Leprechauns for sale

Go to amazon.com, and the first graphic to load is this…

Now, I ask you, FOR WHAT!!! A pot of gold?  Lucky Charms? Some green piece of apparel to keep you from getting pinched?  For the record, I think wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day is stupid, and anyone who has ever pinched me or tried to pinch me is asking to be introduced to my fist or my knee, whichever will do the most damage at the time.

It never ceases to amaze me how “we” go from “holiday” to “holiday” on the merry consumerist highway.  ENOUGH!

Fat Chicks

Just saw an ad for the movie “Pitch Perfect”.  It features a heavy girl who is shown in one scene running to the front of the stage and ripping her blouse open.  Now, if a skinny girl does that, it’s considered sexy.  You know why they have the fat chick doing it in this movie?  For comedic effect.

Cuz makin’ fun uh fat peoples is funny.

Against my better judgement, I watched “Shallow Hal” years ago. I loathe that movie.  It’s humor is based 100% on laughing at fat people.  See fatty make a tidal wave when she jumps in the pool.  See fatty break a chair.  See fatty toss a circus tent (underwear) on Jack Black.  I know, the end of the movie, Jack Black realizes he loves her anyway, DESPITE THE FACT THAT SHE’S FAT.  Because being fat is a character flaw, after all, one that must be overlooked.

BULL SHITE.

I wasn’t fat growing up.  I didn’t put on weight until Josh died in 1995.  My weight has fluctuated quite a bit since then, due in part to my drinking, my ruptured disk, and a nasty sugar addiction I developed.  See, I used to drink my stress away.  When I got sober, I turned to sugar.

So, allow me to vent.

Diet pills and weight loss surgery piss me off.  Not for the morbidly obese, mind you.  If you’re health is so bad the doctor thinks you’ll be dead in six months without bariatric surgery, then, by all means, do it, provided you have a great support system in place.  But for those who think they can take a pill or have a device placed on their stomach to limit their food intake and NOT have to change how they think about food, they are asking for trouble.

People who say “just get off your butt and move” or “just quit stuffing your face” piss me off.  Yes, because it’s that easy.  I’ve seen many people close to me go on these extreme diets, cutting out all carbs or no sugar or whatever, and they have lost tons of weight…and then promptly put the pounds back on when they can no longer sustain the deprivation.  When our bodies put on weight, they go through changes, not just outward changes, like back rolls or cankles, but internal changes.  Your body chemistry changes.  Oh, and you lose your energy. Gone.  Kaput.  And, guess what, when I realized I had a drinking problem, I could quit drinking.  You can’t quit food.  Just ask Karen Carpenter.

Describing especially delicious food as “sinful” or “decadent”, or saying you were “bad” because you ate a piece of chocolate cake…pisses me off.  The negative connotation associated with eating delicious foods has got to go.  It turns our food intake into a morality issue, when it isn’t.  Chocolate tastes damn good.  Nothing sinful or bad about it.  I had never thought of this until I started to read (note, started to…I’m terrible at finishing books) a book written by two dietitians called “Intuitive Eating”.  I won’t go into it too much, but I will say I completely agree with their assessment that when you put foods on your list of “forbidden” or “bad” foods, you make them all the more appealing and, eventually, you’ll break and overindulge.  Case in point.  You really want something sweet.  You’d really like a Snickers bar, but, you’re trying to be “good”, so instead you have chocolate flavored rice cakes.  You eat a serving, but, since you didn’t actually have any real chocolate, and probably very little fat (to satisfy your hunger), you eat another serving.  And maybe another.  Then, an hour later, because you couldn’t stop thinking about that forbidden fruit, and you STILL haven’t had any chocolate, you go ahead and eat the damn Snickers bar.  Awesome.  You just consumed 451 calories, instead of 271.

