Unicorns On Wheels [Petekey]

8. Friday.

2016/01/05 Friday

The plans for a movie marathon with Pete didn't work out on account of the fact that I chickened out before I could text him and I decided that it was best if we did it a different day anyway, so that everybody could be prepared for the socializing bits. And I wondered whether Ryan or Hayley would mind if Pete braided their hair into French plaits or whether it was a normal response to like it very much indeed.

I should've been studying especially because the odds were that Mr Bowie would come back to tutor me on Monday and, while that was a very terrifying thought, it didn't seem worth the rush to freak out about it. Considering the fact that Mr Bowie wasn't getting any younger or healthier.

So today was spent finishing up the reading of Slice of Cherry that ended the way I expected it to, the way all cliché novels do. And once it had ended I considered texting Pete and asking him if he wanted to hang out today or whether he wanted to drive me to Group Therapy but when I picked up the phone to text him I found that he'd texted me first instead.

yesterday I shot a lion in my pajamas said the first text from him. I went on to read the second. I have no idea y it was wearing my pajamas. The joke was funny but it was too corny to laugh at and I just skipped right to final text im sorry I heard that joke on tv I thought it was funny. And even though there was nothing remotely funny about that I caught myself with a grin on my face.

I forgot to reply though, because as I started typing I remembered the note to self that I'd written yesterday and I decided that it would probably be a good idea if I had a look into Huntington's diseases so that I didn't sound like a complete moron if Pete and I happened to start talking about it which we would, at one point or another. Because diseases were all the rage to talk about with your best friend.

I wasn't all that thrilled at what I found because what popped up on google was a shitty explanation that I couldn't understand and a handful of websites that explained things in medical terms that were difficult to understand and I was extremely relieved when I found, on my laptop, a documentary on Huntington's disease.

Previously, I hadn't felt sympathies for anyone in group therapy. I didn't care about Hayley's dead brother and I thought it was funny that Ryan's best friend had drowned in a pool but there was nothing, absolutely nothing that came close to the sort of thing I saw in the documentary. There was a woman in it, who they used as an example while giving me a long lecture.

The woman's hair had been shaven, close to her head so that she looked like Shmuel or one of the Jews in the concentration camps. And while she seemed to have a good thought process, her mouth didn't move with her. It was like it went too fast for her and 90% of what she said ended being a mess of vowels that were hard to understand.

Her arms looked like the arms of a tyrannosaurus, because they were held up in front of her and they shook rapidly and unexpectedly as she tried to talk to one of the doctors in the documentary. In fact, her whole body shook rapidly and kicked out in sudden movements that seemed spontaneous to her as well as me.

I once watched a show where this guy had Tourettes syndrome and I thought he had it bad because every now and again his head would snap to the left and he'd made sharp barking noises without being able to help it. But now, when I watched how the woman with Huntington's struggled to get by in a Stem Cell Research programme, I couldn't help but feel like I'd been moaning about nothing when my legs died.

I couldn't watch for very long and once I'd switched it off and gone on to do something else, all I could see was her body shaking every time I closed my fucking eyes. I wanted to scream and scream and just never stop. And for Pete to see his mother like that, before she died – no wonder he was in therapy.