To Write Love on Her Arms

Today is TWLOHA Day. TWLOHA is a non-profit that tries to encourage cutters, addicts, and other people in pain to talk about their stories and find hope. Sadly, it's also a Christian organization so part of the hope they offer is "God'll make it better!" and we all know what I think about that. However, I think cutting is important to talk about.

I cut the first time when I was 17 and the last time last winter. Like everything else I did during those years, it was a combination of punishment, pain, pleasure, and cry for help. The human body is pretty cool, and when confronted with pain it will often release endorphins to counteract that sensation. I got a rush when I puked, and I got a rush when I cut. Yes, it hurt - that was the point - but it also felt good, for a moment. Moments were so hard to come by back then, sometimes I created them.

For me at least, cutting is very closely linked with my body dysmorphia and my cult upbringing. I was told, over and over and over, in the repetative indoctrination style of a cult, that I was a burden, that I had too many needs, and that I was no good. I tried to cut away my flesh (my "Adam nature" or sinfulness) with a razor blade. I tried to make my physical body as small as possible, thinking maybe then I wouldn't take up too much space or be so in the way. I starved and I ran. When my hip went out, I couldn't run anymore so I went back to throwing up. I once carved the word "FAT" into my left thigh, and the scars are still there.

I really don't have some great secret for getting over any of the things I've moved beyond - anorexia, bulimia, drug abuse, cutting, or suicidal ideation. You just... do. You decide you'd rather live than die, and that's not always an easy decision to come by, but once you've made it, you stick with it. I want to live. So I'll eat, and sleep, and take better care of myself. It'll still be a struggle somedays to keep fighting for my health, but it gets better. As my life is better and coping skills improve - as I learn how to talk to you readers and how to express my feelings in healthy ways and in safe environments (yay therapy!) - I don't want to cut. Or puke. Or die.

If anyone out there is struggling with this stuff, your secret is safe with me. If you'd rather send a private email than leave a comment here, but you still want to talk about your pain or your story, I'm here to listen to you guys, too. You do me such an indescribable good: I can be me, naked and honest and flawed, and you still love me. Trust me, it's mutual. You can always email me privately at angieantitheist [at] gmail [dot] com or you can send me a message through Facebook (badge is on the right.)

Be good to yourselves and each other. Don't make fun of anybody's weight or appearance today (or ever, if you can teach yourself not to.) Remember that somebody you know and love may be hurting his or herself in secret, and don't think that just because someone looks put together, they aren't falling apart. Cutting sucks, and I'm glad people are talking about it, but you don't need god to stop it. You just stop. Throw out your razors and grow hairy legs if you have to. It's like purging or having sex with an ex or any other bad habit - you decide to stop, and find you're able.


Christina Aguilera - Beautiful (Official Music Video) - The funniest home videos are here

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Thanksgiving is for Turkeys

Do I want to be thin or do I want to be healthy? It's an important question, and I wish the answer came to me easily. I think just thinking about my mother makes me want to starve myself. (Look at me, damnit! I'm passing out in school and we've had the plumber out three times this year.*) Maybe more of my food issues are related to her than I originally thought. That almost makes sense; they didn't start till Iowa, when it was just us girls, and mom started dieting. And it was her mishandling of my sister's binge-eating and weight gain that made me realize being skinny earned approval. (I was 11. My mother should have approved of me without me having to earn a damn thing.) It's so obvious to me that my sister, grandmother, and I all have eating disorders - why do I think she's exempt? She's the only obese vegetarian I've ever even heard of.**

And it's November - start of the holiday season and my biannual starvation diet. Only this year, I don't wanna play. I'm tired of that game and I'm scared of dying young. I hate Thanksgiving. I remember loving it as a kid, but I remember loving Gig and the cult, too. And since I was 12 at least, National Binge Eating Day hasn't exactly been my favorite holiday. St. Paddy's is more my style: green beer, Flogging Molly songs, and no one expects me to eat a giant meal with my family.



