Piles of self-hate

So yesterday was really bad and awful for me personally. I wasn’t thinking clearly, I was upset with myself and frustrated as my inability to be normal. I have severe body image issues that affect me daily, but I’ve never been diagnosed with an eating disorder. Instead I just have piles and piles of self-hatred that color how I perceive myself all the time.  It is bad enough that there are frequently times when I want to stop eating and start exercising like a fiend in order to see results. However, I do have some good sense left and it kicks me in the head when I start thinking like that too much. I know how unhealthy that would be for me.

That said even though I know it in my head that doesn’t mean I don’t get a little crazy sometimes. Yesterday I spent some time reading a blog written by a woman who is pro-ana and according to said blog works in some kind of film or modeling industry where there is a LOT of pressure to be thin. I was trying to find some perspective hoping that it would kick me out of the headspace I was in, but all I did was feel like some of what she was writing about going to the gym and limiting her caloric intake made sense to me. That was a little scary honestly and I did find the courage to tell JD about it last night because I kind of scared myself. He asked me if perhaps part of my mood yesterday was because I started new meds and if the side effects might be getting to me. I argued that I had only just started them and he pointed out that side effects are an immediate thing, which he is correct about.

At any rate today I just feel like I am being buried under a giant pile of self-hatred and loathing and I don’t know how to escape from it. I’m not perfect and I never will be, but I don’t think I will ever even get to a point where I can say that I like myself. I’m really tired of always feeling so broken, useless, and worthless, but I don’t know any other way to feel about myself. I’m diagnosed crazy, fat, not really pretty, and have never been able to see the good in myself that others keep telling me is there. I try to trust JD when he tells me that he loves me for a reason, that I’m wonderful, and that he doesn’t know what he’d do without me, etc. but I can’t shake the feeling that he would be better with someone else. My best friend reminds me that I’m not perfect and he’s (JD) not perfect, but we are perfect together. And maybe she’s right. But I don’t want to be perfect. I just want to not hate myself.

Depressed Fat Ass

I’m really having a hard time today. It is snowing out and I hate snow and winter and cold and tend to get very depressed when the weather is bad. Given that I live in a place where it isn’t uncommon to have snow from November-March I can get pretty miserable. But I can’t afford to move away.

Anyway, I’ve dealt with some stupid at work. No more than usual really, but when I’m having a bad day like this it really grates on my nerves that people can actually be as dumb as they are. Now I’m not a genius by any stretch of the imagination and I will give someone a lot of slack if they are willing to learn or able to learn. People who are willfully ignorant just irritate me though. And I’m upset so it is worse than it normally might be. I just want to shut off the phone and work quietly without any interruptions.

But my biggest trouble today is simply being me. I’m not handling myself well and every time I see my reflection in a mirror (so any time I get up to go to the bathroom) I just hate myself a little more and want to cry. I’ve gained all this weight and I know that I can’t physically lose it fast enough for me to be able to feel better about what I see in the mirror. But if I do nothing I keep gaining weight. I feel as though I’m stuck because one way or another I’m going to fail. 

I don’t know what to do or how to address this issue because it is a recurring one that I have struggled with for years.  I’ve always been heavy and I’ve always tried and failed to lose weight. I thought I could just keep trying and magically one of these days it would stick and going to the gym would get easier and not eating so much food would be easier, but honestly all it does is just stress me out. And when I get stressed I want to eat. I’ve gotten better at breaking that habit though since we don’t keep a lot of junk in the house, but I still feel awful every time I see myself in the mirror. Used to I only felt awful; if I saw myself naked in the mirror, now I just hate what I see no matter what.

*sigh* I really don’t know what to do or how to handle this since everything that I have tried (and will probably keep trying) just doesn’t seem to work.  Eventually I’m going to be fat enough that I won’t be able to wear any nice clothes or even want to leave the house because I will be so disgusted with myself. I don’t want this to happen but right now at this very moment it feels like that is going to be the hopelessly inevitable conclusion that my life will come to.

I don’t have a good thing for today.

