I hadn't gotten my hair cut at all since August, so it was getting really thick, and I wanted it short enough that I don't have to mess with it while I'm recovering from surgery, so this was a very good appointment for me today. I may not be a girly girl in most regards, but I do love getting my hair done. :) And after discussing it with Mom when I got home, I think this is the perfect length for me. So yay for that. I love the lady I see every time. She's the only one I trust. She somehow magically knows what I mean I want even when I can't describe it very clearly.
Hahahaha. I'd been planning to cut my hair off during this break for a while now, but wasn't planning on doing it today. And then I got out of the shower today and realized that I probably should do it today because I have Texas and then surgery and then Christmas and New Year's. So I called up one salon in town, and they were booked, and then I called another one (I'm honestly not sure if there are more than two.) and they said I could come in any time, so I called Mommom, and she was already on her way over anyway. So I now look like this.
I like it.
I'm about to go watch the winter finale of Nashville with Mom and then head straight to bed afterwards because I have to be up at 4:30. Texas!!! AH!
As I did when I was in Nashville, I won't be blogging while I'm gone. I'm not bringing my computer because I don't want to have to check a bag (and I probably won't much feel like being on it anyway). I'm sure I'll be posting on my Twitter and Instagram quite a bit, though. So you'll have something to check if you feel like checking in on me. :)
From excitement over trying a new hairstylist today who made my hair look even better than it did before,
to fear and worry when I found out my CT results were in 24 hours after the scan, which is next to unheard of,
to relief when the CT almost definitely confirmed that the mass is just a hemangioma, and I won't have to do anything about it for 6 months to a year to check to make sure it hasn't grown,
to sadness when thinking about the 3 guys who have recently proved themselves to be exactly who I was afraid they were,
to absolute heartbreak when thinking about 1 of those guys in particular,
to anger over what he did, how he handled the aftermath, and his lack of remorse,
to butterflies over a boy who doesn't know how special he really is and how he makes me feel,
to a sense of 1000 pounds being lifted off my shoulders when I was able to spend an hour on the phone with a girlfriend who was the perfect mix of support, comfort, reality check, and wisdom,
to gratitude for all of the ways I see that God has blessed me today, that I am relatively healthy, and that I have so many people who truly know my heart and love me and tell me they want me to stay the same girl that I am right now.
It's been a crazy day. I'm so relieved that I finally got an answer about my liver and that everything looked okay on the scan. I also have a sense of peace about the decisions I've made to cut certain people out of my life since I realized that they serve no healthy purpose for me anymore, but I'm still a bit heartbroken. I probably will be for a while. I've been burned by people before, but not like this. As much as it kills me to let people go, I have to do what is best for me. And the best thing for my sanity right now is to completely remove anyone who is harmful. I'll never be able to heal the damage that's been done if I don't.
So instead, I'm going to focus on the people who lift me up. The girls who text me just to tell me they love me. The boys who tell me they're ready to see me. The people who are there when I need them and never expect anything in return. I am so blessed. I have to stay focused on that.
9 days to Campbell.
This song really has nothing to do with what I've written. I just found it today and pretty much fell in love with it.
I forgot to tell a funny story Carmen told us at dinner on Monday. She's a nanny, and this is something her boss, Jamie, told her.
Jamie's friend Heather has a sort of special needs, but functioning, 14-year-old son. There's about an hour between the time that he gets home from school and Heather gets home from work. Every day, Heather calls at the same time to make sure that he got home safely. Well, one day she called, and the son picked up whispering, "Mom, Mom, you'll never believe this! I caught a troll!" She thought he was joking around, so she went along with it, but he then said, "I gotta go, Mom! He's trying to get out! I gotta keep the troll in!" Well, here's what happened...
While the son was home alone, a man saying he was a Census Bureau worker came to the door. He walked in the house, which is something Census Bureau workers can't do. As it turns out, he was a man working for the Republican Party checking for illegals. This man was a midget, which was what made the kid think he was a troll. When he walked in the house, the kid started chasing him around. He got so freaked out that he barricaded himself in one of their closets. When Heather got home, she found a pile of Skittles in front of the door as the kid showed her where the "troll" was. He had been sliding Skittles under the door to "keep the troll alive."
That may be one of the greatest things I've heard in a very long time. :)
Got my hair trimmed yesterday. It looks a lot better.
It is blistering hot outside. That makes it not very fun for me to go outside. So aside from the haircut, I've done nothing. And it's good.
On a more serious note, today is the 11th anniversary of my dad's death. RIP Daddy <3
I thought I'd give you a little update and make you all jealous of how fast my hair grows. (Just kidding on the jealous part :P)
This was me at Thanksgiving.
This is me today.
