the girl with kaleidoscope eyes

I've been having a bit of an internal debate about whether I should publish this post. Because, although I've splattered the internets with swathes (can one really splatter a swath?) of those odd things that other people call feelings and plumbed my emotional depths, such as they are, I am, if you haven't noticed already, really kind of a private, reclusive person.

But recently several people, both on and off-line, have been asking me if there's something wrong or if they'd done something to offend me. And, though it's not generally the way I roll, I thought I might as well give the open and honest approach a whirl.

A couple of months ago, I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. If you don't feel like clicking the link and reading the gory details, colitis is thought to be an autoimmune disorder, where your body starts attacking itself, leading to all sorts of unpleasant complications. It's not life-threatening, but it's not much fun and, while there are many potentially helpful treatments, there's no cure.

It took a while and a bunch of invasive and embarrassing procedures to get the diagnosis right because I have what my doctor calls an "atypical presentation." That is, most people develop the disease in their teens or 20s, I have no family history of either colitis or the somewhat similar Crohn's disease, and I don't have the most common symptoms, which involve frequent bathroom visits.

What I do have is nausea, a continual low-grade fever, and a pervasive bone-crushing exhaustion. Stress, which I've had my fair share of lately, can make the symptoms worse. I'm taking medication, and, in any event, colitis tends to flare up, then go into remission for weeks or months, so there's every reason to think I'll be able to get it under better control.

Which is a long way of saying that it's not you, it's me. If I'm not commenting on your blog or returning your calls and emails quite as often as I used to, it's not because I don't care about you. It's because I've been having kind of a tough time.

And the title of this post? I'll spare you the long and boring back-story about why I detest the Beatles and everything associated with them. But someone I once knew forced me to listen to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds way more than I wanted to and, mondegreen-fashion, I always heard the lyric in this post's title as: the girl with colitis goes by.

And, not surprisingly, these days, when I picture myself in a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies, those are the words that replay in an endless loop somewhere in the corners of my mind.