Not bad...maybe good

So I've been slacking off on writing mostly because there hasn't been much to say. I've been working and playing WoW on my down time and that's about it. I'm kind of starting to plan dinner for JD and I for the Thanksgiving holiday although we aren't doing anything too crazy. I will probably actually go and work at the office for a while that day so I can get some extra hours in. That never hurts anything and since I'm not going nuts with the cooking I will have plenty of time to get everything done. And then on Black Friday I am staying home and not going anywhere. Screw that mess.

Yesterday was definitely full of some good things. I mean work was a bit of a chore like most work tends to be even if you enjoy your job, but when JD came to get me he had stopped and gotten me flowers. Really pretty pale peachy/coral roses. Just three, but they were three perfect ones that fit nicely in a pretty vase and sit on my desk. Unless I'm at work or not home because if I leave them where Colt can get to them he will eat them. Brat cat.

So getting flowers yesterday was good.

Also good was managing to avoid a small herd of deer on my way home last night after JD and I had dinner and stopped at the store. There were six or so of them in the road and I spotted them as I was coming down a hill doing 55 or so on a wet road in the dark and rain. I stomped the brakes, blared the horn and hoped that it would both scare those deer out of my path and alert the guy behind me that there was a problem and he needed to find his brake pedal. I was a little worried that I was about to get caught between a dead deer and a pick up truck in my small car. Happily, the deer scattered and the truck stopped.

Not wrecking my car is definitely good.

The last few days have been pretty good for my moods and whatnot and I'm doing well waiting until my next appointment with my shrink to see what my med changes are going to be. Hopefully we can find something that is affordable that will work for me. I want to get back on track, get my hours at work under control, stop missing days, and get back to the gym. I just have no motivation for the gym and a large part of that is because of my mood swings. I will be glad to  get that sorted out when it eventually falls into place like it should.

Brick of Text

I didn’t write all weekend and I’m not sure why now that I look back on things. I think I was just being lazy. Saturday my good thing was definitely the food as JD made me brisket, collard greens, and baked potatoes for a belated birthday dinner. We polished that off with bourbon and Dr. Pepper to drink and that was just an altogether enjoyable experience (with red velvet cupcakes for dessert.) We don’t eat together very often as we’re usually sitting at our respective computers. I think we need to get back into the habit of eating dinner together when we are both eating at the same time. Even if we just sit in the floor and talk and eat. It’s so nice.

Yesterday I slept until almost noon which was definitely a good thing and then I proceeded to do nothing all day until I decided that I had this crazy desire to play World of Warcraft for the first time in several years so I did that for a while in the evening and want to play some more tonight I think. I can be a bit of a junkie when I get on a gaming kick. So that will probably occupy a lot of my time for a little while and that’s OK I think. It’s better than say drinking myself silly at least. Yesterday was just a good quiet, day and that’s what made it good.

Then the damn power went out when I was ALMOST asleep last night. That made it hard for me to fall back asleep and then I didn’t sleep very well which meant that I didn’t want to get up this morning at all and I am still feeling pretty rough even though I think I look like I have it together. Poor JD didn’t fall asleep until well after dawn so I know he is still out (It’s after 11) and I hope that he is feeling better when he does wake up.

I never did get any knitting done over the weekend like I was planning on doing and I don’t know if I will finish the blanket any time soon honestly, but I’m just not sure if I really care because it feels more like work than something I can enjoy. That said, I should still try to finish the blanket even if I don’t get it done before the shower (which is this weekend and I think I’m already too anxious about it to go.) And on top of my anxiety I will just feel so awkward and uncomfortable because I just don’t do well in situations like that. It makes me feel kind of awful about not going, but I feel less awful if I don’t go than if I go and put myself through the anxiety and fear and worry and everything else that comes along with having mental health issues that mean you don’t do well at most social events. It honestly keeps me from doing a lot of things because I am far more comfortable and less sick feeling if I just stay home. *shrug* It honestly bothers me less and less as I get older.

