A Thousand Thousand Fearless Things #67

Now Playing: Heavy In Your Arms by Florence + The Machine (this will be my last confession, I loved you and never felt like any blessing)

#594: Garfunkel and Oates

#595: A crazy post about a crazy first kiss

#596: Baby E!

#597: Getting sick of putting up with some people

#598: Weird comfort food. Don't judge me. You weirdos eat black pudding.

#599: Baseball metaphors...

#600: There's this turning point in growing up when you realize that your self esteem's not low enough to look at some people. Atta girl.

#601: Hit me. Get charged with assault. 

#602: When I'm a bitch, I'm a manipulative backstabbing scheming calculative psycho. I don't troll. People who extract joy from winding people up and watching them unravel aren't cruel. They're just tools. 

#603: The rush of creative juices. Lit essay :P

#604: Fainting when I get home and reviving myself with ice cream. Elementary, my dear Watson. 

#605: Oil cleansing. Like attracts like, and then refuses to fuck off. 

dignity.

Now Playing: Better Than Revenge by Taylor Swift (sophistication isn't what you wear or who you know, or pushing people down to get you where you want to go, they didn't teach you that in prep school so it's up to me: no amount of vintage dresses gives you dignity)

I swear, some people at school are insufferably ill-bred.

I've never been particularly tactful, and I've never been one to spare people what they deserve. I can be a bitch. I'm only soft because I feel too much - but occasionally the switch will flick off and I'm only looking for pressure points. But even when I am being cruel...there's always common courtesy, even if you only do it for yourself. Dignity.

There are some people at school who are put on a pedestal for being so nice, so smart, so friendly to everyone, having no enemies. Bullshit. Complete, total, utter, fucking bullshit.

Being polite is more than saying please and thank you. Being nice is more than smiling at people and asking how their day is going. Being friendly is not ignoring someone totally, or being so unbearably condescending...I'm sick of it. Just punch me in the face. Seriously. It would be less insulting.

Sometimes I feel like I don't exist unless I'm with someone - it's only when I'm with one of my girlfriends that other girls sit up straight and show me some fucking respect. Otherwise, it doesn't matter what I do - try to talk to them, do them favours, set myself on fire...I'm just background noise. And then there are others, when I'm with them, I become even more invisible. It doesn't occur to people to acknowledge me, to consider my feelings. It's like it doesn't occur to people that I can have friends in high places, different social groups. It wouldn't kill them to give me some kind of acknowledgement that I too am a human being.

I'm not a likeable person from the start. If you're my friend, you've gotten to know me, understand me, love me for who I am. Those kind of people come from all kinds of places. I've never been good at social groups, at finding my own niche in the social hierarchy. And yes, some of my friends are a good deal more popular than I am. But even so, I shouldn't be treated like a shadow. I don't have to be friends with everybody. But I shouldn't have to put up with this shit.

If I am ever embarrassed, it is not because I'm afraid of how people perceive me or because I've failed to live up to societal expectations - I only get embarrassed when I feel like I've let myself down and not behaved with dignity. Some people have no dignity. I am not worth any less because I'm not afraid to be me. When push comes to shove, there are no prizes for conformity, and no benefits of being so arrogant.

so...

Now Playing: I'm Not Calling You a Liar by Florence + The Machine (and when you kiss me I am happy enough to die)

A few days ago my favourite vlogger of all time charlieissocoollike made his relationship (for a year! I can't believe he managed that long!) public.

Now, I hope this blog post doesn't sound too up myself. I have a very slow traffic blog. I am nowhere near as famous as Charlie McDonnell. But...I'm still out there, in the public sphere. This is taking 'wearing your heart on your sleeve' to the next level, seriously.

But um...yeah. I never know how to say things on my blog. Like things that happen in my life. Things that mean a lot to me that I used to whinge about and now I...can't.

I mean, how do I bring it up? Would I announce a boyfriend in some grand spectacle post? What about a breakup? Do I just not mention it at all? Is that even possible, considering how personal my blog can get? Or just mention it occasionally and hope people will cotton on? Either way it all sounds pretty cringe-worthy.

