Four Years of Hard Rain

It rained on my wedding day. Internally I groaned because that was the wrong script. Like most girls, I'd dreamt about that day for a long time. In those dreams, I wore a gleaming white dress over-burdened with tulle and I posed magnificently with a throng of coquettish bridesmaids. There were tweeting birds, and possibly a harp, and definitely, most definitely, a bright yellow sun pasted delicately to a clear, cerulean sky. The groom in those dreams was always a blur, an afterthought. But whoever that man was he was supposed to be powerful enough to control the whims of the sky, or maybe that was God's job. I don't know.

When I woke up to the dreary greyness of that soul-tethering day, I held every hope in my heart that something golden would still arrive and rescue my little girl dreams, bring them back to me wrapped in rainbow paper on the beaks of tweeting birds. But the moment arrived when I realized that rain was going to keep right on at it's falling. So I did the only thing I could; I grew up and faced the rain.

Rassles wrote a great post last week about her passive, weak, piece of shit umbrella. I commented to her that I did away with umbrellas a while ago. That now, I just face the rain. Well, I think my wedding day was the day I learned that I could do that. I felt the rain. I felt for sure in my heart that I needed that rain the way I needed to feel the kicks of my baby girl 5 months new and strong in my womb. That rain was our baptism, symbolic of the tears of joy and sorrow we would be facing in the days ahead.

My bridal gown wasn't the one I envisioned in my dreams. I had to select a dress that would accomodate my ever-expanding belly. I had to accept the fact that I'd look like a marshmallow in all my photos. And when Todd saw me in my bridal gown before the wedding, it wasn't magic; It was real. I was holding my 9 month old niece in my arms as she wailed loudly in my ear. Todd walked in the room and said...something. And I said, "What?" So romantic. And then 5 months later, he held our crying newborn daughter in his arms and I cried too saying, "Lord, give me more drugs." And two years after that he held a sobbing me in his arms as I buried my sister. And 6 months after that he held me again as I cried over the loss of my breasts. Rain. Just so much rain in these four years.

I love our wedding photos with that grey backdrop. It's prettier than any sun or clear, blue sky. At my wedding and reception, as the rain fell outside, we said "I do" and we kissed and we laughed and we danced in a room made cozy and intimate by the fog against the windows that surrounded us. After the revelries of that night we fell exhausted into each other's arms, husband and wife. In the morning we woke up to a bright yellow sun and he said, "Shit, it's beautiful out, I'm going to play golf" and I said, "Fine, I'm going to brunch with my sisters and having a mimosa". That's so Gwen and Todd. Always will be. Happy Anniversary, Baby. I love you; especially when it rains.

Not OK

Warning: This post is bleak and pointless

So from now on I'm going to include a disclaimer at the beginning of my bleak, hopeless, and shittily written posts. This is for the sake of all my readers who are sick of hearing that shit. So if you don't want to read something pointless and disturbing, check this out instead.

Pointless, yes. But definitely not disturbing.

I've come to the conclusion after much self-reflection and internal questioning that I am not OK. Not OK. Alisha was doing my hair on Saturday and as I sat trapped under one of those hair dryer things, a woman was sitting right across having the absolute audacity to crack her fucking gum obnoxiously in my presence. I came so close to murdering this woman for cracking her fucking gum. I was envisioning in my head stabbing her repeatedly with Alisha's sharp, hair-cutting scissors. I was pulled out of my murderous fantasy by a sharp pain in my hand and I looked down and noticed my fingernails were digging so deep into my hand that they practically broke the skin. Not OK.

I was driving home from said hair appointment and in the opposite lane came barreling down a semi going way too fast. I had this potent, overwhelming urge to drive my car into it's path. Like I pictured my hands turning the wheel really sharp. I heard the sounds of crashing in my head. I saw the pieces of metal and body parts and shit flying just everywhere. The body parts sort of pulled me out of my revelry. It's not my preferred way to go - bloody and dismembered. That would be so embarrassing. Also, I'm not the type to bring others down with me. Needless to say, I made the right choice to not drive into the path of an on-coming semi. Still: Not OK.

Yesterday, I looked at a sinkful of dirty dishes and I started crying. Like literal, wet, salty tears. Over dirty dishes. Not OK.

Today, I made myself some yummy split soup and ate it. And then afterward I was filled with such an overwhelming sensation of guilt and dread. Like just physically and emotionally sick with myself. I wound up heaving over the toilet. Bye bye soup, I barely knew ye. Not OK.

This morning when I went into work, I saw the same image hanging on the wall that I see every single day:
But today it was like I was seeing it for the very first time. I looked at it. And I looked at it. Then I think a little part of me died inside. Like withered, shriveled and died. What is the point of living in a world where people hang that kind of shit on walls as decoration? Not OK.

Now I'm not a mental health expert or anything, but I'm pretty sure these things don't happen to "normal" people. So I think it's that time again. Time to find a fucking therapist. The prospect of finding a therapist depresses me more than you know. The thought of it, like, exhausts me to no end. But I don't think I have much of a choice at this point. I'm so sick of being not OK. Have you ever been not OK? As much as I'd like to be the only person contending with crazy ass thoughts and feelings, it would be awful nice to know I'm not alone. Sometimes I look around at people and wonder how they all have their shit so together. Perfect hairstyles, cute outfits, expensive footwear, manicured fingernails, smiles on their faces, well-behaved children in their arms. I hate people that have their shit together. So jealous. Not OK.

