I want my life to begin... all I have to do is let the right one in.

Everything is topsy-turvy and it's wonderful.

I have relocated out to Los Angeles, where I have a beautiful little apartment a block from Hollywood Boulevard. The walls are covered in bats and the wrought-iron lamp has Edison bulbs that throw shadows against the big French windows overgrown with ivy tendrils and the fiery orange-red of autumn leaves, and one of my best friends lives across the hall. There is delicious two-dollar sushi around the corner and a delicious little Thai place where an Asian man does Elvis karaoke one night a week in the dining room, and I like to walk and see the pink stars on the sidewalk under my shoes. If I turn at the end of my street and look up I can see the vast sprawl of the Hollywood sign on the hills. The city sparkles like stripper-glitter and I will never, ever be tired of it.

My work is incredible; I am the personal assistant to a successful director, and I love going in to our office because it's a big warehouse overflowing with monsters and dead bodies and fake blood. I sit in a dark little office curled up in black leather chairs, typing furiously until the wee hours of the night, listening to ominous movie scores on the office intercom and finding inspiration everywhere I look. I am writing again. People don't realize what I lost in my mother's death, not the least of which was myself. I used to write hundreds of stories a month when I was young, but in the past year and a half nothing I'm proud of has left these fingers. And yet sitting in that office, creative energy felt like static in the air and I wrote furiously until my wrists ached and my eyes burned. The sun was lightening the smoggy sky behind the palm trees before I lay down in bed that night, my heart singing with renewal. I felt like whatever wall I'd been butting my head against, my new boss had taken a sledgehammer to it and those fissures were spreading.

My boyfriend is beautiful, an artist whose palm feels right against mine when we walk down the street and who knows how to kiss me to make me laugh and shiver and clutch him like a buoy. He's the kind of boy you want to wake up in the middle of the night just to ask him his favorite song, and I always wake up first and trace the lines of his strong shoulders and smooth back until he stirs awake simply because I want to see his eyes in the morning sun, which puts gold in the hazel-green of them. He is protective and smart and lovely; his hands touch me with the same consideration he shows his sketchpads, my artist-boy who fills the blank pages with aliens and creatures and wolves and dinosaurs.  I don't remember ever feeling this dizzy-drunk on someone before, a magnet for kisses, someone who fits against my side like this. Walking with him, talking about hopes and fears and dreams, holding his hand in a haunted house, sleeping curled against him like a kitten... all of it feels so right that it should scare me but doesn't.

I feel like I am exactly where I need to be. I miss my Texas friends and family, of course. I am working insane hours and my schedule is demanding to say the least. But I will never regret doing this. I feel electric. I smile so much my face hurts. I feel optimistic and positive and I am loving every moment of my life right now. I made the right choice in taking this incredible opportunity, and I am so happy that I did.

For the first time in a very long time I feel like I am living for myself, and that's an amazing feeling.

Flying lessons.

I don't expect a miracle cure for what ails me--- so many people seem to believe that the weight loss surgery is exactly that, a switch you flick that automatically makes everything in your life better and gets rid of all of the problems. The thing is, you aren't really just physically fat, you're mentally fat. You've got a lot of shit to work through and doctors can only do so much. The whole hierarchy of your friends' group changes as soon as you're no longer 'the fat friend'. Guys stop friend-zoning you and sales clerks in stores are nicer to you. And what's worse is having to explain the surgery to people. I'm not ashamed that I did it, I tell everyone how exactly I've lost so much weight in ten months. I'm not going to smile vacantly or shrug or act like I did it the good old-fashioned way. I am a scientific miracle, a Frankenstein Barbiedoll. I had to have a big chunk of my stomach cut out to make me stop gorging myself on food. I'm not in a position to judge anyone for their vices, except people who refuse to acknowledge them and take control back of their lives if they're able to do so.