I expect to be blogging for a long time yet. It's wonderfully therapeutic, and it's so cool having a time capsule. But you know, things are going to happen that are like...personal...and I don't know how to bring it up on the public sphere.

AAAAAH.....

But I may have mentioned, I'm really bad at secrets. Especially my own. And this...this is my secret. Other things are all tied up with friendships and relationships and all sorts of complicated stuff but this is my secret.

I guess this is my weird convoluted way of saying that I'm not an nbk anymore, and I feel weird because I feel like I'm keeping secrets from my readers even though nobody probably cares and lalalala and wololol but I keep writing about it without actually writing about it and yeah anyway I've lost it and I'll stop whinging about it. I promise. And I hope I won't brag about it too much. I don't know. It was pretty cool ;P

I don't even know why I'm bringing it up. I'll spare you the details, because it's private and special and I'll lose the warm fuzzy feeling if I just broadcast what's going through my head. I guess I'm just bragging, really, or maybe I'm just in shock because I didn't at all expect things to turn out the way things...did. But in all seriousness, I feel like you guys have grown with me and this is all a part of growing up and it should be on my blog, it really should. Because when I'm old and married and had thousands of kisses I'll flip through my blog and remember my first one. And yes, it's been nearly a month but um...I'm kinda...chicken...

I haven't spent the whole month thinking about it. I do have year twelve finals. I just haven't known how to bring it up but if you read closely through some of my recent posts I already have...

It's late. I'm tired. I'm not thinking straight. I might delete this in the morning.

Phew.

And I'm not saying who!

you're so yellow.

Now Playing: Yellow by Coldplay (hahaha. Appropriate.)

I remember when I was little, when we called peach coloured pencils 'skin colour'. I remember picking it up, to colour in a picture and I was like 'What the hell? No. This is not skin colour. If it was, it would be multicoloured'.

Oh, I was a philosophical one. At four. At fourteen I failed philosophy.

Since then, though, I've never thought that much about my skin tone. I mean, as much as I rant about rampant racism in our society and joke that I have to bleach my skin before going back to Korea (it's true. Everyone there is whiter than snow. Although in Seoul that is not hard) I forget that I look different to all my white friends - and, yes, most of my friends are white. It's just not something I'm self conscious about, you know? I'm self conscious about my scars and my tummy and my acne and how absurdly huge my ears are. But I'm yellow and I forget that sometimes. When I look at myself in the mirror I just think that's just how people are supposed to look like.

I only remember if someone makes a joke involving yellow and my friends might point out that I might find that offensive. I never think of it that way - I don't associate yellow with me and therefore yellow with offensive. Slitty eyes and ching chong, yes, but not yellow. Other people actually find it more offensive than I do - white people, mostly, standing up for me. I guess there are only so many jokes you can make about peach coloured pencils.

Now that I'm forced off my lazy ass to take public transport, I take the train home with my friend. One day we had both ripped off our tights (it isn't as seedy as it sounds, I swear) and we just noticed...damn, she's white. And damn, I'm yellow.

Does it bother me that I'm not the same colour as peach pencils? No. But it's weird that I never forget that I'm Asian, but I always forget that I'm...otherwise coloured.

This blog post made no sense. I'm sorry.

it's hard being a half of a whole when you feel like two invisible people.

Now Playing: We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together by Taylor Swift (again. I'm sorry, I only just got this on my iPod. I don't even have an ex to sing this song about. It's ridiculous)

Falling in love for me is easy. I fall in love with assholes. Chances are if I've met you, and you're male, and you don't look like Jabba the Hutt, and you haven't been a total dickhead from the get go...I've had a crush on you. No joke.

I'm not saying I'm fickle, I just...I don't know, I'm good at multitasking. At one point in year eight I was in love with...my first failed attempt at a relationship with a git, my current best friend, a boy who's now in my form and a boy I met in detention...all at once. I was a slightly psycho thirteen year old.

