So I Wrote

Day 3 of the bandwagon

Day 03 Something you have to forgive yourself for

I don't really believe in regrets, so there isn't much that I feel bad about in my past. A couple things bring a sting to my heart though.

When my father was sick he had to get chemo. He didn't want anyone to go with him, much rather bringing his favourite books with him. I had borrowed a book from him - The Hitchhiker's Guide - and he had forgotten about it. He asked me if I knew where it was and I knew very well I had it but I said I didn't know. I'm pretty sure that would have been the last book he would have read in life. And I kept that from him. I've never even read it. It's on my bookshelf now, and everyday I see it and I think about what a compete jackass I was. What the hell was I thinking? I can't bring myself to read it, even though I want to very much. It feels like a jinxed book now. I've tried a couple times but it's only ended in tears and only a page or two read.

It's strange what I feel guilty about. When he was sick I barely went to visit him because I was scared. Scared of his mortality, scared of him vomitting infront of me from the chemo, scared of how I feel seeing him sick. I have no problem forgiving myself for that, it's never been an issue to me. I was scared. I get that. But I can't forgive myself for this book. I feel like I don't deserve that forgiveness. Who does that to someone with cancer? Or maybe I do actually feel guilty for more things concerning his illness and I'm projecting all those feelings on to this rather silly thing. I don't know.

The second thing that I feel guilty and stingy about I've already covered in this blawwwwg. My difficulties with sex. I'm so ashamed thinking of how sexual I could be a few years ago compared to now when I even have to turn away from a movie if there is a sex scene being shown. I'm so ashamed to think about how it's affected my marriage. I'm so ashamed to think about how it affects my husband, how unhappy it makes him. I'm ashamed how it makes me less of a wife, a woman, a person. I'm so ashamed that my trauma concerning sex is so fucked up that not one therapist has even tried to help me with it. I don't know how to forgive myself for this. I know it's not my fault. I didn't ask for this. But, as usual, I hold myself to an impossible standard.

To my husband; I am so, so, so sorry. If I could snap my fingers and be amazing at spreading my legs I would for you. You are the only reason I even try to face this. I'm sorry.

One of the guys - don't look at me!

I guess I've established that PTSD#1 is based on a sexual type of incident[s] (gee, could I have explained that more awkwardly?) I frequent a forum for people with the same type of issues and a thread I recently read has had me thinking.

I tend to fluctuate a lot in weight. I've been quite big and I've been very skinny. At the moment I am on the bigger end (yuck, gross, omfg etc) and it's happened for many reasons. The first being a car accident I was which had me on crutches for close to 5 months and with permanent damage in one of my feet. Another reason is the poking into my PTSD triggered quite the depression, and my... dislike for sex? No. I don't dislike sex. My dislike for being viewed as a sexual creature.

I hate it. Just thinking of it makes me want to get a dirty XXXXXL sweater and hide inside it. Unfortunately, I have a very ahem, female looking body and there is not much that I can wear that hides my... pectoral area.

See, even just writing about it I get all awkward. I usually have no problems being honest in this blog. Fuck let's just try this shit again.

I have boobs. Giant ass fucking boobs that I try hard to hide because otherwise people look and I instantly feel gross. Sometimes I try on something a bit low cut and I just have to laugh because goddamn, why aren't these puppies bringing me any money? Don't blonde, big-boobed women make money being blonde, big-boobed women?

Oh. Right. I'm also teh chubby. Minus 90 sex appeal points.

Having these giant ass fucking boobs and the hips and the general hour glass look about my figure brings attention...... Unless I pad it with much pepsi and chocolate and make myself a non-option for sexual interest. But the thing about being pepsi-padded is I feel like I'm worth less as a human just because I don't have a low percentage of fat on my body. Thanks, bullying jackasses in high school! Props to your mindfucking abilities.

So I'm basically either thin and terrified of being looked at, spiraling into depths of self hatred because Gross! I have sexuality and people see it! or I'm fat and Gross! You are fat, you second class citizen you (but at least people aren't looking at you that way). Rock or hard place? Which would you choose?

I like being one of the guys, because then they don't really notice that I'm (infact!!!!) a girl. I'll banter with you and play video games wearing my eight year old sneakers and sweaters with food spilled on the front (or more realistically: I'll type banter at you and talk about playing video games and tell you how nasty my eight year old shoes and spilled-on sweater are). I'll be gross, say gross things... I'll do anything to take away from my feminity. I'm so comfortable that way. (Not only because I Am Weird, but because I grew up with my two nerdy brothers who played video games and ate nachos all day - to me that is like the height of Cool.)

