Huh. Never had to delete something that wasn’t spam before.

I got my first angry comment the other day. It was mostly unintelligible, to be honest, but it was railing against Health at Every Size, and Regan Chastain of Dances with Fat in particular. So it wasn’t even really MY hate response, it was more hers that got sidetracked on my post. Honestly, I think I’ve mentioned Regan once, maybe twice, so I’m not really even sure how I ended up getting an angry comment about her. Google search, maybe? I should’ve saved it for posterity, but my finger was itchy to use the delete button for the first time on something that wasn’t spam.

If I haven’t made it abundantly clear in this blog, I do apologize. I am a fat activist. I am a firm believer in Health at Every Size, and I highly recommend actually reading Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight. It opened my eyes to a world where I don’t have to hate myself, and where I can be whatever size I am and still be healthy. I am not going to be convinced that it is a crock, no matter how much you rail at me about it. Believe me, my family does it enough just fine on their own. Also, I will not be persuaded by abundant scatological references. Telling me that I shouldn’t believe someone that it is okay with who she is, and insisting that she is more or less whitewashing the fence, with lots of colorful shit metaphors? Yeah, that one’s not gonna fly.

No matter what, I am going to be a fat person for the rest of my life. I am fine with this. Hell, I’m content with that, if not happy. I am fond of all of me, even the lumpy bits and the bits that jiggle when I move. I am most assuredly NOT fine with being told I should be ashamed of this amazing body that does so many amazing things, and being told that I should hate myself skinny. I have done enough of that to last a lifetime and thank god I came to my senses before losing any more of my precious time here on this planet.

My opinion will never be a popular one in my lifetime, at least not at the rate it is going. I will be verbally abused for the rest of my life by just about anyone; people who are cruel, people who are well-meaning but horribly misguided, and by people who love me and think they are doing what’s best for me. But none of that will change who I am or what I look like. None of that will change the research out there. Insisting that said research is like “the six articles that make a case for the earth being flat” isn’t going to change the fact that the dieting industry has been selling us a bill of goods for a long time. It isn’t going to change the fact that hundreds of messages about how I am not good enough because I am fat are being thrown at me every day. It isn’t going to change the fact that the diet industry is raking in $60 billion annually, and this number will likely only go up.

I guess what I’m getting at, is that my mind is not going to be changed about this, no matter what. Mostly unintelligible diatribes in my comment queue certainly isn’t going to do anything but amuse me for a minute, or piss me off, and will be deleted. You have a right to free speech, sure, but this is my blog, and it is a dictatorship. So feel free to go rant at Regan, as she posts her more interesting hate mail on her blog, so at least it’ll see the light of day, maybe. Or rant at me if you need to get it off your chest. But it will most assuredly not be published.

I am fat, and I’m ok with that. I’m more ok with being fat than I am with being bipolar, in fact, and that’s 95% of this blog. So please take your vitriol elsewhere.

Healthy self-talk

So I saw this interview a few days ago, and its message about humiliation versus shame has been percolating in my head for a few days. It’s an Oprah interview with Dr. Brene Brown, who is a researcher who focuses on shame, where they discuss how one’s self-talk determines whether or not they will feel humiliated or shamed by a negative event. I’m not thrilled at how she says that shame is the #1 teaching tool and she sees it all the time in classrooms, as I’ve only been shamed by one or two teachers in my own academic career and it was definitely not something that was encouraged during the time I spent as an education major. (However, the education department itself had a grand time shaming me for having a mental illness, but that’s a story for another day.)

Aaaanyway, I was thinking about how I talk to myself and about myself, and about how I’ve internalized that shame very, very well. I’ve pretty much beaten it when talking about my body, as I am happy with my body physically and have learned to love myself and advocate for myself and other fatties out there, but mentally? Mentally is a completely different story. I beat the shit out of myself mentally on a pretty frequent basis, and usually over extremely inane things. The general manager at work told me the other day, “Sometimes I don’t think you have as much confidence in you, as other people have confidence in you.” It’s so very true. I am a rock solid ally for anyone else, and do not hesitate to give other people the benefit of the doubt and encouragement when they screw up, because we are all human after all, but when I do something dumb? I throw myself to the goddamn wolves.