I have no idea what my good thing for today is going to be (it is about 20 or 12 now) so I will either update it later tonight or sometime tomorrow once I figure out what happened today that was a good thing. I mean sure the fact that I got out of bed today (barely) was a good thing, but if my day doesn’t get better than that then it seems like I might have been better off to stay in bed and sleep and let the fact that I got some sleep be a good thing. Tonight might be an early night, but I only say that until I load up WoW and then I won’t want to log off the game and go to bed….

Tidbits

Just for today I am going to be writing little tidbits as my day progresses and I will post them into one long post at the end of the day. I don’t know what my good thing for today might be yet and I don’t know how things will go overall since it is only just after 11 AM and I am at work until 5. I do know that my office is cold and I’m hungry, even though I ate breakfast.

My local animal shelter is having a special this weekend where adoption fees on all of the cats are waived. I found out about this and immediately asked JD if we could get another cat. He looked like he really wanted to say yes, but then pointed out some reasons that it might be a bad idea, one of them being that my cat, Colt, is a big bruiser of a boy at 20-25 pounds and is incredibly attached to “his” people. He thinks that Colt might be likely to bully another, smaller cat. I think Colt would learn that he can share and would adjust, but the matter is still up in the air.

I started another set of wrist warmers on my smallest knitting loom over lunch. They are going to be a very pretty variegated purple and I’m definitely keeping them. I need to spend this weekend knitting like a fiend to finish off a blanket that I am making for a co-workers new baby. The shower is next weekend and I honestly don’t want to go, not because I dislike my co-worker or anything, but simply because I don’t like showers and the like. I get very anxious and nervous at gatherings like that and I’m kind of awkward to boot. At any rate, hopefully I will get it together and get the blanket finished as it really works up quickly if I just sit and work on it.

Later tonight we are going to hang out with some friends and play D&D (well, Pathfinder, but close enough…) and probably will need to make a midnight Walmart run (yuck!) so I can grab some shortening for the red velvet cake I am making tomorrow to belatedly celebrate my birthday. It is currently looking like the highlight of my day is simply going to be seeing JD when I get home since that is really all I want to do is see him and get a hug. And that’s perfectly OK to be the best part of my day. I still want another kitty though. :)

11/14

So I forgot to actually make an entry yesterday because I was busy being productive. I stayed late at the office to start trying to catch up on some of my contract hours that I have missed and then quality time and dinner with my love.

We both enjoy cooking and we can get in the kitchen and cook together pretty well, even working on different parts of the same meal that we are throwing together without a recipe with little difficulty. Case in point was last night’s dinner that ended up being a bit of a Greek influenced chicken stroganoff type dish over rice instead of noodles. Rice of course simply goes in the steamer and while JD did the chicken I put together the sauce that glued everything together. And then while that hung out for a minute (or three) I steamed off some veggies and then finished them up in a super hot pan with some olive oil, salt, and pepper and called it dinner. I think getting to cook dinner with JD was the good thing about my day (yesterday) because even though we tend to do it every so often I really enjoy being able to get in the kitchen and share the space with someone that I love and create amazing food.

As for today, I’m 29 now and have been at work and things have been pretty low key. I will get to the gym after work because I’m trying to get back into that habit (I had been doing pretty good with it, but I got crazy and that tripped me up a bit.) I’m not really doing anything to celebrate because…well just because. I’m kind of low maintenance and kind of broke and really not interested in going out and drinking, which seems to be a common way to celebrate in this area. JD is making chili for dinner and we are going to spend a quiet evening relaxing I think. This weekend though, comes the food celebration cause food is something I’m good at. Trust me when I say there is a reason that I’m a fat girl. J Brisket, greens, baked potatoes, and (probably) a red velvet cake sounds like an excellent birthday dinner that I can celebrate all weekend cause it’s going to be a TON of food. And I’m fine with that because…brisket.

Today I've also really been struggling with an angry, pissy, moodiness that just has persisted despite my best efforts to not be cranky. Finally as my day is starting to wind down and I have had some time to relax and eat dinner and basically just do nothing except talk to my parents (they called to wish me happy birthday) and be with JD (who has been trading silly Internet links with me) I've started to relax a little. I also did some shopping and ordered some stuff that I wanted/needed and shopping is always mildly therapeutic. Except when its not like when I am frustrated by trying to shop for something. But I think despite my mood issues it turned out to be a good day overall.

