Surgery!

Went well. I remember a LOT of beginning-- the anesthesia, the iv, all the cords, the conversation. Heather told me she was about to give me some stuff to make me feel even better than the laughing gas-- which actually did have me in a fit of endless giggles-- and that was the last thing I remember before waking up in the car halfway home. I've been in the chair all day, just kicking back.

The surgery included the removal of a sideways wisdom tooth and some steroid trigger point injections in my jaw to help with my tendinitis. I've been feeling better throughout the day! I've slept most of the time, but I've also watched "Julie and Julia" and am about to watch "The Hangover" with my sister if she'll jus wake up from her nap.

No one reads my blog,
Carrie Anne

Today is a very special day. I have so much to do, and so little time left to do it. I have make-up work to do, I have another draft of an essay due on Monday, and yet I can't feel any of the weight. I'm not stressed! I'm only inspired. Today I wanted to record a video for youtube of my cover of Samson, by Regina Spektor. It was looking like an epic fail, because I couldn't get a good take. Hell, I couldn't even finish the song. But by the 17th time I tried it, I was smiling. I was excited as I am curiously excited now.

Breathing white sky,
With the weight of wet chemicals.
A sigh into the dead leaf, careening
Against a silver light.
Perception has its limits.
I have my you.
Snow in the air,
Like a kiss to the skin of my arm,
Each little hair rigid.
Each little sound vivid.
And I can still breathe--
Like the endless somber sky.


Have a perfect day,
Love,
Carrie Anne.

It's About Time

I want to be a writer. I want to write insane scribblings that provoke concern for my mental health. And then I want to provoke a belly laugh, or even a chuckle. A chuckle would suffice every now and then. If I could only provoke tears... Or a smile. A sigh. A gasp. As for now, all that my writing provokes is a shake of the head and a thousand or so red, purple, or blue marks on the texts that carry on into the margins. My English class has me questioning my ability. I've never been criticized so epically in cold, permanent, red scratches.

Damn it.

English class is supposed to be my favorite class! I think I hate it this year. Despite my lack of my usual creative, poetic outlet through prose and free-writes, I think like a writer. I have this incredibly nerdy need to describe situations in my mind as it would be written in a novel.

But writers don't get a 77 on an essay.

I repeat. Damn it.

Love and frustration,
Carrie Anne.

It's certainly been a while since I've written you, blog.
I am realizing...

My life is a terrible thing spotted with moments of happiness...
Or that my life is a wonderful thing with trying situations between the laughs.

My outlook is whatever I choose. I'm in command of what gets done when, and how well it gets done. I'm aware of my potential. I'm aware of my passions. But am I aware of others? The people I care about? The people who make me want to improve myself? The people I could possibly love?

Yes and no. I deeply enjoy the company of others, but when the opportunity comes up that I might have a close relationship with someone, I consistently find myself backing out smoothly from the situation. Why is it that I can't make the time? The effort? I do care. But It's getting hard. I've seen too many of my friends turn to something opposite of their ideals, or opposite of mine. Either way it's difficult, and when distance is added to the equation, I've had enough. I don't easily keep up with people.

This can change. But I'm not sure I'm ready for it yet. I do know I owe it to people to show my empathy once and a while. My irrational fear of being a burden is a heavy fear indeed, and I it comes at the cost of hours freed, spent blogging about my issues rather than laughing and doing normal things with friends.

I'm dramatic enough as it is, anyway. Obviously. I don't know if having more people in my life would ease the drama. (laugh-out-loud)

I'm a complete nerd.
And I find that's okay.

Love,
Carrie Anne!

Humans are so strange. I'm a hypocrite for this. But my point today is that we tend to immediately dislike people for being themselves. You have to ease into being sincere. Sincerely, some people can be hilarious, peculiar, and emotional. It's not anything I'd be opposed to with time, but first impressions are seemingly false. I'd immediately associate with the calm and collected kid over the excitable dork... but in time I'd want the excitable dork to hang around. It makes more sense in my head.


So I guess it's not about who you are that counts, it's when you decide to reveal that to others. First impressions are formatted to society, structured, and FALSE. Or are they?

I'm a judgmental person apparently. So thi is probably just my opinion.

Oh Well.

Sincerely,
Carrie Anne.

