What I want to write is that I did everything and said everything and showed everything I could, to show both how I felt and what kind of person I was.

I tried my absolute best, but I failed.

I would like it if this was the last time I wrote about this.

I just got back from another routine checkup at the lasik place.

My vision tested at 20/15 in my right (treated) eye.

Yay!

They're also seeing no signs of any epitheliol in-growth. I've been put on an as-needed basis for any future visits. I'm not expecting any reason to go back, except maybe in a year or two, to have them correct my left eye for seeing up close.

Man, I really suck at this blogging thing now. Or maybe I don't even suck. You have to do something to suck at it.

Anyway.

March 2nd was my one-year anniversary of getting lasik in my right eye. Then, of course, I had an "enhancement" in early November. That's what they call it when the first round doesn't work so they try again. An "enhancement."

Whatever.

One other fun thing that I totally didn't even write about was the epithelial in-growth I had. That was when a bunch of cells that were supposed to be on the outside of my eye decided to spread to underneath my flap. This was made possible because the doctor had accidentally scratched my flap when he pried it up to do the "enhancement."

The main symptom from this was a fairly severe halo effect in the upper-left part of my right eye's vision. It made Christmas trees look really pretty.

I had the in-growth taken care of in early January. That procedure was much like the last one, except that (a) there was no laser, and (b) the doctor scraped my eyeball and the inside of my flap for a long time, to clear out all the renegade cells, then I had to wear a bandage lens for a week.

Since then, my vision has been fantastic. Just a smidgen worse than I'd been able to see with my glasses before all this lasik stuff started. I'm completely happy and satisfied with the outcome and, despite the complications that I had, I'd still recommend it to anyone wanting to rid themselves of glasses.

How about we don't blame the media, or movies, or video games, or gun laws, or his family, or society, or even his alleged mental illness? How about we blame the crazy asshole himself?

Shifting the blame often ends up sounding an awful lot like making excuses, and I don't think people really want to do that. Not for this fucker.

I know that people want to make sense of it all, to try to understand why he did what he did, but I think that Occam's razor applies in this case. This guy was a monster. Period. What he did was horrific. But he did it.

Blame him. There are no so-called mitigating circumstances that could ever come close to explaining the killing of those innocent children. So don't even try.

Blame him.

Writing this Tuesday morning. All of the vision in my right eye is very foggy and hazy. Like trying to see while taking a shower or something.

There's no irritation, so that's good. Now I guess it's just a matter of being patient, using my prescription drops, using my non-prescription artificial tears, and waiting for my eye to stabilize.

I have patience.

Sunday things were actually okay. I even went to stupid Jack's and shot some pool for a while. I sucked, but at least I shot some. I saw ghost balls, but they were focused.

Yesterday and today, blurriness and haziness have been the main theme of my vision. I don't remember the haziness from the first time around, so it's a little more disconcerting than the blurriness. I still expect everything to be okay within the next several weeks. I hope.

One other thing that's definitely new is that I'm super-sensitive to light. Even the lights here in my building at work seem too bright. I'm almost constantly squinting. I might go get my sunglasses from my truck.

Saturday morning I had to drive back to the eye place for a checkup. I very seriously considered calling CornerGirl to come and drive me. I also even caught myself wishing that LaptopGirl and I were still close so she could drive me. I was in an incredible amount of pain, and my right eye was useless for seeing.

But I drove myself, and somehow I made it to the place without killing myself or anyone else. They had me sit in a chair at try to read letters on a chart. I could not read a single letter, not even the top line on the chart which consisted of just one big letter. The doctor looked at my eye and made a yuck face. Not really something you want your doctor to do. He then started trying to remove the bandage contact lens. This took about five minutes, and it was excruciating to me. The doctor said it was stuck to my eye because there was no moisture at all. I said that I'd been applying the eye drops about every five minutes for 24 hours.

Turns out that the bandage lens had prevented all moisture from reaching my eye, no matter how many times I tried to apply drops. To me, this seems like a bit of a design flaw.

So, to summarize, I'd had a flap ripped open on my eye, then I'd had a laser zap my eye, then I'd gone 24 hours without any moisture on my eye.

No fucking wonder it hurt like a motherfucker and was as red as a cherry tomato.

He finally got the bandage lens off, and there was immediate relief. He also squirted a bunch of artificial tears onto my eye, and there was even more relief. I actually began to suspect that I might live through this LASIK enhancement process.

But nooooooooooo.

