I think I've become addicted to painkillers.

So I've had cramps since age 12 - mom wouldn't put me on meds, so I began taking enormous amounts of Advil at the first twinge of pain.

Migraines since sophomore year - started off taking five advil at a time, and when that didn't work, made myself sick at doses of nine.

Any slight pain, anywhere in my body, for any reason - take three Advil, and a cup of coffee in the morning. Cigarettes have replaced coffee.

Migraines these past two weeks - codeine, eight advil, Frova, and now Axert. I love the Axert, it makes all the pain go very far away, and doesn't give me any weird side affects. Except one. When the Axert wears off, the migraine comes back. So I have to take another. And the thing about Axert is that it puts me to sleep for a good five hour block of time. Think I'm going to class on that? Yeah. Right.

So now I'm faced with the dilemma of trying to suffer through the migraine and go to class (or at least attempt to walk there without passing out), over-dosing on some yummy candy-coated Advil, or taking a beautiful Axert, and passing out for five hours. Fuck class. Who needs class, right?

WRONG.

My Intro to Film History teacher is trying to kick me out of the class - because she believes I blew class off, and didn't really have migraines (which is why I sprang for a CAT scan and the prescription, right?) and that I'm not dedicated enough to learning about film. Part of me wants to scream out at her, HELLO it's my minor, after this semester, I'll be ONE credit short of minoring in film, I got an A in my film class last semester, and I am taking THREE film classes this semester. Not dedicated? Oh no.

But the other part says, um not a good call to yell at the teacher who you're trying to convince let you stay in her class. Why do I have to stay in her class? Because add date has already passed, and I have to have 18 hours this semester, otherwise on all my transfer applications, I'm not a full-fledged sophomore. They don't look at AP transfer grades until AFTER you get in. I suppose I could take three one-hour sports classes next quarter, but really, can we see me as a sports person? Didn't think so.

Oh the dilemmas. Oh the horror. Oh the brain pain.

Time to take another Axert, and pass out with only 1/4 of my homework done.

Tear drop 12:14 AM of Sarah

Despite the fact that really, I haven't been able to see most of the nominated films, I would like to propose that we form an Oscar betting pool of sorts - everyone puts in five bucks, the person with the most correct bets wins. Sound like a plan? All opposed?

Tear drop 2:41 PM of Sarah

I am not an angry girl
but it seems like I've got everyone fooled
every time I say something they find hard to hear
they chalk it up to my anger
and never to their own fear
and imagine you're a girl
just trying to finally come clean
knowing full well they'd prefer you
were dirty and smiling

and I am sorry
but I am not a maiden fair
and I am not a kitten stuck up a tree somewhere


Tear drop 1:31 PM of Sarah

Today was a snow day; the school shut down because none of the professors live on campus, and icy roads are apparently dangerous. We have a foot of snow, it's about 6 degrees, and it's supposed to ice over even more tonight, so hopefully no school tomorrow. I didn't end up doing a loooot of stuff that I should have today. Instead from about 3:30 to 11:30 I played psycho-analyst and then ventured into the realms of philosophical debate. My friend Rachel and I came up with a social psych experiment that would be really cool and explain a lot about human nature, if we could actually figure out a normal way to do it and have control groups, etc.

And now, after much discussion, my brain hurts and I want to go to bed. I would like to slip into the black abyss of sleep and not pay attention to the fact that I only did homework for ONE class that I have tomorrow (out of four) and I haven't been to class in oh, a week, because of migraine problems. Yeah bad health!

The diabetes test has been pushed to later this week, so let's all cross fingers and hope I don't have to do something that requires thought and numbers, like regulate my blood sugar, etcetera.

Deep love. Deep adoration.

Don't be a mollusk.

Tear drop 12:09 AM of Sarah

YAY I DON'T HAVE TUMORS! Woohoo!

Tear drop 5:24 PM of Sarah

So new template, but I need some help. I don't want to use the picture they had (I changed a bit of things) and I've tried uploading the picture to snapfish, msn, and a zillion other picture hosing sites but NOTHING WORKS. If anyone knows how to do this... let me know.

