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
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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.