i went away.

but now i’m back.

rejoice.

things that are good in the life of sophie:

school is over for the summer. i am now faced with three months of unlimited potential. i’m going to read everything i can get my hands on, everything i’ve been holding off on for the last not so little while. i’m going to clean my whole house, top to bottom. i’m going to pack up my stuff and move the hell out of gatineau. i’m going to swim and run and dance and draw and play. i am going to get a job i love, working with people that i love. i am unstoppable.

my application to university has been sent. it’s out of my hands now, i refuse to worry any longer. if i don’t get accepted, i’ll just go back to heritage for another semester. i won’t (as i had been convinced of earlier) burst into a screaming sophie-ball of fire. and on the off chance that i really don’t want to go to cegep, i always have an open invitation to a life in istanbul.

i have now earned my brown belt in traditional shotokan karate. for those of you that don’t know, next is black. on average it takes two years to go from brown to black, but you can do it in a minimum of eighteen months. when i stepped up and bowed to my sensei to accept my belt, he said to me, “i want you to stick with this, you’ll have your black belt in a year and a half.” later that night the whole class stopped to watch as james (he’s a first dan black belt) and i kicked the unholy life out of each other. this was two days shy of a week ago and my bruises are still showing; but you should see the other guy…

my friends are happy, my brother is too, my lover’s a fighter and my parents are proud. my life is in my hands.

and one last thing… it’s my birthday.

in just under two days i will be done my exams for this semester; done screwing up my grades, my health and my futur; done worrying about the loaded weapon pointed at my head…

whether i dodge this bullet, or blow my brains all over the wall, i know this will be a happy ending.

tonight i lost my cool, but regained it with the help of my best friend and these sunglasses i found under the microwave.

this was a good weekend.

no… better than good, it was amazing. but after being a ninja for five straight days tomorrow i enter the real world again. how frightening.

training camps like this do strange things to my brain. for the past day or so i’ve been toying with the idea of making martial arts my life.

sophie: let go of school, you fail anyway. let go of being a filmmaker, it was unrealistic to begin with. devote yourself to this, it will fulfill you. it will give you the futur you don’t have right now.

yeah, that’s it. i’ll be a fucking ninja. baby, i’m a lost cause…

i’ve got a bowl of popcorn (and chopsticks with which to eat it), an entire carton of tropicana orange-mango-peach juice, and i just won a game of spider solitair with four suits…

it’s almost midnight…

i’m going to do my homework.

this is an occasion to be marked!

dear diary,

today daddy cried for one whole hour, mummy asked me to quit school, and my poop came out GREEN. it was the best day ever.

today is a good day.

decisions have been made about my life, and shockingly enough most of them were actually made by me. so as i sit here at james and na’s work at seven in the morning (don’t let the time fool you, i’ve been here since four, and up since yesterday), i have nothing but good to look forward to.

last night (that’s technically earlier this morning) james and i decided to wander along carling at a little after ten to see if we could find anywhere that would still be open to feed us. we found a little vietnamese restaurant with a sign that said “sorry, we’re closed” and a smiling asian woman in the window, waving and gesturing for us to come in. we got inside and i asked if they were closed. “oh, yes, iss ok, we cook foh you, you want.” the fortune cookie i got at the end of one of the best meals i’ve had in a long time said, ” you are next in line for promotion at your firm” … that is happy bullshit, cause i am rapidly approaching quitting day, a day on which i will tell my bosses, “i like you as people enough not to open fire on you in broad daylight in a crowd of innocent, bystanding puppies and small children; but as co-workers i would probably afford you no such courtesy.” not to mention people who have “firms” don’t generally get kissed by their fat, toothless and possibly senile customers.

also: japan, with a week-long layover in mauii; there will be condo goodness; and bovernment is now a word meaning “you have been up for thirty-some hours and you are now officially mentally incompetant in the eyes of the law”

i have made an informed and democratic desision to get off these pills. although i’m not looking forward to the incessant crying (which was the first thing to go when the meds kicked in) i thinks it’s still better than what’s going on with my brain and body right now.

believe it or not this is a hard decision, because it’s against my doctor’s wishes (but not, however, my family’s), and all i really want is to get better.

i’m drawing. for the first time in… i don’t even know how long. and even then, it was never like this. this is a very good feeling.