my needs have changed too

 october 9, 2023

for noah's birthday, i got him dinner and a 6-pack of southern tier double IPA. he said today at work, he realized that his birthdate is today. so he had no idea why i was telling him happy birthday, and bringing him home a 6-pack of beer until today, when he realized i was simply celebrating his birthday the sunday before he had to return to work, and since i had the evening off to enjoy. there are only 5 days until my own birthday, and i don't have the same buzz about me i normally do, but i think it's because i'm still recovering from my travels!

my vacation in croatia was definitely more about showing up for my mother than enjoyment and relaxation. but i'm not going to deny how beautiful and wonderful the trip was either. i thought about how i was telling everyone all of the challenges i faced rather than focusing on the good points of the trip, but i guess that goes back to my valuing being truthful, and being able to acknowledge the good parts in spite of the setbacks to having fun. 

being sick in a foreign place was not as difficult with access to so many modern amenities. it was only a bit more rough since i was bobbing along in the ocean, without access to the familiar comforts and luxuries of my own bedroom.

when i returned home, i had a refreshed sense of gratitude for my homespace. so much that i didn't mind returning to noah's own idiosyncrasies, comparable to fAe's--boys are stinky and gross left to their own devices, especially if they aren't concerned with impressing anyone. lol. i love them both. cohabitation is tricky no matter the locale.

it was terrifying having an allergic reaction to a medication i had never taken while i was thousands of feet over the atlantic. my hands cramped up and locked into place, while tingling. every time i closed my eyes, i felt a wave of dizziness immediately followed by nausea. it was a separate kind of nausea that just the plain old plane would have caused. and with my hands crippled, it was more difficult to hold the puke bag, which i eventually managed to get several of so that i didn't have to ask each time i was going to be sick. vomiting on a plane wasn't great. but with fAe assuring me it was an allergic reaction, and that my body would acclimate, i was able to recognize it would pass. i did remove the patch later, so that i could just try regular dramamine. the gelcaps i had of it worked fine the last two shorter flights of our journey to dubrovnik, and i was grateful to be done with vomiting. 

once on the boat, i realized quickly that the motion when we were rocking more did make my stomach sick, so i was glad we had purchased more dramamine from the pharmacy down the block from our hotel. fAe was brave enough to wander the streets alone in dubrovnik, after i was in my pajamas and determined to rest for the evening. fAe had some cigarettes and beer out on the veranda where a small metal table and chairs sat. he had picked them up in his venture to procure me some food, after i'd reached a level of hanger that was just defeat and tiredness. and i enjoyed the comfort of a clean bed with netflix and access to my own bathroom. 

i was devastated when we went to eat dinner on mjet, when i realized the tickle in my throat was not just a response to the croatian air conditioning, but was actually a cold coming on hard. i was thankful my traveling companions all had remedies for me to try and keep the issue from becoming too severe. but a day after being in bed all day, shoving zycam swabs up my nose and putting another homeopathic remedy under my tongue, i could feel the mucus traveling upward and outward in my head. the way a sinus infection felt before it got really uncomfortable. i told my mom, and she donated her script of antibiotic. thank goodness for mothers!

the medication helped alleviate the worst of the symptoms, but i was still congested as fuck. i couldn't speak well. i couldn't sing. i didn't have energy, and when i did try to enjoy my mother's wedding day with the passengers who were all celebrating, i only felt worse afterward. i'm sure the single serving of champagne didn't help!

so my poor body just had to struggle the whole time trying to recover for the blows it took on the way over--picking up the cold that noah had, and then also puking for 4 hours of the flight-time, and losing out on meals for over 12 hours because of nausea. i wasn't able to set myself up for success, but it isn't lost on me how lucky i am not to have caught anything in addition to what i had! my immune system took a blow, but i still didn't catch what the guy next to me on the flight home had, hallelujah. and i didn't catch anything from all the spaces i was at airports and on flights without a mask, which i learned i could not wear with the motion sickness happening. i thanked my body more than once while i was traveling. how sturdy. how well it handled everything foreign happening to it. 

and i got to immerse it in the salty waters of the adriatic sea off the cost of croatia, a land populated by the same people who had been there for so many centuries, having endured its share of ruling powers who invaded and took over. the country had just joined the european union in january, and was experiencing a degree of inflation after switching to the euro. there were money exchange kiosks all over the city of split, where we stayed a few days after disembarking from the almissa. 

i realized the chaos of traveling to a different town each day was too much for me to process anyway. even if i had been well, i would've ended up cranky from going nonstop. i was grateful for the ways being sick forced me to slow down and consider my spoons. swimming at each of the swimstops where i was able to also helped my body to get the movement it craved, and our host did mention the waters were said to have a healing quality. 

our host, it turned out, has family in pittsburgh, which i thought was a great reminder of what a small world it is. turns out pittsburgh has the highest concentration of croatians in the world! who knew? they're certainly a good looking people. all shapes and sizes, but i saw a lot of lean folks with beautiful dark hair and olive skin. very similar to the people in certain regions of greece.

