Play Pretend

Ever had a bad day? I mean a really bad day that breaks you down into tears?

I had one of those days. I walked out of the office in tears. I couldn't hold them back. It had been a long time since I have had a break down quite like this. I couldn't even pin point why I was such a sobbing mess. I didn't have the usual systems of self loathing or the everybody-hates-me paranoia. All I knew was that it had been a very stressful day and I do not have the mental capacity to deal with that leval of stress.

People forget or simply refuse to acknowledge that I have a mental illness. I am high functioning and very open about it. I believe those around me should know that I do not always react in a “normal” manner and some things can make me very unbalanced. However because I am high functioning the point is mute.

Let me explain it a different way. Image that your body is internally destroying itself. Nobody can see the effects of what is going on inside your body. Imagine that even thought your body is breaking you must continue on your everyday life and go to work that it is happening. You know there is nothing you can do to change or stop this thing that is going on internally. Go to bed and wake up every morning thankful that you are still intact, but know inside you are being destroyed.

You discuss it with those around you and they smile and nod or laugh it off. You don't look sick, sound sick, or double over in pain. There is nothing wrong. Get back to work. Get back to life.

This is the existence of a high functioning person with mental illness. At least that is how it feels like to me. When I break I want to reach out so badly. I want to turn to my coworkers and say “Guys, I am not ok right now.” But I can't. I have to try to be normalish. Then I realize I don't even know what that is and I spiral down further.

I freak out because the nice girl is trying to be friendly, but she keeps touching me. Touch makes me feel violated and invaded when I am not given a chance to prepare for it. At first I sucked up and then I told her never do it again. I could deal.

Things keep being done outside of normal procedure. I freak out. Things are to be done in a certain order at a certain time. This keeps me stable. Order keeps me normal. Disorder frightens me. It terrifies me. It breaks me down. If I don't have an order of procedure I cannot make a proper decisions, I cannot make the appropriate responses, I cannot figure out the proper tone of voice, and I cannot pretend to be friendly.

How could I ever expect anyone to understand. I know it's absurd and nonsensical. I understand that and it is why I cannot get understanding for my plight. It is the worst part. Knowing that there is something wrong with you, but world refusing to acknowledge it because you know.

I feel alone most all of the time and when I mention it people say I have a daughter. I cannot come home to my nine year old and say “Today was a good day. I was able to have a conversation and not blurt out some weird antidote or talk about my mother.” or “Today was a bad day I hid in the bathroom six times because I felt like was about to hyperventilate and I think the office thinks I'm just avoiding work.” I can't come home to my nine year old and ask her to hold my hand while cry because holding somebody's hand will make me feel safe. I can't do that. I have to pretend like I can take care of. I have to pretend I can function.

I always have to pretend I can function even if it's a bad day and all of my friends hate me and people are only nice to me out of pity.

Getting Sick Sucks

My computer became infected by malware. Sucks. Even more sucky I failed to remember that resetting my computer would fix the problem. I back up everything in triplicate on various disks, usbs, external drives, blah blah blah. Nothing of importance ever gets saved to my computer.

So now that I've corrected that issue. I'd like to talk a moment about friendships. I have many friends of varying  degrees of importance. Some I keep in touch with better than others. I'm not very good at texting or calling folks. Some are ok with it are even astonished and adore that two years can pass and we can reconnect like it was yesterday. Some get upset and play the blame game. I keep moving forward.

It's not that I don't appreciate my friends. In fact they are more precious than fortune to me. There are friends that have lifted me up when I was stuck in a pit of self created, chemically imbalanced despair. Their love saved me and I cannot express my gratitude. And therein lies my biggest problem the proper expression of the importance of my closest friends.

I do not have many close friends. Those I do retain are a godsend. They are the most patient understanding individuals any one could be blessed with. They have survived my out bursts, my inappropriate reactions, anxiety ridden isolation, and most importantly my unmedicated bouts of insanity.

How could I ever say how grateful I am?

Change in the Wind

Sometimes I spread myself out to thin. I lash out with negative thoughts that the people in my life need to leave me alone, need to back off, or just need to stop trying to make me do things I'm not ready to cope with. Most of the time it isn't so much there fault as it is in my head. I have exhausted myself and neglected to energize not only my mind and body, but also my environment.

Changes. The most dreadfully terrifying occurrences. We all change and all things change no matter what we do. Time makes certain of that. I guess my current juncture in life also demands change and in that demand I have exhausted myself avoiding it. I have alienated friends and given myself more tasks and responsibilities than my limited mental capacity can process.

I am aware of my limitations and I refuse to succumb to them. Someday I will be unable to function on my own, but until then I will continue to do what I do best. My ability to survive sometimes astounds me. I wish my life were simple and I am working on simplifying it. However, I need to rewire how I think. I need to stop saying yes because I feel a sense of guilt or obligation to. I only fall short on my responsibilities.

More than anything I need to surround myself with moments of joy and activities that disspell the darkness I have invited into my existence. Maybe I just need to let people in instead of keeping them at arms length. Fuck it people like to hug, maybe I should stop being afraid of it and let them hug me. Maybe I should write by fireside more often.

