Why hello

I've decided the time is right to move away from Caring For Justice. I am currently undecided as to whether I will restrict access completely or leave it open. My circumstances haven't changed but I felt a change was necessary and this was the perfect way to lose a few undesirables along the way.

I really hope you'll all continue to read even at the new location as I do enjoy your messages of support, they really mean a lot. I really need to work on commenting back to them and that will be my main goal from here on.

For any new readers, here's the gist of my life:

I'm currently 16 and I've had difficulties with friends all through my schooling life right up til now. I've dealt with many occasions of bullying and I felt I'd come through high school okay, despite the alternating rejection I faced in the small school environment. I was very wrong. I arrived for year 7 confused, upset and very unsure of myself. About half way through that year, 2007, my grandfather's Dementia and Alzhiemer's started getting worse and worse and he had varies elongated stints in the hospital. At the same time his wife, my grandmother, was diagnosed with two brain tumours. The biggest one, in her frontal lobe, was the size of an orange and had likely been growing for twenty years. They were able to cut this big one out but when they did they found a third one and the second and third one's they were unable to remove. She's lost her sense of smell completely and for a long time the doctors thought she would have to live in a nursing home but she's proved them all wrong and is living in her own home again.

My grandfather died in early March 2008. I heard he passed peacefully. He'd gone beyond the stage where he remembered us and it was terribly hard. During his sickness I visited him once in hospital, shortly after he died before being revived in emergency the year before (Mum maintains they should have let him go) and once in his short stint in a nursing home. The nurses always said he had the worst possible strain of Dementia and also that he was young for an advanced Dementia patient, mid 70s. His funeral was incredibly hard and I can't believe it's been a touch over three years since we said goodbye. Although, he'd been gone for quite some time before his body finally gave in.

In February 2008 I delved into the world of self harm. I don't know why or what I was thinking but it kick started a habit I'm having trouble dropping. People don't appreciate the addiction it is, but how could you when you don't do it? Some days I'm quite convinced it's a losing battle. Other days I'm doing alright.

July 1st 2008 a box was knocked onto the back of my left heel and thus began my long, tiring battle with my tendons in ligaments. For years since that incident my achilles tendon has been nothing but trouble, I occasionally still feel the pull now. The Children's Hospital had nothing helpful to say when the scans turned up clean (five months after the injury I might add, slack parenting there) and when their treatments were unhelpful. So they concluded that it was all in my head. Then my right patella tendon (over the kneecap) got tendonitis and this was followed closely by my left patella tendon and not long after my right wrist. Physio has been incredibly unhelpful and so has school with their multitude of stairs and insistence upon writing things. In early 2010 I buggered my right elbow, upset a nerve and the tendon resulting in a hypersensitive tennis elbow - I really thought I'd busted the bone. And finally in mid 2010 I got knocked awkwardly in a soccer match which resulted in the locking of my knee. The next morning I couldn't get out of bed. GP concluded cartilage tear, scans disagree instead showing a strained Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL). So now I have to be careful.

I still play soccer and hopefully soon start netball.

I also fell in love in love with horse racing, especially the horses and photography of the sport. I've worked in three different racing stables. It was at my first stable that I met the colt, Justice, who would change my world, and in fact right it for the short time we were together. He was looking pretty good as a summer three-year-old before an injury wore him down. When he came back five months later in 2009 he wasn't as interested in racing as he'd previously been, and as with the top stables he left pretty quickly. Understandably, I was devastated. He popped up for a short time with a small country trainer, and he won three or four races before dropping off the scene again. I am unsure of what happened to him and a part of me is scared to find out, especially if his life has ended.

In my third stable I've gotten to know a few horses and have found myself on the same wavelength as one troubled gelding, renowned for having 'no mates'. Toby, may be a pest at times, but he's proven easier to handle than Justice (who wouldn't settle for his life). I haven't bonded with a horse like this since Justice and I sincerely hope he hangs around for awhile. I look forward to seeing him and he secretly enjoys my visits too.

So, now I'm in 2011 and having more bad days than good and often wondering where I'm going and why. Sometimes I find myself asking the unanswerable and constantly reshuffling my friends. Because sometimes I don't know who they are or what they're thinking.

I'm worried because I don't know what tomorrow holds or what problems the specialists will bring up, but maybe it will be okay one day. I don't know what I'm all that hopeful at this point.

Bah, that 'gist' turned into an essay. Terribly sorry. And Justice did not get the justice he deserves in this blog. I suppose you'll just have to read Caring For Justice to read his story.

- Sky