Intellectualization and humor are finely tuned defense mechanisms serving to protect me from things. Things which even hint at the scar tissue I carry from earlier battles suffered in life.
Sometimes though, I wish someone knew me well enough to know I’m using them and break out the C4.
#scaredbehindsmiles
It’s been 92 days since my mom died. I often wonder where she is now. Where does her soul reside? I could feel it quietly slip away that night at her bedside. Mom was more than a good woman, she was the very best. Gone are the constructs of my childhood, the black and white of what the afterlife looks like. The conceptual part of heaven no longer works for me. I was taught a utopia, free of pain and where all experience only pure love and joy.
It sounds like something I’ve been aching for all along. I’ve only caught short-lived glimpses, here and there, like scattered leaves blowing through my life. The promise of Jesus and of eternal life in heaven? of resting with His angels is the only hope I have. I intuitively know I will not find that love here in this world.
Most of my adult life I’ve had a fear which grips me, that I’m damned. So it is only a fleeting hope for me, to join my mom.
“5 Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to“
–Romans 5:5 New King James Version (NKJV)
Mom, you are where the angels soar now, whatever that place is.
This one is for you ❤️
#missingyou
I was watching an old interview with Manson in prison where he was singing. It was more rare footage. I have to say that is charismatic, enigmatic, energetic, articulate, intelligent, artistic, and philosophical. He possesses just about every quality that captivates me. He has a pretty good voice too. There is this way he drew me in even watching him on the TV screen. Hell, I was enjoying watching him how fucked up is that? He is supposed to be a villain. A devil. Evil incarnate….
I can see how a girl of 19 could have been easy prey for him. Not even 5 minutes into watching the interview I was so engaged and taken by his charm I had almost forgotten that he was responsible for the murderous rampage of the Sharon Tate and her unborn baby. Which made me shudder.
But then I ponder….. just as sociopaths find their prey in a crowd, seeking out the weak ones. The reciprocal must also be true. Prey seemingly seek out their predators……sometimes consciously, sometimes not.
It would explain so much of why I’ve ended up with the men I’ve been with in my lifetime.
Nothing happens by chance, especially not when it happens repeatedly. That is why it is called a pattern of behavior.
There once was a girl from Nantucket
Who wrote her thoughts on a blog and said fuck it.
She let it all rip
and said with a quip,
“If words were a cock I would suck it.”
© by Lexicon Lover
We’re all selling something aren’t we.
Some blogs dispense information.
Some bitch and rant.
Some share sorrows.
Many share laughs.
Some share their most personal secrets.
Some write poetry.
Some write book reviews.
Some post memes.
Others share recipes, travels, and art.
Lots of blogs try to help others with their knowledge they’ve gained on their way up Maslow’s pinnacle.
Still other blogs are so heady that you never really understand what the hell they are spinning.
~~~~~~~~
To all my fellow bloggers out there bloglandia, I raise my glass.
The first time I ever thought about sharing anything in Alcoholics Anonymous was at an open discussion meeting and there were two topics. I have no recall what the first topic was but I sure remember the second which was, “having a hard time sitting with feelings.”
It wasn’t a round robin style meeting so I sheepishly raised my hand, which was the hardest thing to do being riddled with social anxiety. However, the desire to get this out of me was stronger than the fear of whatever people might have thought after I spoke.
I began speaking. I told everyone in that room that I did not know how to live life without trying to change the attenuation of my emotions, be it trying to intensify them or tone them down. Still other times I was flagrantly running away from them through multiple substances and behaviors.
Then I began listing them one by one trying to be as honest as I could:
“I’ve self-medicated using alcohol, marijuana, food, sex, relationships, compulsive cleaning, compulsive shopping, compulsive exercising, workaholism, surfing the internet, rocking out to loud music, speeding in fast cars and last but not least when all else failed isolating from people.”
Then I noticed the room was so quiet I could hear a pin drop. I wondered if I had shared too much. I felt my face feeling red and hot. My mind raced like it always does projecting what people may be negatively thinking about me. I wanted to crawl out of there.
I closed out with “thank you.” It wasn’t until the next person began sharing that my face stopped feeling as hot. I felt more honest that day, as if I had released a giant weight. It’s one thing to unburden oneself in the privacy of a therapist’s office and have them normalize my behavior but it felt like a more genuine process in front of peers. You never know if you can trust a shrink, after all they are getting a paycheck. I wasn’t sure the response I would get, if any.
After the meeting ended 5 people approached me to shake my hand and thank me for my share. I was taken aback. One of them, who later became my fiancé said,” thank you so much for your share, you just shared my exact story.”