But I am a member of multiple weight loss support groups and it disheartens me to see people bragging about 'cheating' on their nutritional plans, or saying that they love getting drunk because it's so much easier than pre-surgery, things like that. On the other end of the spectrum you have incredibly obnoxious people who post things obviously seeking attention, things like "I had surgery two months ago and I've only lost 70 pounds! I thought it would be more but I guess it's okay :(". It makes me Hulk-rage to the point where I barely even find 'support' in these support groups anymore, I just do most things on my own.

Today was a really nice day, however. After the self-flogging of yesterday, I resolved to make today better. I went to the local day spa for a treatment to pamper myself since I had such a rough week; I splurged on a Body Contour Wrap, a procedure the spa offers that professes to be a wrap that makes you lose inches 'permanently' through detoxification instead of dehydration. I had an amazing technician named Lori who did a great job. I was nervous and self-conscious, of course; I had to wear disposable bra and panties made of black tissue paper and the panties were a tiny g-string. (On the plus side, they were 'one size fits all' and they fit and I got to tell her 'YAY! I'm finally 'all'!") She took measurements of my body in key places--- calves, thighs, hips, waist, ribcage, and biceps. Lori vigorously scrubbed my body with this exfoliator stuff meant to expand blood vessels and stimulate circulation, and then she wiped me down and applied this detox cream to me, then wrapped me tightly in Saran Wrap from collarbones to ankles. Then we maneuvered me onto the massage table to 'marinate' while she gave me a fantastic facial, a scalp massage, and arched my eyebrows for me. When she removed the wrap and measured me again, I had lost a total of nearly 20 inches throughout my body. Supposedly it isn't 'water weight' and I won't put them back on from drinking water, but I don't know. All I know is that my progress made me more than a little happy and my body felt really good from the relaxing procedures. And man does my face feel good after that facial treatment.

After the spa, I came home and worked on the house a bit more while eating dinner, more turkey roll-ups with fat-free cheese and Miracle Whip Light as a condiment. I called my grandma, who decided that we should go to the county fair to walk around.

The fair's long been a tradition in my family; there's only one year I didn't go that I remember, and it was last year because it was only a few months after my mom died. The year before, my aunt Shawn, her then-boyfriend (now husband) Kyle, and my niece Kimber went with my mom and me to the fair. My mom was in cancer treatment then but she wore a gray silk turban and a pair of light-up rabbit ears and we won stuffed animals for her at the games and fed her funnel cake. It was an amazing night for all of us and one that I remember very fondly.

This year I was much smaller, and much more nimble as we walked over the uneven ground; my grandma pushed her walker and we browsed the arts and crafts booths, wasted money on games, laughed about the rides. I won a stuffed lobster, a dinosaur, and a sock monkey, all of which I gave away to little kids who didn't win. I bought a tray of wiffle balls to throw at cups and gave them all to little boys whose mother didn't have enough money for them to play. I hung out with a capuchin monkey, who played with my hair for awhile before licking my face.

 

I ate elote (roasted corn) with fat-free mayo, parmesan cheese, sriracha and lemon pepper powder and tried to convince myself it was healthy because it involved a vegetable. I had a few swallows of homemade sarsparilla soda and two bites of a corn dog. My grandma pushed a small piece of funnel cake onto me. But in truth, those 'devious' fair foods that I once inhaled without a second thought just didn't taste good anymore. The funnel cake was like sticking my tongue in a bag of pure sugar, so cloying it almost made me gag, and the corndog tasted heavy and greasy. (Nothing negative to say about the soda or the elote though, damnit).

But as we were wandering, about to leave, my eyes lit upon the trampoline bounce. This is something I've wanted to do since childhood but I was too self-conscious then; the kids who did it were doing crazy backflips and tumbles in mid-air, fearless, soaring in their harnesses and socked feet. By the time I was old enough to psych myself up to do it, I weighed too much.

Tonight I gazed at the 'rules' sign. Must be under 230 pounds.

