I'm baa-aack... :)

Must to stop ignoring blog...

While I was away...I jacked up my intake of 5-htp to 300 milligrams a day.  This on top of the 200 milligrams of zoloft and the 60 milligrams of Buspar.

 

Yes, yes, I worked up to this.  Most people on this would be dead of serotonin syndrome by now.  I'm finally...ok

Apparently, sinusitis causes depression in two ways: One, inflammatory proteins (Eosinophils) get into the cerebrospinal fluid and break down serotonin.

Two, the body actually produces less serotonin when you're fighting infection...this makes sense for survival reasons...unless you're infected for NINE GOING ON TEN YEARS!

But anyway, so the reason I think the SSRI's kept pooping out one after another is they simply did not have enough serotonin to work with.

Now, they do. Voila. I am almost normal.

 

Last night I had a flashback...so minor that I wondered...why did I repress this?

It was my dad knocking me to the floor, I think he backhanded me. He was righthanded, the hit was on the right side...so assumption would be he hit me with the dominant hand.

So I was knocked to the floor, and my teeth cut the inside of my mouth.  I started to bleed, and my face swelled on that side.

The next thing I remember is him dabbling at my face with an icecube wrapped in a washcloth, looking...worried and angry.  I was frightened.

Extrapolating now, as an adult:

-I ordinarily got to run away and hide after he hit me, he prevented me from doing this this time.

-It confused me, because he never comforted me after he hit mebefore

-He wasn't doing it to be kind.

-I now realize he was trying to hide it from mom.

-I wonder if I repressed more physical abuse...this comes as a surprise.

At this point...

I had a bit of a breakthrough last week...I cried for three hours, off and on.
By the way, I can drive and cry...shop and cry, find my car in a garage and cry, make coffee and mourn my childhood, do my job while mourning the indefinable something in me that died and is gone.

Who knew I had this talent for multitasking.

So I posted the following in a few places:

I told my friend Squirrel, and meant it...that he is beautiful...this after he said he was an irresponsible wreck with bad habits I'd be better off without.

He's a fellow survivor (of physical, emotional abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse as well).   And my heart just broke open, I guess, because I can see he is beautiful...because I know all that he has lived through, the tragedy his life has been so far...and he keeps trying, he keeps living and hoping...and when the waterworks really started is when I realized that probably meant I was beautiful too...

I was this little girl made out of love and I was shattered inside. But I still try to live, I still love, I still trust though everything in me screams how dangerous it is. Maybe I'm beautiful too, because I fall down and get up again, a thousand times. Because I am in agony and I keep going, keep trying, keep wanting to love and help other people though I'm not very good at it, I'm not very good at anything, but maybe there's beauty in just the act of continuing to try.

Maybe I am good and true and beautiful and precious even though I feel the absolute opposite.

Maybe we're all beautiful. Maybe we can all live again. No matter how badly it hurts to get there.

So...I cry every day, but am feeling better.

Soon, I shall tell you about my fun-filled Monday morning in which I got a pap smear.

People look at you funny when you curl up in a corner and shake...

what if

I wanted sex with my dad?
I can't remember most of what we did.  Subconsciously I know I had orgasms with him though. Maybe when he went down on me...I'm pretty sure this happened...
I know he made me turned-on, I only remember hating it. I don't imagine I always hated it, or maybe I came to love it alongside the loathing.

What if I wanted the sex, went after it.
What sort of sick, twisted little fuck was I?
How could that be forgiven?





Edited on 11/9/11...to add...hooboy....TRIGGER

The other night I got a memory back.

I became frantically self hating.  I beat myself, cut myself, poked myself with a pin...went crazy.  Stayed up all night trying to shake the horrible feeling.
Then I started crying...and what came was what I was afraid of:

I remember his arms looped around my thighs.  I was trying to get away from him as I pushed at the top of his head and wiggled, but he kept his mouth on me...he kept licking me, and I was helpless, I could not help it I had this feeling, it was too much.
I stopped pushing against the top of his head, I could not help myself, I felt so helpless and dirty.

Yes he made me come. Gods, that's disgusting.
I write it down now and I don't want to believe it.
I want to think I made it up, I want to hope I made it up.

He wanted me to have an orgasm, even though I was trying to both get away from that mouth and not make him angry enough to hit me. He clamped onto me like a suckerfish...and kept going at me...

I was just a little kid!

GAAAAH!  I don't think I'd feel any more disgusting if someone smeared human feces all over me.


I loved him with all my heart.  He destroyed me.  I would ask why, but I don't guess why matters now, because some part of me is never going to heal.

Therapy Friday

Friday was therapy.

We did some digging.  I still feel guilty, disgusting, and filthy inside... and it really hinges on the fact that I went to my dad.  That I don't think he ever forced me. 

That is why I hate myself, why I feel so, so guilty, so weak, so worthless.   My T says that my mom left me alone with him, I was already traumatized, and so I had a need for comfort, not a want.

My mom left me with him, so I had no way to meet what was a need than to get affection from my dad.

 

This still makes me feel oh-so-disgusted and ashamed of myself, that I needed.

Getting a second evaluation

I had a psych evaluation Tuesday.

 

They listened to the litany of childhood abuse...blah blah blah slapped around blahblahblah verbally abused blahblah raped by my uncle, by my upstairs neighbor blah blah became my dad's primary sexual outlet from 6-8 blah blah...

 

I like my current hat, I can look at the floor and I don't have to look in the eyes of real people while I tell them all this. 

 Even better, I can sit in a chair and pull my knees up to my chin, then all you can see is the hat and the knees, and I can see you, but you can't see me, which, since I don't feel entirely real anyway, is how it should be...I can be the person who isn't quite there, I'm not all there anyway.

 

And when the pain sweeps in and rips at me you can't see it.

 You can't see how much I hurt, how I'm wounded and bleeding, there are people who will smell that blood and want a taste...

 

 I don't want anyone looking at me directly anyway because I'm afraid they are going to see the disgusting part in my eyes because I know that's where it is.

 

Then the two docs- the doc and trainee doc doing the evaluation left to confer with the senior doc.  I sat there and pulled my knees up, I pulled them up and rested my forehead on one of them.  I was so tired. The light was on a motion-detector timer thingie and it went off.  I sat there in the dark looking out the door at all the sane people outside the door and I didn't quite cry, but they were all so sane and normal and cheerful and I felt so lost...

 

I feel so very lost...so lost and I don't know that I will ever find my way out of this hurt I've fallen into.

Sorry for dropping off the map

I've been being compost mentis on a social networking site and talking to my bestie Squirrel...like daily-ish.

I wrote a poem...

If I could

I'd disappear
Into the wind

Without a tear-

My memories filled of anguish would have never been,

All my worldly detritus gone in a flash,
Revealed to be barren of worth

As all my rootless hopes and dreams.

And there would be no more me,
One less broken being,

To litter the landscape and annoy the ears with its' pitiful bleating-

A world with one less wastrel of many talents,

One less aching idiotic thing,
None to long for my useless, agony-ridden, bumbling presence,

A sigh of total release,

Then no memories of me, but only the most blessed absence-

(Copyright of the author Oct 2011)

getting weird

Alright...I've agreed to get better...and in return this girl is going to take her chemo and try to live.

More later...but right now I don't want to say too much.

I'm doing better though.

welding shut the escape hatch.

So...I need to figure out how to accept joyless agony.

It appears that joyless agony is the state of my life sometimes, that my chemistry or my evil memories take me there.  So I need to stop trying to escape it and just be peaceful with it, just bear up under the pain.

Take measured steps to shift it, be kind to myself, avoid beating up on myself...but give up entirely the idea of suicide and accept that I choose not to escape the hell.  That the hell happens. That I accept this hell and live not for my own sake but for the sake of others who love me, and whom I need to do a good job of loving...since that is what I am here to do.

To live and love the people I live for, and accept that I will hurt horribly sometimes, because I just do. That death would come as a relief. But that I reject taking my own life, and therefore must find a way to bear my pain and to love through it properly. 

I feel so odd thinking that I need to live for other people.  I guess at bottom I am selfish...and I'm asking myself to give that up, to face an absolutely awful pain, over and over and over...

And it's for those that love me, and not for myself, because I know that my life does not seem to be worth this devastating pain I have to cycle through. 

I guess I have to do this. I am afraid, I feel so unable to go soldiering on in this overwhelming wreck of an existence.
I know I am not worth this struggle.
You know who you are to whom I say this: I love you.

grass fires

On my way to work I put one out before it really took off.
It had just started. Everything is tinder dry here.
Inside though...I am beginning to feel...healed together more. I'm just very sad...my despair is going away.

I want to thank my friend Squirrel and his achy wrist for this...he held on and would not let go of me...and my beloved E for putting up with me...

I find myself in the odd position of waiting for things to get worse and being surprised when they get better instead.

I'm not going to hold my breath, but...maybe, just maybe, I'll be fixed for a while.