I read something about how women in our society have been conditioned to treat themselves so poorly, that it would be considered abuse if they treated another human being or an animal that way- denying themselves food, calling themselves horrible things, never loving themselves or finding themselves worthy of anything, constantly berating themselves. And I realized, that how I treat myself mentally, how I think about myself mentally, is abuse. It’s the same abuse my father meted out, in fact, that has led to my spending a lifetime in and out of therapy, still trying to grapple with that little kernel of self-hatred buried deep inside. All of that shame that my father heaped on me when I was a child, I have taken upon myself to self-flagellate with now. I’ve let that shame and self-hatred live rent-free in my head for YEARS. The voices in my head that are so quick to judge me wanting might have started with my father, but I took them in and let them stay long after he was out of my life.

It’s not something that can be changed overnight. After all, my journey to accepting and loving my body has been one years in the making. After so many years of being abused and then taking on the role of my own abuser once the external one was out of my life, it’s going to take a long time to learn to love me for all of my mental flaws. And unlike in my journey to make peace with my perfectly good body, my mind is not in such great condition. It’s very broken, very fragile, and takes a lot of work to just keep myself feeling okay. It’s hard not to hate something so broken in myself, because I don’t WANT it to be broken anymore, but it’s not something I can really mend. I will have to love the bipolar disorder, the PTSD, and the anxiety if I’m going to love myself mentally. I’ll have to love the neuroses and compulsions and derisive voices.

I am visualizing my mental self as a child, my child. I would not treat a child so poorly as I treat myself. I would not hate a child for having shortcomings, or for making mistakes, even big ones. I would not bring up every failure the child has ever had over and over and over again. That’s already been done. It’s time to treat myself with respect, and learn to love my mental self.

It’s going to be a hell of a journey, and I’m not sure how well this one will play out.

Stress accumulates

…Especially when you work minimum wage, don’t get a full 40 a week, ache everywhere all the time, have no disposable income, and live in your parents’ house, it seems.

I haven’t heard anything as of writing this Tuesday night about the job, but I can’t remember if they were doing callbacks Tuesday or Wednesday, but I think it was Wednesday. I’ve definitely been reluctant to be far from my phone, though. I’m trying not to get all bent out of shape and worked up over it, because that never leads to good places. I spent a LOT of time meditating Monday night to keep things in perspective, and am going to do some more right after I finish this post.

I still haven’t managed to corner the GM to have a conversation about everything that happened last week. Some of the emotional numbness has worn off, so I’m back to feeling emotionally tired and drained. I was only at work a couple hours Tuesday and wound up sleeping the entire afternoon because I just couldn’t do it. I was able to go to the store for some toiletries, and start some laundry, anyway. I plan to get some actual housework done Wednesday as it’s my day off, and it’ll give me something to make me feel like I’m contributing again. I had been doing a LOT of cleaning when I wasn’t working and now I’m not, and I feel guilty for that. Not to the point of distress, but it still is this itchy feeling between my shoulder blades, that I’m being scrutinized and found lacking.

I also feel a little brittle again, which also might explain the sleeping. Whenever I’ve had a particularly bad episode I feel brittle for a while and it takes quite some time to get back to normal. I’ve been making an effort to pamper myself and get enough sleep so I don’t end up getting worse. It might annoy my parents, but considering I generally just stay in my room anyway, I don’t really feel all that concerned about it. I’ve been trying to get back into yoga, too, as it helps with the constant ache in my back, knees, and feet, from standing in one place for hours at a time. I hate just popping ibuprofen all the time. Contrary to my mom’s belief that I’d rather just take a pill for everything, I generally try to just deal with pain, because I take enough OTHER pills that my poor liver and kidneys are probably already taking a beating, so I try not to add additional pills. My dad almost died of an aspirin overdose once, and all I remember is him foaming at the mouth, telling me he couldn’t see or hear, and asking for gatorade because it was “just a cold.”

…Huh. That might explain why I was really reluctant to drink gatorade as a kid. (We never had any in the house, and I remember being distressed at not being able to give him what he was demanding, but he was too weak to do anything to me in response.) I drink it now because I am constantly dehydrated and very sensitive to light/heat thanks to about three different medications. I’m so much fun out in public, I swear. I’ve got to have sunscreen and a neverending supply of gatorade and water, I need to sit down and rest a lot of it’s hot and spend as much time in the shade as possible, I’m prone to heat strokes… This is probably why I am not exactly a social butterfly. Especially after my heat stroke at Disneyworld, my friends who were present for that are hyper-vigilant about my overall state and they pack snacks and drinks for me on top of the snacks and drinks I usually am already carrying. Hell, I had a custom holder made for my garb so I can carry around a gatorade bottle without it being obvious that’s what it is, and I have so many pouches hanging off of me it’s ridiculous. I think my belt alone weighs about 20 pounds when I’m well-prepared and the weather’s going to be hot.

