Sinful

im sure many people are spending last night and now today reflecting on the year just past and their hopes for the year to come. this very minute, bloggers all over the world are filling their cyberhomes with posts about the past present and future... hopes and dreams, tragedies and woes. wishing for things that might have been and might well be... so like 'everyone else' i'll do the same. 2007 was not a good year for me. i dont have many of those anyway. yeah, i know, im young. i have my whole life ahead of me, but unlike most people my age, my lifespan wont be nearly as long as theirs. cancer, illness, bad luck... have all followed me for quite awhile. and will continue to do so in the future. so, without further adieu, i'll share my story.

i turned 25 in 2007. i had an 'ok' job working at a 'trendy' jewelry store. i didnt really care for my coworkers, though i grew to be rather close with a couple of them. through that job, i met my friend erika, who has become one of the most awesome people ive ever had the pleasure of calling my friend. id consider her my best friend (and yes, its ok to have more than one 'best' friend... i have several.) i got a promotion in that job. and while it had shit for pay there were really good benefits. i also met mara from carlsbad, though over time we grew apart. i thought once that i could trust her. now im pretty sure i was wrong. its quite possible (later in 2007) that mara had something to do with me losing that job. today i sit here and say "im glad i did". not many people get happy about being fired, but this loss opened up a much better employment opportunity to me.

i met new people, forgot most of them. could really give a crap. i nearly lost a good friend due to my brutal honesty. and his inability to be my friend when i needed him the most. im glad cory doesnt hate me anymore. (and yeah, G, admit it, you DID hate me for awhile.) and i am so glad you and gnimsh came down for spring break. that was a blast and we should do it again sometime.

our sibling-site 247fixes and our very own therock247uk received the microsoft mvp award for windows security. we have plans to fly out for the big hoopla in april. hold on to your hats guys, therock is comin to america! (and we're all scared.)

i got closer with my sister and my mom. unfortunately, that also changed. i havent seen my sister in over a week now. appears shes too good to hang out with her family. and she cant be bothered to answer our calls. that makes me sad. mom and i have become better friends. i can attribute that mostly to the loss of my dad. we needed someone to lean on, and we both found each other.

and as i mentioned above, i lost my dad this year. he was a flight nurse who died in the line of duty. i honestly cannot relate how much that hurts. how i wish things had been different and i know i cant go back and change them. if i had it to do all over again, i would... but it still wouldnt have prepared me for the heartache and misery i feel every day. theres nothing like waking up every morning feeling lost and dealing with the emotional upheaval every time someone mentions his name. or driving into the parking lot of work every morning and staring at the place my dad was working when the plane went down (my new office building is almost right next door to the roswell southwest medevac base.) i look over at their plane (a new one) nearly every day. and when i see it take off, i say a prayer that my friends there will make it back home safely. im pretty close with a couple of people that still work there. who knew and loved my dad probably as much as i did.

and then i got sick again. found that out two days before the crash. never got a chance to tell dad. still trying not to admit that its back and feels a bit worse than it did before. maybe some slight part of that is because of the emotional issues surrounding his death. the day my doctor released me to go back to work from bereavement leave, they fired me. whoop-ti-fucking-do. two days later i already had another job (which i absolutely love). a couple months later i found out my liver was failing. spent a week on my deathbed before they figured out that it was tylenol poisoning from the pain medication i was taking for the cancer stuff. (it was a pill with 10mg of hydrocodone to 650mg of acetaminophen - i was taking six pills a day minimum... when you stop to think about it, taking 5000mg of tylenol a day is not healthy for ANYBODY. this went on for nearly 3.5 years before we figured this out.) because of the long term poisoning, i will probably never recover full use of my liver. "at best" i have 50-70% normal liver function now. lovely thought, isnt it?

so the year in review was bad and good. im thankful for my family and for my 'real life' friends like erika, monica, kelly and jody, eli, chris, priscilla... a few others. and for my closet friends (you guys know how much i love yall, but im not gonna sit here and list all thirty-seven thousand of you).

and now my hopes for 2008...
i hope nobody dies. :) that's all.
(ok, there's one person id like to see dead, but its not nice to name names. :P)