One year ago was the last time I got up at 7:00am to drive to the full-time job I enjoyed so much that it made me want to freelance full-time. (Lesson learned: Me and big corporations do not mix.) July 8th, 2009 was a Wednesday. I’d originally intended to give my notice on a Friday, but I got halfway through the week and just couldn’t take it anymore. Some problem I can’t remember sprung up at the beginning of the day and I started thinking, What the hell am I waiting for? So, I walked into the boss’s office and said good-bye.

I know a lot of people fantasize about doing that and imagine it as a gleeful moment of emancipation. While I was definitely happy with my decision, the actual moment of resigning was a scary swirl of emotions, like good feelings and bad feelings had collided like high pressure fronts and low pressure fronts, creating an emotional tornado. I instant-messaged my best friend at work, telling her, “OK, I’m going to do it. Wish me luck.” Then I got up and headed to the office like a walking Jell-O mold, quivering inside with the knowledge of what I was about to do.

Once you turn in that resignation letter, you’ve crossed the point of no return. I almost felt like I was about to rob a bank or break into someone’s house. I was going to commit an act I could not easily undo. Yeah, I was certain I wanted to do it, but I also knew I could be broke and unemployed a year later if things didn’t work out right. Plus, my boss was a nice guy, and I felt bad that my departure would put a strain on the department. Granted, I didn’t feel bad enough about it to stay though.

I entered the office, closed the door and stumbled through my prepared speech. My boss understood where I was coming from, even if he wasn’t thrilled to see me leave. And then, God dammit, my eyes got a little bit too full of salt water and an itty-bitty tear slinked down my cheek. Damn you, emotions! Why must you make me look weak and girly?!

Two weeks later, we had my going-away party and then I was on my own. I woke up the next day at eight o’clock, cooked some oatmeal and made some coffee, establishing a new routine, the morning ritual of a real-life freelancer. Than I got on my computer and started figuring things out. And here I am, 12 months later, still not broke! I’m happy not to be living under a bridge, especially since it’s hard to steal a wi-fi signal through concrete. I still feel a bit weird telling people I am a freelancer, as if I’m telling them I’m a traveling gypsy or a circus performer. As if they’ll say, “Really? People actually do that?” Still, it feels less strange than telling people I’m a writer, which always seems a tad pretentious to me, though I should probably get over that already.

When I look back over the past few years, I can see that the moment I really started to take charge of my life was back in 2005 when I started to lose 200 pounds. I don’t believe you have to be thin to be happy, but spending two years working towards a seemingly impossible goal and actually getting there made me feel like a lot of other stuff was possible that used to seem impossible. So, even though I’ve gained back some of the weight I lost, I haven’t lost that feeling that I can steer my life the direction I want to. I quit my job. I moved to a different town. Dunno what I’ll do next, but I know I can do it, whatever it is.

I must say, you guys have been instrumental in allowing me to establish this new lifestyle. I’ve gotten tons of referrals from people who read my blog or who I’ve met through blogging. This little blog here has let me do a lot of amazing things, and I’m so grateful to everyone who has helped make it happen. Big thanks to my Internet peeps!

K, now back to work.

I have been freelancing fulltime for 10 months now, and I ain’t broke yet! Working for myself has been fun/exciting/freeing and stressful/boring/frightening. Regardless of what adjectives you use, it has also required math skills and free wifi.

I have learned how to prepare estimates, to charge what I’m worth, and to keep detailed records. I bring up work at any dinner out so I can write the meal off on my taxes. I’ve overcome my telephone anxiety (for the most part), run a meeting all by myself, and I’ve pitched my business in ten seconds or less at networking events.

I still haven’t figured out a long-term health insurance solution, and sometimes I get lonely or bored and don’t work as hard as I know I should. But I also get to shop for groceries in the middle of the day in my flip flops. And I can jet down to Louisville to meet friends on a weekday without having to ask anyone’s permission to do so. It balances out.

