I have a face I cannot show, I make the rules up as I go...

So much has changed since last spring.

Obvious things first, I had a breast reduction.  That's right, I have little boobs now.  I look very different, but I'm much more comfortable with myself and my back feels the best it has since I was a kid. So woo surgery!

The recovery has been kind of hard on me (and probably harder on Rich, who has had to deal with me fairly full-time).  For the past three weeks, not only have I not been myself, I have forgotten who she is.  I've been moody, and antisocial, and strange.

It was so easy, and the words so sweet. You can't remember, you try to feel the beat ...

Today, I got a letter from myself. I wrote it in a computer class that I took in the tenth grade.  It was dated December 19, 2005.  I was sixteen, I still lived with both of my parents and what was then all of my brothers, I had just fallen in love for the first time, and I was as open-hearted and warm as anyone is ever likely to be.  My friends were my whole world, my mom was my hero (some things never change), and I was so willing and so able to put my whole soul out in the open.  Some of this letter is awkward, some is embarassing, some doesn't make sense to anyone but me, and some of it is about people and things that live in my past like a beautiful scene in an old movie.  Reading this letter was like having lunch with myself at sixteen.  Though it is a little strange, I thought it was important, and I'm going to reprint it here, with as few corrections as modesty will allow :). I'd like to introduce you to Rachel Cathleen Esteban, aged 16.

Tonight: I posted this, and went right to sleep.

Today: I ate more than one meal. I woke up in the morning and did not go back to sleep. I did not take a nap. I did not text my boyfriend all day. I realized that he probably doesn’t mind when I text him all day. I asked for a break when I needed one at work. I picked up my paycheck three days late because it slipped my mind. I was off the computer just after midnight.