Inside Out

Hypergraphia - the compulsive need to write. I've felt so interrupted lately. It's hard to finish a thought or a sentence, much less write a full post. I'm still sad and that annoys me, but trying to pretend like pushing me will somehow make me less sad or stressed or crazy is just nonsense.

My online life is fantastic. If only the rest of my life went as smoothly. I find more and more that I feel most comfortable with either prepared speeches or written communication. I feel like I'm gonna mess up if I say "the wrong thing" and that fear isn't valid for this time and place.

I cut my arm today. I feel like I should be ashamed, but I'm not. I'd originally wanted to slam my head into the wall or cut my left hand off at the wrist. The few minutes it took to pry apart a disposable razor helped me to focus and to calm down. The few quick shallow cuts were more for the sting than anything else. Pain is remarkable for concentration. Sometimes when I feel like a toddler throwing a tantrum, afraid of my own overpowering emotions and down on the floor crying like a child, a little pain makes it better.

And I'm scared to eat, yet I'm desperate for comfort food. I can't seem to figure out whether I want to "not care" about my weight and just enjoy chocolate and life, or whether I want to forego the sweets and treats of the world (and a good deal of the appetizers and main courses as well) to be a size zero. And I'm tired of having to make this decision all over again every fucking day/week/month/year/life. The combination of going out (a lot) more and being on new medications has added about 15 lbs and I'm really not happy about it.

And i don't have the energy to be a fun mom; I just want my kid to be quiet and not have needs in the other room (kind of how I imagine my mom thinking of me.) Depression fucking sucks and I feel like there's no way at all he gets this. He says I'm acting distant - depression involves retreating inward. D'uh. He seems to want sanity or civility or something else I can't seem to muster right now. And it makes me feel like a jerk, but I really don't want to go out. I want to hide in my room, lick my wounds, burn off this weight, and write until my fingers bleed.






I love you ALL.

Read more!

Don't Go Breaking My Heart

My eighth grade boyfriend Chris (the second one - out of an eventual eight) cheated on me with my friend Amy Christian*. Apparently she gave him a blow job. I heard this not from him, and certainly not from her, but seeing as how she had done it during choir class, on her knees while everyone stood around her singing, I heard about it from quite a few people. (This was before everyone had a camera phone, so I was spared at least from seeing it myself.)

I came to school the next day, filled with righteous indignation and wearing my sexiest dress. I had only just started wearing dresses again that year. I stopped as soon as I quit going to Christian school, and quit being required to wear one on Wednesdays for Chapel.

He knew I knew. How could I not? He stood there in front of me on the courtyard where we had sat together with our friends, where he had felt me up under the table while we laughed and joked and talked about music and how much our parents sucked. Chris stood there begging an apology with his face, and trying to foist a small white teddy bear holding a red plush heart on me. He squeezed it and it let out a high and tinny sound, like a singing birthday card or the music in a Japanese Nintendo game.

I didn't even have words. My rage was primal, animal. It wasn't the kind of rage that spoke; it was the kind that growled. I snatched the bear and snarled at him, then flounced off to my locker. Did he seriously think I would forgive him if he bought me some gas station teddy bear with his cigarette money? Not only was that totally insulting, almost more than the blow job even, but the damn thing sounded annoying. Somehow I made it through that day, and onto the bus home from school. I kept myself busy, watching TRL and talking on the phone or else chatting with people on AIM.

My mom was out of town then. She has gone to at least two conferences a year for as long as I can remember. Even as a grad student, my mom missed Easter every single year, because an annual conference is held that week, and it's cheapest to fly on Easter Sunday. My sister Esther and I weren't very close at that point, and we each sort of kept to our rooms (mine a 10' by 10' office and hers a 10' x 16' bedroom the same size as our mom's.)

Esther and I made and ate our meals separately, like always. We hadn't been forced to do family dinners since I was ten, and we both knew how to use the microwave. It wouldn't have occurred to me that eating the meal with someone would be better in some way. (I still get very impatient after I'm done eating, when people want to loiter at the restaurant. The inner diner waitress in me is screaming, "What are you - French?!?")

At bedtime I started looking for some scissors. I found the rusty orange handled ones we kept for opening boxes in the junk drawer. I took them to my small square bedroom, decorated with letters from my friends, taped open, in a desperate subconscious attempt to get my mother to notice me, and notice the danger I was in.

I set up everything I would need on the bed - scissors, a lighter, a hammer, a cutting board, a box of love letters, a trash can, a mix tape, and the bear. I climbed over the pile to the head of my bed by my dresser, and began.