I still cry everyday...when I think about how much I loved my dad, and how little he cared about a love so incredible, and boundless, and open...I worshiped him.
And he raped me, he used me. He took something immeasurably precious and smashed it forever...
I will never love so much again, not without fear mixed with it a bit.

So now I get to clean up all the stuff that went to hell while I was going insane with grief and pain over this stuff...tidy and prepare for the next onslaught...that's the way my life goes...I know the drill by now, there's always more feces inbound to the fan.

just briefly

I'm feeling guilt.
Why? because I kept going in to be with my dad.
And getting abused again.
I traded sex for comfort.

People keep telling me that a terrified, traumatized 6 year old had to take what she could get.
This seems logical.
But I can't believe them!

half of me

What sort of demon have I got inside me? I am terrified of becoming my father, becoming evil, hurting, harming, destroying.

He is half of me and I take him wherever I go!!!

I won't kill myself, but I really want to right now.  I want to get this evil out of the world.

a dying boy

I seem to be reading a lot of  child sexual abuse stories lately...and I read one of a young man who'd obviously been through really awful stuff...then I read the young man was very lonely.

Then I read that he was dying of cancer, only going to live a few more years at best.

This bothers me very much.

I actually started crying (like I don't do enough of that!) on the way home...and I realized something.

I'm really glad I have been able to heal.  I have the therapist, the supportive spouse , the friends, the websites, the meds that keep my distress levels low enough to do the horrific inner work I need to do to live.

I have been through hell itself.  But there has also been joy. I am struck by how grateful I am to have that, how tragic that he will not. How much it pains me that he will never take this journey.

And I'm going to correspond with him, as I can handle doing so...because if I were incredibly wounded and terminally ill...I'd want someone to do it for me.

Admittedly, my big heart may be fully complemented by my thick head for so doing.

repost: the kitchen floor

(Another repost from a message board...important bit...)

 

More to add...I remembered this in the middle of an e-mail to my friend Squirrel...During this weekend's proceedings I got down on my hands and knees on the kitchen floor and made this weird wailing noise....

I know, that was what that keening was about...I remembered the way the despair settled on me, I knew something undefined and horrible was going to happen, and I had screamed until hoarse for my mom to not leave (for work), and I couldn't say why, couldn't blocked it all out......my hair hanging over(my face) and my hands on that carpet....I had got down on the kitchen floor then too. I think he ended up picking me up, because I was there on my hands and knees, bleating in terror...throat too raw to scream any more...I had screamed like a trapped animal and it had done nothing, nothing. I remember that carpet, someone had carpeted that kitchen floor with this weird patterned stuff,

nubbly and hard under my hands. The kitchen lights were blazing, I heard the crunch of gravel in the drive, he carried me upstairs I think he hit me hard, openhanded across the face rocking my whole head sideways and hurting my neck....maybe more than once, I seem to remember his face pinched in fury.
He could never stand me crying, so he hit me until I stopped.
But he hit me often enough.
He had sex with me often enough.

I was six. I loved this man like the sea follows the moon... helpless to stop myself.

He was hitting me and raping me, forcing me to a revolting arousal I was not ready for,tangling pain, blood and comfort in my mind. I was going psychotic from it.

Devastation.

Hurt

I need to do something besides hurt.

But basically, the emotions of the rape I just remembered are new and fresh in my mind...It is both devastating and just incredibly gross...I thought he had peed in me, I was revolted, in pain...

I felt good earlier today, but I started thinking about how much I had loved him, before he hurt me.

And it's devastating. I just can't express how much.

members of kitteh commiteh

I feel crappy, you get cats.

This is Rooftop...except I call him...Squirt. Because he does... squirt stuff, that is.

These are the two freeway rescues, Dangercat and Fly. DC is the orange.

Oh, yes, more later...somebody left on the kittymaking machine.

The shit

Meets the fan.

New recall.  Typical for new recall even.



 GIANT OBLIGATORY TRIGGER WARNING HERE







I feel filthy? check.  I wonder how much I co-operated in my own sexual use? check. I feel like a used cumrag? check.  I sit around wailing, screaming, and rocking myself? check. I have fear, pain both physical and emotional, and a feeling of stunned numbness? check.

The new images this round:

Joel, the neighborhood pedophile who raped my mouth/throat when I was four...he left the room to turn on that gawdaful loud twangy country music, and when he came back he had his pants off, with his plaid shirttails dangling... I believe he had on BVD-style underwear. oh, white, saggy socks. That's new, dirty on the bottoms.
His legs were a little chickeny...guy legs...and very hairy. Dark, black hair.  I think his thighs were at eye level.
He said "We're going to play a game." Then into blurs and blips. Some days I can remember what it felt like, like my jaw was going to get ripped off its hinge, like he was going to shove that dick of his into my brain or like I was going to vomit on him...and then darkness.
Not today, but I remember that I have remembered.  So, yeah, I re-pack things?
My throat feels swollen, but I've been yelling.  I got down on the floor, hands and knees, and just yelled, for no reason I could say.

Although while I was doing it I remembered how terrifying it was to know I could scream more...that my voice was turning into a croak...that I could scream more...and no one would hear, no one would save me.

The final image.  Oh boy.
I am in Mom and Dad's bed.
Dad's finger in me, sliding in and out no two, I think he spit on them, I think he spit on them, oh yuck, it feels ugh, my hips bucking, he's pushing on my clitoris, I think he flicked it, ohgawd feels ah DISGUSTING I am breathing hard oh I feel..."You like that, do ya, huh?"  AHGH! NONONOOO I DONT WANT OH NO I WANT AGHDDD!STOP NO (but I'm not allowed to say no I'm not I'm not AH no Daddy no! STOP PLEASE STOP!)

Uck, he made me like it, he wanted me to like it! He wanted me to have fun! Why couldn't he just rape me just use me just fuck me no he has to make me fucking enjoy it too
UCK NO!
I was his little puppet, his toy, he owned me he made me filthy he fucked me he owned me he colonized me he's in me he owns me I still get aroused! May all the gods and demons curse him he still haunts my insides.
Flicks of me tiny and a grown hairy man black belly hair and my legs hurting, my twat hurting, this huge thing in me his face grimacing, his gasps...SLIMED this EWWW did he pee inside me I thought... me feeling...arousal...ugh disgust...ASHAMED...he came in me oh yuck.

I am sitting here aroused; and revolted at both him and myself.

I am fucking disgusting. AAAGH!

Oh, crap.

I chose not to send this to an online friend, because ...she is this sweet, sensitive person...and...the idea of her hurting for me is not a happy thought.

H, I love you...you're an angel walking around, don't let anybody tell you different.

 ..................................................................................................

This is triggery, if you delete it without reading...well I will read it to myself then...I willl have it. It was important, so very important to write...perhaps not so important that someone read it.

Your heart bleeds a lot. 

Don't bleed for me.

###################################################################################

I may write a poem about it, actually...images are rattling in my head...

I am feeling like I'm going to be having a really bad flashback again. Like the one before...I can't remember what I've told you...my memory is going.

The last one...it wasn't so much that I became broken inside, as I realized exactly how shattered I am at a core level.

And all my armor blew off.

For instance...it used to just bother me when my wife shouted at miscreant inanimate objects. 

Now I'll really want to walk out of the house or go to sleep, to get away from her.

OTOH, last night I was on my hands and knees, giant grin on my face, chasing an armadillo around with a camera at a floodlit gas station.

So it's like...I'm starting to be all the way here now.

Like I haven't been since I was either six...or four.  The first abuse was at four, but it wasn't incest, it was oral rape by a neighbor...I think it took the more serious, later body invasions, the rapes by the predators I could never escape but had to trust...my uncle, my dad.

That was what it took to send the essence of me away. What broke my heart in truth, because it's still broken.

Does that mean to some degree I'm like a small child arriving, from where I've been packed away?

I think so...

I'm sorry for sending you this pain, angel-lady.

An interlude: my coworker

 I think I have more heavy-duty caca coming...but it's not here yet, just inbound.

So, my coworker...I have worked there for a little over a year...and he never shows up on time.

I was warned of this by the lady I replaced...and I said to myself "Okay, if Moral Hazard (Haz for short) won't show up on time, I want that time on my paycheck."
Haz, you see, ends up being 8 to 10 minutes late, 5 days a week.  Hot damn, that's nearly an hour a week I have to wait on his delinquent ass.  It needs to end up on my check, not his.

We had one blowup about it...I tried to talk to him about it...this because he complained I was going by the clients time, not some other time.  Not that he was on time by the cellphone, which is run off of a national standard time.

If you are late by that, bud, your ass is late.  If my ass is late, I don't lie.  You don't get to either. Life's a bitch.
Man up or show your ass up on time. It's called honesty.  Your Christian ass should try it sometime.

Well, now the client's time is set to a national server, it's accurate.

