There's a moment, there's always a moment, 'I can do this, I can give into this, or I can resist it, and I don't know when your moment was, but I bet you there was one."

I've been thinking a lot today about the choices I've made; it hasn't been a pleasant day at all.
So yeah here I am writing again about how miserable I am. There seems to be a common theme going on around here. I write when I'm miserable and sometimes writing makes me miserable. It's a big catch 22 full circle bullshit situation.
I want to write a novel and I want to use the things that have happened to me in my life as material... at the moment I'm recuperating from an accident and I've got a lot of time on my hands so today I started to write and in the process sent myself into a depression. I had to get out of here and it was ugly outside. It was just grey enough and rainy enough and cold enough to make it shitty, but not bad enough to make me stay inside.
I bought this long jumper (for you English and Aussies) or cardigan from a store I like to shop from online and the 2nd time I wore it the first 2 buttons fell off. I was angry about it and was just going to return the thing for a refund but then of course I got hit by a car and was laid up for a few weeks so after coming home I decided I may as well just take it to have the buttons sewn back on and keep the damn thing. No, I cannot sew, not even buttons. And I decided that I needed to take it today because I had spent all day in my room and I was going mad. I walked to the place I like to go to for alterations and upon trying to open the door without even looking discovered that the door was locked and read a note on it saying the shop was temporarily closed. I thought to myself how perfect that was. Of course it wouldn't be open, that would be convenient. So I had to cross the street and go the the other dry cleaner's that is more expensive and because it is an awkward place to cross the street had to stand there and wait while the next bus into town passed me by. There was a trend. I wanted to just forget it all and go back home, but I didn't.
What I couldn't seem to get away from today is the thoughts in my head.
The last few years have been really shitty for me. I spent a lot of time being depressed and I didn't have a computer so I didn't blog about any of it, but something tells me that even if I did have one I still wouldn't have written. I didn't really want to think about the things that were bothering me and that is what writing makes me do. It makes me THINK. Instead I wanted to drown my sorrows and I did a lot of drinking in that time. But guess what? I've stopped drinking and the problems, the mental anguish? Check. Still there.
Now that the cobwebs are clearing and I'm not using alcohol to kill the voices in my head I can hear them again and I don't like it.
I went to the goodwill shop hoping I might find a nice vintage coat there that would replace the one that had to be cut off of me on the 20th of June in the emergency room but I couldn't possibly be that lucky. Not today. That venture didn't take up much time because the shop closes at 5 and so I then took myself to a coffee shop and had a caramelatte. That's the way they spell it. It was yummy but I realised that I hadn't eaten since 10am when I had cereal so I went to the burrito shop next door to the cafe that's called Burp. I think the name is hilarious. Anyway, after my food I was still restless so I went to another coffee shop and had a peppermint tea. All the while doing this I was in pain.
Big fucking deal right? I mean we're all in pain of some kind. Why do I think you give a fuck about what I feel?
Yes I am in pain and boo hoo, so what a car hit me?! I'm sure there are millions of people right now in a lot worse strife than me. It doesn't matter how many times I tell myself that, it still fucking hurts, the pain is still there.
My left hand is feeling a slight numbness as well and this is causing me worry. I've had a previous disc prolapse in my neck and I know what numbness in the hands is about. I only hope that whatever nerve is being tweaked inside my neck works itself out. I would rather kill myself than go through the agony of nerve pain again. Seriously. I'd jump off a building first.
And now I feel like I am rambling and you know what? I don't care.
I did some really stupid things that I'm ashamed of and during that time I was drunk a lot. I drank because it was fun for a long time and I drank because it made me feel good, it made me alive. But somewhere along the way I started drinking because I was miserable. I've thought about this today too, but maybe just maybe it was the drinking that made me miserable.
Some of the life altering decisions I've made were made when I was drunk or at least during a period of time that I was drinking on a daily basis. How can one function properly or grow emotionally when you don't allow yourself to FEEL emotions. Drunkenness took away my ability to feel, and my ability to grow.
Feeling and growing hurts and I'm hurting a lot right now. I'm sad about a lot of the things and angry somewhat too.
That line from Closer has always stood out in my mind as unbelievably true. There is always a moment. I remember mine and wish I could take it back. But now all I'm left with is learning and growing and moving on.
What else can I do?