I ripped open the right side of the bear and yanked the small plastic voice box out. I tossed the bear aside momentarily to focus on the white circle in front of me. I placed it on the cutting board and smashed it with the hammer over and over, till the music stopped and it resembled a squashed bug more than a piece of electronic equipment. I leaned over and put the hammer, cutting board, and carcass at the foot of the bed, and settled back into my spot, cross-legged on my pillows in the corner of my room.

I pulled out all the cotton stuffing, throwing it on the floor off to one side. I had to flip the arms and legs practically inside out to get all of it. Having an idea, I reversed the bear. Looking at it, I suddenly felt much calmer. "Huh," I said aloud. "I invertedted it." I thought my stutter was really funny for some reason and I enjoyed for a moment the sensation of actually being as weird as I felt. I calmly and methodically clipped all the hairs coming through the inside-out bear, and when I got tired of that, I used the scissors to stab and snip the limp and hairless remains. I wasn't sure if voodoo was real or not. I certainly believed in sorcery being both real and demonic. Right then I didn't care. I wanted voodoo to be real. I wanted him to know how much he had betrayed me, but I didn't want to have to tell him. I didn't ever wanna speak to him again.

Once there was really no more bear left to destroy, I moved on to the mix tape. For some strange reason, Chris really liked Phil Collins and the song "Groovy Kind of Love" was on the tape. I hadn't heard it before and that it was uncomfortably cheesy. The only other song I remember being on there was "Sweet Child of Mine" by Guns N Roses. I pulled the thin, gossamer strand of audio tape, out and out, unrolling it from the spools. Into the trash can it went.

Now it was time for the night's major attraction - the grand finale. I set my small green plastic garbage can, now half full of cotton stuffing, in front of me on the bed, and took his love letters - his painfully misspelled and written in a childish scrawl love letters. He wasn't exactly a wordsmith and I remember not being that impressed even when I felt all gooey about him, before my supposed friend put her mouth on his cock in front of thirty other kids, and before he didn't stop her at any point in all of this, until after he had come and she had swallowed.

I unfolded the first letter, from the origami-like shape everyone seemed to pass notes in at school.** I held it by one corner and flicked the lighter with my other hand. I let the flame climb onto the paper, and twisted it this way and that, getting the ashes to fly into the trash can. I burned it down till just the one corner remained, and blew it out before the fire could singe me. I did it again. And again. On the fourth letter, I couldn't keep the flame moving the way I wanted it to, and it burned my fingers. I dropped the letter and the fire into the trash can.

Whoosh! The teddy bear stuffing might as well have been made out of lighter fluid or pure oxygen. And suddenly, in a moment of crystal clarity, I realized the exact stupidity of what I was doing. Trapped in on all sides, with a fire in front of me on the bed, I started screaming. "Help! Fire! Water!"

My sister yanked open my door and threw an old plastic yogurt cup filled with water in my general direction. Looking exasperated, she stalked off and slammed the door to her room, to try to go back to sleep. I grabbed the sodden, charred, smoldering remains of the trash can out to the yard, and let it continue melting and warping out there, then set about airing out the house.

My sister never told my mom, or if she did, mom didn't act on the information. I set another fire a year later, trying to perform a magic spell and letting the candles catch my drapes. I had to use the fire extinguisher on that one, and the clean up was a pain, but mom didn't know about that one either. It wasn't until she went to check the extinguisher, six or seven years later, that she realized it was actually near empty.

Maybe my mom should have invaded my privacy, just a little. I certainly shouldn't have gotten away with as much as I did, and she's said herself that she knew about a lot more than she's told me. I had my secrets written on my walls, if only she had looked. I could scarcely have made it more plain to her how very not-okay I was.






Disclaimer: No actual animals were harmed in the making of this memory.





* Yes, her name really was Christian.
** Is this a lost art form now that kids have texting?

Read more!

Not how I want my story to end

These songs are all about drugs, but they express how I feel about my eating disorder.



I have binged on eggnog and buttered bread multiple times this week. I'm feeling a real loss of control in life, a side effect of all the (positive) changes going on. I've been pushing myself a lot in terms of making hard phone calls and just dealing with hard painful shit and trying not to lose my mind. I don't seem to be winning that battle at the moment. I've slammed my head into the wall twice now. That was something I had really hoped was behind me (although, it is the back of my head that I jerk backwards into the wall.) I know how dangerous and destructive it is, but my anxiety just gets so bad I have to do *something* to bring myself back down to reality, back to a physical reality. I've pinched my arms black and blue this week, and I had muscle tics so bad the other night while running errands I hurt my shoulder from the severity.