By the way, I don't speak to the first boy, the second boy is a sweetie (now), the boy who's now in my form is...just a boy and I never saw that year eleven boy in detention again and it's weird because now I'm his age back then.

But I've never felt like a half of a whole. Ever. That's what I'm trying to find - falling in love is the easy part (when you're a klutz, falling of any description is easy). I've never felt like anyone's really understood me. I've come close, very close, so close I could almost taste it...but then they say something and it's not bad or mean but you're just like 'No. Yeah. You don't get me at all. I don't know what the hell's going through your head. I still love you, though'.

It's the only thing that makes it easier to move on. Knowing that it's much easier to hate someone than to love them, or realizing that you're great friends with someone but a relationship would be an utter disaster, no matter how badly you used to want it. Or that you both like each other but, sadly, you're both too thick to carry a conversation without every second word being 'What?' Or nobody's done anything wrong but intuition just tells you to run for the hills.

The thing is, if you really are half of a whole, or on the way to that, you'll never feel misunderstood. You'll never feel the need to bite your tongue. You'll never feel like your feelings are being brushed aside in favour of meaningless emoticon banter. You'll never cry into your pillow and then say you're okay when you're not. You'll never feel like the other woman, and you'll never feel like Potential Girlfriend Replacement If Current Situation Goes South. You'll never think through everything that's happened and then realize that your current situation is totally incongruous with events of the past. You'll never bore your girlfriends to tears with 'WHAT THE HELL IS HE THINKING I CAN'T READ HIS MIND MAYBE YOU CAN EVEN THOUGH HE'S MY FRIEND NOT YOURS' You'll never make openly public bids for attention or lose sleep from sheer insecurity. How do I know all of this? Because whenever I've deluded myself into thinking that I could maybe possibly potentially hopefully take things up to the next level, I've felt like that. And then something totally assholey will happen and I'll be like 'yeah...this is why we're friends. I remember'

I've never had a close relationship with a guy and not felt at least one of the above. The distance that creates...you know it wouldn't happen if things were meant to work out. It's something you can put up with in a friendship, but it's one of the many warning signs I missed when I was young and silly and naive. So I think it's safe to say, that all of the (admittedly, very few) boys I know...are not The One. We're not the same person, not even a person with split-personality. At most we're conjoined twins.

I'm not saying that the perfect relationship doesn't have fights and problems and conflict. I'm just saying that you won't feel alone in those hard times. I always feel alone in those times. I have to do my own problem solving. All my fights with boys haven't been like civil wars, they've been more like...invasions. I've never felt like I could trust someone completely - which has never turned out to be a bad thing, to be honest. But when you're your own agent in a relationship, or a friendship...you do a lot of stuff behind people's backs, a lot of lying to people's faces. You don't do that to your other half.

The thing is, it's hard to feel totally understood, or to totally understand someone, when you're someone like me. I'm two totally different people in one. Once you get to know how I present myself to the world - which is complicated enough already - you have to meet how I am in private, and yes, it does freak people out when someone who is normally so loud and bubbly starts shaking and avoiding eye contact. I've kind of accepted that about me, but I don't know how easy it's going to be to add a third personality to the mix. It's why I still feel like I have to simplify things for people, to try and conform - but even if I wanted to do that (and I don't, not anymore) I can't - it's like trying to cram a triangle in a circle hole. Hell, sometimes even I can't stand me, so sometimes it verges on impossible to try and endear myself to other people. Although...this is the first year that someone has actually found me attractive and I've returned the favour and some...weird stuff happened. I mean, much good that's done me, but at least I know that there are possibilities.

I'm still trying to be fearless, even when that personal mission sometimes feels like it's contradicting my other personal mission to just get what I want out of life and be happy - and, you know, a relationship is part of that. I don't know why everyone expects us to not want what we all want, to just wait for it to fall into our lap, as if we're going to leave something so important and desirable to luck and fate and chance. I'm me. I'm psycho. But I've got friends - not many, admittedly - and I'll be up myself for just a second and say that I'm perfectly capable of something more, thank you very much.