Most of those things were not useful when it was cold and raining the whole day when I made it to the Michigan Renaissance Faire, though. I ended up buying a new scarf to add to the scarf I was already wearing as a headwrap to try and keep a little more dry. I do not like being soggy.

Sorry, I went off on a tangent there. Not that tangents are really all that unusual for me…

So Monday went a LOT better than this weekend did…

Monday I had the interview for the office manager position at The Adventure Park at Frankenmuth, and I think it went fabulously. I was interviewed by two separate people and only let go so I could go get to Wendy’s on time for my shift; they wanted to take me around the park to see it up close. I think this job is PERFECT for me, and said so about seven million times. Both were very impressed by the scrapbook I keep of notes and accolades from previous jobs (though it needs a bit of updating.) They want to get someone in ASAP, and as I applied Friday night/Saturday morning at some obscene hour and got a call on Saturday, and was able to schedule an appointment for Monday, and they had interviews Sunday and Monday and plan to do callbacks for second interviews Tuesday. I have Wednesday off, so I would easily be able to go interview again if they call me back. The position is salaried and year-round, and there is an office assistant position that is seasonal but would get me in the door for a position at the park they’re building somewhere outside of Detroit that will open next year. This one is up in Frankenmuth, which is a huge tourist place, so finding another job to get me through the off-season (Bronner’s, anyone?) If I could just find SOMETHING that pays enough that I can get my bills under control and be able to get independent again, it will be worth it.

I haven’t heard back from Michael’s, though they said I’d hear something this week and it’s only Monday as I write this, so enh. If the office manager thing goes through, I won’t worry about it, but if I end up with the assistant position, which is usually only about 30 hours/week, I would need to find something to make up the rest of it. I’m just trying to find jobs that are fairly low-stress so I don’t end up in the hospital due to working too much to make ends meet.

At Wendy’s, I didn’t get a chance to talk to the general manager before she disappeared (I was going to go in before my interview, but I was too worried about being late to stop. I was over a half-hour early, so I just hung out in the parking lot for fifteen minutes or so before going in.) At any rate, I was put on the opposite side of the store from the manager I have problems with, and we just mutually ignored one another unless I had to talk to her specifically. Another manager basically managed me the whole night. I work tomorrow during the day, so I’m hoping to talk to the GM then, but it seemed a bit obvious that the manager I talked to on Sunday shared some of my concerns with somebody, or maybe the one that fielded my panicked call on Saturday told her. I still want to explain things to her myself, of course, and maybe sit down with both of them to work something out. Being on opposite ends of the store definitely helped, as I wasn’t under her constant scrutiny and allowed more autonomy. I really dislike the front register, but I definitely don’t dislike it more than being stuck in that corner with the bully manager breathing down my neck.

So let me tell you the story of the last week or so, since I fell off the map at some point last week.

So… I sort of had a breakdown at work/after work on Friday.

The manager who bullies me was more horrible than usual, going out of her way to say nothing to me for about three hours. She ignored me completely and would work around me. When she did talk to me, it was with a lot of eye-rolling and huffing, and making snide comments behind my back. As I was only about four feet away from her, I got to hear it all. I started having a panic attack about mid-shift and took a klonopin. When I got home I felt awful, but I hoped a few hours of time on the internet would help. I took two klonopin as usual with my evening meds, and went to bed by midnight.

I spent the rest of the night unable to breathe or sleep, as my entire shift continued to play repeatedly in my head. I had wanted to set boundaries, or just leave, but I didn’t, and I beat myself up not standing up for myself. I wanted to talk to the general manager about this manager’s behavior but couldn’t until at least the next day. I ended up taking two more klonopin as the night went by, trying desperately to stop the panic attack. I was dressed and ready to go to the hospital when my mom got up. She had noticed I didn’t look quite right when I got home, and was surprised that I didn’t hang around to watch Iron Man 3, which they had rented, and I love tremendously. She and I talked for a long time, and went for a walk, and I was starting to feel better, and very tired, thanks to waaaaay too much klonopin. I knew I was in no state to work, so I called in, which must’ve been frustrating because I’d picked up half of those hours the night before. I knew I’d be comatose or a complete zombie on my feet, and that’s not safe. I spent most of the day asleep, and went for another walk with my mom once I got up. Once I’d had some dinner and a walk, I was feeling better, though I still felt like I was someplace outside of my body, just observing, and emotionally numb.