I’ll never forget that day. That was the day I felt like I wasn’t the only leper anymore.
Nearly every morning for as long as I can remember, I have stepped on a scale to measure how much I weigh.
and the number that is displayed ends up dictating my self-worth.
Strange I know, that a number should have that sort of power over me.
I have friends whose net worth equals their self-worth and I often tell them, that they are so much more beyond their possessions, their material things.
I preach about how the intangibles in life: health, family and good friends have the most value.
But I feel like a charlatan, because there I am allowing a scale to control me.
****
Most days, in one way or another I am obsessing about food. How to avoid it or how to get rid of it. Food is on my mind in a really screwed up way.
Devising ways I won’t binge. Getting rid of food that I consumed if I do. Wishing I could eat and then feeling guilty for wanting to. Feeling really good when I am not eating. Feeling in control, clean, like the world is right. Figuring out calorie exchanges. Feeling desperate and despairing when I am in the food. Feeling bad, dirty, out of control, ashamed, like nothing will ever be right again.
It’s insanity.
I wonder what it’s like to be normal.
****
Then when I am out in the world I am constantly looking at other women. Comparing myself to every woman I see and how I measure up.
But I never do, as the case usually is.
How my outsides are not good enough.
The obsession is so gripping and powerful.
I hate it.
I don’t know life any other way. My crazy thoughts are all I’ve ever known.
****
Why must this blasted scale be the ruler, a way to measure if I am good or bad? If my day will be a good one or a bad once based on the number that I see. I have been this way since I was around 13 years old.
I am fortunate that I have only been hospitalized once for this. The eating disorder itself has morphed over the years. From anorexia in adolescence to bulimerexia by my twenties. Somewhere in between I had picked up a new thing this CHSP, Chewing and spitting my food out.
I have never known life with a healthy reltionship to food.
I have extreme body dysmorphia. The mirror still is my enemy. No matter what other people see, when I look in the mirror I see every flaw, imperfection, amplified ten thousand times. Be it cellulite or acne, a hair out of place. I remember changing outfits several times because everything just looked bad. I looked bad. This makes me want to just isolate. Which I often do.
Its not to do with being a vain person. It’s to do with feeling so inadequate and disgusting that I can’t stand how I look. When I look into the mirror it’s like a fun house mirror which distorts how I look to me. I’m not sure if it’s neurological or what, but it makes me see things that others don’t.
Every eating plan I get on is a struggle because my perfectionist ways interfere and if I deviate from the plan, it sends me into a spiral. I can teeter into punitive self-punishing behaviors.
The only other thing about having an eating disorder is the shame and isolation that keeps me silent about it. It’s painful.
Some days are better than others. I want to believe that one day I will find acceptance with my outsides. I have a hunch it has a lot to do with my trauma past. I probably need to tell Lee about this too. Just one more thing to work on….
Some days it just feels hopeless.
You slither around the folds in my cerebellum
in a cyclical motion
unceasingly,
unrelentingly,
squeezing and constricting
rational thought.
*****
Eventually you attach yourself into my thoughts,
you become one with me.
I cannot separate myself from you.
I am you, you are me.
Without you, I cannot breathe.
*****
I lose myself in fantasy…..
What if, maybe, what could be, if only.
You are both my pleasure and my pain.
A strange dichotomy.
I rarely fight you anymore these days.
What if obsession gives way to possession.
The main entrance hallway to my flat smells like someone crouched down and copped a squat. This pungent stench has permeated my nostrils for two weeks now.
I’ve racked my brain for ideas with how this could have come to pass. There are no animals in the building, yet it smells like a zoo.
I’ve got three possibilities:
The first floor tenants could have gone too far with their fights and one could have murdered the other. They speak a foreign language so who knows what they are screaming at each other or throwing about down below. It sounded like a WWF match down there some nights. The smell could be the early stages of decomposition.
The nearby migrant workers could have somehow gained access to the entryway and did use it as a port-o-potty. You never know.
Some University of Massachusetts students had a party that got wild and some drunk kid did shit in the hall one weekend I was away. Now it’s embedded deep into the carpet fiber.
I am reluctant to call maintenance. What am I supposed to say? There is a phantom shit smell wafting in the hallway? Then why isn’t anyone else saying anything? Have they all gone nose blind?
There is not enough clean linen Febreeze in the world I can spray to rid this. I am resigned to just try and deal my own way.
Oh, it’s so on shit smell. I’m bringing in the big guns tomorrow. I’m buying a plethora of stick-ups. There going to be hidden everywhere…..
Shooting from the hip and cleaning up messes since way back when~
