My therapist had me write this as a starting point for deciding whether getting rid of my OCD, or at least the main obsession that is both my safety net and kryptonite, is worth it. I haven't decided. Anyway, here's what I came up with. Read at your own risk. It's uncensored and feels very vulnerable. I'll be honest, I'm a little scared to post it, but here it is.
My life without Emi... what would it look like?
I pulled back the blankets, looked outside at the beautiful falling rain, and shuffled out of bed, ready to start the new day. It was going to be a hell of a long day, but with a good breakfast and an early start, we’d make good time and be well on our way to sunny Southern California.
After a hot shower, a hotter cup of coffee, and two bowls of cereal – with soymilk, thank you – I hucked all the bags into the Jeep and we were on our way. I was glad Adam was driving, and that we were taking his Jeep; that way I could read the new mystery novel series I’d been dying to sink my teeth into, and I’d have plenty of room to stretch out my long legs en route.
“Hey baby,” said Adam, planting a kiss on my mouth before he shut the car door. “Did you get the little cooler from the fridge?”
“The one with all the Mikes?” I asked.
“That’s the one.”
“Got it, it’s in the trunk with all the duffels. You ready to hit the road?”
“Ready to hit the road,” said Adam. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand!”
I hopped into the backseat next to Deirdre and leaned my seat back to dive into the book. It was a tasty hell of a book, packed with action and humor, and babes to boot. I could just imagine them making a movie of it, staring Kate Beckinsale, or maybe Keira Knightley. I hardly noticed the first five hours flying by, and I only looked up long enough to switch to the second book in the series.
“Good book, I take it,” said Deirdre.
“The best,” I said. “It’s getting me so pumped for all the roller coasters. Oh hey Deirdre. Hand me one of those Snickers bars.”
I popped it in my mouth and opened volume two, which kept me well occupied until somewhere around Eugene, where we made an emergency stop for Laura to puke her brains out, despite her honored place in the front seat.
“That’s a bitch,” I commented, looking up briefly from a steamy sex scene.
Deirdre shook her head. “Saw that coming 400 miles ago.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked, taking a sip of my soda and turning back to Jamie and Nicholson getting it on. “I guess we’ll be here a few, huh?” I stretched out, taking in the juicy details, making note for later that night, where hopefully Adam and I would have a hotel room to ourselves.
Presently, Laura re-entered the jeep, looking peaky but relieved.
“Hey hun,” I said. “You want some ginger ale or anything?”
“No,” she said, “let’s just go.”
“Alrighty.” I shrugged at Deirdre and turned back to my book.
****
I drove past Lake Union and felt nothing… nothing but joy for being in Seattle. The seaplanes weren’t a symbol; they were part of the scenery.
I read a novel about a girl with bulimia, and I only read the vomiting scenes once, thinking nothing significant of them when the novel was over.
I wrote a story about fast cars and rich food, and nobody threw up. I wrote a whole novel and felt no need to focus obsessively on it. No characters with frail health, no unnecessary hangovers… just a perfectly understandable one here and there, and I didn’t dwell on their digestive misery, just remarked on it and carried on.
My friend got carsick on the way to the mall, and I didn’t care. I didn’t want to hurt myself. I didn’t want to join her. It just was, and then we got to the mall and everything was fine, and we had fun shopping.
I watched Ten Things I Hate About You, and nobody stared at me when Kat lost all the tequila. And I felt nothing. No adrenaline. No fear about the awkward looks. Just an admiration for Julia Stiles’ and Heath Ledger’s amazing acting talents.
I took an anatomy class, and there was nothing outstanding about the digestive system. It was just another part of the human body.
I got food poisoning, and it sucked. Physically, and only physically. I threw up and then I felt so much better, and then my day was fine. And so was the next week, and the next month, and a year later, I had no idea as to the date on which it had happened.
I moved on with my life.
****
But was I ready? Emi was the horizontal threads of my fabric, the Id, one might say. Lauren, the Ego, was only the vertical thread.
Take Emi away, and all you see is a pile of very colorful thread. One dimensional and uncomplicated.
When Lauren couldn’t take it alone, when she was scared and stuck somewhere unfamiliar, she wanted Emi to hold her hand, blind her to reality.