I'm not in a good way at the moment. I'm struggling with a lot of things but the biggest one is pain and the thing is I have no option except to deal with it. I have no choice. Yes, that's right, no fucking choice. I have no magic cure or pill to take. In fact the crap they have me on I may as well not even bother with because it does absolutely nothing for me.
I'd like to say a big thank you to all of you out there who have managed to abuse prescription painkillers because you are the reason I am unable to have some relief right now, Thank you very fucking much. I hope you enjoyed yourselves, seriously. The thought of you numbing your inner pain gives me a real thrill.
"You can't have anti-inflammatory drugs," they tell me, "because of the bleeding you had on your brain; You also have to stop taking this one drug we've given you because it is highly addictive and after a while your body finds a way to bypass it's pain masking ability requiring you to need more of it to have the same relief that it once gave you." So basically what you’re telling me is I'm shit out of luck. Thankyouveryfuckingmuch.
All I want is relief from the constant agony and my mind goes around in circles.
I once would have gone straight to the bottle shop and bought any kind of alcohol, probably vodka. I wouldn't really care that drinking alcohol also would be a very bad idea at the moment due to the brain injury. What it would do is provide some momentary relief. It would be like pulling down a shade on the inner torment. But I know that that is not the answer. To give into an alcoholic escape would not help me with this. There is a part of me that still believes the crap. The diseased part of me lies to me and says that it will make everything better. I know it for what it is though and because of that today I will not drink.
Just as I wrote the previous sentence my phone rang and it was my sister. One of the only good things that has come of this accident is it has remarkably healed my relationship with her. She was in a very serious car accident when we were still teenagers and had a massive head injury, as well as a broken neck and beat up body. She is the only person in my life that can say she understands me right now and mean it. And the symptoms I've had with relation to the brain injury part have helped me to finally understand her. It has taken a long time, but I love her again. I was all choked up on the pain and the emotion I was feeling while writing the beginning of this entry and after an hour of talking to her I felt better. I felt more calm. And for that I can say I'm grateful.
I will make it though today, I will make it through this. No, it isn't easy but I am a fighter. She said, "Don't forget what a tough woman you are."
And I thank her for the reminder.

Well it has now been 4 weeks since the accident. And I've come a long way baby. I am back at my own place, finally being able to take care of myself and walk up and down my stairs.
When Ashley dropped me off on Tuesday I didn't want to let him go. I cried because I've been very well taken care of by him and it was a joy to be able to see him every day. But of course it didn't take long for me to feel comforted by being in my own room, surrounded by my own things.
There's something very positive as well about being able to take care of myself even though I am far from being 100% recovered.
This week I've crossed the street twice where I was hit. I did it because I decided that the only way to tackle this thing is to be a fighter. I can't let fear get the best of me. I have to go on, life goes on. I don't really have much choice about that and the sooner I decide to get on with things in a positive way, the sooner I'll be okay again.
There's been absolutely nothing easy about any of this. I've had to come to terms with the fact that I may have a slight disability resulting from the trauma to my head. That seriously isn't easy to think about, but at the same time, knowledge is power. If I am going to beat this I have to live a life of acceptance, of humility, and of courage. Everyday will have its own challenges. At the moment I'm worried about the inevitable return to work. This of course is in the hands of a doctor who is new to me, only having met her in the wake of this nightmare. She doesn't know me very well and on Monday I find out what she will recommend.
Will she decide that I should go back to work or will she allow me more time off? I don't know and it scares me.
If she says I have to go back to work I will have to do it. It will be something I will also have to tackle with courage, much the same as facing my fears and walking across that street and staring down defeat.
I am fighter. I will beat this.

"Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have - life itself."
Walter Anderson

I continue to have bad moments, periods of prolonged sadness and depression about my situation. I think I'm not only driving myself insane but Ashley as well.

I want badly to be positive and think about the good things and not the bad but it is very hard.

I'm in just enough pain to keep me from being able to do anything on my own except going to the loo and heating a cup of soup or getting myself a drink.

I've never been a big TV watcher, even on my days off I'd spend half the day walking around rundle mall shopping or going for a bike ride. I have never watched so much TV in all my life, and I feel lazy and sad and lonely. I've yet to feel even happy about the break from work, to tell you the truth I'd much rather be working than lying here on this couch worrying about how long it will take for my wounds to heal.

I choose that quote at the top of the entry because I want to feel that way. I don't want to be so focused on the negative, but I'm not there yet.