Sidenote: I prefer to hang out with dudes because I've found them to be better, more loyal, a less fair-weather type of friend. *fistbumps my homies*

(all three of them. Oh better watch out so I don't get tennis arm from the excessive bumping!)

(Forever Alone)

(Not really. My homies are awesome and I wouldn't trade them for a hundred other homies.)

(Is Success Kid appropriate to mention here then? Oh I know! Me Gusta!)

I've competely lost track of what I wanted to say now.
Let's review:

• I fluctuate in weight because I'm doomed if I'm skinny, I'm doomed if I'm fat.
• My sexuality is horrifying to me on so many levels.
• I like the boys and being one of them.
• Internet memes rule.
• Girls are not good friends.
• My homies are the best homies in the homediggityword.

Uhhh. Yeah I dunno. It's 4.30 am, internet. I just don't know the head thingy that I write with fingers down.

Nanight.

 

Day 1 of the bandwagon

Day 01 Something you hate about yourself.

Starting off on a positive note, I see.

What I hate about myself is probably the topic of this entire blog. I hate being the broken, gross person I am. I hate being the one that has to fight for every scrap of peace of mind, freedom and life. I hate that I wasn't stronger when I was a kid. I hate that I'm not stronger now.

I disgust myself.

Suck it up, for God's sake.

But I can't. Because I'm not strong enough and fuck does that not suck. No wonder I repel people.

 

I'm cured!!! (Sort of) (haha) (not really)

I went to my bi-weekly therapy appointment last Friday. As usual my head has been spinning a mile a minute afterwards with emotions and little flashes of painful memories. We begun our conversation with discussing my emetophobia - apparently I am quite close to being rid of it. I've definitely felt that it's under my control, rather than the other way round. I have my hard days with the big challenges (like the airport one) but I don't have panic attacks every night anymore. It's unreal just typing that. Just a few short months ago I had horrid panic attacks each night until I fell asleep out of pure exhaustion. Unreal.

We moved on to... more difficult things. Things that I've been able to largely ignore for a long time thanks to my emetophobia taking up so much of my brain power. But now that my emetophobia is going bye-bye more and more, I can deny these things less and less. I've touched upon the subjects here on my blog, and it seems to have sparked a new crapstorm within me. And it's the most cliche kind so it makes it really, really hard not to roll my eyes at myself. But perhaps that is another form of my denial. It wasn't so bad, get over yourself. Or become a stripper, you loser.

My therapist asked me to go to an al-anon meeting. A meeting for family of alcoholics. To that I simply replied "My father is dead, he isn't an alcoholic anymore", and my therapist sort of smirked and said that I am still here, his death hasn't erased any of my past. He suggested that maybe his death has made me free of The Family Secret that I held on to so tightly.

No.

I didn't tell people my father was an alcoholic. I don't know if people would believe it. He had a very prestigious, well paying job that he never took one sick day from (until he got cancer, that is). We were all provided for and we lived in a enormous apartment in the middle of our city. He only smelled of alcohol on the weekends. I never told anyone how much he drank. I never told anyone how angry and violent he got when he was drunk. I never told anyone how scared I was. I never told anyone the reason why I didn't sleep at night.

And I still don't want to. I feel like I'm spitting on the memory of my father by telling this particular truth. I feel like I'm betraying my family. Why do I bother feeling this way? They've betrayed me.

This weekend I was so angry. Furious. Why don't my parents love me?! Why, why, why, why, why did they not do more for me? Try harder? Why was I left to fend for myself when everyone else (my siblings, friends, friggin strangers) they would go out of their way for. Why was I left out? And, in my mother's case, I still am. I cannot for the life of me get attention from her. I've never really reached out to her - due to the guilt, due to feeling like taking care of their feelings was my responsibility etc - but she's always asked me to, and I always assumed that if I ever did she would take super duper awesome amazing care of me.

No.

I was at my lowest in my autumn depression. I was crying left and right, becoming very desperate for it to just stop. I called her. I sobbed so hard I couldn't speak. She asked me to come over for "some tea and a chat", and I went. I arrived, got a hug, a cup of tea and then spent the following two hours listening to how much her job sucks. All the while I felt like I was herp derping with my face out of desperate desperation mingled with why are you talking? What about me, ma?! 

And that feeling stuck in me, internet. What about me? Hello? Is this thing on? 1-2-1-2 testing. Hello?

This weekend I realized: Oh, It's not the microphone. It's you.