I slept SO WELL Saturday night, and was so conked out, I couldn’t wake up until about 3:00 PM on Sunday. I got ready for work at 4:30 and realized I had a bunch of messages on my phone. The GM had written the hours I’d picked up for me, but evidently I agreed to come in earlier at some point with the closing manager for Sunday night, and was supposed to have been there by 3:20. Oops.

However, I also got a call from a job that had weirdly enough popped up on my Facebook feed, for an office manager. I had applied to it on a whim, and was actually called back. I was able to get into contact with the woman who was doing the interviews and scheduled one for 12:30 on Monday, so wish me luck!

Sunday night I still felt weird, and was up front for a few hours. I don’t know where anything is up there, and the sandwich maker was coordinating the orders just fine on her own, so I felt mostly useless and exposed. I came home on my break because it was quite frankly much warmer there, and talked with my mom about how I was feeling sort of paranoid and weird. She told me to try not to read so much into how people were treating me, as half of the staff still don’t know what to think about me and give me funny looks a lot. I was put on the drive thru when I got back, and the return to comfortable familiarity did a lot of good. I was able to talk with the closing manager, whom I’ve worked with for years, about what happened and my hopes that a conversation with the GM on Monday would help. She didn’t share my enthusiasm but hoped for my sake that something might come of it. All else fails, I will involve the nice people who help with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and who will mediate problems at jobs. If it doesn’t end up helping me in the long run, it should help others. Managers should not be rude and bully their employees, at least without consequences for that behavior. The job is stressful enough without help from within.

Hopefully this office manager job pans out, as it is full-time, and hopefully reasonably scheduled, paid, and insurance’d. We’ll see tomorrow.

Reinventing Nadja

Well, when this post goes up, I will have been back at the Wendy’s in my hometown, my first job, for 45 minutes.

I feel like a failure, and have been battling suicidal thoughts as the time has ticked by. I spent last Monday evening on the phone with 1-800-SUICIDE because I was worried I would act on the thoughts, and half of my coping strategies were out- I usually like to talk to friends, and usually roleplay the emotions out, but I had no cell signal, there’s no long distance on the cabin’s phone, and no internet. I opted not to visit Tahquamenon falls the next day due to them featuring so very prominently in my suicidal thoughts to the point of my starting to plan things out, which is when I made the call. I’d been having panic attacks all day Monday, and I overheard my stepdad complaining about how all I do is sleep when I was just in my room, resting, half incoherent from klonopin. My heart hurt but I’m getting used to that. On Tuesday, when everyone was at the falls, I slept, and by Wednesday I felt like myself again, because I’d been able to get a decent amount of sleep at that point. I asked to stay through Thursday, rather than leave Wednesday, but my parents wanted me to come home so the garbage could be put out for Thursday pickup, and I imagine they didn’t want to have to deal with me anymore. Their empathy for my illness only extends so far, and my needing rest to stay functional irritates them.

I was still dreading everything- going in to check my schedule and get a couple work shirts, buying work pants and shoes, all of it. A lot of that anxiety went away when I did check my schedule, and I’ll be working 11:15 to 8:30 on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Not a full week, but the weekend had already been sorted by the time I put in a note asking for hours. I need to be brought back up to speed, anyway, and at least I get a weekend out of it. So many of the faces are the same, though I’m terrible with names. I went to look at pants and shoes and discovered that I can’t afford them, and will need to ask my mom to buy them for me, which makes me feel awesome. I also need her to buy some medication for me (she’d previously offered to help with that but I’ve been embarrassed to ask, afraid that she’d forgotten about it and would change her mind) so we’ll see how things go.

I thought about my life, and feeling like a complete and total loser, a lot on Friday. I started to think about how my career hadn’t really worked out, and this is a period of reinventing myself. That I have to go all the way back to my personal square one to do so is irritating, but at the same time, at least I have a contingency plan. I’m not as awfully bad off as I could be right now- I could be homeless, as my stepdad originally wanted. I could also possibly be employed at something professional, as I’ve had many interview requests from around Ohio, and not a single one in Michigan.

I feel lost, and hopeless, and mostly tired. But maybe once I have a job again, and can have a current employer people can call, and a current employer that’s known me for thirteen years and can attest to how I am a hard worker who is excellent at customer service, maybe that’ll be the impetus I need to finally land something that will pay enough for me to get into my own apartment, get Chihiro back, and some measure of independence again. Of course, now I have to replace so much of my furniture, and my bike and sewing machine, and whatever else manages to wander off before I finally have a place to my own again.