Who cares if my best friend raped my sister? I can ignore it and write stories where everyone is sick. That’s familiar, safe, I know how to deal with that, I’ve done it for years…
What heart problem? It can be covered up with an obsession just like anything else.
I CAN’T HANDLE HOW EVERYONE IS HURTING MORE THAN I AM. I know. I can pretend. I’ll tell Emi all about it, and we’ll obsess together. It’ll be fun, and she’ll tell me how to feel like them. I can experience it all, everything but the bile sliding up my throat… yes, I can understand… I can come so close…
But never close enough, and in the end, I’m angry at Emi. To bring me so close to Understanding and leave me on the outside, how could she?
It’s not her fault. She can’t change my physical body, only my mind.
But is changing my mind worth it when it leaves me “Miss Halfway,” tearing me further apart in the end?
But to be one direction of threads with no weave is torn apart too.
How, exactly, am I supposed to be whole?
Monday, February 18, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Apocolyptic Short Story
Too Late
It was a bright, sunny day in Southern California, and I had a beautiful, new car parked in my driveway. The glimmering August sunshine glinted off the shiny paint, making it look like the car was alive.
It was alive, in a way. It was a life-giving force, one to solve all the air-pollution problems in my town – once a haven of the American Dream, now a hell of smog. It ran so clean I could drive it through my grandma’s living room, if only there were enough room, and it ran so fast I could outrun my little sister’s stuck up prom date in his fancy-schmancy (albeit fossil-fuel-guzzling) penis extension. It was pretty hot, too, I thought as I watched the dazzling sunrays reflecting in the windows of my house.
It was a modest house, for Southern California at least. I loved it, though. We had a host of solar panels on the roof, a small vegetable garden in the backyard, and best of all, a rope swing dangling from the tallest tree, where my sisters and I would twirl around until we couldn’t see the palm trees swaying in the sunset.
It was also the last day I’d ever see that house, but I didn’t know that when I buckled my seatbelt and revved up the 137 horsepower dead sexy electric engine.
It was too late. Too late for me, too late for California, too late for my country.
It was too late for my planet, actually.
It was 2:20 when I sped out of the driveway for my best friend Chelsea’s house. I parked the new machine in her driveway, and her whole family came out to oogle over it.
It was a graduation gift from my grandparents. My parents could never have afforded it, but here it was all the same, the EV1, with my hands gripping the wheel. Chelsea climbed into the passenger seat, grinning, and fastened her seatbelt. I asked her if she was ready for the cleanest, sweetest, fastest ride this side of the Mississippi, and she said Fuck Yes. I started it up again, and headed for the longest, straightest, clearest stretch of road I could find. Zero to sixty in less than three seconds.
It was glorious. The palm trees rushed by in a blur of green, the clear blue sky sang a halleluiah for my act of environmental benediction, and the soft wsssshhhh of the engine tingled beneath my body, vibrating to the tune of a new day.
It was over all too quickly. I rounded the only corner on the stretch of road, and a ringing sound comparable to the sound left after the explosion of a nuclear weapon assaulted my ears. Chelsea screamed, What The Fuck Was That? It wasn’t the car; I didn’t know what the hell it was.
It was a shadow. Several shadows, actually. I saw the faces of people I had seen at school floating around me, but that was impossible. Kyle Bradley, he had died of smoke inhalation last year. Tanya Redding, she had died of a fatal asthma attack a month ago. Mrs. Greenly, she had died of lung lesions in my sophomore year. And there were more faces, some I recognized, some I didn’t, but the only ones I knew were people I knew to be dead. They didn’t seem to want to harm me, but they were rushing around, sometimes in shadow, sometimes clearly visible. One by one, they threw their bodies in the sidewalks and the road, where they became fixed shadows, sucked into the pavement and staining it black with a shrieking volume of the dreadful ringing. Chelsea screamed again, and started choking. CHELSEA! I screamed, looking away from the road for a split second. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG? Chelsea didn’t say anything; she just turned white, then black, and then her body was whipped out of the window, where she joined the masses of swirling faces, and threw her body down in front of me, flat – black – ringing – and the car moved on.