i succeeded in giving a wedding toast to my mom and mike, and i think they were pleased to have one that was executed without too much sobbing. i had the pleasure of meeting clare, mike's sister, who i just adore. she is such a kindhearted person, and so fun as well! i think she had a good time. and my mother's colleague and widowed friend was with us as well. i think she had a lovely time as well, despite getting covid upon her return to the states. 

what i had forgotten to mention was how i did feel like my body was affected by covid still. after i stopped smoking, i noticed that for certain illnesses, it still took some time to recover. now, i don't know what the average time is for one to recoup from a sinus infection or the like, but i definitely think my body is still repairing itself after having been exposed to whatever strain of the coronavirus it got. i want to make sure i keep getting my vaccines. i need all the help i can get to fight off what i can. and i realize that being introduced back into a maskless society (for the most part) comes with all sorts of other strains of shit i'll have to contend with. i don't workout regularly, but i eat well and i try to take better care of myself, so i feel like i do what i can to support my health without any drastic life changes. and i hate that a twinge of fatphobia comes up every time people talk to me about my health. there's always that one person who finds a way to remind you that you are not as healthy as other people are. 

there was something akin to grief i felt when i learned that one of the passengers, a young, thin, blonde scottish woman, was fucking the hot sailor on the crew. i think there was part of me that did feel sad that i was really invisible when it came to being seen as a woman. i definitely didn't have all the tools at my disposal i needed to feel my best! including not having enough hair gel, and opportunities to really primp and pamper myself. i was lucky to wash my face! and it was nice to be fed. but i packed for comfort, not for sexiness. and it showed. and i felt old and fat compared to the other younger people. but also grateful for the body diversity amongst a range of ages onboard with us. i also got to process with my therapist after some initial reflection when i returned.

i really enjoyed journaling from the lounge deck of the ship, late one night when no one else was out of their rooms. i had the deck to myself, and happily sipped on my water and watched the lights of the port reflect off the water in the harbor. it was so relaxing. and i really made the intention to be present in my enjoyment of the sights and sounds in a far away place. it felt like a dream, especially after taking a couple hits of the medicinal pen i took with me. i was so glad fAe was right that it would not be difficult at all to have some gummies and my pen with me. 

to have the level of comfort i would really prefer to while traveling internationally, i would need to invest considerably more money into things. this is good to know for my future self. having gone to europe now, i feel okay not going for another couple years to greece. i need time to prepare. and pay. and in the meantime, i can still go to canada to see our dear friends, and to other places in the united states, considering i still haven't made it past the center of the contiguous u.s. 

the people i got to interact with were really lovely. i realized most of the boat was working-class folks on holiday. and european holidays last much longer, so a lot of people were just doing the cruise as one part of their tour of europe. people going to greece and italy afterward. folks stopping in singapore on their way back to australia. we met enough australians to travel the continent! i really do hope to see our friend jo when we have the means to travel there. and shar and denise. they were lovely. it did feel like a bunch of mums and dads and then a cluster of younger people. but fAe and i didn't perfectly fit in with the younger adults, because neither of us is really into clubbing or drinking that much anymore, and felt more content playing games and staying close to our beds!

but the conversations i did get to have about politics with the other passengers, namely neilsine, were wonderful. those are the interactions i crave when i travel. being able to talk openly about what's happening in our respective countries and their governments, hearing about the effects of white supremacy all over the world. neilsine pointed out that what happens in the u.s. affects australia too. it's a fact about a world power i don't like to think about, but was aware of. and we all lamented the idea of trump getting elected again. how it emboldens hatred and conservatism all over the world. 

i didn't enjoy the interactions with mike that always forced me to get heated. he doesn't understand how his ideas are so ridiculous. i know he is ignorant. but part of my anger stems from his lack of effort to educate himself with credible information. information that doesn't just come from the media circus that is fox and whatever other conservative media he consumes. it bothers me that my mom doesn't talk about that stuff with him. but i think she has covert tactics to get him to start using his brain more. one can hope. 

most of the people on the cruise, at least a decent majority of them, seemed to have values that overlapped with mine and fAe's. i know we're privileged in terms of our experiences and education. i don't expect everyone to have the same perspective, and i certainly don't expect younger folks to care about more social issues, because they're still busy having fun. i get it. and i wish i had more opportunities to discuss things that matter with the other passengers who also enjoy having those talks. i think plenty of them weren't interested in having any discussions that weren't light and fun.

so i'm back in my routine, getting situated. still working on getting my full mojo back. feeling good though. and feeling ready to do little bits outside my comfort zone here again, like going to an open mic and going to some restaurants. i'd like to go to the arcade in erie. maybe i will do that for my birthday. 

i love the fall, and while i don't have the same kind of excitement i usually do near my birthday, i do have an incredible amount of gratitude in my heart, and that seems to have tempered a lot of the little waves regular life has offered since my journey across the sea.