This past weekend one of my closest friends came for a visit to cheer me up and have a bit of a belated birthday party. We took the two days we had together to do as much as I could stand, given my current condition. He hadn’t been in the DC area since he was a kid (as he pointed out, a while before I was born, hehe), so I wanted to make sure he at least got to see a little bit of what DC has to offer while he was here. Sadly we set the dates for his trip before I realized that the weekend would be home to the rather famous – and rather busy – Cherry Blossom Festival. Oh, and the National Kite Festival. Oh, and let’s not forget, the DC Marathon. Whoops.

    I think it worked out well anyway. We didn’t exactly get to go downtown, but we at least got to see it from a distance thanks to the various sight-seeing pull-offs adjacent to George Washington Memorial Parkway. He arrived on a Saturday morning, and I was determined to drive to pick him up. I took my narcotics patch off and went without my pain medication for about 20 hours all together. See, it’s only slightly illegal to drive while under the influence of narcotics, especially these hefty ones, so I deprived myself so that I could pick him up and also so I could drive for the first time in about three months. I was having a blast behind the wheel, but I think I may have been a bit rough. It was just so hard to control all that enthusiasm!

    That Saturday afternoon we went to the new Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum to check out all the planes and space stuff (they have it labeled as such, ‘space stuff’), and thankfully he goes through museums at exactly the same speed I do. We were in and out in just over an hour, I think. The rest of Saturday was pretty slow because, as I had feared, my body balked at the idea of going without medication. I kind of crashed.

    But my friend was sweet about it and we spent the rest of the day cooling off and just hanging around. Sunday, though, I was determined to make sure he didn’t spend the rest of his trip in my dark basement watching movies. We managed to go to Great Falls, Virginia, then off to George’s house, Mount Vernon. I have a special relationship with Mount Vernon, as it was my favorite place to visit the last time I lived in this area, when I was a toddler. It wasn’t until my later years when I discovered that the house’s real name wasn’t ‘After Burner’, but I loved it nonetheless (my family still can’t figure out where the confusion came from, but honestly, if I had to chose between those two for a name for my house, I’d so name it After Burner.)

    Anyway. The point I’m trying to make is, as tough as it was that first day to get out of the house sans pain medication, as much walking as we did over the weekend, as sore as I was afterward, it was all worth it. I got a chance to get back out in the world again, to soak it all up, pretend I was halfway normal and healthy for a change. Sure, I was kind of tired and quiet the whole time, but it didn’t matter. I was in good company and I got to explore, take pictures, and just enjoy it.

    I’ve been thinking about it the past few days, as it was quite a jolt, returning to my world of bedrest and doctors after a short venture into the outside world. In all honesty, I’ve been thinking about it a lot, that world outside and everything that’s going on without me. Looking back over the past ten years, I’ve really missed out on a lot. If it hadn’t been for The Toe, I’d have graduated with a masters degree by now, and I’d be well on my way to doing whatever the heck it was I was planning on doing (I think when I was first looking into college options, I wanted to get into journalism. [And yes, that was ten years ago, I’m not kidding.]) Throughout all of my thoughts and feelings about being gypped, left behind, or generally stuck in limbo, I can’t help but feel overwhelmed with what might have been, where I could have been out in that world right now if things had been different. It’s just like when I was a kid and I hated going to bed early, realizing how much of the nighttime world I’d be missing out on.

    King Kong came out on DVD this week and after waking up in the middle of the night tonight, I’ve been watching all the post production diaries. During each little 10 to 15 minute blurb, the videos cover a different department of the film’s post production and all of the interesting people that make various bits of the movie happen. This has only added another aspect to my pinings – it never fails that no matter what a department is doing, I find myself thinking, “I want to do that!” Blowing up logs for composite footage, recording a plane flying past for sound effects, sculpting stryofoam to build a mountainside; whatever it is, I want to be there, I want to be in the thick of it, I can see myself doing whatever it is they’re doing.

    That’s what I miss most. The options. All of the wonderful potential avenues of exploration and creativity this world offers. Even though I know one day this will hopefully be over, it still feels like I’ll never be there. And worse, it makes me feel like I’ve accomplished nothing in my 21 years of life. Sure, I’m well aware that I’ve had far more adventures than most other people my age, and yes, I realize I have accomplished a lot. But it doesn’t feel like enough, knowing what has happened over the past ten years and knowing how much I have lost. There could have been more, and there should have been more.

    That said, what to do now? There is so much I want to do, so many industries I have a passionate interest in. As much as I love Ferrari racing and want to pursue that as soon as I’m fully recovered, that’s not enough. As much as I loved my work with The Daily Prophet, that’s not enough either. As much as I love writing, that’s not enough. I want to get back out there, I want to see the world, I want to meet people, I want to learn new things, and most of all, I want to have my hand in something that’s important, that affects peoples’ lives for the better, that really accomplishes something wonderful. I don’t feel like I’ve done that enough, or that I’m doing that now, or that I’ll be doing that any time in the near future. That’s what I hate most.

    This past weekend, though, it at least showed me that the world is still out there and that if I’m patient, it should still be there when I’m all done and ready to reenter it. And yeah, sure, I’ve been trying to do things for other Dercum’s Disease sufferers, but I don’t know… I feel like if God had just shown me the plight of these people, I could have helped them with just as much passion without having to suffer through the disease as well. The passion’s there, God, I’d work on what you want me to work on anyway. Just show me when and where, and I’m there. During PotterWar I wasn’t affected by Warner Brothers’ lawyers, and yet I still fought like hell for those who were. I could do so, so much more. I feel like I’m trying to bail water out of a boat, but I’m strapped down to the deck with only one hand free to try and throw water out the sides. I’m just waiting for someone to cut the ropes, then I can dump the water out and rebuild the whole damn ship.

    At least my friend cut one or two of the ropes this weekend, long enough for me to realize there’s still something out there worth bailing for. The world’s just going to have to wait a little while longer. Until then, I’ll keep singing along with Fred Astaire and the song that’s been swimming around in my head tonight, “There’ll be smooth sailing cause I’m trimming my sails, with a bright shine on my shoes and on my nails. Steppin’ out with my baby, can’t go wrong cause I’m in right! Ask when will the day be, the big day may be tonight!”