Hello, livejournal. It has been quite some time since I have confided in you. :p
A lot has happened, I guess, which is probably obvious from my lack of updates. Funny how that works. the more that happens to me, the less I update my journal.

For starters,  I healed up very well after surgery. I am totally fine now, and I feel great, and it was a good experience, although it was painful. And I didn't get to wake up to my boyfriend this time because he was out smoking a cigarette, but my mommy was there to hold my hand and console me while I sobbed, though I needed no consolation. I just laid there and cried for what seemed like an eternity, so overwhelmingly happy to have gotten rid of cancer, and have dealt with the very last of it, and excited to look normal again, and to move on with my life, and be a different person, and leave the cancer in the past and put the past behind me.

Then, my brother got his surgery on the 30th of September, almost EXACTLY a month after mine. And from what I am aware of, that went very well. For a while he was having some heart problems, and at one point they thought he had a blood clot in his lungs, but everything turned out to be okay, which I am very happy about. His heart rate was just a bit too fast, especially when he stood up or tried to walk, but I guess that went away. Last I heard about him, they were releasing him very soon. Which is a lot sooner than they released me, but I think that it's because he is much bigger than me, so he didn't have as much of a problem with maintaining a somewhat healthy weight or getting some food down or something like that.

Then, on Sunday, my dad and I drove to Renton to meet up with some guy we found on craigslist, who sold us a BlackBerry Curve 8310. It's beautiful and mine and it is my baby and I love it dearly. I use it way too much for my own good. It's so nice. I don't know what I would do with it if I wasn't using it all the time. It's a BlackBerry, they're made to be in use constantly haha. And yesterday, I started classes at Gene Juarez Academy. This means I am well on my way to becoming a licensed stylist. This means I am well on my way to starting my career. The first day was very boring, and all that really happened was a lot of talking, a little tiny bit of note taking, and some group activities and a lot of "Getting-To-Know-You" games. I ran into Mandi during our last break, which was nice, because she was the only familiar face I saw other than Jade and Courtney, the admissions reps.

I met some interesting people. One of them is a man who seems to be very gay (if becoming a stylist wasn't a big enough hint). He has his nose pierced, and he has a blonde chunk in his hair, and he has an industrial like mine on the same side as mine, and he has a conch piercing (I'm pretty sure it's a conch? but I'm too lazy to research that), and he has gauges and a couple more ear piercings, and he has the nape of his neck pierced, and a tattoo that says "Pride" on his right wrist, and a tattoo of a star where the nape piercing is; the two end-balls of the barbell are on either side of the top point. He's enertaining and he does his own hair and he sits next to me in class. My locker partner is a girl that I met maybe twice, but she seems nice, and I like her already; she took up very little room in our locker, which left a lot of room for me, which I graciously used half of so she still has room for her things. They gave us our kits and we have a lot of appliances and things to lug around now.

I don't really have friends there, nor do I know anyone enough to talk to them outside of class, but it's nice to have someone for while I'm in class. I just wish I wasn't stuck all alone for my breaks and lunches. I spent so much of my time by myself yesterday, it was crazy. The commute to Northgate is like an hour and a half to two hours, depending on which buses I catch, and the commute back is a non-negotiable two hour trip. I leave at 6:07 and I don't return home until 9:00. It's very demanding, but I know that I can handle it, so it doesn't bother me much. We have two fifteen minute breaks, one of which they broke up into two 7 minute breaks, giving us three breaks, and a forty-five minute lunch. This would be enough time to go to the mall, if I had a car, but yesterday I just used it to go get a latte at Starbucks and chain smoke.

So that's my life, right now. I'm happy about it. Things are coming together beautifully.

I've got two days of life left. I am not allowed to touch food after tonight, and I'm not allowed to touch water after tomorrow night. And then I won't be home for a few days. Which is usually the part that kills me. The pain isn't generally too bad cause they have me on so many god damn pain killers that I can't even make heads or tails of the fact that I'm alive, let alone in so much pain. If I remember correctly, which I probably don't because there was about a week of 15-minute-doses of morphine and the standard drip clouding my memory, I only really noticed the pain for a couple of hours, and that was usually only when they made me move or walk. Other than that I just chilled, high on the worst drugs possible, trying to figure out ways to make the hospital staff hate me enough to send me home early, or convince them to up my drip so I could pretend that I wasn't in the hospital, or even just trying to tell them that yes, I will be perfectly okay if you just leave me the fuck alone for ten whole minutes so I can take a shower BY MYSELF because I don't feel comfortable with you washing me.
I digress.