Men are from Mars and women are from Venus (we all suddenly just don't care about Earthlings) but I'm looking for a Plutonian. Like me.

my hair conditioner is a science experiment.

Now Playing: We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together by Taylor Swift (I say I hate you, you call me, I love you)

To make hair conditioner: Pick rosemary, wash rosemary, cram rosemary into glass jar, cover in apple cider vinegar. Dilute 1/4 cup in 400mls of water. Replace rosemary when it begins to disintegrate.

Because of my new shampoo (amazing Shampoo Bar from Corrynne's) I've been washing my hair less often, so my conditioner is used a lot less and spends a lot more time sitting in a dark cupboard, not being topped up or otherwise messed about with.

Which means that, especially where the rosemary is exposed...it's trying to form a mother.

and then I was topping it up today without looking properly at the vinegar bottle and then FLOOMP, a massive grey slithery thing plopped into the jar and I was like AAAAAAH

It was an actual mother of vinegar! It was absolutely fascinating. I've never seen one before.

If you put it in alcohol, you can make your own vinegar. Unfortunately it freaked out my sister, and so it went in the bin.

...I know, I'm a nerd. But it was really really cool.

I can only explain the first ten.

Now Playing: Good Intent by Kimbra (I know you didn't mean it boy, you meant so well)

Now, you're going to have to forgive me for going all American on y'all. I've been talking too much to my friend in Texas lately. And lbs...work in perfect...tens.

You'll get what I mean in a minute.

I was steadily gaining weight from about twelve until just before I turned sixteen. Part of it is just growing up - growth spurts and hormonal weight gain and etc. But most of it was that I was a fat little pig who drowned all her sorrows in ramen noodles. I was 105lbs at about eleven or twelve, and by the time I got back from eating my way through the Asian continent last summer I was 130lbs.

Yes, I gained 25lbs. In my defence, it sounds a lot better in kilograms.

I made my ball dress when I was fourteen, and about 110lbs. I deliberately made it a little bigger, and very very adjustable. But by the time ball came around two years later, I was in danger of not fitting in to my ball dress - or, at least, looking terrible in it.

So I got back, and I worked out every day. It was torture - partly because I am very very unfit, but mostly because I am very very lazy. I wouldn't eat any carbs after sunset, and in a rice-worshipping Asian family that is kind of...hard. I wouldn't look at junk food. The only thing I could do when I was upset was walk, work out furiously, or cry my eyes out. My days of ramen binges - I once at three packets of those really big Korean noodles in one go - were over.

But the hard work paid off. I wasn't skinny, but I lost 10lbs before the ball and with the help of a bustier everything was smooth and nice.

I lost 10lbs through blood sweat and tears. But now it's been nearly six months since the ball and I've somehow managed to lose...another 10lbs.

The thing is, I stopped actively losing weight after the ball. Mostly because I had to give in - I was having dreams about steak and french fries. I also knew that it was year twelve, and I didn't have time to work out as much as I liked. I thought if I could stay at 120lbs and then start losing weight again after exams, that would be great.

But no. Another 10lbs have slipped away, despite eating ramen (only once a week, I swear), sharing Cokes with my friends (and getting Cokes bought for me by lovely guys) and generally eating whatever I like. The only rule that I've strictly observed is that I only eat when I'm hungry - which means I have skipped lunch on more than one occasion. I haven't worked out for God knows how long, and my daily commute on the highly inefficient public transport system only started recently.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is NO LEGITIMATE REASON AS TO HOW I'VE LOST 10lbs. I remember, vividly, pushing myself to lose weight, watching the numbers ever so slowly crawl down, being depressed when they creeped up again every time I so much as looked at something that wasn't a salad. And then the exact amount of weight has just kind of melted off and I don't know how or why or when...where does 10lbs of body mass go? Sometimes I think it's just hiding under my bed and I'll wake up one day fat again. But now I'm back to my old foodie, anti-exercise self and I'm...dare I say it? Skinny. Well, skinnier.

