I'm going to write because I think I'll explode if I don't and it's so calm in the house but the snow is stacked outside and it feels like everything is closing in on me and I can't breathe, I'm suffocating in this silence. Olivia called and wanted me to go sledding and I said no because I just want to curl up in a ball and sleep for a thousand years and not have to think or feel. But in three hours my friends are coming over, the people in my band, and I'll have to play my guitar and laugh like nothing's wrong and I don't know if I can handle it and tonight Siobhan is dragging me to a party at her boyfriend's house and I just want to sit home alone. And Nick and Matt keep wanting to talk to me and do things with me, and I keep telling them I can't, I can't, I can't do the relationship thing and I'm so freaking bipolar I keep loving them and hating them, one or the other with nothing in between, and I miss Sam, and I miss being in his arms, because I felt safe there, and there were no strings attatched.
And I've been thinking about love and how fake it is, and how people just hurt you with it, like sex I guess it's just a horrible thing and love always hurts and sex always hurts and somehow they're connected unlike my thoughts today I know this is unreadable and unfollowable I'm sorry. But my mom tells me she loves me and my dad tells me he loves me and Craig tells me he loves me and my friends tell me they love me, well let's look at that.
I remember one time, there were soap bubbles everywhere that's what I remember most, at the kitchen sink and my mom was yelling at me, and I yelled one word back, "I..." and I was eleven or twelve I think and I knew as soon as I said it that I was dead. And she looked at me and she slapped me across the cheek and she shoved me against the sink and my head cracked against the cabinet and I just kept staring at the soap bubbles, thinking about how clean they were, feeling so dirty, just wanting to float away in them and she was pushing me and screaming at me and I just stared straight ahead until I dissociated away into some place cleaner and whiter. And my mom says she loves me but she's so mean to me, and her love hurts or is not real or something.
And I remember at home when I was downstairs and I'd just gotten home from Kristin H.'s house and Mom upstairs yelling, "come on Lindsay we're going to the hospital." and she was so calm and I was so confused and I asked why and she said because your dad's tried to kill himself and I went upstairs and his eyes were unfocused and I said dad why and he said, I just wanted to die I guess. And my dad says he loves me, but he tried to leave me, and if he loves me why did he almost leave me alone with my mom?
And Craig... what he did... I remember that in my nightmares. I remember that floor, the bedroom floor the living room floor, and I remember looking out the windows, blue sky gray clouds whatever, and I remember screaming for a long time but he was holding me down, it's a game he kept saying, and I remember crying and crying until finally something snapped inside of me and I floated away into the top corner of the room and watched, apathetic.
And my friends who have betrayed me....
AND WHAT THE HELL IS LOVE??? It doesn't seem like much to me besides a lot of pain and a lot of anger and a lot of mistakes to be forgiven and love must hurt does love always hurt??????
And all these flashes in my life of the people who swear they love me, hitting me raping me hurting me and it doesn't seem real, this love, this idea that love is a good thing.
Friday, December 31, 2004
Thursday, December 30, 2004
The elusive
I went snowboarding today. It's a good thing we went today and not yesterday as was planned, because if I'd gone yesterday, high, then I sure would have crashed into everything and most likely killed myself or at least embarrassed myself quite a bit.
It was so beautiful, and the snow was everywhere, and the snow machines were on, and up at the very top of the mountain the snow machines smudged the sky, like some giant took a finger down a pastel painting of a perfect mountain and smashed the sky and the trees into each other into a big blur of softened color.
For some reason that really mattered to me, that the colors were inverted, and it made me very sad. And I saw a lot of kids from my school up there, and I sat there in the snow and wondered what's wrong with me, why I can't interact with people, why I would rather be alone than with my friends, why I am content with just disappearing inside of myself and feeling sad forever and watching the world slowly smudge away.
I'm a freak, I think. And I think that though that makes me sad, it doesn't make me nearly as sad as the way the oxide seeding (or whatever those snow machines do) made the sky look.
And I sat there, thinking, why do I care more about music and poetry and art than about the way I look? Why, when my friends all buy clothes, do I buy cd's and new guitars? Why do I feel safer when I'm alone, with more clothing on, padded and farther away from the world? Why do I feel out of place when I am with my friends sleeping over and they are all looking at vanity magazines and talking about boys and I want to talk about the real difference between right and wrong? And I thought, they think I've never done more than kiss a guy because I'm so paranoid of relationships and push everyone away. What would they think to know I'm not a virgin?
We went to dinner, and I watched as everyone else devoured the things I used to love, steak and chicken and corn, while I munched on some mushrooms. And that made me feel different and far away too.
Shauna sent me this email on my views on gay people basically saying i'm scared of diversity, and going on and on about why I should believe her opinions and views rather than those of my religion, and she was saying that my views are decreasing diversity and we need to support it, not decrease it, and I can't help thinking, how is it increasing diverstiy for her to force me to believe the same way about diversity that she does?
And I really do like diversity, I think it's necessary, but I hate it when people aren't tolerant of my views and try to change me because they think my views aren't tolerant. They're hypocrites.
Sorry... that just bothers me.
But about happiness...
I thought a lot today, as I rode the chairlift into that rift of matter and sky where everything mixed, about why I can't seem to be capable of being happy. And I couldn't remember a single time in my life when I was ever happy, and I realized I was terrified of even the idea of happiness, of the idea that people out there are happy. And then I was mad at myself for thinking this way, because if I think I'll never be happy, I won't.
And I thought about relationshps a lot, and why I'm not capable of those either. They feel like giving away a part of myself, like opening myself up and letting joint ownership commence over my soul, and even thinking about being in a close relationship makes me gag.
And I thought about Nick and Matt and the boys over the years that have tried or wanted or shown interest in a relationship in me that I've pushed away and isolated myself against.
And it seemed to me that the things in life everyone else seems to take for granted are the most elusive to me.
It was so beautiful, and the snow was everywhere, and the snow machines were on, and up at the very top of the mountain the snow machines smudged the sky, like some giant took a finger down a pastel painting of a perfect mountain and smashed the sky and the trees into each other into a big blur of softened color.
For some reason that really mattered to me, that the colors were inverted, and it made me very sad. And I saw a lot of kids from my school up there, and I sat there in the snow and wondered what's wrong with me, why I can't interact with people, why I would rather be alone than with my friends, why I am content with just disappearing inside of myself and feeling sad forever and watching the world slowly smudge away.
I'm a freak, I think. And I think that though that makes me sad, it doesn't make me nearly as sad as the way the oxide seeding (or whatever those snow machines do) made the sky look.
And I sat there, thinking, why do I care more about music and poetry and art than about the way I look? Why, when my friends all buy clothes, do I buy cd's and new guitars? Why do I feel safer when I'm alone, with more clothing on, padded and farther away from the world? Why do I feel out of place when I am with my friends sleeping over and they are all looking at vanity magazines and talking about boys and I want to talk about the real difference between right and wrong? And I thought, they think I've never done more than kiss a guy because I'm so paranoid of relationships and push everyone away. What would they think to know I'm not a virgin?
We went to dinner, and I watched as everyone else devoured the things I used to love, steak and chicken and corn, while I munched on some mushrooms. And that made me feel different and far away too.
Shauna sent me this email on my views on gay people basically saying i'm scared of diversity, and going on and on about why I should believe her opinions and views rather than those of my religion, and she was saying that my views are decreasing diversity and we need to support it, not decrease it, and I can't help thinking, how is it increasing diverstiy for her to force me to believe the same way about diversity that she does?
And I really do like diversity, I think it's necessary, but I hate it when people aren't tolerant of my views and try to change me because they think my views aren't tolerant. They're hypocrites.
Sorry... that just bothers me.
But about happiness...
I thought a lot today, as I rode the chairlift into that rift of matter and sky where everything mixed, about why I can't seem to be capable of being happy. And I couldn't remember a single time in my life when I was ever happy, and I realized I was terrified of even the idea of happiness, of the idea that people out there are happy. And then I was mad at myself for thinking this way, because if I think I'll never be happy, I won't.
And I thought about relationshps a lot, and why I'm not capable of those either. They feel like giving away a part of myself, like opening myself up and letting joint ownership commence over my soul, and even thinking about being in a close relationship makes me gag.
And I thought about Nick and Matt and the boys over the years that have tried or wanted or shown interest in a relationship in me that I've pushed away and isolated myself against.
And it seemed to me that the things in life everyone else seems to take for granted are the most elusive to me.
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Motivation
I slept twelve hours, woke up this morning lithium high, walking into things, sick. In and out of tangled dreams all night about playing my bass guitar I ran to the bathroom and threw up and threw up until it hurt. I felt miserable. I looked at myself in the mirror, at my face all fuzzy without my contacts and like a peach-colored ghost in a cheap movie, and though the rest of me was blurred my eyes were impossibly concentrated and clear, and they looked infinite, infinitely sad and shameful and disappointed and lost.
And I decided right then and there, I can't be that weak anymore. Because I felt my dependence on things like substances, and I felt my dependence on pain. And I realized the brave thing is not to take the drugs and throw up or cut my wrists, the brave thing is to NOT do these things, to stand up to my monsters and my past. The brave thing is not to never have sex or to have sex with everyone I see, but the brave thing is to dare to love, to dare to have sex with someone I love, to understand it's not giving a part of myself away but rather sharing it, to force myself to see that sex has a pure side, made of glass. (Does it? It must, mustn't it, for anyone to think it's beautiful?).
For now Ayn Rand would hate my motives and I don't care. Ayn Rand is a bi*ch. And like Shauna said (this may not seem to fit but it really does): "You think I'm a virgin but I f*cked your father."
Why am I suddenly doing this to myself? Trying to be confident when for so long my main concentration has been on how to most effectively destroy myself? Because my whole life, people have always been amazed at all the things that I do: soccer, tennis, honors classes, cello, violin, viola, standup bass, bass guitar, piano, teach violin lessons, acting, church. I expected myself to be good at all these things, to be the best, to be perfect at them, and I'm not, and it's frusterating because I'm good at all of them but I'm not great at any one of them, and I've never been or done anything remarkable.
And this year I joined debate because I thought it looked fun and really interesting. It was the first thing in a long time I did purely just to have fun. And that's still my main reason for doing it. But... but I have a chance... to be good at something. And I need to believe that it's possible. And I need to believe that maybe I am talented at debate, that maybe working hard and being a perfectionist may finally pay off. I need to believe it is possible for me to live for this.
And this is the motive Ayn Rand would hate: I AM GOING TO TRY, YET AGAIN, TO QUIT THROWING THINGS UP, TO QUIT CUTTING. NOBODY WILL KNOW. NOBODY WILL SUPPORT ME. AND WHY? FOR MY DEBATE COACH. She'll never know. She'll never know the things I do when I'm not at practices. She'll never know how incredibly screwed up I really am. She would, I think, if she knew any of this, be incredibly mad at me. She'd probably call me stupid (that's what Kayte said, she said, "for being the smartest person i know, you're also incredibly stupid). But I need to do this for her, because she sees something in me that nobody else has ever seen before... because I think that despite all my logical reasoning about how there is no such thing as caring about someone, most of all me, I think that she cares about me. And I think she wants me to be confident.