I just don't know what to do when I'm living at a hospital. Cause everything that I could do has already been done too many times before. I brought books, magazines, paper, pens, pencils, colored pencils, crayons, coloring books, fucking word puzzle books, my laptop, a little ball puzzle that Vince/Danielle let me have in the hospital, and I always had friends there, and I still got so bored daily that I resorted to counting the cracks and holes in the ceiling, and monitoring what my average heart rate and respirations-per-minute were. I don't know if you have ever actually paid attention to such a dull count of life, but let me advise you against it; unless you really want to feel like you should kill yourself for how much time you wasted doing nothing productive. But let's be a little honest here; the view from the hospital is, at best, a view of the freeway and the roof of a nearby building, and at worst it's just a cement wall. The TV has about ten channels, all of which never have anything good on, and really the only reason you would actually USE your TV would be to fall asleep, which is the only way to fall asleep, coincidentally, because otherwise the heart rate/respiration monitor would be beeping at least once every hour, waking you up, because apparently it thinks you're flatlining. I think it just had a... quirky sense of humor, I guess.

I'm trying to make the hospital room sound entertaining enough to not feel like I'm going to die, living there again for another few days. Granted last time I probably only contemplated jumping out of the window because I was stuck there for a week, and the only world I got to see was through the same three windows I always looked out of, and when I would walk around my floor (which I could walk around twice, on a good day, without even feeling like I used energy at all; it was such a small fucking hospital floor), but still. The only plus side I remember to being in the hospital was that everyone actually paid attention to me, and they were helpful to me  (which was undestandable cause I couldn't do anything for myself for so long), and my aunt would buy me about five dollars worth (four fifty, actually) of energy drinks almost everyday. And people stayed overnight with me every night, and they all made sure that between every visitor I had, I was never alone. Which was nice. Cause being alone in the hospital is probably the worst thing ever.

It's good though, right? The final surgery is very quickly approaching, and I can't say that I'm not at least a little bit excited for it. This is where my life starts to go back to as normal as it ever could be as a cancer survivor. Those two words should never be used to describe me. I don't understand where along the line those became reality. I like to pretend that this was all just a really horrible nightmare, and that I'm just now waking up from it. From my diagnosis, on December 12, 2008, until now, it was all just fake. I just made myself believe that horrible things happened to justify why I feel like so much shit, and I just happened to be convincing enough to believe myself. I just think that the hardest part is the fact that still, nearly a year later, I can't bring myself to actually hear the words "cancer patient" or "survivor" and actually believe it. I mean, it makes sense, I guess. This was without a doubt the worst experience of my life, and I dont' think I have been truly happy since before I found out about it all. That's when I started to get really, really sad and cynical and my belief in everything dropped and I just kind of cried a lot and didn't talk to anyone because nobody could relate.

Cause I mean, when people talk to you, they talk about things they can relate to. And after a while, everyone knew about my disease, and they all did the most awkward job ever of walking on eggshells around me, never mentioning anything because they didn't want to know how I would react if they mentioned the C-word. I remember several times, when someone was talking about it, and as soon as they said "cancer" they slapped a hand over their mouth, got all wide-eyed, and apologized profusely to me, promising to never mention it again. Maybe I've mis-presented myself, but I don't really care all that much if "The Cancer Word" comes up in conversation. In fact, it actually bothers me a lot more when it's completely avoided. Talk about uncomfortable. I can understand it, I guess, because for most people it would be a life-shattering event, diagnosis of cancer when you are only seventeen years old. But I kind of miss being treated like a person. There is nothing worse than the awkward silence after someone says, "You should quit smoking cigarettes!!! You'll get ca--uhhh..." It actually hurts, a little. I'm still a person. I'm still the same fucking person. I'm still me. I'm just twenty pounds lighter, and I have been through a lot more, and I sure as hell have a LOT more life experience than I did a year previously. Thats the only real difference in my eyes. I feel older, a little wiser, but mostly like I overcame what will be the hardest thing I will have to endure. The effects are ever-lasting, but so is the remarkable feeling that I actually did this. I beat this disease. With help, sure, but I beat cancer. I'm alive. I survived it. The second surgery is in two days, and I'm still alive, and there is nothing wrong with my health. Fuck you, cancer, I fucking beat you. I got my life back, you can't have it, and neither can anyone at the hospital.

