The 23rd & 24th; Nothing changes.

The 23rd of August. 

I think the worst thing about waking up too early is when the stories on the radio are just depressing or annoying or both, and that is what happened this morning. I had to turn it off, and in the end I listened to the Jordan Banjo episode of Off Menu before getting up. His choices were all terrible, except for the fact that he chose still water over sparkling. 

Because I was up so early, I had time to get a blog post done before I had to go out. I was at Black Sheep to get my hair coloured at eleven, so that has been my day. Gemma and I had a chat and we decided on purple sides, deep red on top with some turquoise panels. We had some very interesting conversations about how she hates Christmas (I can't process this), the complexities of hair bleaching, and I found out that she is actually younger than me (only by eight months). That was very weird because I had assumed that because of her ability to be a senior colour technician, she must be older than me. Admittedly, I only thought she was maybe like 31, but still. 

Everything was fine, until I got to Michaela to blow dry, and the blue had not come out as I had imagined. I hate being unhappy at them, because I feel so ungrateful, but I couldn't leave and feel confident about it. We looked at it in the light and I still felt it was too dark, so Michaela used a scrub to take off the top layer of colour. However, I didn't really feel that made much of a difference, so we decided that I would go home, have a play with my hair, style it how I like, then look at it some more and decide what I want to do. 

Once I got home, I had some lunch (it was half past three!) and went upstairs to mess with my hair. I've done my best, but I can't like it. They've left a block of space for me tomorrow, so I'm going to ring them in the morning to let them know I'm coming. I'll go to liver clinic, go home, have lunch, then go back and we'll fix it. 

The 24th of August. 

Usually, when the weather is this good, I feel great. But tonight, I feel like everything is wrong. Not everything in the world, but definitely everything about me. 

I woke up stupidly early, so that wasn't a great start, but after that it did seem to get briefly get better. I had liver clinic at eleven, which I was early for, and it was deserted. I know it's a Saturday in the summer, but it's not the apocalypse. Not yet, anyway. I saw Dr. El-Sharif again, which is not ideal, but fine. I will see if Philippa can sort it out for me to go to James' clinic next time because I would like to see my actual consultant instead of a random reg. Thankfully, all I really needed was to have my tacrolimus level checked and to get some more of it, because the GP refuses to prescribe it. It may have been my quickest clinic visit ever.

Back home, I had lunch, and got changed for the gym. My plan for this afternoon was to go to Black Sheep at two, get the hair sorted out, then go to the gym about three. However, that did not quite work out. First, we tried just going over the blue bits with the red, which didn't really do anything at all. The next option was to go over the entire front section, which took out the blue tone, but it still looked essentially the same to me. At that point, I was just feeling terrible, because to my mind, I looked awful, it was my own fault for making a stupid choice, and Gemma was doing her best to try and fix it but nothing was making me happy. Our last resort was to try and bleach the whole top front section, then put the red over that again. That was about 95% successful, and I have some of the same dye at home, so I can go over it again if I feel it needs it. By the time we were done, I wouldn't have got to the gym until four, which is too late, and I just wanted to go home. I'd been staring at my face for an hour being upset, feeling shit about how I look anyway, and my brain is just too full of negative thoughts. I texted Daddy to come and pick me up, and went to get an iced coffee from Under Pressure while he drove. My wheelchair and their ramp didn't get on, so two guys had to basically lift me into the shop, which was embarrassing. Then I felt even worse, and bought a slice of chocolate cake to try to fix that. It's still sitting in the kitchen, because if I'd eaten it then, I would have had no room for dinner. 

I needed to go and lie in the dark, but Daddy mentioned that nobody had been to sit with Brooke today, so I thought we might have a nice hug and that would cheer me up. Unfortunately, she decided to be mental and naughty. After half an hour I was bleeding from one wrist and multiple points on my leg, so I left her and went to try and tend to my wounds. 

I just want my body to cooperate with me on one thing. I'm doing everything I can and nothing changes.