Stomachache

'Stomach' is a funny looking sort of word. So is 'ache'. Put them together and it's almost enough to make you laugh. The sort of feelings it describes, however, don't really induce that sort of chuckle out of me. Not since Monday, and the testing and Thursday and the results. Now, I am scared of every cramp and worried of every bout of nausea.

I have a stomachache today.

I don't know if I'll be able to have children. I've been thinking that phrase a lot lately. I've said it out loud dozens of time. I even said it before I ever got those stupid test results back. I said it for lots of reasons, at different times, to lots of people. I always sort of meant it. But it never scared me before. It used to feel like a sort of self-implicated restriction. Something I could always reverse if I ever had strong enough desire to. Now... Now it's that sinking feeling that drops out from underneath your breakfast and leaves a cold sort of stone in the pit of your stomach that makes your afternoon tea turn on you. It feels like betrayal. Betrayal by your own villainous body. Betrayal by your own flesh and blood. Which is funny, sort of, because that's always a term you hear people use for their offspring.

"Their own flesh and blood."

I write to get this out from inside of me. It feels like a poison, gnawing at my twisted up entrails. Wreaking havoc and crying out from inside of me for more. More... pain? Suffering? Nothing specific. I don't think I could give It anything and It be happy and content.

It.

I think I've struck on something important here: there is a feeling of invasion by something Other inside of me. That something alien has breached my most sacred and vulnerable.... Inside Place. My Core. I read once that people used to think that your soul resided in your liver. Or something like that. I remember more clearly learning about benevolence being found in the liver. It does sort of feel like I am centered around what I can huddle safely with my arms. I want so much to have a baby. I want to be pregnant. I want to be all round and shiny and lovely and full of life. I want to bring life into the world. Life created out of love and commitment and attraction and compatibility and friendship. I want to hold the little angel in my arms. I want to nourish those tiny hands and blinking eyes. I want to coo and caress and sing and laugh and cry over my child.

I used to think that I would never have children. That I wasn't stable enough. Wasn't a healthy enough vessel. That I would never find a relationship worthy of that elusive title of 'family'. I mean, you've got to really make sure the set-up is a-okay. Everything has this nasty habit of falling apart. I wanted to make sure my foundation was strong. I found Poncho. Or, rather, he found me. Showed up one evening, in my living room. Surrounded by strangers and vague acquaintances. Uncomfortable. Like he was in some bizarre-o world waiting room.

"Yes, of course, Mr. White. You sit right down there and your soul mate will be in to get you. Could you just fill out this form while you wait for her?"

Poncho is my puzzle piece. Everything I needed in a partner. Everything I ever could have wanted. I love him so much, in so many different ways. I need to just write about that sometime. It's just, so overwhelming. Still. We've been together since March of last year and it still just blows my mind. All of it. The perfect friendship, the kisses, the Love, the sex, the cuddles, the conversations, everything. He's perfect. Well, no. Not perfect. He has faults and the like. But even those are strategic, in connection with me and my faults and imperfections and such. We're perfect for each other, even as imperfect beings. I think he's the dreamiest, sweetest, softest, most wonderful friend. Best friend, boy friend, all kinds of friend. Any kind. He's there for me in every way. Whatever way I need. It's just, astounding, when you think about it. Really amazing. I looked so long. I tried so hard with so many morons, to make this. To create some inkling of this, that I now have in abundance. It's so disgusting to me, now. The past. Anyway. I'll talk about the past more later.

Poncho is going to be a great father. 'Is going to be'. Not 'would be'. We'll adopt. Foster. Something we want so badly to have children. They don't have to be from our genes. It's probably better that they're not. I have lots of genetic crap I don't want passed on. Used to be another reason I always said I wasn't having kids. I didn't want them to blame me for all the problems I handed down to them. ADHD, bipolar, depression, anxiety, asthma, stupid-bad allergies... But I decided, you know what? I love myself the way I am, all that included. And god knows Poncho loves me for who I am. So who's to say the kids wouldn't love themselves regardless of genetic quirks? Precisely.

Well, I feel much better now. I think I'll end this now, on an optimistic note.

Peace, Love and Strawberries.