This is really long. I didn't mean for it to be. I dont' even know what the point of it was, but I'm pretty sure I strayed from it at least five times in the last few paragraphs. I just... I need something that I can talk to, even if it isn't a human. Especially if it isn't a human. It's so much less awkward. A livejournal wouldn't be able to cut me off and tell me to change the subject, or tell me that it's a touchy subject, or tell me that I'm being morbid, or just not listen to me because they don't know what to say and they don't want to try to think of something.

Everything is moving so fast now that I'm not paying attention to it. I have my second surgery in eighteen days, which suddenly became really close. I don't know. Last time I remember thinking about it, it was a month away, and it was so far off that I didn't have to worry about anything. but now I have started to realize that I need to start preparing for everything. I need piercing retainers, I need a higher pain tolerance, I need to be ready for bedrest yet again. I need to be ready to exist only in hospital walls for a few days, although this surgery will be so minute compared to last time's week long hospital stay. I have a projected two-to-three day recovery time in the hospital, and beyond that they believe it won't be much longer than a week or two. This one is not anywhere near as extensive as the last one. I'm just excited, moreso than anything. A little nervous. I'm ready to be me again. I'm ready to like the person that I am, and not be self conscious about things that I can't help, things that happened to me purely due to my faulty genetics. I'm ready to love me again, and feel like me again, because I haven't in the past three or four months. I've been a stranger, someone I don't recognize, with weird things in weird places and no self esteem. I want everything back. I want to be a healthy weight again, too, but it's becoming more and more apparent that I won't be able to necessarily accomplish that.

I have a meeting at the Gene Juarez beauty school next Wednesday, I guess I'm supposed to just meet people and walk around and see what the classes are like. It's pretty far away, but it's worth it to me, if I can get a great education out of it. And, after that, we have me pretty much set up to begin classes in the beginning of October because the woman I spoke with figured that it would give me enough time to recover from surgery fully and have some time to myself to hang out with people or do whatever else I wanted to do. I'm very excited. I'm glad that finally, after all this time of doing nothing but waiting for things to start coming together, I can start getting my life started for myself. I can go to school to learn the skills I need for my ideal career, I can get a job once I'm healed up, I have my GED... I'm pretty satisfied with my accomplishments as of now.

But, for now, I just have to deal with the fact that my head is swimming with anxiety and excitement and skepticism all at the same time, and wait for it to either go away or learn to deal with it. Which isn't too big of a deal. I mean, the worst is over, now I just need to make up for all the lost time. I'm eighteen years old, and I'm finally living the life I almost want. Going to beauty school. Normal again. I'll look like me. I have the piercings I want. I look the way I want. I need new clothes, but that can wait. I have such big dreams in my mind, and I'm not going to let them slip through my fingers.

I just want the Technical College to start answering my phone calls because I want to know whether or not I passed my last GED test. It's inconvvenient how they tell you that they post your scores online, but then make it damn near impossible to view them. I just want to know for sure so I can either read up more on cosmetology and figure out what to do about that after my surgery or plan to retake it on a day when I am less hungover. Because I learned last Thursday that that's a really bad time to take the tests.

I kind of just wish that it wasn't so hot out. Yesterday was like 105 degrees. I didn't even want to leave my house because on average the temperature in here is like 80, which seems like a lot on a normal day but yesterday it was so much cooler and nicer. I would much rather it be 80 than 100 degrees. I could take a cold shower I guess, but I don't know if there would even be a point to it cause I would get out of the shower and just be warmer than I was when I got in, once I got out and felt the temperature in my house and outside.

Today, I'm going to try to go to Danielle's house because her basement is cool and nice. It feels like it's air conditioned but it isn't. Which I wish was like my house. I need an air conditioner, but it's never proven itself worthy. Then again, usually at this time of year, it's in the 80's and 90's, not topping out over 100.

I also don't like this heat because it's making my nosering try to get infected and icky. So that kind of hurts a little. Oh well. I'll live. I just want to fill time until I can figure out my GED scores.

There are so many things rushing through my brain all at once and I don't know how to sort through them just to understand one thought and how it morphs into another.
I don't know what I'm getting at, at all.
I should maybe go find some way to entertain myself, maybe piano or something, because TV is just not cutting it for me right now. I need something more active, but I don't want to be around people.

Today is me and my boyfriend's eleven month anniversary. He is my longest relationship, officially. My other lonest didn't even make it to ten months, I'm pretty sure, and if it did it was just barely. And we're still doin amazing, and I'm still so happy with him, and I still see no end in sight. Almost a whole entire fucking year together. It's crazy. It makes me very happy.

