Merry Christmas to all my friends. I miss chatting with you all dearly.

I am still living at the South residence here at Skyland Trail. I theoretically have 1 week left, but my treatment team will be asking for more time (don't know how much more time, but they are wanting at least another month or so).

The past 2 weeks have been crazy, and I know several of you have been asking for updates of me through onwards and mom through text. So I thought I'd post an update on here as I do sometimes have access to the internet at the residence (we have 2 computers with internet access for 24 of us, so you can imagine how difficult it is to get online...and the computers won't let me open the chat...I've tried D I'll try to see if I can get a group Skype call on my phone sometime...but I'm not sure how that works yet, so we'll see lol.

Anyways,

I moved in to the residence 2 weeks ago and all hell broke loose. I have the energy of a 5 year old. The first week was pretty fun. I was on observation for the first weekend so I was confined to the house and wasn't allowed to go anywhere, but I hung out with the staff and just ran through the house and chain smoked my lungs out and watched a ton of movies. I all ready knew most of the patients since I'd been going to treatment for 5 weeks, so I didn't really have to meet many people. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we go back to the hospital from 6pm - 8pm for LEAP (not sure what it stands for) but pretty much it's just to have supervised free time outside of the residence so we can work out, do art, play with the XBOX kinect, etc etc etc.

This past week was pretty crap, though. Last weekend a few of us at the house thought it would be really super awesome to go buy some nerf guns at walmart to play with. We asked the weekend staff to take us to go buy them, and the even helped us pick some awesome ones out. We unpackaged them and started shooting them. The staff set down ground rules for playing with them. Pretty much, ask before shooting someone, don't shoot people that don't want to get shot, don't shoot each other in the face. All acceptable rules. The staff gave us targets to shoot and even played with the guns with us. They were bright yellow and orange guns. They were tons of fun. It was my new favourite thing. On Monday we brought them to the hospital to shoot our counselors in the butts. The weekend staff gave us permission. 3 minutes in to Monday morning my counselor snatched it out of my hand and yelled at me for it and it turned in to this massive issue. Apparently it's a "huge trigger". And they wouldn't look at my side of it. They wouldn't look at my logic of it.

They take us on outings to laser tag. They let us watch Law and Order, CSI, and Horror Movies with explicit.....abuse scenes (I'm sure you know what I'm talking about). But no, a toy meant for a 3 year old is what's triggering. And the thing is, every patient in the residence loved the guns, everyone was playing with it, the staff helped me buy it. We asked if everyone was okay with it. But suddenly it was an issue. I don't understand why it was so wrong. My counselor did later approach me and say she was sorry for getting so abrasive about the gun because that was triggering for me, but I'm still upset about them taking my gun. It was a stress reliever for me and everyone in the house.

We're also trying to figure out a way to talk to the staff and patients of the hospital on how to approach me about my verbal impulsivity. As you all obviously notice in chat, I have great difficulty with cursing and inappropriate language. I don't do this for attention and shock value. It's not tourettes. It's an impulse control problem. And it's much, much worse when it's spoken rather than typed. Staff is generally better with it than patients. I have loads of people that just start screaming at me when I start getting crude. The thing is, most of the time, I have absolutely no clue what's coming out of my mouth. I don't hear myself. It just kind of happens, and it's happened for so long that I don't hear it anymore. And I've grown up getting screamed at, that it's super triggering. And I know that my language is triggering for people. So all that ends up happening is that you have two people massively triggering each other and then we get super violent. So it's a lose lose situation. So that's kind of where we're at. Trying to convince patient's to maybe try to be a little bit patient with me or maybe like make me aware of my language because I think that if I can hear myself that I can stop, at least for a few minutes ya know? It's a start. I don't like triggering people. It just happens.

I'm going home in a few hours to spend part of the day with my family for christmas. My brother is in town for a few weeks, and it really sucks that I won't get to see him very much but hey, it is what it is. I was extremely upset on Friday because I'd put in for my christmas day pass 2 weeks ago. So I call my mom Friday morning and she says to me, "I hope you're not upset with me, but we didn't want to stress you out until we got all the information but your dad went in for surgery for stage 1 melanoma. They think they got it all out and he doesn't need chemo so he's okay." I'm very, very happy they waited to tell me with everything that's gone on the past few months. So I go to treatment that morning and they tell me my pass has been denied and I just start bawling. And guilt trip the crap out of them. So they felt bad and decided to let me go.

It's difinitely been a rollercoaster of emotions here. I think in many aspects I'm starting to get better. I'm finally starting to get a bit better. They started me back on topamax. However this past week my caloric intake has been much, much lower than it has been in months because I wasn't able to go to the grocery store to get snacks, which I heavily rely on because I don't like the meals here. So I got the side effect from topamax where my limbs get tingly and due to my diet this week it kinda made it worse and when I went for a run my limbs would just completely go numb and I fell asleep xD. Needless to say my diet is getting concerning for the staff, but it's making me both happy and miserable. My counselor wants to send me to an eating disorder treatment center, but I've convinced them to let me stay here so long as I continue to try to work on it.

I love you all so much and I hope the holidays are treating you well! I'll be online on and off!!!!