Lastly, thinking you can shame anyone into losing weight pisses me off.  I’m not saying we swing the pendulum the other way and say, “you’re perfect exactly the way you are!”, aka, “fat acceptance”.  No, considering what the excess pounds does to your hormones, your joints, your heart, etc., I’d say it’s not wise to take that extreme. But society doesn’t help the overweight when they make fun of them, call them names, or otherwise imply that they are gross and unattractive.  Trust me, overweight people know what they look like.  I can’t speak for everyone, but I know *my* self-loathing is at an all-time high right now, and I’m not even at my heaviest.  My husband, a fit, handsome young man eleven years my junior, thinks I’m hot.  He always has.  And he’s not blowing smoke.  He genuinely thinks I’m attractive.  I’m so repulsed by my weight that physical intimacy is practically unthinkable to me, and I try to avoid looking in the mirror as much as possible. It hurts.  But losing weight is HARD.  When I had my nervous breakdown, I put back on half of the weight I’d dropped in the months prior.  Those pounds are sloooowly coming off, but that’s what it takes.  Some days I just wanna break down and cry.  I so wish I could just flip a switch and be healthier, feel better about myself, and be a better wife and mother.

And then I turn on the tv and see a “let’s make fun of the fat chick” scene from a movie, and I want to scream.  Or eat a Snickers bar.

Poor Penn State

Yes, let’s go on and on about how the football program and the University itself is being punished for its inaction and enabling of a child rapist (enough with the “child sex abuse” crap. Children don’t have sex, they are RAPED). Let’s talk about what this does to Joe Paterno’s legacy (note to Paterno family: “SHUT UP”). Let’s not talk about child rape/abuse and what it does, not just to the victims, but to everyone.

I’m going to take this opportunity to delve further into the pool (swamp?) of my abuse. I’ve been trying to talk about it more in therapy. And after a lengthy absence from blogging, what better way to break the silence than to talk about something light and sunny, like a six-year-old being forced to perform oral sex?  Yeah!!!!

Honestly, I can’t remember the first time it happened. We were living in Alaska, my step-father being stationed at Elemendorf Air Force Base. When I was 18 and told my mother about what happened, I had to ask her how long the babysitters, twin sisters named DAWN AND DIANE VAN NESS (screw them), had taken care of us. My mom said they had been hired pretty much when we moved there, so I can only assume it started when I was six. I clearly remember the last time it happened. But I digress.

Dawn and Diane were the older sisters of my friend, Heather. They lived down the street. They would take turns babysitting for my brother and I. They’d take me to my parent’s room and lay down on their (king size?) bed. I remember the black and brown patchwork bedspread. They’d strip off their clothes and lay back, and make me get on my knees by the bed and perform oral sex on them. They’d take my step-father’s leather belt out of the closet and whip me with it and threaten me with more beatings if I said anything about what was happening. The leather was brown, and cracked, and there were flat metal brads on it, and holes punched through, so it looked like swiss cheese. It didn’t feel like cheese when it hit me.

I remember one day, filling my hard, orange suitcase with socks and underwear (?), because I was going to run away. I didn’t, of course, but the suitcase was still packed when my mom was packing me up for a summer in Oklahoma with my grandparents. “Where are all your underwear?”  I was afraid to tell her what was going on, so I told her I had attempted to pack for Oklahoma on my own, and presented the suitcase. She bought it.

This was my normal. So normal, in fact, that when a visiting female family member asked me to put on my mother’s pantyhose and perform a strip tease for her in the basement, I did it. Then we lay down on the couch and made out. She told me to rub her crotch, and I did as I was told. I *think* that only happened once, but my memories of Alaska are a blur, so I could be wrong.

When we were preparing to leave Elmendorf for Medina Air Force Base in San Antonio, one of the twins decided that I should experience what they had experienced all those years, so they “treated” me to some cunnilingus . I remember staring at the ceiling, trying to pretend I was elsewhere. We moved to Texas when I was 9.

I’d say within a year of moving to Texas, my brother started hitting me. If I didn’t do his chores for him, he’d hit me. If I didn’t give him the remote for the tv, he’d hit me. If he was driving me somewhere and couldn’t see past me in the passenger seat when looking right, he’d backhand me. The physical abuse lasted for roughly 5 years. After that, he was just verbally cruel. As I’ve said before, I confronted my brother about all this 17 years ago, and he’s asked my forgiveness, and I’ve given it to him. I love my brother very much, and I consider our relationship healed. I know he still struggles with guilt, and hope he can forgive himself some day.