And now...Haz keeps trying to rewrite my time on my shift reports. Which is how I fill out the timesheet prior to faxing it off if I haven't written it down on a second piece of paper(something I have now been required to do; thank you Haz.)

Only....he has no access to liquid paper.

Not only that, Haz has no access to a clue. He's a MORON.

He writes over my numbers in a completely different hand!.
He does not even have the brains to notice that I close my fours at the top.  His are like an inverted H. That, and he makes these big bubble letters. I scrawl like a doctor.

I got pissed and reported this to the supers, because as it initially stood, he saw the timesheet last, and probably got away with altering my time at least one week, before I noticed. The rat bastard.

 My company sucks...they told me to fax my timesheet in...never mind he's engaging in altering a legal document. Supposed to be an insta-fire!
Real professional there, folks.

But I decided if they don't care, I'm not going to be pissed.  I'll just stop it.

Haz tried again with yesterday's shift report. 
 I left a note in thepocket of the notebook tonight:

" If you want to forge my time, you need to work on forging my writing style more accurately if you have any hope of it working."

I printed my name, drew a horned smiley-face and left it in there.  I may start photocopying the documents before he walks in.
I have a camera.

Get proof.

sleep and rain

Ever since the Mayday Flashback, I've been having insomnia.  Resolved.  I think I slept 24 hours in less than 48.

But I may be getting sick again from the sinusitis...the 9 year old infection in my head. The doctors seem to think it can't exactly be cured, just managed.   So I have to clean a little more aggressively, irrigate better.

I was going to go for a motorbike ride... But apparently something I dreamed was happening is coming true.

We're about to have a good rainstorm. We've been having an epic drought. This is good.  The land's been gaping open, yearning for water. Fools flinging their cigarette butts out has set the roadsides on fire.

Oh crap, I think I left my car window open!

friends in the box part 1

I have contacted people, and people are E-mailing me...

This makes me feel ridiculously happy. I feel like I am opening presents on a holiday.

I am trying to get a 19-year old girl on a survivor's forum to save herself. This is hard because everyone's destroyed her, abandoned her, kicked her to the curb.

I think I'm going to lose and she's going to kill herself.

This makes me very sad.  She's a very lost and very broken little child... seems much younger than 19.

I see my broken self in her.  If/when I lose her...this will hurt.

We older people...we all let her down, failed this bright, sweet little child so horrendously.

Dealing with her this much may be too painful for me, I may have to talk less to keep from upending myself...I'm crying over her.

Yet another way I disturb people

I think I scared my friend Squirrel today.

I told him what I'd like to do to the man who crippled him through sexual abuse...it's not a pretty thought...To me it's a very happy one.

The man has hurt my friend.  I want to hurt this man. Badly. Doesn't mean I necessarily would act on the desire...there's a little matter of going to jail...

Am I supposed to feel guilty about this?

My friend was so horribly abused he can't think about it without vomiting.

He's a wreck of a person when he could have been brilliant, happy, and successful.
I read what he says sometimes and I just start crying.

I wish I could hurt the man who did this to him.
I would enjoy that so much.

To another friend, I said, of a woman who was stalked and raped multiple times by the same guy..."I'd be proactive, take it to the police, get protection, but if it came to it, and he came back, I'd arrange to be sitting in the dark, waiting to fill his belly full of buckshot."

"Because a rapist is a waste of oxygen."
People don't understand my sorrow and morbidity.

I don't think people understand this righteous killing fury either....

WHY DON'T THEY! WHY!

Repost: Why I quit my old forum

Better slap the warning up here...


I've been alternating between ______ and the other mental health support forum I go to...They are blunt around there.
Usually this has been good.
Sometimes I have to get called on my BS.

But one of the mods there, I think her bipolarity's put her not in a good place...

I was hanging out there in chat there because I was lonely, wanting distraction...and this lady came in and basically accused me of making this all up.

This being the abuse.


(Now with extra goodness...)


I mean, I went from relatively stable to going crazy in all directions over the past three years. I am just not doing good.

My marriage is something I want to keep, but having anyone that close to me, emotionally, is a constant trigger. It also brings up emotions that...I felt for my Dad.
I loved my Dad, incredibly much...I remembered what it was like to love like that recently, and it's terrifying and beautiful. I loved him, I trusted him, I felt safe with him. This boundless, overwhelming love and trust...
He decided me coming in to sleep in his bed and having daily nightmares (From the two prior rapes) meant he could have sex with me. When I was 6. This I dissociated, because I NEEDED him, I needed to be safe, and held and comforted.
That was what I needed, and I had to prostitute myself to get it. So I dissociated it all pretty much every night, and went insane during the day.
Thumbnail of the horrorshow in my head. AAAnd I'm getting back more recall.
*******************************
So anyway, this lady didn't believe that-she actually said "Weren't repressed memories debunked a few years ago?"

And I stayed in there and defended myself...but after, her questions spiralled into me half not-believing myself. That, and thinking that most of the people on the site were thinking something like this:

"Here comes______, that dumb ****. She not only thinks she was sexually abused and wants us to feel sorry for her, she thinks she's an androgyne, calls herself third sex! What a f***ked up freak she is"

At least I don't talk about the SI much. Mainly because I'm not ready to quit.

But I already had one blow-up regarding my med decisions-they're creative...long story.
I was not feeling entirely welcome anyway.

But now I feel like I lost a community.
Because I now don't feel believed.
I've been going there almost daily since '09.I have known this woman for some time, liked her, thought her advice was often kind and good...and she just went off on me like this.

I have no emotional armor-the flashbacks are just blowing it off. Anything anybody says can just sink in and hurt.

And not having this be believed...it just rocks my whole world's axis.

Repost: how do I get past this?

Okay.



This is a triggerfest. Strap on your protective gear and your full-face helmet.

I have figured out that being in a close, committed relationship...is triggering me.

Not all the time, but it's a pretty significant trigger. Why? alright...I'm going to lay out the full story here, sports fans...

My child sexual abuse started at four. I remember that the upstairs neighbor invited me into his apartment to see his rats and spiders. I've definitely never acted like a girl-I adore rats and spiders... and had already been in to see them with other kids.
What I remember is him turning the old radio on country music...and somehow his dick was down my throat. I can't even picture the position. Then he's throwing me out of his apartment and I'm running down the orange carpet the projects had.
This I did not recall until I was 19. I blamed myself. Why? I had been told by my mother (in her angry voice) that I must never go in someone's apartment. So what happened was my fault. That's what happened to bad little girls, bad things.

This same year...and in what order the two occurred is a very, very good question...a different neighbor tried to force me into his ground-floor apartment window at gunpoint.
I was terrified to go outside for about a month after that, until I told my Mom "He had a gun," at which point she said: "Well, maybe he was cleaning it."
Being four, I was just too flabbergasted to argue with her.

So...I kind of stopped being the outgoing ham of a child that I was and...became shy. fearful, especially of men. I didn't talk about things.

Skip forward to when I was six. We had just moved into a new house! It was so nice! Well, I think what had happened is my Mom and Dad went somewhere and needed my Grandma to watch me...only Grandma didn't drive.
So my Grandma needed my uncle to drive her, he was 17 at the time.
Grandma liked to watch tv, pretty loud...so I guess she didn't hear what happened.
I went up to pee, and my uncle followed me up. As far as I can remember he threw me down, pulled down my pants and raped me.
It was something he did fast.He told me to shush, but he he had to hold me by the throat to keep me from making any noise.
I kind of remember him wiping the the blood off with a white washrag,because it burned. I remember him walking out of the bathroom.

Fragments. The fragmentary nature of the memories... so frustrating.

I went and laid down in my bed, so the blankets and stillness would keep my body from flying to pieces. Eventually I fell asleep. I remember my mom coming in and laying her hand on my forehead, saying "She doesn't have a fever."

So even though I dissociated this all, I was already having nightmares. They got worse.
And my Mom fond a job. She was an RN, so she went to work at the hospital on the night shift.

My memory is shattered into pieces at this point, but what I never forgot is this: screaming in terror to be left with my Dad.

What I've recalled...and what's really messing me up at the moment is this:

I went in there to sleep with my Dad because I was afraid to sleep alone...because of the nightmares. He had sex with me...in return.
I now recall standing outside his door crying silently, stuck between two terrors: sleep with the company of the nightmares, or sleep with him.

The thing is, I went from hating it, to accepting it, to liking and wanting what he did.
It's horrible, yeah, but the feelings in my body,and the glimpses in my mind are telling me I enjoyed what he did after a while, wanted it, became sexually aroused with him even though it never stopped hurting.

The thing is...is that I have started hating myself again for the past few years.
I think it's because I am in a really deep, committed relationship with my wife.
I love my wife dearly, and trust her quite a lot. That means I fear her terribly.

When I was left alone with my Dad, I needed him to comfort me, you see...I fought going in to sleep with him, I remember that. I remember the shame of not stopping myself
Because I needed him, he required a price of me. I paid.
Eventually I liked and wanted what he did.
That fact still fills me with shame, revulsion...and sexual arousal.
Uck. Uck. Uck.