I have a feeling everything will be better in a couple weeks. Little Man will be attending his new school; I'll have full internet function (instead of the neighbor's wifi, which I am stealing by sitting in the yard in the rain, with an umbrella between my knees as I type this); I'll be more used to the idea of living with another adult. Specifically a male one.

I don't want to have to talk about my eating disorder with him. It's such an ugly thing. Sometimes I feel very removed.





Goodnight my dear, beloved Anteaters and online friends. I have felt too ugly the past few days to seriously consider a video. I hate what my brain does to my mind. Mental illness fucking SUCKS.

I'm gonna call the doctor and find out if we need to up my pills or change them or *what* but I don't wanna get so skinny I'm ugly again. I don't want to eat through my new dental work with bile. I don't want to exercise till I tear a muscle, or get shin splints, or collapse. I don't want to live on energy drinks, weed, and cigarettes again. I don't want to weigh my worth as a human being on a fucking bathroom scale. But I don't wanna go a pound over 110 either. This blows, but I'm hoping being real about all of this with all of you will help keep me acountable for not screwing up my life again. You can remind me how much I have to live for, and that I'm not just a body, and that I have to stay healthy so I can live, for my kid. You won't be like my mom and just let me starve myself to death in front of your eyes.



...Right?

Read more!

Pointless Numbers

(Wrote this years ago, but seeing as how I feel as creative as the lint trap of a public dryer right now, I figure it's better than skipping a day of posting.)

I've got a secret
And you're dying to know
I'm not as pretty as you think
Would you love me if you knew me,
All my ugly, dirty parts?
Thirty by twenty-three
Figures you won't understand
And poetry you won't know how to read
Two hundred to eight hundred
One hundred twenty-nine
All the pointless numbers
All my desperate lies
Trying to love myself
Trying to destroy myself
I've got a secret
And you're just dying to know
I'm shaking with nerves
Quaking with caffeine
And it's all I can do to lie to you
To tell you that it's okay
I've got a little secret
And I know you wanna know
But no one told you which questions to ask
Or what signs to look out for
I'm happy cause I moved from three to four
from seven to five
I'm still alive
I'm hanging on
It's all okay
Today
Tomorrow's another story
And you're not sure why you worry
You can't put your finger on it
And my finger is the problem
I've got a little secret
And I'm dying for you to know
I've got a little secret
And I'm dying cause no one knows

And that, boys and girls, is why I don't do secrets anymore. Obviously not *everything* is fit for public consumption (like if it involves someone else, and they're not quite as cool with spilling their insides out in a public forum.)







(I love Daily Motion because they give embed codes that YouTube has blocked.)

Read more!

Take Your Pills

Know how I know I'm not the only person worrying about mental illness and funky chemicals in my body? Cause I listen to pop music, or at least I did in the 90s.



The thing is the meds are making me feel all the negative consequences of my former recreational drug use, without the, you know, recreational part of it.



It's not that I don't think I ever had a problem with drugs; it's just not how I define myself. It's not even in my Top Ten of personal demons to vanquish, lol. I feel like I dodged a bullet really. Just around the time things were really getting out of hand, I found out I was pregnant and straightened up and grew up pretty much right away. (Except for all that growing up I'm yet to do.)

Icky played this song for me when we were coming down from pina colada flavored mushroom juice one night. It has always had a calming effect on me since, even though I don't, uh, go out for awhile anymore.



I used to scream the lyrics of this while driving around town, contemplating running away. I just liked the idea of not being home today.

I've loved this whole album since it was released, but this song was one of the reasons I bought a guitar. The lyrics sound like they're about me, or at least the girl I used to be (who is someone I think of a lot while writing a memoir, heh.)



And a look back at my teen years wouldn't be complete without the song that I thought defined me best.



Somehow I feel like this girl and the girl in Lithium all at once. Bah. Thanks for listening to the music with me. I swear these songs kept me alive in high school. Just knowing someone out there could express it better for me was like finding water in the desert. It made it bearable.

Read more!

Today I Feel...

Depression makes communication hard, but communication is vital to ending depression. I guess this is the next part of the meds cycle? I feel great ennui. My sheets have been off the bed for a couple hours, but I just don't have the energy to care, and the thought of actually getting up and fixing them exhausts me. Little Man keeps walking into the room to ask, "Are you okay?" and comment "It's dark. Want juice?" (Love him.)

