Got fired this weekend. Pretty lame. I didn't really want to stay there much longer anyway but it would have been nice to quit with honor and dignity and maybe another job lined up.

Apparently two weeks ago, a lady came in at 8:40 when we were about to close but I'd started cleaning early because sunday nights are slow. I wasn't paying attention to the front door because I was tired, still sick and wanted to clean my shit and go. I guess this lady felt that I deliberately ignored her and her family when I never saw them and would never ignore them if I had. That's just rude. And that's no way to get a good tip. So she sent an email to corporate and I am fired. No other complaints or write-ups or any other kind of disciplinary action in my file.

Three things really bum me out about this: Number one: I wish she would have said something at the time, something like "excuse me, we would like a table please." or even something less polite, so I could have done something for her then. I would have hooked it up for them because that's what I do when I fuck up. Instead she had to be all passive-aggressive email on me and I am fired and the manager on duty at the time was also fired because they think he closed early again. Number two: the manager who got fired is a dad. That's just fucked up. Not that dads shouldn't get fired but come on dude. He'd worked there probably half my life span. Not cool. Number three: After I toughed out all the shit with my health, sucked it up day after day and continued to be a pretty awesome waitress, this is what I get. I am never sucking it up again.

That's what she said.

Today was my first day of classes for winter quarter. I'm feeling pretty meh about school at the moment. All I did over break was feel crappy. I had my skinectomy and that knocked me the fuck out for a while. When the numbing shots wore off, the pain was worse than I expected. It felt like something had cut my bone. I was pretty depressed afterwards too, thinking about how it can come back, that I could have to go through this again and again. Just a little local anesthesia and goodbye skin. I could feel the sawing pressure when he cut it off. For a moment, before he stitched me up, I could feel my skin hanging loose around the bone, my bone exposed and cold. The whole time I felt something cool and wet seeping out all around my arm. It was horrific. I thought I was going to pass out or puke and I wasn't even looking at it. My doctor kept asking me questions to distract me, so I was laying there trying to talk about Salman Rushdie but all I could think about was my blood and bones. And then when he finished my wrist, again on my leg. Thinking about possibly having to go through this again makes me crazy. I look over my skin every day.

I feel different now. I feel old and tired. I'm afraid of the sun. When I started feeling better after surgery I got a really bad cold that knocked me back down. I spent new year's eve sick and alone. Nobody called me except some guy from work who I'd already told I couldn't work for him.

The other night at work Sarah Bonilla pointed out to me that I have the 11:11 stitched into my body, eleven stitches on my arm and eleven on my leg. 11:11 is a strange phenomenon. I did some internet investigating (internetstigating?) that gave me some food for thought. Eleven is associated with enlightenment and while I think a lot of the "angels make me look at the clock at 11:11" stuff is kind of crazy, I do think there is value in adding a level of symbolism to your life if it improves the quality of your life. I don't think my personal 11:11 enlightened me in any way, but maybe it was a call for me to pay more attention. To keep trying to live better.

But shit god damn, I wish I wasn't back in school already. It's going to be super hard for me to care about the antebellum South and 1890's England, let alone Plato and Aristotle.

I had this dream that Ray came over to my house to see me. I kept trying to tell him about my surgeries because I wanted him to feel sorry for me and therefore love me. I showed him my scars and he, all jovial and jolly, grinned and told me I wasn't very pretty anymore and he was so very glad he didn't have to deal with all my shit. I wanted him to see the crooked rivers stitched on my arm and leg, the purpling frown on one breast and the crooked smile under the nipple of the other. I thought that once he saw how I had been hurting he would be moved. I thought I could make him love me with my pain, but he just laughed and said I wasn't very pretty anymore and that was the end of the story as far as he was concerned. I had this dream a couple of times.

The joke's on you evil dream Ray. I've been using this moisturizer that makes my pores less porous and my cheeks are so smooth and soft you'd think I ripped them off a baby. Also, I am a real person whereas you, evil dream Ray, are merely the product of an over-worked and extremely anxious subconscious. I was just thinking about it in the shower and I wanted to make sure I wrote all this down. Because all the cancer in the world wouldn't make him, or anyone, love me the way I want them to.

On the plus side, I don't have any cancer anymore. I'm pretty stoked on that but also terrified of it coming back. I'm worried that no matter how much I step up my sun protection, the damage may have already been done. I'm worried about how I'm going to get health insurance after I graduate. I'm good for the next year, but shit, having melanoma pop up in two different spots at the same time indicates that I am at an increased risk for reoccurance. I can has skin check?

A couple weeks ago, the day after my skinectomy as a matter of fact, I had a really good talk with my dad. I was all hopped up on vicoden rambling to him about how I think maybe I made myself so sick by being so hard on myself all the time. I am starting to believe more in the connection between mental health and physical health and I think these tumors and these renegade cells are my body eating itself up the way I always take things out on myself. He said something like, we are always comparing our insides to other people's outsides and it's not fair to anyone and it's not constructive. I am used to seeing my dad as kind of curmudgeonly, a fuddy duddy and a goofball, the guy who borrows my little brother's car to smoke cigars in it, but when he said that to me, it reminded me that he is also very wise. Also, that I love him very much.