psych Dept., which my doctors and also T. the social worker have contacted ages ago on my behalf, but which I haven't heard from yet. Since L. is xxxese, I got into this whole paranoia that she would come across my name on file and know what exactly it is that I have, and with her being raised where and how she was raised would flip out completely, and maybe even spread the word. Now, I know this is paranoia, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. How she would react when she realizes that a poz has been kissing her cheeks and digging into her popcorn. At the same time I was thinking about my response on the Ynet HIV forum to some poor girl who "wants her beauty back" because AZT has taken it away, and all the horror of that, especially for a woman (but also for a man, it's just that this hits closer to home). Then gossipy (but nice) R., the other girl who was with us, started questioning me about a collegue, which I happen to deeply dislike but that is completely besides the point, who has been recently hospitalized , asking me what exactly it is that she's got. It just seemed so nosy and insensitive, and I couldn't determine whether she didn't believe that this person's affliction was real, or whether she was just curious to see what it was, but in the same awful way that we look at car crushes, without enough compassion, just with that "phew" feeling, as though the fact that some poor sod has crushed exempts us (while we ourselves are in a car as we look!). Later, at P.'s place, I already knew I should discuss my going-or-not to Asia* with him, but I didn't think around midnight on a workday was a good time, so I booked him for the weekend, but I was still so flustered. He knew something was going on with me obviously, I have the kind of face that just doesn't hide emotion, but we let it go and went to bed (we have been sleeping together the whole week, which is atypical, since usually we do that only on weekends. The main reason is that I found some indescripebly horrid worm/centipede thing that must've crawled out of the drain on the edge of my sink, among my facecreams and toothbrush, and even though I washed it into the drain and then through some fueming hissing anti-blockage acid granules after it, I am mortified that something similar would reappear; I am not a phobic, I mean, I don't like cockroaches but I can handle them, but this was something I have never come across, and there it was in my bathroom sink!!!!). This morning we woke up after a relatively quiet night for both of us (we are getting better at sleeping together as we become more acclimatized to sharing a bed), although, like every night this week, it was suffused with strange lifelike and symbolic nightmares/dreams. P. always watches CNN while he has breakfast, and usually I don't join him, but today I did, and in the course of 10 minutes or so, saw how by 2050 there won't be anymore fish in the oceans, refugees in Sudan, the usual images of Israel and the Gaza strip, some area in Iraq that looked like a bit of Mars controlled by black uniformed militias and some other things I may be fogetting. I was stunned (by this time P. had already left and I was alone). I was like someone who came off a desret island, or some peaceful serene place, to find out how complicated and vicious and dangerous and hopeless the world is, and me, a tiny particle in it, awash on the waves made by decision makers that influence my life, my health, my happiness, my future, my loved ones, just as these poor souls in Sudan huddle under makeshift shelters in the dust storm, only of course a billion times better off and luckier, but still completely, utterly left to the whims of the universe and mankind. Especially mankind... but also the universe, which has allowed this virus to mutate, I don't particularly trust and the moment.

And all this blabber to write what I could have in a line: I am shit scared, from and for everything.