the amber woman with her bouquet, encased in lilly's, some grace in a period of fighting for peace

Hello world,
I am mono.

Not to be worried at or fretted over, but it's there.
The puffed up sickness lays beneath my eyes, aches my swollen glands and passivizes my reactions to everything. Except for doors that should swing both ways but don't.
As I understand mononucleosis is a virus and only united states-ians get it.
Because it's a virus it will always be in my blood. This blood that has keeps me alive, beating, and fresh can now weary me into a world where I start seeing card board boxes in the back of a grill as comforting beds.

I wonder, will I spend all of my university years in and out of mono kingdom?
Maybe not if I learn to take care of myself.
Some lessons are hard to learn.

When I was young, in elementary school, I would stay home sick all of the time. And even when I was genuinely sick, I could still do a nice dance across a couch. PBS was my most loyal friend through those years. My favorite has been Mr. Mahuta. How he probably never thought the whistling theme song with poppy keyboard that belonged in a 1970's series would stay with me. Ho! That whistle has been in my blood even longer than mono! Take that!
I used to lay on our interesting patterned couch with a sippy cup of juice, creating intricate houses out of construction paper. They were full of bold colors and a doorway might be unframed or it could have a large swath of green paper fringe elmers glued upon it.
Such energy and vivaciousness.

How sad it was for me my freshman year when I was sick: I could curl up on a dorm bed that was four feet off the ground and do nothing. No paper, no PBS, no sippy cups, only desperate phone calls home for some sense of comfort. I couldn't away to ma soeur's, for I still had classes to see and homework to lay my head on. I, who had never been tired a day in her life (maybe crabby, but oh never tired), I had to shut my eyes and curl under covers as my friends lounged about and cracked jokes in some outer place. It was too much for a poor little freshman. So instead I often went out anyway and developed a habit of finding corners where I would curl up and sleep at parties and other social gatherings.

Now I live a bit further from those girls I've lived with. All of the people I ever really went about with, called up and whatnot, they're all gone. One's even in Paris. Ma soeur isn't even on campus which is terribly upsetting. J'ai une cousine, mais pas ma soeur. She even has a job now so I can't bother her all day long with texts and phone calls. Everything is different.

It is easy for me to wonder what the people I see these days must think of me. Rarely does any new bug see the eccentricity that won me the "Most likely to start a new fashion trend by not doing laundry" superlative in our apartment awards last winter. But is it what they see of me, what I create, my state of artistic genius and productivity, or is it how I try to send a ray of light their way?


I used to be upset and tear out ads for Walmart, Payless, or some other low mill shop in my Vogue magazine. I used to think Vogue was slipping. Fashion ads should be beautiful, not commercial. There is no room for that tawdriness. If you ever want to see true art, true beauty, true trueness, find an ad for Jil Sander. However, I have realized fashion in the past was not accessible. I have grown up in a time when it is more and more accessible, and now even we, the lower classes, can see clothing as an art form instead of just trends. I'm still not a fan of Walmart or Payless, or Pennies and co., but ho! I won't rip you out of my magazine anymore, because I foretell that someday you will be more fashion forward, you are slowly crawling into this race and we will all find access to this joy. End the snobisme.