Which is bloody inconvenient, to tell you the truth. I can't wear school skirts anymore, and when I put on my school shorts there's a really big gap between my back and the waistline. I have about two pairs of pants that fit me, and both of them are pyjamas. When I go out, I always wear dresses - I mean, I like dresses, but they're...um...the only things that fit me now. Because they're hand me downs. From my Asian Miranda Kerr sister.

So, yeah. I've lost 20lbs. But I can really only explain the first ten.

I am a slob.

Now Playing: We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together by Taylor Swift (I absolutely cannot believe it's been two years since Taylor Swift last released her album. I remember buying it when it came out and...and all the things that have happened since then, there's always been a Taylor Swift song to help me along. New album coming out in October!) 

I am a massive slob.

I've been skipping sports carnivals since year seven. Before then, I was vaguely excited - but then it got boring, you know, all those 'Well Done' stickers and 4th place ribbons in the last division. All the champions read out - they were always the same name. There was never any that much fuss about me, what I could do. All they cared about was who was blessed with the right genetics to have strong legs and make everyone else feel like fat little nerds.

The sense of relief, driving past school - vaguely 'sick', but on my mother's suggestion - on sports carnival day...it was wonderful. Not feeling bad because I was slow and tubby with short legs. Not bursting my lungs trying to win ribbons I always knew I'd never get.

I don't think I've ever been to a high school sports carnival, and I've been to all of one swimming carnival - and didn't swim. I can't even remember if I was on my period or not, but that was the excuse I gave.

So I'm at home, blogging and studying and listening to music. I slept for eleven hours and I'm still in my pyjamas. My hair looks revolting and I know I'll have to wash it before I show my face at school tomorrow. I'm not wearing any makeup and I've done the only thing I can do in the kitchen without blowing something up - make ramen noodles.

:)

exhausting.

Now Playing: No Light, No Light by Florence + The Machine (would you leave me if I told you what I'd done? And would you leave me If I told you what I'd become? Because it's so easy to say it to a crowd but it's so hard, my love, to say it to you out loud) 

I always feel guilty because I know I am a difficult friend to have.

I'm really bloody complicated. Messed up. Intense. It's a lot more than most people can handle, or want to handle. I know.

I always feel a bit guilty because being friends with me is pretty...crazy. In my defence, I can be a good friend when I want to. I'm always there to listen to even the most messed up problems. I can listen to absolutely anything and not judge. I'm easygoing to the point of insanity, really.

Which is not always a good thing. When I say I'm 'okay', I'm either being a girl and living in that alternate universe in which 'okay' means 'I am totally not okay, you tool, and it's all your fault', or 'okay' means 'i'm not really okay but I don't want this to stop'. What can I say? I'm trapped by teenage recklessness just like the next man.

The only thing more insecure than worrying about taking up space is taking up time. I feel so guilty that people are wasting their time on me. I shouldn't feel that way! I'm a friend, and friends are an investment of time and love and energy.

But I've always been a secret. I was thirteen when someone first said 'don't tell anyone how much I care about you' or words to that effect, and nothing's changed since. Being a guilty pleasure is only cool up to a point. Then it's mostly irritating, partly degrading and very, very exhausting.

But I guess you know there's something wrong with a relationship where the best part about your whole week is listening to your girlfriends bitch relentlessly about how much of a twat your friend is, and agreeing with absolutely everything they say. I guess you know there's something wrong with a relationship when you can't say what's wrong, when you can't be angry, when you feel like you have to let everything short of murder slide. I guess you know there's something wrong with a friendship when you are supposedly 'best friends' with someone but you have almost nothing to show for it.

What comes between best friends? It's not academia, not even now that we're all so absurdly busy. No. It's society. Social groups will have more appeal than any single person.

So much has happened and almost nobody knows. I never thought things would turn out this way, and I never thought that once I had so much I would want so much more.

