I think human behavior is one of the most fascinating things there is to observe and be a part of. Lately, there has been quite a bit of drama on my hospital unit. I don't like the management here, they don't treat people very good. Some of my favorite people especially.. 2 of whom have left for other jobs. That's the sad part.. the fascinating part is that there is a girl here who I have always had an on-off friendship with.. well, I don't know if it's a friendship exactly, but sometimes I like her and sometimes I don't - that's a better way to say it. I've wondered often if she has bi-polar disorder because her moods seem to fluctuate for apparently little to no reason, that I could ever see. She was never "mean" to me but sometimes she just was really grumpy. Suddenly, when my 2 favorite people left she's all sunshine and roses ALL the time! I can't figure it out.

My one theory is that maybe she was jealous of the bond the two girls had and since they both left, she feels better. Second theory, she was jealous of the girls (and not the friendship) themselves and that's over too since they left. I don't know.

I have to say I am happier for it. She's a lot more sociable now and I like that. I like to be friendly with people.

Ugh, today is not a good day. I'm having sinus issues and I've been throwing up.. except I haven't eaten anything to throw up because once I started to eat, that's when I started. I know, I won't go into details because it's gross - except it's mostly water, so not too gross. Anyways.

I should mention how grateful I am that my friends put up with me. One friend in particular. I am lucky to have a friend in you, more than I can say. I don't want to get all mushy-gushy.. that's never been my style.. but I'm glad you are there. Thanks for letting me have my way once in awhile :D

It's hard to believe that Christmas is  almost here. This year has gone by so fast.. too fast, or maybe not fast enough.

I finished the Twilight series today. I should've done it a lot sooner, but I read the first book and then got distracted with life, and I just picked up the rest of the books the last couple weeks. I loved the books, I was sad that they came to an end. I guess there was supposed to be another book in the series, but that someone leeked it in it's infancy stage onto the internet, and the author was so upset about it she doesn't even know if she'll finish the book or not. I can't say I blame her, as much as I'd love to read that book. When you write something it becomes a part of you, or maybe it's better to say it was part of you from the beginning and you are just sharing it with other people. It's hard to let people in on your world sometimes, and to have it stolen from you - in a form that isn't up to par with your usual standards, unfinished.. well, I would feel more than violated. I do hope that she can get back in the right frame of mind to finish it though.. it would be great. That's the hard part about getting attached to a series.. you get attached and when it's finished.. well you feel like when you're graduating high school and you don't know if you'll see those people anymore. It's sad, but it's so worth it.

I'm thinking of reading Anne Rice's Mayfair witch trilogy again. I love those books too. :)

I'm thinking for the first time in about 2 years I'll have what I consider to be a real "home." Not just a place to stay. Although, right now, i don't feel like that "home" is quite mine yet.

I feel so off-kilter all the time. Like I'm in some sort of bubble. I don''t know who I am, what I like.. and I don't like that feeling because I pride myself on knowing WHO I AM. It's just lately everything I used to be and like.. well it's all different and funny now.

For example, I used to watch the news, almost non-stop. I can't watch it anymore, it gives me too much anxiety. I have to watch it in small doses, and whenever anything about health-care reform comes on, i try to turn it.

I find myself missing so many things, and yet I feel somewhat numbed. I just want to be past all this, I want to be looking back and thinking "wow, that sucked but now it's over." And I don't know how to do it.

And now that I have a real place to go, I'm supposed to get better, the pressure is on. I know it, and I feel like I can get better, that I am getting better... but it's so slow. And I worry what my limit will be. For the most part my obstacles are more mental than physical. I have so much anxiety, and it's hard to fight it.

People always take breathing for granted. Heck, I never used to really think about it. It's just something your body does automatically, a reflex. It's funny when you have to sit and concentrate - and yet at the same time NOT think about breathing. To just let it happen. You get caught up in trying to make sure you're breathing while not focusing on the fact that you're breathing - and it makes it SO nervewracking.