I think we're going to go see Bruno together tonight, in celebration. I'm not sure. Yesterday we had a celebration but then we found out that it wasn't really our anniversary. Haha. We both just got really confused, so I guess we're having two celebrations. but this one is the real one.

Anyways.
I'm gonna go back to doing nothing but sitting around on my bony little ass. And hopefully not being so confused by myself. I think too much sometimes. I really do.
I don't know what I'm even thinking about, because there isn't anything coherent in my head. There isn't. It's just retarded zoning in and out of reality, I guess. I'll let you know when I figure myself out. :p

Happy day-late fourth of July, everyone. :)

I had a pretty...interesting day, in celebration. My dad went to Portland to see some concert thing with someone, assumingly his old friend Moon who he likes to blow shit up with and get drunk, but probably in the reverse order. So I had a few people over since I kinda had the house to myself anyways. We drank some beers, smoked some weed, and blew off a very basic arsenal of fireworks for a little while. All we had was a strip of firecrackers, some bottle rockets, and a spinner. Around ten or so, we were all inebriated in one way or another, and we decided that we wanted to find some fireworks to watch since we didn't have any to blow off. It didn't take much; all we had to do was walk a few blocks down the road, and we found people lighting off some fireworks, then more down the street, then even more at Juanita, I think it was on the football field... We sat around on the street, smoked a bowl or two, then got bored and started walking again and found more fireworks at my friend's house.

Then we just kinda sat around until everyone left. Which was kinda boring, but I expected that cause my house kinda sucks. There's really nothing entertaining except for my TV, my Xbox, my piano, and my dad's electric drum kit. All of which are short-lived entertainment.

I'm satisfied with how it went. I kinda wish I had more fireworks, or the opportunity to have watched more, but I don't really care much. We got to watch them get lit off in one way or another, and we watched them for a good half hour or so. I'm satisfied.


Today, my dad is coming home. My house is completely cleaned the way it looked before, like nothing ever happened. I'm waiting for him to show up so I can go do something, anything, today because I am broke and I need bus fare. Yes, I am already planning on leaving the house, even at eight in the morning. I want to find something to do today while my boyfriend works.

On a different note, alarm clocks are fucking annoying. My dad's has been beeping since six thirty this morning, and it's in his bedroom which he keeps locked so it's still going off at 8:10.
FUCKKKK it's obnoxious.

on Saturday.

They're still hella swollen and a bit sore and the studs are VERY snug in my lip,
but I like them an awful lot.

My parents kinda hate me for it, a little.

I haven't posted an update in so fucking long. It's ridiculous. I guess I've been kinda busy lately. A huge change from when I couldn't even get out of bed, last time I posted, and all I really could do with my day was sit around on the computer and do shit because it required only enough energy to type. Lately I've been out walking and doing things that even the doctors expected me to be unable to do for a month. It's been over three weeks since surgery and other than every now and then having a little bit of a problem, it's almost like nothing happened to me. Granted, I still don't have the same energy level that I had before, I have made a very rapid recovery. And I've gotten over how depressed I was initially, which is really good. The doctors told me it would go away eventually, but that I could pretty much expect to be depressed for a little while.

Today will be a great day. Collin is working today from noon to four, I'm pretty sure, and then after that we are going to my sister's house because she is hosting a family get-together, we have one every month, and we'll be there for a few hours and then leave and have a Saturday night to do whatever the fuck. I have already made plans for myself; Yesterday, I went to Woodinville and bought two hollow needles (a 16 gauge and a 14 gauge because I didn't know which one I would need, and they were hella cheap--combined, they only cost 69 cents!) and two labret studs (which it turns out were 16 gauge, so that's the one I need haha), and a tongue ring (cause... why not? I had money) and after my family get together, I am going to pierce my lip. I'm doing snake bites. I'm excited. I have never pierced anything on myself other than my ears before, but I can't find anyone else who can do it and I can't pay for a professional parlor because that's like a hundred bucks for both. And I figure, a lot of my friends have pierced their lips in various states of mind (sober/fucked up) and with no experience whatsoever beforehand, and not fucked up. So I stand a very good chance. Usually they do it with safety pins, and I have all the necessary equipment; if I can get the needle through, I'm good.

So that's exciting. It'll be piercings number 19 and 20. Hahaha. That sounds like such an excessive number. Shh.

Today is my surgery.
I spent all night crying. Like, bawling and sobbing and a huge fucking mess. I don't really know why, but my emotions are running rampant and I dont' know how to control them. I'm crying now, just thinking about the fact that in an hour I will be leaving for the hospital to stay there for a week. I have to leave my life behind.
And I'm not ready for this surgery. I'm not ready for the physical changes. I'm not ready at all. Just seeing the markings of the surgery made me break down. I hit rock bottom last night and hopefuly there is nowhere but up to go. But I doubt that.