I walked up to the operator, a guy in his thirties with a jack o' lantern smile and kind eyes. We spoke briefly and I told him that I had always wanted to do it but had never been thin enough. He waved me up onto the trampoline and I climbed easily onto the chest-high ledge without struggling; I stood patiently, biting my lip, as he fitted the harness around me and between my legs. I was sure that there'd be a snafu, that it wouldn't buckle, that the straps wouldn't touch.

It buckled, and he pushed the button to start the hydraulics. I was lifted into the air until I felt weightless, and experimentally I bent my legs and kicked off.

I flew.

 

Nobody's fault but yours.

I watched a documentary today that was streaming on Netflix, called My 600-lb Life: Melissa's Story, and it was a very poignant watch for me that resonated hard. It was the kind of thing that really hit me in a vulnerable, emotional mood. Today's been an unstable day with my emotions anyway, but today was also a day that I realized I'm not as strong as I thought I was, and this blog's being used in part to hold myself accountable.

 

I've been fat since I was young, since my dad first pulled his shit with me. Coming into my life and telling me that he was there to stay, then vanishing without a trace, popping in like a rabbit in a magician's hat whenever he felt like causing more drama and pain for my mother and I, I began to internalize my feelings. I wouldn't talk to my mom about it because I knew it hurt her to discuss my father; he was the love of her life and she was convinced that she had done something wrong to make him leave as it was. She didn't need my questions. I started to pack on the pounds, sneaking food into my room late at night, secretly eating cookies or Little Debbie cakes and guzzling sodas and juice boxes and other sugary treats. My family wasn't big on vegetables; we were a mac 'n cheese, mashed potatoes, chicken fried steak type people. Every day when my grandma picked me up from school we went to Sonic or McDonald's or Burger King for a 'snack' to 'tide me over' until dinner. If my mom was watching TV, I'd go to the kitchen and return with a bag of chips and a can of dip or something similar, and by the end credits of the movie we would've polished off the entire thing. It became comforting, although I don't know when that started. Every time I was upset I would reach for food, and of course this stretched out my stomach to the point where it took more to get me full. I'd ask for seconds, or supplement a regular serving size with an extra side dish or a salad or two or three rolls if we were out in a restaurant. I was always eating, forcing bites past my lips even when I wasn't hungry, simply for the fact that it was familiar, it was a security blanket.

It would be easy to lay some of the blame on my mom or my grandma, but really, what's the point? Everyone has That Relative who insists you try her famous cheesecake when you say you can't possibly take another bite of food or you'll pop; I was raised by them. My mom ate to hide her feelings of rejection and loneliness about my dad, and my grandma used food as a balm. She saw it as a direct affront to her Southern hospitality if you didn't stay for dinner, or go for seconds, or have dessert. If she saw me eyeing the dessert menu she'd insist I order something, not letting it go until I was eating a chunk of pie or a bowl of ice cream, because she was convinced that if I didn't order it she was depriving me. I don't know if this was her subconscious way of trying to make up for me being raised by a single mother; all of them were overcompensating, spoiling me with any toy they thought I'd like, buying me tons of clothes, plying me with food. My mom maxed out multiple credit cards, filed for bankruptcy and started the cycle anew right away. She was desperately trying to fill that hole in her heart, and food and shopping were her only two vices. She used shopping as a way to bond with her mother, and the two of them enabled each other; before long my grandpa gave up lecturing my grandma about "bringing one more thing in this damned house" and we just picked and wove pathways through the ever-cluttered houses like mice in a labyrinth of things. All the while, my mother and me were ballooning in weight; she hit over 400 pounds before she decided to do something about it and got very serious, joining a local gym and hiring a trainer.

