I'm just going to start writing and hopefully this will turn into some kind of cohesive effort. I really doubt it though. I really just need to talk. And my supply of readily available, intelligent, sympathetic ears has been running low lately. It's my own fault, I'm absolutely miserable at maintaining relationships. I mean, I take it down to a whole new level. I give up on people too quickly. I don't give them enough credit. One questionable friendship move and I'm out of there so fast...and yet I expect them to stay as I do the same. It's a mess. I'm a mess. I'm such a mess, in fact, that I just had to PRE-CLEAN my apartment just to get ready to actually clean it tomorrow. There were things all over the floor- clothes, books, the remnants of whatever it is that my dog chewed up and left for me in a pile, dirty dishes all over the floor...that's when you know it's bad, when your dirty dishes aren't even on the available surfaces anymore. They've oozed off of the tables and counters and down to the floor. It was bad. My apartment looks like a miserable little hovel, and it was an excellent representation of what was and is still a little bit going on inside of me.
Being a twenty something is so completely overrated. I went out last night with two thirty-ish year old men, and they both seemed to have their shit all sorts of together. I don't know why people gripe about age the way that they do. A few wrinkles and a bit of osteopenia seems like a small price to pay for soundness of mind and a convergence of purpose. If I were to illustrate my sense of purpose on a page right now it would look like another portion of a Rorschach test. I want to go so many directions at once that now I can't seem to go anywhere. I want to be so many people that now I can't seem to be anyone. Almost worst of all, I want to write so many different novels that I can't seem to write anything. The best I can do is this piss poor purging word vomit that doesn't do anything but make me feel a little less like I'm about to explode.
I want to write a story. Writing a good book is the closest human beings really can ever get to true objectivity. As a reader you step into the authors skin and see what they see, interpret it how they interpret it. For a few hundred pages you really are as close as you can get to seeing the exact same thing another human being sees, without your own subjective experience to color it. But I can't seem to get my fingers on to the keyboard. My biggest hang-ups seem to be that it is A.) Such an enormous task, B.) Such a difficult task and C.)I get so caught up in wishing that I'd written the Game of Thrones that I can't come up with my own ideas.
In other news, I shaved some of my head. I know that sounds like I pulled a Britney Spears, but in all honesty it was a long time coming. I've always liked this particular hairstyle, it was just a matter of me gathering cajones in hand and taking the plunge. It took a really long time for me to do because in the world of a southern, modest, classic woman, appearance comes first. Self expression can be stirred in at your leisure as long as it stays within the confines of approved whimsy...but if you take it too far, you become trailer trash. Even if you were born into the top 2%. I was and am terrified of judgement, like most other social primates, but I finally realized what my future would really look like if I continued to hide myself and justify my conformity. It was fucking bleak. I realized that all of those small-ish decisions, like the decision to have long, prom-queen curls, and the decision to remove my tattoos, and to buy sweatpants from Victoria's Secret that had "PINK" emblazoned across my backside...they all add up. And suddenly without even realizing it, those tiny, seemingly insignificant deaths of self add up to me on my death bed without anything particularly interesting to show for it. I'm not a Christian. This life is the only shot I have. I don't want to waste it cowering in my immaculate brick home with my pie-making neighbors who all talk shit about each other at bridge once a month. So I pretended like I wasn't afraid, and I marched over to my local salon and watched calmly as he sawed off 1/3 of my hair. It looks weird. And I am so, so happy. Does it make me look more attractive than I was before? No. But it makes me look more like ME. And that, from what I've noticed thus far, is priceless. Am I still afraid to walk into class on Monday and hear whispers of "what the hell did she do? She was so pretty before..."? Hell yeah, I am. But doing this was more important than that fear. All of the good stuff usually is.
In other, other news, I am still single. Two years doesn't seem like an insane amount of time to be single, but according to everyone I'm talking to these days, it is. Twice in one week I've fielded questions as to why I think it is that I've been boyfriend-less for so long. The best part is that people usually ask me that question while eyeballing me up and down, as if trying to assess whether this single disease came about because I have seven toes on one foot or some sort of fungal infection hidden beneath my clothes. Usually I can't make up my mind as to whether or not I think their questions are funny or offensive. I guess the two aren't mutually exclusive. In all honesty, I've been single for two years because I haven't met anyone particularly stimulating. I've been busy working on my own heart and mind, as well. I'll admit that it does get lonely, and everyone I know seems to be getting married, but neither of those facts seem to be a good enough reason to just hitch myself to any old Tom, Dick or Harry and be content with it. I'm not patient enough for that nonsense. I have papers to write.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Where to Begin
Even just the idea of writing a post makes me feel lost. There are just a lot of things. Too many feelings have come and gone since the last time I wrote, and I just have that feeling that I'm not good enough to find a way to translate them all. Where you could understand. This post is potentially going to be the geekiest, cheesiest corner of the world ever, but you just bear with me, okay?