But I don't need her to know, that I'm doing this for her. I want to be confident solely for myself, but I can't, and Rand will forgive me my borrowed motivation and go to Hell. (I guess I'll meet her there).
If I want this, this debate thing, badly enough, I have to be confident. And I don't know how. Fifteen years of branding has completely burned into me a unipolar opinion of myself: that I am stupid, weak, and incapable. And now I am being forced to suddenly believe the opposite? How can I do that?
Not for myself I guess. But maybe, just maybe I can do it for Amanda.
SCREW BULIMIA. I hate it. I hate doing drugs I hate what I'm doing to myself. I HATE EATING DISORDERS!!!!!!!!! AND SELF INJURY!!!!!!!!!!
I can beat this. I know Amanda doesn't know me very well, but she's the only one that believes in me, that believes it is possible for me to have that confidence I lack. And out of everyone telling me I'm stupid and incapable, and one person telling me I can do this, I choose to believe her, for once. I choose her as my motivation.
Because I have allowed myself to do the one that always hurts me, in the end: to care about her, to love her.
And I decided right then and there, I can't be that weak anymore. Because I felt my dependence on things like substances, and I felt my dependence on pain. And I realized the brave thing is not to take the drugs and throw up or cut my wrists, the brave thing is to NOT do these things, to stand up to my monsters and my past. The brave thing is not to never have sex or to have sex with everyone I see, but the brave thing is to dare to love, to dare to have sex with someone I love, to understand it's not giving a part of myself away but rather sharing it, to force myself to see that sex has a pure side, made of glass. (Does it? It must, mustn't it, for anyone to think it's beautiful?).
For now Ayn Rand would hate my motives and I don't care. Ayn Rand is a bi*ch. And like Shauna said (this may not seem to fit but it really does): "You think I'm a virgin but I f*cked your father."
Why am I suddenly doing this to myself? Trying to be confident when for so long my main concentration has been on how to most effectively destroy myself? Because my whole life, people have always been amazed at all the things that I do: soccer, tennis, honors classes, cello, violin, viola, standup bass, bass guitar, piano, teach violin lessons, acting, church. I expected myself to be good at all these things, to be the best, to be perfect at them, and I'm not, and it's frusterating because I'm good at all of them but I'm not great at any one of them, and I've never been or done anything remarkable.
And this year I joined debate because I thought it looked fun and really interesting. It was the first thing in a long time I did purely just to have fun. And that's still my main reason for doing it. But... but I have a chance... to be good at something. And I need to believe that it's possible. And I need to believe that maybe I am talented at debate, that maybe working hard and being a perfectionist may finally pay off. I need to believe it is possible for me to live for this.
And this is the motive Ayn Rand would hate: I AM GOING TO TRY, YET AGAIN, TO QUIT THROWING THINGS UP, TO QUIT CUTTING. NOBODY WILL KNOW. NOBODY WILL SUPPORT ME. AND WHY? FOR MY DEBATE COACH. She'll never know. She'll never know the things I do when I'm not at practices. She'll never know how incredibly screwed up I really am. She would, I think, if she knew any of this, be incredibly mad at me. She'd probably call me stupid (that's what Kayte said, she said, "for being the smartest person i know, you're also incredibly stupid). But I need to do this for her, because she sees something in me that nobody else has ever seen before... because I think that despite all my logical reasoning about how there is no such thing as caring about someone, most of all me, I think that she cares about me. And I think she wants me to be confident.
But I don't need her to know, that I'm doing this for her. I want to be confident solely for myself, but I can't, and Rand will forgive me my borrowed motivation and go to Hell. (I guess I'll meet her there).
If I want this, this debate thing, badly enough, I have to be confident. And I don't know how. Fifteen years of branding has completely burned into me a unipolar opinion of myself: that I am stupid, weak, and incapable. And now I am being forced to suddenly believe the opposite? How can I do that?
Not for myself I guess. But maybe, just maybe I can do it for Amanda.
SCREW BULIMIA. I hate it. I hate doing drugs I hate what I'm doing to myself. I HATE EATING DISORDERS!!!!!!!!! AND SELF INJURY!!!!!!!!!!
I can beat this. I know Amanda doesn't know me very well, but she's the only one that believes in me, that believes it is possible for me to have that confidence I lack. And out of everyone telling me I'm stupid and incapable, and one person telling me I can do this, I choose to believe her, for once. I choose her as my motivation.
Because I have allowed myself to do the one that always hurts me, in the end: to care about her, to love her.
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
The Core (and the painful brags)
I didn't want to eat the steak, but I overheard Mom tell Dad she thought I wasn't eating, and I had to. And the process was so forced, so deliberate- I had to force myself to chew and swallow every bite. I hate food and I hate eating!
And after dinner I stood there, sixteen pink, oblong pill capsules sitting in my hands like prokaryotic cells, filled with material enough to make me throw up, to make me miserable for twenty-four horrible hours. And I thought, "You don't have to do this, Lindsay. You don't have to overdose or take the laxatives. You can just go to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow and forget that steak you ate."
But I couldn't.
And I thought about what my friends would think if they saw me, what Kristin F. would think, what my parents would think, what my debate coach would think. And every conscious part of me did NOT want to take those pills. They make me miserable- why would I want to take them? They poison you, just like an alcohol overdose. Lithium poisoning. I'm slowly murdering the peroxisomes in my liver cells.
I thought of all those people and I thought, "You're better than those pills, Lindsay, better than the drugs and the lies."
And I knew I was and I also knew I had to take them, just like I have to breathe oxygen. And I stuffed them in my mouth, five at a time, and swallowed them with orange juice, and my stomach started writhing just from memory even before they were all down.
And I know that sometime tonight I will kneel before the toilet and concede defeat and throw up the stupid steak, because I know I'm better than my eating disorder, but I don't know how to beat it.
And that's how all the monsters are... that's the core of me, these demons that I know I am capable of beating, I know I have the strength to beat but I don't know how.
Kayte sat across from me at coffee and she said, "Lindsay, you know you need help" and I nodded and she said, "But you're not going to get it" and I nodded. And she looked so sad. Maybe for an instant she actually did care because she hugged me then.
And these are the things I'm going to rationalize:
1. I hate myself.
2. I am ugly.
3. I am fat.
4. I am weak.
5. I am unlovable.
6. I am stupid.
And this is going to be hard for me, the hardest thing of all, but I'm going to do it.
1. Why do I hate myself? For all the other reasons on the list. Am I a hateable person? Matt says I'm the least hatable person he knows. But Ayn Rand says that only the second-hands, the scum of society, base their own opinions of themselves on what others think. So if I'm going to do this... I have to do it right. And this is hard it really is. But I shouldn't hate myself because: I am talented, I am nice to others, I have compassion, I truly want to be happy. I AM A GOOD PERSON.
2. Why do I hate what I see in the mirror? I'm not ugly. Christian called me beautiful when he went out with me. My friends tell me I look pretty some days. Not that anyone is ever going to dare to call me ugly but myself or my mom but still... I need to base this on myself, not on what they think anyway. Why am I not ugly? Because my eyebrows are well-shaped. Because my nose is not too big. Because when I lay down my ribs and my hips make this perfect convex box. Because when I stand up the muscles in my stomach are flat and visible and defined. Because I have beautiful eyes. Because I have small hands with palms shaped like circles instead of the boring, average ovals. I AM BEAUTIFUL.
3. I am not fat. I weigh 105 pounds. I am almost 5 foot 2. I am on the 25 percentile for height and the 22 percentile for weight. I am actually slightly underweight. My stomach and waist are very small- 22.5 inches. When I flex, my calves go very hard. It's all muscle, not fat. I AM NOT FAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (screw you bulimia!)
4. I am not weak. I was sexually abused for four years and physically abused for twelve and have been emotionally abused since I was old enough to understand my mother's words. I survived. I built a world for myself, I split my personality, I became dissociative, antisocial, and rude, but I survived. That alone makes me not weak. The fact that I survived. The fact that I want to be happy. Some people would've gone crazy with the abuse that I put up with. I survived. I AM NOT WEAK!!!!!!!!!!
5. I am not unlovable. Lots of people love me. The only reason I don't accept their love is because I have not yet learned to love myself. But I will. And then I will be able to have healthy relationships and love won't feel like giving my soul away to something dirty. Love won't feel superficial and surreal and only worth a heartache. Because people do love me. I AM NOT UNLOVABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
6. I am not stupid. I am in calculus and I am a sophomore. I am in honors all my classes. I have straight A's. Unless something massive goes wrong, I will be a valadictorian. I got second place out of over 800 entries in the novel division of the national scholastic writing awards. I am an amazing author. I am very smart. I am smart emotionally too. I see things deeper and clearer than my friends do. I AM NOT STUPID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I AM A GOOD PERSON!!!!!!!!!!! I AM BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!! I AM JUST RIGHT-ON WEIGHT-WISE!!!!!!!!! I AM STRONG!!!!!!!!! I AM LOVABLE!!!!!!!!!!!! I AM BRILLIANT!!!!!!!!!!
wow that was very, very hard. I feel selfish now. But what I'm trying to learn is that confidence and humility are not mutually exclusive. I can believe these things and still be humble.
Now I just have to keep telling myself these things every day until I believe them.
Tonight, I will sit in front of my toilet and throw up and bulimia will win one more battle. But maybe next time I won't. Maybe next time I'll be strong enough.
Gosh, I hope so.
And after dinner I stood there, sixteen pink, oblong pill capsules sitting in my hands like prokaryotic cells, filled with material enough to make me throw up, to make me miserable for twenty-four horrible hours. And I thought, "You don't have to do this, Lindsay. You don't have to overdose or take the laxatives. You can just go to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow and forget that steak you ate."
But I couldn't.
And I thought about what my friends would think if they saw me, what Kristin F. would think, what my parents would think, what my debate coach would think. And every conscious part of me did NOT want to take those pills. They make me miserable- why would I want to take them? They poison you, just like an alcohol overdose. Lithium poisoning. I'm slowly murdering the peroxisomes in my liver cells.
I thought of all those people and I thought, "You're better than those pills, Lindsay, better than the drugs and the lies."
And I knew I was and I also knew I had to take them, just like I have to breathe oxygen. And I stuffed them in my mouth, five at a time, and swallowed them with orange juice, and my stomach started writhing just from memory even before they were all down.
And I know that sometime tonight I will kneel before the toilet and concede defeat and throw up the stupid steak, because I know I'm better than my eating disorder, but I don't know how to beat it.
And that's how all the monsters are... that's the core of me, these demons that I know I am capable of beating, I know I have the strength to beat but I don't know how.
Kayte sat across from me at coffee and she said, "Lindsay, you know you need help" and I nodded and she said, "But you're not going to get it" and I nodded. And she looked so sad. Maybe for an instant she actually did care because she hugged me then.
And these are the things I'm going to rationalize:
1. I hate myself.
2. I am ugly.
3. I am fat.
4. I am weak.
5. I am unlovable.
6. I am stupid.
And this is going to be hard for me, the hardest thing of all, but I'm going to do it.