Mom wants me to “network” more. I’d love to volunteer, or do temp work, but my anxiety levels spike at the thought, and the temp agency didn’t work out, as they never contacted me again after I completed all the assessments. Another temp agency sent me assessments to complete to get a call center job. I don’t know if that will pay better than minimum wage, but maybe.

I just… need to find my self-confidence again. Six months of nothing but being turned down, ignored, belittled, and parceled out has done nothing but destroy me inside. I have no confidence in my ability to maintain employment, and maintain stability whilst employed. I want to go back to school to learn to be an interpreter but I don’t know if I can manage that on top of working at a job like Wendy’s; I definitely can’t afford to pay for it, but if I took enough classes to get my loans deferred, that would be a little more money in my pocket to be used towards other bills.

There’s so much to do and I’m so afraid of all of it. I make lists and even the lists make me nervous. I covered one of them up with the scarf I just finished making, and I keep moving around my pile of mail as if it’ll sort itself out properly if I manage to put it in just the right place.

I’m trying to be confident, I really am. I’m trying to put forth the best I have. Maybe I need to go get my costume out of storage and wear it around for a while; actually *being* Nadja tends to help, though I have no faire to attend. I don’t want to go to the ones around here because they aren’t home. Willy Nilly on the Wash is home, and I hope I can get there soon.

I just want to go home.

This past weekend? Worst weekend EVER.

Friday wasn’t the best day, I was struggling with my depression pretty badly. Saturday during the day I felt a bit better, and my mom, sister and I ran a garage sale to sell my nephew’s outgrown baby things, and did pretty well. We’d all been out in the sun, so all three of us napped after that. My grandparents and an aunt and an uncle later came over for hot dogs and to hang out afterwards. After they left, my sister and her fiance rented a couple movies and were watching “This is 40” which was TERRIBLE so I went back to my room rather than finish it. I don’t really remember what happened, but I do know that the depression I’d been struggling with was back, and brought with it a host of suicidal thoughts. I was starting to formulate a plan of jumping out of an attic window, so I packed a bag and went downstairs to ask my sister to drive me to the ER.

We got there around 1, and I didn’t actually get assessed until around 5:30. The woman was from the local mental health agency, so she made me an appointment to get connected with services on Monday at 2. I was discharged and my sister (who had been passed out in a really bizarre position in a chair most of this time) took me home. I had something to eat, showered, and went to bed around 7:30 AM on Sunday.

At 11:45, my stepdad stormed into my room, knocking over my fan that was too close to the door, and bellowed, “GET UP.”

I looked at him and said “Did you know I was at the ER last night?”

“GET. UP.”

I did get up, to go find my phone and call my mom to see if she could mediate. She was driving my brother and nephew back to their house and was on her way back, and said, “We have to talk. Get dressed and I’ll be there in about 20 minutes.”

Seriously, guys, there is nothing more gut-wrenching than the phrase “we have to talk.” But I got dressed, figuring mom and I would talk and sort things out and things would be ok.

I didn’t realize my stepdad was going to be part of the conversation. I almost refused to talk with him, but I bit my tongue and we started talking. They wanted to know what led to my going to the ER, and I was explaining what happened. I said I was doing the best I could, I’m taking my medication and trying to do what I can, at which point my stepdad interrupts.

“Where has that gotten you? In the last six months, it’s landed you here, and then last night you were at the ER. What was that about?”

I know I yelled this part. “Because I wanted to go to the attic and JUMP OUT OF THE WINDOW.”

“Why didn’t you?”

I stood up and left, returning to my room, and barricading myself in with my nightstand, as the door doesn’t latch and definitely doesn’t lock. I could hear my parents arguing, and my stepdad saying “She needs to understand that this is all bullshit.” A few minutes later, he comes in AGAIN, forcing his way into the room despite the nightstand in the way. He says, “I meant what I said literally. You HAVE TO UNDERSTAND that you really want to LIVE.”

I was just screaming and mostly incoherent at that point, screaming at him to get out and leave me alone. He refused to, and then told me to get out of HIS house if I wouldn’t come down and talk to them. I said if he didn’t get out, I was going to call the police, getting my phone out of my pocket. He insisted that would make it worse, but I dialed anyway, and he FINALLY left once I started talking to the dispatcher. They said that they would send an officer to mediate and I said I’d wait outside for them. Once I walked outside, my parents tried to get me to go sit down at the table again, but I told them I was waiting for the officer to arrive, and went to wait in the driveway.