I've cried out for help, as they say, many times. Perhaps not always in words. Blasting the same song that I felt depicted exactly what I was feeling over and over (once I actually blasted on repeat, while shouting the lyrics, For You by Staind), hoping someone would hear it, or dressing in all black with torn up pants because that's like, totally how I felt inside omgz, or not going to school, or not getting out of bed, or not eating, or eating all the time, or accidentally revealing wounds that I had 'I fell down the stairs' and 'I walked into a cupboard! I swear!' type explanations for. But they weren't capable of dealing with me.

Why. 

Oh, the guilt.

I once heard somewhere that people who feel a lot of guilt are full of themselves, that they overestimate their importance in the world.

Does that mean I need to add a new category for Narcissism? Because I am the most guilt-ridden person I know.

I feel responsible and at fault for pretty much everything and everyone in my life - I get a stomach ache if someone else messes up, because I feel like I should have been there to make sure they didn't. And when something is genuinely my fault it feels like I will die from the surge of guilt and self-hatred, so I whip out my razor and I cut myself. I know. Ridiculous. I thought I stopped with the self-mutilation crap to cope with emotion years ago but it seems that there is one feeling that can drive me to my shiny, forgiving razor still.

Guilt.

PTSD#1 has fucked me. It's a barrier in my marriage that kills both parties. I keel over from guilt and my husband simmers in his frustration. And all along it is me, just me, who is responsible. I carry this trauma, this broken part of me, and I am killing my husband. I hurt him, I hurt him so deeply with this. I can't stand it. 

So yesterday I told him that he should leave me.

I feel so, so sorry for him for being stuck with me. If I want to die to get away from myself, how must he feel? Leave me, it's the only way I know how to express how guilty I feel. How inadequate. A man like him shouldn't be with a broken piece of shit like me. There's always something wrong with me, always something that needs fixing. Always some reason why I am never quite present in my own life.

I loathe myself. I look at myself with disgust because I am so weak. PTSD, depression, GAD, phobias, panic disorder. I must be an exceptionally weak person to have fallen into all these mental disorders. Suck it up.

I loathe myself. I listen to my husband tell me how he feels about the havoc that is being wrought by my, MY, PTSD#1. Then I think about all the beautiful, intelligent, amazing women who could so easily do what I cannot. Who could so easily trump me in the role of girlfriend or wife to my husband. I cannot do what most can. Having sex makes my soul sick - It makes my brain replay my trauma, It makes every part of me freeze to stone, It makes me stare blankly into the wall of my bathroom until I notice that my skin has gone blue because I ran out of hot water at some point.

There are so many beautiful, intelligent, amazing women who can spread their legs and happily, passionately, take my husband. Who can listen to him better than I can, who can cook better, clean better, make him laugh more, frustrate him less. Make him happier.
There are so many amazing women who are care-free, who aren't broken and burdened by their pasts, who are thinner than I am, who don't fall into a hole of depression and anxiety that every single fucking time is the fight of their life to get out of.

I am broken in so many parts of my life. Every step that I take is a struggle. All the things that have broken me are hurting my husband and I cannot bear it. The guilt, internet, the guilt is so acidic. I cannot bear the thought of him being with me when there are so many beautiful, intelligent, amazing, thin, care-free, happy women out there who would open their lives, their hearts, their wallets and their legs for him and make him happier than I have. Maybe even happier than I ever could.

Still, he stays. And I don't know why, internet. And I am so selfish that I don't protest just so I can keep the greatest blessing ever to wander into my life.

The guilt will burn holes through my skin, and the army of willing women are standing ready at the sidelines, waiting to take over my coveted position. 

Oh, the guilt.

In which my PTSD is explored.

I'm laughing. Having a moment with teh lulz. I thought I would write something about PTSD today and I literally cannot remember what I've written about it before, I've blocked it out. My brain is so effective! It won't even let me keep memories of writing about memories. Sometimes I feel like I'm being trolled by my own brain, and it's just trying to make me look stupid. Or maybe I am just stupid. Trollolol.

I have two seperate PTSD 'instances'. I call them PTSD#1 and PTSD#2. I don't talk about PTSD#1, but I have been working on PTSD#2.

PTSD#2 is the 'easy' one, the one most therapists can help with, I am sure. When I have asked them (and I've had a few) about PTSD#1 they will not touch it and say it requires training they don't have. So I don't talk about it, because it even scares therapists (and that scares me). I don't know if it can be fixed, or by whom.

I just spent an hour trying to describe PTSD#2 but it was all crap and sounded ridiculous so I got backspace happy and wrote this instead. How's the weather where you are? Spring yet? Denialdenialdenialdenialdenialdenial! Repress that shit. Hurrah! I am cured.