1. Why do I hate myself? For all the other reasons on the list. Am I a hateable person? Matt says I'm the least hatable person he knows. But Ayn Rand says that only the second-hands, the scum of society, base their own opinions of themselves on what others think. So if I'm going to do this... I have to do it right. And this is hard it really is. But I shouldn't hate myself because: I am talented, I am nice to others, I have compassion, I truly want to be happy. I AM A GOOD PERSON.
2. Why do I hate what I see in the mirror? I'm not ugly. Christian called me beautiful when he went out with me. My friends tell me I look pretty some days. Not that anyone is ever going to dare to call me ugly but myself or my mom but still... I need to base this on myself, not on what they think anyway. Why am I not ugly? Because my eyebrows are well-shaped. Because my nose is not too big. Because when I lay down my ribs and my hips make this perfect convex box. Because when I stand up the muscles in my stomach are flat and visible and defined. Because I have beautiful eyes. Because I have small hands with palms shaped like circles instead of the boring, average ovals. I AM BEAUTIFUL.
3. I am not fat. I weigh 105 pounds. I am almost 5 foot 2. I am on the 25 percentile for height and the 22 percentile for weight. I am actually slightly underweight. My stomach and waist are very small- 22.5 inches. When I flex, my calves go very hard. It's all muscle, not fat. I AM NOT FAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (screw you bulimia!)
4. I am not weak. I was sexually abused for four years and physically abused for twelve and have been emotionally abused since I was old enough to understand my mother's words. I survived. I built a world for myself, I split my personality, I became dissociative, antisocial, and rude, but I survived. That alone makes me not weak. The fact that I survived. The fact that I want to be happy. Some people would've gone crazy with the abuse that I put up with. I survived. I AM NOT WEAK!!!!!!!!!!
5. I am not unlovable. Lots of people love me. The only reason I don't accept their love is because I have not yet learned to love myself. But I will. And then I will be able to have healthy relationships and love won't feel like giving my soul away to something dirty. Love won't feel superficial and surreal and only worth a heartache. Because people do love me. I AM NOT UNLOVABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
6. I am not stupid. I am in calculus and I am a sophomore. I am in honors all my classes. I have straight A's. Unless something massive goes wrong, I will be a valadictorian. I got second place out of over 800 entries in the novel division of the national scholastic writing awards. I am an amazing author. I am very smart. I am smart emotionally too. I see things deeper and clearer than my friends do. I AM NOT STUPID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I AM A GOOD PERSON!!!!!!!!!!! I AM BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!! I AM JUST RIGHT-ON WEIGHT-WISE!!!!!!!!! I AM STRONG!!!!!!!!! I AM LOVABLE!!!!!!!!!!!! I AM BRILLIANT!!!!!!!!!!
wow that was very, very hard. I feel selfish now. But what I'm trying to learn is that confidence and humility are not mutually exclusive. I can believe these things and still be humble.
Now I just have to keep telling myself these things every day until I believe them.
Tonight, I will sit in front of my toilet and throw up and bulimia will win one more battle. But maybe next time I won't. Maybe next time I'll be strong enough.
Gosh, I hope so.
Exercise
The only thing that has ever even come close to the same release as cutting is running. Over the summer I ran four miles every single day when I was trying to quit cutting. And although I failed at the attempting to quit thing, I did get in very good shape.
I'm not that great of a runner. I'm more of the sprinting type, short distances. Or really, really long ones. Nothing in between. 100 meters or 10 miles.
Anyway, my shortest mile time is 6:55 which is a really long time compared to some of my friends', but I was very proud of it. I did it during soccer season, and the only reason I managed it was because I was running with the hot coach from England, and all the other girls were way behind us, and it was just me and him. He was going on about pitches and football and boots and mostly I just kept nodding because I couldn't understand him with his thick accent, but it was nice. I thought I was going to die, but I kept up with him. I did hear him say something about me being in really good shape.
No, not really. Just he was really hot.
Anyway, my mom's always complaining that I do soccer and tennis because they take up so much time. But when I'm running, when it's just me and a racket or a checkered ball, I can forget how much I hate myself and the world and just concentrate solely on the game. I'm way better at tennis, but I'm getting there with soccer too, which is odd since I've been playing soccer every year since I was four and I just barely started up tennis.
Anyway, I think that that is a healthy way to get mad, to run, to pump it out of you.
I've tried all the punching pillow things and such. They don't work for me. They never have. I've tried screaming and kicking things and I just end up feeling stupid and breaking knuckles. Like the first time I ever heard Martina McBride's "Concrete Angel" and I was so mad because I thought someone ought to have warned me, because it made me remember my past with my mother, I punched the way really hard and broke a finger. And it still didn't help much.
And at one debate meet, when I was really mad for this reason that would take five pages to explain so I won't, I was so mad, and for once in my life, I felt like hurting something else, not myself. I didn't feel like hurting someone else, but not wanting to hurt myself was a tremendous start. I'd never before not wanted to hurt myself when I was mad.
I started kicking the wall, really hard, and my shoes were making these black crescent moons and all the paint was chipping away and people were staring at me, but this voice inside my head was screaming, "DON'T LET GO, THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE, HOLD ONTO THIS MOMENT, TO THIS DESIRE!" and for a while that day I thought maybe I could make it without cutting. But the anger was too much and later I gave in. I think, though I in the end failed, that that was the first sign of healthy anger in me, at that debate tournament.
My parents are convinced that I shouldn't play soccer and tennis because they're just two more things to stress about, except they're the opposite to me, they help me de-stress. It's more like eustress... the good kind of stress we learned about in health class.
I have a hard time with soccer because I'm on a team, and I always feel like I'm going to let them down, but I have worked very hard. I'm definitely not a sensational soccer player but I'm not horrible anymore, I don't think.
I'm not that great of a runner. I'm more of the sprinting type, short distances. Or really, really long ones. Nothing in between. 100 meters or 10 miles.
Anyway, my shortest mile time is 6:55 which is a really long time compared to some of my friends', but I was very proud of it. I did it during soccer season, and the only reason I managed it was because I was running with the hot coach from England, and all the other girls were way behind us, and it was just me and him. He was going on about pitches and football and boots and mostly I just kept nodding because I couldn't understand him with his thick accent, but it was nice. I thought I was going to die, but I kept up with him. I did hear him say something about me being in really good shape.
No, not really. Just he was really hot.
Anyway, my mom's always complaining that I do soccer and tennis because they take up so much time. But when I'm running, when it's just me and a racket or a checkered ball, I can forget how much I hate myself and the world and just concentrate solely on the game. I'm way better at tennis, but I'm getting there with soccer too, which is odd since I've been playing soccer every year since I was four and I just barely started up tennis.
Anyway, I think that that is a healthy way to get mad, to run, to pump it out of you.
I've tried all the punching pillow things and such. They don't work for me. They never have. I've tried screaming and kicking things and I just end up feeling stupid and breaking knuckles. Like the first time I ever heard Martina McBride's "Concrete Angel" and I was so mad because I thought someone ought to have warned me, because it made me remember my past with my mother, I punched the way really hard and broke a finger. And it still didn't help much.
And at one debate meet, when I was really mad for this reason that would take five pages to explain so I won't, I was so mad, and for once in my life, I felt like hurting something else, not myself. I didn't feel like hurting someone else, but not wanting to hurt myself was a tremendous start. I'd never before not wanted to hurt myself when I was mad.
I started kicking the wall, really hard, and my shoes were making these black crescent moons and all the paint was chipping away and people were staring at me, but this voice inside my head was screaming, "DON'T LET GO, THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE, HOLD ONTO THIS MOMENT, TO THIS DESIRE!" and for a while that day I thought maybe I could make it without cutting. But the anger was too much and later I gave in. I think, though I in the end failed, that that was the first sign of healthy anger in me, at that debate tournament.
My parents are convinced that I shouldn't play soccer and tennis because they're just two more things to stress about, except they're the opposite to me, they help me de-stress. It's more like eustress... the good kind of stress we learned about in health class.
I have a hard time with soccer because I'm on a team, and I always feel like I'm going to let them down, but I have worked very hard. I'm definitely not a sensational soccer player but I'm not horrible anymore, I don't think.
Pain, the monster, drugs and pills.
Why do I need to hurt myself to feel alive? It's been like that for a very long time. Although before eigth grade, before I was 14, people did it for me, so I didn't hurt myself nearly as much as I have since then.
I think that at a very young age I was taught that I deserved to be hurt, that that was my function in life, was to be a means by which people could let out their anger. Craig and Michael and babysitters did it sexually- my mom and my grandma did it physically and emotionally. I guess it makes sense that now I need that- the pain. Because it's all I've ever known.
In eigth grade my friend told the counselor my mom was hitting me. That's before I knew it was wrong. At first my dad and my brother were mad at me, for betraying family secrets and such. Eventually, social services got called, and my mother moved out for two months to an apartment down the street.
When you are outside shoveling snow in the winter, it's not fun, obviously, but it doesn't hurt. You can sit there for hours shoving snow around and you don't feel any pain, only the sense of purpose that you get from knowing that right now shoveling snow is your only job in the universe. But when you come inside, and you've only been wearing thin gloves or none at all, it starts to hurt, to ache like nothing else does deep in your hands and your fingers and your toes, and other extremities you had, while you were shoveling snow, forgotten existed.
It was like that for me, with the abuse. When my brother stopped sexually abusing me, I could handle that. When Michael stopped and the babysitters stopped and my grandma stopped I could handle that. But my mother's abuse was my only lifeline left- I needed it. It's not sick to need abuse, I have decided. You'd need it too if you lived my life.
I remember one time at Olivia's house we wanted to frame her little brother so I cut my knee with scissors until it was bleeding a lot and we told her mom that her brother had done it by throwing rocks at us in their crabapple tree. And Olivia watched while I pressed the edge of the scissor blades into my skin (I think we were nine), and she asked, "How can you do that?" but it felt normal to me, it felt good.
Four years later I would again slide a blade into my skin, this time a razor. My mom had moved out, my brother was engaged, my cousin was probably in prison, and who knew where the heck my babysitters were. I was left abuseless. It hurt far worse than being abused. It was withdrawel, simply. I needed abuse and my body couldn't function without it. So I did the only thing I thought I could do. I started abusing myself.
Such things are addictive. And I have an incredibly addictive personality. The first time I ever tried alcohol was on a ship. I didn't drink much, but I think I was mildly drunk because I couldn't see straight or walk after that and I kept running into walls. My brother laughed at me. I cried all night. I'd sworn I'd never drink alcohol. I knew, that day, that I could never drink another drop of it again or I'd never be able to stop. It tasted so good to me.
Anyway, after I started cutting, everything got so much worse. I was dissociative 90% of the time when I started high school. I was cutting every night. I lived in my own world where I was convinced no one could hurt me, only myself, only with that cold control I had as I slid the razors into me. It was sick and I knew it and I didn't care.