Now I loathe myself for depending on anybody...and when people are emotionally close to me, my love for them is in constant warfare with my desire to get as far away from them as possible.
All the people in my life.

I wish I could just do without human connections.

I wish I didn't have any emotions. I don't want them.

Repost: freakish

Funny enough that...My abuse was pedestrian.
Sadly not exceptionally bad.

I even had one sane parent...in denial, yeah, but sane.

And I blocked it all out, dissociated, blanked everything that happened.

Was able to forget the neighbor, my uncle. Forgot my Dad as it happened, every night...I forgot so he could keep me safe.

But that meant I went insane during the day.
I had a voice that screamed in my head, over and over again, in a drunk Australian accent...and I'm American, I didn't even know what that accent was as a child...
The voices yelling incoherently in my head, the fears, the terrors....the television theme songs in my ears.
I guess I was going psychotic because of what my Dad was doing...I was shattering inside...I was six. I was just a six year old child and nobody would have believed. Nobody.
Most people don't know what it's like to no longer be in reality...

And for having had this breaking of my mind and soul done...I feel forever isolated.
On bad days contaminated...but even on good days, estranged.
People who weren't tortured every night by having a beloved father force his dick into a body far too small for such...most people...they won't understand.

And even worse, I grew to like this price he exacted for his attention and affection. His insane substitute for the love I needed, and I went insane, and was aroused, and wanted the sex...and that the most horrid and loathesome thing of all...

People don't understand this, people don't believe this, I can't stand this, I am stamped with this horrid thing, every inch.

I want to be loved and accepted but I feel like I've been forever...set apart, rendered very different, made alien, by this thing. I'm always going to be sad and broken spirited somehow...

Something crucial was destroyed. I don't know if I can grow it back or it's just gone.

Gee, that was rambly. Bedtime now.

I'm terrified to sleep, but if I don't I'm going to wreck another car.

repost: inner kids part 2

(On second thought, this whole thing's) probably triggering...)

And I want you-all to keep in mind I'm not saying I have DID...this is just a way of thinking about what is a dissociated but unitary personhood...







So, first off, my inner boy...who's about, eh, somewhere between 13-15, has acquired a name...and he's the source of those...comments.

The ones that just come flying out of my mouth, like the aforementioned reason I told a clerk I wanted sports bras. (No floop-floop-floop)
They just come right out...yeah, thank you mister...
Basically, I have articulated my inner Bugs Bunny.
I can't help but like him though.
He's a nice kid...and the reason why everyone says of me "You act like a big kid!" The boy's really close to the surface, he's the very social aspects of me. Useful. Because I'm weird, but, get people to laugh and they like me, weird and all.

The other inner child's the little girl. The six-year old, that went away when Dad started...

She...has shown me what she is, in part, the other day...LOVE.

Like a nuclear explosion, a white hot fire of love. Boundless love.

I didn't remember what it was like to LOVE like this. It's beautiful, terrifying, and overwhelming all at once. Think feeling in love with someone, then cubing the intensity and throwing it at everything and everyone you come into contact with.

So, that's who my father...hurt so badly that I had to tuck her away...

And I will never let anyone hurt her like that again.So this has been a sneaky way for me to get that compassion I have for other people, and particularly kids( who are INNOCENT!) and turn it on myself. The frontal assault method of self-love did not work. We'll see if this leaves a lasting impression.

I will tell you it hurts a lot to love like this. It's so intense.

But I want to keep that little girl inside me safe, never make her go out around strangers, never let her get hurt again.
She's not armored like me, she's not protected inside and out, it really isn't safe for her to be out alone.
The boy(part), he's sensitive and not grown up, but he's social and helpful...this other inner part of me is too delicate.

Repost-inner zombie and boy

My friend Squirrel wants me to try inner child work.

The thing is? when he suggested it, I got this image of a drowned, eyeless rotted girl crawling out of water.
With filthy rot liquid pouring out of her mouth.

So he said to make a safe place for her, and I visualized a large walk in closet with a giant pile of stuffed animals she could bury herself in. Since I couldn't get this drippy undead inner component out of my consciousness once she'd presented herself anyway.

The other night I got the impression of crying from under those stuffed animals and a wave of sad loneliness enveloped me.

Today in the store I managed to offend a clerk by making a comment about why I wanted sports bras ("So they don't go floop-floop-floop when I run." Is what I said.
Well, that hurts.
Not having your tits flap is a necessary part of running.)

I was walking out of the store, and I hear a little girl's voice in my head: " She didn't like us."
And I sad (internally) "No, she didn't, but I'm going to work on liking you."
And I made an effort to extend compassion to her...which is hard. She's very slimy and foul. Putrid. And being undead, she's very cold.

So yeah, my interior metaphors are behaving independently.

My internal boy...I guess he got to grow up in a way. I certainly feel more connected to my male side. He was the one who got me away, outside, where it was safer. Why I act like a little boy a lot. About 15 years old. I like cars and guns and explosions, and transformers, and bugs and snakes. All that good boy stuff. Action movies. The boy's the one who likes fedoras and trenchcoats and big boots, and generally looking like as much of a hoodlum as he can reasonably get away with. Or looking like Doctor Who.
The one I resemble out in public. The one who puts on a big front because he's scared a lot and insecure, like a teenaged boy.

The girl died. Maybe she can be resurrected. Maybe she will unload her tremendous sorrow on me and be laid to a more peaceful rest...a thought that fills me with tremendous sadness, suddenly.
That there is a part of me that did die. A part of me that will never live again. Something that lost the will to continue.
Squirrel says they just hide very deeply, but...I fear mine may have no life left in her.

This is really all very...weird, and sad...and I hope Squirrel knows what he's doing. He says it made him a lot less suicidal, a lot happier.

insomnia

Sleeping seems to be pretty difficult these days, or at least sleeping when I want to sleep.

Well, ok, sleeping at all.

not so much that I am wounded

As today I AM a wound...I just hurt. Abuse stuff.

go read this, be angry

Transgender professor denied tenure, terminated:

http://www.ocolly.com/opinion/transgender-professor-denied-tenure-terminated-1.2208077

Tudor is transgender.
After her complete transition, the human resources department told Tudor she could only use the single handicap bathroom located quite a distance from her office. As a result, she could only assume that Douglas McMillan, the vice president of academic affairs, made such an outrageous request.
In the past, for instance, he had openly asserted that Tudor's lifestyle "offends his Baptist beliefs."

what I do with razorblades

I didn't cut for a long time...but when I started doing college on the installment plan...I got really stressed. So usually around the end of the semester, I'd cut.

It brings me out of my emotional firestorms faster than a shot of liquor.

Then my relationship with my wife...I've been arguing, which I've read as my fault. All of it had to be my fault, I'm the crazy one.
So I hated myself, and I cut to punish.

But that morphed, and now I cut because it's like putting on a pair of fuzzy pajamas.   I take a razorblade and sketch little lines down my belly. All over it, in fact, from side to side. Then I put rubbing alcohol on it-and the burn is pure pleasure.
After I can feel this prickly sensation of pain around my middle that makes me feel somehow calmer all day.

My friend Squirrel tried to get me to use the rubberband...the result of that was that I started getting all sorts of purple, lesion-looking marks all over my left arm, where people could see it, and I wasn't getting the same comfort.
I do like the bands though, I can pop myself almost anywhere.

Today I realized I've been cutting because I was lonely for my wife's touch and affection...because we have the Stupid Argument of the Day(tm) and I was just getting it so little.

Furthermore, I thought it was all my fault because I kept yelling at her...and somehow my brain disregarded the fact that she was yelling at me, and starting the yelling in many cases...
I told her today that-I was not telling her this to manipulate her-but that I am so lonely for her attention that I cut myself so I don't feel so heartbroken and empty.
That...can't be allowed to ride anymore.

About the cutting though... I don't care anymore...I just don't want to give it up right now. It represents comfort and safety to me.
And I just feel like a massive wound right now. I'm not willing to try to move past it.

affirmation # 2

Do what works, no matter how weird it is.

Ironic & Hysteric

When bad things happen-last time it was my last car wreck, I almost split into two.
One half of me is very calm and observing, the other is having the emotions.
I thought of them as Ironic and Hysteric, and said that Hysteric's in control of the body...Hysteric's also what I'd call my previous dominant state of being.
Today during an argument... Ironic took charge.

I disengaged coolly and listened to my wife stand there and fume. I thought: "Wow, she's not ready to talk until she stops blowing like that." And I waited until she started making some different noises and I had done some dishes...and then we were able to resolve it.

I've been calmer ever since.   I have somehow figured out to flip myself into a state of almost robotic calm.

I don't know how I managed that.
I need to be able to manage it on command.

The thing is, this new side of me doesn't care about anything other than solving the problem...Hysteric is all the emotions-just a giant storm of them, all over the place.

