(no subject)
Sep. 7th, 2003 01:37 amI'm having trouble speaking. My mouth feels physically heavy, as if opening it, forming words, would be an unbearable weight to shift, and so I am silent. It's actually not a big deal, it's one of those odd things that happens to me sometimes, and I'm not sure if it's normal or odd. Hell, I was 21 before I found out thinking in third person was unusual. Even more strangely, that was about the time my mind moved to first person thought.
Remember that book I mentioned getting today? I've finished it. Now, I have always read at very high speeds, but a 300 page nonfiction text in a few hours is pretty good even for me.
I feel validated by a good deal of what I read, even had a few moments of "Wait, you mean that's not normal? It's ok that I've always thought that was a shitty thing to do to me?" However, there were some discordant notes. In a chapter about weight, body image, and eating disorders, the focus was entirely on compulsive overeating, with anorexia mentioned offhandedly three times. Distressing. Anorexia has an odd rep - it seems many people have decided the one and only cause is the "Madison Ave" image of the ideal feminine. Um. No. For some of us, it's control, invisibility, something to hold on to.
A remember my mother giving me shit about being chubby all throughout my childhood. I had thought I must have weighed close to 200 pounds at my biggest. Recently I found out I never went over 160. I had hit full height at 13. At that age I went on a diet and excercise program of my own devising (I didn't become anorexic until college, when all my life came to haunt me). Moma panicked, and went on a campaign against it, deliberately removing the fruits, vegatables, and other healthy foods from the house, instead only keeping around cookies, candies, and heavy foods she knew I liked, in order to get me to eat. To this day I wonder at the mixed messages.
My past is the world eater worm, though. No one single issue is to blame for what went down. Yes, my mother being a drunk was a major problem, compounded by my fathers passiveness. (Oh, daddy. I'm so sorry. Life has not been good to you, but I have to learn to not try and make up for it, or deflect it from you. It hurts me to do it, because it brings you down from that shining pedestal I put you on and pulls you to earth, but I have to acknowledge where you hurt me too.) However, my sister is *just* *not* *right*. She started beating me when I was 6 months old. Normal kids don't do that shit. Perhaps she learned some of it from moma, but still...she has responsibility here too.
This is getting erratic. There's something I need to say, though...I know it comes from being accused of malingering, or being attention hungry, or making too big a deal of things, but I need to say it anyway - I'm not writing about this for attention. I'm writing about it because I have a responsibility to myself and the world I live in to dig deep and fpull out the weeds, the trash and the broken bits, so I can have a good harvest.
Remember that book I mentioned getting today? I've finished it. Now, I have always read at very high speeds, but a 300 page nonfiction text in a few hours is pretty good even for me.
I feel validated by a good deal of what I read, even had a few moments of "Wait, you mean that's not normal? It's ok that I've always thought that was a shitty thing to do to me?" However, there were some discordant notes. In a chapter about weight, body image, and eating disorders, the focus was entirely on compulsive overeating, with anorexia mentioned offhandedly three times. Distressing. Anorexia has an odd rep - it seems many people have decided the one and only cause is the "Madison Ave" image of the ideal feminine. Um. No. For some of us, it's control, invisibility, something to hold on to.
A remember my mother giving me shit about being chubby all throughout my childhood. I had thought I must have weighed close to 200 pounds at my biggest. Recently I found out I never went over 160. I had hit full height at 13. At that age I went on a diet and excercise program of my own devising (I didn't become anorexic until college, when all my life came to haunt me). Moma panicked, and went on a campaign against it, deliberately removing the fruits, vegatables, and other healthy foods from the house, instead only keeping around cookies, candies, and heavy foods she knew I liked, in order to get me to eat. To this day I wonder at the mixed messages.
My past is the world eater worm, though. No one single issue is to blame for what went down. Yes, my mother being a drunk was a major problem, compounded by my fathers passiveness. (Oh, daddy. I'm so sorry. Life has not been good to you, but I have to learn to not try and make up for it, or deflect it from you. It hurts me to do it, because it brings you down from that shining pedestal I put you on and pulls you to earth, but I have to acknowledge where you hurt me too.) However, my sister is *just* *not* *right*. She started beating me when I was 6 months old. Normal kids don't do that shit. Perhaps she learned some of it from moma, but still...she has responsibility here too.
This is getting erratic. There's something I need to say, though...I know it comes from being accused of malingering, or being attention hungry, or making too big a deal of things, but I need to say it anyway - I'm not writing about this for attention. I'm writing about it because I have a responsibility to myself and the world I live in to dig deep and fpull out the weeds, the trash and the broken bits, so I can have a good harvest.