That same year I started abusing drugs and my builimia got out of control and that too was addictive, and that too I had sworn I'd never do. Everything I believed, everything I was so sure of when I was 11 had slowly slipped away from me and dissolved like my pain and my depression were acid, or enzymes designed specifically to catalyze the reactions that turned my substrates of dreams and hopes into despair and mental illness.
Now I am being very careful to stay away from illegal drugs. I keep telling myself that when I do come face to face with them, I'll say no, as I've always planned on doing. But now I'm not so sure. Now I don't know what I'd do if someone handed me heroin or crack on a platter. I need so badly to escape from my life. I am still dissociative the majority of the time, a condition that annoys everyone around me and that my therapist says I need to fix, but dissociation is sometimes not enough. I want to completely leave any sort of world behind.
I WANT TO BELIEVE THAT HOPE IS POSSIBLE. I want and need to believe that I can heal from all this someday. I guess that is what I am attempting to do right now. I WANT TO BELIEVE THAT SOMEONE WILL SOMEDAY CARE ABOUT ME, but I can't imagine anyone caring about me, so I don't know.
Bipolar is a monster. Low-self-esteem is a habit.
The rest of my life is a castle of addictions.
I think that at a very young age I was taught that I deserved to be hurt, that that was my function in life, was to be a means by which people could let out their anger. Craig and Michael and babysitters did it sexually- my mom and my grandma did it physically and emotionally. I guess it makes sense that now I need that- the pain. Because it's all I've ever known.
In eigth grade my friend told the counselor my mom was hitting me. That's before I knew it was wrong. At first my dad and my brother were mad at me, for betraying family secrets and such. Eventually, social services got called, and my mother moved out for two months to an apartment down the street.
When you are outside shoveling snow in the winter, it's not fun, obviously, but it doesn't hurt. You can sit there for hours shoving snow around and you don't feel any pain, only the sense of purpose that you get from knowing that right now shoveling snow is your only job in the universe. But when you come inside, and you've only been wearing thin gloves or none at all, it starts to hurt, to ache like nothing else does deep in your hands and your fingers and your toes, and other extremities you had, while you were shoveling snow, forgotten existed.
It was like that for me, with the abuse. When my brother stopped sexually abusing me, I could handle that. When Michael stopped and the babysitters stopped and my grandma stopped I could handle that. But my mother's abuse was my only lifeline left- I needed it. It's not sick to need abuse, I have decided. You'd need it too if you lived my life.
I remember one time at Olivia's house we wanted to frame her little brother so I cut my knee with scissors until it was bleeding a lot and we told her mom that her brother had done it by throwing rocks at us in their crabapple tree. And Olivia watched while I pressed the edge of the scissor blades into my skin (I think we were nine), and she asked, "How can you do that?" but it felt normal to me, it felt good.
Four years later I would again slide a blade into my skin, this time a razor. My mom had moved out, my brother was engaged, my cousin was probably in prison, and who knew where the heck my babysitters were. I was left abuseless. It hurt far worse than being abused. It was withdrawel, simply. I needed abuse and my body couldn't function without it. So I did the only thing I thought I could do. I started abusing myself.
Such things are addictive. And I have an incredibly addictive personality. The first time I ever tried alcohol was on a ship. I didn't drink much, but I think I was mildly drunk because I couldn't see straight or walk after that and I kept running into walls. My brother laughed at me. I cried all night. I'd sworn I'd never drink alcohol. I knew, that day, that I could never drink another drop of it again or I'd never be able to stop. It tasted so good to me.
Anyway, after I started cutting, everything got so much worse. I was dissociative 90% of the time when I started high school. I was cutting every night. I lived in my own world where I was convinced no one could hurt me, only myself, only with that cold control I had as I slid the razors into me. It was sick and I knew it and I didn't care.
That same year I started abusing drugs and my builimia got out of control and that too was addictive, and that too I had sworn I'd never do. Everything I believed, everything I was so sure of when I was 11 had slowly slipped away from me and dissolved like my pain and my depression were acid, or enzymes designed specifically to catalyze the reactions that turned my substrates of dreams and hopes into despair and mental illness.
Now I am being very careful to stay away from illegal drugs. I keep telling myself that when I do come face to face with them, I'll say no, as I've always planned on doing. But now I'm not so sure. Now I don't know what I'd do if someone handed me heroin or crack on a platter. I need so badly to escape from my life. I am still dissociative the majority of the time, a condition that annoys everyone around me and that my therapist says I need to fix, but dissociation is sometimes not enough. I want to completely leave any sort of world behind.
I WANT TO BELIEVE THAT HOPE IS POSSIBLE. I want and need to believe that I can heal from all this someday. I guess that is what I am attempting to do right now. I WANT TO BELIEVE THAT SOMEONE WILL SOMEDAY CARE ABOUT ME, but I can't imagine anyone caring about me, so I don't know.
Bipolar is a monster. Low-self-esteem is a habit.
The rest of my life is a castle of addictions.
death and life
I think I'm actually getting somewhere with all these essay things. I guess I'm trying, yet again, to understand myself.
So when I was little, I watched my brother go to jail and prison and bootcamp and residential treatment. He wasn't home from the time he was 13 on. My parents sent him to Samoa for drug treatment, this island roughly near Australia. He came back two years later, got into drugs again, and got sent back. After that he was mostly in trouble with the law and the court.
I love my brother so much. Probably more than anyone else in my family, although it is perhaps a sin to love someone more than everyone else. But he is an awesome person. I've tried throughout the years to be mad at him for what he did to me, but even now my anger is brief and then I regret it.
The day after my 14th birthday my parents sent me to the same hospital my brother was at for a few months. I stayed in the accute unit- mostly for my bipolar being out of control. You know how you think you're way better than the people in those behavioral residential treatment places? YOU'RE NOT. I've been there. They're just like you.
I went in there with the attitude that everyone would be crazy and of course I wasn't. I was so naive back then. Anyway, I was probably the craziest one there.
My father works at that same hospital. Every day outside my bolted windows I watched him pass. Until I was in that psych ward, I've never felt homesick. But the week I was there I cried myself to sleep every night. People woke me up every fifteen minutes, coming into my room. I wasn't allowed to have pencils or drawstrings or go to the bathroom with the door shut. It was... Hell. It was death. It was nightmarish- the painful group therapy sessions, the anger that was coursing through me the whole time because my dad was three hundred feet away and I'd begged him to come visit me but he wouldn't. He was worried about his reputation- everyone knew my brother had stayed here. What would they think if they knew I had too? His refusal to visit me was for the same reason that a year and two months later he would forbid me to tell anyone of his suicide attempt and that nightmarish night at yet another hospital.
I could see my house outside the window to my small room. Every morning I sang to it. Something about wanting to go home I don't remember exactly what song it was.
On my last day in the hospital, a saturday in late May of 2003, they finally decided we weren't going to run away and let us outside. After a week of being confined in a small room all day every day, being able to go outside was like being let out of a prison camp. We ran through the grass... we rolled in it, we kissed it, we ate it. I've never realized how lucky we are to be able to breathe fresh air and walk on grass and see the sky every day. WE ARE SO FREAKING LUCKY.
Anyway, we didn't care what anyone thought of us, didn't care if they thought we were crazy- we were, after all, in a psychiatric hospital.
As I lay there on the ground, for the first time in my existance I was overjoyed just to be alive. And alive I was- I was so alive. I loved that my lungs were working, that my heart was pumping, that it was almost summer and that my hellish days in middle school were almost over (I didn't know my freshman year in high school would be worse than sixth, seventh, or eigth grade).
All that mattered to me at that moment was that I existed, that I was me, and that there was what seemed like an eternity of days in front of me to be free and to be happy.
That's the most alive I've ever been- ironically after one of the worst weeks of my life.
We don't appreciate what we have. Think of people in other countries who don't have nearly as much as we have- think of Asia getting hit with those tsunamis and earthquakes and all those poor people dying. I wasn't deprived in the hospital- I had everything I needed- but it taught me how lucky we are to be free, to be in control of ourselves, to be able to make our own decisions, to have locks on our doors and our own rooms and warm blankets that are ours.
You don't know the horror of Hell until you stay in a psych hospital.
But if I die tomorrow, if I kill myself tonight, at least I'll have had that one instant when I was totally and completely alive, when every cell of me cared about nothing but that epitome of life that was shining hard in me like a star of hope.
So when I was little, I watched my brother go to jail and prison and bootcamp and residential treatment. He wasn't home from the time he was 13 on. My parents sent him to Samoa for drug treatment, this island roughly near Australia. He came back two years later, got into drugs again, and got sent back. After that he was mostly in trouble with the law and the court.
I love my brother so much. Probably more than anyone else in my family, although it is perhaps a sin to love someone more than everyone else. But he is an awesome person. I've tried throughout the years to be mad at him for what he did to me, but even now my anger is brief and then I regret it.
The day after my 14th birthday my parents sent me to the same hospital my brother was at for a few months. I stayed in the accute unit- mostly for my bipolar being out of control. You know how you think you're way better than the people in those behavioral residential treatment places? YOU'RE NOT. I've been there. They're just like you.
I went in there with the attitude that everyone would be crazy and of course I wasn't. I was so naive back then. Anyway, I was probably the craziest one there.
My father works at that same hospital. Every day outside my bolted windows I watched him pass. Until I was in that psych ward, I've never felt homesick. But the week I was there I cried myself to sleep every night. People woke me up every fifteen minutes, coming into my room. I wasn't allowed to have pencils or drawstrings or go to the bathroom with the door shut. It was... Hell. It was death. It was nightmarish- the painful group therapy sessions, the anger that was coursing through me the whole time because my dad was three hundred feet away and I'd begged him to come visit me but he wouldn't. He was worried about his reputation- everyone knew my brother had stayed here. What would they think if they knew I had too? His refusal to visit me was for the same reason that a year and two months later he would forbid me to tell anyone of his suicide attempt and that nightmarish night at yet another hospital.
I could see my house outside the window to my small room. Every morning I sang to it. Something about wanting to go home I don't remember exactly what song it was.
On my last day in the hospital, a saturday in late May of 2003, they finally decided we weren't going to run away and let us outside. After a week of being confined in a small room all day every day, being able to go outside was like being let out of a prison camp. We ran through the grass... we rolled in it, we kissed it, we ate it. I've never realized how lucky we are to be able to breathe fresh air and walk on grass and see the sky every day. WE ARE SO FREAKING LUCKY.
Anyway, we didn't care what anyone thought of us, didn't care if they thought we were crazy- we were, after all, in a psychiatric hospital.
As I lay there on the ground, for the first time in my existance I was overjoyed just to be alive. And alive I was- I was so alive. I loved that my lungs were working, that my heart was pumping, that it was almost summer and that my hellish days in middle school were almost over (I didn't know my freshman year in high school would be worse than sixth, seventh, or eigth grade).
All that mattered to me at that moment was that I existed, that I was me, and that there was what seemed like an eternity of days in front of me to be free and to be happy.
That's the most alive I've ever been- ironically after one of the worst weeks of my life.