It's also weird how things go in circles.. last year around this time I was just a visitor to this hospital. My dad was admitted and he was here for a few days. I remember my mom and I went to the wrong elevator by accident, the very elevator that takes you to the unit I currently am at. I remembered the painting of irises on the wall when I was wheeled in by the paramedics when I transferred from the other hospital.

I have my whole life ahead of me. I know this is just one mountain I'll climb, that I have climbed other mountains in the past. I know I can do it but taking those steps is so hard. Time is really flying by though. In a couple months I'll have been "sick" for one year. I don't like that at all!

I don't know if I have shared yet that I'm adopted. I was adopted when I was 6 months old, have no recollection of my birth mom, or of my loving foster family (except of the pictures I saw and things I heard from my parents about my foster mom.) For some reason, lately, I've been thinking of writing a letter to my birth mom. I don't know if this is technically possible.. for a lot of reasons. My adoption was for a good reason, honestly, even though I am a very pro-life person, she would have been very much within her rights to have an abortion.. and it would have even have made sense to do that. Instead she chose to be brave and sacrfice 9 months of her life so that I could have a life. Then she made the decision to give me a better life by putting me up for adoption. I have so much respect for her and the choices she made for me.

I have never once thought about seeking her out in person, or invading her life. The circumstances of my adoption, think it would just cause a lot of hurt and distruption and that is exactly why she gave me up in the first place. I would never want to do that to her. I wish only the best for her... I have such a compulsion lately to just let her know I feel. I want her to know how much I appreciate everything she did for me. That I recognize the hard decisions she made and made them even though they probably weren't easy for her. How she put my life first, the things that were good for me, instead of ending her embarrasing situation after she learned she was pregnant.

I want her to know she made the right choice and that her choices lead me to be where I was meant to be. Where I am blessed to be.

I want her to know that she gave me my life and allowed my parents to give me a great life. I want her to know that if she ever decides to seek me out or wants to meet me, that the door is always open. However, I won't ever be the one to knock on her door because I don't want to open old wounds for her and her family. I owe them that much.

I just want her to know that her sacrifice for me don't go by unnoticed that I appreciate her and will always have a special place in my heart for her. She won't ever be the one I call "mom" but she was instrumental in giving me the life I have and I can't ever express my gratitude in words.

It's amazing how much your perspective can change over the years. When I went to middle school (and high school too, I guess) there were always kids who lived in "trailer parks." Some of them were my friends.. but I have to be honest with myself and admit I looked down on where they lived.

Well, things have come full circle on me.. because now I'm going to be moving into a park. If this had happened several years ago, I think I'd feel ashamed.. but I'm not, in fact I'm extremely happy! If I had ever visited those friends I would have realized how nice those homes really are. Much nicer and preferable to apartments. My parents found a really nice place that has everything we need - even things we didn't have at my old house. Things like a side-by-side fridge, which is nice when you're in a wheelchair because you can actually get into the freezer by yourself. The stove has knobs on the front versus above the stove-top. There is a nice garden tub. In the new place I'll have my own full bathroom! Everything is fresh and new looking.

It's going to be so great to finally have a place of our own after having to live with my grandparents for so long. My grandma's alzheimer's is worse than ever and if my aunts and uncle have their way she is never going to go to a nursing home - which she desperately needs. She needs the structure and stability, people around her that have alzheimers too so she doesn't feel inadequate anymore. They just don't understand she needs more care than they are ever going to be able to give to her, it's just not humanly possible. Not unless they get 24 hour-home care and no one can afford that. They're lucky to have insurance that will pay for the nursing home.

Anyway, it's just a bad situation and I'm glad my parents (and when I go home) will finally be out of it. I feel like one nasty chapter in my family's lives is finally coming to a close.. although it will be much nicer after I finally am able to go home.

In other news..

