Option 1, I choose YOU! For now, anyway.

Well, after writhing in misery for the last three days - that's option 2 - I decided that maybe a reversion to Option 1 - allowing my OCD to defend me against the misery - would be a good idea for a little while considering the severity of the situation. So, as much I hate/am ashamed of writing these stories, I decided to write one anyway, except, instead of representing the pain-inducing situation through Tory as usual, I would actual use her to represent my character specifically in the struggle. So this isn't anything close to what actually happened, but I wrote it so that she's going through the same sort of pain that I was, yet within the parameters of her character. I also made a point to make it seem like she was getting ridiculously upset over a really little event... well, I don't think I even need to explain why THAT'S significant!

So without further ado...

An Excessively Guilty and Overly Ashamed Conscience, or Let It Go…very, very loosely based on a true story. October 1994.

I walked around to the back of Karl’s house, looking for a suitable object to throw at his window. Finding a rubber ball presumably left by one of his many siblings, I tossed it upwards and thought gratefully that I had a decent sense of aim. Presently Karl appeared at the balcony and came down to meet me.

“Hey babe,” he said. “I thought you were with Rachel. What happened?”

“Something bad,” I said, giving him a hug and trying not to cry.

“You’re not hurt, are you?” He asked, and I shook my head. “Is she?”

“No, Rachel didn’t get hurt either,” I said. I gave up and cried anyway.

“Aww, baby… well, come on inside, you wanna try and tell me about it?”

I walked with him up the stairs; his arm around my waist was making me feel a little safer, although it always made me nervous coming to his house unannounced, hence my habit of throwing rocks at his window. Once we were in his room, I picked up the red and black fleece blanket from the foot and his bed and held tight to it, trying to banish my guilt. It wasn’t going to happen. Karl sat down next to me and rubbed my back.

“What happened?” He asked again.

I buried my face in the blanket. “I threw up in front of Rachel,” I said. “She freaked out… I mean, she didn’t kick me out or anything, I just couldn’t stay there anymore, I felt so bad about it…”

“Why? That’s not so bad.”

“Well… I couldn’t make it to the bathroom,” I said. “It’s been so long since I’ve done that… it’s only when I get motion sickness, otherwise I can control it…”

“That’s alright, baby, it happens to everyone once in a while.”

I couldn’t stop crying now. The guilt was just making me feel sick again, and I couldn’t do anything to make it go away.

“I know, it’s not just that!” I said. “It was so scary, the look in Rachel’s face, like it was her fault…”

“That’s crazy, why would she think it was her fault?”

“Well because she was driving I guess… she doesn’t have her license yet, so she was nervous enough about that… but her car is a stick like yours, but she’s not as good at driving it as you are, plus she was scared to death to get pulled over, so she was driving like a grandma, pumping the brakes all the time and everything.”

Karl suppressed a laugh, probably amused by the unlikely thought of Rachel driving like a grandma. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be laughing,” he said. “I know that kind of driving makes you sick faster. She probably wasn’t thinking about that, though.”

“Yeah… she didn’t even know until we were almost there.”

“Of course, you wouldn’t tell her, would you?”

“What difference would it make? I would have gotten carsick anyway. That’s not the point.” I sniffled. “Well she asked me something, but I didn’t answer right away cause I was just breathing, trying to settle my stomach… and then she asked what I was doing, so I told her I was feeling carsick, and she just said something like ‘don’t puke in the car, that’ll look really bad if I got pulled over,’ so I told her I wouldn’t. But when we got to her house…” I couldn’t talk anymore for crying so hard.

Karl hugged me and tried to get me to relax, but it was useless. “Do you have a tissue?” I asked. I was afraid I was going to get snot all over his blanket. He gave me one and told me to keep talking.

“Well I told you,” I said, “I didn’t make it. I got as far as the top of the stairs, but then I couldn’t hold it.” I held tighter to the blanket and dug the fingernails of my other hand into my palm, trying not to scream. “Rachel completely froze… I told her I was so sorry, but she didn’t say anything, just stared at me… I felt so bad for her; she had no idea what to do… I think she finally said something about not realizing I was so sick, and asked if I was okay… I told her I’d be fine, I’d clean it up… she didn’t answer, just sat down, I think she might have been crying…”

I stopped and held my breath, and shifted my attention to my fingernails. I wanted to punish myself for putting Rachel through so much trouble, and at the same time, I also felt guilty for causing Karl trouble. He was probably right, I probably was making too big of a deal out of it, but I couldn’t help it… that was just the way I was.

“Huh,” said Karl. “Is Rachel scared of puking? Cause that would explain a lot.”

“No,” I said, “I don’t think so. She told me once, though, she’s scared of… being responsible for people, doesn’t want them dying on her watch or something like that.”

Karl raised his eyebrows. “Dying? Come on, you just got carsick, jeez.”

“I know…” I found it a little ironic that he was saying this now. I had said almost the exact same thing to him when he was going ape-shit about me making myself throw up on a road trip to get it over with. “Yeah, so it’s a little extreme, it’s just some phobia of hers I guess. I just feel so bad for freaking her out like that! Not to mention it was embarrassing! I’ve never thrown up in front of her at all, let alone on the floor!”

“Baby, don’t worry about Rachel, she’ll be fine. Everyone has their fears, she’ll get over it. She’s probably over it already. You’re here, you’re not her responsibility anymore. It’s probably one of those things you don’t think about once it’s over. Besides, she has her mom to take care of her if she’s still freaked out. That’s more than you can say.”

“Oh God, her mom… she’s gonna have to finish cleaning… oh my god, she’s probably gonna get mad at Rachel, and—”

“Tory. Rachel’s mom is a nurse. I bet she could clean up puke in her sleep. I’m sure it’s no big deal.”

“I guess,” I said, wiping my nose again and trying not to choke on myself. I wished I’d been able to stay long enough to finish cleaning like I’d said I would, but I couldn’t stand to watch Rachel sit there, frozen in uncertainty any longer. The tears resurged, and poor Karl scooped me up and tried to get me to lie down.

“Baby, let it go!” He said. “Rachel will be fine. Her mom will definitely be fine. Now I just need to make sure you’re going be fine.”

“I am,” I wiped my swollen eyes. “I feel better now.”

“That’s good,” said Karl, and he kissed my cheek. “Now you need to relax.”

I was still crying. I didn’t know how to make the guilt go away. I wanted to go back to Rachel’s house right then and tell her I was sorry, but she probably didn’t want to talk to me.

“Shhh…” said Karl. He pushed my hair out of my eyes and kissed me again. “I love you,” he whispered. “I hate seeing you like this… please believe me… it really is okay. I’m sure everyone will be fine. Let it go, Tory. Breathe, sweetheart. It’s okay.”

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?