We don't appreciate what we have. Think of people in other countries who don't have nearly as much as we have- think of Asia getting hit with those tsunamis and earthquakes and all those poor people dying. I wasn't deprived in the hospital- I had everything I needed- but it taught me how lucky we are to be free, to be in control of ourselves, to be able to make our own decisions, to have locks on our doors and our own rooms and warm blankets that are ours.
You don't know the horror of Hell until you stay in a psych hospital.
But if I die tomorrow, if I kill myself tonight, at least I'll have had that one instant when I was totally and completely alive, when every cell of me cared about nothing but that epitome of life that was shining hard in me like a star of hope.
Monday, December 27, 2004
ANGER (THE INEVITABLE) (and affinity to the f-word)
[04-13-06 EDIT- I am editing this post because I am not this angry anymore and I don't need all that I wrote here] Alright... here goes nothing... I guess if I'm going to do this whole painful process I have to do it the right way. I'm doing this for my debate coach, you know. Because she needs me to be self-confident. Well, wants me to be. I guess I want to too... but I think in the end I'm doing it for her.
So I don't swear of course. Ever. I've sworn once in my life, out loud, in geometry. I don't get geometry. Calculus is so much better, more concrete. I didn't get the sigma thing. I threw down my book. I said "shit!" really loudly. Everyone stared at me. Nobody seemed to understand how a person who had never sworn before could swear over sigma notation. Stevie just started laughing.
but... here goes nothing.
F- YOU Mom for hitting me, and making me think you were going to kill me, and choking me and calling me horrible things and telling me things were my fault and making me take care of you and telling me I'm a hypochondriac fuck you i'm not!
F- YOU Dad for ignoring what mom was doing to me, for not protecting me, for watching her hit me and hit me and hit me, and watching her do it to Craig too, for not stopping her, for hating me when she got taken away.
F- YOU Craig for forcing me to have oral sex with you, for being my hero my whole life when all I needed was to hate you and I couldn't because you were so good to me and I always loved you and you always loved me well you don't freaking do that to people you love, Craig, no matter how freaking mad you are! (oh yeah, i forgot... f-ing mad you are)
F- YOU Michael for raping me every day for so long. Because you know what, you're the real, deep reason I'm writing all this, because you did that to me, because you screwed me up for life.
F- YOU Grandma for hitting me and shoving me against the wall, and telling me I'm making this all up, that I was never abused because I WAS!!! I F-ING WAS!!! and you abused me too!
F- YOU stupid pyschiatrist Carl for making me stay at the psych hospital two extra days, for telling my mom I was making things up, for giving her excuses to believe that what she did had no impact on me. and for wearing white with khaki.
F- YOU Leslie for sexually abusing me, for never caring...
F- YOU nameless babysitter for the same freaking reasons...
F- YOU Kristin for knowing I had an eating disorder and was cutting and saving my life and then leaving me!!!!!!!!!
wow i feel dirty for swearing that much... it feels wrong, but I know I needed it... God will forgive me because I needed it and wow I really do feel somewhat better now...
So I don't swear of course. Ever. I've sworn once in my life, out loud, in geometry. I don't get geometry. Calculus is so much better, more concrete. I didn't get the sigma thing. I threw down my book. I said "shit!" really loudly. Everyone stared at me. Nobody seemed to understand how a person who had never sworn before could swear over sigma notation. Stevie just started laughing.
but... here goes nothing.
F- YOU Mom for hitting me, and making me think you were going to kill me, and choking me and calling me horrible things and telling me things were my fault and making me take care of you and telling me I'm a hypochondriac fuck you i'm not!
F- YOU Dad for ignoring what mom was doing to me, for not protecting me, for watching her hit me and hit me and hit me, and watching her do it to Craig too, for not stopping her, for hating me when she got taken away.
F- YOU Craig for forcing me to have oral sex with you, for being my hero my whole life when all I needed was to hate you and I couldn't because you were so good to me and I always loved you and you always loved me well you don't freaking do that to people you love, Craig, no matter how freaking mad you are! (oh yeah, i forgot... f-ing mad you are)
F- YOU Michael for raping me every day for so long. Because you know what, you're the real, deep reason I'm writing all this, because you did that to me, because you screwed me up for life.
F- YOU Grandma for hitting me and shoving me against the wall, and telling me I'm making this all up, that I was never abused because I WAS!!! I F-ING WAS!!! and you abused me too!
F- YOU stupid pyschiatrist Carl for making me stay at the psych hospital two extra days, for telling my mom I was making things up, for giving her excuses to believe that what she did had no impact on me. and for wearing white with khaki.
F- YOU Leslie for sexually abusing me, for never caring...
F- YOU nameless babysitter for the same freaking reasons...
F- YOU Kristin for knowing I had an eating disorder and was cutting and saving my life and then leaving me!!!!!!!!!
wow i feel dirty for swearing that much... it feels wrong, but I know I needed it... God will forgive me because I needed it and wow I really do feel somewhat better now...
My Father and his Pills
My father tried to kill himself in July of 2004. He swallowed over 200 pills.
That was the most screwed up thing about when my dad tried to kill himself... that nobody bothered telling me he was going to be okay... i guess the doctors knew it and my mom knew that after he drank the charcoal and stuff he was going ot be okay, but i thought he was going to die. and on the way to the hospital, he was acting young and depressed, but then at the hospital it's like he shut himself back up again, and was acting all adult again, and professional.and we talked about everything in the hospital room... but never the fact that i thought he was going to die, and not about what he'd done. we talked about playing tennis and food adn stuff but not about what my dad had just done. and i wanted to scream. and nothign changed. how weird is that... that someone can do that, take so many pills and try to die, and nothing changes. anyway, the next day, we got up, and we ate breakfast, and we played tennis, and my parents told me never to tell anyone what he'd done, and that's all we ever said about it ever again.but you know... what i needed more than anything, what i still need, is to talk about it. because it's like my parents had this perfect hole in their lives, and his suicide attempt fit right in, and they could forget it, but i couldn't. because nobody told me he was going to be okay... because he knew how much pain i was in, and he was willing to kill himself, which was so selfish. and it's like it had never happened, because they never mentioned it again. like nobody was willing to admit that my father, the man i thought was invincible, had actualyl tried to leave my mom and me. gosh if he'd killed himself i'd have had to... because i couldn't handle living alone wiht my mom. it's such emotional terrorism.anyway, sorry, my point is that it's stupid not to talk about the things that hurt us, becuase what we really need, what every human being really needs, is to be able to talk about it, and get it out of them. that's hte only way to heal... is to let it be real, let it have happened. the way to get over things isn't to pretend them and act like they don't exist... it's to let them exist, admit that they are part of you, and not try to cut them out of you like some rotten part, but to let them be real, and let them be a part of you, and accept the fact that we're not really whole without even the bad parts of us and our memories.
That was the most screwed up thing about when my dad tried to kill himself... that nobody bothered telling me he was going to be okay... i guess the doctors knew it and my mom knew that after he drank the charcoal and stuff he was going ot be okay, but i thought he was going to die. and on the way to the hospital, he was acting young and depressed, but then at the hospital it's like he shut himself back up again, and was acting all adult again, and professional.and we talked about everything in the hospital room... but never the fact that i thought he was going to die, and not about what he'd done. we talked about playing tennis and food adn stuff but not about what my dad had just done. and i wanted to scream. and nothign changed. how weird is that... that someone can do that, take so many pills and try to die, and nothing changes. anyway, the next day, we got up, and we ate breakfast, and we played tennis, and my parents told me never to tell anyone what he'd done, and that's all we ever said about it ever again.but you know... what i needed more than anything, what i still need, is to talk about it. because it's like my parents had this perfect hole in their lives, and his suicide attempt fit right in, and they could forget it, but i couldn't. because nobody told me he was going to be okay... because he knew how much pain i was in, and he was willing to kill himself, which was so selfish. and it's like it had never happened, because they never mentioned it again. like nobody was willing to admit that my father, the man i thought was invincible, had actualyl tried to leave my mom and me. gosh if he'd killed himself i'd have had to... because i couldn't handle living alone wiht my mom. it's such emotional terrorism.anyway, sorry, my point is that it's stupid not to talk about the things that hurt us, becuase what we really need, what every human being really needs, is to be able to talk about it, and get it out of them. that's hte only way to heal... is to let it be real, let it have happened. the way to get over things isn't to pretend them and act like they don't exist... it's to let them exist, admit that they are part of you, and not try to cut them out of you like some rotten part, but to let them be real, and let them be a part of you, and accept the fact that we're not really whole without even the bad parts of us and our memories.
Eating Disorder
It feels like I'm posting too much, more than is socially acceptable (but like i said, what is society anyway?), but I need to get this all done at once, because it hurts, and it's better to do something that hurts psychologically all at once rather than to draw it all out.
I HATE SALAD. I HATE CELERY. I HATE SPINACH. Well I went out to eat with all my relatives tonight... and I sat there chewing on my salad, my celery, my spinach, thinking that. Thinking, I haven't eaten something I like in a very long time. Mostly I eat celery and spinach and things I hate, just because I know they have zero calories. I'm so lost in this eating disorder. I just want to lose a little more weight, be under 100 pounds. Shauna told me this is stupid. I don't care. Shauna told me this is giving into society. I don't care. It is, ultimately, not giving in to something even worse than society, something deadening and numb.
I'm going to keep spewing about what other people say because that's where I get all my information about myself. That is something else I have just realized. Kayte says I have to stop overdosing on drugs to throw up. She said that I'm the only person in the world that's ever going to care about my body. I told her I don't. I don't care about my body one bit. In fact it would be marvelously convenient if I could get hit by a semi-truck tomorrow or get cancer. How selfish is that- that there are people dying of cancer who want only to live, and I want only to die. Well, selfish is my goal. That's what this painful psychoanalysis is about. Being selfish.
Anyway, I sat there tonight at dinner squashed between my parents and I needed to hurt myself so badly I could hardly breathe. I wanted to grab a fork and try to stab myself with it, but something told me that though my parents are dumb and blind, they'd probably notice me skewering myself at the restaurant table. But it began to occur to me... how can I live another day? How can I live my life like this? The only assurance was that because I've been so depressed, it's probably not going to last a lot longer before I rocket into mania and try to jump of the roof thinking I can fly again. (I always think I can fly).
I remember when I was 12 in seventh grade and I was so depressed for so long and wasn't eating and tried to kill myself and then one day I woke up and I thought I was the most brilliant person in the universe, and I started writing all these theories, covering sheet after sheet of paper with pointless math problems and circular logic. And I remember sitting in that stuffed-up office and having more labels to plaster over myself: bipolar, obsessive-compulsive, generalized anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, attention-deficit disorder, dissociative disorder. And I remember the plethora of pills that for so long I took dilligently even as I cut my arms and my legs with razorblades.
And I remember the first time, that first terrifying night when the anorexia became bulimia. I remember I ate a brownie, just one, and that was all I'd eaten all day but it was enough, and I took the bottle of lithium pills in my hand, and I started swallowing them and swallowing them. I threw up all night. I thought I was going to die. It felt like it. I couldn't leave the toilet. My head was spinning. My mouth was full of way too much spit.