I'm not angry, I'm exhausted. And it's sad that, when all is said and done, nothing has changed - I'm the happiest when I'm tapping out an essay or sitting in English class. It's still what I do best, despite everything that has happened this year. It's very disenchanting, really, to be changing colour but people only see you in black-and-white. I'm exhausted by friendships and relationships and people. I'm so exhausted I don't even have the energy to say 'enough'. It takes less energy to smile, so I smile. There's not much else I can do anyway.

I know this is all really bad timing on my part. I should probably have scheduled my mental breakdown in the middle of summer, but shit happens when shit happens, you know. You can't schedule when you grow up, when things happen to you. And I don't even spend that much time thinking about it - and that's the point. I need to think, I need to talk, but I have no time for myself and nobody has any time for me. I feel like I'm going to explode. All I know is that the second the pressure's off I'll be alone. I won't see my girl friend every day and my best friend won't be there for me. So, really, nothing's changed. That's the part that is the most draining. Progress for progress's sake - I don't feel like I am moving anywhere, as a person. It's exhausting.

So, for all the people who have seen me 'tired', for all the people who have seen me stare blankly into space, for all the people who are getting more and more confused by the cynicism and sarcasm and double entendres when I speak...this is what's going through my head. I'm not angry or hurt or happy. I don't regret anything, and yes, I'd still do it all again if I had the chance. But I'm just exhausted.

being brave.

Now Playing: Cameo Lover by Kimbra (this is non stop baby, you've got me going crazy, you're heavier than I knew) 

I was a pretty clingy kid, to be honest, despite being in daycare. My mum's colleagues used to call me 'leach' or 'parasite' because I always insisted on being held, cuddled, and clinging on to mum. Even now, I'm closer to my mother than most girls my age are - my mum is my best friend. 

I've never understood parents who's goal in life is to train physical and emotional attachment out of their children. I knew I could always run to my mother for a hug, to kiss something better, for a talk. I was never made to feel weak or babyish for it until I got to school and people judged me for it. I can't count how many times I've fallen asleep in my mother's arms, or gotten up at all hours of the night and crawled into her bed. That's what parents are for. 

But one thing that my mother did instill into me was guts. I get my guts from my mother - literally. The one thing I remember the most is 'don't cry'. 'Don't cry, G. Be brave'. I don't know any girl who isn't allowed to cry. 

I cry really, really easily. Let me tell you why. 

Sometimes people ask me how I handle my medical condition. What they don't realize is...what else can I do? I was born with my medical condition and I'll die with it. I don't know what it's like to look at myself in the mirror and not see scars, not see my pacemaker. I don't know what life is like without little nips of pain almost every day, I don't know what life is like without hospital scares. That's just life. This is just my life. I don't know what life is like without it. Being brave is just one of the things I've had to learn, like tying shoelaces and catching trains.

I guess this has affected my life in the fact that I've always been attracted to intensity - the kind of do or die, heat of the moment, complete rush of spontaneity. That's what I mean by living without regrets - it's not like I've never done something that I wish I could have done differently, or that I've never done something and then kind of wished I'd never done it...but I live without regrets by accepting everything. The good is wonderful and the bad...well, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I'm a stronger person, a better person, because of the experiences that I have. That, and the fact that I am suffering from teenage recklessness and sometimes I simply can't resist. 

Physically, I have to deal with the pain. The little nips are muscular pains...they're hard to describe, I haven't gotten them from anything else apart from my pacemaker. I'm also really, really unfit, and get tired easier than other people - which is why I have burst into tears on more than one occasion when people have yelled at me for taking my time on staircases because a) it is pretty physically exerting for me and b) I fell down three flights of stairs when I was five. Hospital - hospital is just pain, and then when you get home the immobility is beyond frustrating - taking a lifetime to hobble down the stairs, of not being able to sit up, sit down, somehow finding lying in bed doing nothing quite uncomfortable. And then there's the appearance...it's hard not to notice my scars. It starts a few inches below my collarbone, right between my breasts, and stops a few inches above my navel. Sometimes I look in the mirror but I just can't imagine the scars away - I really have no idea what I look like without them. My pacemaker is about the size of my fist (although, admittedly...I have a tiny fist) and protrudes just where my waist dips in. Self conscious? Definitely. 

