Life List Update

Skills
Learn basic archery
Practice reiki
Practice a form of dance
Places
Visit Sweden, and meet my relatives
Visit New Zeeland
Spend at least a year backpacking through Europe
Entertainment
See War Horse, the broadway play(My mom's plan is for all of us to go at Christmas.)
See a Broadway play on Broadway
See something in London's West End
Achievements
Work on a Broadway play
Work on a Hollywood film
Work for Wetta Workshop
Work on the Olympics
Get My Degree in Theatre
(I'm working on all of the above by going to college and working on my degree(s?).)
Write a book(Working on a few books, so its something.)
Experiences
Beat Cancer! (Working on it. Approximately a week left.)
Have a family
Become a Buddhist Nun

So I've made a second draft. Given updates on what I'm working on. Added two things.

Writing for Myself

"I'm not angry with you, I am disappointed in you." This sentence has become something of a trope in our literature. The idea that quiet disappointment is more powerful reaction than the loud anger that we expected to receive. When the hero disappoints his mentor it seems to effect the main character more than the anger ever would have. If you look at society, we are constantly running away from the feeling of disappointment. We are constantly afraid of disappointing the people in our lives.
For those of us who are mentally ill our fears of disappointment can lead to strange and irrational behaviors that make sense to us because we live in a different world. I can only speak for the world I inhabit, and the particular challenges it gives me. In my world a disappointment is a crushing blow. To me disappointment is one of the worst feelings I can experience, and I will do anything to avoid it. I try to control how much disappointment there is in my life in two ways. I try to control everything around me, or I go to the other end and shut down. I let somebody else take the wheel and barely live my life at all. I do this because above all I am searching for comfort, security, love, and connectivity. Yet when I have these things I have trouble maintaining them because I fear the crushing disappointment I will feel when I eventually lose them.
I have worked long and hard at trying to balance out these two extremes. So that I can find and keep what I seek. I don't always succeed, but I don't always fail either. What I am almost always doing is fighting these impulses to behave irrationally, even if it is to do the more socially acceptable thing and shut down for a little while when I am disappointed. Lately I try to make art. I try to do something with myself that is productive and lets me not fall into the traps my own mind sets for me.
One of the hardest parts about writing as art is that people don't expect to be able to read what you write for yourself. They get easily confused and angry when you are not taking them into account when you write. I'm not taking others into account when I write, I write for me. I write what I think sounds good. And if people enjoy it, then I am incredibly blessed.

Good Art

At first the scar bothered me. It sat right at the center of my neck, and when my hair was down it was a perfectly framed reminder. It had a slight curve to it, just enough to be noticable if you stared at it. Stare at it was all I could do. I couldn't think. I couldn't utter the words, you have cancer.
Normally I get some sort of satisfaction when I am right, even if it is grim news. Typically I can find some small comfort in the fact that my iniution did not fail me. This time that gilmer of self gradification didn't come. Neither did normalcy. 
The doctors were calm as they explained everything. I was never told the stage, I was never given a lifespan. I wasn't going to have chemo. I felt a little cheated. All the buzz words you normally hear with cancer, that people can understand, I was denied. Instead I was given a whole different vocabulary, one that not many have heard before and can be quiet daunting at times.
I dove into this vocabulary, into this world of my illness. How could I not? I didn't belong with the regular cancer patients, and I most deffinately didn't belong with the healthy people. I was in my own bleak world, and nothing could take me away from it.
It hasn't been until the last two days and a simple phrase that I've truly started to heal from this entire thing.
"Make good art."-Neil Gaiman
That phrase in away has saved my life. It at least has saved me from succumbing to this disease. I'm not sure what my bestfriend and I were talking about when he advised me to look up the speach that phrase is from. I was probably droning on and on ad nasum about how utterly terrible my existance had become. He suggested I listen to Mr. Gaiman's speach. I was moved, and yet at the same time I was hurting. My future was all determinded now on if I could get affordable healthcare, my daily existance depends on a multitude of medicines and the doctors who perscribe them. How could I make good art when I couldn't go out and be an artist?
So I set my self a challenge, make as many creations as you can each day. Do not judge them.Just create them.
So here I am, creating, making, healing. This may not be art that is pleasing to others, but it is good art. It is good art because its creation helped its creator heal from a dibilitating disease. Art will not provide me the hormones my body now needs to survive, art will not make food magically appear on my table, art will not always make me instantly happy. But what art does is inviable to my life, and my greatest hope that my art is not just good for me, but it is also good for you. That it moves you, shakes you, pushes you, and sends you on a journey that you might not otherwise have found. And if my art does not do this for you, that somewhere in the world there is art that does.