It was not stopping. I tried the brakes, and nothing happened. I tried to move the steering wheel, nothing. The sky was gone, and in its place was a dark cloud of smog, raining black upon the top of silver car, staining the windshield and destroying my vision.
It was oil. Oil was raining down, blinding me, choking the swirling clouds of people above. It was getting harder for me to breathe; every breath felt like it made my lungs bleed, and worse yet, the noise was getting only louder. Suddenly the car hurdled around a corner, almost throwing me from my seat, and all at once it stopped. The oil dripped off of my windshield, and I had a cloudy view of my surroundings again. Immediately in front of the hood stood a most stunning creature, blinking at me as if nothing had happened.
It was a caribou. There was a lone tear dripping from its majestic eyes, and when the tear hit the ground, it too became oil. I blinked back at the caribou, wanting to help it, make it stop crying. Around it, there were hundreds of caribou-shadows on the pavement, as flat and dead as Kyles, Tanya’s, Chelsea’s. What’s Wrong? I whispered. What’s Happening?
It Was You, Humans, it said. I wondered for a second what he meant, but before I had a minute to figure it out, I stopped breathing. I opened my eyes as wide as I could, struggling for air, but only smog filled my lungs, and my body felt weak… transparent. I looked down at my fingers, and they had turned entirely white. I felt a tug on my shoulder, and I was sucked out of the car, and my blackened body began encircling the caribou, who watched me with a passive sadness.
It was over. I felt my shadow-body hit the pavement with surprising force for a body of smoke. My soul sifted through the sidewalk, and the ringing reached a fever pitch so that I thought surely what little was left of me would shatter. I watched myself drift earthward, as though my soul’s eyes were far above, and I saw that the shadow, like everything else, had turned to oil, and was slowly dripping towards the core of the earth.
It Was Bound To Happen, the earth whispered. You were all too greedy. You set yourselves up for this. My perception backed up even further, and I saw the planet, surrounded by a black haze, and as the last of the oil drops reached the core, the whole planet exploded, and the corpses of animals and trees rained across the solar system, dripping with the oil that had ended it all.
It was not supposed to end this way.
It was a bright, sunny day in Southern California, and I had a beautiful, new car parked in my driveway. The glimmering August sunshine glinted off the shiny paint, making it look like the car was alive.
It was alive, in a way. It was a life-giving force, one to solve all the air-pollution problems in my town – once a haven of the American Dream, now a hell of smog. It ran so clean I could drive it through my grandma’s living room, if only there were enough room, and it ran so fast I could outrun my little sister’s stuck up prom date in his fancy-schmancy (albeit fossil-fuel-guzzling) penis extension. It was pretty hot, too, I thought as I watched the dazzling sunrays reflecting in the windows of my house.
It was a modest house, for Southern California at least. I loved it, though. We had a host of solar panels on the roof, a small vegetable garden in the backyard, and best of all, a rope swing dangling from the tallest tree, where my sisters and I would twirl around until we couldn’t see the palm trees swaying in the sunset.
It was also the last day I’d ever see that house, but I didn’t know that when I buckled my seatbelt and revved up the 137 horsepower dead sexy electric engine.
It was too late. Too late for me, too late for California, too late for my country.
It was too late for my planet, actually.
It was 2:20 when I sped out of the driveway for my best friend Chelsea’s house. I parked the new machine in her driveway, and her whole family came out to oogle over it.
It was a graduation gift from my grandparents. My parents could never have afforded it, but here it was all the same, the EV1, with my hands gripping the wheel. Chelsea climbed into the passenger seat, grinning, and fastened her seatbelt. I asked her if she was ready for the cleanest, sweetest, fastest ride this side of the Mississippi, and she said Fuck Yes. I started it up again, and headed for the longest, straightest, clearest stretch of road I could find. Zero to sixty in less than three seconds.
It was glorious. The palm trees rushed by in a blur of green, the clear blue sky sang a halleluiah for my act of environmental benediction, and the soft wsssshhhh of the engine tingled beneath my body, vibrating to the tune of a new day.
It was over all too quickly. I rounded the only corner on the stretch of road, and a ringing sound comparable to the sound left after the explosion of a nuclear weapon assaulted my ears. Chelsea screamed, What The Fuck Was That? It wasn’t the car; I didn’t know what the hell it was.