I was always fat, though. It became kind of my 'thing' I never went on a serious date in high school, ever--- the first time I went to prom it was with a platonic male friend of mine, and then my senior year I went with my gay best friend because I had no romantic prospects. While my friends were making out in the backseat of cars, I was taking pictures of punk bands at local shows and convincing people to make post-show IHOP runs with me because I knew that the night would inevitably end with me shoveling food in my mouth and I would rather do it in a social setting than alone in my house. At one point, I told my then-friend in a non-ironic, deadpan way, "I really wish I had the self-control for bulimia". Did I really wish I had an eating disorder? No. But I was disgusted with myself, with the way I was always using food as a crutch, as a social tool, as an excuse for myself. I was holding myself back by letting myself get fatter and fatter.

Maybe subconsciously I was scared of finding a guy like my mom had, of being hurt by one and falling to pieces under the surface like she was. My mom was the most sweet, caring, generous person I'm likely to ever meet in my life, but my father did a real number on her and up to the day she died, she had not one drop of self-esteem. She bought ugly cotton panties in bags at Walmart and refused to update her hair from the way she'd worn it in the 90s and was the person who was always remembering everyone's birthday and buying graduation presents for kids of coworkers she barely knew simply because she was beaten down and broken by that rejection from my father and she was trying so hard to be liked. She didn't believe she was beautiful; if I told her "Mom, buy that shirt, it looks great on you" nine times out of ten she'd hurriedly shove it back on the rack and come up with an excuse on why she couldn't. Once, I dyed the underside of her auburn hair black and put chunky black streaks through it; she looked amazing and years younger, and since she was coming to rock concerts with me all the time back then, I thought the change would be great for her. But she went to work and someone joked, "What, do you think you're the same age as your daughter now?" She came home and dyed all of her hair a dark brown to get rid of the evidence of the funky streaks, near-tears, and told me that she'd just decided she didn't like it, that was all. I finally wheedled it out of her and then I had to fight the urge to go punch her coworker in the face--- didn't they realize how much bravery it had taken for her to make a change like that? For her to let me paint her nails black once, for her to stop being America's sweetheart and start becoming some of the feisty, spunky girl she'd once been again?

I was the complete opposite end of the spectrum. I was desperate to be alive, to be liked, to be noticed. I was working as a photographer and promoter for bands and I wanted them to like me. Yet automatically upon meeting them, I was delegated to the 'Other' category. I watched band after band talk to the fawning, svelte girls in leggings and tight shirts, in obscenely short skirts and stiletto boots, and I stood there awkwardly waiting my turn for a scrap of attention. I wore push-up bras and hoped that my cleavage would distract everyone from the fat roll below my tits. I cut my hair short and dyed it neon pink and pierced my nose and got tattoos to make myself stand out, to try and be beautiful like the girls I admired. Even when I was wearing backstage credential lanyards, some security guards would stop me because they couldn't believe a girl like me could be with the band. My mom was actually denied backstage entrance to an event with Ryan Dunn from Jackass because, as the security guard so eloquently put it, "they don't let middle-aged fat chicks backstage, sorry lady".

So I've been working through all of this, and this time of the year always makes me kind of nostalgic. Halloween was always my favorite and my mom and I used to dress up together from the time I was an infant; she was the one who took me door-to-door in the nice neighborhoods to get the good candy, and when I was too old for trick or treating we'd sit home together and pass out treats to the neighborhood kids and watch the Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees marathons on TV. After Halloween came Day After Halloween shopping, which was pretty much our version of Black Friday; we'd hit all of the Spirit and Halloween Boutique stores, buying up fake blood and fangs and weird decor at half-off. I have a six foot tall robotic Jason Voorhees because of one such trip. After Halloween comes Thanksgiving, and then Christmas; last year was our first holidays without my grandpa and my mom both, but this year will feel even heavier because I'll be in LA instead of with my grandma. My first holiday season not being home.

When I was in Ohio, I bought a box of buckeye candies thinking "I'll make them last, I'll eat one every few days and really savor them". But the stress and the agonizing drama of moving on short notice has fucked with me, and everything has been going down from family drama to people guilt-tripping me for my lack of free time this week, and so I found myself eating them absently while I watched Netflix. They melt in your mouth, so they weren't taking up a lot of room in my stomach.