Lastly, there was the other family member, a male, who, on at least two occasions, pinned me to the ground and kissed me on my neck and maybe my chest, over my clothes. Where exactly he kissed me isn’t as clear as the memory of his erect penis on my leg. Again, we were both clothed and it didn’t go any further, but it shouldn’t have happened at all.

So, that’s it. From age 6 to age 15, I had five different people sexually and/or physically abuse me in one way or the other. So let’s talk consequences, okay?  Let’s talk about how child abuse affected me. Obviously, I can’t, and wouldn’t dare, try to speak for all victims of child abuse.

So let’s talk about consequences…

1. Prior to hitting puberty, I thought I was gay. I had no sexual feelings towards girls, but, since I had engaged in sexual behavior with girls in Alaska, I assumed that meant I was gay. It wasn’t until I hit puberty at age 12 that I realized that wasn’t true. When I was 14, “Something About Amelia” came out. I didn’t have a father abusing me, but it was the first time I really realized what child abuse was, and recognized, at least in my head, that I had been abused and it “wasn’t my fault”. NOTE TO BEN AFFLECK AND MATT DAMON: While I loved “Good Will Hunting”, getting a hug and being told repeatedly that “it’s not your fault” is nice, but it’s no magic bullet.
2. I remember coming home from school at age 12 and taking shots of Glenlivet. I would later become a raging alcoholic, complete with drunk driving, attempts at promiscuity (thankfully, unrealized), blackouts and midnight vomiting.
3. A pattern emerged in my relationships…I let the other party take control, and it usually was to my detriment. I had a few friends, good people, who I still think of fondly and even have some contact with, though it freaks me out, but more often than not I associated with people who didn’t treat me very well. Why should they?  I had been taught in word and deed for 9 formative years that I wasn’t worthy of decent treatment.
4. I retreated into a fantasy world. I spent most of my evenings shut in my room, pretending I was anybody other than myself. While this was a savior then, it has proven to be harmful to me in later life.
5. I had no confidence, and no willingness to take risks, so I did the safe thing after high school and stayed within Texas to get my degree in Radio, Television, and Film. No USC film school for me, or driving cross-country to try and break into Hollywood. After college, I moved to that mecca of entertainment, Enid, Oklahoma, and worked at a crappy TV station for a crappy boss.
6. I was only asked out once in high school, and he stood me up, further devastating my already weak self-esteem. I went on to date just a few men, all of whom treated me, not abusively, but poorly. I was there to service their ego. Josh was the one exception to that, but he was far from a healthy relationship.
7. I became someone who could rather easily be defeated. I’d offer some fight, but eventually would acquiesce to the notion that I’m cursed…that I somehow deserve all these bad things happening to me. The abuse, the schizophrenic boyfriend who committed suicide, being ignored or mistreated by men, failing at any pitiful attempt I made to try to break out of the “safe” cubicle-dwelling career I’d settled for, etc.
8. I put on a ton of weight, first after Josh’s death, then again after a back injury. I’ve told myself for years that the injury was to blame for my weight, but, let’s face it, I had surgery years ago, my back is 95% better, and I still “eat my pain”. I’m coming to terms with the fact that I use my weight as a shield. The world largely (no pun intended) ignores, dismisses, and ridicules the fat. If I’m fat, I have an excuse to not take more risks, not put myself out there, and I can blame it on everyone else because THEY are the assholes who judge me for my appearance. How convenient.
9. I’ve battled depression and PTSD for 25 years, went through cutting myself and anxiety attacks and still find myself talking about myself in a far more hateful way than I would ever talk about someone else, with the exception of pieces-of-crap child abusers who should die in a fire.
10. Did I mention I have anger issues?  Of course, like any sane person, I hate child abusers, but I also have moments when I feel hatred towards anyone who’s never suffered setbacks, or who suffered them and managed to not let the setbacks defeat them.
11. I still struggle with anger and resentment towards my parents, not as much for being unaware of the sexual abuse happening in Alaska, but for deliberately turning a blind eye to my brother’s bullying when I went to them and pleaded with them to help me. Even now that my brother has acknowledged his abuse, my parents have yet to come to me and tell me they are sorry for not only not putting a stop to it, but for turning around and calling me a liar.  I still have trouble asking people for help, and I expect no one to protect me.  I’m working on letting my husband in, but it’s hard.
12. My emotional problems have caused great distress for my loved ones, specifically my husband, who deserves much better than what he got. And now my daughter, my sweet 4 1/2 year-old, is already showing signs of being hypersensitive about my moods. I’m currently in bed with a head cold, but when I told her “mommy is sick”, her first words were, “okay, mommy, well, let me hug you and kiss you and that will make you feel happy again”. She now won’t compliment someone else without reassuring me that she loves me, too.