It was a shadow. Several shadows, actually. I saw the faces of people I had seen at school floating around me, but that was impossible. Kyle Bradley, he had died of smoke inhalation last year. Tanya Redding, she had died of a fatal asthma attack a month ago. Mrs. Greenly, she had died of lung lesions in my sophomore year. And there were more faces, some I recognized, some I didn’t, but the only ones I knew were people I knew to be dead. They didn’t seem to want to harm me, but they were rushing around, sometimes in shadow, sometimes clearly visible. One by one, they threw their bodies in the sidewalks and the road, where they became fixed shadows, sucked into the pavement and staining it black with a shrieking volume of the dreadful ringing. Chelsea screamed again, and started choking. CHELSEA! I screamed, looking away from the road for a split second. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG? Chelsea didn’t say anything; she just turned white, then black, and then her body was whipped out of the window, where she joined the masses of swirling faces, and threw her body down in front of me, flat – black – ringing – and the car moved on.
It was not stopping. I tried the brakes, and nothing happened. I tried to move the steering wheel, nothing. The sky was gone, and in its place was a dark cloud of smog, raining black upon the top of silver car, staining the windshield and destroying my vision.
It was oil. Oil was raining down, blinding me, choking the swirling clouds of people above. It was getting harder for me to breathe; every breath felt like it made my lungs bleed, and worse yet, the noise was getting only louder. Suddenly the car hurdled around a corner, almost throwing me from my seat, and all at once it stopped. The oil dripped off of my windshield, and I had a cloudy view of my surroundings again. Immediately in front of the hood stood a most stunning creature, blinking at me as if nothing had happened.
It was a caribou. There was a lone tear dripping from its majestic eyes, and when the tear hit the ground, it too became oil. I blinked back at the caribou, wanting to help it, make it stop crying. Around it, there were hundreds of caribou-shadows on the pavement, as flat and dead as Kyles, Tanya’s, Chelsea’s. What’s Wrong? I whispered. What’s Happening?
It Was You, Humans, it said. I wondered for a second what he meant, but before I had a minute to figure it out, I stopped breathing. I opened my eyes as wide as I could, struggling for air, but only smog filled my lungs, and my body felt weak… transparent. I looked down at my fingers, and they had turned entirely white. I felt a tug on my shoulder, and I was sucked out of the car, and my blackened body began encircling the caribou, who watched me with a passive sadness.
It was over. I felt my shadow-body hit the pavement with surprising force for a body of smoke. My soul sifted through the sidewalk, and the ringing reached a fever pitch so that I thought surely what little was left of me would shatter. I watched myself drift earthward, as though my soul’s eyes were far above, and I saw that the shadow, like everything else, had turned to oil, and was slowly dripping towards the core of the earth.
It Was Bound To Happen, the earth whispered. You were all too greedy. You set yourselves up for this. My perception backed up even further, and I saw the planet, surrounded by a black haze, and as the last of the oil drops reached the core, the whole planet exploded, and the corpses of animals and trees rained across the solar system, dripping with the oil that had ended it all.
It was not supposed to end this way.
Barefoot in February
I've discovered that the best way to get through Valentine's day is to pretend like I like it. It worked well enough last year, so I thought I'd give it another shot today. It's led to some amusing consequences, though!
First, I painted my nails pink over top of the green-tipped French-ish manicure I did a week ago that is now chipped, so my nails looked okay from a (very long) distance, but redonkulous and fragmented up close. Hah!
Also, last night, I tried to fix this pair of pink platform sandals that I got from a thrift store a couple years ago. The shoes are perfectly good except for this one little detail: the part of the sandal where your foot goes, on the left shoe, keeps ripping off of the sole, thus leaving the giant two-and-a-half inch platform dangling, which is mighty hard to walk in. So I glued the shoe back together, for probably the third time, using superglue. All was well until about a third of the way to school, when the shoe ripped apart again. Oh well, I thought I could handle walking the rest of the way with one normal shoe and one flip-floppy shoe.