Tear drop 4:41 AM of Sarah

My friend Rachel and I have been discussing fear of death lately. The weekend I returned home for my grandmother's funeral, Rachel was in a really bad car accident in which she was thrown from the car and landed on the opposite side of the highway. She shattered most of her right leg, and after staying in the Lynchburg hospital for two weeks, returned home and began her recovery. Rachel was always a very caustic and witty person, a girl who never really took anything seriously. But since her accident, she has been confronting her fear of death and her problem to find anything remotely serious in nature. When she's not drugged up on codeine to help her with the pain (sorry about those phone calls, guys) she's actually very astute at figuring out what her problem is. She's not so good at handling it and understanding what it means. Normally she flips out and comes down to my room for cigarettes and black coffee at midnight, but tonight I called her down to my room early, to tell her about something that happened to me today.

I've been getting really bad migraines since I came back to school, and have had a problem with chronic migraines since November of sophomore year. I had a CAT scan that Novemeber because my pediatrician was like,"well, it might just be migraines, but I want to rule out brain tumors." So my mom and I drove down to the hospital, waited in agony for the results to come back, and found out that it wasn't tumors, just those silly migraines lasting too long and being improperly treated.

They wouldn't put me on medecine, just told me to take five advil when I felt one coming on, and that should solve the problem. However, as the months have turned into years since that incident, five advil doesn't do it anymore. I worked my way up through dosages of six, seven, eight, and finally, when the pain was horrendous the other morning and I needed to go to class, nine advil at a time. Of course I over medicated myself, and made the problem worse than it already was, but that is just an indication of how bad it gets.

Any light stabs at my eyelids and makes me feel as if needles are being pushed through my eyeballs. My ears become insanely sensitive, and anything above a whisper feels as if a megaphone is right next to my ears. Moving is not an option as I become violently nauseated, and thus I have to fight through the initial symptoms to reach for the bottle of advil, down them, and lay back down again. I've had three migraines since I came back to Sweet Briar, and two of them have caused me to miss classes or class related functions. In an act of desperation, I went to the school health center today to see if they could perscribe some kind of medecine to make me be able to go to class and deal with the pain.

While checking out my vitals, the nurse noticed that something wasn't right with my vision, and that my eardrums looked a little funny. She called the doctor in, who took a look, and then began to explain to me that she wanted me to go have a CAT scan at the local hospital. According to my doctor, my vision slurred and my ear drums looked hazy but overly-pressured, which are symptoms of brain tumors. She said that since I'd been having so many migraines lately, and that they have increased in their frequency, she felt I needed to see a specialist. In addition to that, my hallucinations, my inability to focus, and my sense of "pressure" when I'm trying to write something or complete a task all have links to brain tumors.

I have an appointment at the local hospital at 3 this Friday to have another CAT scan. While it's highly unlikely I actually have brain tumors (they generally appear in those aged 6 months to 3 years, and after 35) I'm still really scared that there's something wrong with me. Rachel's the only one here I can trust enough to talk about that fear with, but I feel incredibly alone, even though I know that I'm not supposed to think about it, and in all likelihood, don't have that kind of problem. My mother, being as maternal as she is, offered to come up and be with me when I took the scan, so that I didn't have to face bad results alone. That touched and shocked me, and I think it made my fear a little worse. I just don't want to be alone in all of this, as sad and melodramatic as that is, I need to know that whatever happens it will be okay.

I'm sorry to put all of this out here and make people worry when it's 95% likely I don't have a problem, but I needed to get it out of my system and write it out, and force myself to deal with it. If I don't have tumors, then I'm sorry I scared all of you guys. But if I do... I guess this is your early warning system. Please don't worry, don't freak out, etc. etc., that's my job. If anything happens, I'll let you know.