Colposcopy Results

The biopsy revealed that there are high level changes in my cervical cells. That usually means a LEEP procedure, where they remove the parts of your cervix with such cells in order to restrict this sort of cellular activity as much as possible. Dr. Scott has decided not to take this action, on account of several reasons. First, I am young (relatively), and being closer in age to 20 than I am to 30, she is hesitant to remove chunks of my cervix.... Which is good, since I want to have kids eventually and all. Secondly, I've never had an abnormal pap smear before, so this is an isolated incident. Thirdly, since my pap smear was abnormal, but did not reveal high grade changes among cells, but only low grade changes, this isn't as bad... I think I got all that down correctly. It's all so complicated and they're all so careful in their speaking to me. They don't want to scare me.

I am scared. I've spent the better part of the day crying. And it's not just the test results. It's this whole new development with the student loan. I owe them so much money, and the account is delinquent, and I have no way of paying for it. Poncho and I were still struggling just to get rent together for Monday. I don't know what we'll do. We've been trying to find jobs. We've enlisted the help of unemployment, and I've sent off for information on food stamps. I don't know what else to do. It all seems a bit hopeless.

I feel better now, when I'm writing all of this. I talked on the phone with my mother for a while today, and she gave me some good advice. Live in the now. Live for the moment. In other words, don't worry about things, because worrying isn't going to help anything. Don't even think about the issues that stress you out, unless you can contribute good, positive, constructive sorts of thoughts to the issues. Planning, in other words, is fine.

The plan is this: tomorrow, my father and I are going to have a conference call and go in on this together. We'll figure out how to get a payment plan set-up or something. I'm supposed to go in for another pap-smear and colposcopy in June - four months from the one on Monday - and they'll see if my body has been able to fight this thing off on its own. If not, then they'll have to operate and do that LEEP thing and remove chunks of my cervix and god, I cringe a little just thinking about that. I have been instructed to take 1 mg of folic acid every day, to help strengthen my pathetic excuse for an immune system, in hopes that doing so will boost my body's chances for fighting this thing off on its own.

I took a multi-vitamin today with 500 mcg of folic acid in it - that's 125% of the daily amount you're supposed to be getting. It's a start. I'm just worried about the whole multi-vitamin thing. They usually make me jittery. Like caffeine.

I want to be healthy. I want to have pretty babies someday.

Pray for me.

Taste the Rainbow

They called me Skittles in high school. Not the whole 4 years, mind you. Just Junior year, when I dyed my hair for the first time. My cousin, Olivia, helped me. We bleached it first, since my natural color is so dark - a really dark brown that often gets mistaken for black. Then we used Manic Panic, a temporary dye. We did red, orange, and yellow streaks. When I pulled it back, the colors radiated outward from my face in a fascinating manner. But when I left it down, you could only see the red streaks on either side of my face. It was very cool. Manic Panic washes out very quickly, but the initial color is vivid and beautiful. I have a few pictures of that hair style, but I don't have any digital versions.

After that washed out, and I just had the limpid bleached out yellow left, I re-did the coloring job. This time, I used purple and red. I left a space in between the two colors. I have a few pictures of that, digitally:

That's me with Olivia. I call her Livvie. I even type that into my phone, or into the Facebook search, before correcting myself to use her full name.

After that, I did normal brown hair again. Then, about 2 years ago, I started back to re-dying it funky colors. But this time, I did my whole head. I started with pink:
I have gotten much, much better with the make-up. And those eye-brows. Yeesh. After that, I had to dye it back to brown until I moved in Russell and out of my father's place, where I'd been living for the summer. Next was turquoise. I consider turquoise my base color. I kept going back to it, as you'll soon see. Here was the first time:
Even this first time, I incorporate some pink, in stripes, from the temples. I often did this. Pink, sometimes purple. Sometimes both. This led to another nickname, Cotton Candy.
I gave myself bangs!
Sometimes I spiked them up with gel. This picture shows one of the times I did that, and clipped back the rest of my hair so it looked shorter.
What it looked like down. (Actually later that same day the picture above was taken.) Here are some other incarnations of the turquoise/cotton candy look:

I did every color of the rainbow. One for each month, for a year. I cut my own hair during this time. I bleached my roots when they grew out, and I used a permanent dye called RAW, which wouldn't wash out like Manic Panic, but instead would gradually fade and then grow out with the rest of my hair. I did red, pink, yellow, green, blue, purple, and black.

