Pulled Beef

I contemplated not writing today. After all, I’m pretty consistent. I could take the day off from my blog. Sounds innocent, right? How about if I said that I was contemplating it due to my deep level of shame over my emotional state after leaving my computer yesterday? That puts a whole other spin on it, doesn’t it?

Every positive word I’ve ever spewed came crashing down on me yesterday afternoon. Or maybe they were all squeezing me; I felt like I was continuously being taken up a notch in frustration and anger and that whirlwind I can’t control but feel like I should. The more I tried to relax, the worse it got. Nothing seemed amusing, nothing interesting. I put on a comedy to watch and ended up CRYING because it was one of those daughter coming of age things and in the end, the controlling mother accepted and was proud of her daughter and told her so. What a fucking fantasy! At least it always is in MY world. My mother was NEVER, NEVER like that. I was WRONG for doing what I wanted. ALWAYS. (And for the record, yes, even thinking about this makes me cry. It’s a deep fucking issue.)

None of my projects were even attempted yesterday. It all became about getting myself under control, and the valves were open – my boiling point was reached by one in the afternoon, at which point I took a chip of Ativan to calm the fuck down.

Here’s all the things I did for myself yesterday that I feel I didn’t deserve at all:

• took a long, hot shower and conditioned my hair
• made sure to lather my dry skin with lotion
• put on my music and visualizer and zoned out for an hour
• watched films and sat on my ass
• didn’t give a fuck how much I smoked
• ordered in pizza for dinner and ate it all in one go
• ate a sugary treat

And it was HARD. Hard to be so nice to myself. Hard to stay in the shower an extra 5 minutes just to let the hot water run over my head. Hard to put on the lotion and rub it in to my fat body. Hard to sit and watch things when I should have been up working. Hard to let go of my smoking.

The only thing that was easy was eating. Eating has always been easy for me. Early lesson: dog dies, go for hot fudge sundaes. Thanks a million, mom.

In my whirlwind of over emotion, the crowning glory to it all was a big daub of guilt. Guilt over my smoking, guilt over not doing anything, guilt over eating all that food. Above all, guilt over losing it. Because it was drilled into me that I should be able to control this. I used to be punished by being made to sit still when I was too wound up. So it all came back. Sit still, get yourself under control! If you were better, stronger, you’d be able to do this.

The realization that I expect myself to be able to control these blow ups came at about the same time a friend messaged me telling me it’s bipolar and not. my. fault. And here’s where my head is at with this…When/if Yoda writes ‘bipolar’ on my file, I’ll start to accept that. Up until that point, I’m still not 100% convinced I’m not just a spoiled, whining brat like my sister always told me I was. Fuck, man. I need fucking permission to be this way. Otherwise I fucking blame myself. I need that label. I don’t know how to let go of this otherwise. And even if I do get possession of that label, it’s gonna be difficult.

Maybe it would all be easier if my mother was still alive so I could tell her what my diagnosis is and she could accept it. But I don’t believe she’d accept it. If I imagine telling my sister that I’m bipolar, I’d expect a lot of ‘well that explains it’ and then continual jabs over my past behavior and continual dissing of my current behavior because hey! I’m now officially fucking crazy. Don’t think my mother would do much different, other than have that tight-lipped look on her face that I hate so very, very much. And telling my older brother in the states anything is useless. He’s the one who jabbed me once, asking what the fuck I had to be anxious about. I had to explain to him (he who’s supposed to have a 135 IQ) that stress is created internally as well as externally, and it was the internal stress I was having problems with.

My family is not the understanding kind of people you’d want in your life. Too bad I had to grow up with them.

…Yep. Yeah. In the time it took me to roll I teared up twice over two different thoughts. I’m strung out. Like pulled beef strung out. Raked over the coals. In pieces. Tattered. The worst part of yesterday was the temptation to LIE. Not check all the times I rolled and smoked. Not include the Ativan I took. Even my bro said don’t put down all that shit. It didn’t matter; what mattered was that I really needed to get myself under control. For a moment that’s exactly what I was gonna do: blow Js all day, take that Ativan, and say nothing. Then I thought how it would feel next time I saw Heike if she told me I was doing ‘really well’ like she did this last time. How hollow and empty and wrong that would be. And I got up and put those marks on the calendar, complete with a capital ‘A’ for Ativan, in ink. I remembered what my first goal was: honesty. And even tho it’s gonna SUCK to go in on Wednesday and say I smoked 6 Js, not 5, PLUS took an Ativan which I’m not even prescribed so I’m being doubly bad, it’ll be better than the lie.

I may be pulled into pieces right now, but I won’t let myself dry out and fall away. Pulled beef; fine. Jerky? No.