The officer arrived and I explained what was going on, trying to get him to see my side of things. He listened and took a few notes, and then went to talk to my parents for a few minutes before returning to me and mansplaining a bit about how my parents were trying to understand and weren’t daring me to go commit suicide. I agreed to go talk to them with the officer (who really wasn’t any help as he kept taking my stepdad’s side) but at least my stepdad was being somewhat civil at that point. The police officer left after a while, but of course we had to keep talking.

Mind, I have had four hours’ sleep at this point, after sitting in the ER all night due to suicidal ideation. I have been told that my suicidal thoughts were bullshit, talked over, mansplained to, and nobody at this point is willing to accept my personal experiences as true. I had eaten a bowl of cereal at six when I got home but that was it, so I was also hungry, and I was pissed as all hell.

I finally went and explained spoon theory, which my stepdad hotly debated, insisting that I should be able to do all of those things and I was just being lazy about it. He continued to assume that I spend all of my time in bed and demand that I not be in bed between 8 AM and 8 PM. I pointed out that he hadn’t even been here in over a week, and I have been doing everything anyone asked of me the whole time, and that I wasn’t magically going to get better after my entire life had been turned upside down. There was also a conversation about weight and health in there too, because of course there was, my family never misses a chance to concern-troll me about it and go into detail about how exercise and weight loss will definitely fix everything. (One of my skinny friends who struggles with depression told me “Yeah, and I also fart rainbows,” when I told her this later.)

My parents tried to say that this is stressful for them too, but I pointed out that, while their adult daughter has moved in might be a bit stressful, I have lost EVERYTHING. I lost my job, I moved away from my friends, I lost my companion animal, I lost my security network, all of my stuff is in a storage unit, and I am barely holding it together, and then when I got here my brother’s life fell apart so we’ve spent the whole time trying to pick up the pieces for HIM and I’ve just been pushing everything down, just like I always have had to.

I don’t think ultimately that I got through to anybody, but I was too tired to keep going. I retreated upstairs and took my nighttime medication, took a shower, and went to bed at 5:00, despite fears that my stepdad would come in and start yelling at me again for being lazy. Mom came in at 7:30 to check on me and I told her I was pretty much done for the night because I was honestly too tired to see straight. I slept until about 2, at which point I got up because I was hungry- all I had to eat yesterday was a bowl of cereal, half a sandwich, and some potato salad- and then I wanted to get all of this written down.

I’m still a bit of an emotional wreck but I’m presently numb. It’s raining outside and that sounds nice. I think I’m going to go eat something and try sleep again.

Another conversation with a friend

(Clarification: This friend lives in New Zealand, and thus was awake when it was obscenely early o’clock, so I felt a little less awful for talking to him, than calling anyone local.)