Overall it has been a great decision, the right decision, and a decision I’m proud I was brave enough to make. However, it has also induced a minor personal crisis. Once you realize you are free to do anything with your life, it becomes pretty damn overwhelming to figure out what to do with your life. I feel like I’m reading a menu with a thousand entrees and I’m paralyzed, not knowing what to order.

When I was working for THE MAN, I would often sit at work wishing I were not at work. And when I wasn’t at work, I was often too exhausted from work to do the things I’d wished I was doing when I was at work. It was easy to think that if I had complete control over my life, this paradoxical problem would be solved. However, now that I call all the shots, I’ve found that this isn’t so. I still have moments when I glare at my computer, frustrated by a Javascript bug. Some days I feel unmotivated to complete jobs which I have chosen to take on. I am happy for a greater percentage of the time, but I’m not happy 100% of the time. Except now there is no corporate headquarters to damn, no misguided leadership to bash, and no one to blame for anything but myself.

The Buddhist dieting book, “Savor,” which I recently reviewed, said that many people are carried through life by their “habit energy,” like a rider on a runaway horse. I’ve certainly felt trapped by the force of my habit energy at times, which might manifest itself as a job or a relationship or another element in my life. But it can also be comforting to be trapped, because you don’t feel the weight of responsibility that comes when you have to make choices. Sometimes the best thing about a mindless job is that it’s mindless. If you’re not in control, nothing is your fault.

So, here I am, ten months later, and I feel like I’ve already begun to slip into a new stream of habit energy. This time it is the habit of my self-employment. I wake up at 8:30, make coffee, eat oatmeal, and watch the end of Good Morning America. I push Java Bean out of the office and close the door. I check emails and figure out what I need to do today. I’ve become comfortable communicating with clients, keeping the books, and getting work done. For the first six months it was exciting and interesting and new, and now that it’s more comfortable, I can’t distract myself with it as much. I find myself asking, “OK, now what?”

I’ve always hated that question. “Now what?” I don’t know what! Stop asking! I KILL YOU! In high school, it was, “Where are you going to college?” In college it was, “What’s your major?” After college it was, “Do you have a job?” It just never ends. Once, I literally started hyperventilating when a friend asked me what I was planning to do after I graduated. One of the things I liked about my weight loss was that it gave me a project to focus on for two to three years. I killed time at work during the day, but all I really cared about was walking, cooking, and blogging about it. After the weight-loss, I made book writing my big project. And after the book writing I got a never-ending headache and had a bit of a breakdown, partly because of the pain and partly because I didn’t really have a project. I suppose visiting doctors could be considered a project, but it was a crap project, like a book report a teacher had assigned on a topic I hated. Then I got my shit back together (mostly), and made book writing and freelancing my projects.

And now…I am project-less again. I turned in my book manuscript in January, but it’s not due to be published until next year. I’m still blogging. I’m still freelancing. I have one or two ideas simmering on the stove. But I don’t really have a project I feel passionate about like I have at other times in my life. I miss that sense of forward motion. I miss feeling fired up about something. And I’m not really sure how to get that back. I guess you don’t go back, you go forward into something else. What? I dunno.

I’ve asked myself the old question, “If you could do anything without fear of failure, what would it be?” My answer is: Travel, meet interesting new people, and build a supportive community of friends. I’ve been traveling more this year, but I’d love to travel around the world. Sadly, that costs money I don’t actually have. So I’ve been turning that idea around in my head, thinking that if I were only a bit more clever I could figure out a way to make that happen without declaring bankruptcy or working a well-paying job I hate or abandoning my cats. So, that stands as a puzzle that I am still pondering, trying to fit the pieces together to make the picture I want. And even if I do get the picture I want, I might discover I don’t actually want it when I get it. Or I might want it for awhile and then need something else. Always something else.