And after that I knew I could eat brownies as long as I threw them up. How many days this year have I gone to school high on lithium? It makes you dizzy- horribly sick. I throw up all night and then the next day at school I'm so tired, so fatigued, I just want to sleep and sleep, and I can't focus, can't concentrate, and I get a rash on my skin, and I lose my coordination and run into everything, and my vision goes all blurry, and my hands won't work. How many days have I embarrassed myself at various music lessons with a mind as slow as mud and fingers that won't move fast enough?
I remember the first time I bought the laxatives, at Safeway. I stood before them on the shelf for a really long time, staring at the cough medicine and the advil, waiting for all the people to go away before I grabbed it and some shampoo and threw them in my basket. I never thought I'd be brave enough, to buy something so embarrassing. But I stood at the counter, and I threw them down on the register where everyone could see them, and I blushed furious shades of red but I stood there, and the lady just rang them up with my shampoo like they were flowers.
Thinking back, way back to when the eating disorder first started, I did it first for attention. In seventh grade I fainted at school, right after home ec in the hallway. I'd been starving myself for weeks and I'd finally achieved the result I needed. My mom had been hitting me a lot, and I kept trying to tell her I didn't like it but she wouldn't stop, and it was the first passive-agressive thing I did, I think, when I was just becoming a wallflower, a silent sufferer in the shadows. I wanted to show her that she was hurting me.
But after that it wasn't for attention. And I don't tell people about it now. I don't talk about it. The guilt that I am abusing drugs is hard to handle, consering I swore I'd never do this. But I've forgotten everything I believed when I was 11.
I want to understand why I need it so badly. I keep trying to stop overdosing and stuff, but I want and need so badly to be perfect, to be thin, and I'm so fat. All I see when I look in the mirror is fat. All I think about is food and how I'll binge or purge, or obsess about calories. I can't take my meds anymore because just thinking about taking them makes me sick, from all those nights, miserably long, spent in front of the toilet. It feels so out of control- it is so out of control. I don't want it. I want to stop but I can't.
And now I can't even imagine eating without getting it out of me somehow.
I think it's partly for control, yes, partly for perfectionism, because I need so badly to be perfect. In fact the perfectionism is so bad that I find it hard to make myself do the things I used to love for the simple fact that I know that no matter how good I do, I'll never have done good enough for myself. I want so badly to be perfect... I need it, but I can't be, and I'm not, and for that reason I hate myself. I hate myself for being human and flawed and carnal and fat.
I HATE SALAD. I HATE CELERY. I HATE SPINACH. Well I went out to eat with all my relatives tonight... and I sat there chewing on my salad, my celery, my spinach, thinking that. Thinking, I haven't eaten something I like in a very long time. Mostly I eat celery and spinach and things I hate, just because I know they have zero calories. I'm so lost in this eating disorder. I just want to lose a little more weight, be under 100 pounds. Shauna told me this is stupid. I don't care. Shauna told me this is giving into society. I don't care. It is, ultimately, not giving in to something even worse than society, something deadening and numb.
I'm going to keep spewing about what other people say because that's where I get all my information about myself. That is something else I have just realized. Kayte says I have to stop overdosing on drugs to throw up. She said that I'm the only person in the world that's ever going to care about my body. I told her I don't. I don't care about my body one bit. In fact it would be marvelously convenient if I could get hit by a semi-truck tomorrow or get cancer. How selfish is that- that there are people dying of cancer who want only to live, and I want only to die. Well, selfish is my goal. That's what this painful psychoanalysis is about. Being selfish.
Anyway, I sat there tonight at dinner squashed between my parents and I needed to hurt myself so badly I could hardly breathe. I wanted to grab a fork and try to stab myself with it, but something told me that though my parents are dumb and blind, they'd probably notice me skewering myself at the restaurant table. But it began to occur to me... how can I live another day? How can I live my life like this? The only assurance was that because I've been so depressed, it's probably not going to last a lot longer before I rocket into mania and try to jump of the roof thinking I can fly again. (I always think I can fly).
I remember when I was 12 in seventh grade and I was so depressed for so long and wasn't eating and tried to kill myself and then one day I woke up and I thought I was the most brilliant person in the universe, and I started writing all these theories, covering sheet after sheet of paper with pointless math problems and circular logic. And I remember sitting in that stuffed-up office and having more labels to plaster over myself: bipolar, obsessive-compulsive, generalized anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, attention-deficit disorder, dissociative disorder. And I remember the plethora of pills that for so long I took dilligently even as I cut my arms and my legs with razorblades.
And I remember the first time, that first terrifying night when the anorexia became bulimia. I remember I ate a brownie, just one, and that was all I'd eaten all day but it was enough, and I took the bottle of lithium pills in my hand, and I started swallowing them and swallowing them. I threw up all night. I thought I was going to die. It felt like it. I couldn't leave the toilet. My head was spinning. My mouth was full of way too much spit.
And after that I knew I could eat brownies as long as I threw them up. How many days this year have I gone to school high on lithium? It makes you dizzy- horribly sick. I throw up all night and then the next day at school I'm so tired, so fatigued, I just want to sleep and sleep, and I can't focus, can't concentrate, and I get a rash on my skin, and I lose my coordination and run into everything, and my vision goes all blurry, and my hands won't work. How many days have I embarrassed myself at various music lessons with a mind as slow as mud and fingers that won't move fast enough?
I remember the first time I bought the laxatives, at Safeway. I stood before them on the shelf for a really long time, staring at the cough medicine and the advil, waiting for all the people to go away before I grabbed it and some shampoo and threw them in my basket. I never thought I'd be brave enough, to buy something so embarrassing. But I stood at the counter, and I threw them down on the register where everyone could see them, and I blushed furious shades of red but I stood there, and the lady just rang them up with my shampoo like they were flowers.
Thinking back, way back to when the eating disorder first started, I did it first for attention. In seventh grade I fainted at school, right after home ec in the hallway. I'd been starving myself for weeks and I'd finally achieved the result I needed. My mom had been hitting me a lot, and I kept trying to tell her I didn't like it but she wouldn't stop, and it was the first passive-agressive thing I did, I think, when I was just becoming a wallflower, a silent sufferer in the shadows. I wanted to show her that she was hurting me.
But after that it wasn't for attention. And I don't tell people about it now. I don't talk about it. The guilt that I am abusing drugs is hard to handle, consering I swore I'd never do this. But I've forgotten everything I believed when I was 11.
I want to understand why I need it so badly. I keep trying to stop overdosing and stuff, but I want and need so badly to be perfect, to be thin, and I'm so fat. All I see when I look in the mirror is fat. All I think about is food and how I'll binge or purge, or obsess about calories. I can't take my meds anymore because just thinking about taking them makes me sick, from all those nights, miserably long, spent in front of the toilet. It feels so out of control- it is so out of control. I don't want it. I want to stop but I can't.
And now I can't even imagine eating without getting it out of me somehow.
I think it's partly for control, yes, partly for perfectionism, because I need so badly to be perfect. In fact the perfectionism is so bad that I find it hard to make myself do the things I used to love for the simple fact that I know that no matter how good I do, I'll never have done good enough for myself. I want so badly to be perfect... I need it, but I can't be, and I'm not, and for that reason I hate myself. I hate myself for being human and flawed and carnal and fat.
Power and Homosexuality
So I really am going to do it, completely and totally psychoanalyze myself, everything I ever have been, everything I could or will be. I do this to a certain extent every day, but I want to try to collect it, in print, reality.
So this post is going to be about power, because I've been thinking (I do believe I think way too much when I'm not in school- school is the perfect way to kill any sort of thinking brain cells) about it and its role in my life.
Power... well for instance when I was at my counselor's office last year, one time I saw Sam's dad and one time I saw Shauna's dad. And I didn't tell them who I was for a very long time. It's similar whenever I see someone I know that doesn't know me. Why? Because there is a sense of power in knowing someone, in knowing one of their secrets that they may not even tell their dearest friends... that they're in counseling. To them that makes them screwed up. Because when I know that, I have a sort of power over them, the power of information, and they have none of that over me.
Why does it matter to me so much that I have power and control?
I don't know. I think a lot of things in my life are about it though. Perhaps because over my childhood I had no power or control. My mother hit me and I had no control to fight back. She called me stupid and a bi*ch and I didn't have the power to ignore her words- I believed them. And of course there was all the sexual abuse in which I had no power to fight back. So I guess it makes sense that I crave power.
And I do usually have power over people because I have amazing instincts. I can tell things about a person just by paying attention to their actions, to the way they say things. Most people could also do that, I think, if they trained themselves, if they cared enough. But I have excellent training. I've been watching people my whole life- mostly the people that abused me. It took the shock off of the abuse a bit, to expect it, to learn to know exactly when it was coming. I still don't know why though... why would my cousin do that to me? And logic and answers matter quite a bit to me, maybe more than they should. I can't just accept things.
And I think that my bulimia and my cutting started because I felt powerless, because I felt unable to change the world or even myself, or my circumstances. When people found out what my mom was doing to me and she moved out, that was a loss of power.
My mom is always insisting that I crave power over my family. Well that's one area where it's not true, I think. I just wanted to take care of my mom and I failed. She needed taking care of. But I have always felt too much power in the sense of codependency, in the ways my mother needed me, to cover up what she did, to help her survive.
Anyway... about homosexuality. I'm not homosexual... it took me a long while to be able to establish that. I don't think I ever thought I was, either, but doesn't everyone have their doubts at times? Shauna asked me, "do you think you'll be lesbian because of what they did to you?". Well... no. Female people sexually abused me too... namely my babysitters. Perhaps not as profoundly or as "badly" as my brother and cousin did, but still.
I think that being homosexual is morally wrong. I am not against gay people at all... I do believe it is perfectly natural. But the natural man is an enemy to God... and I believe we as people have a responsibility to try to figure out what's moral and what's not. There is not always a clear line... but my experiences with sex have taught me that what is natural is not always right, or moral.
I do believe in separation of church and state though in the issue of homosexuality, and that gay people deserve all governmental rights guarenteed to straight people, and that religious rights should be left up to religious affiliations to determine.
So I'm not gay. But I've wondered about it. Actually, I don't know what I am. I like guys, that is for sure. But... I don't like them as much as some of my friends seem to. I don't think about sex the way they do. I think about it logically, as an act of perverted passion, and try to dissect it and the motives people have to engage in it. My friends have dreams about it and think about it with a sort of lust.
In that way I may never fit in. I can only hope that someday I find a man that understands how completely and utterly terrified I am (wow this psychoanalysis thing must be working because this is the first time I've realized this) of having sex, because it is yet again giving up control, and it feels wrong to me, and it feels like allowing myself to be invaded by space aliens by evil means and for an evil end.
But I do want to get married someday, and I suppose have a healthy sexual relationship, so I guess I'll have to work on my sexual phobias.
So this post is going to be about power, because I've been thinking (I do believe I think way too much when I'm not in school- school is the perfect way to kill any sort of thinking brain cells) about it and its role in my life.