Me: sorry I was so weird the other night
I was getting really manic… and then my parents’ internet crapped out
which probably saved you from a lot of weirdness.
Him: Oh? I wasn’t aware. You were fine. :3
Me: I hate it when I’m like that.
it led to a whole lot of awful with my family the next day
Him: *offers hug?*
Me: I can’t stop crying
Him: I’m at work now fyi
Me: and it’s really unfair of me to point this in your direction
Him: Should be ending soon
It’s fine.
I can take it.
Me: it’s just a lot of family drama
I went home over the weekend for my sister’s bridal shower
and got manic, so I was really out of it on Sunday during the shower
and did nothing but piss my mom off again
so I’m pretty miserable right now
and so I’m being really awful and dumping on you, because you’re the only person who has any reason to be up thanks to timezones
as it’s 3:59 in the morning
Him: all the hugs.
if you were having an episode out of your control and she doesn’t recognize that then fuck your mum.
Me: I know I shouldn’t necessarily be making excuses for other people’s bad behavior
but I know it’s coming from a place of pain
because I remind her so much of my dad
so she’s always trying to fix me, and any reminders that I’m sick and will never be better is met with anger and hostility
Him: Not really an excuse though.
Me: no… but it’s easier to accept when I reframe it like that
I don’t deserve it
I’m literally a victim
Him: you really don’t
Me: but it’s easier to accept being victimized over and over again because I can’t fix it, when I can see why I’m being abused
Him: brb
Me: and god that looks horrible when I write it out
Him: …back. and yeah it really does.
Me: and any time I try to point it out, I just get yelled at and told I’m just acting like a victim and I need to grow up
and… it’s always been like that
and it hurts
Him: That.. sounds toxic.
Like. Incredibly so.
Me: yeah, a bit.
and no amount of talking about it with her fixes it
but right now I’m rather dependent on my parents to help me, y’know, have a place to live
as unemployment doesn’t pay all the bills
Him: oh god. When did that happen?
Me: February
I got fired.
Him: Argh
Me: and I can’t find another job
so I’m looking at maybe having to file for unemployment
and there goes the rest of my life
Him: Why?
me: because the American safety net is a lot more like a spider’s web
you can’t escape it and it eats you alive
I would lose pretty much all of my autonomy for a pittance
and would end up dependent on SO MANY programs to be able to have a place to live, food, insurance so I can have medication…
I would only be able to see a limited number of doctors (and not my own, they don’t take Medicaid) and they’re all burned out and overworked
Him: Oh god
Me: I’d end up relying on a case manager who’s some fresh out of college kid like I was, who’s just trying to get started, and mostly likely does not give a shit, but I will have to rely on them advocating for me, because the system is set up so I can’t advocate for myself
most of the programs require a case manager to sign off on it, along with a psychiatrist
so I’d be at the system’s mercy
and having been on the other side of the desk?
the system is pretty merciless
Him: Shit.
Me: and then, if I was able to go back to work, all those programs would get ripped out from under me and I'd have to start over again
and if I became unemployed again it would start all over again.
so…
Him: I’m so sorry Nadja.
Me: And my parents have made it VERY clear that they have no interest in me having to live with them.
so I am pretty much thinking I would be better off jumping off a bridge.
than be at the mercy of all of that.
Him: I really hope you don’t.
I hope it doesn’t come to that.
Me: me, too
I’m hungry, and I should probably go to bed
I’ve finally stopped crying
thank you for listening
Him: You’re more than welcome.
Take care.
Me: Thanks. 🙂

Happy anniversary

Today, the Ides of March, is the eighth anniversary of my hospitalization. One week from today is my birthday.

I was almost twenty-one when I finally had myself hospitalized, and that was when my mom finally accepted my illness for what it is, but the various conversations we had last week definitely proved that she still doesn’t know much about it. I’m not sure why, I’m happy to tell anyone just about anything about my mental civil war, if it’ll help them understand those of us with mental illnesses better. Mom doesn’t ask much, and I guess I don’t tell enough, or the right things. Even when I do explain I’m not sure I’m doing a very good job of it. I figure if I had a kid with an illness, I’d do all the research there is to do on said illness in order to help them as much as possible, but denial is a pretty powerful force.

I’ve been watching the old animated X-Men cartoon from the 90’s for the last couple days. I loved that show then, and I love it now, and I keep mentally equating mental illness with mutation. So much stigma and misinformation, hatred and fear, it’s really not all that different.

I always wanted so badly for my mom to accept me and the things I liked, but she definitely disapproved of the X-Men, and my favorite character, Rogue. I realized in the last couple days of marathon cartoon watching part of what I love so much about Rogue- she’s untouchable. Between her ability to absorb other people’s energy and powers, and her flight and super strength, she was the paragon of invincibility I always wanted to be. I would be safe if I was Rogue. I could’ve protected my siblings and flown us all to safety somewhere, or I could’ve left on my own and been safe.

Mom took one look at Rogue and said she didn’t want me watching shows with “women with fake boobs like that.” She did watch an episode with us once, but of course it had to be a really weird episode, “X-Ternally Yours,” where Gambit had to go back to the bayou and deal with weirdness there. Mom didn’t approve. Of course, it was on after I got home from school and long before she got home, so she couldn’t stop me from watching it, but I had to keep everything secret. I’ve done that for a long time. So many things were kept secret from mom because I knew she wouldn’t approve and I wanted that approval so desperately.

When I saw my therapist Thursday, we talked about this, and about how I need to love myself for me, and not base my self-worth in the approval of others. The past happened, but I don’t have to let it control me.

Tomorrow should be a day of celebration for me. Eight years since I was hospitalized, though I’ve had a lot more ER visits in the last year than ever before. I feel like I’ve lost my way at times, and right now I don’t really know which way is up, but it’s still been eight years.

It’s been a long, confusing journey, but there’s still a lot left to go. Every time I think I’m going to give up if something happens, that thing happens and I find myself going, “Yeah, okay, I don’t have time for this shit” and keep going. I have no idea where this inner strength is coming from, but maybe it’s Rogue after all. Sometimes it takes mutant powers to keep going when you’re fighting a civil war, after all.