Modern Feminism and How It Has Caused A New Age of Segregation

I find myself on the forefront of a battle I never knew I would have to fight. Growing I was very much a flower and frills kind of girl. I wore dresses and only dresses, picked flowers, played with barbies, and dreamed of two things. I dreamed of adventure and I dreamed of being a homemaker. While I have indeed adventured I have not known the joys of being making a house a home for my family. It truly is my only regret.

The problem, however, is not that I have dreamed and lost, but in the backlash I get from "feminists" when I reveal this. How is it progressive for a man to want to be a stay at home dad, but holding woman kind back when I want the same thing? Further more how is this building equality. To chastise me and other women like me for enjoying what is considered a traditional role. So what if it's considered traditional nothing else about me is traditional so why hate me for that one thing.

The great female freedom fighters of the past fought so that everybody, that means both women and men, could decide their societal positions despite gender and not because of. It isn't about me being a working parent because that uplifts women. It's about me being a stay at home mom because that uplifts me. Isn't that what Susan B Anthony, Carol Downer, Abby Kelly, and the ultimately wanted; for women to have the opportunity and power to uplift themselves?

The Begining Of A Begining . . .

I often get told that I am strong, courageous, beautiful, and a great parent. Even more often I feel I am none of these things, not even a comical misrepresentation.

Is it really important to be these things or even feel that you are these wonderful adjectives? It isn’t that I don’t understand some of the things I have survived and accomplished are out of reach for some people. It is more that I feel I can always do better. My little monster that constantly tells me I am not good enough.

Here’s the real kicker, I don’t even know whose measure I’m holding myself up to. What makes the things I do, love, and conquer subpar? I rarely stop myself to think about whom holds this impossibly long measuring tape I constantly attempt to surpass.

So I sit here and I ask my questions and rant my rages to anonymous few that dare to dip into my head. Tonight I feel as if I have found a little bit of clarity. The answer is I have become my mother. I was never good enough or successful enough for her tastes. I do not do things as they should be done or as they are socially expected. In turn that voice pecks at my already chemically imbalanced brains.

It isn’t that I haven’t come to terms with my abnormal personality or my overly whimsical views on every day. I most certainly embrace my ability to be delicately blunt and aggressively humorous. In fact I am so at ease with myself I can’t remember the last time I felt like I hated myself. I know at one point I did. I love myself. I love being a fat girl with huge curly hair. I love that I’m weird, liberal, conservative, self-centered, giving, logical, and fanciful all at once.

Then someone says “You are so strong.” and I lose my shit. How dare they? What do they know? If I am strong I wouldn’t cry all the time. Maybe in the end the statement doesn’t enrage me because I am not strong, but because it makes me accept that maybe I am good enough. That despite my self-perceived short comings and hyper critical nature I am more than that weird fat girl with the big hair. Maybe I wear my size and weirdness as a badge to stave away some inward need to measure up. If I embrace my flaws and never admit to being more than a short coming I cannot be wounded.

So Why I think Theaters Showing Nothing But 50 Shades of Grey Should Burn Down

Let me begin by saying IHATETHEBOOKSIHATETHEMSOMUCH. Yes that needed to be said in all caps with no spaces. Let us begin with why I hate these high rated books and this heavily anticipated piece of shit movie.

1. They depict an askew warped view of BDSM relationships.
This I can say with utmost confidence in my knowledge of BDSM relationships. I have explored in them, taken part in the community, and have retained a healthy friend base in the community.

2. The relationship is horribly abusive. It is amazingly, hugely, horribly abusive.

3. There is a point when things just become porn. Soft core porn, but it's porn. Perhaps that's why everybody wants to watch it. However I get my porn for free.

4. And the best reason of. Diversity people. Maybe there's an audience out there that wants to watch some thing other than a massively disappointing glimpse into a very interesting subculture.

The Return

I would like to begin with an apology for taking an unannounced hiatus. My life became an interesting roller coaster the past three weeks.

So what does an individual do to uplift themselves? One could surround themselves with other people to be uplifted. This seems to be a problematic cure. If the individual's network of uplifters are unavailable or if the feeling also comes linked with a sense of anxiety toward loud noises or crowds. What does an individual to do?

I think that the most important thing to do is find things to do that help usher out the awful feelings, the grey muck, and soul clogging ick. I stayed away because I had let myself be swallowed so completely by my own dim prospects. So I entered a writing challenge. One page of writing per each day of December. I have also written a short short story and submitted it to a contest. I still feel like I'm dragging myself through wall of cobwebs that clump together to even further hinder my progress, but I can see that I am still creating. I am still going on. I continue to achieve and complete the tasks I have set forth on myself.

That has been my most difficult lesson to learn. To assign myself tasks and put together due dates and deadlines. School never prepared me for designing and completing my own goals and assignments. I only learned to excel at things that others put in front of me.

I often wonder if I can continue to make progress on things I would want to achieve for myself. I have short term goals full of creation and art. My long term goals of success and finding my match seem impossible dreams to grasp.