Trying to be a protector

(Trigger warning.  Bad language, dark thoughts, and slight sexual talk.)

He fucked someone else.

He’s the one who fucking decided to not speak to us for weeks, acts all apologetic when he comes to visit us in the hospital, and then last night he decides to tell Charlotte he’s fucked someone else.

While they’re in the MIDDLE of foreplay.

Fucking classy, right?  Motherfucking classy.

I wanted to put my boot through his shitty fucking face.  But I didn’t get to control that situation.  Since it was a fucking sexual situation, control falls to fucking Charlotte.

Fucking Charlotte.

So fucking needy in her fucking needs that when he drops that gem of a bombshell, she fucking pauses, stares at him a second while internally WE LOSE OUR FUCKING SHIT.

Then she carries on like nothing fucking happened.

Fucking fantastic.

She fucks him not one, but twice after that little gem of information.  She tries to justify it by saying she didn’t try hard (yeah right).  But that’s not even the fucking point.
Then she needles him.  She fucking push, push, pushes the shithead to admit that the cocksucker’s fling of betrayal was shitty.  Great fuckwit.  I don’t fucking care if it was the shittiest lay you ever had.

You’re still a fuckhead.

He spends half the fucking night trying to say how beautiful, how lovely, how gorgeous we are (stupid fucking V told him about the body image issues and most recent laxative use).

It all fell on fucking deaf ears.

All I can fucking hear in here is how awful we must look for him to go out and find someone else to fuck.

Shit.

Now I have to fucking deal with a brand new spiral of self-hate after we just dug ourself out from the last one.

Thank you motherfucking shithead of a fuckwit.  I’m putting up a fucking banner.  We aren’t going fucking back to him.  This is it.  Charlotte filled her fucking void.  She’s done for a couple weeks.

We finally found a fucking doctor who will see us (appointment tomorrow) so we don’t fucking need his medical fucking ability.

The fuckhead can just stay away.  Stay the fuck away.

Don’t need these fucking mind games.  We already create our own shit.

Hoping the fucking doctor tomorrow can help.  And I’ve never fucking hoped on doctors for shit.

Anything to calm them down.  Thinking they’re fat and ugly and unfuckable.  Jesus.
Charlotte fucked the man twice and he certainly had no issues performing.  Ya’ll are fuckable.  Chill the fuck out.  It’s him that’s unfuckable.  I’m sure the low class whore of a bitch he found was like, 400 pounds and had the worse butterface in fucking existence.

I’m with Middi on this front.  If meds can help, I’ll allow them.

Especially with the numb fucking hands being the worse they’ve been in awhile this morning. Can barely put the fucking bra on.

So that’s our fucking weekend.

Hope ya’ll are fucking good.

-Rika

Rose-Tinted Lies

**(EXTRA Trigger warning for blunt and not pretty ED talk)**

The glow and flame and burst of light you think you’ll have.  The silver insides, the fluttering clean, the glorious empty, the lightly skipping steps of a person who is perfectly thin.

It’s a rose-tinted lie.

Here’s what an eating disorder really is for me:

It’s two am and I wake up with those sudden feelings of self-hatred and the flab seems to be clinging, clinging,  Something has to be done.  It doesn’t matter that work is in the morning and I really shouldn’t be a shell at work.  I reach for the pills.

It’s living a life where measurement of pills are dolled out by shakes of a bottle and tosses into a shaking palm.  Proper dosage is only “more”.

It’s making sure I have enough ephedrine to curb the hunger pains and exhaustion.  It’s reading the articles that talk about it being mostly outlawed because when it was coupled with caffeine and aspirin it caused dramatic weight loss (and a lot of health problems).  And my only reaction is “gotta get some low-dose aspirin”.

It’s telling people I love eating hot sauce straight because I’m a weird nut about spicy food; when it’s really because it acts as a natural laxative and adds next to no calories.  And loving that it burns the shit out of my tongue so I don’t want to eat more.

It’s the burning and painful tenderness of my behind after I’ve had a particular violent bought with the laxative effects.

It’s sobbing in the middle of a weekend afternoon because I desperately want to bake something (baking being my secret passion) but knowing I’m not seeing anyone soon that I could pawn the results off on.  So I have to stop myself from doing it.  Otherwise I’ll just eat the results and cow’s don’t deserve desserts.

