Well, only five more days before we can say goodbye to 2006, or in my case, good riddance.
The tail end of 2006 has been a miserable one for me and I can't wait for a fresh start. Although New Year's has always been just another day for me, and the stroke of midnight anti-climatic to say the least, this year I feel like I need a symbolic start, a blank page, a new leaf, etc.
My problems began in the fall when a person whom I thought was a very good friend let me down in a big way. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I pride myself on being a good friend and that I count my loyalty to my friends amongst my best qualities. Even though I had stuck by this friend through the most difficult three years of her life, when things became difficult for me in my life, she abandoned me quicker than a hot potato. She told me that I was "juvenile" and that my feelings were "offensive" to her.
Soon after that, some so-called online friends accused me of being a traitor for having resigned from a forum I worked at with them (of which I was the most senior member of the team) to start my own forum. Some nasty e-mails were sent to me that were harsh and uncalled for.
At the same time, the only grandmother I have ever known, was undergoing a slew of medical tests. One of them was for Alzheimer's Disease, which if I had had any rational thought at the time, I would've realized that it should not have come as a big surprise as she had been suffering from dimensia for some years now. In the span of about two weeks she found out that she had both diabetes and Alzheimer's Disease.
And if all that weren't enough, I spontaneously broke out into hives. A red rash was everywhere on my body and I couldn't figure out why. They were itchy and ugly. My doctor couldn't figure out what it was either. She ultimately deduced that it was an allergic reaction, but to what she didn't know. So for a month and a half I was on this crazy elimination diet, writing down everything I ate then slowly eliminating things. I had to really read the labels on packages and ingredients on everything. One frightful possibility was that it could be soy. At first I didn't think it was such a big deal. Allergic to soy? No worries. I'll just stop having soy lattes from Starbucks and eating tofu (which would be sort of sad as my mom makes a great eggplant and tofu dish), until someone pointed out to me that soy is in everything. And she should know: Her daughter is allergic to soy and for the first several years of her daughter's life she was making everything her daughter ate from scratch. Then my friend Kim mentioned that her husband is allergic to soy and when I talked to him he told me all the things he couldn't eat -- which was everything. I started to panic a bit. Then my test results came back and I'm allergic to eggs. Which really isn't a big loss in my life since I've never been a big egg eater anyways. The sad thing was that she thinks that while I can eat small traces of eggs now (like when one egg is mixed into the batter of a cake or used to coat bread crumbs), in a few years she thinks that even this will cause an allergic reaction so that I'll have to cut out anything made with eggs .
Then my friend Kim who is due to give birth in January, was hospitalized as a precaution as they thought she had pre-eclampsia. Fortunately she didn't, but it was scary for a week.
So needless to say, it's been a stressful and difficult four months for me. I'm ready to move on and put all of this behind me. Four months of stress and pain is enough for one person, isn't it?
The tail end of 2006 has been a miserable one for me and I can't wait for a fresh start. Although New Year's has always been just another day for me, and the stroke of midnight anti-climatic to say the least, this year I feel like I need a symbolic start, a blank page, a new leaf, etc.
My problems began in the fall when a person whom I thought was a very good friend let me down in a big way. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I pride myself on being a good friend and that I count my loyalty to my friends amongst my best qualities. Even though I had stuck by this friend through the most difficult three years of her life, when things became difficult for me in my life, she abandoned me quicker than a hot potato. She told me that I was "juvenile" and that my feelings were "offensive" to her.
Soon after that, some so-called online friends accused me of being a traitor for having resigned from a forum I worked at with them (of which I was the most senior member of the team) to start my own forum. Some nasty e-mails were sent to me that were harsh and uncalled for.
At the same time, the only grandmother I have ever known, was undergoing a slew of medical tests. One of them was for Alzheimer's Disease, which if I had had any rational thought at the time, I would've realized that it should not have come as a big surprise as she had been suffering from dimensia for some years now. In the span of about two weeks she found out that she had both diabetes and Alzheimer's Disease.
And if all that weren't enough, I spontaneously broke out into hives. A red rash was everywhere on my body and I couldn't figure out why. They were itchy and ugly. My doctor couldn't figure out what it was either. She ultimately deduced that it was an allergic reaction, but to what she didn't know. So for a month and a half I was on this crazy elimination diet, writing down everything I ate then slowly eliminating things. I had to really read the labels on packages and ingredients on everything. One frightful possibility was that it could be soy. At first I didn't think it was such a big deal. Allergic to soy? No worries. I'll just stop having soy lattes from Starbucks and eating tofu (which would be sort of sad as my mom makes a great eggplant and tofu dish), until someone pointed out to me that soy is in everything. And she should know: Her daughter is allergic to soy and for the first several years of her daughter's life she was making everything her daughter ate from scratch. Then my friend Kim mentioned that her husband is allergic to soy and when I talked to him he told me all the things he couldn't eat -- which was everything. I started to panic a bit. Then my test results came back and I'm allergic to eggs. Which really isn't a big loss in my life since I've never been a big egg eater anyways. The sad thing was that she thinks that while I can eat small traces of eggs now (like when one egg is mixed into the batter of a cake or used to coat bread crumbs), in a few years she thinks that even this will cause an allergic reaction so that I'll have to cut out anything made with eggs .
Then my friend Kim who is due to give birth in January, was hospitalized as a precaution as they thought she had pre-eclampsia. Fortunately she didn't, but it was scary for a week.
So needless to say, it's been a stressful and difficult four months for me. I'm ready to move on and put all of this behind me. Four months of stress and pain is enough for one person, isn't it?
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