I’m working through all this. Talking more openly about everything that happened, in a therapeutic way. I hope to get clear of this before I do any more damage to my daughter. I know it will be hard to convince her she’s lovable and valuable if I think her mother is crap.

I pray for other victims of child abuse…that they find a way to overcome their trauma, and have peaceful lives, and don’t let this cancer that is child abuse spread any further.

And screw Penn State, or any other organization, that lets this happen to children.

Resentment, thy name is….

I am finding I’m having a tough time dealing with some people’s success. I’ve become bitter and resentful, particularly when I perceive that someone whose path has been clear their whole life has the gall to tell anyone how they, too, can be successful or otherwise tell them how to live.

Shut the hell up.

I get annoyed on several levels.  First, there’s the person who’s never lacked anything a day in their life who has the nerve to criticize others for not being able to completely overcome their shortcomings.  Case in point….I once worked with a man, someone I considered a friend, almost like a brother, who went on a rant one day because some woman had made the news because her son had been killed in the crossfire of a drive by shooting in her neighborhood.  My co-worker didn’t want to hear of her sorrow…”why didn’t she just move, if she’s in such a bad neighborhood?”  Well, gee, member of the most privileged race and gender whose toe has never dipped below upper middle class, maybe you have the money to physically move your family and pay for a more expensive apartment in a safer neighborhood after coughing up a security deposit and first and last months’ rent, but this woman, obviously, didn’t.  Truthfully, I didn’t know her situation, I was just so irritated that this man couldn’t see past his own experience.  “I’d move, why didn’t she?”

I worked with another person, a woman who was NEVER my friend, who also was completely out of touch with anyone else’s problems.  Zero empathy.  Rich parents, still married, no major problems, illnesses, crimes, etc. that affected her family.  I lost track of the “let them eat cake” comments that she made. She married a wealthy man, and when she had their first child, was able to become a stay at home mom.  A spoiled, shallow woman who no longer had to work in a cubicle and more than likely hired someone to take care of her children.  Puke.

Then there’s the youth, someone whose got the energy and the drive and the opportunities, living in the time that we do, to do far more with their lives than I could have even had I not been forced to perform oral sex on my babysitter at age 6.  Even if all those years of abuse had not happened, when I was in my early 20’s, no one was making their living doing half the cool things kids are able to work at now.  There are kids making a living off of posting videos on YouTube, for pete’s sake.

Lastly, there’s the broken ones, the misfits like me, who are open about their pain, their losses, their mental health issues, etc. These are the ones I least begrudge their successes, but they are painful to watch. Jenny Lawson, The Bloggess, whom I’ve mentioned before, is  screamingly funny. She lives in Texas with her husband and daughter and makes a living as a writer. Her first book has just been released. And she suffers from depression, anxiety, and admits to self-harming. And I literally feel a pain in my stomach when I read about her accomplishments. Her book is on the New York Times’ bestseller’s list. She appeared on CNN. She made a short with  Wil Wheaton and Jeri Ryan. She’s awesome. And I think I hate her.