I'm annoyed at how many pills I'm taking, and I'm upset that they're making me feel sick. The antibiotics are doing hell on my stomach, and there's a hold up on my food stamps so I can't run out and get all new food just yet, to accommodate the unplanned oral surgery and necessary changes to my diet. (I cooked up pork chops the night before. How the hell am I supposed to chew those?) Between antibiotics, probiotics (to fight the antibiotics for the sake of my woman parts) the anti-depressant, anti-anxiety, and anti-OCD medicine, I'm taking... 16 pills a day right now. Most of those are biotic related so they'll finish up in a little under two weeks, but my stomach is killing me in the meantime.

Also? There's side effects. Other than unmentionable unpleasantness, I've had mood swings, paranoia, and now today depression. It's not even like active sadness. It's just... a lack of motivation to turn on the light as the sun sets. (I know I should care that I was wearing these pants yesterday, but I don't. They are drawstring, so they stay.)





Don't worry. I'm gonna snap out of it with a Terry Pratchett and a cigarette. But first, I love this song.



It used to make me feel so guilty, singing that last verse. But the song spoke to some inner pain well enough that I did it anyway. Blah. Depression - just as much fun as it sounds! Hang in there kiddies; who knows what tomorrow's side effects will bring?

Read more!

Soul for Supper

Obviously, I'm still having computer problems. (Would you believe the screen on the laptop broke?) I'm borrowing a laptop today and I'll do what I can but my obsessive blogging capabilities are a bit down at the moment. *sad face*.

Moving on: Since I'm here now, I thought I'd share with you something I wrote this morning. My mom had to put my cat December to sleep this week. He was 12 and a good cat, but crippled since birth and in increasing pain the past few months. My mom was so heartbroken over this cat's limp and I wondered, how can you care so much about a cat you don't even really like but it didn't matter for me to walk with a limp all through high school? I guess she doesn't think the cat is faking it for attention.

Someone eats your soul for supper and you wonder why it hurts

We battle one another, but grew up while viewing births

And I wonder if you'll ever love me, like I heard a mother should

Mom, I know you won't believe me, but I tried so hard to be good

But good enough's not good enough and perfect is impossible

I thought I was imaginary, turns out I'm just invisible. Invisible.

I reached out to hold your hand. When will you take mine?

And loving you is like self-defeat. It's only in my mind.

Who needs sleep when I can worry?

Who needs rest when I can hurry?
Who needs to eat when I can fake it?

Children need love, yet I made it.

Someone eats your soul for supper, and you wonder why it hurts

We tear each other down and our accidental births

And I wonder if you'll ever love me, like I heard a mother should

Mom, I know you won't believe me, but I tried hard to be good

Now I've found reality. It's painful, but I'd rather stay.

You can keep denying me, but I know I'll be okay. Someday.

I reached out to talk to you. When will you hear me?

You can't seem to see I'm real even when you're near me

Who needs sleep when I can worry?

Who needs rest when I can hurry?

Who needs to eat when I can fake it?

Children need love, yet I made it. Somehow.

Someone eats your soul for supper, and you wonder why it hurts

We poison one another. We've been dying since our births

What do you want to say to me if "Sorry" isn't what you speak?

You're cold as ice and hard as stone, afraid to feel will make you weak. And meek.

Who needs sleep when I can worry?

Who needs rest when I can hurry?

Who needs to eat when I can fake it?

Children need love, yet I made it.

Someone eats your soul for supper, and you wonder why it hurts

We sacrifice each other. We've been lambs and goats since birth.

Your mother never loved you and I'm not sure you know how...

Maybe the new computer set up will include a mic and I'll see if I can make a simple audio file of that. (And then one of you who is good with guitar or piano can help me make the notes actual music - please, maybe, with cherries?)

-------

From "Komarr" by Lois McMaster Bujold.

Stupid, irrational weeping. She muffled it in a towel, lest he, or Nikki, or her guests hear and investigate. I hate him. I hate myself. I hate him, for making me hate myself.

Most of all, she despised in herself that crippling desire for physical affection, regenerating like a weed in her heart no matter how many times she tried to root it out. That neediness, that dependence, that love-of-touch must be broken first. It had betrayed her, worse than all the other things. If she could kill her need for love, then all the other coils which bound her, desire for honor, attachment to duty, above all every form of fear, could be brought into line. Austerely mystical, she supposed. If I can kill all these things in me, I can be free of him.

I'll be a walking dead woman, but I will be free.

I only feel like this some days. I think my mom is a walking dead woman every day.

Read more!