Pretty awesome, huh? (Forgive it for being messy; at the end of the day, after classes and whatnot, I'm too tired to care what my hair looks like, lol.)
I'm really not that far away from what my hair looked like before all the surgeries.
I don't really have anything fascinating to write about today. I just wanted to show you this because it makes me happy. :)
My mom stayed home with me today because I had such a horrible night last night and have been in unmanageable pain.
Thankfully, my mom begged Duke into calling me in more painkillers because I'm not doing good at all and have to move to college in 5 days.
*sigh*
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In other, lighter news, I got my head shaved to look slightly less odd. Yes, I still have some hair. :) Maybe I'll post pics in the next couple of days.
I was pretty blah about it at first, even though I knew she didn't really have many options about what to do, but now I think I kind of like it.
The funny is that when I wake up, my hair stands straight up like a peacock (or a peahen, I suppose). Sometimes it's side to side, and sometimes it's front to back in more of a faux-hawk fashion. Seriously, I was getting ready to go out for my uncle's birthday yesterday, and I spent 25 minutes trying to get my hair to lay down. The tricky thing is that I'm allergic to pretty much every hair product, and finally, Chelsea came up to me, said "here, try this," and sprayed this hypoallergenic toner on it, and it worked!
Little did I know, toner is actually for your skin. :)
Oops.
Oh well. It did the job and it didn't hurt me. That's all I cared about.
I've never been a girly-girl. I've never felt the need to spend an hour in the morning getting all prettied up with makeup and whatnot. In general, I really couldn't care less about that kind of stuff. I basically never wear makeup unless it's a special occasion. (Maybe that's why the boys don't pay attention to me! Yeah, right.) Until now...
Last night, I decided I wanted to look at the back of my head, just to see the damage I was working with. I honestly didn't think it would bother me. I just wanted to see it. But as I angled the handheld mirror to look back into my bathroom mirror, I saw just how much hair I had lost, and it hit me. Everything that I've been through in the past two and a half weeks hit me. Then, my mom took the bandages off because they were peeling up anyway, and it hit me even harder. It's hard to explain, but it didn't seem quite so real until then.
Suddenly, I became superficial. All I could think about was the fact that my cute hair is gone. Why something that's never mattered to me mattered a lot all of a sudden, I don't know, but it did and does. My mom and I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to rectify the shave job Dr. F did on my hair, and we can't come up with any style that's remotely close to what a normal 17-year-old girl would want to have. And it sucks.
I know I shouldn't care. I should just be grateful that I'm alive right now, and I am, but I'm still a teenage girl. I'm leaving for college in just over a week, and when I walk on that campus, I don't want my scars to be screaming "look at the freak!" But when the back of my head is completely shaved, like we've decided I'll have to do, it'll be like a giant red arrow following right behind me. Trust me - you can't miss the incisions on the back of my head. And there's not a hat on this planet that will fit my head, either.
This seems so stupid. I should just be thankful that I still get to go to college this semester. I am. But I'm still 17 years old and I still just want to fit in and blend in. My entire life, I've tried really hard to avoid any attention that wasn't academics-related. I want to go to school and have people want to get to know me, not either ask six billion questions about my head or be so freaked out they won't want to come near me.
You don't need to tell me "It's just hair. It'll grow back." Please don't tell me that. I know that. I know it's just hair. But it means a lot when you're a teenage girl. Especially one who's facing an entirely new world at the same time she's trying to deal with recovering from something like this.
I fell again on Friday. With two sixteen-inch steel rods in my back, even the most minor slam or tumble or fall is incredibly painful. Needless to say, I got no work done this weekend.
Our refrigerator died. We have no clue why. Now, we have basically no food in our house because most of what we had was in our fridge and freezer, and we had to give it to my uncle and my grandma.
We think my mom has another kidney stone. Pitiful, in-pain me trying to take care of pitiful, in-pain her does not work well.
Got my new haircut. And my new glasses. Love them both. Pics will be up...sometime.
So...something you should know about me is that I'm a very indecisive person. Like really really indecisive. It's hard for me to buy or pick out anything because I'm so afraid I'll change my mind. I've had the same haircut for years because I wasn't sure if I wanted to change it. Well, tonight I went up to my mom and said "Do you think I should cut my hair?" just totally out of the blue. I had considered it a few months ago, but at the time thought I didn't want to do it because I wanted to be able to do my hair up for prom. I decided a couple weeks ago that I'm not going to prom, so I figure, why not? So I made myself go ahead and get online and look up pictures of possible haircuts. After some serious deliberation, I found the perfect one. :)
This hair with my new purple frames that are coming in this week is gonna look amazing, my mom and I decided. :) I'm really really really happy.
