When you lose your hair, you lose a sense of identity. When I was younger and went through chemo, I had some adjustments to make in assessing my appearance. I'd always been skinny - my mom says now in hindsight that I was probably too skinny - that I was actually sickly looking. She says that I was so skinny that she could see the bones in my back. I look at the pictures of myself in my 8th grade yearbook - months before I was officially diagnosed with my disease - and I look normal to me. Being from a Chinese family, I don't think you can ever really stop eating voluntarily. Food is always a focal point of every family gathering, no matter which way you look at it, and I never had to change my eating habits. In fact, I probably gorged myself too often in those days, but my metabolism was so fast I'd never put on any major weight. (How I long for those days!)
Once I was diagnosed with lupus, I had to up my dose of calcium considerably, and being on steroids, I got the classic "moonface" - I was chubby as a chipmunk. For someone who was used to being super skinny and able to wear whatever clothes I wanted, this was a very uncomfortable change. At this time, the song "Bohemian Rhapsody" was popular because "Wayne's World" had just come out in the movie theaters to massive reaction. That song defined me in that period of my life - it has a lot of very soul-deep lyrics. In particular, I think of "sometimes I wish that I'd never been born at all" and the last line of the song, "nothing really matters, anyone can see...nothing really matters, nothing really matters to me." That song is heart-breaking to me and it's exactly how I felt then. Everything I had based my life on - doing well in school, doing well in the eyes of my parents - crumbled when I had to submit to the disease.
I was home-schooled for the first two months of high school, which didn't help the transition to a new school environment. I had wanted to go to school with everyone else - on the day of orientation I was running a high fever and my parents wouldn't let me go. It was tough getting back to school, because I really didn't have a large group of friends from junior high that I really felt I could trust. I heard wild rumors that had spread about why I had suddenly disappeared from 8th grade - the worst I heard was that I had been raped and I had gotten pregnant. I suppose this was started since I had been so skinny in junior high and now I looked like the "before" part of a Weight Watchers ad. The medication I was on also made me retain water like crazy, which caused my feet to swell up on occasion and give me trouble walking. I am so thankful that I had, for the most part, understanding teachers, who knew I had to see doctors all the time, and were accommodating. German and chorus were two electives I took that gave me something to look forward to every school day.
I think my parents didn't cave in for cable TV until 1992 or 1993. After which time, I used to come back from school, homework in lap, and park myself in front of the television. How I completely missed Duran Duran I will never know. But for the most part, I spent most of my time on homework - whether it be working out science problems, studying German, or reading for history or English. I was really only active with Rotary Interact, a service organization - whilst my classmates were doing track and field, or were on a sports team. Other friends of mine hung out at the mall, saw movies, bought makeup - all stuff that I forgoed in order to always have my homework done. Looking back at it all, I wish I had cultivated better relationships with my friends, because now it's almost like I don't know these people that well anymore, except where school is concerned. I try to qualify my old anti-social habits as being part of what I became after I had been diagnosed with lupus. I didn't have the same level of energy as everyone else, so I had to conserve it when I could, so when I did have the energy, it went straight to the books. I didn't go to any Homecoming dances, didn't go to Junior Banquet, didn't get invited to Senior Prom. (At least in college I attended the Calvert Cotillion - which is essentially a Senior Prom - with a bunch of school friends last year.) I guess I left high school with a lot of knowledge but lacking in any solid connections with anyone.
Which is probably why I latched on to the whole "net" thing right away. Here was a means of communication with people like myself, that I didn't have in my "real" personal life. I would say that I've made better friends over the Internet than I have in person. Maybe it's because most of my friends in "real life" were made via school, and so it's inevitable that we're always quite serious when we're talking to one another. Three people have stood by me for a very long time (in my eyes). Christie (who I met 5 years ago this summer) was a friend I met through a mutual love for Paul McCartney, and she's given me constant and continual support as the sister I never had. Sara (who I met at the DD.com message board when we were both trying to find second-generation fans to communicate with) is my co-princess with STR, our club/group we started in October 2000, and definitely a girl I can relate to, I thought I was the only person who thought I was a music dictionary not just in Duran Duran but almost any music genre. Kat (who I met when she joined STR) is my little sister, who I can discuss Duran Duran at length and never get bored.
Write me - at [email protected] or [email protected] and keep me posted if you've read everything so far *grin*
story continues here
Blown By the Wind of Reason - my main essays page and directory.
The Fields of Eden - main entry page.
this page added on 04/18/02