Tear drop 12:13 AM of Sarah

So you sailed away
Into a grey sky morning
Now I'm here to stay
Love can be so boring

Nothing's quite the same now
I just say your name now

Chorus:
But it's not so bad
You're only the best I ever had
You don't want me back
You're just the best I ever had

So you stole my world
Now I'm just a phony
Remembering the girl
Leaves me down and lonely

Send it in a letter
Make yourself feel better

Chorus:
But it's not so bad
You're only the best I ever had
You don't need me back
You're just the best I ever had

And it may take some time to
Patch me up inside
But I can't take it so I
run away and hide
And I may find in time that
You were always right
You're always right

So you sailed away
Into a grey sky morning
Now I'm here to stay
Love can be so boring

What was it you wanted?
Could it be I'm haunted?

Chorus:
But it's not so bad
You're only the best I ever had
I don't want you back
You're just the best I ever had

The best I ever had
Best I ever...

Vertical Horizon - "Best I Ever Had"

Tear drop 4:37 AM of Sarah

"We can't stop here, this is bat country."

Walking back to my dorm room from work, I see six hundred bats in the sky, swooping, screeching and calling; they are looking for tonight’s feast. Watching them, I think immediately of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and the personal connections it has for me, and then I draw a parallel between “bat country” and Sweet Briar College.

Were it not for Sweet Briar’s archaic institutions of rules carried out in the 60’s, an intense feeling of tradition that surrounds me, yet doesn’t fill me, and being surrounded by nothing while being used to the city and suburbs, I still wouldn’t like Sweet Briar. Those bats remind me of the people that I come in contact with everyday – six hundred screeching girls, all trying to prove they are the best, all trying to come out the fullest in tonight’s feast. Each day at Sweet Briar College I feel obliterated and frightened by the hundreds of girls running around me, trying to prove that they are stronger and better than men, and are also stronger, better, more talented, prettier, and more aggressive than all the other girls. While the college itself doesn’t promote competitiveness, it exists in nearly every facet of my college life. I see girls racing to class, sucking up to their teachers, trying to work out harder than the girl on the machine next to them, shoving their perfect boyfriends in everyone’s faces – just so that she can be thought of as better than the next girl. These are girls who don’t just facially express their consternation when they don’t understand something, but verbalize it, crying in class, asking the teacher to go over it one more time, please, why couldn’t they just do it this way. And if they understand, then the girls try to teach the class and show themselves off. There is no room for the middlewoman at this school – people who are content need not apply.

We have the standard trophy wives – the girls who spend hours of time on their makeup, hair, posturing, weight, and clothing; girls who can name high class brands alphabetically at the drop of the hat, while I recognize two or three from their list. They sling their books around on their backs in 200 dollar backpacks, cute purses on their shoulders, and their well-groomed, high class boyfriends are the prize they hold in their hands. They are so proud of themselves; they are incredibly proud of the fact that they got into a good school, a women’s school, to show their future husbands that they are educated along with gorgeous. They aren’t as smart as most of their classmates, and they know this. They are jealous, and so they primp their hair and fix their eyeliner, and giggle over the newest diamond engagement ring to hit the campus. And this, in their minds, makes them better than the other girls.

And then there are the girls who ridicule the trophy wives; the punkers and the art freaks, the indie kids and the drama majors, who point and laugh at the trophy wives, all the while secretly wishing she looked like another girl, and still had her talent. But whatever beauty and false posturing they lack, they make up for in their craft, and they know this and flaunt it above everyone. “I have substance at my core!” they practically scream from their overblown images, shoving their classmate’s faces into their work and their get ups. “I can produce art; I love something new and socially unacceptable. I dress this way to get you to hate me because I don’t WANT to be mistaken for one of you.” They would hate to be mistaken for one of the other girls, but they are jealous just the same. They want to have a boy at their side, a ring on their finger, and designer shoes on their feet. They pretend all they want that they don’t care, but people can see right through them. They see the jealous eyes. And though they know their craft and love is better and purer, they keep pushing until it loses its purity. And this, they think, makes them better.