I guess I can start with this...if you are in the mood to absolutely emotionally brutalize yourself, read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. It's told from the point of view of a kid named Oskar, who lost his dad on 9/11. It sounds so Oprah Book Club, but there's this quote that explains the brilliance of this book. "Trying to describe music with words is like trying to describe architecture with dancing." Let me explain: that book finds a way to describe emotion that I've never encountered before. Like someone really finding a way to describe architecture with dancing. You feel your way through that book like a blind man. I've never been more effectively transported into someone else's shoes.
Something else weird it did to me, I fell in love with Oskar Schell, the little boy. He seemed so real. I started to understand how parents can love their children as big as the sky. I was so adamant about not wanting kids because I thought that I would be doomed to a life of minivans and white picket fences and gossipy neighbors, and I'll never want that. Not ever. Life is bigger than that, and better too, but I'd never seen the child rearing business done differently, so I assumed that was all there is. Just that. Just the gossip and the soccer practice and the Osh Kosh Bigosh overalls and the McDonalds and all of the possessions and belongings that were always clean and always surrounded you but had no life in them whatsoever. I thought that whole life was empty, and that the people who lived that life were just checked out.
So anyway, I wasn't a fan.
But meeting little fictional Oskar Schell made me realize that parenting could look however I wanted it to look, and that that was okay. I'll still be a great mom. It's just that when I picture parenthood, it looks more like this:
I want to adopt all of my children. Really listen to me here, because right now I'm choosing every world carefully. I want you to hear me. I just know that it's in my ability to pluck some kid out of a life where they don't feel wanted, where everything is two sizes too big and they get shuffled around...I could save a kid from that. I could give him a life that looks so different, where we'd go on adventures and solve mysteries and puzzles and collect rocks and get the carpets dirty and dance all the time. And I want to write a long story about how I've been waiting my whole life, how I've fought through jungles and jumped out of airplanes and searched the entire world just to find them, and then I want to read that story to them all the time, so that they know that there was never a time that they weren't wanted, not even for a single, single second.
The only item on my bucket list right now is to see all seven continents before I die. And I want to take my babies with me, and I want to teach them about the world and show them all the different faces of it, so that they can grow up to be compassionate, understanding human beings who recognize the humanity in those around them. I want them to live their whole lives knowing the goodness of people, knowing that sometimes you just have to poke around a bit until you find it, but that it's always there. I don't want them to have to wait to figure that out until they're older, like I did.
I want to write a letter to my future husband, to tell him about all the ones that didn't work out. To tell him that I'm waiting for him, and that I'll know him right when I see him. Maybe just so he'll know that even though I'm kissing other boys, he was the one for me even before I'd ever met him. I was just waiting.
I'm graduating soon, and it's got me so shook up that I can hardly sleep, or eat, or do anything but stare out ahead of me and give myself ulcers. I've never been so scared. I probably won't get in to nursing school this round, or maybe even the next round, or the next. I'll have to get a real job, a really real job, which I've never done. Not a job that you depended on to pay your rent. It's such a big step out in to such a big space. This is when I really get a chance to mold my life into what I want it to be. It's such a big responsibility that I'm afraid I'll just freeze up and not take the big risks. And I'll just end up a cashier at the Piggly Wiggly until I die of tooth rot (can you die from that?).
I want to be a bartender. Not forever, just for right now. During the day I want to console the old drunk men and try to convince them that life will be good again, if they try hard enough. And then during the night I want to dance around and listen to loud music and pour drinks for the younger ones. I've never gotten the opportunity to make a dream come true before. In college you always talk about your dreams and how it'll all happen once you graduate. You never think you ever really will, though. So here's to hoping I do myself proud.
I guess I can start with this...if you are in the mood to absolutely emotionally brutalize yourself, read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. It's told from the point of view of a kid named Oskar, who lost his dad on 9/11. It sounds so Oprah Book Club, but there's this quote that explains the brilliance of this book. "Trying to describe music with words is like trying to describe architecture with dancing." Let me explain: that book finds a way to describe emotion that I've never encountered before. Like someone really finding a way to describe architecture with dancing. You feel your way through that book like a blind man. I've never been more effectively transported into someone else's shoes.