This is much harder than I thought it would be. I can speak about it, I can tell the PTSD#2 story - but why can't I write it? Hmm. Then again, when I really think about it, I don't think I speak about it very well either. Basically I think I would say something like "My dad was very angry. He yelled a lot. He drank alot. After mum moved out I had to take care of him. And he drank more. It was not a great time."  

What? Fuck. Suddenly there are tears. This is all so very confused by the fact that when my dad died three years ago he had changed from The Man Who Gave Me PTSD (though it is unfair to pin it all on him) and we were good friends, and hung out quite often. But then he died. And for some reason the only thing I can think about right now is the way he used to chew his food and drink his milk while reading Donald Duck comics at dinner time.  

I'm not angry at him. At least, I don't think I'm angry. I just feel guilty. I'm guilty because I wasn't stronger and couldn't survive those 7 years without making myself sick and making that my dad's fault.

I'm guilty because who I'm actually angry with right now is my mother, because she didn't save me, because I wasn't protected. I'm sorry, mum, I really am. It makes me want to weep with guilt when I think bad things about my family. But the truth is - please, forgive me - nobody fucking protected me and I was too young - TOO YOUNG - to be unprotected. To witness all the things I did. To shoulder all I did. And I'm sick now and I'm struggling to get better. And I'm sorry but it's all my family's fault, because none of you protected me and all I ever did was try to protect you (and I still do.). And now I'm sick and in a situation where nobody can protect me, because all those things happened and nobody protected me when I could have been. 

The skin of my emotions is raw and torn and the medicine stings worse than the wound.

I guess I am angry. My mother could run away to her new life and ask me to come with her all she wanted, but how was I to leave my alcoholic, broken father who needed me? My siblings - oh please, forgive me - didn't see me. They were deaf, dumb and blind while I stayed up to make sure my dad didn't set the house on fire when he fell into an alcohol induced stupor with a cigarette in his hand.

I guess I am angry. But there is more of my guilt than my anger.

I am so sorry for writing what I just did. I am so, so sorry. I wish I had the strength to protect every single one of you forever.

I know they all have a story too. A story when they were hurt, when I disappointed them, when I failed them. We all have stories about how we were failed by eachother. I guess this is just me documenting mine. And I'm really, really sorry about that.

Crapstorm Recovery

As I recover from the crapstorm that drove me to two therapists and to the bottle (the pepsi kind) I feel increasingly afraid of actually doing what I've been working for. You know... like, living.

It's not that I haven't lived so far, or like all my times have been crap and dark - because they haven't - it's just that I've always carried around a dark cloud that has tinged every blessed day of my life. I'm getting ready to move on to a new life where every good event won't be slightly in shadow or have me thinking "I can think of a thousand ways this pisses me off/makes me sad/reminds me of that one depressing time/will make later suck/may make me throw up GOOD GOD WHAT I AM DOING HERE fleeeeee!".

What's it like not being weighed down by a million mind-bricks? What's it like to allow yourself to really enjoy moments? What's it like to live without what-ifs? I have no idea. I don't remember if I ever have. I didn't think I was capable. Now I know I'm capable. Maybe not as capable to be as care-free as some, but hell - any improvement is very welcome. Also, I find those really happy-go-lucky people annoying to the extreme. I bet they all crap fairy dust and pee champagne. I just crap and pee the regular things. I'm cool with that, because I can act like a monkey and throw my regular crap at those people and bring them back down to earth. Fuckers.

Sometimes I think about all the things I want to do but haven't been able to because of my emetophobia and general fear of pleasure. Like bike really, really fast without being afraid I'll become so winded I'll throw up. Or go to dinner at someone else's house and not be paranoid and checking on their hygiene. Or just simply go for a walk in the winter and end up at a cafe and enjoy myself without fear of the noro virus. Sometimes I try to think about freedom and fail because emetophobia is a strong monster that can block you even from fantasies. Sometimes I'm so sick of the entire therapy shit that I rebel against myself and spend the entire weekend in bed rejecting the company of everyone (including, shock and disgust, my cats). It's all so freaking exhausting but ever since my first taste of what life without a thousand mind-bricks could be I haven't doubted it will be worth it.

 But still, the freedom frightens me. Being free from fear frightens me. Where will I focus all my energy? Will I find other bad habits? What are good habits?

Who am I without all this?