It’s being a little happy deep down when a particularly nasty migraine results in multiple days of vomiting.

It’s hating myself so deeply, so darkly, in a twisting thorn of rage, for the days after those migraines where I can’t eat enough.

It’s telling coworkers that I ate before I came to work and I would prefer to just work through lunch.

It’s shaking and trembling in the bathroom after those handful of laxatives, the cramping in my stomach so bad that I’m pretty sure I’m going to die.

It’s unexplained bruises and scratches when I wake up in the morning.  The only clue is a echoing cry of despairing self-hatred in the back of head.  It is almost childlike.

It’s hearing my best friend tell me I look like a pinup model in a swim suit and wishing, just wishing, that I could see myself that way.  I’m not dumb, I know my eyes are broken.

It’s hearing my mother say “You would never treat another person the horrible way you treat yourself” and being stunned into silence by the truth of it.  I am my own worse enemy.

It’s hoping, hoping, hoping that something will change.  But nothing ever does.

It’s a rose-tinted lie.

Breaking a promise

(trigger warning for self-harm discussion)

I’m so very angry with myself.  And feeling remorse/regretful.

I broke my promise to myself last night.  I could go into which bit of me did and that it was an insider and not the “whole me”, but I feel like that’s just trying to dodge the blame.  It doesn’t matter “who” decided to do it.  It doesn’t matter.

I broke a promise.

It’s been three months since I’ve actually cut.  I’ve thought about it.  I’ve talked about doing it.  But I haven’t done it since I moved to my new place.

I’ve drank, I’ve self-medicated, and I’ve restricted.  But not cut.  Not that.  I promised myself I wouldn’t.  I promised my friends I wouldn’t.

Why can’t I just keep that one promise?  Why?  Three months is barely anything.  I feel so lost, so remorseful, so…

Sad.

I can’t wear shorts this weekend.  I’ll have to be sneaky with Army if we get intimate unless I want him to lecture me (again).

Mad.

The burn and sting of the freshly opened cuts feels so sickeningly good.  It shouldn’t.  I know it shouldn’t.  I hate that it does and I’m so mad that I would use that feeling to try and justify doing it.

Bad.

I just can’t win.  I thought the promise was something I valued.  I thought I (all of us) truly meant it.  I thought we could keep this new apartment free of that negative energy.

But blood has been spilled.  And blood stains.  It soaks in and ruins everything it touches.

I am worthless.

F-A-T

Is it me?

Slight trigger warning: brief mention of sex, but only in a vague sense

________________________________________________________

Army couldn’t perform the other night.  You know, perform. 

I don’t know why.  He wouldn’t elaborate.  We’ve only had this problem once before in our entire on and off again relationship and that time he explained in detail about his issues (which aren’t important at this time, so I won’t expand on that).  He was also strangely distant.

I think it’s me.

I’m worried I’ve gained weight, though I’ve been trying so hard to be good and not.  I guess I haven’t gone up any clothing sizes and my friends and family remind me think about that when I start thinking in a non-logical fashion.  So if I’ve gained weight, it must be not enough to cause me to go up in any sizes.

But obviously something’s changed.  I must be doing something wrong.

It’s sort of funny though because though on one level, I’m upset and confused and concerned, mainly I just don’t give a damn.  I don’t think I’m all that attached this relationship, even though I sometimes try to convince myself otherwise.

I mean, Army is a good friend.  But I just don’t feel any magical chemistry like I used to or like my friends talk about with their significant partners.  I mean, I enjoy the sex, I enjoy spending time with him, sometimes I like how he makes me feel.  However, there’s no craving anymore, there’s no dwelling on him when he’s not there.

Again, I think it’s me.  I think it’s that depression catching up to me and trying to kill my romance.  Not my libido, which is crazy healthy still.  But it’s like if the possibility isn’t right in front of me, I only sort of “itch” in a general sense.  Like “Hm. I could really go for sex right now”, not “Man I wish Army was here”.  I don’t think that much at all anymore.  Most of the time I can’t kick him out of my apartment fast enough after we’ve finished.  He’s the one who’s wanted to stay and cuddle.  I feel like such a boy.
But even the other night he wasn’t cuddly.  I don’t even really know why he came over.  I didn’t ask him, he asked me.  Was it just to throw my own unattractiveness in my face?