I’ll be turning thirty in late October, and I’m quite proud of how far I’ve come this decade. It’s been the personal-growth equivalent of running an Iron Man. I used to literally stare at walls instead of chatting with people, but now I can make small talk and network like a socially competent individual. I used to be super-fat, and now I’m just sorta-fat. I could not fathom the possibility of running my own business when I was in college, and now I’m working for myself. It’s been good, but now I’ve got to figure out what to do with the next thirty(?), forty(?), fifty(?) years or more.

Any boredom I’m experiencing can probably be blamed on lack of imagination on my part. Sometimes I think, “Life has been good, but how am I ever going to fill the next few decades?” I know this is a stupid question because it is a big huge world and I’ve only seen an itty, bitty piece of it. There is enough stuff out there to fill a hundred lifetimes. There are over six billion people I could meet. But when you have that many possible choices, it can be hard to choose just one thing at a time. Sometimes it’s easier to blame a job.

Last week I was watching an episode of Glee, the hit Fox show that everyone has told me to watch. The plotline of this episode involved the temporary school nurse giving some student members of the glee club pseudoephedrine, a chemical commonly found in cold medicine, which can also act as a stimulant. They were using it to feel alert and souped-up to perform. In between my laughter at the jokes and my humming along to the songs, I found myself thinking, I should totally try that. It might help me get through the day. At which point I sighed and thought, Oh, Jennette. That is so, so, completely wrong. You are obviously depressed. Because, seriously, no one should be contemplating the abuse of cold medicine as a method of coping with day-to-day life.

For those of you just arriving at the party, I have had a chronic headache for almost two years which has really effed up my life. (And OMG, do not send me suggestions. If you do, I will sell your email address to Nigerian spammers. I swear to GOD!) If 2008 was my year of pain, 2009 was my year of feeling tired. Oh, oh, so tired. All the time. I even tweeted it once, asking if anyone else felt so tired, but no one really got what I was saying. They talked about being tired after their day or tired from work, but I was talking about being tired all the time.

One of the reasons I decided to quit my job and freelance full-time was because I wanted to be able to lie down on the couch all day if needed to, instead of pretending to work while I stared at a computer. Some days life is just…hard. I’m not interested in reading, or watching TV, or writing my blog, or doing anything, except perhaps eating, but even that joy is rather empty and fleeting.

This is probably 80% of the reason I gained back about 40 pounds last year. I know how to eat healthy and exercise, but on so many days it seemed pointless. When I am sad and lonely in the evenings and don’t feel like doing anything and don’t care about anything, I like to eat. I obviously need to find an alternative coping mechanism for these feelings, either with anti-depressants or a support group or something. Thankfully, I watched the Glee episode the night before an appointment with my doctor, so we tweaked my meds, which I hope will help. I’m going to do my best to exercise and eat well, which should give my body the tools to feel better. I’ve got some other plans I’ll got into more detail about soon.

Mostly, I’m just admitting I cannot do this alone anymore – the weight, the depression, the pain – just living a good life. It has all buried me lately and I’m trying to dig my way out. I never understood depression until it happened to me, and like so many things in life, you’d don’t really get it until you go through it yourself.

Here’s where I stand with my 2009 goals:

1) Continue to pursue headache treatments

I first went to the headache clinic in January of 2009. Within a few months, we were managing my headache much better, though not ridding me of it completely. We’re still tweaking meds, but overall this goal was pretty much met.

2) Work to become full-time freelancer

I chucked my job in July of 2009 and haven’t looked back. I don’t know how I ever coped with working in an office in the first place. I still don’t have a long-term health insurance solution, but I’ll deal with that at the end of 2010. Another goal accomplished!

3) Maintain my weight with regular fitness and health eating

I’m going to give myself a C+ on this one. I continued to gain weight at the beginning of the year, but I’ve been maintaining for the past several months. I could do better, but managing the headache comes before weight loss, even in this list.

