i don't like this site as much as the Blog.com, but that site is still not up and running. this one is more for writing, but i think it was the ease in mixing media on the other site. but i'm just trying to get the discipline back of doing this daily. today, i don't have a thing going on, so i'm going to try to get back on track all the way. i have to take a friend to a counseling appointment this morning. but i'm going to clean my fridge out, finish my living room cleaning, get my bedroom together. i want to start putting some real order to my home, because i'm trying to put some real order to my life. if i can get my cleaning done today and tomorrow, i can do the serious chill over the weekend. and that would be nice.
pushing the envelope. significance is that i feel if i could get explosively honest, i could find the secrets. i'm going to try to stay focused on that today. as i clean, as i do life stuff, i'm going to keep writing. intermittently and consistently, until i see if i've gone further than before.
i know that some of the stuff i've hidden is based on shame. i'm not looking for that. i've spent so much of my life being ashamed of myself, i've had that instilled so deep inside me, that i'm not going to bother with that for this part of the journey. i know that a lot of my shame was religious in nature. to be ashamed of sexual feelings, to be ashamed of pleasure, to be ashamed of not being everything that my parents wanted me to be, those things were based on belief systems more than on actions on my part. there was also a lot of shame that came from others in my family. my mom's mom often compared me (my brother Jerry as well, but this is my thing) unfavorably to my oldest brother Rick. in most things, we were told how Rick would have done things, which was always better or different than we, or i, was doing them. it may not have been intended as a put down, but it was.
but there's deeper shame. shame is an internalized thing. shame is something that comes from the deep part, the roots of a human. guilt is something different. guilt is like lotion; it puts the guilt upon its skin, and then it feels the pain again. shame is an enema. it may start outside, but it gets all the way into the guts, stirring up shit over and over again. so what's in my gut right now?
food was a numbing agent for me. it was also the only excitement that i felt consistently when i was young. i would steal food though we always had more than enough, that i can remember. i would open a pack of hamburger, scoop from the bottom enough to make myself a couple of burgers, then close the pack looking very much untouched and put it in the freezer. i would volunteer to put groceries away so i could plan my secret meals according to what was in the bags. i always felt that the flaws in me being fat were permanent. when you hear your parents use that one small word when talking about you..."IF" ...two letters and whole words of separation. 'you'd be so handsome...IF...'. you'd be so happy 'IF'...it was like fat was making me less a human, rather than more of one. that's a sad thought. i did feel like less of a human. when i was playing, i'd be fine. i could play and run and jump and kick and hit and throw like every other kid. i was fast for my size, i was very agile, i was quick too. but there was the pre-destined limitations of being fat. fat meant you couldn't be considered as a receiver, though your hands were impeccable. it meant you were going to be on the line, and not even a defensive back position was considered. fat meant you weren't considered seriously as a basketball talent, though you had a real nice fadaway jumper. but fat also went the other way too. though i was very active, i wasn't about distance, not about endurance of one thing. i couldn't do long running. i couldn't do laps very well. there is nothing that is more of an example of a shame enema than a coach jumping down from a tree, screaming at you because you can't run laps like the other boys. and there would always be excuses. i felt it necessary to make excuses for myself. for my limitations, as if i weren't allowed to have any. i would lie about dropping things and having to find them while running, when i was truthfully just winded from carrying more weight. i was not weak. when i say that, it makes something resonate in me. i felt like i was weak, but i wasn't weak at all. my first job was on my uncles moving truck. i was around ten. my brother and i became the grass cutters for the family. it was how we made our extra money. there was no weakness. there was shame, there was guilt, there were lies and excuses. and there was my older brother.
i don't know why he exposed himself to me. i know he was laying on my parent's couch. he asked if i wanted 'bacon and eggs' between his legs, that exact rhyme. he then exposed his genitalia to me. i remember it clearly. i don't know what else there was. i don't remember anything else, not like a blackout, just as having no further details. i don't know how old i was even. i just know that has not left my mind, where so many other things have.
i know i first tasted alcohol as a very young child. my parents would have gatherings, many families did. they had a fold down record player, and they would listen to music and drink and smoke at night. one thing the movies have gotten right. i would taste from the glasses left over in the morning. i don't remember much about that either. not like a compulsion, not like a need, just as a fact. it had to be as a very young child, because my dad was done drinking when i was four. so i don't think it even happened very often.
breakfast:
two egg california blend veggie omelet w cheese: 200 calories
one piece wheat toast: 60 calories
its funny, when you know a two egg omelet fills you up pretty nice, why do you still want three eggs and grits and two pieces of toast? because you are addicted to carbs very possibly.
i am thinking about my early years. about having to apologize for not being perfect. i remember when my mom came to my school once, just visiting, as parents used to do to check up on their kids. i'm sure she was a PTA mom at one point. i was spelling a word on the board and i got it wrong, which was rare but it happened. that was maybe second, third grade, but whenever it was, i was completely demoralized by failing in front of my mother. i cried in school, and when i got home, i got beat. now, i'm pretty sure that the beating was for the crying, but even that is really unreasonable. but that's the point. we were a sick household. whether the beating was for misspelling the word or for crying, there is nothing that i can say, as an adult, to justify that action.