Thank you, I’m well-aware of it already.

I’ve buried that desire for actual romance down so deep that I don’t fantasize about it anymore.  Except when certain songs come on the radio or my iPod.

Then it’s hard not to cry.

I don’t understand why I can’t handle anything beyond a casual, secretive physical relationship.  I want to.  I want to so much.  But I just wreck it every goddamn time.

I just want the punishment to end.

The Grip of a Label

The last post didn’t really establish how badly this Steubenville case has gotten to me.

I’m mad at myself for that, but I can’t seem to break free.

It isn’t really the case itself.  I’m not going to bore you with more talk about the media’s portrayal.

No, I have a more personal issue.

The victim’s mother stated, “This does not define who my daughter is. She will perservere, grow, and move on.”

But I worry.  I worry about the label of “victim”.  I worry whether that is truly ever able to fall away.  To be something of the past.

Because right now I only feel like a victim.  I feel like I’ve never shaken that label.  I’ve never relaxed the iron grip of it, the gnashing teeth and rancid breath.

I still feel powerless, lost, hopeless.  These feelings sometimes dwindle down a bit, but they never seem to truly fall away.  I can manage a strong front.  I can fake it like a pro.

But inside I still just feel like a scared girl who doesn’t want to walk down the street without at least some pepper spray, most likely my dog, and even possibly a gun (I never said I was a Democrat).

I don’t want to be that scared person.  I don’t want to be a victim.  But anytime I get into a personal situation that narrows itself down into that test of power, of control- I fumble.  I cave.  I fold into myself and allow myself to be the powerless.

I don’t understand it because I do not give up control at work to my clients.  I am not rude or mean, but I am in control.  I think the less I know a person, the more likely I am to remain in control and not allow that feeling of uncertainty to creep in.

But when someone starts digging into my skin, breaking beneath the surface…then I let the reins fall.

I hate that about myself.

The past couple days I’ve lapsed so bad back into my eating disorder because I need to know I have control, I need to know this body is mine to do with what I want.  I don’t know why I can’t get that feeling treating it healthily.  I wish so hard that I could.  I know I’m broken and I need help.

Why can’t I just reach out?

Why is the grip of this label so crippling?  Why do I think of myself as the victim or the villain of a story instead of the hero?

On one level, I’m so sure that I can just keep wading through my own muck without that extra push, that extra lift.

But on another level…..I know I can’t handle it.  I can’t keep going like this.  Not for much longer.

Fat (TW)

I hate having to deal with the aftermath of a self-harming episode.  I hate dealing with the withdraw from Middi’s pill popping. I hate dealing with the stinging of Daria’s mutilation whenever clothes or above-tepid water touch the tiny cat-like scratches.

But what I hate the most is having hide Victoria’s crazy self-mutilation. She cuts and burns actual words into my skin. Not something I can pass off as a dog or cat scratch after a week of healing. Nope. Something I have to hide for months until the scar fades enough that it can’t be read.

It’s been almost a year since she last tried to do this. And someone was able to stop her before she managed anything resembling readable English.

Not this time.

I’m so ashamed.

All it does is give power to her desire to starve us to death.

Every time I look down and see those three letters, I believe them.

It doesn’t matter what others say. Even a completely unbiased (and well-meaning) friend of Shadow Dragon who was over last night said “Where’s the rest of you?” and some other comments about my supposed dramatic weight loss. But it’s so hard for me to see it myself.

Why? Why?

Why do I only see flab and fat? I just try not to be as bad as Victoria. But I see it. Every day.

And now those three letters carved into my skin whisper to me that I’m not good enough. I’m not there yet. Moremoremore.

I don’t want to die. I know parts of me do, but most of me wants to live. Why can’t those parts be stronger? Why do the negative parts get away with so much? How do they get so much power? Why does insecurity always slip back in instead of the compliments I hear from friends and family?

I don’t understand.

Worthless

Tonight is hard.

Today was hard.

The past couple days have been hard.

My mask has been tightly in place until I am behind closed doors.