"...But it's beautiful."

Sometimes I wonder the inevitable wonders. Why am I here? Who am I? How much control do I have? And then I remember that it will soon be over. As long as it has a definite end, in relativity to the time I will be absent from my decaying corpse, I have a short life. But how am I alive? How am I alive, rather, in relativity to others? Does the woman with sharp green eyes and unkempt dark hair have a brighter perception than I? Am I perceiving things wrong? Am I at fault? Are these problems obtained by shameful means, are they lessons I’ve ignored? I’m a fool then. I’m a fool to have these skewed images and perceived senses. It’s not there. And if it isn’t there, where am I? I’m not here. I can’t be here if all I’m doing is taking up space while my mind is off corrupting itself with temptations of its own. It’s so easy to let the sleep take over, even while I’m awake. But it isn’t sleep at all, for I wake up rested. But I’m not awake at all, for I sleepwalk and wipe at my flesh. I was free when I was empty of experience, full of life. I was programmed to do this. To stop feeling the real effect of the swaying dandelions, and wishing for old friends. It’s like a motion picture now. I know what I should say, but I don’t experience the thoughts for myself. There it is again. The tapping, the creeping of the particles, cloaked in clear blankets, dragging their boneless bodies across my uncloaked flesh. And it’s gone. I’ve resisted the urge to let go. To sit back and listen to my mind is to watch a film that projects something real. It’s just as real as the things I experience, anyway. And this is my trapped emotion. This is the way I was born not to be. The way it ought to be. And I wouldn’t rather be anyone else. To lack this confusion is to stop the room from spinning, where every corner holds a new image. Where every rotation reveals a melody, and every silent moment unveils a scrambled mass of ingenuity. Its not accessible, but it's beautiful.

SIMON'S ROCK.

God?

(This is a little bit of my personal essay on religion I've been working on for this writing camp.)


I’m so confused.
It’s difficult to imagine that the earth and all her beauty weren’t crafted carefully by a divine being. Naturally it’s the easiest belief to live with. As an atheist, I don’t live easily under my system of non-beliefs. I’ve been told by a handful of spiritual and/or religious persons that I can--and should--choose to believe in something miraculous--something infinite--something all-knowing.

My first confession is that I did believe in a god for some time in the past. It was a humid night in June, and I was about seven. Mom had fallen asleep early, so I stayed up and watched the clock nervously, waiting for her to wake up and check on me. I sang to myself while I waited. I would sing three or four words one way, then I’d dress them in a new melody again and again. I loved my voice. Amber from school always thought she had the better voice, but I thought she just heard it all wrong. I figured that God must have chosen me--out of all of his little children--to be something quite remarkable. I knew he wanted me to write songs for him. I had been making up little songs since I was three or four, but I was now able to write them down, and I took advantage of that. I wrote in a sparkly blue journal with moons on it, and I locked it with a generic key that came with every journal like it. I made sure to write as neatly as possible, with my best vocabulary, so that one day when I’m famous and important it’ll be worth a million dollars. I wrote songs about nature that I pretended held a poetic meaning, and I would sing those songs all the time to my friends. As I was lying on my back in bed singing, I decided to talk to God. I closed my eyes and said a prayer with my hands at my sides. Then I’d say it with my hands clasped in front of my face. Then I’d say it with “Amen” pronounced differently. My logic was that prayer was like a magic spell, and God only heard it if you did everything right.




...... (a bunch of other stuff I don't want to post in a blog and that you wouldnt want to read) ......



I don’t want to be a rotting lump of chemicals when I die. I want this temporary body to contain a permanent soul. I want to know more than this life in this body in this family in this world. I want to be more than a face, more than innate behavior. I want to feel my heart stop, see a white light, walk through a tunnel, and have a cup of tea with lost loved ones. But I’m so afraid. I’m fearful that there’s a definite end, just the way there’s a definite beginning. Where did my soul exist before I was born? Are souls simply created on a random day, and then later released into eternal greatness? I don’t think so. But I hope so.

What does the man on the subway with nowhere to go have in common with the little girl who blows out her five candles? What are men fighting for, dying for, living for, even? What keeps one person from associating with another without having so much as exchanged names? Religion is an aspect unique to humans, but not every one of us has an appreciation for it. I won’t force myself to believe in something seemingly imaginary. More importantly, I won’t let something inevitable keep me fighting against this life--the only one I’ve got. Maybe.