This week I've cheated. I've had about one full root beer, split between multiple trips to restaurants; I can never finish a whole soda, but I try, damnit. I've had a few bites of cookies here and there. I've eaten real sour cream on a taco salad instead of Greek yogurt or fat-free. I've eaten flatbread pizza slices even though I know the carbs are bad and the food's probably got tons of preservatives because it was from a restaurant instead of me making it myself.  And, since I returned home on Saturday, I've eaten seventeen buckeye chocolate bon-bons. I finished the box.

That isn't to say I'm completely off the wagon. I've been chugging water and I saw my trainer today for an ab-kicking session of core work, lots of stretching. I've been packing and moving stuff in the house, which is a lot of work in itself. I walked all over Ohio. Breakfast today was a grilled chicken salad, no dressing except guac and a spoonful of sour cream, lunch was fat-free turkey slices rolled around fat-free cheese sticks, dinner was a sugar-free Vitamin Water and more turkey slathered with roasted garlic hummus and rolled up for easy nibbling. I'll probably eat a LiveActive cottage cheese cup before bed and drink a little more water.

But fuck, backsliding makes me sad and I hate knowing that that urge is still in me. The urge to eat when I'm stressed, to use food as an excuse. In my mind I rationalize I worked out for an hour, I can have a bon-bon and then I look down and three are gone. I thought I'd broken this habit and I guess I'm just disappointed in myself.

My weight's still at 215 but everything is shifting around. I'm firmly a 14/16 in jeans now and a medium in t-shirts; the medium at Horrorhound Indianapolis fit but I had to stretch it a bit before I put it on. The medium I just got at the 30 Seconds to Mars show went over my head and fit nicely without even feeling clingy or snug. My BMI went from a 54.7 in January to a 33.1 today, which means that in 3.1 points I will be considered 'overweight' instead of 'obese'. And I still have a ton of energy physically--- it's just my mood that's causing the problems.

I refuse to give in to any more temptation. I've come too far for that. I'm getting rid of all of the bad food in my house and when I get to my new place, I will not backslide. I will hold myself accountable for these things, because I refuse to start putting weight back on. I am stronger than this, fuck. 

I am more than just the 'fat girl' now and I am determined to stay that way. I have an amazing new job and a fantastic group of friends and a great new guy and a whole new city that need to find out who I am now, and I want to find out too.

I don't wanna live a lie that I believe--- it's time to do or die...

It's been an insanely busy little-while for me, sorry about the lack of blogging! I'll try to make up for it by making this one awesome (hopefully).

So last time I told you guys that I had made the decision to move out to Los Angeles; I still don't have the green light to publicly say what the job is, but I can tell you it's a ton of responsibility, a pretty demanding position, and I am so, so, so honored and excited to have been asked to do it. I'm going to give it two hundred percent to try and prove that I was the right choice for the position. In the meantime, I've been frantically scrambling to hire movers, change bills over to the new residence, forward my mail, get my paperwork in order, sell everything I can to make extra cash, etc. as well as wrangling my best friend Brandy into coming on the drive to LA with me as moral support (in addition to being a Thelma and Louise type fling before I live in California and she returns to Texas).

This weekend, however, was something I'd already been planning and had paid for ages ago, so I had to take a few days from my busy insanity here in Texas to hop a plane to Columbus, Ohio.

I've been a big 30 Seconds to Mars fan since I was a senior in high school and all through college, but it really blossomed around 2009-2010 and has been pretty steady since then. I think they're an immensely talented band with a lot of diversity in their sound, and the lyrics are often a lot more poignant and emotional than most mainstream rock music. So when their new album Love+Lust+Faith+Dreams dropped a few months ago and I heard it, I just knew they would be touring soon and that I would have to muster up the money to go. Unfortunately, when the dates were announced Texas was nowhere on the roster. I know that the band pretty regularly tours for years on end and comes through a country multiple times, so there will likely be a Texas date or two in the future, but I wasn't willing to take that chance and bought a ticket to see them in Columbus, OH. (Why I picked Columbus of all places I have no idea... their next show was in Denver and I have friends there I could've visited for a bit, but I picked Columbus, where I knew no one.)