But oh no. A little further, it came almost completely apart, leaving the sole hanging on to the footbed by a hair thread, VERY hard to walk in! I was shuffling my left foot on the ground like a retard, and occasionally the shoe would get all skewed, I would trip, and I'd have to re-align the parts again. Finally I got to a bus shelter, where I took the liberty of sitting on the bench, and decided that, since I didn't have time (or patience!) to walk all the way back home and get another pair of shoes, and walking like that was getting totally ridiculous (not to mention painfully slow!) I decided that, despite it being about 40 degrees, my best bet was to just take them off, carry them, and walk the rest of the way barefoot.
So I did. I've gotta say, I looked pretty cool walking to school, barefoot in February, all decked out for Valentine's Day with a pair of broken pink shoes dangling from my icicle-like fingers. Awesome. I went to my Environmental Science class thinking, this school is hippy-infested enough that I could totally get away with this... in the spring. Oh well, nothing else for it. I totally wanted to just swagger in and be like, "What up, I'm barefoot! Wanna fight about it?" I didn't do that, but I did take notes. Hahaha. And then, we watched this video about how Big Oil and the Federal Government etc. killed the electric car. Ohhhh so much corruption. Anyway, it inspired to write a little short story, which I'm going to post right after this.
And then, I walked back home barefoot. Hell yeah I'm cool. Or cold, if you want to get technical.
EDIT: My V-Day adventures continue! Laura and I made an expedition to the student bookstore because I wanted a new water bottle, and while I did wear different shoes, we got aroused... err... distracted, by an ultra-sexy Ducati (have you ever heard the engines on those things?) and in our staring at the sexy motorcycle, I almost ran into a pole. And Laura almost toppled into me as I was almost toppling in the pole, due to the Ducati ooglage. It was fantastic.
First, I painted my nails pink over top of the green-tipped French-ish manicure I did a week ago that is now chipped, so my nails looked okay from a (very long) distance, but redonkulous and fragmented up close. Hah!
Also, last night, I tried to fix this pair of pink platform sandals that I got from a thrift store a couple years ago. The shoes are perfectly good except for this one little detail: the part of the sandal where your foot goes, on the left shoe, keeps ripping off of the sole, thus leaving the giant two-and-a-half inch platform dangling, which is mighty hard to walk in. So I glued the shoe back together, for probably the third time, using superglue. All was well until about a third of the way to school, when the shoe ripped apart again. Oh well, I thought I could handle walking the rest of the way with one normal shoe and one flip-floppy shoe.
But oh no. A little further, it came almost completely apart, leaving the sole hanging on to the footbed by a hair thread, VERY hard to walk in! I was shuffling my left foot on the ground like a retard, and occasionally the shoe would get all skewed, I would trip, and I'd have to re-align the parts again. Finally I got to a bus shelter, where I took the liberty of sitting on the bench, and decided that, since I didn't have time (or patience!) to walk all the way back home and get another pair of shoes, and walking like that was getting totally ridiculous (not to mention painfully slow!) I decided that, despite it being about 40 degrees, my best bet was to just take them off, carry them, and walk the rest of the way barefoot.
So I did. I've gotta say, I looked pretty cool walking to school, barefoot in February, all decked out for Valentine's Day with a pair of broken pink shoes dangling from my icicle-like fingers. Awesome. I went to my Environmental Science class thinking, this school is hippy-infested enough that I could totally get away with this... in the spring. Oh well, nothing else for it. I totally wanted to just swagger in and be like, "What up, I'm barefoot! Wanna fight about it?" I didn't do that, but I did take notes. Hahaha. And then, we watched this video about how Big Oil and the Federal Government etc. killed the electric car. Ohhhh so much corruption. Anyway, it inspired to write a little short story, which I'm going to post right after this.
And then, I walked back home barefoot. Hell yeah I'm cool. Or cold, if you want to get technical.
EDIT: My V-Day adventures continue! Laura and I made an expedition to the student bookstore because I wanted a new water bottle, and while I did wear different shoes, we got aroused... err... distracted, by an ultra-sexy Ducati (have you ever heard the engines on those things?) and in our staring at the sexy motorcycle, I almost ran into a pole. And Laura almost toppled into me as I was almost toppling in the pole, due to the Ducati ooglage. It was fantastic.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
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?
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?
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Speaking of UNDERSTANDING, and other stories
This last week at my family's house has reminded me so much of my life in high school, and believe it or not, I actually kind of miss it.