4) Secret goal I will not reveal because I like driving you crazy

Also, I did absolutely nothing to work on this goal, so major FAIL on my part.

5) Travel outside the country

Done. I saw London, I saw France! I only packed four pairs of underpants! (Travel light, and do laundry in the sink.)

Overall, pretty good job, but there is room for improvement. After some thought, here are my goals for 2010:

1) Secret goal I will not reveal to preserve an air of mystery

2) Lose at least 20 pounds by July.

3) Travel to at least 3 new places.

4) Finish and promote headache memoir

5) Another secret goal, in case I hadn’t driven you mad already.

I’ve printed my goals and taped them to my desk. Now I just have to achieve them!

When I fly, it is inevitable that I start thinking about the meaning of life. No matter the airline or the destination, no matter the time zone or the country, when I look out an airplane window, my spirit soars with awe and my stomach sinks with terror. Looking down on our planet, I can see small square stamps called fields and narrow long lines called roads. The cars speeding down the highway look like ants slowly trudging across a desert. When I zoom out on the world like that, human civilization doesn’t look all that different from an ant colony or a bee hive or a bacterial growth. It makes me wonder, is there a life form out there that would look at our world and diagnose humanity as an odd and not that fascinating fungus?

Then I think of my cats, because I can always bring the subject back to my cats. Java Bean and Officer Krupke don’t know about the recent economic recession or the effects of global warming or the politics driving the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their brains cannot conceive of these things, nor do I think they’d care if it was all explained to them. Krupke wants a bowl full of food and warm spot on the couch. Java Bean wants to play with the mouse toy and snuggle against my chest. They would rather catch bugs than catch Osama Bin Laden.

When I am zooming around in the atmosphere, it makes me wonder, am I the cat in someone else’s world? The universe is so, amazingly, fantastically, unimaginably big, and time goes on forever and ever or may not even really exist at all. I am never going to understand the universe. Yet I have no doubt that there is stuff going on that is very, very, important, that I will never, ever know about.

Looking down, this planet looks minuscule in comparison to all that exists, yet I can’t help but remember how complicated my little, everyday planet is. There are millions of transactions occurring in the global economy that require computers and instantaneous network connections to track. Creating a diagram of how my friends, family, and acquaintances are interconnected would take a complicated illustration with many circles and lines and dots. You do not even want to see all the digital clutter that is on my computer, expressed in zeros and ones, that would feel like an amputation of my brain if it was lost, yet means less than nothing to the other six billion residents of this planet.

All of those things are so complicated and necessary to make our lives run, but when I’m flying over the planet, they seem as distant and untouchable as the processes that go on in my cells every second to keep me alive. I know about mitochondria and cell division and glycogen, but I don’t understand how everything in my body works together to be this thing that is my body and my consciousness and perhaps my soul. I don’t know what will happen when I die, but I have my hunches. For now, all I know is that I want a refrigerator stocked with food, people to love, and a cozy seat on the airplane, right next to the window.

I no longer have to breath deeply and grip the arm rests when the airplane takes off. I do not focus on the flight attendants as if they are explaining the meaning of life when they demonstrate how to put on the oxygen mask. I’ve traveled several times over the past two years and each trip has made me a little more confident and a little less uneasy to take to the skies.

However, I was a bit worried about that middle section of the flight path illustrated above on my most recent flight that crossed the vast Atlantic Ocean. When we took off from Paris, I could gaze out the window below to see ships skating across the water like toys in the bathtub. Then we coasted above the clouds and I was glad because I did not want to see the vast emptiness that would await us if something went wrong, knowing no one would be there to help us but ourselves.

So when Air France flight 447 disappeared and eventually the wreckage was found, I felt so sorry for the passengers and their families because I had feared the same might happen to me only two weeks earlier. I didn’t fear it enough to cancel my trip or take a long sea voyage instead, but I knew it was a remote possibility, just as I know I could die every time I buckle my seatbelt and drive to work. It makes me wonder, which picture of me would they have shown on TV? What would Brian Williams or Charlie Gibson or Katie Couric say about me in my brief two sentence obituary as my face flashed on the screen? Would they dig up archival video footage of me appearing on their morning shows? Would my book sales suddenly sky rocket? And even so, is having a best-selling book really worth dying for?