I'm extremely frustrated with photobucket. Everytime I go there the websites not coming up right. It comes up so unprofessional, like a website with a designer who only knows basic HTML code. It doesn't have any real graphics or depth - not even a background! Just plain white. I've tried reloading the website.. I even thought maybe it was my internet browser (IE 6 or 7) and so I used Google Chrome, and it was the same thing. As far as I can tell no one else is having this problem.. but for me it's making the website completely unusable. Everything just comes up in lists that don't make any sense. I can barely even search! Ugh, i hate it.

Lately, I've been watching an episode of Sex and the City here and there. I don't know why, I never was much interested when it was actually a new show. I never went and saw the movie. To tell the truth I always thought it was kind of ridiculous - especially how it contributed to girl's ideas that they all HAD to have designer shoes and bags otherwise LIFE WAS NOT COMPLETE!! I'm not into high fashion, or any of that kind of thing. So it boggles my mind why I suddenly want to catch episodes of this show. I can't relate to anything in it - and I really don't even want to. I've never had much of a social life.. and the more I come to know myself, the more I realize it's because I don't really want one.

In some ways I'm a very selfish person, I need a lot of time to myself.. to reflect and think. And write. Something I haven't been doing enough of lately. When I don't get enough time to do these things, it feels like a pressure.. I get irritable, and angry and the more time that goes by it's like a pressure cooker that feels like it's going to blow. I think I've always been like this from the time I was little.

I do have friends, and I like my friends.. but sometimes I push my friends away if they want to spend too much time with me.. and I don't like that about myself. I know some people think I'm lonely.. and I guess growing up, sometimes I was, but really, most of the time I enjoyed the solitude. And yet I admired my sister and envied the way she could make friends so fast and easily. It's like two parts of my personality, the ying and yang, and they haven't quite figured out how to mesh, the balance.

Today my mom brought me this cool necklace/bracelet that she bought at a flea market. It's a skeleton sitting bowlegged on a small blue-metallic gazing ball, the skeleton has a tall Suess-like hat, that is bent to the left a little more than halfway up. I've always liked stuff like this.

..........

I feel like I come here and I don't write anything.. I don't write what I feel or what I think. I try to write it all without really saying anything.. because I don't want to face it. I don't want to see it anymore real than it already is everyday.

All I can say is this is one helluva mountain to climb. I don't know if I have the strength. There are so many times when I just want to give up but I know I can't and that this is all part of God's plan. I just want this to be over. I want to be at the top of the mountain.. or better yet beyond it. But I don't know how anymore. I know what I have to do to get there and it seems impossible. It's like telling someone that is in the desert, thirsty for water and all they have to do to get to the well is scale the Grand Canyon.

And I wonder - how did I come to be here? I know it's a pointless, useless question. Someday I will know, I will have all the answers I ever thought I needed. It's so hard though, it's so hard. I try to stay so hopeful, and I do have hope, but that doesn't lessen the challenge.

I want my life back. But I'm also scared about what that life is going to be like now.

I'm trying to stay so positive, and for the most part I am, but it's hard. It's hard not to think sometimes "why me" but  I know those thoughts are no good and harmful. At the same time.. I know I am better for all of this. I have an am learning so much. Things I probably couldn't have learned other ways. I believe each person has a different path they have to take to learn the things they were meant to learn while they spent time on earth. I know this is part of my journey.. but wow, I think I took on way more than I could chew (as I usually do!) My spirit was WAY to ambitious.  

The other day I went to the mall.. (for a visit) and it was nice.. but at the same time it seemed so alien to me. It wasn't part of my life anymore, like it used to be and that was weird. It felt like visiting a school you used to go to as a child. It still exists, and things are going on as they should.. but it's not YOURS anymore.

I know, one day I will look back on this post and think WOW I did it! Look how far I've come, just like I've come this far. But wow, right now it seems like the impossible.

The other night I told one of my respiratory therapists that I felt like this whole experience was like asking someone to  climb Mt. Everest. And she took my pad of paper and wrote "you have wings"

That's why I don't give up or give in.