Something else weird it did to me, I fell in love with Oskar Schell, the little boy. He seemed so real. I started to understand how parents can love their children as big as the sky. I was so adamant about not wanting kids because I thought that I would be doomed to a life of minivans and white picket fences and gossipy neighbors, and I'll never want that. Not ever. Life is bigger than that, and better too, but I'd never seen the child rearing business done differently, so I assumed that was all there is. Just that. Just the gossip and the soccer practice and the Osh Kosh Bigosh overalls and the McDonalds and all of the possessions and belongings that were always clean and always surrounded you but had no life in them whatsoever. I thought that whole life was empty, and that the people who lived that life were just checked out.
So anyway, I wasn't a fan.
But meeting little fictional Oskar Schell made me realize that parenting could look however I wanted it to look, and that that was okay. I'll still be a great mom. It's just that when I picture parenthood, it looks more like this:
I want to adopt all of my children. Really listen to me here, because right now I'm choosing every world carefully. I want you to hear me. I just know that it's in my ability to pluck some kid out of a life where they don't feel wanted, where everything is two sizes too big and they get shuffled around...I could save a kid from that. I could give him a life that looks so different, where we'd go on adventures and solve mysteries and puzzles and collect rocks and get the carpets dirty and dance all the time. And I want to write a long story about how I've been waiting my whole life, how I've fought through jungles and jumped out of airplanes and searched the entire world just to find them, and then I want to read that story to them all the time, so that they know that there was never a time that they weren't wanted, not even for a single, single second.
The only item on my bucket list right now is to see all seven continents before I die. And I want to take my babies with me, and I want to teach them about the world and show them all the different faces of it, so that they can grow up to be compassionate, understanding human beings who recognize the humanity in those around them. I want them to live their whole lives knowing the goodness of people, knowing that sometimes you just have to poke around a bit until you find it, but that it's always there. I don't want them to have to wait to figure that out until they're older, like I did.
I want to write a letter to my future husband, to tell him about all the ones that didn't work out. To tell him that I'm waiting for him, and that I'll know him right when I see him. Maybe just so he'll know that even though I'm kissing other boys, he was the one for me even before I'd ever met him. I was just waiting.
I'm graduating soon, and it's got me so shook up that I can hardly sleep, or eat, or do anything but stare out ahead of me and give myself ulcers. I've never been so scared. I probably won't get in to nursing school this round, or maybe even the next round, or the next. I'll have to get a real job, a really real job, which I've never done. Not a job that you depended on to pay your rent. It's such a big step out in to such a big space. This is when I really get a chance to mold my life into what I want it to be. It's such a big responsibility that I'm afraid I'll just freeze up and not take the big risks. And I'll just end up a cashier at the Piggly Wiggly until I die of tooth rot (can you die from that?).
I want to be a bartender. Not forever, just for right now. During the day I want to console the old drunk men and try to convince them that life will be good again, if they try hard enough. And then during the night I want to dance around and listen to loud music and pour drinks for the younger ones. I've never gotten the opportunity to make a dream come true before. In college you always talk about your dreams and how it'll all happen once you graduate. You never think you ever really will, though. So here's to hoping I do myself proud.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Pardon Me While I Whine
I came thisclose to starting a whole other private blog so that I could whine like a little girl without anyone having to witness it. I never really feel entitled to whine, considering the fact that I have working arms and legs, live in an apartment that doesn't have cockroaches also living in it (mostly), and have a generally sweet, fantastic little life. My parents are awesome. Every blood relation of mine is awesome.
You know how your best friend always hates your boyfriend because all they hear about is the time that he *insert terrible thing that he did here*? That's how I feel about this blog. Y'all only hear the bad stuff. I hardly ever say a word about those weeks at a time where I am just so thankful to be alive. So uhh...let me just say, those weeks/months happen. That is where I'm at the majority of the time.
BUT UNFORTUNATELY THIS IS NOT ONE OF THOSE WEEKS AND SO YOU'RE JUST GOING TO HAVE TO SIT THERE AND LISTEN TO ME COMPLAIN AND TRY MY BEST NOT TO RESORT TO USING ALL CAPS THROUGHOUT THIS ENTIRE POST.
I feel badly. I feel down and out. There are some days where no matter often I remind myself that I'm just out-of-this-world lucky to have all that I have, I still can't stop thinking about:
1.) I am listing them for your convenience.
2.) And also explaining why they bother me for my own convenience.
3.) Okay I'll really start listing them now.