Ironic...feels cool if not icy, and utterly ruthless.Where have you been all my life, Ironic?

So my mental side and emotional side are split off, and getting worse?

I'm not saying I've got personalities, I'm saying that...oh, I dunno what I'm saying.

I do note I'm getting more split, not less...I thought the whole point of healing was to be less split.
But I'm prepared to take functioning.
I'm looking through Ironic's view, and utility is paramount.

Ok. bed.

dissociation's gift

When my Mom went to work, she left me with my Dad...she worked night-shift.
I had severe nightmares from two dissociated assaults, and was utterly terrified to sleep alone...so I slept with him...and he had sex with me.
I was six when this started, eight when my grandmother's presence stopped it.

But this is about the afterwards.

I don't think I repressed this so much as I didn't remember this...but I recall waking up and feeling very safe in my parent's bed, lying next to him. I felt very comforted.

The dissociation gave me this feeling of being safe and loved, waking up next to him, when I was lying next to the biggest monster of my childhood.

I think if I had realized how abandoned I really truly was, I would have gone utterly catatonic.
I would have been a far more shattered person then in the end I turned out to be.

My Mom, much as I love her...she would not have believed what was happening unless she walked in on us having sex. Otherwise it would not have punched through her denial.

So, I was able to have the illusion of safety...and apparently I needed that.
My mind gave it to me...a strange gift it is.

wondrous strange

I keep describing it as "I feel like my personality has been whacked with a hammer." Also, it really is going insane.
I am suddenly knocked loose from who I was, that person who was in a slowly-tightening death spiral...really, that me was getting worse.

I don't feel like I am the same person I was last week.  Moreover, I do not want to be that person any more.

I want to be someone else.
So that is what I am going to do.

Worry is not useful.
Guilt is only useful inasmuch as it keeps me honest, but I take it too far.
My mind needs to be controlled through meditation.
Ritual connects me; I need to engage in it.
Self-hatred is actively destructive; it must go.

But I have been running around profoundly damaged, yet surviving.   I can feel my strength now, and it is awesome...you could break ships on me.

So, my pain will not kill me, my fears will not kill me...I am a survivor beyond belief...and I can allow myself to love, and feel, and trust, because I am strong enough to take the pain.

And I don't have to feel embarrassed about turning into a one-person Greek funeral on occasion. If I want to have a wail and snot fest, I WILL have a wail and snot fest. If I want to be angry, I'll go be angry for a while away so I don't act like a jerk to people, but I can be angry.

And while I feel very unsettled, I also feel more delighted that I have in years. So much better than the internal battery acid of depression.

I'm going to have to work hard to maintain this clarity.  I need to. Who I am now is a more adapted version.

To a friend who doesn't read this blog

I just deleted this post...I decided, that as indirect and undescriptive as it was about who I was talking about, and as careful as I was to make sure any identifying details got left out...
As it was, my friend might still take it as a breach of trust, and I should not have done it in the first place.

I will apologize to him and forward the original when he seems stable enough to handle the info.

I would never consciously hurt him, and now I'm worried that he WILL be hurt when I do tell him.

He...just told me something that made my heart break for him, and I vented here...and should not have. His business is not mine to discuss publicly.

My challenge: a weekly affirmation-#1

Why?
Because I was a human blow-up doll to several somebodies, to put it really bluntly.

When that's part of your early childhood learning concepts?
It tends to cause self-hatred that has to be kept shaved regularly.

So, affirmation #1:

Only you know the tortured road you have walked, the stones that tore your feet open, the cold that ripped your heart to shreds, the demons that sucked your bones empty at night, the monsters that feasted on your soul.
You have been through hell and came out the other side.  You are stronger than steel. Do not forget it.

Just briefly

Afraid to sleep, so brain mulched by insomnia.

But I'm paradoxically feeling way better than I have in a while.

I feel shattered: a repost

Well, at least I'm not beating on myself anymore...

Sunday's spectacular flashback (whee!) reminded me I've been profoundly broken, and I shouldn't judge myself so damn hard. The not-productive part of beating myself up I knew.
Now I really understand, finally, I don't deserve it.
I'm really broken inside, I'm doing good.

It took getting out of my wife's truck, walking into the woods and breaking into pieces there to remind me...I need to be gentle with myself.
I'm a broken person, and I may be able to heal, but right now I'm broken. I have to live with that.

Right now I feel that brokenness-I've been able to shove it down, but something has shifted. Probably getting this close emotionally to my wife. I trust her enough that it tripped yet another switch I didn't know I had. Joy.

An online buddy of mine has said that it's easier for people like us to give than to receive...I am going to try on this for size. Because recieving always has made me feel nervous and guilty.
Tonight I have to stop and buy a tarp/bungee cords for the lovely new lady in the driveway: a '78 Hondamatic 400cc motorcycle...and I think I shall buy my wife something as well, something little, because due to the Hondamatic, I'm a bit broke.

I told her if she *does* get this weekend off and feels okay enough, I'd like to go to a park. Parks don't involve people. I will not freak the hell out in a park...unless the situation really warrants it, in which case there WILL be damaged assailants.
Like the Hulk, you won't like me when I'm angry. You won't like my wife either. She goes freaking ballistic too. God I love her . She is awesomeness itself.

repost: it's that time again!

Oh yeah...it's flashback-time again! whee!

:Trigger:


This crap is a trigger fest, alright? if you will freak, steer clear.







I've been grappling with my self-hatred...and there's a bunch of reasons bubbling between my ears why it's so hard for me to let go:

I'm afraid to feel good-like someone will come along and hurt me for feeling good.
I feel like I MUST punish myself...because I didn't do everything right!
I believe I'm a failure, and to say I am doing my best is to accept mediocrity.

But...I feel like I'm about to decant an abuse memory.

Considering the way it works, probably one where I was enjoying sex with my Dad.

Ultimately...I have to forgive the person who enjoyed having sex with Dad. Who went in there willingly and had sex with Dad. UCK!

It may have started off forced, although the memories are so fragmentary I can't tell. I do remember, have always remembered...standing in the hallway outside his door, crying in quiet terror, knowing that to go back to my bedroom was to be left alone...with all the terror that implied...
And to go in to him was...and memory blanks, but there are blurs, and what's in the blurs...well,now is the child's little body beneath his...and the fact that it hurt, this sort of ripping pain, and aroused me, and comforted me all at once. Oh god...

And that was the price of not sleeping terrified and alone: he got to do with me what he wanted. What I am sure I wanted eventually. Because I wasn't really touched enough anyway, because I came to be turned on also.

There's something that causes me to be revolted at myself for that. That is why I fear people now...because I needed him.

Yes, there's my trust issues...there they are:
I needed him because I was having horrible nightmares from already having been raped by my uncle and orally abused by an upstairs neighbor...I needed him to protect me from the horrors in my head.
He used my need for him...to have sex with me. He didn't need to force me. I needed him, so I paid that price. I let him have sex with me.
And having nerve endings, it felt erotically pleasurable.
I liked it. I wanted it. I was willing to have sex with him.
I find that revolting...that I was so weak.

That's why I feel this sense of helpless terror when I need anybody. I need people and I loathe that I need people...and agh. Because that weakness got used against me so horribly well.

Needing people makes me feel numb and terrified. Disgusted at myself too, for needing them, loving them, trusting them...

But...how do I forgive myself for needing? for being weak, imperfect?
If I were better, I wouldn't need people. If I were stronger, I could be all alone...then I could have pride in myself.
At least that's what part of me thinks.

I hate the part of myself that is human and vulnerable and imperfect. I do NOT want to be vulnerable, human and imperfect.
That person screwed their father out of terror at being left alone. That person was someone's thing because of need for safety, closeness and touch.
That person was weak, and I feel disgust because per is me now.

Love

Is handing another person the power to devastate you. You are utterly in that person's power to hurt. All they have to do is withdraw their affection, and if you love them, your whole world will go dead, dull, and pointless. It is making another person practically essential to you.

It terrifies the living fuck out of me at the same time as I can't help doing it.

I don't know why this is coming up for me so strongly right now...but it's part of what makes me want to end my marriage at times.
The depth of love I feel for my wife feels...too dangerous. She's too close. I feel too much love for her.
I'd be shattered if she went away.
Probably not healthy, but there it is.

Otherwise I'm crawling out of the bomb crater of last week's gods'awfulness, and I hope you're doing okay.

To the non-depressives: suicidality for the n00b.

Okay.  Since my depression's gotten to the point where I plunge into this level really fast, I thought I'd detail the scenery for those who haven't been.  Think of this as a guided tour of the interior hell depressives' misfiring brains create inside.
Do fasten your safety belts, please, and remain seated throughout the tour.

Suicidality is definitely a negative altered state of consciousness.   Your thoughts usually slow down, get very direct and simple.  You can't think very well at all, in fact.
Some people have numbness. They just feel like a walking zombie.  I usually have some of that, but I also have self-hatred and an emotional pain that's very intense.
The overwhelming feeling? Tiredness...so, so tired.  The kind of tired that makes you want to sleep.  Forever.