He'd also put numbing drops onto my eye, and that numbness wore off by the time I got back home. And the pain and the itchiness returned with a vengeance. Every time I opened or closed my eye, it was like scratching it with a nail.

Saturday might even have been worse than Friday had been, at least at first. By Saturday evening, I was starting to detect a lessening of discomfort, and I was able to sleep for the rest of the night.

They say you learn something new every day. I don't know if that's completely true, but I did learn something new three days ago. Several things, actually.

What I learned first is that a LASIK enhancement starts out differently than an initial LASIK procedure. With the initial procedure, the one I had back in March, what they used was a very thin, very sharp blade to cut a flap in the front of my eye. Then they folded that flap out of the way, zapped my eye with a laser, and folded the flap back.

With an enhancement procedure, however, there is no very thin very sharp blade. Nope, what they do with an enhancement is insert a "surgical instrument" (small putty-knife) into the scar from the original incision, then tear the flap back open along its original lines.

I'm sure there's a good reason for doing it this way, but I can't help but think that any healing that might have taken place over the last six months was for naught.

I found this out about 10 minutes before I had my own LASIK enhancement. At about the same time, they informed me that I would probably experience more pain and discomfort after this procedure than I'd experienced after the initial LASIK. Because of the ripping, I figured. made perfect sense.

A lot of the steps were the same, though. The doctor put a lot of numbing drops in my eye. Then he drew on it with a medical pen. Then he jammed the putty-knife in and lifted part of the flap.

Then I went to the actual LASIK table. They put the anti-blink doohickey on my eye, The doctor lifted (ripped) the flap back out of the way, then the actual laser zapped for about one second.

Then the doctor spent what seemed like a year fiddling with my flap. He ended up telling the nurse that I'd need a bandage lens. As he was fitting that (an oversized contact lens) onto my eye, he explained that, when he'd initially jammed that putty-knife into my eye, he'd caused a small amount of abrasion. That abrasion would be sore, and the bandage contact lens would decrease my discomfort.

The first problem I noticed with this bandage lens was that it made things hazy, so I couldn't tell if I could see better or not. I wish this had been the only problem I noticed with the bandage lens.

But noooooooo.

After OddlyFamiliarGirl ferried me home, I tried to take a nap. It didn't work. The numbing drops had worn off and I was in a lot of pain. A lot. It felt like I had a staple in my eye. I squirted some artificial tears in, and they helped, for about 10 seconds. I kept putting the drops in, but the relief never lasted more than a few seconds.

I went to get something to eat, and drink, reasoning that a full stomach might help me to sleep. It did help. I was able to sleep for about four hours. When I woke up, my eye looked like a cherry tomato. Very red and very swollen. My eyelids were swollen, too. I mean, I really looked like crap. More so than usual.

But I didn't want to be the pussy who called back into the eye doctor because of some pain. They'd already told me that I'd experience pain. I figured this was normal. I kept putting in the artificial tears, about every five minutes or so. I managed to sleep fitfully until Saturday morning.

I think I'm just going to go ahead and miss TheGirl and TheKid today,

It's Halloween and, if things had turned out differently, we'd be enjoying some trick-or-treating together.

Tomorrow I'll go back to bottling things up, but today I think I'll be sad.

I've earned this right.

I have this desire, more than an inkling but less than a resolution, to write in this damn thing more often. Like maybe even every day.

Problem is, on some days nothing really happens. Like today. I had a boring all-day meeting at work. I came home. I took a nap. I got up and watched Big Brother.

It's on days like this that I would like to be able to reach into my brain and pull out a topic. Even if it's not timely, or relevant. I have such topics, waiting in the wings so to speak, I really do. But I fear that they're all stupid.

So, on days like today, I might write an entry like this, and try to be satisfied that I at least wrote something.

Every now and then, it's just memories. Nothing present current pounding buzzing eating eroding exploding. Just the past. The fucked-up past.

Who was I? Who was she? Who were we? What were we? Are we dead now? Were we ever alive? Or were we never anything more than figments?

I always have to remind myself, that I have this outlet for my thoughts and feelings, and for the words that do their best to represent. It's been a month since I've written here, and much longer since I've written anything relevant decent memorable therapeutic.

I want to write a novel. An autobiography of sorts. I have it in me. I have the story, or at least the beginning and the middle and a thousand endings. I have the title, even though RockGirl disapproves of the title I've chosen.

I think it's brilliant, so I'm keeping it.