This may seem like a non-sequitur, but I read an interesting article on victims in our society.  It pointed out how hurtful it is to go to the politically correct extreme of never blaming the victim.  That’s not to say there aren’t some people who truly meet the definition of 100% blameless victim.  Children usually fall into that category. But smokers who develop lung cancer?  Many have cried “victim” and sued the tobacco companies.  As loathsome as “Big Tobacco” is, do these people hold no responsibility themselves?  What about the chances we take?  What about people who go out and get drunk and do dumbass things.  They drive and get themselves and their passenger killed, like Jackass star Ryan Dunn did.  I read of so many people acting as though this was a “tragic accident” and “poor Ryan”.  He was driving over 100 miles an hour, drunk.  He not only killed himself, but his passenger.  He paid the ultimate price for his stupidity, as did his friend who was stupid to get in the car with him, but his loved ones continue to pay.

And, don’t hate me on this, but the whole Natalee Holloway thing pisses me off.  Yeah, it sucks that she was murdered, but for an underage girl to go out drinking and get in a car with boys she barely knew in a foreign country….it boggles the mind.  And it happens all the time.  This article I read describes this kind of victim as such:

“Victims With Minor Guilt: This category includes victims who with some thought, planning, awareness, information, or consciousness could have expected danger and avoided or minimized the harm to themselves… choosing to get drunk (the minor responsibility is for electing to be completely helpless and unconscious, at the full mercy of others, in a situation that has the potential to be dangerous).”

Another part that stood out to me…

“alleviating all women or any victim from any and all responsibility to predict, prevent, or even unconsciously invite abuse, is to reduce them to helpless, incapable creatures, and in fact, re-victimizes them.”

So, now is when we get to the point. When I was six, I was a victim. 100% innocent. My abuse continued until we moved to Texas, when I was nine.  Then my brother started bullying me.  I’d get smacked and pushed around at the drop of a hat.  I remember getting backhanded if I was in the passenger seat and he couldn’t see past me when looking to the right when he was driving me to school. Not, “can you please lean back a little?”, just SMACK.  By that time I had had enough of this abuse crap, and went to my parents for help.  My brother proclaimed his innocence, and my parents accused me of being a liar.  For years my mother accused me of hating him and just trying to get him in trouble.  I admit, I did grow to hate him.  But then, when Josh died, I laid that hate down at my brother’s feet and told him I didn’t want it anymore.  He wasn’t worth the effort.  To my shock, he apologized.  He admitted he knew he had been awful, and was truly sorry.  On that day, I got my big brother back.  Since then, though there’s been times we’ve ticked each other off, we’ve built a relationship that I cherish.  He’s the only person in my life who’s hurt me who has actually admitted to it and apologized for it.

But, I have to admit, I’ve let the abuse I received as a child serve as the pedestal from which I’ve ALLOWED myself to be a victim.  Will stood me up in high school.  Poor me.  I got involved with a schizophrenic drug addict who (gasp!) killed himself.  I’ve let a good part of my youth slip away without ever taking the risks required to do any of the grand things I’d hoped I’d do.  I crawled into a bottle of Jim Beam, gained weight and went dateless for 7 years.  I had the power to change, avoid, or overcome any of these problems/issues.  And I’ve often told myself that I have, in fact, overcome them.  But that’s a lie.

Hubs and I were talking today about me pursuing one of the many crowdfunding opportunities available these days.  I posed the question, “what would I ask for funding for?”

Husband: Your repurposing stuff.  Your business.  Arr Bazaar.

I got irritated.

Me: What would I do with any money I raised?

Husband: Advertise your stuff.

Me: I’ve gone down that road before, remember?  When I tried to sell jewelry.

Husband: But this is different.

Me: Yes, but it’s still ME trying.

And then I turned on the tv and saw this kid, this “photography student”, advertising a smart phone by demonstrating the awesomeness of the pictures he took with it while skydiving.  And I hated him.

In not entirely unrelated news, I’m able to see my shrink on a weekly basis, at least for a while.  The psychological equivalent, hopefully, of having my name legally changed from “poor me” to “kick ass self”.

Noooooooooo!!!!!

Not a good night

Though my husband would use more emphatic terms, I’d say I kinda flipped tonight.