Thank goodness that skill was learned well.

I just feel like giving up so much right now. It’s so hard to stay postive with these crushing thoughts and constant insomnia.

I tried opening up a bit to Army about feeling down Friday. Via text, because texting is so magical in it’s security to allow deeper confessions without face-to-face or even verbal interaction.  Army used the phrase “we’ll figure it out”, which has just completely thrown my whole system for a loop. 

Somehow that simple phrase triggered a whole codependency fear I have. My issues should be solved by me alone (well…alone-ish, har har).

And now he hasn’t said a word to me since Friday night. He’s been active on Facebook, so it isn’t his job getting in the way. I’m sure I’m reading too much into it but I can’t stop.

I can’t stop.

Even when I unwrap a fresh blade, I notice how it says “made in USA” and my insides twist because I want to joke with him about of course the US still manages to make their own razor blades.

But I can’t.

I won’t seem needy. Or clingy. Or crazy.

So instead I break a promise.

Over and over I break that promise, the red lines multiplying.

My word isn’t worth shit.

I’m not worth shit.

I should just finish the bottle or bring the blade somewhere higher than my knee.

This is so hard.

My life is worthless.

My Personal Angel: Zoe

Trigger warning for description of self-harm.

I’ve tried so hard to be good to myself.

We all made that promise weeks ago. And we followed through for a good while. Long enough for the constant ridge of barely healed slashes above my left knee to attempt to become scars.

But the stress piles and piles.

Work is becoming too much with my demi-boss’s passive-aggressive bitchiness. This time she actually managed to be bitchy about my bronchitis and lack of ability to communicate verbally for most of the week. I have a feeling she’s going to drag me into another “you-need-to-shape-up” meeting with our department supervisor.

Most of me doesn’t give a shit. I’m not going to roll over this time. I’ve done nothing wrong or unprofessional. She’s the one creating fucking drama that isn’t there.

But my second stresser makes me want to roll over and take my lashings because I can’t afford to lose this job.

Shadow Dragon just told me yesterday that her landlord sent her a stern letter basically saying I can’t live here and must be out by the end of January.
Now, this change in situation could work out because Army is possibly about to have his lease broken (due to his roommates divorcing, not anything he’s responsible for) and he’s asked me to live with him again.

Again I’m torn.  I’ve talked it all up to my mom and friends when they ask about how I feel about moving back in with Army. But truthfully….I’m not sure. My relationship with him has changed so drastically over the past two months that I’m scared to change it even further. I don’t want to tear down more walls. I can barely build them strong enough to keep him out.

I know I can’t be trusted to live alone. Look how badly I just backslid today, with just simple stressers and multiple sources of support.  I spent a chunk of my evening chatting with Shadow Dragon and Puppy, which relaxed me at the time.

But once I’m alone in my room and the insomnia beast sets in….I spiral. Down, down, down.

I take a strange focused pleasure in tracing the lines of the scars, opening the same slashes from weeks ago.  That focus and pleasure lasts until a soft jingle distracts me and Zoe noses closer.

She licks the thinly bleeding lines.

My heart breaks.

From my leg her tongue moves to my arm, my hand, my face. Then she settles her head firmly in my lap so I can’t bring my knee up to my hand holding the razor blade.

And all I can do is hate myself so hard, so deeply. How did someone so weak, broken, and selfish as me come to have such an angel of a dog to walk this path with me?

I don’t want to be here anymore.

And yet, when I look down into those golden eyes of devotion- I don’t want to be anywhere else.

Religion and Mental Health

I’m not atheist.

Those of you who follow me and have read a lot of my posts (and the various about me sections) know this.

I choose the label “Pagan” because it’s the easiest one to explain my unlabeled belief.  And my mother is Pagan.  But I don’t really like labels.  I believe in a higher power.   I don’t exactly know what it is.

But moving on.  My issue today lies mostly with the way some Christianity, particularly Catholicism, feels about mental health, particularly depression and suicide.

This is not to say I have an issue with Christians or Catholics.  I do not.  I have family, friends, coworkers- many persons I care for greatly that are active Christians and I respect them wholeheartedly.