Rant

I want to run.
But I have to wait for my musical device to charge.
I don't want to. I want to feel the pavement beneath my bare feet.
I haven't done this since last summer. Not since the last time I got angry like this.
I'm trying to be patient, to give my ipod some time to charge.
10 minuets I say, I'll leave in ten minuets.
But In ten minuets my parents might be home, and they'll bar the doors and stop me from going.
Trouble is insured if I leave this late when they are here.
But right now they are not. They are out stalking their dream house.
If only they showed as much emotion about my cancer as they did about future homes.
They kept swearing that they didn't move soon enough, when they only got the info yesterday and the house went on the market tonight.
I could use ETF, but then again the fact that freedom is so close, yet so far is too tempting.
Why do I always have to be the punching bag?
Why do I always have to make threats?
Why am I this way?
Is there any medicine that can help me?

I guess I'm just restless. I can't really go outside.
Not when it's been so hot and I've been so sick.
My parents believe I should be trying harder. They didn't even want me to have a week off. It is hard for me to understand my parents.
I feel better but I still want to run.
I want to, even though I shouldn't.
Even scrubbing makes me feel the weakness in my body.
They told me this was the easy cancer.
I think doctors should be banned from saying that phrase, the easy cancer. The instead should say the most curable cancer. It doesn't put stupid ideas into stupid peoples heads about how this will be for the patient.
I'm rambling.
The only reason I fear rambling is I fear people wont read it and will misunderstand me.
Being misunderstood is a fear of mine.

Should I wear shoes when I go? Only 3 minuets left.
I gave the thing fifteen to charge. I wont even be gone that long, sooner if the charge doesn't hold.
I hope the charge holds. I haven't used this thing in two months.
Too busy packing for LIB and then running.
Brother is freaking out over getting my music on his computer.
Be greatful little one its good music!
Shit. Mom and Dad are home.

So This is Cancer

I am fighting cancer. I think what people forget about this whole thing is that I'm not a trained fighter. This isn't a martial arts movie. I don't magically stop all the punches they throw at me. The other guy gets quiet a few punches in. And even though it is likely I'm going to walk away from this fight, I'm gonna walk away with wounds that need to be stitched and bruises that need time to heal.

Right now my lips are twitch my hands feel funny and my feet are tingly. Because I didn't wake up at my normal times to take my medication. Yesterday I had three mental breakdowns. All over something rather simple. I would go so far as to call my thinking durring those times delusional. I am losing my mind and for another four weeks it is only going to get worse. Today, thus far I am lucky. But I feel another breakdown coming on.

This is my cancer. I wont lose my hair. I don't spend most my time bent over a toilet waiting to puke. I am not in a lot of pain. And I am set to live a long normal life. This is my cancer, it isn't what most people expect. This is my cancer, and it slowly driving me insane.

After Cancer

So I'm having one of my crazy ideas that I'm not sure I'll actually follow through with.

I want to go be a hermit in the woods for at least a year.

I keep chasing these things that I cannot have. I keep hoping that magically all this hurt, pain, and anger will leave me. That the actions that this trio drive me to will stop. It wont. But with all these distractions and my own lack of attention, I can't seem to stop and turn my life around. Sure I've made some great progress. But what I really need to do is get the fuck out of this life where I can hide from all the things I can't face. I need to face reality. I need to become who I am and stay that way.

So that is the grand plan after cancer. Go live in the woods. God I hope this works.