It’s back again

I’ve always struggled with anxiety. As a kid, I would grow transfixed with some catastrophe; so transfixed that I was crippled with fear, I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t concentrate in school and I couldn’t stop crying. This would go on for about two weeks (it felt like two months), to the point where I was forced to make a resolution of some sort regarding the terrible fear I had of these catastrophies.

Once I accepted that bad things can happen and that there’s nothing I can do about it, I seemed to let the fear go. The three main sources of my worrying were the possibilities that my mother might die, the world might end, or someone would create a tyrannosaurus Rex and set it free in my neighbourhood. I’m not joking.

The mother-dying fear would return for a few days here and there, right to the end of my childhood. I can remember a few times when the anxiety that she might die popped up suddenly, and I had to call her from school and make sure she was alive to feel ok again. I also used to fret about our cats like that.

That all went away once I left high school, but then one day when I was 21, it popped up again, but not about my mother. It was about a boyfriend that everyone warned me against and said that he’d break my heart.

It’s not a fun feeling. Other people who I know say that you can’t understand or know what it’s like unless you’ve been through it. But I have a little more faith in my fellow man, or at least I want faith in them. So I’m going to try to explain what it feels like.

To me, if you were told something terrible was going to happen, and no one knew when, that is a little what it feels like. I’ll elaborate.

Imagine you were told your wife had cancer, or you had a hit placed on you or you had a son on death row. You would think about the inevitable a lot, in fact, even when you weren’t thinking of it, it would still be on your mind. It would never-ever leave you alone. You’d lose your appetite, you’d lose sleep and get behind at work. Take that feeling and you’ve got a pretty good idea.

What’s different from these examples is the build-up. These cases are a shock and wear off-type, but the anxiety that I feel builds up. Anxiety manifests itself through my silly worries where the more I worry, the more I have reason to worry, so I worry more.

I feel a bit like a crazy person sometimes. The places my thoughts take me that are so utterly ridiculous and insane don’t help. The ability to notice 200 threats to my existence in one minute is sometimes overwhelming.

Although I have to say that this time, it is no where near as bad as before. I eat, I sleep and I work, no problem. But a rumble of anxiety is always in my tummy.

Aaaaghr

It’s almost 2012.

I’m thinking back over the past year and everything that’s happened. It’s been a year of a lot of changes. New job, a car, a nephew, finally getting over that boy I couldn’t seem to get away from since 2009, finding a new and amazing boy, losing 10kg, gaining 15kg, leaving 12 Step fellowships for good, partying again like a normal person, going on lithium, coming off lithium, having a promiscuous phase, having a celibate phase, seeing three people I know pass on, being loaded, being broke, new friends, leaving old friends… phew. Quite the year.

I’d like 2012 to be a little calmer.

I’d like to stay in the same job, have a great and peaceful relationship with my boyfriend, make new friends, lose 30kgs, get off all meds, not be celibate, not be promiscuous, being ok for Dollars, look after my car, learn guitar, start gymming again, start playing poi to tone up and have fun, go to Afrikaburn in April and last but definitely not least – get some form of self esteem going.

 

What it feels like

You feel it all the time. Feel it everywhere. It never stops unless you’re asleep. The constant awareness of it is just ALWAYS there. Like a half-drunk cup of coffee; you are always aware that you still have coffee left, even if you’re not specifically thinking of it. The awareness just sits deep in my stomach like a stationary bumblebee; humming and buzzing in the back of my bundle of organs, reverberating my lower body in anxiety and distaste.

I guess that’s why I daydream so much. That’s why I fall asleep experiencing life as I really want to: only through my dreams of being thin again, and not reality. When I have those daydreams and fantasies, I think about what I would wear mostly. I think about how very different my wardrobe would be if I was thin again. I think about how much easier my life would be. Never having to be followed round by that VOICE telling you that this isn’t OK. To be able to sit down and be comfortable, instead of sitting in a way I hope doesn’t make me look concertinaed. Being able to do ANYTHING and not have to worry and fret and feel so ashamed of the fat greasy layer all over me. Let me give and example:

What it’s like to sit down as a fat person:
First: Pull up pants at the back so when you sit your bum crack doesn’t spill out. Also pull up at the front so that your belly doesn’t spill over the front like a water-filled balloon. If you don’t, you’ll get a hideous muffin-top.

Second: Sit down very carefully so your body stays straight. Keep your chin up so you don’t get a fat roll of the jaw. Chest upright so people don’t see your fat-stuffed breasts. back straight so you don’t look like a hunchback, even though you are hunched 24/7.

Third: Hold the chair in place in case your bum overbalances over the side. Start to sit lightly at first, in case the chair collapses under your weight. If you’re not down far enough, you can still save yourself from falling over on your bum if it does collapse. Not being able to save yourself will mean people will see that you have a double chin, your belly, enormous breasts and probably bum crack.

Fourth: Always sit, and I mean always, one of two ways.

