Rest, Relax and Eat Right

All things I didn't do this past weekend. I decided to push myself a little bit and volunteer as staff for a 4-day 3-night leadership conference for high school kids. Now this may sound fairly innocuous, but this is where you are wrong.

The day begins at 7:30 for the delegates when we wake them up. That means that staff are awake as early as 5:00 making pancakes, eggs and bacon for breakfast in the residence kitchens. We are lucky to get three hours of sleep because by the time the delegates get into bed and the staff meeting finishes up it's usually around 3:00am.

The days are absolutely grueling with constant cheering, dancing running all over the place with a little bit of down time for motivational speakers and sessions on leadership.

And the food . . . delegates eat first always, so if there isn't enough the staff don't eat. Or we eat things like burgers and chicken wings and pizza, pizza, pizza. Candy and cake all hours of the day, trying to replace sleep with food.

I know this sounds really really awful, but I absolutely LOVED IT!! My body was up to the demands and my Crohn's didn't get in the way much at all. It definitely let me know near the end that it wasn't all that happy, but that didn't stop me from having an AMAZING time.

I guess it really proved to me that I am okay, I can still do the things I love. I'm not an invalid and I am stronger than I think I am. Now I'm going to collapse into bed and try to catch up on my sleep a little more.

Rent

"You don't want baggage
Without lifetime guarantees
You don't want to watch me die"

My friend was able to get last minute tickets to the final performance of Rent in our city on saturday. I didn't have anything else going on that night, so I said yes without a thought. I don't want to get all melodramatic here, but seeing the show:

a. made me cry
b. brought up some memories of earlier this year

A. was no surprise. I'm a crier. I cry at movies, books, tv shows, sad songs...pretty much anything with a plot. In the past, seeing the movie and the broadway show has brought tears to my eyes, so I was expecting that.

I wasn't expecting the sight of Angel in a hospital gown (similar to my old ones) and some of the lines to really hit me where it hurts. Watching the characters struggle with AIDS and still be there for each other, even when really sick or dying made me sadangrymaddepressedlonely. Why couldn't I have that too?

My illness was the catalyst for my break-up in November, and it was hard watching what I didn't have. I know Crohn's disease isn't fatal, but if people with AIDS can find love, and not be ashamed of their disease why can't I.

This musical hit a couple of nerves, and I feel like I understood it in a completely new way. Rent did amazing things for AIDS awareness, however I doubt Crohn's will ever reach that level of mainstream pop-culture.