i'm halfway done cleaning out the fridge. it needed to be done. there were things, ARE things, living in there, things that were dead when i put them in containers and refrigerated them. not to mention the horrible spills and stains that have been uncleaned for i don't know how long. i don't know why i do this. but it's part of what i'm looking at now, my relationship with myself and the world i inhabit.
i am seeing that emotional turmoil triggers the eating response. that has never really been something that i've looked at, but it bears some consideration. case in point: i just got a letter out of my mailbox. well, a letter and a package. the package was addressed to a male Thomas who doesn't live here...far as i know, though i kind of figured what it was. but to be certain, and because it's not addressed to any of the 'known' residents here, i opened it. and it is stuff for Syd, from a gay/lesbian/trans support group, i would imagine. stickers and a rainbow lanyard and all types of gay swag. however, one sticker that's included bothers me very much.
now, i'm not a supporter of 'trans-gender' philosophy. i don't believe it. i think who a person sleeps with, chooses to live their life with and have a family and spend their important time with, regardless of what scripture or Republicans or any other source says, it up to the individuals in question. i've believed since my early sobriety as my sponsor taught me, 'you can do anything you want, as long as you're willing to own the consequences'. that's choice, and the freedom to do so. but to be born in a specific body, with specific genitalia, with a particular chromosome count that gave you your particulars...it will always be, in what i know is just my opinion, a program that has been installed and run for the benefit of politicians, television producers and plastic surgeons. but in this world, you can say you're anything and it's true. woman says she's black, lives a black life, becomes president of her chapter of the NAACP and is discovered to be white. immediately after that caught the public feeding frenzy, she suddenly became 'bisexual', and pregnant, and broke. so she stayed in the public eye, with the possibility of a reality tv show somewhere down the line. or this bitch who decided she should decide the parameters of her job by denying same-sex couples marriage licenses. its just grist for the mill. she doesn't care who gets married, she don't care gay or straight, and she don't really care about christianity. she cares about the cameras that were on her, the politicians who were in her corner and her time in front of the mic, praising Jesus and forgetting her divorces that make her, by her own logic, a fornicator and an adulterer, deserving of being stoned to death.
anyway...
lunch was a taco wrap, seasoned ground turkey with diced tomatoes cheese and sour cream, and half a cup of chili (as in an emotional state i spilled half a cup. dinner was a blackened chicken thigh, boneless and skinless, a half cup of mashed potatoes and spicy cabbage. my spicy cabbage has an afterburn to it that is nice. if i do dinners for sale anytime soon that's definitely going to accompany the fish.
so, i talked with Syd about the package that came. i never did get to the point with that, did i? this is very hard writing for me, to be honest. not just the looking at myself. i know how to do that without much flinching. but the nature of the things i'm seeing are very goddamned emotional. like, okay, there was a sticker in the packet that said 'my allies are those who respect my pronouns'. see, that's the era we're in. and i can understand not allowing anyone else to put you in a box, but i can't understand just climbing voluntarily into another box and saying this is your freedom. i'm old, maybe dumb, but that still don't make sense. so i thought about the wording, and i thought, 'ally is an interesting term. its a term that one would use as an identifier in a war situation. like, the Allies in WW2 were the ones united against the Nazis, Italians and Japan. you want your allies around you when you have to go into a confrontational situation. and so i thought, what's the opposite of allies? because i am not a respecter of pronouns. i am a respecter of people. i am a respecter of intelligence. but i don't find it necessary to call my daughter, who has a vagina and goes on menstruation once a month, a boy. so if i'm not an ally...that makes me an enemy. the nazis were the enemy of the Allies.
so i talked with her, and though she says that she understands my neutral position (which is exactly what i can maintain, because like abortion i have not had firsthand experience and therefore do not assume to preach or moralize, but i also will not allow the world to dictate policy to me. i love the expression 'not my monkeys, not my circus', i probably wrote it backwards, but more than that one, i have my own in situations like this; 'i will not join your snowman league, i will not play your reindeer games'. the snowman league is a reference to an old charlie brown serial, wherein he is told he cannot build a snowman unless he is part of a team. and the teams get uniforms and banquets and trophies and whatnot, and they have rules (like illegal mittens) and charlie brown feels its stupid and builds his own snowman in defiance of their league and they've moved on to some new fad by that point. my life. charlie brown was a very heavy young man.
VF has made sense of much of what i wrote early. i can feel my inner child angry at this stuff. my sugar, not high, is not in the low end range it had been, but i'm eating better than yesterday. i'm going to the gym in the morning. i'm going to push the envelope some more tomorrow, so it will likely just be part 2. oh, i finished cleaning the fridge and cleaning out the fridge, and i washed all my coffee cups and the drying mat they sit on. i washed my flatware yesterday, and i washed the countertop holder that was very filthy. i am doing this because i find order in my mind when i manage to reduce the clutter around me, and because i don't want R to feel antsy when she's in my space. i miss her, and i wish she had been able to come by today. but life goes on, and i'm sure i'll talk to her tonight. i am going to decompress now. tomorrow will be here soon enough.
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