There are the standard academics, who flaunt their brains and their talent over the rest of their classmates, in order to make themselves the best. The musicians and the dancers, the art history majors and the international studies majors all have their private quibs, their private desires to be a different person. But they are who they are, and because of this, they have to be the best.
So they swoop and they screech, descending on Prothro dining hall in a flurry of false laughter and uncertain stares. They shout silently, “look at me! I’m the best! I have the most talent/beauty/brains/culture!” Girls are treacherous creatures – stabbing people in the back in order to climb over them on the social ladder. Girls will sleep with other girl’s boyfriends in order to gain personal satisfaction; in order to know that she, in the end, is better than her competitor. They covertly delete assignments, sabotage projects, cut music in the middle of performances – there is nothing a girl won’t do to prove she is the best. They form false friendships and use each other to get another rung up on the ladder to personal satisfaction.

In truth, I feel sorry for these girls. I have no desire to be one of them; I have no desire to make a friend that will only cut me down. I will reach the top with my own devices, with my own refining of my skill. This is not something I need to shove in the face of my competitors – “look at me, I can write. Does that make me a better person?” These girls are sad creatures, and they will never find their fulfillment in life. They are searching blindly in the darkness, hoping that their screeches and their swooping dives will help them find their way; will help them find the satisfaction they need to be the best.
I am trapped in bat country, trying to stay low to the ground and under their radar. I don’t want to become another victim for their meals of personal growth and dissatisfaction. I will hide in the corner with my laptop and a flyswatter, typing away and fending for myself.


Tear drop 9:15 PM of Sarah

On second thought, Sweet Briar sucks my ASS and I can't wait to get out of here.

Tear drop 4:45 PM of Sarah

So, now that the apocalypse has taken effect, I'm actually enjoying this semester (so far, I've only been here three days) and my classes ROCK even if my schedule is somewhat hellish.

MWF:
10:30 - 11:20 - Intro to Psych. Such a cool class - my teacher is really young, and really nice, and her voice reminds me of someone I know, but I can't place it. I spend like all of class trying to figure it out. But the workload looks okay, and the stuff is actually interesting, so hurrah for me.
11:30 - 12:20 - Elementary Italian II - I hate Italian. I hate the teacher - there is ONE teacher for all of the Italian classes, so there's no way to escape her. I'm thinking of dropping Italian and taking another film or english course, so we'll see what happens.
1-5:30 - WORK at the bookshop. It's going to be a long four and a half hours after book rush finishes. But I'll read and do homework and such, so maybe it will be okay.

TR:
9:00 - 10:15 - Long Road to the 60's:From Montgomery to Watergate. My professor seems kinda dry; talking about sex and his drug use during the time period. But our books look interesting, and I've got some fun people in my class, so we'll see.
10:30 - 11:45 - Intro to Creative Writing, with Carrie Brown, who was my Essay teacher last semester. She's so sweet, and even though the class is incredibly full of people just trying to fulfill requirements, I'm sure it will be a lot of fun. There's a lot of reading, actually, and not so much on the writing, which will allow me time to work on my idea. Yay!
1:15 - 2:30 - Intro to Film History - I haven't actually been to the class yet, I dropped my Education class late last night to do it. But we watched a silent Buster Keaton movie last night, which was sort of entertaining. At the end I began to fall asleep, but whatever. Looks like fun.
2:45 - 4:00 - Shakespeare on Film - I LOVE IT. My teacher's cool as hell, and the plays are cool, and everything is fun, and I knew the most about Shakespeare and his history and the Rose and the Globe and stuff and it made me excited.

And on Tuesday and Thursday nights I have film classes to watch fun movies so that's fun.

Yeah fun schedule.

Tear drop 4:28 PM of Sarah

The Apocalypse: Fun or not so fun?

Share.

Tear drop 8:15 PM of Sarah

Ah.

School has started, classes have begun, work schedules have been mapped out, and books have been bought. For a grand total of 411.64. And that's without the 125 dollars I spent on my Italian books last semester, which I'm using again. Having a single is kick ass. I'm working on two collages to put up in my room, I have oodles of posters on the way from allposters.com, thanks to my parents on my birthday, I've got Christmas lights, cards, all sorts of wonderful things that say MINE. Yay for me, yay for having a single. Mmmm Gina cookies are delish.