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand." Henri Nouwen


I mean no offense to anyone with this statement because I know not everyone has a belief in a higher power, but I want to believe more than anything that God will give me nothing that he doesn't believe that I can handle.

On Saturday the 20th of June I was walking, I was not 15 minutes from my destination and listening to my ipod. It was around 6:45am and the stars were still out. I must have been thinking about the music or where I was going. I was in a pleasant mood, looking forward to my weekend. I had to stop at Wakefield street to wait for the pedestrian green light to let me cross, and shortly after starting to cross the street a car turned onto the street, not looking, and hit me.

The only thing I remember is seeing a car, the image of the car just flashes and next I was being asked questions by the emergency staff of the hospital. I don't really even remember much about the ride to the hospital, it is really all a blur.

Luckily I'm at home now, I only had to spend 3 days in hospital, although thinking back I could have probably used a few more days there.

Turns out the guy who hit me is actually a doctor. He wasn't speeding or drinking and will probably plead guilty to failing to give way to a pedestrian. The penalties he face seem like nothing compared to the agony I am in at the moment.

Right now I'm on the couch at Ashley's house watching tv. The pain medicine that I took this morning has completely worn off and I can feel pain from numerous parts of my body.

I don't like that I have to take pain medicine but even on the stuff I feel excruciating pain. The injuries that I have are not fatal and I will heal but they are affecting me in dangerous ways.

Mostly I am sad and worried. I had a minor concussion which resulted in bleeding on my brain. From what the doctors have told me and what I have experienced this week, this is a pretty serious thing. I've had difficulty concentrating and also experience short term memory loss.. It is most noticeable when I forget something that happened on the beginning of a tv show when it is near the end or when I am trying to recall conversations.

I also have an increased irritability that has worried me. I don't really know to what extent that will last, they say it may be permanent.

I don't have much choice in this, I can't put too much stress on myself because when I have done too much I end up experiencing more pain.

I find it hard to sleep a whole night through because the injuries to my body force me to lie on my back which is something I never do when sleeping. But the moment I try to turn the pain is excruciating. Although I have no broken bones my muscles have been severely bruised and I may have some torn ligaments in both my knees.

I don't feel the same inside my head and that is the one thing that is the most difficult to explain to someone. Not everyone knows what it feels like to have been hit by a car and the pain of that, but pain is something most people understand. I worry that I may never be the same again inside and that scares me more than the pain.

I haven't got all the answers but the only way I know to get through this is to take it day by day. I don't know what I would do without Ashley because he has taken such good care of me from the moment the hospital called him. I can't even stay at my flat because I can't walk up and down the stairs.

I've been told it will take 4 to 6 weeks for my brain to recover alone, no one has even attempted to tell me about the rest of my body. I obviously hate not knowing but what I do know is I could have died, I could have been in a full body cast right now and I've not had to endure that.

And maybe, just maybe I can deal with this, because I'm still here.

If you go back and you read any random page of my years of archives you will see that my life has been a constant struggle. It seems to me that no matter what size or weight I was I was never happy with it. Always wanting to lose 5 more kilos, fit into that crazy dress. I starved myself for at least 2 weeks to get into that thing. I was obsessed with weight loss. There is no doubt about it.

Yes I had been overweight for sometime and had been suffering a lot from it when the whole crazy process started. The weight loss itself was a good thing until it became an obsession. I started reading other people's weight loss blogs and stopped my normal blogging and started this one, don't you love the title!?

I've had an online diary since early 2000, and look at this wow. Writing has always been an outlet for me and publishing my writing, even online was cathartic and therapeutic. I didn't always write about weight loss, I wrote of course about everything and everyone. Some people didn't like it when they found it. I never meant for them to find it, but we always get found out.

You may be wondering about now, where is she going with this? I don't know. All I know is I have something to say and found myself alone on a Saturday morning with it pouring down rain outside (something it never does here) and not a lot to do, well except clean my filthy room and take a shower. I can put that off for a few more hours.

Why did I abandon the blog? Some people out there no doubt still troll by randomly or hope in vain to see me pop up on their daily RSS feeders. I've gotten some comments wondering if I'm coming back. I've always gathered a following. If I weren’t me, I would read my blog. Now that sounds incredibly pompous. It is not how I mean it to sound, but it is true. I like it when people bleed onto a page.