In terms of pain...if you've ever had someone close to you die? It has about the same quantitative level of emotional pain...but the feeling is different.
When someone dies there's a horrible wrenching feeling, but also...a profound gratefulness for having known them as well? There's incredible pain, but it's a clean pain, somehow?

Your heart just gushes open helplessly in agony, loss, and love.

Suicidality is different.  It's as if a thousand daggers are turned against yourself.  There's either a leaden deadness, or a loathing of oneself that passes all bounds. It hurts. It hurts.

The charge is often leveled "Suicide is selfish!" From the perspective of the suicidal person, not usually. They either feel like other people don't care about them, or that their suicide will be a good thing...the love of others around them...no longer seems real.

I used the analogy of a clear plastic hamster ball.  It's as if I'm in a person-sized version of one, and everyone else is outside the hamster ball, having fun, loving and being loved.  But I'm not able to participate, not able to penetrate the invisible, hard shell separating me from other people.  I feel dreadfully lonely, but totally unable to do anything about that...as if there is something uniquely and horribly wrong with me.
I feel like a monstrosity.
My own wrinkle-but I think it's typical-is to despise myself and think I need to be killed for the good of everyone around me. But that may or may not hold true for all the suicidally depressed.
Other people have used the analogy that it's like having an anvil drop on your head. Metaphorically, yeah.  Severe depression is...severely crippling. Thanks, Captain Obvious.

So I find it both soothing and frightening to think about ways to kill myself when in this state. Frightening, because, instinctively, I think most people fear death somewhat. Genetic programming.  Soothing, because the pain you are in is not only all you can stand and more...it feels like it goes on forever.
I also self-injure.  Some severely depressed people do that, without the intent of killing themselves.  In my case, the pain actually makes me feel soothed...I've been doing it for so long it's literally directly comforting to engage in something other people would find inexplicable and revolting.

But when suicidal...you are paddling your douche canoe on a sea of suck that you can't see coming to an end.
In fact, researchers have studied severely depressed people and found out their time sense is off.  When you're down, every minute drags by as if dragging steel chains...every....torturous...minute.

What I've learned is that for me...this passes...provided I keep doing things to shift it. I have to try and eat good food, get the correct amount of sleep, neither binge nor starve, work out, take my meds, try to be kind to my loathesome self.
If it doesn't pass I go to the doctor and get something done with my psych cocktail. Or go hop on the therapy-go-round. Or whatever.
The point is a mixture of tolerating the pain and doing something constructive about it has kept me alive...and on the majority of my days grateful to be so.

But if I were to compare this pain to a physical pain I'd have to say it hurts at about the level a fracture does.

So...if you've never been severely depressed...that's the tour. 

I hope you've kept all limbs in the car, we do so hate when we have to sew fingers back on.

depressed again

My wife reminded me of money I owed her...and I feel horrid about forgetting this...I owe her for my car.  The one that's giving me problems.

I owe my mom too.

I am such a failure.

People tell me to have mercy on myself...and I can't.
I feel very profoundly that I deserve none.

I am such a waste of potential. Such a waste of oxygen.

I have screwed up

I thought the motorcycle class was a two-day class.  No, the class is three days-I've prepaid, non-refundable, so I have to take a day off of work to go two weeks from now.

Add to that that I forgot to get my sertraline filled. One of three meds.

I feel like I don't deserve to feel good right now.  I'm trying to hold my feelings at arm's length and observe them impartially, to say to myself "I am feeling feelings of worthlessness and stupidity right now."
This is at least making me not break out a razorblade and get slicy.

I nevertheless really want to break out a razorblade...cutting would be very relieving...the cuts, the stinging, the burn of the alcohol...all very nice.

I'll settle for eating no more and going to bed. Or at least try, though I'm really hungry

Oh, and a word on that...I just want to get thinner.   People keep telling me "You're thin enough now."  I still feel pudgy.  My stomach isn't flat, my thighs are still wobbly, I still look pudgy as far as I'm concerned.

I'm just too close to being fat again to be happy.  I want to be far away from fat, and 150 is too close to 163, and I STILL LOOK FAT.

I see a face that's too rounded, a body that's not graceful and angular, but big and rounded...yuck.

the red queen and spring planting, plus being fat

I'm back to feeling like I have to work as hard and fast as I can and it's not good enough...I hate that.

I have to surround my baby trees with something protective ASAP.
I didn't like the result the first time I used chicken-wire for this...but if I use a smaller tube of it...

When next I get paid, I'm getting a 100 foot roll of 5-foot fencing wire for Tornado's run.
Need to plan a time to fix the roof, too.

Five planting beds made, three prepped. I want to make a low bed in front of the front fence (mucho cutting and nailing involved), and also plant a triple row of corn and a long row of amaranth. Also sunzilla sunflowers along the side of the house that gets full sun-a living sunshade. Runoff from the A/C means an automatic irrigation in that area...
The elderberries are going in along there too. Maybe wild raspberries along the fenceline-again with the cardboard no-till method.

Gotta get the Macartney rose babies in dirt-they are looking droopy. May throw them in humus tonight when I get home & water the fuck out of them.

The idea I had with the corn, amaranth, and sunflowers-the ones going directly into the yard- is to put (unused, unbleached) coffee filters in the sprouting cups, then put the sprouted seeds in the ground in the coffee filters.  This is mainly for ease of removing the seeds, so the dirt around the baby roots doesn't fall off.

With them I also plan to do what I'll call "cardboard no-till"...wherein I put cardboard down, cut holes in the cardboard and dig a little hole beneath that with a hand trowel (gotta buy the hand trowel), put the pots in and use mulch to completely cover the cardboard, then water the whole shebang.
I doubt I'm the first lazy person who's thought of this.  It just seems like too easy a way to prevent the grass from strangling my babies.

I am tired as fuck.

Maybe I should just make with the big-ass planting buckets so I'm not in such a rush to get all the beds built. Try to dive some more, and, failing that, buy the 55 gallon drums at the place where they are cheap... and cut those in half.
The really big-ass planting buckets can get ringed with the garden fence inside, to support the vines.

Not as aesthetic as a wooden planting bed...but it has the benefit of not requiring being bloody built!

Making less work for myself is a Good Thing right now. A really Good Thing
-------------

Part of the stress I'm feeling may be due to the following issue:

My doc cut my Buspar dosage when I thought we were going to leave my dosages the hell alone-and I think that was merely a clerical error on his part.

Merely a clerical error? maybe not?
I have to call him because I dropped the dose to comply, so I wouldn't run out...and now I'm tense as fuck.

I'm gaining weight, too.  I am a disgustingly fat slob.

Since I seem to be bound and determined to have one "mad day" a week, I have to start hardcore payment for said mad day. 
The "mad day" being my up day of the weekend.

Every other day...I am going to start alternating 300-1700 calories, or at least trying really hard to hit those targets. So 1000 total calories six days a week, one big eat day to keep me from going into starvation mode...but even then I need to set a cap, maybe 2500 calories?

This weekend I ate 3K calories on my up day, maybe more. Jeebus.
No wonder I put on six pounds over the last two weeks, I've been eating like a fucking piglet.  Oink oink.
I need to weigh 140, NOT 150, NOT ONE FUCKING FIFTY-EIGHT-which is what I climbed on the scales at yesterday.

At 143 I looked in the mirror and I almost liked what I saw. I looked...shapely, angular.  My stomach was curved, yes, but not bloated the way it is now.  My face was chiseled-looking, and I really liked it.

 I thought I was finally almost thin enough.
Then I promptly ate myself up to my current blimpiness...which just goes to show I need to be thinner, so I don't get like this again.

NEVER AGAIN, as the Jews say...

I look solid. Like, meaty, fleshy, flabby, nasty.

I look disgusting.

No more fucking peanut butter.  No jelly. Only sugar-free chocolate.  No more of those damn builder bars.  No Oreos-those are chocolate crack.

The new food rules are:

 No white flour, no refined sugar, no nuts. No compromises.

I have to be just as rigid about this as I am about being vegan.

And the Teahaddis declared war on me first, too...

I would like to advance the idea that the hard right wing can no longer be dealt with rationally.

They are not here to coexist peacefully with us.  They've declared war.

Case in point:
 The following is excerpted from an article on The Hill, Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) speaking:

Tea Party activists pushed members to stand firm on spending cuts and the debt limit.  "They don't want us to get pushed around, which is exactly what I believe in," he said. "You've got to stand firm or you're going to lose credibility."

What do Dems perennially do? compromise.  Compromise can make you look good to someone who holds an ideal of compromise. 

When we lefties compromise with the hard right, we're projecting our own belief system on people who don't share it- to wit, that we are reasonable, and that reasonable people compromise, work together, build relationships, get along...

