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[personal profile] jadegirl
I'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.

Date: 2003-09-06 11:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] striver.livejournal.com
you always seem to touch things in my mind when you talk about things like this, though sometimes I am not sure if what comes into my head is the same as what you are saying, like those sudden realizations that certain things that we grew up with aren't really normal or accepted behavior outside the family.

I envy your reading speed. I have to work at reading.

Date: 2003-09-07 02:26 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] luminatte.livejournal.com
i can't imagine anyone actually believing anorexia is really about the image.
i've always learned or thought it was rooted in the need to control *something* in one's life.

i could be wrong- but if i'm right (and i think i am) i don't like that the false idea could be widespread.
people should just plain *know* that.

Date: 2003-09-07 03:50 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] impgrrl.livejournal.com
Silence may be necessary (or at least the only possible thing) for now, but that offer to call goes either way.

*Any*time.

Date: 2003-09-07 04:56 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] violent-solace.livejournal.com
This may be only the beginning of digging in there to find the things that went wrong, but I believe it will benefit you in the long run.

It hurts. I know. How can people who were supposed to love you treat you this way?

Because they aren't well is the only reason I can think of. Their own pain has poisoned them beyond recognition.

I know I got off lucky, and while I don't know the entire story, something tells me you did to.

You are sane. And you are trying to work through the things that live deep within you so you may put them to rest and move on. This is good.

And just so you know, you have always been the farthest thing in my mind from an attention whore.

I want you to know that, and anyone who thinks any different doesn't know a damn thing.

Date: 2003-09-07 06:47 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] worknplay1.livejournal.com
" How can people who were supposed to love you treat you this way?

Because they aren't well is the only reason I can think of"

Sometimes it's simply because they just don't know any better.

Sometimes it's simply because they are copying what they know, how they grew up.

And yes, sometimes it's because they just aren't well.

Hush's cs

Date: 2003-09-07 07:13 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] violent-solace.livejournal.com
Maybe that's it, but somehow I think it goes much deeper than that.

I'm not sure what kind of experience you are speaking from, so its hard to know if we are speaking of the same things.

Sometimes its because they can't pay attention to anything but the now, and they are so clouded by their own emotions that they don't even know why they feel the way they do or why they act the way they do, and if they don't even know why then they can't see if what effects they may be having with it.

They are full of pride and can't admit that they may do something wrong. They are clouded by pain, pan they ran away from in their own childhoods and still run from it, even though the monster that chases them just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

They need power and they need control and they will get it, whatever the cost.

They use food to ply the child, to persuade the child, to attempt to control the child. They use food to comfort the child because they are incapable of showing love.

And then one day, years after the fact, they wake up long enough to realize that this child is now fat or chubby.

And somewhere deep inside themselves the know, they know, but its another source of pain, and one they can't admit to themselves, suddenly their own actions are mirrored in the child, and the child suffers.

They have never been able to look themselves in the mirror and admit their faults and now there is a living breathing mirror of themselves that they can't turn away from.

So they try to destroy it.

The sins of the parents are visited on the children.

Date: 2003-09-07 07:20 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] worknplay1.livejournal.com
" The sins of the parents are visited on the children"

Many many times yes. But not always. Although it's not easy, although it's a long hard road, sometimes one is lucky enough to realize what's going on / what went on and bends over backwords to make sure history does NOT repeat itself. For these people they are very lucky.....their chidlren even luckier.

i believe studies have been done showing where identical twins, living in two different enviorments, can be so totally different. Which to me proves that envirenment and upbringing does have something to do with everything. Although, that does not necessarily mean that the child will turn out 'bad'. Some kids see what they see and are determined to make a better life for themselves and their kids because of this. Others simply choose to live as they know. Sorry, i think i kinda went off topic a bit here.

Hush's cs

Date: 2003-09-07 07:23 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] violent-solace.livejournal.com
Although it's not easy, although it's a long hard road, sometimes one is lucky enough to realize what's going on / what went on and bends over backwords to make sure history does NOT repeat itself. For these people they are very lucky.....their chidlren even luckier.

I'm glad you understand.

And I'm working very hard to make sure my daughter is one of the lucky ones.

And I won't feel the need to tell her she doesn't appreciate what I've done for her.

How could she? Hopefully she will never have to know the kind of pain necessary to appreciate it.

It will be enough to have broken the cycle.

Date: 2003-09-07 12:38 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] morven.livejournal.com
I just wanted to let you know I really appreciate the depths of analysis that you share with the world.

Many a time I've felt as though your catharses have helped me in my own search for the real me behind my masks.

Date: 2003-09-07 07:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jadegirl.livejournal.com
Thank you. It's good to know the bonfires I light here sometimes warm others, too.

Date: 2003-09-07 02:12 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] veilofire.livejournal.com
I read your post... and know that I have to revisit it at least once.

cs said a mouthful in her post... and I believe I agree with darn near every bit of it.

Whether or not we want to believe it, our parents have, or had, training that they were not aware of.
Just as we do, they danced the dance that they knew --
that they learned from their parents (or parental figures).

My parents were alcoholics -- both of them. Above that, one set of grandparents drank and the others were control freaks.
So here I am... yup, I partied a lot.
Don't drink now, but believe me, I have a great deal of their traits.

I learned a lot about this when I researched being an adult child of an alcoholic.

You are a strong beautiful woman.
I admire you.

V.

Date: 2003-09-07 08:27 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] iswari.livejournal.com
You have a lot of courage in pulling up those weeds and trash and broken bits. It's hard. But you reach a point where it's harder not to.
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