I had for a while convinced my significant other to write a diary as well, he imitated me a little and wrote about his feelings and it was gorgeous. He stopped writing it when one of his brothers read it and went to his parents with it. He posts things now, but none of it is personal or raw. I'm a fan of raw.

So where was I? The abandoning of the blog, yes. I had a bit of a breakdown. I didn't end up in a mental hospital but sometimes I wonder if I should have. I left the home I lived in the entire time I have been in Australia and although I don't need to go into all the reasons, it was all I could do at the time. I ended up with my best friend, paying her to live in her small guestroom. It worked because we also worked together and she was having some personal hell problems too. They say misery loves company and it is a wise saying indeed.

By the time I moved in with her I had already gained a lot of weight. It could have been that the emotional torment (self-inflicted for the most part) I was in had me drinking a lot, and eating whatever I wanted. I remember many nights that I had alone just going home and drinking a bottle of red wine and eating potato chips for dinner while I cried about how much I was hurting.

My friend also drank a lot so I didn't have to hide it from her. She also let me cry but mostly, she just didn't judge me for what I was doing. What I didn't know at the time was that a doctor had misdiagnosed my hair loss as stress. This is important because after a while I stopped eating potato chips for dinner, although I still drank quite a bit, I hardly ate at all. And it wasn't until 3 months ago that a doctor finally diagnosed my thyroid deficiency. All those potato chips had no where else to go but my hips, thighs, bum and arms.

After a few months I had a mini wake up and a fight with my friend that pushed me to find somewhere else to live. I re-evaluated the drinking, although I still drank a lot the amount was reduced significantly and I started exercising. I only lost a little weight. I even rejoined weight watchers and was cycling. The scale refused to budge so I decided to quit weight watchers and just keep doing my best.

I'm on medication for my thyroid and after only 3 months the blood report was that the hormone levels are now normal.

"How long until I feel normal, until I can lose weight and it isn't so bad?"

The doctor says, "I recommend a dietitian for weight loss, but hang in there, it will get better."

It is laughable. Me go to a dietitian? I've done it all, read it all, and seriously DONE it all. I know what to eat, when, how much and where to lose weight. What I haven't figured out is how to quell the emotional hunger. Trust me when I say there is nothing a dietitian can tell me about dieting that I don't already know. I've read everything you can imagine on the subject and applied the methods. I was a walking science project. I know it all.

I've developed a real love of cycling. I just wish I could do it more. It is dawning on winter and dark most nights by the time I get home. It isn't that I don't want to exercise, because I do. What I want is an easy fix. I find life so fucking hard in every area. I don't want to be an obsessive woman again about weight loss. It was seriously not fun and when I was so thin I didn't even enjoy it! The week that picture was taken we were in Melbourne and I remember being obsessed the whole week thinking how fat I was. It is ridiculous. If I'm going to obsess about being fat, I may as well be fat.

Know what I mean?

So tonight, going out with my flatmate and her friends to celebrate her 21st. Last night she showed me the dress she plans on wearing. I think it may fit on my thigh. And I started getting all worried about what I am going to wear. I know I'm not the only one that does this, but I wish just once I could love myself the way I am.

To feel beautiful just as I am, not to judge myself for anything, to truly be happy inside myself: this is my goal. How do I plan to achieve this? I don't know. I have armed myself with a few books; The Mastery of Love is one of them. It is seriously an incredible book and I love the beliefs and ideas of the Toltec. I was so astonished to find that I've actually climbed to the top of the largest pyramid at Teotihuacan, which is just outside of Mexico City. It is known as the place where "man becomes God."

It is achievable, self-love. I plan to master it, but I also plan to keep writing now that I've dusted off the cobwebs. And with that I think I'll end this entry.

I'm on holidays in the US. I am mainly visiting family and such. I was so excited because I have not been here in 2 years and I was really looking forward to this trip.

Today I am feeling homesick for Australia.

This is one of those times when I realise that I am more at home in Adelaide than I am in the US. I don't really belong here anymore and it is not a bad thing.

I am not exactly sure what all of this means; but Australia, you're not finished with me yet, and I'm not finished with you.

I share this because it is relevant:

I was telling Amelie all about you. if only you could have heard me! I told her how intelligent you are, how we always don't agree but you always teach me things, how I think with my emotions and you think with your head. How much our differences make us work, how I broke it and how I want to fix it, how because you don't suffer fools I know I am intelligent.