1: leaned back in the chair, cross your left knee over your right (for some reason it’s easier to cross to the right). Notice how your legs don’t cross easily. They don’t feel very comfortable crossed, but you have to do it. Even though your leg sticks out at a funny angle, it has to be done. Notice all of the thin people around you with their legs crossed with such ease, the one leg just flopping over the other and hanging next to it like the chimes in a windchime. Hands must always be across your lap, or sometimes hugging yourself to hide fat rolls, which feel as if they’re about to brush the floor. Keep pushing yourself up the chair continously, as your heavy torso pushes down continuously and makes you slide slowly down the chair until you’re almost horizontal.

2: You sit with your bum towards the closest end of the chair so that your legs perch off the seat and they almost feel slightly thinner, as they are hanging and not squished next to eachother. Your back must be completely straight, thus taking out the hunchback look but also helping the double chin and lifting your breasts off your chest. Arms must rest on the table at the elbows, after which they cross in an attempt to hide your enormous sacks of mammary fat. Always keep your arms not touching your body anywhere as it squashes them and makes them look twice the size they are.

Five: Feel uncomfortable. Feel so aware of every single centimetre on your body. How your clothes feel unpleasant against your skin. How you wish so much of your skin didn’t touch other parts of your skin. We’re masters of fooling everyone that we’re not as bad as we look.

These are the best ways to sit. Not comfortable at all, but if you do what is comfortable, you will look like an amoeba, flowing out of the seat. Now, when a person sits down, it takes about five seconds. Imagine what the other 23 hours, 59 minutes and fifty five seconds feel like to a fat person. That type of set up is going through our heads, every second of the day, unless we’re sleeping or daydreaming about a place where our minds can be quiet.

Never the subject

I’m always behind the camera lens, not in front of it. It’s not usually by choice either. I use my weight as an handy excuse that no one will ever question when people ask me “shame, why are there no photos of you?” It’s easier to just mumble “Oh I hate being in photos,” as if it were my decision to be excluded.

Parties, gatherings, get-togethers – I’m always flung a camera and asked to take pictures because “I’m so good with a camera” and in all honestly, I don’t think I am all that great.

Even my family hasn’t really bothered to take many pictures of me lately, despite going on about what a photogenic person I am. Or maybe they just meant that when I was 65kgs. Looking through the photos that were taken in August, I was in one picture on my own. One photo of me, out of hundreds. I don’t fit in at home, I know that, but I thought they would have at least taken a couple of pictures of me. Every time I’m in a picture, it is a family photo and I have to be included in it, although I’m missing from some of those too.

At NA parties, conventions and gatherings, they would take pictures. Lots and lots of them. I was never in them. A friend’s party for her daughter – I wasn’t in one picture. Not one. Well, one where you can see my sleeve, and my head is obscured by a baby.

I’m just continually… not in photos. I wondered if it was co-incidence, but after about the 10th time when I looked excitedly through a friend’s album of an event I was at and realised with a sinking feeling that I didn’t make the cut (again), I’ve stopped finding it a co-incidence.

I’m invisible. I don’t think I’m that hideous. But I don’t think people really see me at all either.

There are no pictures of me tagged as a “sexy driver” or a “naughty schoolgirl who’s going to show everyone how it’s done” or playing games of fucking chess on the train. There’s no intimate photos of me lying with a lover in a post orgasmic glow.

There’s  no pictures of me doing “epic” shit like driving while hodling a bottle of beer, playing guitar with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth. No pictures of just my legs, just my breasts or just my bare back. None. No pictures of me lying in the sun. And no pictures of me and my lover together, taken by us. None. And if I was to put my lover’s clothes on, I’d rip them, and mine would drown him.

But I’ll do it. I’ll get there again. I’ll be the one everyone wants in their photos again. I’ll be the one whose boyfriend never stops taking pictures of me because he thinks I am so beautiful. And then I’ll put up loads of old photos of myself – as my fat self. And I’ll tag myself in them, and I will tell every fucking person that has passed on me because of my weight that I am the same person, whether I look good in pictures or not. And I’ll tell them they are so ugly on the inside that I can’t bear to look at them.

There are times when I feel I’d rather not be the one behind the wheel

Another death. Pointless. I’ve been to too many funerals, and I can’t tell if it’s because I am getting older and that is what happens when you become an adult, or if I’m just exposed to a particularly susceptible bunch of people. I think the only person I have known who has died of old age is my grandfather (touch wood). There’s been accidental overdoses, a couple of murders, car accidents and lots and lots of suicides.

In a way, suicide is indeed a most selfish act born of the fear of rejection and responsibility for “letting down” people we care about. “I couldn’t bear to tell my wife I’m broke,” “I failed all my exams and my parents will be so ashamed, I really don’t want to hurt them.” Sentiments of care for others, but ultimately narcissism for believing that loved ones would rather have them dead than failing at some part of their life. Surely the pain of seeing someone fail is not a pinch on the pain of having someone end their life over it

I sit here, having just learned about another friend who has taken his own life, and I’m certain he wasn’t thinking of others, but not in the narcissistic way that saddens entire schools, businesses and churches. He sounded so completely fine when I spoke to him a few weeks ago. He sounded happy. He was excited about coming back to South Africa. I don’t for one second believe that he feared parental upset for something less-than-favourable in his life.