Well, we place a value-a high one, on being reasonable.  We're dealing with people who grew up in right-wing millenialist circles, and they believe in purity, not reason. They are not here to get along with people who of differing faiths, who behave differently, who look or think differently.  They are not here to be fair, equitable, even-handed, to embrace the Democratic spirit, to be tolerant of diverse points of view and accept that things cannot be all their way (since they aren't a majority)...

They are here to purge.

These people think that compromise indicates weakness.
They do not want to work with us.
They do not want to live with us

AND THAT IS THE POINT!

They want to see our points of view quashed, our personal freedoms (like same-sex intercourse and relationships) hidden again and most likely made a felony offense again.

They want their view of the country to prevail, no matter who they have to stomp on, shut up or threaten to do that. Religious minorities had better shut up.  People who aren't drinking the free-market lassiez-faire Kool-aid, they better shut up too.  People who want affordable health care, a social-safety net, affordable housing? Pollution control? limits on business monopolies?

They want us to all just shut up and become invisible. Or they would like to make us dead, in some cases.

They are on a holy war to purge the infidels, not a campaign for reasonable government.

As a queer, a third-gender person, a spouse of a trans woman, and a politically vocal person...this could get ugly.

Built planting beds today-and I have made dirt!

I did a lot of work, and feel inordinately happy for having done so. Three beds made, three beds lined.
I cut two scavenged pallets in half, remove the underside boards from two of the four pieces, and nail the results together.  I then line that with cardboard first (dumpster-dived, natch), then pack other people's yard waste inside that.
Thank you, other people, for being neat freaks and throwing out your hardwood leaves, pine needles, and most especially grass clippings!
Those turn into dirt much faster than the hardwood leaves and pine needles.

In fact, I dug down in the holey water trough-it's a 600 gallon trough the neighbor gave me-and I have made dirt! I filled it up with leafmould last fall, and at least the bottom composted. There's probably about a yard of really rich humus in there, ready to be mixed with topsoil and then used.

Went and got some more cardboard- I have more beds to line.

Because I have physical energy, physical activity isn't the flog-the-carcass experience that it was when the sinuses were full of crud.  I am enjoying the heck out of this project.

But I got green crud out of my nose...uhoh.

Next weekend, I'm going to be tied up learning to ride a motorcycle-motorcycle riders safety course.
Provided that goes well I'll be talking to my credit union about pre-approval, then, provided I can do it given a $500 down, the shopping trip commences.

Rachel from cardholder services called...

I'm sure you've gotten these...calls, it's an automated recording that says "This is Rachel from cardholder services.  We need to confirm your account information." or some such B.S.
It's obviously phone phishing.  I assume that if you were foolish enough to give them your credit card info, they'd clean you out.

Well, today, my wife picked up the phone, and got this very robocall.... and held on until the automated system connected her with a live guy...who later turned out to be in Mumbai...but that's skipping ahead.

I'm in the bathroom, and what I hear is this:"Yes, can you please put me on your no-call list?"
"Um, no, I don't have a cordless phone...well! I see!  I hope a poisonous snake crawls up your intestines, but first it eats your balls...yes, Mumbai? I know where Mumbai is, if I'm ever there I'll have to look you up...maybe the next Pakistani bomb will get you this time?"

Apparently the guy had started it by suggesting my wife take the phone and shove it up her ass...

As she put it afterwards: "They may know what customer service is, but they have absolutely no truck with it."

I didn't declare classwar, it was declared on me...

Now I usually don't think I ought to indulge in political vitriol, because I think there's too much of it...and there's too many people who take it literally. We need to stop treating each other like enemies and start remembering we're all Americans, and at the end of the day we all  share this country, even though we disagree.

But sometimes, when I'm feeling angry, it's nice to have someone do the ranting for me.

 Enter The Rude Pundit:   http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/

But this little gem, quoted for wisdom, isn't rude at all-it's the Goddess' own truth:

.... the mania behind the budget slashing is propelled by the insidious opposite argument: that government itself is unpatriotic and that to fund its actions is akin to funding the enemy. It redefines patriotism as not being about country but about individual.

Yes. YES.  That's precisely what the bill of goods the conservative working-class has been sold, and it's patently ridiculous.  You're not building up the country if you're only out for yourself. In fact, that seems to be the problem-the power elite(and really, everybody else) have decided they want all the wealth and power themselves, rather than looking out for the greater welfare. 

This attitude and related behaviors are leading people to devour the health and wealth of our country from within like a batch of flesh-eating parasites, and we're letting it happen.

Because they have a critical mass of us hoodwinked.

And another bit, told in pure Rude Pundit style:

It buys into a conservative lie that if you cut taxes a little for businesses, it'll bring in some jobs. But if you cut taxes a lot? Well, fuck, that has to bring in a shitload of jobs. Yeah, ask Ohio how that worked out. It's like saying that if a little heroin gets you high, then a whole bunch of heroin will get you really, really fucked up. Your theory fails when you're dead in a pool of your own vomit

I just have to say the following:

Look, we've been cutting taxes and cutting taxes all my life.  I was 8 when Reagan was elected.   I have seen nothing but a long, slow slide downhill for most of the people I know.   Our wages stagnate while the cost of everything else goes up yearly.

Schools-suck.  Healthcare-sucks, not the care itself necessarily but getting access-I already know of one person lack of healthcare access killed-my Mom's friend of 15 years. Our infrastructure's on a downhill slide.  Those things that make us rich as a nation are being neglected.

And we are still being told: we must cut taxes.

When are y'all going to wake up and realize: tax cuts for the rich DON'T result in prosperity! They result in all the wealth and power concentrating at the very top!   If you aren't in the top 5%, why do you KEEP BELIEVING THIS CRAP!!!

Maybe the birthrate of suckers has gone up since PT Barnum's day.

I think an interrelated problem is national: the fallacious faith in free trade

I buy the argument-established dogma to economists-that trade protection equals a price hike...but only to a degree.  Because the main influence on pricing is what the market will bear.

 What I propose is that we stop being international patsies with this free trade=automatic wealth nonsense and start strategizing for our own interests, like every other country does.

http://www.economyincrisis.org/content/uncle-sam-global-trade-sucker

(And I think I shall order this guy's book, because he agrees with my position...and I want him to tell me why I'm right, so I can tell other people why I'm right without sounding like a moron.)

Basically, we need to start practicing protectionism like Japan and China.

BUT, and this is a big but, that free-trade lie, while making the rest of us worse off, has made a few people very, very well off indeed.  Those people have a staked interest in free trade not only staying, but spreading to more countries.

Never mind that our supposed "free trade" with a lot of countries seems to not be so free.  China consistently manipulates the yuan so as to make its' products artificially cheap on the world market.  Everyone knows this, but do you think any politician would suggest altering our agreement-by, say, imposing a tariff on finished products from China?

No.  And this is because the wealthy have accumulated the power along with the money-they can now pretty much control the government.  In effect, our entire government has become at least a partly captured agency catering to the wealthy.

We have our collective apathy, gullibility, and ignorance to thank for this, though. We are the Democrats, the Republicans, the people who either do or do not show up to vote.

 But I refuse to say we get the government we deserve, because I'm not nasty enough to think anyone deserves to have their democracy sold out from under them by deception.

got rambly last night on a forum....

Dunno that I entertained anyone but myself.

But I'm going to repost it here, along with a link to the article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/g-roge..._b_806588.html
 (in reference to the article)
Maybe his drawing in of those disparate subjects: art, politics, symbols, and religion, just appealed to me.
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I guess I find it interesting because the art I've done...and I won't say my art's terribly good, but I enjoy making it...I incorporate symbols in there, and often don't figure out why for some time afterwards. I tend to like and aspire to paint pop surrealism-lowbrow. Why? Blame it on my history of LSD use and love of comics...(BRIGHT....PRETTY....COLORS!!!)

I am inclined to paint horribly morbid things, like people getting blown up or deformed animals (previous subjects) in dayglo, glow-in-the-dark cartoony style. I'm also a mishmash of spiritual inclinations, so those too are grist for the artistic symbol mill.
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I went online after the shootings in Arizona, and saw the postings of Jared Loughner. The man, in my semi-educated opinion, is a flaming schizophrenic.
Schizophrenics/schizoaffectives get symbols and reality confused. Apparently, so does the Catholic League.
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Now, the rhetoric on Fox news is, as always...hysterical. Not funny hysterical either. While they have a right to say it (although I don't know that they have an inalienable right to the public airwaves and cable utilities-that's debatable...),I judge them to be incredibly immoral as an organization for engaging in the hyperbole and, erm..."inaccuracies" is the best face I can put on it... that they do.

Because there are people out there who are either uneducated or delusive and they are going to believe what Fox tells them.Not that Loughner was one. I'm not sure what side-spur of reality he was on.
But I live in wingnut land, and I hear them repeat stuff that, since I don't listen to anything Fox puts out, completely gobsmacks me. And they believe it totally, never question a thing. The have more guns than my wife and I.
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“

Of course, you can also get caught up in believing the symbol itself and not what it represents.