More importantly, what would I want them to say about me? I’m not sure, but it reminds me that you should not wait to start living the life you want to live. I don’t know how many tomorrows are in my future, but I hope they are all good ones.

Last month I was standing in line at Kroger, just like I’ve spent days of my life standing in line at Kroger. I was tired, I didn’t want to be there, and the lady in front of me was paying with a check.

As I shifted my weight from foot to foot, I was surprised, not by Jessica Simpson’s weight gain flashed on the tabloid covers, but by how I felt. My headache isn’t that bad right now. Weird. The same constant pressure was in my skull as it has been 24 hours a day since February 2008. Normally a long line at the grocery store and a bad mood would make it scream, but it was just holding steady at its normal background hum.

The headache clinic I have been going to since January (and not blogging about for my sanity and yours) makes me keep a headache diary. I record the level of my headache in the morning, noon, evening and night. They use a 1-5 scale where the numbers mean:

1 – Low level headache which enters awareness only at times when attention is devoted to it

2 – Headache pain level that can be ignored at times

3 – Painful headache, but can continue to function

4 – Very severe headache, concentration difficult by can perform tasks of an undemanding nature

5 – Intense, incapacitating headache.

When I started keeping the diary my days ranged from 2 to 4, most days being 3, the really bad days being 4, and the occasional “good” day where I had a 2. My neurologist adjusted my meds in January and there were no results. He adjusted it again in February and slowly I started to have mostly 2’s. Just as I was gaining hope of having a, you know, LIFE, again, my brain ratcheted back up to a 4 for a whole day, making me want to flush my seemingly worthless pills down the toilet. Then I went back to 2’s most of the time, except for a rainy day, which knocked me back up to a 3.

So the point of me spewing out more numbers than a bingo caller is this – my headache is currently dampened. It’s not gone. I still have pain. But I can do stuff now. I can come home and work on my blog without wanting to stab my eyes out with a ballpoint pen. I can go shopping on the weekends and not collapse on the couch in amazement that I’ve completed my tasks. When I drive to work, I do not spend 80% of my drive thinking about my headache and why did this happen and will anyone be able to fix me and oh my god when will this pain end? I think about what podcasts I should download and should I renew my lease and how much should I spend on my spring wardrobe and hey, I haven’t been thinking about my headache, how weird!

Out it goes, not with a bang, but a whimper. It slowly retreats, but does not completely give up ground. And gradually I have begun to get my life back, piece by piece, gluing it back together like that shattered oatmeal bowl that got broken in the mail.

I have been very hesitant to mention any of this for three reasons. First, I didn’t want to jinx myself. I’d hate to tell y’all I felt better and then get a level 4 headache the next day. Second, the pills could stop working at any time. For six years prior to the start of all this I took a pill everyday and it kept the headache away. Then it stopped working. Kapoot! And that could happen again. I am not cured. They still cannot tell me why I have this ridiculous, meaningless pain in my brain. Third, I made a vow to NEVER mention the headache on the blog again. I didn’t even mention the fact that I’d decided not to mention it because that would require me to mention it. Occasionally I have gotten emails that said, “Hey, you haven’t mentioned the headache lately. Are you better?” No, I was not better, I simply learned life was better if we didn’t bring it up anymore. But, I’ve been mostly all right for about a month now, so I’m going to take the risk and announce it publicly. I’ll cross my fingers that posting this won’t make the headache worse.