Power... well for instance when I was at my counselor's office last year, one time I saw Sam's dad and one time I saw Shauna's dad. And I didn't tell them who I was for a very long time. It's similar whenever I see someone I know that doesn't know me. Why? Because there is a sense of power in knowing someone, in knowing one of their secrets that they may not even tell their dearest friends... that they're in counseling. To them that makes them screwed up. Because when I know that, I have a sort of power over them, the power of information, and they have none of that over me.
Why does it matter to me so much that I have power and control?
I don't know. I think a lot of things in my life are about it though. Perhaps because over my childhood I had no power or control. My mother hit me and I had no control to fight back. She called me stupid and a bi*ch and I didn't have the power to ignore her words- I believed them. And of course there was all the sexual abuse in which I had no power to fight back. So I guess it makes sense that I crave power.
And I do usually have power over people because I have amazing instincts. I can tell things about a person just by paying attention to their actions, to the way they say things. Most people could also do that, I think, if they trained themselves, if they cared enough. But I have excellent training. I've been watching people my whole life- mostly the people that abused me. It took the shock off of the abuse a bit, to expect it, to learn to know exactly when it was coming. I still don't know why though... why would my cousin do that to me? And logic and answers matter quite a bit to me, maybe more than they should. I can't just accept things.
And I think that my bulimia and my cutting started because I felt powerless, because I felt unable to change the world or even myself, or my circumstances. When people found out what my mom was doing to me and she moved out, that was a loss of power.
My mom is always insisting that I crave power over my family. Well that's one area where it's not true, I think. I just wanted to take care of my mom and I failed. She needed taking care of. But I have always felt too much power in the sense of codependency, in the ways my mother needed me, to cover up what she did, to help her survive.
Anyway... about homosexuality. I'm not homosexual... it took me a long while to be able to establish that. I don't think I ever thought I was, either, but doesn't everyone have their doubts at times? Shauna asked me, "do you think you'll be lesbian because of what they did to you?". Well... no. Female people sexually abused me too... namely my babysitters. Perhaps not as profoundly or as "badly" as my brother and cousin did, but still.
I think that being homosexual is morally wrong. I am not against gay people at all... I do believe it is perfectly natural. But the natural man is an enemy to God... and I believe we as people have a responsibility to try to figure out what's moral and what's not. There is not always a clear line... but my experiences with sex have taught me that what is natural is not always right, or moral.
I do believe in separation of church and state though in the issue of homosexuality, and that gay people deserve all governmental rights guarenteed to straight people, and that religious rights should be left up to religious affiliations to determine.
So I'm not gay. But I've wondered about it. Actually, I don't know what I am. I like guys, that is for sure. But... I don't like them as much as some of my friends seem to. I don't think about sex the way they do. I think about it logically, as an act of perverted passion, and try to dissect it and the motives people have to engage in it. My friends have dreams about it and think about it with a sort of lust.
In that way I may never fit in. I can only hope that someday I find a man that understands how completely and utterly terrified I am (wow this psychoanalysis thing must be working because this is the first time I've realized this) of having sex, because it is yet again giving up control, and it feels wrong to me, and it feels like allowing myself to be invaded by space aliens by evil means and for an evil end.
But I do want to get married someday, and I suppose have a healthy sexual relationship, so I guess I'll have to work on my sexual phobias.
Psychoanalysis
So I have this need right now, this desire, to write and write and write and pin down the world like a butterfly on a corkboard, because that's what I feel like, butterflydust, that's my username because butterflies can't fly without the dust on their wings, and I feel like I have all that dust but I don't have the wings. The world is so complicated and mostly I don't understand it, or anything it stands for, but I want to.
And I get these impulses, these needs to write, so I will. This is my third blog- the others have failed... maybe they make me too naked, like a bug under a microscope, suffocating under a glass coverslip, the edges too sharp, the dye smeared like blood. This time though I've told nobody about this blog. I want people to read it, I think, to try to understand with me what is so wrong with the world, but I don't want any of my friends to.
Becasue I am left with this vague, constant interpretation of life, mainly that it is wrong somehow, distorted, like Picasso's cubist paintings where the surface areas and the angles are all out of proportion.
And I've been thinking a lot about society, and about the truth. What is truth, anyway? We rely on it to be a concrete concept, something we can fall back on. But looking back at my life, at my house and all the abuse that's occurred in it, I don't know the truth. The truth is mainly an assortment, a collage of individual memories. The problem with memory is that it's such a fickle thing... emotions and impulses and the surreal get caught up in it, and twist it around. So in my past, the truth is simply an overlap of individual memories, as it is, I think, in most people's lives.
So what society deems as "truth" is not actually what physically occurred. Nobody can be sure, when emotions are so distorting, what is the real truth. So we accept that we cannot know what the real truth is, that we can only guess, draw sketchy lines of best fit. But how is that concrete? I could make myself believe something today, and it would be true for me. How can society call me sane or insane? If society voted tomorrow that the sky was green, would that make the sky green? We'd have to accept it, as we accept most general rules of society, most majority wills, but does accepting it as the truth actually make it true?
If you think about it, the only truth comes from expensive investigations that deal only with the physical, like forensics. But we cannot use forensics on our lives in a daily basis... and human fluids and living tissues die over time and become impossible to medically analyze. Science can only do so much for truth. Truth can only do so much for science.
And how terrifying, that is, to realize that what we most rely on and depend on to be concrete is actually malleable, actually incorrect the majority of the time and never 100% accurate.
I'm going to keep writing, I think, because I'm onto something here. Something that may be the only real truth in life. If there is no such thing as physical truth, then there can only be emotional and non-physical truth. But that differs for every individual. Yet again we are brought to the unsatisfying conclusion that truth is simply an individual concept, like heroism.
My English teacher defined heroism as "Giving ones life for a cause greater than oneself". I don't think my English teacher knows what she's talking about, or has even thought about the implications of such an abusive definition. For instance, consider the Homeric hero. I asked her if Homer's creations (Achilles, Aneus or however you spell that) were heros. She said they are. But are they heros by that definition? No. Homeric heros may have given their life for what society thought was a cause greater than themselves, but in the end what is their real motive? Rewards in the afterlife. "Greater than oneself" implies selflessness. Homeric heros gave their lives for the most selfish cause imaginable: eternal bliss and life, confined only to their individual self. Therefore, what society has called heros cannot possibly fit that definition. Very few "heros" have died for something selfless at it's core. Maybe I'm bordering on objectivism here, but in my opinion people are born innately selfish, and most people remain that way. Therefor what I think of as a hero is different than what you think of as a hero. Are we both wrong? According to that definition, yes, but I think that definition is crap. Hero is an individual concept, no matter how we try to force it into the laws and definitions of society. So is truth.
Anyway... moving on to my next issue of self actualization. (The main goal of this blog is to make me self-confident and have self-esteem. Is that possible to achieve through a thorough psychoanalysis of myself? I guess I'll find out).
My friend Mallory said that growing up hurts. I, of course, agree. It hurts some more than others... it's put me through Hell. Biblically, we are expected to become better people because of our challenges. I seem to be becoming steadily worse. Maybe not in the respect of helping other people. My life is solely utilitarian. If it weren't for the people around me, I'd kill myself. But I recognize the need to live for a more selfish cause. Some Christians would like you to believe that selflessness is necessary to salvation. I disagree. God wants us to love ourselves. God is all about love. Love of God and love of self are not mutually exclusive. They can coexist. God said we should love God and ourselves more than all other people. Only if we love these two main entities can we truly love others.
In my opinion, this has proved true. People that do not love themselves have a hard time accepting the love of others or giving it. This has become apparent in my own life.
Moving onto my last issue... that of sex. Maybe I will be smitten down for mentioning something as carnal as sex and as divine as Godly love in the same journal entry. But God has said sex is sacred. I can't see how. When I had sex, it was all about pain and sweat and everything I strive not to be. It was simply an equation of human hormoines and desires and I was so young and I hated it. I guess the fact that it was incest could have something to do with that, but it is sex all the same. When you are engaged in sexual intercourse, does it matter to you whether it's your brother, your cousin, or an actual lover? No. You can be hating it with every cell of your psychological being, but your body, being the horrid creation that it is, will still love it to an extent. The chemicals of desire still lie unbidden in you. So... in reference to my past. I didn't actually want to have sex with my brother or cousin when I was very young. It was rape, I suppose. BUT... the hormoines and chemicals of desire and flesh still existed within me. I was only like five, but a part of me still felt the stimulating effect of it. So the main question I am posing is this: I didn't consent to it verbally. But my body consented to it physically. Does that make it cease to be rape?
I know that yet again I am simply finding another facet of that same old guilt, another way to blame myself for what people continually tell me was not my fault. But if you think about it... even if it was unintentional, isn't that spark of human pleasure that existed inside of me on those bedroom floors a sort of permission?
I don't know. I don't want to excuse them for what they did to me... ultimately, they have paid for it. But I am still unconvinced that I didn't in some way allow it to happen. Even at three, four, five and six I was intellegent enough to realize that even though my body craved it, my mind knew it was wrong. Nobody had ever told me it was... in fact I didn't even know what sex was, or that that was what I was engaging in on a daily basis. But I knew two things: 1. I instinctively physically loved it even thought it hurt and 2. I instinctively psychologically hated it. Why did I accept the first one to be of more merit than the second one? How can I say that it wasn't in some way my fault that I let it go on for so long?
I can't.
And now I am led to believe that my experiences, no matter how young I was, were still sexual and carnal. What happened to me was horrible. It was all about chemicals nad endorphins and pleasure and the heavy feeling of someone with you and pain and sweat and blood and everything carnal. How can something so incredibly flesh-based as sex be sacred? I believe God in most respects, but I cannot see any good in sex. It is a horrible tool, a tool with which we hurt eachother.
Oh... and the fact remains that I am a masochist, I think. I actually want to get raped again. I actually want my mother to start hitting me again. Why? Because I need it to function. And now that I don't have it I have simply turned to self-destruction. Which is better? Does it make me a bad person that I require pain to survive?
Mallory said this: "It makes me feel like going and having sex with as many people as I can, to hurt them."
And I say the exact same means, but with a different end: "It makes me feel like going and having sex with as many people as I can, to hurt myself."
Okay I'm done now.
I actually do feel a bit more enlightened than when I started.
And I get these impulses, these needs to write, so I will. This is my third blog- the others have failed... maybe they make me too naked, like a bug under a microscope, suffocating under a glass coverslip, the edges too sharp, the dye smeared like blood. This time though I've told nobody about this blog. I want people to read it, I think, to try to understand with me what is so wrong with the world, but I don't want any of my friends to.
Becasue I am left with this vague, constant interpretation of life, mainly that it is wrong somehow, distorted, like Picasso's cubist paintings where the surface areas and the angles are all out of proportion.
And I've been thinking a lot about society, and about the truth. What is truth, anyway? We rely on it to be a concrete concept, something we can fall back on. But looking back at my life, at my house and all the abuse that's occurred in it, I don't know the truth. The truth is mainly an assortment, a collage of individual memories. The problem with memory is that it's such a fickle thing... emotions and impulses and the surreal get caught up in it, and twist it around. So in my past, the truth is simply an overlap of individual memories, as it is, I think, in most people's lives.
