"This is what must be left after everything that can die is dead and everything that can be lost is gone."
~Geneen Roth, Women Food and God
I tried several times throughout the week to sit down and write, but the words were just not there. This week has been an interesting one to say the least... one of those weeks where you would like to pretend maybe it didn't even happen, and that's what some of my family members have chosen to do. To not "deal." To "sweep it under the rug." To go on smiling even though its a lie. I wish I could pretend, but I think part of not "dealing" is why I have the issues I have... fear has always been a friend of mine. I can't take the lies anymore. Granted, I am not proud of my actions--exploding, trying to break telephones, kicking in doors, foot-flipping heavy chairs (ouch), but how else can you react when they all sit around and act like everything is okay. The details: the who, the what, the why, the where, the how... they are not important. What is important is the basic fact that I don't understand how someone can say the worst, horrible, mean, malicious things, and then, the next day just go on like it never happened, but more importantly... what happened to ALL of those feelings? There was a reason you said them, and so I can't imagine that they all just dissipated in thin air in less than twenty-four hours? And the truth of it all is this... there feelings... they are okay to have. Acknowledgement, attention, etc. I can really live without it, and I'd rather have someone not speak to me, then force themselves to out of whatever obligation they feel. The old I-didn't-have-my-anti-depressant card was thrown up in the air, and I gather that's where I'll find the truth as well...
This episode made me really confront myself because after the detonation, I sped off in my jeep, and found myself in a Wal-Mart parking lot, putting on an Academy Award Winning Performance of tears... The scariest thing is the thoughts that permeated from my being--I truly thought it was the end of the road. I sat in my car, and contemplated on whether buying a box cutter, or Subway. I chose the five dollar foot long, but the point is that darkness was there... and I didn't necessarily want to die, I just wanted the pain to. I didn't want to live in this world of constantly being kicked out, which is the first thing I always ask whenever there's a fight, as if I am auditioning to be a twenty-eight-year-old orphan. Perhaps I incurred a little P.T.S.D. from everything that happened prior. Then, I shot over to the Riverwinds parking lot, and watched the fog roll off the water with a few other cars. I gazed at the tide, and thought of driving my jeep into the water... so that I am no longer the burden, or the problem, or the person you can just kick out of your life... but then I thought any actions like that would just give the people that did wrong by me satisfaction, and that was the last thing I was offering. And instead of doing what I would always do, which was run away to some relatives for the week... I went home; I apologized for my behavior, but I did speak my peace. I am tired of running, and no one is ever gonna do that to me again.
The week went on, and somehow, someway, I lost three and half pounds. I started reading Geneen Roth's "Women Food and God," and as I go deeper, I see a lot of myself in this book. It keeps talking about the obsession, the compulsion to eat even when your not full. What are we hungry for? The book did help bring a sense of balance that I just didn't feel last week. Its not just about the physical, its also about the spiritual, as well as the mental.
A friend request on Facebook triggered a memory... the boy was thin, blonde, and beautiful, and I remembered him offering me a pencil in math class, as we had all just started at the local community college. I remembered looking at that boy and thinking what a loser I am--that I'll never be thin, blonde, or beautiful like him... that I'd be lucky if anybody wanted me. I was eighteen mind you, and the wounds of high school were still fresh. A part of that shame is never really gone... a part of that feeling of being unworthy may never go away, and its scary.
Earlier in the week, the news feeds were all abuzz over a former classmate that had passed... a year older, and I knew the name, but couldn't picture the face. Rumors of an overdose... so sad... and like the boy above he was thin, blonde, and beautiful, and now he's gone... What was his story? Twenty-nine, so young... it breaks my heart, and its my own ignorance because even still, in the back of my mind, I always think those people don't have problems. I also started to think about the people that are not strong enough to go on... Do they deserve to be ostracized, or judged... This life thing it gets hard, and it doesn't come with a user manual. Nobody is anybody to judge, especially the ones that don't make it... we've all got a vice, just some of us pay the price...
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