So my first victory of the trip, that elusive NSV (non-scale victory), is that LOOK HOW MUCH ROOM WAS LEFT ON MY SEAT BELT! Before my surgery I had to have the seat belt completely extended and even then I often had to ask for an extender. Gone are those days, and not only that, there were tons of inches left and I actually got to tighten the lap belt to a comfortable level. I was in first class, so I wound up crossing my legs like a proper lady for some of the flight too. You really don't understand the novelty of being able to cross your legs until you realize that when you're a bigger girl it's an incredibly difficult task. Now it's second nature to me and I LOVE it.

When I landed in Columbus and caught a cab to my hotel, I was delighted to find that I was situated in the middle of the German Village. This was a great thing but also an awful thing. When I was newly post-op an ex of mine took me to a German settlement town and I couldn't eat anything; the brats and sausage were much too greasy, and everything else seemed very heavy with bread or dough of some kind, or potatoes in some cases. I ended up picking at salads and wishing desperately for a restaurant where I could get a grilled chicken breast or something 'normal' to tame my poor sensitive belly.

This time though, ten months out from surgery and able to stomach most anything, I felt ready for this. My hotel was a dingy little thing on High Street, directly across from a small gay bar and next door to a weird, delicious place that couldn't figure out what it was. The place was a sports bar that looked like an Irish pub, was in a German neighborhood, and served predominantly Greek food. I popped in for a late dinner of hummus and tzatziki with cucumber slices instead of pita bread, then went back to my hotel to relax for the rest of the night with cable and free WiFi. The Food Network and Nick at Nite kept me company until I dozed off. 

The  next morning I had a quick breakfast and then decided to take myself on a walking tour of the German Village since I'd opted not to rent a car this trip. I took a map of the area and just set off, and once I got my bearings it was a blast. I stumbled into a gourmet chocolate shop, where I had my first buckeye candy--- it was like the high-end Reese's cup that Fat Amanda had been seeking her entire life, and I didn't feel bad when I had to buy a few to take with  me. Everything in moderation, turtledoves. I had a spiced apple cider and found a place called The Book Loft, which is a must-see if you're in Columbus. A beautiful space that looks like a big old gingerbread house with a sprawling, stunningly-landscaped courtyard, it houses over 50,000 books and is a delightful little labyrinth you can lose yourself in for hours. I wound up buying a copy of "Sharp Teeth" by Tony Barlow, an absolutely amazing novel about werewolves in Los Angeles that's written in free-verse like a novel-length poem. The prose is lush and the plot's very interesting; I highly recommend it for an unusual, fascinating read.

After that, I walked back to the hotel, vaguely aware that I'd traveled on foot almost five miles round-trip between all of the detours and random routes I'd woven through the Village during my day, but my feet weren't hurting at all. The only discomfort was because it was beginning to get warm, the kind of warm that comes right before a big rainstorm; that heavy, pregnant-feeling quiet warmth with no breeze to stir things up.

I called for a cab to take me to the LC Pavilion for the concert as I freshened up, but unfortunately the cabs were super backed up and the wait was almost 45 minutes. I wound up lucking out and snagging a vacant cab that pulled into my hotel parking lot, and the driver got me to the venue just in the nick of time. I checked in for the meet and greet and headed in to wait my turn.