I'm So Tired

My life has been interesting lately, to say the least. The sun is shining, I've got all the free time in the world, I'm free of heartbreak... But I'm so confused. I'm so blank. It's not a recent thing, this emptiness. Maybe it isn't just me, either. But when I was a wee little child I just lived and inquired. Here I am trying to remember what it was like, when I'm most likely just wasting my time. You know what? I'm probably just doing a horrible job adapting to my life. Our environment is constantly transforming, so maybe it's time I underwent a transformation of my own. The only enjoyable part of this tabula rasa feeling is that I'm freeing up my options for the future.

Think about this with me. Unless the world really does end in 2012, I can expect a long life ahead of me. I can hope to one day be in love, pursue my career as a musician and a writer, and eventually become someone to both a family of my own, and also to the world around me. Because if there really isn't anything waiting for me when I die, I want to be remembered here. In this life.

Too deep for a blog?
Possibly.
Too deep to consider?
Never.

Love always,
Carrie Anne.

YOU are special

Because hardly anyone reads my blogs anymore. But here you are, reading my blog. One in a million, truly.

Words

I think now is a good time to start thinking about words again, seeing as how I leave for my writing workshop at the end of the week. I was in a store the other week standing in line. I think it was Bath and Body Works. I remember thinking about how I might write about my life one day. Well, to clear that up, I WILL write about my life one day. The question is how I will do it. I realized the seemingly obvious: great writing isn't done by using vast amounts of detail, or carefully chosen words. Non-fiction isn't more fantastic if you can remember more. You can NEVER describe everything, anyway. A great writer will describe the small details that most can associate with a very particular emotion. Are you following me? It's not about how specific you can be, or how much you can think to write. A great writer will exclude the obvious, and only fill in between the lines. This is what it means to show, rather than tell. If you ask me, it's a trick of the mind. A great writer isn't just good at telling a story, he or she will need to be good at manipulating the reader--anticipating the reader's prediction, and making assumptions about the reader's intelligence or experience.

Maybe that's all obvious. It's interesting to me, nonetheless.

So much love,
Carrie Anne.

Today I took my driver's ed exam. Easy. I was the third one to finish. But that also meant that I was sitting at my desk staring at my watch for more than an hour afterward. I got to help grade everyone's exams, so I knew when someone failed. Two people failed. It was more like an IQ test than anything, I think. All common sense.

I went to starbucks with my mom after that; i ordered for the both of us as usual.

I've been starting to eat and live a little teeny bit healthier.

Tinsley comes home in two days. And apparently she's going to attempt to bring a baby kitten with her. I hope it works, but it will be amusing nonetheless. One week with her, and then I'm gone for the rest of the summer. It's been determined that I will ride by plane, alone, to Massachusetts. Sure it's going to be scary since I don't know the first thing about traveling by plane... But I have to learn sometime. sigh.

I've been very happy. VERY happy.

Love,
Carrie Anne

I'm so thoroughly happy right now. And I can't wait until I get to visit my grandparents, dig my feet in the sand, and kick back with my little sister and dad. They'll get to see my new face! Which probably doesn't look drastically different from before the surgery, but the actual fit of the lower and upper jaw is very much improved. 8mm it was moved. Wow! Besides the killer pain I'm feeling below my left temple, I'm fine. Well, and there's the fact that my diet is stil bland and limited. Oh well. Worth it!

Love,
Carrie Anne

Well I can see that no one really cares about blogging in the summer time. It's only when you've got a million things to do for school that you actually set aside time for blogging I suppose. I've got literally nothing useful to do with my time for now, as I'm still recovering from surgery. I'm glad the bleeding has decreased drastically in the past few days. It was really worrisome to bleed every time i pulled my cheek back to put rubber bands in.

Anyway. Tomorrow, if it isnt storming around the middle of the day, I'm going to try and get some sun. I literally look halfway dead with how pale I am. Gross.

Love,
Carrie Anne

Happy fourth of July!

My mom and I spent a lot of time together yesterday. Between getting up and going to Northlake, seeing "Year One", talking for an hour outside on the porch, and playing a game of Scrabble, I feel like this whole recovery ordeal has brought us closer.