Seriously, if you can truly lurk and stop yourself from commenting, you should go look at a pro-ana community forum on Thanksgiving. (Warning: Images on that site will be triggering as hell if you have an eating disorder or body dysmorphia, so please respect your own limits.) It's almost entirely, "you can make it!" and "forgive yourself - start over tomorrow" messages of encouragement, or else it's girls freaking out because the combined pressures of extended family and public eating prove too much for them to handle. I think for five years in a row, I'd find some excuse to leave after the meal - to pick up eggnog or ice or cigarettes or something - so I could throw up in the privacy of a 7-11 bathroom. Before that I used to just take a walk around the neighborhood and throw up in some neighbor's bushes***

I wanna be 10 pounds overweight just once in my life, to know what it's like. I wanna feel safe enough to eat as much as I want, and then stop. I want to never see my mom again. I want to trust myself and trust humanity to be better to me than my family was. Little Man is going to Thanksgiving this year with my mom, and then he's spending the weekend with his old nanny. (Ah, the days of 70+ work weeks, before I discovered unemployment checks, laughing at eviction notices, and blogging.) Where will I be spending this holiday? In Puerto Rico with Boyfriend Dave, *miles* away from my crazy family and their crazy drama and their table full of lard and calories. Shit, I had the best Thanksgiving ever last year splitting a Boston Market dinner with Little Man and watching the Grinch on TV. I'm hoping this year is even better.

And now a song to remind me of my grandma Carol Balizet and the rest of my mean, mean family.



I'd take the seasick crocodile, too. Fortunately, I don't have to. I can seek geographic solutions to deep-seated emotional problems :)



* Freshman year
** Healthy Eating: You're Doing It Wrong
*** Angie the Anti-Theist: Sober-vomitting in public since 1995. (Come on, it's a little funny.)

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Gazelles for the Slaughter

Anyone have $2500 to spare for my dentistry? Fifteen years of bulimia combined with 18 years of parental neglect (and a complete lack of insurance or money the past several years) has left me with more teeth that have cavities than don't, and four more that just plain need to get pulled out (in addition to the ones I had pulled four years ago.)

I am coming to the painful realization, yet again, as I seem to have to do every year or so, that what my mother means when she says she loves me isn't the same as what other mothers mean. Other moms take their kid to the dentist. Other moms figure out their kids have eating disorders. In the pro-ana movement, I was the only person I knew who had an eating disorder for more than three years as a minor without my parents figuring out something was wrong. At the time I thought I was just so clever, but in reality it was just easier for her to ignore my suffering than to do anything about it. Like my teeth - if I ignore them long enough, they'll all just rot away. She ignored me right into a series of high school suicide attempts, but somehow I survived that.

Today I hate my mother. I hate that she seriously considered spending $1500 to keep an elderly cat alive, yet I know if I call her and ask her to help with my dental bills, she won't do it. (In fact, she'll blame me for it, or tell me why I'm not trustworthy with money, or why I somehow deserve to not have teeth.) And it's not like she ever believed in faith healing for teeth. My whole childhood, she would take herself to the dentist, and have extensive (expensive) bridgework and fillings and crowns put in. I think she might have taken me in for cleanings and check ups three times my entire childhood. She didn't think God was going to protect my teeth, and she's known for years that I needed pretty extensive work to save the teeth I still have. She just doesn't give a damn.

My mother doesn't love me. My mother never loved me. My boyfriend* is gonna help me figure out how to pay for this, and he's not actually gonna let me go several more years watching my teeth rot away. It's baffling to me that someone I've known less than six months can care about my well-being. My family's known me my whole life, and they never did.

No real point to this post except to cry, and to remind myself later, next time I act like a battered spouse and want to "work things out" with her again. I just have to accept the fact that she was a *terrible* mother. She doesn't love me. And as much as I want to impress her or deconvert her or somehow get her to notice and love me, she won't do it. So it's probably not healthy for me to keep trying.