My surgery begins at 3:15 if it's on time as scheduled, and I will be done by 4:45.
My surgeon is kinda cool; I asked him about my piercings, and he said he didn't want to make me take out the ones that would close up too quickly to put a ring back in them after the surgery and save them, cause I told him that my dad offered to pay to take me to get them all done again if that happened, so he said that I should just take out whatever piercings I can afford to take out and they will just work around the rest. So I'm not gonna lose my tongue or nose ring. :)

But other than that...
this sucks.

fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
I'll talk to you all in a week. :/

I turn eighteen in three days. I am pretty excited. Of course, it would be a lot better of a thought if I wasn't going in for surgery three days later and if I wasn't so terrified of that. But I guess it's still ok. I have twenty bucks now, courtesy of my grandpa, so I can hold on to that and go buy myself some cigarettes on my birthday, or buy some beforehand or something... So that's pretty cool. I'm going to TRY to get enough money for a carton but I don't really know exactly how I'm going to manage that because so far all I have is twenty and a carton is a good sixty, seventy dollars with tax. It is a really nice thought, though.

I've been thinking a lot about my surgery lately. Both good and bad. I'm excited to be better because right now I'm about as far from it as possible, but I'm really not excited at all. There's so much that could go wrong and fuck me over worse than I already am, and there's an extensive healing time due to what they are doing to me, and there's another surgery after the big one in six days, and the scarring is going to be big and ugly and all over my stomach and I'll be living in the hospital, presumably alone because my relatives will be working and my friends will be at school. And it's been making me cry a lot. I'm not really sure why. It's a big change. A huge one. And it's a lot to adjust to, and the idea of it alone is taking a toll on me. I don't really know what to do.

I know that I am probably going to cry after I get out of surgery, if not from the pain, then from the other physical drawbacks I will be experiencing as a result. Like the fact that I won't even know how to make myself mobile for at least a day, I will have to completely learn to do everything, and everything else. It makes me really mad sometimes.

I'm trying to stay optimistic; I had an epiphany the other day about it and I stopped being afraid, which was nice, but I guess it was also a bit temporary because now I'm right back where I started, panicking and a broken up mess.

I don't wanna talk about it.

I still have so much to think about, it's not like getting back together took very much way from my cluttered head. But I guess at least now I'm not hopelessly devoted to someone who wasn't even willing to be with me at the time. That was such a terrible feeling. I couldn't think of anyone or anything else but how much I just wanted things to be normal again and how much we should have been together but we weren't. But I still have a surgery coming up in two weeks, from today. And I just had a really really bad nightmare about it. In which I woke from the anesthesia before the procedure was done, waking to my surgery happening on me and being in a lot of pain, and I had to take out my tongue ring and they wouldn't let me put a retainer in it so it closed up, and Collin couldn't force a barbell through it no matter how hard he tried, and when I woke up nobody was there to see me and smile and tell me I'm okay or comfort me or anything, and after the first couple of days everyone went back to living their normal lives and stopped visiting me because they didn't want to just chill in the hospital, in order to see me, and they have school, and curfews, and boyfriends and shit. And I remember that my boyfriend in the dream wasn't Collin or anyone who looked or sounded or was like him, so it wasn't foreshadowing or implying bad things or anything, but while I was in the hospital, some girl told me that my boyfriend was fucking her.

It's so bad. Like, I have two surgeries within the next four months. This is my 18th year of life. I should be out enjoying it, clubbing, and buying smokes and other things I'll be allowed to buy, and doing all this shit, and I'll be stuck on beds and in the hospital, and even when I'm not I won't feel like myself. I won't feel pretty. I'll feel like shit. Cause this surgery is going to make me look like shit for three months. I wanted to get my belly button pierced sometime soon, but now I don't know because the scarring is going to be so bad. I think eventually I might get some kind of tattoo, once the scars have healed up enough to not be tender anymore, that will cover the scars, so I have something somewhat attractive to look at instead of a surgery that saved my life. Cause while that is a scar worth having, I don't want to look at it day in and day out. I hate scars. Especially big ones. Especially big ones in the middle of my tummy.

It's two weeks away. I'm not ready for it. I'm not ready for the pain, or learning how to live life again, or anything that is going to happen to me. It's scheduled for three fucking days after my 18th birthday. How's that for unfair.