Love,
Carrie Anne

As an atheist, I don't expect to gain any feeling of accomplishment following a debate with a Christian about religion. And yet, here I am feeling enlightened and still just as atheist as ever. What a great debate.

Love,
Carrie Anne.

Today I look and feel a lot better than yesterday or the day before. I put some concealer over by bruises and actually got out of the house! Mom took me to get lunch at Max and Erma's, where I ordered a plate of mashed potatoes and a bowl of tortilla soup. My throat is still raw where they plugged it up and shoved tubes down in it during surgery, so the soup was a bit too spicy for me to handle. But the potatoes were satisfying enough! Afterward, we went to Victoria's Secret at Birkdale, where I had planned to use a coupon for a "pink" bra... apparently they've stopped making my size. So that was upsetting. Anyway, I bought sweatpants and a new eau de parfum. Smells FANTASTIC. Then Mom and I got frappaccinos... It was difficult to use the straw at first, but I got the hang of it. Mom found me a drug that will help my swelling, bruising, and aching, and it tastes awesome. I'm supposed to have 5 of the little pellets everyday. Anyway. My mouth still bleeds pretty much constantly. But I'm completely used to the taste of blood. (tmi? thought so.)

I'm excited for driver's ed next week!!!! Can't wait to boss the little teeny boppers around. Just kidding.

Love and happiness and whatnot,
Carrie Anne.

Hello, hello!

This morning I woke up with a peculiar taste in my mouth. Feeling mike I needed to wipe the left corner of my lip, I did so. Turns out it was blood. I had apparently bled all night long... Probably swallowed a bunch of it. So I sort of panicked, and demanded that mom took me to the doctor "now". So I put some ACTUAL clothes on for the first time in a week, then we proceeded to go downtown where they could fit me in. The guy was real rough, pulling my lip back and ripping bloody strings out with some sort of doctor tool thingy. He told me to brush my teeth all the time anyway, even though it bleeds. Then he let me ask a set of random questions I had written on a piece of paper. My most important question was when I could try EATING something... like ravioli. He said I could start today, and I was very very happy. =DDD

So I got home and ate two helpings of micro ravioli. So so so much better than drinking broth slowly with a baby spoon. Yay!

I can't wait til I can open my mouth wide enough to at least put a finger between my teeth. It'll make hygene a LOT easier, and eating will be much quicker.

I have a soft spot for Drake and Josh, so I'm going to go watch that now. And I doubt more than one or two people will read this anyway.

Love,
Carrie Anne

Well now I'm sitting here eating chicken and star soup. Really I'm just picking around the carrots and chicken and swallowing the stars. Anyway. Emily is gone now. We watched "Breakfast at Tiffany's", and I liked it.

As I'm watching "Two and a Half Men", I'm realizing something about laugh shows. The ones where there is an automated laughing audience. It used to annoy me, and I felt it was cheezy, but it's hard to notice it now-a-day. I quite like the fake audience, actually. I think they add it in so that people, who, like me, can watch T.V. alone and actually laugh at the funny moments in the show. It's nearly impossible to laugh at a show when no one's there to laugh with you.

Anywhoms. Just thought I'd share that realization. Maybe it was obvious to everyone but me. But just like a laugh, a thought is pointless when there's no one to share it with.

Love,
Carrie Anne.

Day 6!! So close to the end of the first week in recovery!

At this point I'm just killing time waiting for Emily to get here. She's gonna come bring movies for us to watch, and I imagine she'll spend a while laughing at me. I'm going to try not to be envious when she eats a stouffer's french bread pizza and I'm eating soup/yogurt/ensure with a baby spoon. sigh. I feel like I look better today, as far as the swelling. My bruises are still yellow, even the ones on my neck. I opened up a wound in my mouth twice now. it's huge! Just a pile of stitches and tissue and whatnot, impossible to not at least brush up against while brushing the teeth... So it bleeds and bleeds. We called the doctor asking if I can sleep flat yet, and apparently it's still too early for that. =[

The internet boyfriend is working today. So hopefully I'll get to talk to him tonight.

I'm running out of things to report, so I'm just gonna end this and wait for Emily while listening to Switchfoot. Hope she brings good movies.

Love,
Carrie Anne