And since I know you will ask, the answer is 75mg of Nortriptyline and 40mg of Nadolol taken once at bedtime. My abortive of choice is 550mg of Anaprox, which is essentially industrial strength Aleve. If anyone has a time machine, please write down that information, travel back in time to February 17th, 2008 and slip it into my PO Box, will you? It will save me from having the WORST YEAR OF MY LIFE.

Yeah, sure, I’ve grown and learned a lot from this experience. I understand depression in a way I never did before. I have greater empathy for the old and disabled and the suicidal. I appreciate little things like a bright cloudless day without pain in a way I never did before. But seriously, screw that. It’s been fucking awful and no one should have to suffer like I’ve suffered. I’ll just hope the worst is over and savor ever second until that hope is proved wrong.

It was exactly 4 years ago today that I stepped on a scale and then stepped on a treadmill and finally stepped into a new phase of my life. Happy fativersary to me!

I started out at 372 pounds, a number I would rather possess in foreign currency than write down on my weight chart. After over two and half years of work, I hit a low of 170.8 pounds (partially induced by stress I dared not blog about). That weight was a bit too low for me, since I still like to eat a donut now and then. Instead, I maintained a weight of 180 pounds for a good while, was happy with my size, and bopped happily down nature trails and treadmills as I trained for a half marathon and promoted my book.

Then after almost a year of unrelenting chronic pain, I entered another phase of my life which involved depression and compulsive eating, gaining back about 25 pounds. And quite frankly my dear, I didn’t give a damn, because I was so foregone.

Lately, I have stabilized both mentally and physically. I haven’t gained any more weight in the past few months and my secret, late-night dates with the freezer department at Marsh have become infrequent. I am hopeful that as I continue to pursue medical treatment, I will regain the health and energy necessary to work off that weight and enter yet another phase of my life.

That’s the story so far. It keeps going. I lose weight. I gain a bit back. I lose it again. That’s life. That’s my body. It takes time and work and a sense of perspective.

It does not involve acai berries or colon cleanses, which I only mention because along with the new year there has been a rise in scammers wishing to take advantage of people who have made resolutions to lose weight. Steve from Weight Loss Weapons has made a master list of sites that are pretending to be blogs but are in fact fronts created to sell you sham products so their owners can make big profits. Don’t be fooled!

One of these sites tried to place an ad on my site earlier this week, but it seemed fishy to me so I rejected them. (Yes, I sometimes turn down ads. It’s not just a line in my advertising policy.) These sites are pretending to be run by regular people who are telling their life stories (like I do here on this blog), but they’re fake. They want you to trust them because they act like they are part of our community, but they are just twisting that sense of social connection for their own means. It’s kind of disgusting, even grosser than the idea of a colon cleanse. I was hesitant to link to the list of sites because I don’t want anyone clicking on the links and buying the products, but I think it’s better to warn people about the fraud than pretend it’s not out there.

To all of you looking to celebrate your own fativersary, good luck! All we have is time and each other. Skip the acai berries and invest in yourself instead. You won’t regret it.

However, I have learned it’s best not to wallow (or to try not to wallow anyway), so I’m going to continue on blogging about other stuff. So, don’t act too weirded out when I start talking about how to set your goal weight and things like that. I could whine about my headache all the time, but that would get old for all of us very quickly.

ETA: Oh, yesterday some people were getting a 500 error after they left a comment. I don’t know for sure why this was happening, but I would guess it was due to high traffic because it is weight loss resolution season. If it happens to you, just hit the “Back” button and try submitting your comment again and it should hopefully work. I will delete any duplicate comments…someday.

People always said life is hard and I would nod and agree, but I did not understand. Weight loss is hard and college is hard and finding a job is hard. All those things are hard, indeed, and I’ve done all those things. I thought I understood when people said life was hard, but I didn’t, because you cannot understand suffering until you have suffered.

I have been suffering lately. I have been suffering since the evening of February 17th, 2008 when I got a headache that has never gone away. Some of you probably laugh a little and think, “Ha, that’s weird. But it’s just a headache. How bad can it be?”

