Everything sucks right now. I’m simultaneously very, very depressed but also experiencing irritability that chokes me and mania/anxiety that prevents me from sleeping. Doc is recommending a swap-out of one of my meds. I hope it works, because right now it feels like I’m *this close* to spinning out of control. And for me, out of control is a dangerous thing.
I have so much to write about and express, but I just can’t get the words out right now. Later, I hope.
Excuse the unicorn theme, but I was feeling nostalgic. Like I want to draw ponies and watch The Last Unicorn or something.
Still working on the food thing, and slowly changing habits. I had oatmeal this morning and it was so filling and satisfying that I think I’m going to start having it most mornings.
I need to pick up my apartment so my kitty-sitting neighbor isn’t grossed out by the clothes I have all over my floor and the dirty dishes in my sink. I’m going to Laramie, WY this weekend to visit a friend who recently moved there. She was my fat-girl shopping buddy so I’m sad she left, but at least we can visit sometimes, since WY isn’t too far to drive.
I’m taking Monday off so I can relax and have down-time, me-time, after socializing all weekend. I also have an appointment to get my hair cut and colored (my boss got me an Aveda salon gift card!).
School starts again in 10 days. I’m only interested in the Psychology of Sexual Orientation, and I’ll just “get through” Women’s Spirituality. I’ll try to learn something, but I’m just SO not in that kind of place. Maybe I should be, maybe it will help me.
Ok, I’m off work in 15 minutes…which means NOW. Have a good weekend, all.
First of all, I have to say that all of the people who read this blog are THE BEST. Whether I’ve met you in person or not, on my last blog entry you all left me with some very positive things to think about myself, and it made me feel a little better. (I want to say it made me feel a *lot* better, but my negative feelings toward myself are still stronger than your positive feelings toward me, unfortunately.) Thanks for being a good friend to me.
This week I am trying a new approach to my health. Kaiser is my medical provider and they have a system where you do this whole health evaluation online, and answer all kinds of questions about your habits from eating to sleeping to smoking, etc. From there, taking into account your own motivation and confidence in reaching your goals, it recommends what your top priorities should be. Then it all becomes part of your medical record, and they check in via email every week to see how you are doing. I think it might be worth it to really give it a try. My top priorities are eating healthier and reducing stress, with secondary priorities being exercising and sleeping better.
I’ve started recording what I eat each day so I can see where I’m at, and then I’ve set goals for how many calories I should eat each day (as well as how much fat, protein, fiber, etc.). I worry about doing this only because it’s part of what allowed me to obsess about my weight a few years ago and develop bulimia. I would include even a piece of gum I chewed, and tracked ounces of water I drank and everything, and if I was over the # of calories I set my goal at, I would purge. This time around, I think I have enough perspective – and have gone through enough negative consequences from bulimia – to not do this again. I’m not beating myself up if I don’t meet my calorie goals for the day; I’m just using that as motivation to do a little better the next day. All of this is forcing me to think a lot more about the food I eat, which is good, but I am being cautious so I don’t go too far the other direction.
At the same time, I want to talk about self-esteem. This concept is completely bizarre to me. There are things I love about myself, and times that I think I am completely awesome, and even times when I look in the mirror and like what I see, like my face, skin, and eyes, and my height and long legs and fingers and being curvy and sort of Amazonian. I’ve learned to love my big toes and broad shoulders, and am OK with my legs. And of course there is the other stuff, like being forthright and opinionated and caring and making great soup and having excellent taste in media of all kinds and a pretty voice and an intelligent mind. There really are lots of things that are good about me that I do recognize. It pisses me off that I’ve let my body become this way and that the fat is, to me, so bad that it cancels out a lot of the good.
Anyway, I’m trying this new healthy thing and hoping to make it stick. I feel a resolve inside me, but that resolve reminds me of what I felt before the bulimia developed. And at the same time I feel unstable, like just under the surface, if it weren’t for the meds, I would be an absolute wreck. I literally felt so bad about the way I looked in my 30th birthday photos that I wanted to die. I seriously, seriously did. (So much of this feels at odds with me being a feminist, like I shouldn’t feel this way, but I know body acceptance doesn’t just appear magically.) And I feel a despair about things I’ve done in the past (like being mean to old boyfriends, or the shitty things I did to my family when I was doing meth, or even lies I told my friends in high school, or feeling ashamed of something stupid I said 2 years ago) that is almost ridiculous. And little things seem so dramatic to me. I have enough experience with this crap to tell myself that it will pass and believe it, and I have trained myself not to make decisions when I’m sad, angry, lonely, hungry, or tired, because the results are never good.
All the stuff I was excited about just a couple of months ago just seems blah now. I don’t want to join the governing board for the women’s chorus because I don’t think my voice will be heard. I’m not excited about singing this season. I don’t give a crap about the blogging conference that my school is sending me to, and am hardly blogging at all. I’m sick of school and just want it to be over. I’m not looking for internships. Every day I just have to force myself to go to work and I don’t enjoy it like I used to. Even as I type this I know I’m setting off red flags. But the thought of starting over with YET ANOTHER therapist is just too much to take. Every few months to a year, the person I was with – whom I had learned to trust at least a little – ended up transferring or retiring. This last one made me feel shattered every time I went to see her, and then she transferred. And I just can’t do that again right now. So I’m waiting for the crappy stuff to pass and focusing on one little thing at a time.