When I first saw the movie “Constantine” I was drawn in by the idea of angels and demons walking among us.  But then I became horrified and disturbed by the idea of someone being condemned to hell for taking their own life.  Being raised by a Pagan mother and atheist father, I’d never heard of this belief before.
(Note: I’m actually unaware of a lot of common Christian-based beliefs.  I wasn’t ever taught those things.  Not even basic bible stories.  The only one I really know is the flood, but that’s because there’s a Pagan equivalent.  Someone tried to explain the whole J-dude and the whale to me a couple months ago and I just didn’t get it.  They were like “He was swallowed by a whale” and I was like “You mean like Pinocchio?”  and they were like “Well, that’s the reference Pinocchio is making.”  to which I replied “Huh. Weird.”
I make an ass of myself frequently.)

Suicide happens when the pain is greater than one’s coping abilities.  Simply put, the person is struggling, reaching and reaching, and no one is grasping that hand and pulling them out from the hell they’re already in.

And then you want to say that they have to continue that suffering (that was not their choice in the first place) forever???  That is not a religion I can get behind.  At all.  I wish this narrow minded idea that mental illness is not “as real” as physical illness didn’t exist.
And to have religion, a powerful force in itself, perpetrate this belief that persons suffering from mental illnesses can just shake themselves free of it by simple faith and reading of a religious book…is just incomprehensible to me.

My spiritual beliefs are dear to me.  They’ve gotten me through some rough patches.  But they were not enough when I miscarried last year and decided I wasn’t worth the life I had been given.  I lost my faith.  A lot of persons I’ve known to have depression and suicidal thoughts have followed this pattern.  Faith is swept under the rug.  Not because we don’t believe or don’t want assistance from the Great Divine.  It is merely that our mental illness makes it impossible to care about and grasp those greater ideals.  We consider ourselves worthless- why would we want to draw attention from a higher being to that?

But to be punished eternally for that self-hatred?

I cannot believe the Great Divine, in their loving kindness, in the beauty they’ve handed to us, would truly punish like that.  How can some who hates only themselves, harms no others, be on the same level of hell as a mass murderer?

But there is a flip side to this.

I heard this beautiful story this morning and it opened my eyes to acceptance.  That everything has two sides.

Here is the story (I’ve paraphrased it a bit):

Two soldiers were stationed together for many years.  They became good friends, brothers-in-arms.  When they were sent into battle, one of them didn’t make it out alive.

The soldier left living found out that his friend had no relatives or other friends to handle the funeral arrangements.  So he took his fallen friend to his own family Catholic church and requested the priest handle the arrangements and eulogy of his friend.  The priest first asked,

“Was your friend Catholic?”

“He was not.” Answered the soldier, meeting the eyes of the priest bravely. The priest nodded.

“I will take care of your friend.”

The soldier then had to go back to his base.  Years later, he returned to the church to look for his friend.  He scoured the graves outside the fence, since he knew that since his friend was not Catholic, he wouldn’t be permitted within the fence’s boundaries.  He couldn’t find his friend’s grave and went to ask the priest.  The priest nodded and led the soldier to the correct grave, securely within the bounds of the fence.

The soldier looked at the priest in confusion.

“But I told you my friend was not Catholic.”

“I know.” said the priest, “And by the rules of the church, he is not to be buried within the boundaries of our fence.  But I searched the bible many times over for the answer.  No where did I find a passage that forbade the moving of the fence afterwards.”

Case of the Uglies

I’m feeling really awful today.

First of all, I’ve been feeling really fat and ugly lately. I suppose it’s the season and the whole Winter Blues thing.  It’s been leading to a bit of craziness.  I haven’t been eating much, though I’m trying not to let it get to dangerous levels. That’s been hard. I’ve also been a bit harsh with the beauty regime; using toner and cleanser and an expensive overnight cream.

Then Mom asked me to house-sit and watch my youngest brother for the next couple days. Tonight while he and I were watching a movie, he told me some nasty and hateful things his dad (my stepfather) said to him about me.  My brother is thirteen years old.  And I’ve always been polite and helpful to him.  I don’t think I deserve such underhanded and rude trash talking.

But maybe I do….

I’m trying really hard not to self-harm. I’ve been so good the past couple weeks.

But tonight is hard.

I don’t think I’m strong enough.