I've got an appointment with my therapist this afternoon - the therapist that my boyfriend willingly pays for, because he thinks it's important for me to not be overtaken with symptoms of mental illness all the time. Unlike my mom, who just tells me to control myself and quit being dramatic, and who I have told as recently as month ago how hard it is for me to be a good mother when I don't have my medication, and she said, "Oh, that sucks" and then continued to spend money like water on her own therapy, and trip to the cult survivors retreat (that I didn't get to go to.)

Crazy how finally having someone love me hurts so much. I guess I was still in denial about how bad of a parent my *mother* was, because it's so easy to blame everything on my grandmother, or my absent father. I think she broke me, too. I don't think it was just Gig. I don't think it was just my ex-husband. I think my mom was probably the first person who ever taught me that I don't matter and that my pain isn't real and shouldn't be addressed.

I want to go kick her in the teeth.



*Oh yeah. I guess I hadn't mentioned him on ATAT yet? Name's Dave. Sweetheart, awesome, funny, and a total dweeb (just my style). I wanted to wait a while, and get his okay before blogging him here.

**My Christian and former super-Christian readers probably realized this post's title was a (not very clever) take off of some Song of Solomons verses about his lady's sexy teeth. Clever comes after the novacaine wears off, okay?

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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?)

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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.

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Confirmation and Strawberries

I had just turned 6 and it was time for the annual Strawberry Festival, which is almost exactly like the Florida State Fair, only with lots and lots of winter strawberries (yum!) That year it was Giggy, my sister Esther*, my cousin Jason*, and me. After watching the pig races and eating elephant ears, we walked through one of the giant flea-market style aluminum buildings to look at displays people had made out of, or inspired by, strawberries.

I came to one display I didn't understand. I stood and conetmplated for several minutes, trying to understand what a wax sculpture of an African-American baseball player had to do with strawberries**. After a while I looked up and around me and realized I was alone. My family had moved on and left me behind.

I stayed calm,and I prayed as I walked through the galley, for the Lord to help me find my family. Once outside, I spotted a policewoman and I quickly approached her. "Excuse me, my family has lost me."

"You're lost?"

"No, I'm not lost. I know where I am," I explained, "but they don't."

Lost or not, she took me to the locomotive caboose car being used for the Lost and Found at the festival. It was boring, but it didn't last long. While I waited inside, amongst boxes of wallets of sunglasses, she put a call out across the loudspeakers that I'd been found. I started singing "Amazing Grace" to myself, now especially pleased with the line about "I once was lost but now am found." Giggy poked her head through the train car door and came to retrieve me. I was scolded for not keeping up and for dawdling, and then we went to join my cousin and sister at the make-your-own strawberry shortcake tent.

That night, I told my mom I had met an angel. I had prayed and God had sent that angel disguised as a policewoman to come bring me back to my family, like a lost sheep (in reality, a neglected sheep.) And for years I was convinced she was an angel. I obviously don't think that now, but my mother didn't correct my labeling. After all, how can you judge the validity of someone else's supernatural experience or their conversation with an angel, if you accept that these things do occur at least some of the time? My angel wasn't more or less credible than anyone else's.

I'd always thought of the man who saved Giggy from the canal when she was a teenager was something of an angel. Both he and the policewoman were African-American, and so for the rest of the time that I believed in Angels, I thought they were all black. Maybe Gabriel was a blonde white guy, but surely the non-arch angels were all black. After all, the only people I knew of who had been nice just to be nice, and not for some gain, were black. So obviously angels were black.

Confirmation bias is simply starting by believing something, and then making new data twist out of shape to hold onto that beleif. I believed that god was required to answer my prayers, and I beleived that he never worked through people, only through direct intervention. So when I found the policewoman, I thught it was because "god had led me to her". I probably just learned from Seasame sTREET that a police officer is a good person to find if you're lost or need help. (I certainy woul not have learned that from my parents, who taught me to fear all authority that wasn't "godly".)

