Week nine in review

Well. Here it is, Saturday again, time to sum up the week. Week nine was the best week I've had so far because my thyroid levels are approaching normal. I'm not sure 5 mcg of T3 will be enough, but I'm willing to give it another week or so before I make any pronouncements. As far as the Interferon goes, I'm still nearly free from side effects. I'm a bit tired, and I've noticed that my appetite has decreased, but the insomnia is quite a bit better. I must be getting used to it. I still need the Melatonin, but at least I'm able to get to sleep. I'm not always able to stay asleep, though. I woke up at three on Monday morning and lay awake, whimpering, until it was time to get up at six. I must be getting old, because one night of too little sleep means I fly at half-staff for the next three or four days. Still, I had only one night of too little sleep this week, as opposed to the five or six I'd had each week up to this point.

I want to live a normal life, as much as possible, while I'm doing this treatment. In the last few months I've wavered back and forth about the idea of signing up on a dating web site. My friend has been pushing me to sign up on Plenty of Fish, but for a long time I just didn't feel ready to take that step. "It's free," she urged. "What have you got to lose?" What, indeed, except possibly the fragile, carefully cultivated self-esteem I've developed about my own level of attractiveness to the opposite sex. Let me say right here and now that I know there's nothing wrong with me. I've been told I'm beautiful by everyone I know, and though I don't see it myself, I've arrived at a place where I'm willing to take other people's word for it. And I know how smart I am. So here I am, a beautiful, intelligent, talented woman who is fully self-supporting and free of excessive baggage and psychiatric diagnoses, and yet I get absolutely no male attention whatsoever. The friend I just mentioned says that's because I'm "different," and she's probably right. Basically, I'm suited to about two percent of the population, and if you take into account that most men of my age are either married or involved with someone, my choices narrow down even more.

I decided to take the plunge anyway, and had an interesting first week. Last Friday, when I signed up on Plenty of Fish, I accidentally placed myself in Canada. I don't know how. I told them I lived in the US, but it must have reverted back to the default country somehow. Anyway, when I was filling out the form, it asked me what province I lived in and wouldn't allow me to create the profile without choosing one, so I chose Quebec. I've always wanted to visit Montreal. I figured I could go back and change it later, but at first I didn't know how to do that, so my first experiences were all with Canadian men. Was I flattered! I think I like Canadian men. I kept getting letters from men in their early thirties, which was interesting (have I mentioned that I'm forty-four?). I even had a letter from a twenty-four year-old whose photo was essentially a portrait of his bare chest, all oiled up. He wrote, "You are one hot cougar!" I laughed so hard I nearly fell off my chair.

So, after generating all sorts of interest in Montreal, I "moved" to California and the torrent of letters ceased abruptly. It seems I'm only attractive to Canadian men. My friend told me not to despair, that because of who I am it will probably take awhile for me to find someone interesting. Okay. I left my profile up, and I even signed up on another free site, Perfect Match, which seems rather more hopeful than Plenty of Fish, but only marginally. While I was bored at work the other day I created a profile on Eharmony, and after spending ten minutes or so filling out their "personality/compatibility questionnaire," they found me all of three matches, one in Arizona, one in Tehachapi and one in San Diego. I should shell out sixty bucks a month for that? Are they insane? I've never gone back to that site, although they emailed me the other day to tell me that "Matt, from Reno, Nevada" had requested contact with me. Why? I live 350 miles from Reno and I have no interest in relocating. What would be the point?

I haven't got a lot of time to devote to romantic pursuits right now anyway, so perhaps it's for the best that I haven't landed a fish. I suppose I just want to feel like a real person. Not that I don't, but somehow being on a treatment for a disease which carries such a heavy social stigma has made a few inroads on my sense of myself as a worthy and viable human being. I fight that with everything I've got because I know to my core that there is nothing shameful about having Hepatitis C. It has been labeled a drug addict's disease, but there's also nothing shameful about being a drug addict. It's a disease, not a moral failing. As my friend Kelly often says, only a disease would make us do the things we do, to ourselves and to the people who love us the most. Only a disease would make us risk our lives and our freedom and make us give and hazard all we have in pursuit of the next fix. One reason I started this blog was to fight that stigma. I choose to remain anonymous not because I have Hepatitis C but because I'm an addict in recovery and the eleventh tradition states that I need to maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and film.

So, that was the week, that was.