This may be going all over the place, but I’m basically saying that I see two sides to suicide. The “guilt/can’t cope with embarrassment of self-perceived failure” type, and the “my life is fucking miserable and I don’t want to be alive anymore, and I’m going to end it because I just can’t bear living anymore” type.” I don’t find the latter selfish. I find the former selfish. Even though it involves care for others, it is is care that stems from a desperate need to keep one’s ego afloat. The latter stems from utter misery and depression, and has nothing to do with ego.

I count last night’s suicide amongst the non-selfish type. And it makes me so sad that this person was in such a bad place to have done this.

You’ll be missed, Surfer James.

 

Earplugs

Always in the background, a bit like a dull, humming sound.

An annoying sound. Very noticeable. Unavoidable. But subtle all the same.

All questions, experiences, reminisces, moments of growth,

All involving that shallow rumble. Like life began

With her.

Nails on a chalkboard. Am I reasonable.

Something I think about often,

Not as often as I try and ignore that nauseating sound.

Spiders and stars, scrambled eggs and subwoofers

The days come and go these days. They blend together one after another and I lose count of where it began, and where it will end.

It feels like I’ve known you for years.

I’m experiencing things I haven’t felt in years: contentment, amazement, happiness.

Yet with such good comes such bad. Intensity, passion and safety leave space for loneliness, neglect and sorrow. We who climb highest fall hardest.

I’m tempted to use caution; to preserve myself in a half realised, half abandoned limbo so that any pain I may come to experience can be buffered by the detatchment.

But I don’t want that.

I’ve been made to smile a lot, laugh constantly, evaluate the preferences in my life and feel valued as someone truly worth adoration. These mean so much to me, and they are easy to do when you’re around.

Sometimes I do feel fear, anger, loneliness and confusion. Big emotions come easily to me, but aren’t dealt with easily by me. I’ve always struggled to be appropriate.

But I realise there is no fine-line over what is acceptable and what is not. It’s different with every lover.

I do not feel boundaried and expected to behave within certain parameters in order to please someone else over my piece of mind.

And I daresay the same for you.

How fortunate!

 

 

An every day reminder.

“Flat boobs are hot.”

“Lots of tattoos are hot.”

“Boots (Levi’s cowboy, army, those brown ones at Mr Price) are hot.”

“Very long hair is hot.”

“Androgynous bodies are hot.”

“Red hair is hot.”

“Skinny legs are hot.”

“Girl on top is hot.”

“Short shorts are hot.”

“revealing tops are hot.”

“Gymming is hot.”

 

I am none of these.

And every day another one pops up, reminding me how I am everything but what’s really desired.

For better, for worse

I had a sober 21st.

I have been told since the age of 19 to behave like a 35 year old.

I have had it drilled into my head that there is something fundamentally wrong with me, and that I can’t be a normal person, while I have also had it drilled into my head that if I am NOT a normal person, I am a failure.

I have been told I am an addict, alcoholic, co-dependent, sex addict, love addict, self mutilator, anorexic, bulimic, compulsive over-eater.

I have been forced to adopt ruthless attitudes to things like relationships, friendships, self-preservation, health.

I have been diagnosed with severe depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, bi-polar 2 disorder, spent hundreds and thousands of rands on rehabs, psychologists, psychiatrists, weeks in clinics on the psychiatric ward at Crescent and Kenilworth Clinics.

I have been heavily medicated since 19.

I have had a nervous breakdown at 23 after my fiance relapsed and I was convinced all was lost as I had been fed the belief that once someone in a relationship relapses, they need to be kicked to the curb.

I have seen people in recovery walk out on marriages, engagements, friendships, jobs, families, commitments of years and years because someone involved relapsed and is now “dangerous.” For better, for worse doesn’t exist where I was.

I have been restrained against my will in psychiatric clinics.

I have been threatened with being sectioned to Noupoort, Valkenberg and other horrific institutions if I refused to comply with the wishes of professionals.

And now I refuse to live in a prison in my head, so afraid to even look at something the wrong way because it might threaten my “recovery.”

What recovery? I had no life. Not one that was worth anything of substance, anyway.

What would Gramps think

I often wonder what my grandfather is thinking. To me, when people die that we love, they are always there, even if just in my head and a product of my imagination and they are a bit all-seeing/all-knowing. Especially my grandfather.

It’s a good gage of how my life is going when I consider what he must be thinking of me. It’s like that old question – “if you were to die suddenly, would people be shocked at what they find in your belongings?”

Death is something that really breaks down the walls of denial, unless you’re really fucking  ill in the head.

I don’t think my grandfather would be very happy. The worst part is, I don’t think he would be angry with me. I think he’d be sad.  I have shit in my head that I don’t quite know what to do with. And I know he can see that, and that it hurts him.

But then, what the fuck would I know.