Emotionally you go to some pretty dark places, too. There are no words to describe the feeling of hugging your own father and knowing you might never see him again. There is no way to describe the sheer panic when they have the gas mask on your face and you can't breathe and it's heavy and sickly sweet and you know you're just about to pass out and the only thing in your head is 'don't want to'. It's hard not to feel a little violated when you wake up in intensive care in unimaginable pain with your shirt completely unbuttoned and a slit down your chest, and then a syringe of Panadol is forced between your lips like you're a sulky infant. On more than one occasion I have totally broken down and asked 'why? Why me?', and begged to just be normal, just to be like everyone else, to not have to go through this crap. 

I know you just have to get over it. I don't ask why anymore - there's no point. It's the main reason why I'm atheist - I cannot begin to describe the unimaginable rage that sears through you at just the thought that someone or something might be responsible for all of this, or that you are somehow guilty or deserving of the pain. Sometimes I can go days without thinking about it, without realizing I'm different, and then it'll hurt again or someone will bring it up and then I realize that yeah, I am a freak of nature.  

People don't see a lot of it. They see me as being relatively normal - in uniform, walking around, hair up, makeup on. They haven't seen me on a hospital bed, losing weight with cracked bleeding lips. They haven't seen me in a wheelchair. They haven't seen me rushed to emergency in all hours, they haven't seen doctors turning pale at the sight of my thick hospital file. They haven't seen the surgeon calmly scribble a picture of a heart and explain to me how they're going to dissect it up like a ninth grade biology class. They haven't seen me slowly inching down the stairs with tears rolling down my face. They haven't seen me with an opium headache. They see everything airbrushed, everything tucked away, the calm after the storm, everything cleaned up and hidden under clothes. I don't get to see that, but I feel...everything.

People feel the most sympathy/empathy when somebody was 'normal', and then becomes disfigured or disabled in an accident. Why is it that those few years of normality inspire more sympathy than a lifetime of having to deal with it? I'm not saying we shouldn't have any sympathy for people who become paralyzed after freak accidents, but it isn't any easier, being born with something. Sometimes I think it's harder. 

I really hate it when people try and brush it aside, try and compare me to paraplegics or cancer-sufferers and try to tell me that what I go through is nothing. No. What I go through is not the worst, nowhere close. I know people live with a lot worse and I have nothing but the greatest respect for them, for their strength. I am incredibly lucky to be alive, to be reasonably functional, to be relatively normal. But don't belittle what I've gone through. I've been through extraordinary pain, and I've been to some very dark places because of my medical condition. Not many other people have to question whether they should exist, whether their existence is somehow illogical or immoral. It's more than what most people have to deal with, and it's more than what most people can deal with. It is not something I would wish on anyone, and I don't need pity, but I would like some understanding and I certainly don't need people telling me that it's nothing. This is my whole life - it effects everything in my whole life. I'll tell you right here, right now, that if you weren't born with what I was born with, you couldn't handle it. Even if you could handle the physical pain, being born different, being born disadvantaged, deformed...if you let it get to you it can totally, totally screw with your mind. You don't know what it's like to wish, before and beyond everything and anything else, just to not have to do this, to just be like everyone else, and know that that wish will never be granted. 

And so that's how I've learned to be brave. I've got guts from my mum. Like all good daughters, I don't listen to my mother - I cry. I cry in pain and I cry in terror in hospital, but I never cry because I've given up, I never cry because it's gotten too hard. I let myself cry over relationships, over other stuff - but not this. When it counts, I've got guts - I get my guts from my mum. You learn eventually - not just me, but everyone - that no matter how hard something is, no matter how much something hurts, there will always be something even worse but you'll get through that and this, too. No matter how low things get, no matter how much pain you're in, no matter how scarred or scared you are by something, you have to be brave. Life can get hard, but it doesn't get any easier after you break down. Don't cry, G. Be brave.