On Wednesday, I got all dressed up in my old goth(ish) clothes, particularly my "old faithful" boots and the torn-up skirt that I wore like, every week. It felt very much like high school, and getting ready for the Evanescence concert reminded me of those parts in between the drama, stress, depression, cutting, and suicide threats that didn't suck. The parts where people I didn't even know called me "Evanescence girl" in between classes, or when I sat in my car in the driveway singing my heart out to the music I loved. Correction: Love.
On Wednesday, I got all dressed up in my old goth(ish) clothes, particularly my "old faithful" boots and the torn-up skirt that I wore like, every week. It felt very much like high school, and getting ready for the Evanescence concert reminded me of those parts in between the drama, stress, depression, cutting, and suicide threats that didn't suck. The parts where people I didn't even know called me "Evanescence girl" in between classes, or when I sat in my car in the driveway singing my heart out to the music I loved. Correction: Love.
Being at the concert was, in so many ways, going back in time to the height of my love of the band, and fulfilling the dreams of the high school me that never got to see them live. It was a little weird being at the concert with the temporary musicians - when I saw Ev in Vancouver, it was when John and Rocky were still in the band - and it definitely felt a little more like "The Amy Lee Show" than enjoying the whole band... but then, I suppose, they are called Evanescence after all... that just so happens to mean ephemeral, temporary, like vapor. Everything does change. My life. Her life. The band. And that's okay.
The most powerful moment all night was when she sat down at the piano and played Lithium and Good Enough back to back. If Amy and I had sat down in a room together, figured out one emotion we had in common (as if there were only one!) and decided to write about them, those two songs would have been the result. Basically, those songs express the absolute truth of so many of my feelings... her lyrics could not have captured them more perfectly. So needless to say, I felt incredibly connected to her knowing that the words we were both singing were entirely from the heart, and I felt like our voices were crossing in mid-air and blending... I could see her face so clearly from where I was standing - maybe 20, 25 feet from the stage - and that emotional connection was amazing. I don't suppose I'll ever know if she knew what I was feeling, but I guess that one way connection was enough for me. I felt it. Towards the end of the song, I could tell she was breaking up at some of the phrases, being such an emotional and personal song. To see this person that I've looked up to and cared about so much all these years, almost crying at the song that connected our hearts was about the most incredible and emotional thing I could have ever prayed for.
And course, just her saying "Good evening, Seattle," was the fulfillment of something I've waited years to hear. She even said, "Wow, there's so many of you here! Thanks!" She sounded rather touched... it was sweet.
At the end of the show, when the crowd had finally called the band back for an encore, she sat down at the piano again, and I thought, hm, they must be doing Your Star... that's what they played at the Vancouver encore. But then I heard an organ... an organ? There was no organ on The Open Door... not even on Fallen, really. Not much, anyway.
I thought for a second - really? Are they really--are they seriously--is this actually--? It was. All at one second, Nikki and I looked at each other, and SCREAMED!!! OH MY GOD THEY'RE PLAYING UNDERSTANDING!!!! For those of you that don't know, Understanding was the first Ev song ever to be played on the radio, back in (if I'm not mistaken) 1998. It's off their first EP album, so needless to say, rare and not exactly recent. At the end of the song, Amy said, "Wow, I'm surprised any of you knew that song!" And I was thinking, "HELL YEAH, that's me!!" Way way cool. And then they did Your Star, which is awesome live. The whole show was incredible.
November 21st was the Someday of my high school life, my high school dream. And who knew how far the both of us would have come! In 2004, I don't think either of us could have forseen feeling Good Enough. And yet, there we've both arrived.
So then, on (Black) Friday, I was hanging out with Nikki and Sam, just like old times, talking and laughing and innuendo...ing, and just generally goofing around, in my family's house, in my old room. It still feels like home, even though I've called the dorm, and now my apartment, "home" since last fall. I miss living with my family, living in that room, even if it is nice to have the freedom to run my own life and my own schedule. Having my old room and my high school friends back kind of made me want my old life back. It's so boring at college. To be honest, the "new life," the "real life," whatever you wanna call it, kinda sucks. Competitive majors. Jobs. Realizing how much debt I'm going to have to pay off when I graduate, thank you $50,000 education. Wondering what the fuck I'm going to do with said competitive major in order to pay off said $50,000 education. Not to mention, I never seem to have the inspiration to do anything interesting with the little free time I do have, at least in that creativity-killing, pathetic excuse for a city.