I think the best part of my day turned out to be something that I was incredibly annoyed and grumpy at initially and that is my trip to the gym. I went under much protest and whining, but I hit 1.5 on the elliptical in 25 minutes. That's not a bad thing and it might be the kick I need to get back on the wagon (again) and maybe stick with it better this time. I will keep trying.

Nothin

Today was the first real snow fall of the season and that gives me something good about my day. Not the snow. NEVER the snow. I hate the stuff. But it was good that I made it home safely driving through white-out conditions and just enough snow on the road to be dangerous.

I've spent my evening watching youtube videos, eating pizza, and browsing reddit. Nice and quiet and relatively relaxing and I'm remembering to write before I go to bed. My day at work was quiet as well although it got off to a bit of a late start since I managed to oversleep. Ooops...

My plans for tonight had also originally included some stargazing but the weather prevents that. Boo. And I'm rambling because I don't have much of a topic tonight. Hmmm...let's see.

Yeah, I really got nothin...I'm off for bed.

Tangents

So in addition to challenging me to find one good thing about my day JD has also suggested that I start trying to write everyday. If I can keep up with things to write about and then just remember to write it might work. I don't have very high hopes for myself, but *shrug* who knows.

At any rate, my good thing for yesterday (because I never shared it and sharing it might help me be more accountable) is that we put hard boiled eggs in the spaghetti sauce. I had never had i and it was really freaking yummy. next time though I might not let the eggs cook as long before they go into the sauce. I felt like they were a bit dry in the center and a slightly creamier yolk would have made them even better.

It is Monday and I haven't really slept since Saturday night. I have no idea why. JD said he came in to check on me at one point and I must have actually been asleep at that point in time, but I know I didn't sleep for long and I know he was up all night. So I figure I've had 3 maybe 4 hours if sleep. I am wide awake. JD was smart enough to finally go lay down in bed about 9 this morning and is currently sleeping. I tried to sleep to, but my mind just wouldn't shut off. It goes off on these random tangents about crazy stuff and I'm done for.

So its 1130 and I'm up, I ate a spaghetti egg with a piece of bread and now I'm here. I need to run to town at some point and I need to get some unpacking done, but I don't want to drive alone since I've had no sleep and JD is asleep in the other room and I don't want to wake him by trying to unpack. So nope.

The thing about the random tangents that my mind sets off on...if I could do all the things that my brain can imagine me doing, I would be set for awesomeness. Unfortunately life doesn't work that way. Of course, if all the bad things that I conceived of came true I would also be set for disaster every single day so maybe it is a good thing that we can't wish or will or think an event into existence. Besides, someone would've probably already wished me dead if that were the case and I wouldn't be here to write this. Hell, the person that wished that could've even been me. I was a dark, angsty child. I'm not really any less so as an adult, but I try to hide it better because adults aren't supposed to be emo. Except I was emo before emo was cool...by like almost a decade. Does that make me a trendsetter? *laughs*

Hmmm, I still haven't come up for something about today that is good. Although given that I haven't had nearly enough sleep to attempt to be a functional human being I think the good thing about today is going to be that I'm glad I don't have to be at work. Not working can be a good thing. And today, on Veteran's Day when we honor those who have served to keep our freedoms, it is definitely a good thing for me.

Change Challenge

So JD is challenging me to find something good about my day. Even if it is only one little thing. Because I tend to sit and be miserable and mopey and depressed about things that aren't changing and the reason that those things don't change is because I'm not doing anything to try and change them.

And I will stop for a moment and I will state the obvious here. Change is hard. Really hard. Really fucking hard.And because I want to change so much it seems like it is just overwhelming and I can't do any of it. So I get stuck in a rut that I can't seem to escape. I honestly don't even know where to start or where to even think about starting. So I don't get anywhere and I stay stuck.