My family and diet culture

The whole time I was home, mom would periodically start in on eating healthier and getting more exercise, which sure, I agree, are beneficial things and I do my best, but when I have no money, buying healthy foods is a challenge, and there are few safe spaces for me to exercise in. My neighborhood is not safe to walk around in, that’s for sure, and I don’t have the money for a gym or any classes. I tried to explain that, when I’m in the middle of a downswing, I don’t *care* about those things. Getting out of bed and putting on clothes is sometimes all I can manage in a day. I can tell she’s trying to understand, but this still seems completely foreign and lazy to her. She just wants me to get on with it and just do it already and has a hard time not thinking I’m just being lazy.

I mostly tried not to let this bother me, but I really had to grit my teeth when my sister came home, and the real diet talk began between the two of them. Talking about calories per serving, my sister talking about going to the gym twice a day and mom wholeheartedly endorsing it (while I sit there, thinking of the thinspo images my sister has all over her kitchen, how my sister has a poster on her wall where she measures various parts of her body multiple times a week, how she’s actually had problems where she was all kinds of disoriented because she’d cut too much protein out of her diet and probably could’ve died… How her fiancee encourages this behavior, constantly comments on her body, and often comes up with new ideas for diets for the two of them to try, all of which scares me to death.

Is this how we’re going to measure our life?

Both my mother and my sister are obsessed about their weight and size and are all kinds of crazy about looking “right” for my sister’s wedding this summer. At some point this past weekend, my sister said, “I love my birthday! It’s an excuse to eat cake with no guilt!”

I looked her dead in the eye and said, “I never feel guilty about eating cake.”

Because I don’t. I’m at peace with my body, I like how I look, and constantly strive to undo the damage living in my family’s diet culture has done.

“Diet culture, even when it doesn’t involve surgeries or starvation or physical harm (although it very often does involve these things) is violence. Even the language of diet culture is about hurt: burn those calories, zap that fat, I’ve been so bad, no pain no gain, beat the hunger, crush the cravings, fight the fat, battle the bulge, waging war on obesity. See? All about the hurt. It’s no wonder then that some people seem to perceive fat acceptance as a new kind of danger. Some assume it’s a movement that promotes harm to one’s own body or to the health of others, or even to taxpayers. It doesn’t. It simply illuminates this fact: if there is a war on obesity, there’s a war on ‘obese people’ and those people have a right to resist. So we do, often by opting out of the war altogether and making peace with bodies. I don’t want to fight my body anymore and I sure as hell don’t want to fight yours, whatever size it is. In fact, I don’t even want all that rhetoric about fighting. Why are softer words (embrace, accept, listen) less utilized? Traits commonly seen as ‘feminine’ and therefore weak — like kindness – are actually some of the most effective mechanisms we have to use against fat-hate. It’s hard to sell diet pills to someone who’d like to be gentle on themselves, accept themselves for who they are, listen to what their body needs and embrace size diversity. And it’s hard to see how creating a world without diet pills wouldn’t be a win for feminism.”

-“Fat Acceptance: when kindness is activism,” by Spilt Milk on Feministe.

And my nearly 29-year-old body bears a lot of scars from diet culture. Mom says I didn’t start to gain significant weight until my dad left, but that’s when my period started, and the really disordered eating started happening because that’s when my mom stopped eating. For months, she lived on salad and coffee, and constantly commented on her body. So I started eating in secret, shamed due to how my mom treated my weight gain, the constant lectures while watching her live in such a disordered fashion. She put me on diets, too, and then scolded and shamed me when I didn’t lose weight. I’m pretty sure that this whole time my thyroid wasn’t working right, so I couldn’t have lost weight if my life depended on it. I did try, hard, every diet, but I’d give up once mom started in on how I must be cheating or I’d have lost more weight by now. So I continued to yo-yo for YEARS, trying out various diets and failing all of them, constantly bearing the concern trolling from my family.

It wasn’t until I was on my own that some of the disordered eating slowed down, and once I discovered Health at Every Size and fat acceptance, I really started to like my body how it is and stopped mistreating it so badly.

Moving home could undo a lot of that. On the other hand, I deliberately left Fat!So? and Health at Every Size there when I left. Passive-aggressive? A little. But I didn’t want to talk about it any more, as I’d done nothing but be on the defensive for a week.

Maybe mom’ll take the hint and read it, and learn a little bit about how NOT to treat me.