I wouldn't have concluded, "She's an angel" if I'd never been told about angels and how they're messengers of god who come interact with and talk to people. (My son has no idea what an "angel" means but at 4 he knows the names of a half dozen bones in the human body.) Once your ideas are already biased in a direction, it is human nature to cling to ideas which support your primary belief, and to reject those that seem to contradict it. That's because it's unpleasant to hold conflicting views or ideas at hte same time. That's called cognitive dissonance and it is that unpleasant sensation that, I think, leads to a quest for truth for some and compartmentalized thinking for others. It's not a sustainable place to stay in the long-run.

Since I thought everything good from God and there was no such thing as human goodness, I had to warp the data in front of me - a woman who appeared in every respect to be mortal and human - to fit with my primary beliefs about the nature and behavior of God. Magical thinking, sloppy thinking, uncritical thinking - you don't have to try hard at all to be completely and utterly wrong. Just go with what seems to fit with what you already believe, and you'll never have to change or be confronted by disquieting ideas. It's like Valium for the psyche. "Yeah, that fits. Therefore, it must be true."




* Names changed
**It was Darryl. I get it now.

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Speak No Evil

I blamed Gig for the molestation. Even then, I knew that what she had taught me was harmful and left me in a weakened state when a predator came by. She didn't have to kill people immediately, or with her own hands to be guilty of their deaths. She had told me - over and over and over - "Children should respect adults" and "Don't contradict your elders." Unstated but eminently understood was the subtext, "Adults are always right. If you disagree, you're wrong. Don't contradict your elders."

And so when a very old man told me that I should keep things between us, that it was "our little secret", who was I to contradict him? It took me a year to break through that nasty little bit of brainwashing and to tell my mother. I think I already must have been doing some kind of self-thought censoring to handle all the cognitive dissonance inherent in my childhood. I would manage to repress or block out all thoughts of it when it wasn't actually happening, for the better part of each day, right until bed time. Then, I'd be alone in the room my sister and I used to share, until my brother got kicked out and she moved into his room. The room was big and blue and I would be very lonely by myself in a queen's size bed.

After mom had shouted, "Lights out!" down the hall and I had put my book on the end table and turned off the lamp, the thoughts and feelings would all come rushing in. Guilt and shame and a horrible sick pleasure and confusion and betrayal. I knew the act made me feel horrible, but I also knew that adults were never wrong so I felt this was my crime, my sin, my fault it kept happening. My Giggy designed me to be a willing victim, because that was what worked for her. And she didn't care if that made me more vulnerable to everyone else. I see now that what I was doing those last two weeks I stayed up late, debating whether or not to tell my mother, until finally one night I did, was undoing brainwashing. I'm frankly amazed I as able to, in that environment.

To recognize a flaw in Gig was incredible, given the precepts of my reality. She wasn't just my grandmother, parent, or caretaker. She was my god. She was my Jesus. She seemed to have the power to make the sun rise and set, if she wanted to. And she told us - over and over and over - that she was not just accceptable but exceptional. Dr. Lifton (cult expert guy) has 8 criteria of a totalist control group. When I told the truth about Bob Kirby, pedophile old man, I also did serious damage to my grandmother's control over my words and my language. I could disagree with an adult and be right. Since Bob was just my friend's dad down the street, and not a family member like it is for a majority of molestation victims, I never felt betrayed by him. Obviouly he violated me, but he didn't owe me antyhing. No, I felt betrayed by my grandmother who I thought had the power and the direct-line with God to keep us safe but instead had made me more vulnerable.

And here I was thinking the time she killed a boy when I was 14 was the first time I questioned her.

One night, back in that big empty bedroom I broke free enough. I went out to the living room in my nightgown and socks and approached my mother. "Can you come to talk to me?" I told her. She was so upset. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?" She wished that she known so that she could have stopped it, and once I told her it was over. But because I was made to endure mental and physical abuse at the hands of the woman who supposedly loved me more than anyone else in the world, my Giggy, I had no idea it was my right to complain. Adults were always right and I was a piece of shit, right?