It’s good to have everyone’s support, even though I know I don’t post much or comment much anymore. You are all SO loved.
I’m sitting here at my desk and, like I have been the last few days, I’m feeling horrible about myself. I’ve honestly been thinking I hate myself and want to die – because of my weight. It’s awful, awful, awful. I think if I try to write too much, I’ll never stop crying, and it would be hard to do my job with perma-tears and giant, wracking sobs.
I just missed a call from the accessibility center at school. I got in touch because the teeny desks with attached chairs in the classrooms are too small for me to fit into without discomfort. Yes, I’m too fat for a chair. I spend my time worrying about whether the restaurant’s booths are going to be too small for me to fit into, or whether that person on the street is going to call me fat, or if my coworker is looking at my shirt because it’s cute or because my belly makes it stick out like I’m pregnant. Almost every moment of every day is filled with this consciousness of my weight. Someone is walking by, suck your stomach in. Don’t make that facial expression, it shows your millionth chin too much. Breathe quietly, even if you are out of breath, so you don’t sound like the asthmatic fat person people make fun of in movies. You can’t do cartwheels, run through the sprinklers, make it to the top of that hill. You can’t be successful or beautiful. You can’t wear that. You can’t feel that. Your friends are disgusted by you. Your family is embarrassed of you. Nobody would ever want you. And on and on and on.
Every day I try to change and every day I fail at it.
This hurts too much to even talk about. I’ll try later, maybe.
[Note: This is not a "cry for help," and nobody needs to worry about me being suicidal or doing anything like that. I'm just ranting / freewriting. It pisses me off that I have to put a disclaimer on my own thoughts, but better safe than sorry.]
Ok, I know I’ve really sucked with posting here over the last 1-2 years. (I can’t believe I just typed YEARS.) Anyway, I’m not ever planning on getting rid of my blog here on Xanga, but I do have a new blog I would love you to check out. It’s called Soldiers in Petticoats, and it’s my first foray into feminist blogging.
It began with a project for school. The director of the women’s studies unit wanted to help me move toward my goal of working with feminism, writing, and social media as a career (it’s also what my Women, Writing, & Society degree is all about). He (yes, he!) offered to have me write a blog on my college’s women’s studies website, which I was thrilled about. Unfortunately they are just moving way too slow for me, so I went out and did it on my own. They may link to my posts later, if they ever get their act together. In the meantime, I feel like I’m actually doing the stuff I want to be doing. I’m even going to go self-hosted with the site so I can have control over all the features. This will give me a lot of great experience in building *real* blogs, not just using templates.
In Soldiers in Petticoats, I mainly write about feminist issues that I see going on (and am learning about in school), and relate them with pop culture. Please check it out and help me get it going! Feel free to invite others to read it if you think they will like it. You can subscribe via RSS, or you can just sign up to be emailed when I post new entries.
I also have a page for my blog on Facebook, so if you “Like” the page, you can get updates on new posts that way too.
The women’s chorus retreat was AMAZING. I plan to do a long post about it soon, hopefully with photos. My life is moving at hyper speed at the moment, so I’ll check in later.
So the next couple of weeks are suddenly packed with activities. How did this happen, and why did I let it happen? I have too many interests, dammit! Coming up:
In other news, I’m doing girly things for myself: my hair is freshly dyed red (it was faded to strawberry blond, even getting dangerously close to blah blond), and I’m getting a pedi tonight (yes, I said pedi; deal with it). I’m avoiding visiting family because I don’t want the stress which comes almost entirely from my sister being a mess, and from my continual resentfulness toward my mother. More and more I think about the fact that I’m actually going to graduate from college (not until December of next year, but it’s finally starting to feel real) and that means I can go for a job that does not involve making someone’s copies. Even though the chorus has taken up a big chunk of my life, I’m toying with starting to learn guitar again. Jennifer just bought (a really sexy) one, and maybe we can learn together? I don’t know. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but not enough to really charge ahead full steam. My fingers currently feel like ice cubes because it’s always too goddamn cold at my desk. And my eyes are watering because I have allergic conjunctivitis, and my foot hurts because I have a cyst on top of the right one, in between 2 long foot bones. (Prognosis: they’ll have to go away on their own, and that’ll be $30.)
I could pretty much listen to Placebo all day long. I’ll probably never get over that angsty part of myself, especially when I hear the acoustic version of Teenage Angst.
Happy 10 year Xangaversary to me!!!
Ok, it was March 28, 2001, so I’m a few days late in celebrating, but at least I managed to make it in the same month. 
I honestly don’t have time for a big post about this, but I do think it’s incredible that I’ve been with Xanga for a DECADE, or 1/3 of my entire life. It’s also amazing that Xanga has been around that long in this fast-paced techno world we live in.
Anyway, happy Wednesday!
I must really be getting old. I had a title post in my mind, and was already set to start typing out a long entry.
Then I got distracted by some work stuff, and when I came back to start typing, every single thing I had thought of was completely gone.
This must be the internet version of walking into a room to get something and forgetting what it was, or looking for your glasses when they are right there on your head.
I’m on the precipice of a deep dark depression, while at the same time having so much going on and going for me. It’s a weird feeling, and I don’t quite know how to deal with it. I think part of me withdraws almost all the time when I am with people now, and I only feel like myself when I am alone. This has been so for a long time, but seems even more blatant in the last couple of weeks.
Um…that’s pretty much it for now.
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