May 14th, 2454-Belated

Eros,

I've been under for almost two days now. They knocked me out real good! I don't know what new drug this is, but its the most intense coma-inducing thing I've ever dealt with. So yeah, sorry I couldn't write, I was just on drugs =/ hah. I haven't heard from Dr. Twinn yet and so I don't know exactly how many more surgeries are left, but I imagine that he'll say only one. I'd be lucky if he said none. I'd be thrilled, actually. But at the same time, maybe I need to go under one more time.

It was weird, too, to be under the way I was. I was dreaming. I don't normally dream, or at least dream that I can remember, while I'm being operated on. Anesthetics normally leave me groggy for days-so much so that I don't normally remember my name for the first few hours. This new anesthetic, Coliva (and I must say that I really dig how shortened the drug names have become), put me under in half of a minute and I remember something like 10 years worth of dream. I lived, like, a lifetime on this drug somehow. An old lifetime. It really creeps me out, dreams, how sometimes I have them and I feel like I've lived extra years or something. I mean, not that years are really relevant anymore. But still. When you lose track of time, what's to say you haven't lost track of reality?

Well anyway I want to write about this dream before I totally forget it. I was living on an island. Me and Bali and Liam and Domenica, we were all there on this island. And we had a little hut with all the stuff we felt like having. So like, if one day Liam and I felt like taking Domenica scuba diving in the reef off the coast, we could do that because the scuba gear was just there. Christ, how magnificent that reef was. I'm telling you, Eros, it wasn't unreal but it was totally out of this world. It was so pristine, this reef, I can't even explain. Or if I needed a frisbee to play with Bali, there'd be a frisbee in the hut. So Bali and I would play frisbee. We didn't have a house. We just lived in the trees and on the sand. Some days it rained, but we didn't need shelter because we could just camp out in the trees. We had these little burrows, too, that we'd crawl into and lie down in at night. We had all this food, like fruit and shit all over the island, and whenever we wanted something that wasn't there, well, there was this hut and we could get out an old-fashioned barbeque and some burgers and just make whatever the fuck we wanted. It was the most perfect place in the world. Domenica and I used to run on the sand together, always warm sand, and we'd have mud ball fights and we'd take trips to this waterfall in the little forest that was there. And we'd jump off of it over and over, whooping and shouting, into this icy crisp blue pool of water that stretched endlessly downward. I'm talking freezing cold kind of crisp, too, but that didn't stop us from splashing one another and swimming around in this water all day long. One day, we decided to follow the river and figure out why this waterfall was so cold and we found a massive cave at the top of this hill, filled up with fresh water that came from who knew where? So we dove down into this cave one day with Liam and explored and watched all these crazy zooxanthellae light shows because sometimes zooxanthellae do that-emit chemical lights. So we swam in these really pretty lights and loved each other in timeless ways.

It was honestly about 10 years that I spent in that dream. 2 days into 10 years. Most if it has faded, at this point, but I remember alot of intense moments with such crazy clarity. They're like memories. It felt like so much more than a dream. I remember the scuttle crabs that littered the island and the trails through the forest that we'd walk on for fun. I remember Bali never changed, but Domenica grew up. I got to watch her grow, Eros. I saw her grow. She was alive, here in this dream. And Liam, well he never changed, either. I was made up of all my original parts, too, and I didn't change. No cancer to ruin me. No chopped up bits of others' body parts sewn onto my fresh skin. I was just me. And Liam LOVED me and I LOVED Liam and it was true. And that was that. And Domenica was there and we LOVED her and she LOVED us back and that was more true than anything I'd ever done. Simple, but not plain. No way.

As I'm writing this I just keeping thinking: what now? What do I do now? I want some more Coliva so I can escape back to that island and live there forever again. I wasn't alone, there. I mean, Bali is here now. He's at my side, faithful, waiting for me. But Bali is the only one I have. One of three. Two pieces are missing. And I need them. I wonder if, someday, I'll ever know those pieces or fill in those blanks. But I doubt it. They are together in the beyond place and I'm too afraid to meet them. Does that mean I love them less?

God, Eros, these thoughts will kill me.

-Lynn