in beloved memory

This entry might be a bit heavy on some as I'll be talking about, well, death and dying.

I was reminded of a beloved friend passing away after losing her battle with cancer.  I miss her but I know her suffering is over now - and she was suffering a lot in the last few years of her life. But despite that, she kept going and stayed positive.

She is one of the reasons why I really decided to live my life differently, to have more fun in the here and now. To live and not have (too many) regrets.

Watch over me from up there, Emi. I love you!

I am really scared of having to part from my loved ones eventually. At least I am now. I still get suicidal sometimes when things go really wrong and it's really selfish but if it's you who goes first, it saves yourself the pain... but the thought of inflicting it on others holds me back.

It's probably what has really kept me from going through with it a few times. Along with thoughts of things I still wanted to do, wanted to see, wanted to experience.

Maybe it's hypocritical because I had the traumatic experience of ... finding a friend after they had done the deed. They wrote a farewell message to me and in a panic, I dashed over to their house. But... it was already too late. He was already gone. I'd been on edge because of other stuff that had happened on his end but he'd been trying to move on, he'd been going to therapy. But it hadn't been enough I guess. It had hurt too much. I can't blame him. And I hope he, too, is in a better place now.

Apart from the heart attack I wrote about in the other entry, I had one other brush with death (unless you count the traffic accident in which my family and I would have nearly been toast... but I don't really remember much of that except for a huge burning tire flying past our car).

When I was in 9th grade or something, we went on a bicycle tour with class. I am not the best cyclist, so maybe that had something to do with it but... it was not entirely my fault.

We were going down a hill on a new bicycle path - it had not yet been coated with the protective stuff, so it was just bare concrete. There was a patch that had sand on it. One of the guys up front pulled his brakes a bit too strongly and slid on the sand, coming to stand sideways on the bicycle path, effectively blocking it. I was coming down the hill behind him and had to brake hard to avoid ramming him but I also slid on the sand and ended up flipping over him and crashing down onto the bicycle path, getting tangled in both of our bicycles in the progress.

One of my wrists got tangled in a wheel and uh 'snapped' kind of? Or twisted, I guess. While it broke etc. it didn't fall off. Ah yeah uh pain.

Luckily I had worn a helmet, of I would have been toast. My friend/classmate got away with bruises and a sprained ankle and some cuts because he'd merely been pushed onto the ground. I had gone flying (my friends said they could see me fly from the back of the group (no one else got to descend the hill, everyone had to get off and push).

But yeah I was lying on the ground, unresponsive really. And everything that happened I barely remember because I was just running on adrenaline. Somehow my mother, who'd been accompanying the bicycle group with her car (she was carrying our luggage and food) got me into the car and drove me to my uncle's hospital. That's when I really just... passed out.

Result, my left wrist was broken in multiple places and the nerves had been squished and damaged maybe beyond repair and recovery. It was kind of like in Harry Potter when Lockhart accidentally gets rid of Harry's bones in one arm. My left wrist was basically unusable and I had no feeling in it anymore.

Which was great for the healing process and stuff because uh no pain. But was pretty damn shit for everything else. You really don't realize how much you need your non-dominant hand until you no longer have it.

The good news, though, my parents didn't give up on it and I went through rehab and was able to recover functionality of the wrist. It's... ALMOST normal now but there are still tons of things I can't do - or shouldn't do - with it. Carrying stuff for some time is okay - although I need to take breaks a lot if it's a long time or if it's really heavy stuff. But some exercise stuff etc. is a big no no.

Which really doesn't help my quest of losing weight \o/

I can really only exercise under the supervision of a physio therapist. Sigh. I need to find one but since I am traveling so much I can't really see one regularly, which sucks.

But yeah... the accident kind of made me feel a bit like I had been knocking on death's door.

Oh for those of you asking, why did I choose to brake instead of trying to go past my friend? Well, going right would have meant flying into barbed wire. Going left would have meant getting hit by a car on a busy street. There hadn't been many options.

lol my body is really f-ed up.

writing all this makes me feel a bit like I'm trying to be overly dramatic but ... it's all true.

I'm not doing this to get pity or anything. I just need to write this down to kind of process it for myself, too. Writing about all of these things - and just look, my entries are all MASSIVE - has been really good for me. My therapist said so, too. It's good to get it all OUT and then over and done with.

I'd been keeping a lot of this in and it's not good. People reach their breaking points eventually. So getting rid of some stuff helps to avoid breaking and bursting.

Thank you for those of you who are reading this still and are coming along for the ride - aka all the whining. I don't deserve you ;3;