Exercise-Induced ARRRGH!

Here's a little, very uncensored, piece I wrote earlier today. Warning: extremely whiny, self-loathing, and painfully honest. Yeah. Apparently I'm suffering from depression... so say the five dffferent self-tests. Anyway. Here's this:


Is This Vulnerable Enough?


I feel like I’m ruining everything I touch.

I started researching asthma as a way to get away from the vomiting obsession. I thought that would be a good way to redirect my attention so that I could do something else with Tory’s poor health, thus not making her throw up all the time and feeding my obsession.

So. Asthma. Totally different. Perfectly logical alternative, right? No.

It was fine at first, but then, just like with the vomiting, I became afraid to say the words, became more likely to dance around the words, just like

Throwing up and motion sickness and nauseous and all those words I don’t want to say out loud, because then I’d be talking about it. The thing I obsess about. Shouldn’t talk about it. Humiliating. Foolish. WEAK.

So then I didn’t want to talk about asthma that way, even though it had no history. No phobia. No old obsessions. No Zac Hanson having trouble breathing on stage and me flipping a bitch about it. Just an idea, a diversion to get me away from the real obsession. But now I can’t talk about it either. It’s become another fucking keyword. And why? Because I tried to fix the first one. What next? Will I torment someone with chronic headaches and become unable to say the words “headache, ibuprofen, pain”? Or maybe a fear of heights. Or snakes. Or anything. I could touch anything with my attention, make anything my distraction, and then kill it, make it any damn keyword, another thing I can’t say, another thing I get both giggly and panicky about when it comes up in conversation, online, on the silver screen…

But then I had an idea. Maybe it was a good idea. Maybe it was just that stupid empathy attacking me again. I’m a terrible runner. Terrible. Can’t run for more than a minute or two without wiping out. Feels like I can’t get enough air, no matter how easily it slides down my throat. Not satisfying. Can breathe, yes, but can’t obtain enough oxygen. Maybe asthma, a mild form, of course, was attacking me while I ran. Yes! It had to be true. It would make sense of everything, the shortness of breath, the chest discomfort I had always blamed on my heart, and been told over and over again was not anything to do with my heart. And my cousin had just been diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma, for the burning pain in her trachea, just like mine, and it all made sense, I was so sure…

But it wasn’t. And now I feel completely invalidated. I need a REASON for being such a horrible runner. I hate that no matter how much I run, swim, I still am no good, I run a TEN MINUTE MILE, not even sure I could do that well now… and it’s not my heart, and now it’s not my lungs either? THEN WHAT THE FUCK IS IT? The only reason I can come up with is that I am really as pathetic as I seem, that I really am in such horrible shape… that I am no better than my whiny little sister that always says she can’t do it, she’s gonna die, no more exercise, boohoo I’m a fucking wimp. Am I the same as her? Does everyone feel like I do when I run, but they just deal with it and I can’t? Am I that pitiful? It’s not my heart, it’s not asthma, so what other answer do I have?

Or worse… do I just want to have it the way I want to have every other damn problem so I can understand? I have a hell of a history with that one. I want to understand motion sickness. Understanding on an intellectual level isn’t enough. I have to feel. I have to experience. I have to truly get it. It was the same way with eating disorders, cutting… as ashamed as it makes me, the fucking empathy is probably half the reason I did any of those things in the first place to understand… not because I was a cutter at heart, or anorexic, but because I wanted to feel what it was like… so I did.

At least I think so. It’s a fuzzy line now. One cut is all it takes to fuel an addiction. I may have done it out of empathy, but now it’s done, and I want it, I want more. I want to hurt myself more than anything right this minute.

Actually, I would rather know what the hell is wrong with me. But if the answer is still NOTHING than I would gladly settle for slicing into my skin over and over and over with the sharpest razor and drinking my blood until I throw up, and then I’ll have experienced everything. Maybe I’ll even panic so much I’ll stop breathing for a minute and then it will ALL make sense.

But I’m not going to do that. I promised too many people I wouldn’t. Including myself. But it doesn’t mean I don’t want to. I do. I want terribly to cut right now. I want to cut because I hate all of this. I hate feeling pathetic, like my sister, I hate not knowing, I hate not understanding, I hate that I want to understand, I hate the empathy, I hate how fucking obsessive I am, how I draw everyone’s problems into my body, as if my own weren’t enough.

They’re not, right? My dad moved to California and isn’t paying for college. But he never hit me. He wasn’t the abusive alcoholic absent father many kids suffer. I have a weak stomach. So what? Some people are allergic to everything in the grocery store, or are handicapped, or have cystic fibrosis, and I’m complaining about a little sensitivity to dairy? So the fuck what? Nobody cares!! My complaining is useless! Sure I have problems. But there are NOTHING next to the misery I see all around me… and that’s what makes me so fucking miserable… the fact that everyone else is. I have to be miserable too… or else. And yet I hate it. I hate this empathy. I want to feel my own feelings, be glad that I can read in the car and breathe the free air, and I can walk where ever I want without a wheelchair or anything, but instead, I’m crying about that tiny ounce of fat over my stomach, the fact that I have no breasts, bad skin, am too tall… does any of this really matter when I could have NO legs, eczema, Marfan’s syndrome? It shouldn’t! But here I am feeling sorry for myself! Wanting to HURT myself. What the fuck is wrong with me?