Not so happy news: while unpacking stuff and putting it away, I found one of my tupperware things in Charli's drawer that had macaroni and cheese residue in it - and it's over a month old. Yay!

Charli and Jen and I are good friends again, and Audra and Fallon are going to come up to SBC one weekend to go out to the movies and chill and stuff. So that will be fun. My Shakespeare on Film class looks AWESOME, just from the books I've bought for it, except there's no Othello. No Othello! My second favorite Shakespeare, and actually a pretty good movie, even with the O remake, which I enjoyed. I really don't have anything to talk about, I'm just talking, and I want to be on the dinosaur list.

I'm working a zillion hours a week this semester, actually, only 11, but I've also got six classes, so that will be fuuuuuun. Yah. I have nothing else.



Tear drop 10:12 PM of Sarah

I moved around a lot as a child - before I started pre-school, I'd lived in two different states, and six different homes. I have lived in a total of five different states, fourteen homes, and have attended fifteen different academic institutions. That's a lot of moving; a lot of packing up your memories, deciding what gets thrown away, saying good-bye, and leaving people. Throughout my life, you'd have thought that I'd have gotten better at leaving people, but the opposite is true. Each time I leave someone, it hurts worse and worse, because I know that in all of the other places I've left, I haven't hung on to a single friend from any place. I get scared, I panic, and I cry like I will never see people again. One summer my mom and sisters and I drove up to my grandparents house in Chesapeake, and my dad had to stay behind. As we were pulling away, Pearl Jam's "Last Kiss" was on the radio, and I was bawling and screaming for my dad to come give me one more hug, just one more, how come he couldn't come with us. I get hysterical. I'm always afraid that the conversation I'm having, this good-bye I'm saying, will be the last. I'm the kind of person who can't go to bed mad, and can't just leave something to settle overnight. I can't just walk out, or hang up the phone (on anyone besides my mother, and most times not even her) without saying, "I love you" or "sweet dreams."
If that wasn't panicked and irrational enough, I have an even worse time being left behind. I've only been left three times - when my dad moved up to Connecticut without us for four months when I was eight, when Casey moved to Albuquerque during the summer between freshman and sophomore year, and this past Tuesday, when Ian and Chandler left my house. As much as I've come to deal with and expect my tears when I say good-bye, nothing prepares me for the ache that comes with being left behind. And now everyone has all of this talk of moving and leaving and separating, and I can see our little group beginning to splinter off - the get-togethers will become fewer and far-between, but hopefully they will become greater with importance in our lives. I know I'll see people again, and I know I shouldn't be worrying about anything yet, but hey, I worry, let me go with this one, mmkay?

Okay. Enough with the sad depressing introspective.

NEWS!
My Art of the Personal Essay teacher really, really liked what I wrote in her class, and when I presented her with a book idea I had (a collection of essays written from the viewpoint of a pathological liar) she had me write a few samples for her, which she enjoyed, edited, and sent off to her agent. She's going to try to get me signed, and get me a book deal. How incredible would that be? I'm so psyched (yeah I used the word psyched!). I could get published! Wooohoo! So I'll be spending a lot of quality time with Microsoft Word this semester, in addition to massive studying for my 20 hours of classes, and working two jobs. Woo!

On another note, I've decided to make some New Year resolutions, which should amuse and confuse, because we all know some things will never happen...
Keep losing the weight. It's making me happy.
Stop smoking.
Be more knowledgeable and aware of our political world - start reading Michael Moore books falls under this category.
Get a better GPA this semester, and make more money.
Transfer to GSU.
Try to start getting along with the mom.

And I think I'm out... I go back to school eeeeaaarrrllllyyyyy Sunday morning, so anyone who wants to see me before I leave must call my cell phone. MUAH.


Tear drop 12:54 AM of Sarah