4.) The fact that I have no money, and will not have any money for a long time. Which is all my fault. I fell prey to an infomercial. And didn't cancel my gym membership correctly so I owe $110 in unpaid fees. Due tomorrow. And I was late paying my rent, so that adds another $50. And I know what you're thinking...no, Anytime Fitness will not take my first born child as a form of payment. I asked.
5.) I got bad grades on two of my tests. Which means that I failed to prove to my parents that I am a genius, which is preeeeetty much all that I have to offer them at this point, and I failed to prove to myself that I'm a genius as well. I feel like I am failing in all areas of life right now.
6.) Did I mention that I don't have any money?
Number 7 gets some space because it's a Giganatasaurus Rex paragraph and I don't want to overwhelm you visually.
7.) My ongoing battle with my eating disorder is always at the front of my mind. I feel like a failure there, too. I am nowhere near as bad as I was. Even my worst slip-ups now look nothing like my worst slip-ups then. But I have always been the type of person who can't see the forest for the trees. I still struggle. But you know what's the worst part? The worst part is that it's not the struggles that bother me. I eat healthily a good solid 70% of the time. I don't starve. I rarely binge. I don't throw up. What really bothers me is that I am still over weight. I wish I could delete that and pretend like it was something else, but that's what it is. That's what all of this is. Because it reaffirms what I've been so afraid of. That even though I have for the most part gotten my shit together, it won't make me smaller. I won't suddenly look like a pile of bones, or even a normal person, for that matter. I have achieved the very thing that I thought I'd never achieve...I've become normal about my eating. But it's still not enough. I am still over weight.
I feel like I kept pushing up that mountain and fighting and fighting to get over this eating disorder with everything that I had. I am a normal human being now, and becoming more normal every day. And I worked so hard for that because I had this magical image in my mind of how it happened for my mom. The second she threw her hands up in the air and gave up for good on her eating disorder she became skinny and normal and natural and perfectly in balance. I thought that that was all that I had to do, was to find a way to truly surrender the control of my darling little Ana and her friends Binge and Purge, and that glitter would rain down from Heaven and I'd be set free, with a shiny new body and a sound mind.
But nah. All I have is the sound mind.
So I feel trapped. The only way to lose this weight is to diet. If I diet, I die. I will spiral back down into hell and it will be years before I make my way out again, if I do at all. But if I stay here, the best case scenario would be that I stay over weight. The worst would be that I just gain weight steadily until I fuse with my couch and they have to tear down a wall of my house and remove me from my living room with a fork lift meant for barrels of hay.
Oh my god.
DO YOU SEE MY DILEMMA.
I have just realized that I quit counting.
But damn. I put all of my effort into this recovery. I have come so far. In fact, I'm almost done. And I am still over weight. I do not have a shiny new body. I have one that is bigger than it ever has been before. And it's looking like it's going to stay that way. I want to cry. Actually I did cry. A tear fell out of my eyeball and it surprised me so much that it made me stop crying. And it made me realize that I know approximately zero ways to cope with pain that aren't 800% dysfunctional. Let's take a gander at my life history of problem solving. Age 7-22: Restricting/Bingeing/Purging. Age 12-21: Cutting. Age 14-20: Smoking. Age 15-22: Drinking. So I've basically covered all of my wildly dysfunctional bases here. What do you normal folk do when under duress? Ride horses? Play fucking golf? I don't even know. I don't get it.
All I know is that I want to check out of life for awhile, to deal with the loss of my biggest hope. And the loss of all of my money. And the loss of all of my coping mechanisms. Now I just get to sit here. I've got nothing to do to make it feel better. Some therapist of mine said that this was healthy, that you're supposed to be able to just "sit and feel an emotion". Is that seriously how this works? I am really supposed to just sit here and feel like pond scum? This is when I would normally eat ice cream to make my serotonin shoot up through the roof. Or this is when I would normally smoke a cigarette or drink a fifth or cut a little (a lot) bit to make this weird, intangible emotional pain turn in to something that I know how to handle. Like a hangover.
See, I told you. Big ol' whine fest. Now excuse me while I go put my face through a window.
You know how your best friend always hates your boyfriend because all they hear about is the time that he *insert terrible thing that he did here*? That's how I feel about this blog. Y'all only hear the bad stuff. I hardly ever say a word about those weeks at a time where I am just so thankful to be alive. So uhh...let me just say, those weeks/months happen. That is where I'm at the majority of the time.
BUT UNFORTUNATELY THIS IS NOT ONE OF THOSE WEEKS AND SO YOU'RE JUST GOING TO HAVE TO SIT THERE AND LISTEN TO ME COMPLAIN AND TRY MY BEST NOT TO RESORT TO USING ALL CAPS THROUGHOUT THIS ENTIRE POST.