The meet and greet itself wasn't that amazing because it was run very business-like and the guys kept it very brief. It had an assembly-line quality to it where you were handed a poster, you stood in line, the guys passed the poster down their table as each scrawled their symbol/signature on it, and you got it back. Then you got into a different line and queued up for the photo ops, which were very quick and consisted of you coming into frame, standing there for five seconds while the shot was snapped, and then you were shooed off to make room for the next person. However, I managed to buy myself some time when Shannon noticed my tattoos and commented on them; this got Jared's attention and he asked how I was doing. I asked him about Dallas Buyers Club, his upcoming film project, and he got very excited to talk about it. He's receiving early buzz as an outstanding actor in the movie and I am personally giddy about it. 

I really love this picture, and not just because it's with one of my favorite bands and I don't look like a complete spaz in it. But I can honestly see the difference in myself after the surgery. It's in the way I'm standing so casually, with my thumb in my jeans pocket and one hip cocked out, and the way I stood sideways; in the past I wouldn't have dreamt of it. I would've tried to hide part of my body behind Shannon, maybe, or angled myself so that I looked as thin as possible. I'm still a big girl and I'm still well aware of it, but I simply don't care anymore, maybe. I had a lot of confidence standing next to a group that have millions of people swooning over them (not to mention one of the most beautiful men on the planet, Jared Leto, with his hands on my shoulders and his face a few inches from mine) and I wasn't freaking out about looking okay. I was just having a great time. The surgery has really allowed me to enjoy living and stop being so concerned about what people think of me every minute of every day.

So we hung out backstage for awhile, got to see the stage technicians inflating the big balloons for the launch, getting the big Triad in place, etc.

Then it was time for the concert, and I had side-of-stage access that I opted not to use because I had made some great friends in line and we'd decided to stick together. Alyees in particular (and I bet I just butchered her name) was this adorable, funny chick who was my barrier-buddy and we shielded each other from drunken fangirls all evening.

After all of the anticipation (and a brief flash-flood rainstorm!) we were ready. The opening band was New Politics, who totally rocked our faces off, and then it was time for 30 Seconds to Mars at last!

 

As we got to the end of the night, they performed "Closer to the Edge" and literally hundreds of pounds of confetti paper shot into the air from multiple cannons. Some of the confetti had messages on them; things in Latin, phrases, and some said "Help! I'm trapped in a cookie factory!" 

 Anyone who knows me, knows how much I love confetti... so this face was 100% authentic.

After they played "Up in the Air" and invited people to join them onstage, Aleeys and I bailed and she was nice enough to give me a ride back to my hotel. I was too jazzed from the concert to sleep, so I just kind of ran around my hotel room in a frenzy, updating my Facebook like a psychopath and watching the video footage I managed to snag of the show. 

I also took a couple of selfies, because I was feeling empowered and kind of naked-like. Ignore the cellulite, that isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Other than the loose skin and dimples everywhere, I'm beginning to like the shape my body's taking on. (You know, like an actual female body instead of just 'round'.)

On the plane ride back today, I was first-class again and they fed me a super-healthy and protein-friendly open-faced turkey sandwich with cherry tomatoes and some kind of pesto mustard sauce. Obviously I left the bread... the stuff in the cup is some weird cheese 'salad' type dish, chunks of spicy cheese mixed with diced red peppers and some kind of vinaigrette. I had a few bites but didn't stick with it. The turkey was delicious though.

When I landed in Dallas, I drove through a torrential rainstorm to get home... I sold 45 things on eBay! All of it was old clothes from my pre-surgery days, but a lot of cute goth/punk stuff that holds its value well, and I made a nice little boost to my savings account. I have a feeling the poor thing is going to need every  bit of help it can get once I get to LA next week.

So the plan for this week is--- work frantically to pack anything I want to take, sort out trash, make phone calls to several companies, fill out paperwork and drop it off around town, etc. Try to keep sane. Friday I'm planning to have a big garage sale, then Saturday is my 'send-off' party with my friends at Six Flags in Dallas. Then early Sunday morning my girl Brandy and I are hitting the road to drive from Texas to LA, and the next chapter of my life begins.

I hope I am brave enough, strong enough and tough enough for this.