I loved having dyed hair. It made me feel unique and weird and different and artsy. I was called Rainbow Lady by all the kids I came across. The kids I nannied for loved it. It was expressive. I was lucky to have jobs that allowed such expression. First, at Hot Topic in the Asheville Mall, and then with the nanny position. My co-workers at Hot Topic called me Rainbow Brite because of my constantly changing hair color and tendency towards candy-raver-esque clothing/accessory style.

But, ultimately, it was bad for my hair. The follicle was fried, and wouldn't lay down, not even with deep conditioning.

I dyed it back to brown, in late 2008 and let it start growing out. I had to get a job, after all. Most places won't even look at you if you have funky hair. In May 2009, I had it cut professionally at Galina's, here in Asheville. From there, I let it grow out. I don't have bangs anymore, what with it being something like 9 months later. I need to get it trimmed, get rid of the last few bits of colored hair.I can finally put it all up in a pony-tail. It's so exciting! This is what it looks like now:


I used to have really long hair, in my youth.

I kept it long up until Sophomore year of high school, at which time, I cut it (myself, mind you) in a fit of rage. I had this mind-fuck of a boyfriend, name of Flint:

And he kept badgering me to cut my hair, change my clothes, listen to different music, watch different movies.... all in order to be more like this chick he was in love with from Vermont. I forget her name, but I guess it doesn't matter anymore. The thing is, when we finally broke up after being together for something like a year, I cut off a big chunk of my hair just to spite him. It looked like crap. I tried this layering thing and I had no idea what I was doing. It just cluttered up the frame of my face and looked dingy and crowded. I wrote a poem about it: A poem originally written in March 2002, in which I was contemplating suicide while cutting all of my hair off. This is the revised version, which I released on deviantArt a while ago.

A Hair Too Close To Real

Just one last thing before I go
The memory of that first kiss
To cut away the long black silk
To watch it fall through the abyss
My eyes will cry what they still may
My heart can't yet take that away

To confusing faces, my face turns
In all this anguish, something burns
Even for the fear of death
I will draw my last breath

Watch now, my weightless apparition
Leave me as I start to transition
As feet lift from the cold hard ground
And seen through mirrors, heard through sound
See darkness, torment, an evil sight
The strands of black upon skin so white
Shown eerie through reflections of the night

Take twin blades and cut away the years
Take away the memories
Take away the fears

If cut too deep the toll of flesh is paid
Damned spirit of a teenage girl, in sorrow made

Forgive me running far from here
From everything I was held dear
And leave to me just one thing, this
The memory of that first kiss.

And so, we've come full-circle. Back to high school! I dyed it for the first time a year after I cut it. So I guess you could loop this entry and just keep reading it, over and over again. But I wouldn't recommend it.

When I Grow Up...

I want to be a therapist. I want to help people. I'm good at it. I have an intuitive sort of leg-up on people's problems. Insight. I want to help people. I want to help people help themselves. I want to assist people in understanding themselves and their world. I want to spread love, health and happiness. I want a small case-load, I want to know my people. Spend time with them. I hate the in-out system of medical/mental health. It's impersonal, impractical, and moronic. You can't help someone if you don't know the extent of the issue. We need to learn to listen, really listen. Nobody listens anymore. We're all so focused on ourselves. Our own problems. It's so limited. The best way to solve your own problems is to get out of your head and see things from someone else's point-of-view, to help someone else with their problem. The best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else. Practice what you preach, right?

I have to finish undergrad and then put myself through lots of grad school in order to achieve this goal. I also want to teach. To profess, actually. At university. I want to be a mentor.

I want to be a parent. Parents are mentors. I want babies. I want to mentor those babies. I want to stay at home with my babies. I love cooking and cleaning and organizing and teaching. I want to home-school my kids. Not to shelter them, but to help them blossom and grow. The public school system is so messed up. I think kids can learn more, and faster than we know. Especially early on. Especially when you present it in the right light. Foreign language, any sort of theory, math, motor skills, philosophy, spelling... Anything.

Kids are amazing like that.