...well, we're going to resume. not a hundred percent, by any stretch, but this is a day for moving it along, and so since we're not sitting idle, we may as well get it on all the way, right? i know, talking about myself in the plural is a bit creepy, but i'm sure it's the flu, mostly. i keep making mistakes, like my fingers are slower than my brain. but i'm going to get it together.
making breakfast right now. an open face bacon and egg with cheese sandwich, about 300 calories. gotta get back to watching my numbers as well. no point cleaning up and discarding useless shit if i just leave myself anchored through neglect and shortcuts.
i think i finished with family stuff. and i believe i covered my peers as well. the origins of where this pain has come from are pretty easy to see. i know that at a point i shut down the emotional reactions as much as i could. i know that by the time i was in junior high, it was too hard to stay distant. hormones were running rampant, the girls were getting thicker, and there were social issues that came about that i was ill-equipped to deal with. i've been thinking about some things this morning that help me understand this a bit more. like, the thing with my mother, she was trying but her trying was tainted by her association with the Witnesses, i believe now. there was a song on the radio this morning, "Rich Girl", by Hall & Oates. i used to love that song when i was a kid, but i wasn't allowed to listen to it. why? because it had the word 'bitch' in it. i know, i'm as profane as a boatful of drunken sailors at a stop full of whores today, but back then, we couldn't even listen to something that had swearing in it. at least, with my mother we couldn't. so there were movies we couldn't see because of content, monster movies, horror movies, and there were songs we couldn't listen to because of content (pretty sure she had a problem with 'The Black Superman', a song about Muhammad Ali, but i sure can't remember, when i listen to the song now, what was offensive about it to her), events we couldn't attend because of content, etc. yet, at school, if i missed a word like 'christmas' on my spelling test because i was taught we have nothing to do with christmas, i would be punished. it was pretty psychotic. it was not an easy line to walk, and sometimes, it was impossible. and the reason i say these things now is not to make my mom look bad, but to explain the statement that she tried, and that her trying was tainted by the association with the Witnesses. plus, a lot of this had to do with the battle for control between herself and my father. so shutting down emotions just seemed a smarter thing to do. but when the internal changes started, the external stresses also manifested. i could not effectively close off emotions when they were running wild, out of control in regard to girls and a need to be a part of and being bussed to a predominantly white school and exposure at the same time to Malcolm X's autobiography. i was a furnace constantly being stoked with coal. and the explosion kind of happened, but it was actually more of an implosion. i stopped caring about the grades and the certificates and my parents being happy. in eighth grade i began experimenting with drugs, and i got my first failing report card. my parents, who were in a war, should have seen this as a warning sign, but they didn't.
this sick is trying its best to kill me, i'm thinking. went to counseling, falling asleep in VF's office, but she made some good points about perspective changing. i just want to clear away some of the weight that has kept me from moving further. if it helps me understand other people, that's cool, but i need it to help me understand me.
so i was talking about the explosion. i got high in junior high school. i kept getting high until three years after high school. i sort of oozed through school. i don't remember much of it now. i know i was lonely, and i was scared a lot, and i learned how to perfect the performance that had begun back in elementary school. i was anything except me. i was the clown, i was the brain, i was the freak, i was the monster. but i was losing track of Tim. i remember liking girls and not daring to talk to them. i remember the few times i talked to them and the absolute horror (it seemed at the time) they would express from having someone like ME talk to them. what i realize now was i wasn't carrying myself particularly well. in giving up on me and just playing so many different roles, it would have been like saddling oneself with the boy who would eventually go postal. but i only saw that i was a monster and no one would ever love me. Christal loved me, first girlfriend. given to me by a boy she was seeing when his social status improved from being on the football team. special ed. girl, which meant i was crueler to her than i had a right to be toward anyone. and it wasn't even cruelty, but it was not kindness. she gave me her lunch money. i don't know why, it was just a thing to do. i fumbled through the beginnings of sex with her. she was a wrestling fan so i'd bring her wrestling magazines. i stole a bottle of cologne for her. i was drinking and getting high, and her dad was an alcoholic (eventually died of alcoholism). she never asked me to be anything but there for her, and i couldn't give her that in any sufficient supply, so she found someone who would and of course then i was crushed. kids are so stupid. only girl i was with until i graduated. she died a few years ago. she was neglected to death by her older sister. we'd not seen each other for a lot of years, but she was my first love. deserved better than me. deserved a better death.
anyway, the ridicule from school, the pressure at home, the sense of alienation and depression made the drugs so much easier to take on. but the thing that was a constant, that never ever went away until the cocaine use tried to usurp complete control, was the food.
i remember walking...WALKING, up McCartney road to cornersburg pizza with my friends. that was the hangout thing for me. food was at the center of all the madness. eating chicken by the bucketful. the center holds. learning to cook better so i could eat more. candy stolen, shoplifting only sweets, getting caught shoplifting at Hills, punished for it, just stealing candy, and lying about the crime in school so as not to be more humiliated. stealing was a thrill but it wasn't a numbing agent, and i really needed to kill the feelings. the munchies after smoking some good weed, chocolate, anything sweet that went down easy, starchy stuff that would sort of coat the inside of my already coated mouth. amazing. smorgasbord, up on Liberty road at that time, long before hometown buffet or golden corral, would walk...WALK, to eat all i wanted to eat. point of pride, the more i could eat, the more i could insulate myself from the names and the insults and the laughter and the disappointment of not being perfect and eventually being a failure. the center cannot hold. things fall apart.
i fell asleep earlier than i planned yesterday, so i want to finish this one. another thing about sacrifice; if you say you're gonna do something, you do it. i can never really make an amend to my school peers. i know they affected me socially, they affected my self-esteem, they made me fearful, they definitely affected my security and my sense of worth. it fed into my food fiending because finding a better high doesn't take away the use of the main drug.
even now, as i go through some of these old times, i feel the food fiend in me, the inner child, fighting for control. my eating, while not bad, is not as disciplined as it had been. these are things i've encountered before, part of the patterns i've looked for and am looking for. so we're going to do a weekend of rest, and we're going to keep digging, as our five day system check was severely compromised by the flu, and then we're back in it, okay?
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