Even things that aren't inherently bad are still huge changes that are going to take a lot of getting used to. I mean, one of my best high school friends is now married and has a baby. A baby! She has an awesome husband, and I'm totally happy for her (and comfortable around him) and her baby is a little angel and I love him with all my heart... but my high school friend wasn't a married mother. She was an angsty kid, just like me. And it's not that I want the angst back. I'm very glad to not have to be the suicide hotline anymore. That's great. But even so, our lives and our friendship have changed. We're on opposite sides of the motherhood line now, and while we're still very close, it's different. And while it's a good different, I still miss the old, uncommitted, single-person friendship we had. And I know we'll never have that again.
On top of it all, uhm, my sister has changed. A LOT. It's not really my business, so I'm not really at liberty to spill all the beans here, but let's say my mom and I are scared, hurt, and totally unsure of what to do. It's scary and depressing.
I'm also depressed that I have to go and endure 2.5 more weeks of the most boring town on the west coast, starting in a couple of hours. And then, at least six more months after Christmas break is over. Ugh. The move to Seattle, providing it all goes as smoothly as I hope, cannot come soon enough. Heh... that reminds me, I still have to figure out how to get around my lease. Gulp.
Alright, so life doesn't totally suck. I think my wounds about the holidays from years past are starting to heal, and I think I might actually enjoy this Christmas season, and, well... it could be worse. I could have literally lost friends, and I haven't. I guess I'm okay. It's just hard, and life's just different. A lot of times, I need change, but especially if I don't instigate it, I always have a hard time dealing with it.
Personality Test
Apparently I am...
...self revealing, neat, craves attention, prefers organized to unpredictable, needs things to be extremely clean, worrying, perfectionist, emotionally sensitive, respects authority, social, vain, does not like to be alone, likes large parties, controlling, social chameleon, not a thrill seeker, enjoys leadership, takes precautions, puts the needs of others ahead of their own, assertive, rule conscious, makes friends easily, always busy, heart over mind, phobic, aggressive, clingy, compassionate, dominant, outgoing, suspicious, hard working, and strong
Thought this was pretty interesting. And fairly accurate.
...self revealing, neat, craves attention, prefers organized to unpredictable, needs things to be extremely clean, worrying, perfectionist, emotionally sensitive, respects authority, social, vain, does not like to be alone, likes large parties, controlling, social chameleon, not a thrill seeker, enjoys leadership, takes precautions, puts the needs of others ahead of their own, assertive, rule conscious, makes friends easily, always busy, heart over mind, phobic, aggressive, clingy, compassionate, dominant, outgoing, suspicious, hard working, and strong
| Advanced Global Personality Test Results
|
Thought this was pretty interesting. And fairly accurate.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Understanding
Same shit, different day. I have to understand, I have to experience, to watch passively and intellectually understand is not good enough for me. Fucking being a scorpio. I have to be an active part, to suffer simultaneously, or else I am not good enough.
You all know what I mean. I have to understand, I want to, you know what I want to do. If you don't I don't care. What matters is that it's true and that's that and I don't give a shit that I'm not making any sense. I'm making sense to me, and that's all that matters. I have to talk about it in some capacity because I feel like I'm losing it, and if I do that entirely, then... I'll probably end up cutting. I really, really want to. I won't, but the desire is very strong. Fuck.
One of these days I'll let it go and appreciate my strengths. But today and every day prior, my strengths ARE my weaknesses.
You all know what I mean. I have to understand, I want to, you know what I want to do. If you don't I don't care. What matters is that it's true and that's that and I don't give a shit that I'm not making any sense. I'm making sense to me, and that's all that matters. I have to talk about it in some capacity because I feel like I'm losing it, and if I do that entirely, then... I'll probably end up cutting. I really, really want to. I won't, but the desire is very strong. Fuck.
One of these days I'll let it go and appreciate my strengths. But today and every day prior, my strengths ARE my weaknesses.
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