Musical Theater and Glee

Every time you think I've confessed as much as geekishness as one person can hold, I reveal more. I weigh in on the pirates vs. ninja issue (ninjas would win, even though I think pirates are cooler); I wax poetic about all things in the Jossverse; I miss playing Dungeons and Dragons (I didn't just play: I was a Dungeon Master years before that had anything to do with BDSM.) Today I must tell you probably the most shining example of what a Massive Geek I truly am: I majored in Musical Theater - in high school. I can belt out some Stephen Sondheim and Jerome Kern. I can do jazz hands and dance like a fool in a big group number. I read plays.

And so, I love the new show Glee! Between this quasi-musical style TV show, the resurgence of actually talented talent shows like American Idol and Britain's Got Talent, and the commercial success of the High School Musical movie series, I think America is ripe for a musical revival and I'm totally stoked! (Does *anyone* else still use stoked?)

Maybe it's because I grew up on black and white movies, or because the only non-church music I ever heard as a child was in musicals, or maybe it's because they're awesome - but I've never understood the marginalization and mocking of musicals. Sure, they're campy. That's the point. Musicals are all about heightened emotion; rather than going all British miniseries and merely quirking an eyebrow now and again, actors in musicals get to go all out - big arms, big voice, big dance number. And some of the most poignant, heart breaking, and achingly beautiful songs on love and loss I've ever heard came from musicals.

(The Pride and Prejudice footage is a fan's idea. This song is from the musical "Chess".)


(Here's another, clearer version sung by a different actress that has embedding disabled.)



Interestingly enough, the earliest lessons I got in race relations were from musical movies, like West Side Story and Showboat.



Okay, you have to admit - that's an *amazing* voice! When did we start mocking talent? It's time to stop that. This man was phenomenal, and it's not like no one in my generation has the ability. So let's get all excited about musicals together - okay? I'm sure there are Christians out there who think I'm all dark and evil now, since I'm an atheist. But I'm just so campy, so silly, so geeky - I can't understand how people can find me threatening. I public admit to loving musicals (and not in a "Oh, well, if I'm in NYC I'll grab tickets" way. In a let-me-take-two-buses-each-way-to-school-and-practice-four-hours-a-night-cause-I-wanna-be-on-Broadway kind of way.)

And look, so you don't think it's just a repository of sad songs, here's one of my favorite comedic musical bits. (I love every single musical except Oklahoma! That one sucks, but even there "Poor Jud is Dead" is pretty funny in a wooden-delivery kind of way.)



(You can skip ahead to 6:01 if you want, but I love this enough to watch the whole thing.) Frank Sinatra really was swoon-worthy, wasn't he? I got a thing for short guys, what can I say? Old Blue Eyes *sigh*...


Now tell me musicals aren't freaking awesomeness cubed?! And hey, if you just wanna tell me that I'm a massive dork, that's okay too. I'm a dork with good music :)

p.s. Yes, I sing all of these at full-throated I-went-to-school-for-this volume, in my tiny thin-walled apartment. It's decent payback for my neighbors keeping the talentless Kanye turned on all night, right? (Yes, he is talentless. The difference between the videos here and the crap on MTV is that these are real voices, not mixing and computer editing. The sound you hear came out of someone's body like it is. No distortion and hiding was necessary to make it sound good - it already did.)

p.p.s. Rachel on Glee! is my favorite. She's so earnest and intense and passionate and people aren't kind to those traits in high school. She's pretty much exactly what I was like on the *inside* in high school, while on the outside I looked like I should be shooting the place up. (What, didn't the girls you knew shave their heads and start wearing trench coats in tenth grade? Oh. Huh.)

Read more!

Worship High

There are some places where the rules of society don't apply. I'm allowed to curse and yell at the man who cuts off my car on the highway, but not the woman who cuts off my cart at the grocery store. In a mosh pit, I'm allowed to shove and hit people and they're allowed to elbow and kick me. In a charismatic evangelical church, I'm allowed to experience musical euphoria, cry, dance, or collapse onto the floor in an emotional puddle. I'm allowed and even encouraged to raise my arms up, to smile while tears stream down face. So it makes sense that now that I don't go to church, I never experience that anymore.

The Holy Spirit is not any more absent in my life now than he ever was. Concluding, as I have, that God is imaginary, I see that the presence or lack of God in my life is not the determining factor. Rather, I never go anywhere anymore where lame dancing and public displays of internal emotions are so heartily encouraged or even tolerated as they were at church. I'm not going to break down at the pool or the bar or the grocery store. The environment is what elicits the response, not the calling of God on your heart. Or my heart. Sorry, my heart just pumps blood. Really, really fast in a mosh pit.

Read more!