I feel badly. I feel down and out. There are some days where no matter often I remind myself that I'm just out-of-this-world lucky to have all that I have, I still can't stop thinking about:
1.) I am listing them for your convenience.
2.) And also explaining why they bother me for my own convenience.
3.) Okay I'll really start listing them now.
4.) The fact that I have no money, and will not have any money for a long time. Which is all my fault. I fell prey to an infomercial. And didn't cancel my gym membership correctly so I owe $110 in unpaid fees. Due tomorrow. And I was late paying my rent, so that adds another $50. And I know what you're thinking...no, Anytime Fitness will not take my first born child as a form of payment. I asked.
5.) I got bad grades on two of my tests. Which means that I failed to prove to my parents that I am a genius, which is preeeeetty much all that I have to offer them at this point, and I failed to prove to myself that I'm a genius as well. I feel like I am failing in all areas of life right now.
6.) Did I mention that I don't have any money?
Number 7 gets some space because it's a Giganatasaurus Rex paragraph and I don't want to overwhelm you visually.
7.) My ongoing battle with my eating disorder is always at the front of my mind. I feel like a failure there, too. I am nowhere near as bad as I was. Even my worst slip-ups now look nothing like my worst slip-ups then. But I have always been the type of person who can't see the forest for the trees. I still struggle. But you know what's the worst part? The worst part is that it's not the struggles that bother me. I eat healthily a good solid 70% of the time. I don't starve. I rarely binge. I don't throw up. What really bothers me is that I am still over weight. I wish I could delete that and pretend like it was something else, but that's what it is. That's what all of this is. Because it reaffirms what I've been so afraid of. That even though I have for the most part gotten my shit together, it won't make me smaller. I won't suddenly look like a pile of bones, or even a normal person, for that matter. I have achieved the very thing that I thought I'd never achieve...I've become normal about my eating. But it's still not enough. I am still over weight.
I feel like I kept pushing up that mountain and fighting and fighting to get over this eating disorder with everything that I had. I am a normal human being now, and becoming more normal every day. And I worked so hard for that because I had this magical image in my mind of how it happened for my mom. The second she threw her hands up in the air and gave up for good on her eating disorder she became skinny and normal and natural and perfectly in balance. I thought that that was all that I had to do, was to find a way to truly surrender the control of my darling little Ana and her friends Binge and Purge, and that glitter would rain down from Heaven and I'd be set free, with a shiny new body and a sound mind.
But nah. All I have is the sound mind.
So I feel trapped. The only way to lose this weight is to diet. If I diet, I die. I will spiral back down into hell and it will be years before I make my way out again, if I do at all. But if I stay here, the best case scenario would be that I stay over weight. The worst would be that I just gain weight steadily until I fuse with my couch and they have to tear down a wall of my house and remove me from my living room with a fork lift meant for barrels of hay.
Oh my god.
DO YOU SEE MY DILEMMA.
I have just realized that I quit counting.
But damn. I put all of my effort into this recovery. I have come so far. In fact, I'm almost done. And I am still over weight. I do not have a shiny new body. I have one that is bigger than it ever has been before. And it's looking like it's going to stay that way. I want to cry. Actually I did cry. A tear fell out of my eyeball and it surprised me so much that it made me stop crying. And it made me realize that I know approximately zero ways to cope with pain that aren't 800% dysfunctional. Let's take a gander at my life history of problem solving. Age 7-22: Restricting/Bingeing/Purging. Age 12-21: Cutting. Age 14-20: Smoking. Age 15-22: Drinking. So I've basically covered all of my wildly dysfunctional bases here. What do you normal folk do when under duress? Ride horses? Play fucking golf? I don't even know. I don't get it.
All I know is that I want to check out of life for awhile, to deal with the loss of my biggest hope. And the loss of all of my money. And the loss of all of my coping mechanisms. Now I just get to sit here. I've got nothing to do to make it feel better. Some therapist of mine said that this was healthy, that you're supposed to be able to just "sit and feel an emotion". Is that seriously how this works? I am really supposed to just sit here and feel like pond scum? This is when I would normally eat ice cream to make my serotonin shoot up through the roof. Or this is when I would normally smoke a cigarette or drink a fifth or cut a little (a lot) bit to make this weird, intangible emotional pain turn in to something that I know how to handle. Like a hangover.
See, I told you. Big ol' whine fest. Now excuse me while I go put my face through a window.
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