”

People get them confused. A lot of people.

I've been kinda following PZ Myers' jousting with Catholics over some round white crackers.
Yep, PZ desecrated a Host. To at least one Catholic who emailed him, this meant that PZ was planning on physically injuring Christ-when he announced his plans. You can read the blog post here:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2...esecration.php.

When I was a Christian, I read the new testament a lot, and got that Christianity was about love for others, forgiveness, and being Christlike.

I read "Judge not lest ye be Judged," as an injunction against condemning others. Similarly, the injunction not to worry about the mote in someone else's eye until you've gotten the plank out of your own.

Christ (if he existed) seemed to want us to focus on our own shortcomings, and to be gentle with others.
This is a wise and kind way of living.

But I have found that a lot of Christians-not all, but a number of them, perhaps the majority in the evangelical movement, are just bone-deep hateful.
And it's not just my orientation or my gender and their disapproval thereof.

The most hateful ones are usually white, well-off, racist, and classist. Nor do you have to scratch them very hard to find that out. There's a lot of them.
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As someone who studied ceremonial witchcraft for a bit, the reason symbols are used (deliberately) is because they raise the emotions, the idea being to stack symbol upon symbol, raising one's emotional state to a point of ecstasy, transcending one's normal state of consciousness. I rather assume this is the whole point of the ornateness of Catholic churches.
But most people invest the symbol itself with sacredness...when the symbol is just a "finger pointing at the moon."
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Advertisers use symbols to deliberately create an artificial need (in many cases). Otherwise ads would all look like classifieds. The object they are selling is equated with something else-mastery, sex, social competence..happiness.
I imagine all of us have had buyer's remorse? where we got exactly what we wanted and felt like crap about it? Maybe because we were subliminally told we were buying happiness. Instead we got product X.

Maybe part of the financial crisis is we somehow behaved like debt addicts as a group? that is, our debt made us unhappy, so we bought more crap to make ourselves happy b/c ads programmed us to think buying crap makes us happy, so we got more into debt, so less happy, so bought more crap, and rinse/repeat into the poorhouse...
I dunno. It was just a thought. No supportive data.

Anyway, sorry this post turned out so damned rambly. I'm having insomnia lately, and it seems to make my ability to stay on point way worse. Mind you, I execute random topic broadjumps even at optimum status.

Paging Mistress Moonbeam Manners!

As a Pagan, how does one graciously deal with the Christians?

 -How do you turn down invites to come to church on Sunday morning?   I just had to do that from someone I like, and it was most...uncomfortable.

-How do you respond when someone asks "Are you saved?" knowing full well this person's going to attach to you like a limpet for half an hour if you don't lie? At that point, are you justified in being rude? 
A person I knew was harassed on a city bus so persistently she had to threaten to follow the Christian lady home and poop on her lawn in order to get left alone.

-How do you respond when someone starts talking about the Christian god around you? Do you clam up or come out of the broom closet? What if you're at work?   I  live in the bible belt, so I get it at work.

-Why is it that those who seem the most forward about their Christianity are often out to pull one over on you in any business dealing you might have? I've seen this multiple times, including a minister who tried to buy something from me for way less than its' value...and after I refused his final offer he admitted he had just wanted to resell it at a better price.

-Why do they expect respect for their beliefs when, if I am foolish enough to present my beliefs, I am disrespected?

-How could one potentially point out how rude they themselves are being when they try to convert you, in the nicest way possible?

Losing / keeping off weight, in about ten thousand unfun steps

I have gone from 275 to 150 pounds, and I intend to maintain that loss this time-ideally I want to make it down to 140. I'm 5' 9"  140 is 20 pounds within the normal weight range for my height, meaning I can't have a few bad days and make myself overweight again...which remains a possibility so long as I'm at 150.

 

Having yoyoed multiple times, I gain very easily.Most obnoxious.

 

Losing the weight has been simple, if really hard. 

 

What my experience implies is that if you're obese on a typical American diet, and you want to not be obese, you have to stop eating the typical American diet and eat something a lot better for you.

 

Permanently.

 

You also have to stop living a sedentary lifestyle, like a typical American.

 

Again, permanently.

 

(A few people to whom I have described how I eat have said, "That's crazy!" when they hear it. It's fanatical, yeah, but it seems to be what I needed to do.  If eating whatever you liked worked, we'd all look like supermodels.)

 

Magazines and TV shows lure you in by advertising some new miracle diet. There isn't any miraculous wonder diet.

 You just have to be willing to endure a certain level of misery. Get up  and not eat what you want, over and over.

 

According to social research, the two behaviors found in people who maintain massive weight loss is calorie-counting and daily weighing.  I have to admit I'm not actually counting my calories, really, just sort of keeping an estimate in my head these days.

 

Since I've been counting daily for a year, that estimate's likely to be semi-accurate. if I start putting on any weight-like five pounds or more, it's back to being rigorous, writing it all down.

Right now I'm losing, so I'm not complaining.

But you'd better believe I climb on that scale daily. If you don't do that, it's really easy to put on ten pounds without realizing it.  I actually want a really good digital scale, but the budget fairy isn't waving her wand on it yet. Other priorities.

 

My other personal tricks: I'm vegan, save for honey and those meds/ supplements I absolutely can't get without gelatin capsules.  This, at one fell swoop, eliminates a large part of the fatty foods I could eat as a possibility.

Mind, I'm not insisting that will work for everyone.  You have to evolve your own strategy. I suspect some people need some meat. I don't seem to, but I'm really careful about my protein intake, too.

 

I also have binge eating issues...so I identify my binge foods and they don't generally get brought home. I'm finally pretty much banning peanut butter except for an occasional treat; I go hog-wild on that stuff.  Anything chocolate, cookies, gourmet bread products...

 

All the above I will binge on.  So I try to only buy it in small amounts-single servings preferred.

 

Changing your diet will take time-you body will drive you berserk wih cravings.  Therefore it's easier to taper onto almost-all healthy foods over about six months.

 

Other things: Fast food is not your friend.  It is a trainwreck nutritionally, it's very expensive when compared with a home-cooked meal, it can have contaminants in it.  Even the best of it is loaded with salt.  The worst is a breaded heart attack.

I also used an even more restrictive version of the Johnson up-day down-day diet than the doc recommends.  As I said, my metabolism is messed up

 

Your alternative to fast food when you really can't cook, or aren't at home?  The produce section and the health food section.  Go to the supermarket, get some fresh fruit, a vegetable you like raw, a protein bar, and maybe a single serving of nuts-or maybe a tiny bit of good cheese from the deli, if you eat cheese?  There's your to-go-meal for in the car. Cheaper, way better for you.

 

Take a vitamin.

 

I also...sigh...have to admit I used some sudafed to help suppress my appetite.  Off and on, because you can get hooked on it; you can also damage your heart.  No more than the recommended dose of 12 hour sudafed, preferably every other day.

And mind you, I have bad allergies too, so I wasn't *just* using the pseudoephedrine for its' appetite suppression and fat catabolizing properties.

Anyway,

I think white tea is way safer for the purpose of appetite suppression and catabolysis.  I would guzzle it, were I you.

I favor stevia as a sweetening agent, and chromium picolinate seems to help.

But nothing's going to substitute for restricting calories and working out vigorously. Absolutely nothing.

 

You also need to eat lots of raw vegetables and the lower-calorie fruits.  If you're eating the kind of lower-than-the-American-norm caloric intake you should be eating, you'll be hungry if you don't eat lots of bulky vegetables to fill your stomach up.

Oil on the veggies will help you absorb beta carotenes, but it takes only a little oil to do that.

 

Look, if your problem isn't as severe as mine was-275 pounds and medical comorbidities-you don't have to go quite as far.  The thing to remember is, if you don't want to go back to looking the way you did before you started dieting, then you have to commit to permanence in your changes.

Which I guess means implement change slowly. And do not expect the fat to come off fast-2 pounds a week is good.  This is a marathon, not a sprint.

Don't panic-diet ( "Ohmygod I have to fit this dress in three weeks!" ) Buy stuff loose and/or let-outable.

And I really do mean that you should only do that which you can keep doing. Because to maintain, you pretty much have to keep doing it.

Reason being? I can see how crappy my metabolism has gotten from yoyoing. I can almost look at food and gain.

 

 I know that yoyo dieting also has been shown to place a strain on the heart. 

Actually, any time you diet it's a strain on the body...and if you keep losing, then gaining, repeatedly, it's actually worse for you in the end medically than if you left it the heck alone and just focused on eating nutritionally well and exercising daily.

 

Finally...it's important that you try and like your body, no matter its' size or shape.  

I know, easier said than done, but at one point I was so ashamed of the way I looked that it prevented me from exercising my body, for fear people would laugh at how much I jiggled. 

Like it and you'll respect it, move it and take care of it better.