Sometimes I forget

I talk a big talk about my recovery from emetophobia and PTSD and all the what-have-yous that I've been labeled with. I try to feel positive and upbeat and "omgz, I can sooo totally do this. No problems." But then I get trolled by my own emotions and I start feeling really low. All the while my emotions are all " problem?". Thanks, guys! Way to stick it to the man.


Yeah, it's a problem. Once you fall it's hard to get the motivation back. Once I feel like all the hard work I've done has not made a lick of difference I want to rebel and say FUCK this. But then I tell myself to suck it up and get on with it. There is no turning back. There is nothing to turn back to. What is the life of an emetophobe? It only consists of fear and OCD-like behaviour. The life I am pawing at now has intense highs of freedom and intense helium-like rushes of joy. I have to have more of it.

In these moments, the moments when I am trolling myself, I forget where I started and how far I've come. I look and I drown in the distance I yet have to go, and I forget that a few months ago I couldn't even eat an egg. I forget where I started, or rather... I completely disregard where I started because in my eyes the only starting point that is deserving of being viewed as a starting point is where everyone else is with their non-emetophobia. But then I remember that that is my goal, and I am much closer to it than I used to be.

That's when I get a rush. I get a rush of REAL control over my life, not the fake kind that I strived to feel with my emetophobia. I, all by myself, have started taking back the reigns to my life. I do what I want, when I want. Nobody and nothing will keep me back. Especially not myself and the hiccup I created in my mind.

I like these rushes - control, joy and freedom - it makes me feel alive.

I think along the bumps in my life I forgot I was alive. I like feeling alive.

Alive.

(I really like that word)

(It's not dead like other things)

(Like... my father, my sex drive, the scale after it showed me I gained weight for no flipping good reason)

(I only have two resurrection potions to use. Obviously I can't keep being fat so the scale has to come alive again to make sure I keep losing weight)

(and my husband really likes sex so I guess I'll pour the potion on my giney.)

(Sorry dad! I'm sure you're having a blast doing cartwheels up in space though so no hard feelings, right?)

Okay, So I didn't write.

 

Yeah, I suck.

You see, I'm a perfectionist. I get anxious thinking that I won't ace everything I do; and this bloggy thing here meant a lot to me so I freaked out and ran away. I ran far, far away from all the emotions that were being exposed in me. I ran far, far away from how it was affecting my relationship with my husband. I ran far, far FAR away from how it was affecting me. I felt like I couldn't ace these feelings so I turned to one of my best friends - Denial.

The therapist I had talked to during the winter and spring... well, she dumped me. On my birthday. After I had told her one of my biggest secrets, one of the biggest darknesses in me - if not the biggest, the cause of everything.

By summer I was a wreck. I didn't resemble myself anymore. I had put on 40 pounds, I didn't brush my hair, I wore one pair of (stretchy! for my bellayyy. Which was pregnant. With chocolate.) pants and I just did not give a fuck. My husband asked me to please, please talk to someone from his life coaching program. I resisted. I accepted. I chose a lovely woman, to whom I owe an arm, a leg and probably half my bowels. I don't know if I should type out her name, so let's just call her Aurora. The light in my pitch black sky.

With the former 'therapist' I realised I was ready, so ready, to lay everything out, to reveal, to step up and take responsibility and face everything crowding in my brain. Aurora listened to all of it. She didn't stop me, she didn't pull away from me in horror - Basically what she did for me was hear me. Then she started healing me.

I don't quite remember my other blog posts (and I'll tell you why in a minute) so please bear with me if I repeat myself.

My home wasn't the greatest. My father was an alcoholic. He was full of rage (for good reason, I have discovered). He yelled a lot. He frightened me. In my home, nobody spoke (except when there was yelling, of course). And I mean this literally; the only thing that could be heard was the TV and the slight hum of the computer running. It was so tense I constantly had a knot in my stomach, in my chest, in my throat. I couldn't sleep. I went from over eating to starving myself. A lot of things happened, and not a lot happened at the same time. I don't really remember all that much yet. I have post traumatic stress disorder - PTSD - so every memory I get flashes of tends to disappear as quickly.
At 13 I fell into quite a catastrophic depression and developed emetophobia (the fear of vomitting). I recently took up the battle with my emetophobia and I would not wish this battle upon anyone. Except maybe Hitler, but he was a big douche.

I want this here bloggy thing to be a humorous thing but also my outlet for truth (...some of it anyway). I want them both to exist in each post but, realistically, I know that can't always happen. These things in my head are tough, confused and just really fucking suck.

I'll end with a joke.

Why did the PTSD patient cross the road?
... I don't remember.

Badump-tshhh. I'll be here all week.