It is bad. It is very, very bad.

It has made me cry so badly that my wailing has made the cats run into my bedroom. It has made me come home numerous evenings and binge eat as a temporary way to ease the pain. It has made me go out to the parking garage during work and cry in the back seat and idly think that I could jump off the roof of the building if it gets unbearable.

And through this all has been the knowledge that I may never get better. No one seems to know what is causing my headache. None of the pills work. None of the eastern or western medicine is doing any good. I read stories about people who have had headaches for 10 or 20 or 30 years and I know I may join their ranks.

So, I have alternately been seeking a cure and also trying to learn how to cope with this unknown disease that may be with me for as long as I live. (Hopefully a long time. I was not seriously considering suicide and since I started anti-depressants have not even idly considered it as an option.) Still, it is hard. It is very, very hard. I truly understand that word now.

I have also not been taking care of myself. I have not been eating well and I have not been exercising. I know these things are important and would benefit my overall health, but I feel so overwhelmingly miserable on a daily basis that food is one of my few comforts and exercise seems a chore as difficult as swimming around the globe. (Which, of course, would be great exercise.) I know I need to do better in these areas, but I am focusing most of my energy on just getting through the day, on keeping my job and my health insurance that I need so desperately right now. I would love to lose weight, but I just don’t have the energy for it right now and it is hard to make it a priority when so many other things need fixing first. I can’t move the furniture when the house is on fire.

I have been trying to keep my momentum and keep living the life I was living a year ago. I’d like to be that girl again. But I feel like I’m sleepwalking through my own life, that I’m just going through the motions, miscast as the lead in someone else’s play. I would like that sense of normalcy back. So I try. I do what I can. But I also have to remember I have the right to do less than humanly possible. Otherwise I go a little krazee, as was evidenced last night.

I haven’t been talking about my struggles too much on the blog for a couple reasons. First, I didn’t want a hundred different opinions on what I should be doing. I know they are just voices of the caring, but they pull me in a hundred different directions until only shredded remains are left. This place has gotten so big lately that I don’t always feel comfortable sharing everything anymore, knowing someone is bound to misunderstand me. It does not feel as safe here as it used to. There are hypodermic needles on the playground.

Secondly, I like to act as normal as I can, to live as much of my life that I can, although lately I have been living a half-life, unable to do the things I want to, to feel the ways I used to. This blog used to be called “Half of Me.” I am now (a little over) half my weight, but due to my illness I’m living half a life too. I fake it well. I greet people warmly in the elevator and I smile at my doctor’s appointments. I tell jokes and goof around. They would say, “Jennette seems perfectly ok! She’d never take a header off the roof!” It makes me look around at my coworkers, at the people in line at the grocery store, and wonder how many of them are faking it too. There is so much suffering that goes unnoticed.

It might get better. I’m seeking help. I’m still seeing doctors. I’m trying to get by. My family and friends have been awesome, cooking me dinner and doing my dishes and checking in on me and listening to my whining. But I don’t know what will happen. I might be sick forever and that will be that. I’ll have to figure out how to live with this chronic pain. I’ll have to learn to do the best I can with what is left of my life. But at least there was a year there, when I was working out and eating well and I was healthy, when I felt really good and the world was full of so many possibilities. I was happy then and it was nice. I’m glad I had that year.

And to anyone who thinks there is something noble about my suffering, about the way I carry on so bravely in the face of insurmountable odds, fuck you. There is nothing noble about this. There is just pain – meaningless, endless pain. There is no purpose to it, no greater meaning. It will change me and test me, no doubt, but I don’t want any congratulations for the fact that I still carry on. I do it because I have to and death is not an option.

So, on Friday I leave for vacation. I’m going to the Quaker Oatmeal Festival in Colorado because God knows I could use a fucking vacation. I will try to have a good time even if the high altitudes make my head explode. And by God, I promise to eat a shitload of oatmeal.