From that point on, I talked about it. I talked about it at school with my teachers and the other kids. When we watched the bad touch video in class, I told everyone that it could happen to them and how they should never be alone with an adult if their parents don't know about it, even if they knew the adult. I talked and I talked, and I felt better. It's amazingly simple the healing process for victims of sexual abuse - talk about it. Say and believe that it was not your fault or your doing, and you will get better. That's it! And I became somewhat allergic to secrets. Obviously. I would rather be naked and ugly and broken and real than be clothed in beautiful jewels and lush fabrics and living a lie.

I have OCD and saying it isn't going to make me crazier. It's going to allow me to treat it. My son has a speech delay. Saying that isn't a "negative confession" that's going to keep him mute for life. It was the first necessary step in getting him the past three years of comprehensive, free, speech therapy he's had. My husband was an alcoholic. Recognizing that and admitting it to myself helped me get the hell away from him. Living life on reality's terms works so much better. It is okay to say, "Houston, we have a problem." How else can anything ever get fixed or healed or better?
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Today's Lois McMaster Bujold quote (go read her books already!) is from "Mirror Dance".

He felt very strange. His fury at the violation of his privacy was fading, to be replaced by a light-heartedness that astonished him. He was greatly relieved, to be unburdned of his secrets. His dread was shrunken, as if giving it away had literally diminished it. I swear if I tell four more people, I'll be altogether free.



*That kid does look a little children of the corn, don't ya think?

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One Laptop Per Child

I've been wanting to add a couple new features to ATAT. I'm a big believer in forming an atheist community, not just outlets for intellectual expression, but also for forming friendships and establishing some of the social context for discussing all kids of issues, not just those about the first amendment, or biology, or Mormons, or his noodly appendage.

One of the most positive benefits I experienced from church community* was the share sense of responsibility for mankind. This was in the post-cult, Vineyard and Episcopalian years, but even as a young girl I enjoyed picking which charity I wanted to give my weekly ten cent tithe to. So I've been thinking a lot about how we could incorporate some of those same conversations about giving an charity and the good work we contribute to - with our finances, time, or energy - and kind of remind the world that we care, too. Not having any gods hasn't stopped us from caring about others; many of us who used to believe feel a more pressing need to take care of the most vulnerable on our planet, since we no longer think their struggles or suffering will all be made right in an afterlife.

November is breast cancer awareness month, and I lost my godmother - the most kind and affectionate maternal figure I had - to breast cancer April 19, 2007 and it still hurts. But I'm seeing myself more and more as someone who champions children's rights and children's causes So, while I'm sure the folks at the Susan G. Koman Foundation would be glad of a donation, this month I've decided to feature One Laptop Per Child.

The mission of One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is to empower the children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child. In order to accomplish our goal, we need people who believe in what we’re doing and want to help make education for the world’s children a priority, not a privilege.

OLPC’s mission is to provide a means for learning, self-expression, and exploration to the nearly two billion children of the developing world with little or no access to education. While children are by nature eager for knowledge, many countries have insufficient resources to devote to education—sometimes less than $20 per year per child (compared to an average of $7,500 in the United States). By giving children their very own connected XO laptop, we are giving them a window to the outside world, access to vast amounts of information, a way to connect with each other, and a springboard into their future. And we’re also helping these countries develop an essential resource—educated, empowered children.

The internet led me to atheism. Google helped me discover my grandmother was a cult leader. The pro-anorexia movement, for all its faults, kept me alive and somewhat sane during the darkest years of my life. We all know how empowering the internet can be, and how much someone with little money can learn - and how connected they can be with other ideas and other people - if they have access to the free information and communication on the web.

For everyone who wished you could donate to the Atheist Association of Uganda, here is one way you can help children in Uganda and other parts of the world, living amidst superstition, war, and ignorance. If you have the funds and would like to support this charity, you can go here to donate to One Laptop per Child. For $199 US you can buy a laptop for a child in th developing world (which used to called third-world.) If you'd like to promote this charity yourself, I'd greatly appreciate it. I think this is a wonderful secular charity with goals we can all get behind.


*I said it was a positive aspect of the community, not the religion so don't get all excited, theist readers :)

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