So what society deems as "truth" is not actually what physically occurred. Nobody can be sure, when emotions are so distorting, what is the real truth. So we accept that we cannot know what the real truth is, that we can only guess, draw sketchy lines of best fit. But how is that concrete? I could make myself believe something today, and it would be true for me. How can society call me sane or insane? If society voted tomorrow that the sky was green, would that make the sky green? We'd have to accept it, as we accept most general rules of society, most majority wills, but does accepting it as the truth actually make it true?
If you think about it, the only truth comes from expensive investigations that deal only with the physical, like forensics. But we cannot use forensics on our lives in a daily basis... and human fluids and living tissues die over time and become impossible to medically analyze. Science can only do so much for truth. Truth can only do so much for science.
And how terrifying, that is, to realize that what we most rely on and depend on to be concrete is actually malleable, actually incorrect the majority of the time and never 100% accurate.
I'm going to keep writing, I think, because I'm onto something here. Something that may be the only real truth in life. If there is no such thing as physical truth, then there can only be emotional and non-physical truth. But that differs for every individual. Yet again we are brought to the unsatisfying conclusion that truth is simply an individual concept, like heroism.
My English teacher defined heroism as "Giving ones life for a cause greater than oneself". I don't think my English teacher knows what she's talking about, or has even thought about the implications of such an abusive definition. For instance, consider the Homeric hero. I asked her if Homer's creations (Achilles, Aneus or however you spell that) were heros. She said they are. But are they heros by that definition? No. Homeric heros may have given their life for what society thought was a cause greater than themselves, but in the end what is their real motive? Rewards in the afterlife. "Greater than oneself" implies selflessness. Homeric heros gave their lives for the most selfish cause imaginable: eternal bliss and life, confined only to their individual self. Therefore, what society has called heros cannot possibly fit that definition. Very few "heros" have died for something selfless at it's core. Maybe I'm bordering on objectivism here, but in my opinion people are born innately selfish, and most people remain that way. Therefor what I think of as a hero is different than what you think of as a hero. Are we both wrong? According to that definition, yes, but I think that definition is crap. Hero is an individual concept, no matter how we try to force it into the laws and definitions of society. So is truth.
Anyway... moving on to my next issue of self actualization. (The main goal of this blog is to make me self-confident and have self-esteem. Is that possible to achieve through a thorough psychoanalysis of myself? I guess I'll find out).
My friend Mallory said that growing up hurts. I, of course, agree. It hurts some more than others... it's put me through Hell. Biblically, we are expected to become better people because of our challenges. I seem to be becoming steadily worse. Maybe not in the respect of helping other people. My life is solely utilitarian. If it weren't for the people around me, I'd kill myself. But I recognize the need to live for a more selfish cause. Some Christians would like you to believe that selflessness is necessary to salvation. I disagree. God wants us to love ourselves. God is all about love. Love of God and love of self are not mutually exclusive. They can coexist. God said we should love God and ourselves more than all other people. Only if we love these two main entities can we truly love others.
In my opinion, this has proved true. People that do not love themselves have a hard time accepting the love of others or giving it. This has become apparent in my own life.
Moving onto my last issue... that of sex. Maybe I will be smitten down for mentioning something as carnal as sex and as divine as Godly love in the same journal entry. But God has said sex is sacred. I can't see how. When I had sex, it was all about pain and sweat and everything I strive not to be. It was simply an equation of human hormoines and desires and I was so young and I hated it. I guess the fact that it was incest could have something to do with that, but it is sex all the same. When you are engaged in sexual intercourse, does it matter to you whether it's your brother, your cousin, or an actual lover? No. You can be hating it with every cell of your psychological being, but your body, being the horrid creation that it is, will still love it to an extent. The chemicals of desire still lie unbidden in you. So... in reference to my past. I didn't actually want to have sex with my brother or cousin when I was very young. It was rape, I suppose. BUT... the hormoines and chemicals of desire and flesh still existed within me. I was only like five, but a part of me still felt the stimulating effect of it. So the main question I am posing is this: I didn't consent to it verbally. But my body consented to it physically. Does that make it cease to be rape?
I know that yet again I am simply finding another facet of that same old guilt, another way to blame myself for what people continually tell me was not my fault. But if you think about it... even if it was unintentional, isn't that spark of human pleasure that existed inside of me on those bedroom floors a sort of permission?
I don't know. I don't want to excuse them for what they did to me... ultimately, they have paid for it. But I am still unconvinced that I didn't in some way allow it to happen. Even at three, four, five and six I was intellegent enough to realize that even though my body craved it, my mind knew it was wrong. Nobody had ever told me it was... in fact I didn't even know what sex was, or that that was what I was engaging in on a daily basis. But I knew two things: 1. I instinctively physically loved it even thought it hurt and 2. I instinctively psychologically hated it. Why did I accept the first one to be of more merit than the second one? How can I say that it wasn't in some way my fault that I let it go on for so long?
I can't.
And now I am led to believe that my experiences, no matter how young I was, were still sexual and carnal. What happened to me was horrible. It was all about chemicals nad endorphins and pleasure and the heavy feeling of someone with you and pain and sweat and blood and everything carnal. How can something so incredibly flesh-based as sex be sacred? I believe God in most respects, but I cannot see any good in sex. It is a horrible tool, a tool with which we hurt eachother.
Oh... and the fact remains that I am a masochist, I think. I actually want to get raped again. I actually want my mother to start hitting me again. Why? Because I need it to function. And now that I don't have it I have simply turned to self-destruction. Which is better? Does it make me a bad person that I require pain to survive?
Mallory said this: "It makes me feel like going and having sex with as many people as I can, to hurt them."
And I say the exact same means, but with a different end: "It makes me feel like going and having sex with as many people as I can, to hurt myself."
Okay I'm done now.
I actually do feel a bit more enlightened than when I started.
Saturday, December 25, 2004
Suicide
Well merry Christmas.
Last night was the most suicidal I've been in a very long time. I just sat there cutting my wrist and staring at my Nepal prayer flags. Funny how that's exactly what I did a year ago yesterday. I wish I was an inspiration. I wish I was a good person.
So I very bluntly told Matt that I want to kiss him. Gosh I'm bad at this relationship thing. But whenever I try to flirt with him disastrous things result. Like when I was going to coffee with him I walked into a pole... and when we were going bowling I was getting so enthusiastic about Led Zeppelen and U2 that I drove like five miles past the bowling alley before I noticed.
Plus I don't know if I'm stable enough, healthy enough, or self-confident enough for a relationship. Whenever someone starts getting close to me I pull away. Plus I don't feel like I deserve to be liked or loved. That could be a problem.
So could my lack of coordination, my lack of a sense of direction, and my affinity towards walking into any solid substance.
Last night was the most suicidal I've been in a very long time. I just sat there cutting my wrist and staring at my Nepal prayer flags. Funny how that's exactly what I did a year ago yesterday. I wish I was an inspiration. I wish I was a good person.
So I very bluntly told Matt that I want to kiss him. Gosh I'm bad at this relationship thing. But whenever I try to flirt with him disastrous things result. Like when I was going to coffee with him I walked into a pole... and when we were going bowling I was getting so enthusiastic about Led Zeppelen and U2 that I drove like five miles past the bowling alley before I noticed.
Plus I don't know if I'm stable enough, healthy enough, or self-confident enough for a relationship. Whenever someone starts getting close to me I pull away. Plus I don't feel like I deserve to be liked or loved. That could be a problem.
So could my lack of coordination, my lack of a sense of direction, and my affinity towards walking into any solid substance.
Friday, December 24, 2004
Foundation
Have you ever sat down and tried to analyze yourself and realized that something- an idea or a memory or something- is utterly and completely consuming you, and it's all you can think about, and it's all you see when you look at the world?
I realized that a few days ago... that my desire to be thin is chewing me up like a termite. I knew bulimia was dangerous... I didn't know that it was so easy to slip into and so impossible to stop. Now I am deep in it's clutches and I know there is no hope for me.
I watched my brother go through this. Not the bulimia, but the drug addiction. I watched him go in and out of jail and eventually spend six months in a bootcamp in the state prison. And I swore to myself I would never do that. I swore to myself I was stronger than that. Now I'm using laxatives and overdosing on drugs to make myself throw up.
It was hard, for a long time, admitting that what I'm doing is drug abuse, because I never thought it was possible that I could slip into this. But I guess it is.
I can't help wondering if I'm a horrible person because of the things I do. One could argue that because I'm mentally ill I'm partially not responsible. Well that's a crap argument. I am responsible. I am the one choosing to destroy myself.
I want to get help but I can't. I have high school to think about. I'm going to be valadictorian unless I mess things up. And nobody suspects me... I get straight A's, I play two sports, I play seven instruments, I teach music lessons, I'm in key club, I'm in Lincoln Douglas Debate. I'm a sophomore and I'm in all honors classes and calculus and I'm taking the AP bio exam in February. People don't look at me and see the truth- that I'm a pathetic, driveling creature and I spend weekends crying and cutting things into my legs and throwing up.
I want to be able to love myself and accept myself. But how can I when I am doing these things? I hope that I go to Hell because I deserve it. I'll deserve every sulfurous burn.
And now it's Christmas Eve and I'm remembering religion and my faith in my church has been the only thing that's kept me from killing myself, but if I'm going to Hell anyway, why should I bother?
I realized that a few days ago... that my desire to be thin is chewing me up like a termite. I knew bulimia was dangerous... I didn't know that it was so easy to slip into and so impossible to stop. Now I am deep in it's clutches and I know there is no hope for me.
I watched my brother go through this. Not the bulimia, but the drug addiction. I watched him go in and out of jail and eventually spend six months in a bootcamp in the state prison. And I swore to myself I would never do that. I swore to myself I was stronger than that. Now I'm using laxatives and overdosing on drugs to make myself throw up.
It was hard, for a long time, admitting that what I'm doing is drug abuse, because I never thought it was possible that I could slip into this. But I guess it is.
I can't help wondering if I'm a horrible person because of the things I do. One could argue that because I'm mentally ill I'm partially not responsible. Well that's a crap argument. I am responsible. I am the one choosing to destroy myself.
I want to get help but I can't. I have high school to think about. I'm going to be valadictorian unless I mess things up. And nobody suspects me... I get straight A's, I play two sports, I play seven instruments, I teach music lessons, I'm in key club, I'm in Lincoln Douglas Debate. I'm a sophomore and I'm in all honors classes and calculus and I'm taking the AP bio exam in February. People don't look at me and see the truth- that I'm a pathetic, driveling creature and I spend weekends crying and cutting things into my legs and throwing up.
I want to be able to love myself and accept myself. But how can I when I am doing these things? I hope that I go to Hell because I deserve it. I'll deserve every sulfurous burn.
And now it's Christmas Eve and I'm remembering religion and my faith in my church has been the only thing that's kept me from killing myself, but if I'm going to Hell anyway, why should I bother?
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