Getting older is full of all kinds of small unfairnesses.

Since I had a weird lung cold at the beginning of the year that gave me what felt like an ongoing asthma attack for about a month, I decided that I really should stop smoking once and for all.

So I had an appointment with my butt doctor since the last time I tried to quit, one week in I started getting a really bad flare up, which cleared up immediately upon me starting smoking again. It hasn’t helped that I seemed to have adjusted to the controller medication I have to take every day. I still get mild flare ups pretty regularly and smoking was one of the things that could clear that kind of stuff up. She prescribed some colon-specific steroids for me to take for the next two months while I quit smoking to keep any flare up I might get from getting too bad.

I’m a week in. Three days ago I developed a headache that comes and goes and persistent low-level nausea. And I’m starting to have a mild flare up.

I hate that I get to make a choice every whether or not I want to feel sick and not smoke or stop taking the meds and have to start smoking again to keep my colon from trying to kill me.

The kid in me wants to scream about how unfair this whole situation is, but that would mean that there would be someone to blame for this. It’s ironic enough that it feels like there should be – I want to do a really good thing for my health, which in turn makes me significantly less healthy.

It’s too early to tell if this is even going to work. I might get through the course of steroids and immediately get a flare up and have to start smoking again. Or everything could be totally fine and I can go about my life with one less thing to worry about for the time being.

And I’m feeling a bit better today, so maybe my body’s adjusting to the medication. And the flare up seems to be getting a bit better too (provided I can stay away from the GF’s gelato in the freezer).

* * *

I’ve been slowly working my way through Buffy for a fourth time over the last month or two.

I’m into season 5 – or, as I like to call it, the season where Buffy gets a massive taste of the unfairness of adulthood.

The show is fucking great when it comes to betraying expectations. It pulls generously from the high school drama and horror movie trope bins and mashes them into a delightfully absurd and deeply affecting story.

And in season 5, when she comes up against two forces she can’t fight (her mom’s illness and the, at times, face-palmingly ridiculous Glory), a large amount of narrative energy is spent exploring her grief for her sense of fairness in life.

Because it’s certainly one thing to intellectually know that the world is unfair and to experience that unfairness firsthand. And that experience of unfairness really is inevitable.

* * *

I dunno.

Maybe when I figure out the source of this cynicism, I’ll stop blogging about it. Or maybe it’ll just consume me.

Hard to say. Too early to tell.

But I do have a suspicion it’ll all work out, even if it’s not in the way I expect it to.

Go outside. I bet it’s a beautiful day out there somewhere.