When I write it all out it makes things seem even more hopeless than they already tend to look from my pessimistic point of view. *sigh*

Changes

I'm spending my weekend coming off a rough week of crazy mood swings, spirals, and highs/lows. I'm also spending it watching Champs on wftda.tv because no matter how much I'm not able to skate right now it is still an absolute blast to watch. Except for Gotham. I am so over watching Gotham because they play at a level that is just beyond many of the other teams and I hated seeing them just utterly destroy Ohio. I hope that Bay Area can come in and beat them.

I also hope that I can figure out the issues that I am having, not only with my medication, but with my insurance (or lack thereof) and that I can find a way to continue treating my bipolar and PTSD. Honestly, when I look at it from a health standpoint I know that I have no choice but to FIND an option that will allow me to keep up with my treatment because if I don't then I simply won't be able to function at a level that is going to allow me to do anything resembling having a life.

Once I get this crisis under control I want to be able to move on to having some boredom in my life. I want nice and quiet and uneventful because I am so tired of having there be one catastrophe after another. Even if it is all minor stuff it just wears a body down to nothing. I want my life to be dull for a bit. Then maybe I will be able to once again consider getting back to roller derby. But before I get back to derby I need to get back to myself. I need to get with the gym, stick with it, change my eating habits, and basically just learn that it is OK for me to do me. So not only will there be the gym to handle but also just the basic truths of life that tell me that it is OK to have a bad day, it is OK to sit and knit or read or veg out, and even beyond that I need to realize that it is OK to accept myself regardless of things that I might not like and then I need to let others choose to accept me or not and what they do is not something that I need to worry about.

JD tells me everyday that he loves me and that I am beautiful. I know that he loves me and I can easily believe that he does. What I struggle with is that I am worth loving and I feel like he would do better if he loved someone that was worth loving. I need to learn that he obviously thinks I am worth it, which is kind of a new concept to me. And I need to learn too that when he says I am beautiful that he doesn't see what I see when I look in the mirror. In order for me to learn that I think that I might need to find a way to change what I see in the mirror as well and that is definitely something that I have no idea how to do.

Reading back over things I see that what this post seems to boil down to is that I need to make a lot of changes in my life and I'm not really sure where to start with any of them. If there is anyone out there who still reads this and has some advice to share I would welcome friendly comments.

Starting Over

I've been cycling really hard all week. It has affected my ability to work, sleep, play, enjoy myself, and participate in roller derby. I think I am coming to realize that until I have my bipolar disorder under control and can focus on something beyond simply surviving my day then all of the extra things (like roller derby) are simply going to have to wait. It breaks my heart to have to walk away...again. But I can't do it.

I feel as though I have virtually no friends because I either can't handle hanging out with people or because I am too broke to go out and do anything. Working at Walmart was an awful job, but that was what gave me a little extra money to go out and have a drink with friends or maybe enough to have even gone to dinner. Now I live paycheck to paycheck under what feels like a mountain of debt that I don't think I can escape most days. It is incredibly discouraging and even though I am slowly watching those debts decrease it happens on such a micro time scale because of interest rates and my inability to make more than just the bare minimum of payments that it is very hard to see the scant progress that I do make.

I work a 9-5 that isn't exactly stressful, but it can be too much for me and I'm exhausted by the time I get home; another reason that I might feel alone because I simply don't have the energy to go do anything. Before I started cycling super hard I was getting to the gym and had seemed to be making some small headway there (another form of progress that is very hard for me to see) but since I crashed and burned I have been once. And my eating habits have been atrocious.

Basically, I am starting all over at the beginning yet again. This feels like only the umpteenth time that I have done so and I feel like I don't know how many times I can start over before I eventually just give up altogether. How many times before it is just too much, before my spirit is crushed under the onslaught of repeated failures.

Ugh, this is a rather disjointed and rambling post, but it accurately reflects my thoughts and my feels so unlike writing a speech or a presentation I'm going to let it stand as it is and hope that I can somehow, someway, someday make the changes that I need to make (and stick with them) in order to be a whole person again.