I’ve been on edge all day.  The kind of on edge that leads to a freeway shooting if someone fails to yield to me.  I just couldn’t handle any little hiccup today.  At one point this afternoon, I was curled up in bed crying, and my daughter climbed up onto the bed with me.  She asked in her cute little four-year-old voice, “mommy, what’s wrong?”  I don’t remember if I responded, or if I just kept crying.  She lay down beside me and spooned with me.  “You’re the best, mommy”.  She says that to us a lot.  She’s been sick for weeks now, from an ear infection/pink eye to strep throat, and has been even more clingy than usual, so I’m sure seeing me in the state I was in today was even more distressing.

I feel like such a failure as a mother when my child sees me like this.  I’m terrified she’s going to grow up being scared for me.  I really need to start tracking these wretched days, as I suspect they are at least partly due to hormone changes in preparation of surfing the crimson wave.  For the last few months, I’ve been vaguely aware of these horrific days when I just want to take a bat to something.  Like I wish I had a room full of china teacups that I could go into once a month and smash to dust.  Then, once my rage is spent and I’m happily exhausted, I leave the room, and little oompa-loompas (the orange ones with green hair, thank you) come in and quietly clean up the shards and prepare for next time.  Hmmm, what would they sing?  I’ll have to give that some thought.

Shoot a pickle

Been feeling better lately.  I’ve even managed to stay out of the cocoon for the last few days.  Then today I noticed my (trashy) neighbors were holding a yard sale.  No big deal, except I learned they came onto my property and stole some bricks that bordered one of my front flowerbeds to hold up their sign.

We have a long history with these lowlifes. They are incredibly inconsiderate, loud, vulgar, etc. Even the city had to get involved because of all the disruptions these people have caused in the neighborhood.  I was just remarking to my husband the other day how pleasantly surprised I was that they’ve been relatively well behaved the last several months.  Then today they proved they are still scummy to the core.  Why do I mention this?  Because I can feel the mental blanket lowering on my brain.  I get incredibly angry, but instead of going over there and giving them a piece of my mind, I swallow it all, or let it out in bursts in the direction of anyone who causes me even the slightest irritation, like my husband.  By swallowing my anger I invite depression.

I also allow myself to be pigeonholed by what people think of me… even people I can’t stand.  I have no reason to like these people next door.  They’ve shown time and time again that they are rude, thoughtless, self-absorbed and without intelligence.  Yet, when they’ve projected their view of me and my family onto me, part of me accepts their assessment, even though I know it’s not true.  So I go through the arguments against their assessment of me in my head.  I list all the reasons they are wrong.  But since I’m not having this conversation with them, it’s really about convincing myself.

I’ve had just one confrontation with them.  A couple of the tenants were screaming and hollering because we had put a security camera up on the side of our house.  In their paranoid, pothead minds, they thought we were spying on them.  I approached them and, by taking the high road, being mild, and keeping my end of the argument respectful, I was able to diffuse the situation.  We walked away with a better understanding of each other and they’ve since been better behaved.  But they never admitted they were wrong about anything they’d done.  Peace was attained because I took the high road.  But I didn’t sleep for the next two nights, because I kept going over and over the confrontation in my head.  Even though I had done the proper, mature thing, part of me wanted to jump over the fence and beat the sh*t out of them.  To call them on ever city code they’ve violated by playing their obnoxious music at 100 decibels, and parking their cars on the front yard next to my living room window with music blaring, or storing their trashcans outside my kitchen door (and dumping some of their trash in my side yard, hence, the cameras).  I wanted to take a bat to the head of the woman who I’d heard call my child a little bitch.  MY FOUR YEAR OLD DAUGHTER.  What kind of person calls a little girl a bitch?  My child doesn’t know hate, she knows Spongebob.  She doesn’t see skin color, she sees people.  And this woman next door had referred to my child as a bitch.  Then I stood toe to toe with her, and didn’t call her on it.

I’ve had several people tell me I did the right thing, but let me tell you something….I get really, really tired of people getting away with bad behavior and my having to take the high road.  I’m finding more and more often, the high road is leading me to a low mood.

I think I need a kickboxing class.