I get to have another vaginal ultrasound tomorrow. Yippee! Nothing better than a dildo-ish wand in your vag and a search for cancer. At least, I'm coming down to the wire on the ovarian cyst/cancer issue. Just a couple more days until I know if I'm dying.

It's not all bleak and hopeless in my world, though, you'll be happy to know. My piss-ants are finally doing some cool shit. They're making tunnels and like building a little city. So there's something for me to put on my "Reasons to Live" list. Also on the list is Liv, who drew more pictures of people pooping today. And Thursday is my 4 year anniversary. We're going to DC this weekend to visit Todd's father's grave and go to the Holocaust Museum. So that ought to cheer me up.

A word to the people who know me in real life: I don't need an intervention. Don't even think about that shit. I'm not fucking kidding you. Obviously, I have the balls (or the stupidity) to remain open and honest about my feelings and experiences. And it actually makes me feel better. Just don't get all dramatic with the concern. It will only serve to piss me off and make me go anonymous on this blog and maybe in real life. And I know how sad you would be if I did that because you told me how sad you would be if I did that. Love!

Put Your Child To Work Day

So we just had that Take Your Child to Work Day annual event this past Thursday. It's the one that started as Take Your Daughter to Work Day, the goal of which was to to "encourage employees...to invite a pre-pubescent-aged girl to spend the day with the employee at his or her workplace, with the aim of exposing girls to various career opportunities"(Wikipedia.org). Women have historically been limited in occupational opportunities, so this event was organized to improve self-esteem and encourage girls to pursue careers they might not have been aware of as options. Apparently, people got all up in arms about the fact that something that was designed to exclusively encourage young females (who are clearly in need of it), did not also include young males. God forbid we make little girls feel special in any way.

Is it just me, or does it now feel like the initial reason for and spirit of this annual event has been lost? When I worked at the hospital, I remember people bringing their kids to work along with toys, coloring books, and other "pass the time" items. They'd situate them at an empty desk and there they'd sit for the whole of the day playing with their stupid toys and making me uncomfortable with their creepy stares. And I thought, "Well, isn't the point of this exercise to inform children about the type of work you do? Shouldn't they be somehow involved your workday, in all its excitement and tedium?" I knew the day had lost all meaning when people I worked with started bringing their infants into work with them on that day. It irritated the shit out of me to have to hear a baby wailing while I slaved away at a job I hated so much to begin with. But I guess kids are never too young for us to begin exposing them to the grim realities of a lifetime of hard work. In fact, I propose a new annual event. Better yet, make it a daily one. Put Your Child To Work Day.

Child Labor Laws be damned. After all the crumbs I've vacuumed, toilets I've scrubbed, ass I've wiped, she fucking owes me.

Earning her keep.

Put a little muscle into it there, Toots.

I don't do windows. But she does.

And then she has the nerve to say, "Mom, when are you going to help me clean?"

Things I Might Have Said

A long time ago, in a cafeteria far, far away.

"That's a lot of food for such a little girl."


Fuck you. No, really, fuck you. Because after you walk away and forget that you said that, I'm going to get up and dump this plate of food in the trash. And then, come Tuesday, I'm going to lie to my therapist about my goddamn food plan.


"I wish I had your willpower."


Fuck you, too. It doesn't take willpower to have a disease. In fact, I have the opposite of willpower because I don't have a modicum of control over my own impulses to destroy myself.


"Oh my god, you're eating chocolate?"


"...ummm...yeah." (looks down in shame and self-loathing)


"You don't look like you eat chocolate."


Go to hell. And while you're going there, I'll be going to the bathroom to puke up the chocolate I don't look like I eat.


"I'd love to be skinny like you. I wish I could have anorexia for a little while."


Yeah, I wish you could too. Then maybe you would know to never, ever, ever, ever, ever say that to a person who actually has anorexia. It's not a diet. It's not something you put on and take off with ease. It's a living fucking hell. It's the only way I know how to look in the mirror without spitting at my own face. It's the only way I know how to feel like I deserve to exist, to take up space, to breathe air. I had a chewable vitamin for lunch yesterday, you asshole, and I weighed myself 20 times. I threw up the chewable vitamin and I was afraid it didn't all come up. So I went to the gym and walked for 3 hours on the treadmill. Does that sound good to you? Is being this skinny really worth the price of admission?

Present day living room over a mocha and a really, really yummy pastry


Wow. That felt amazingly good. Better than any purge. People don't know what the fuck they're saying sometimes. I know it's not their fault. I've been reading old journals and just feeling sorry for the old me, for the things that were said to me when I was sick and then in recovery. It's so satisfying to see how far I've come, how different I am. Because this is what I would want to say to those clueless folks now:


"That's a lot of food for such a little girl."


Hell, yeah it is. I'm fucking hungry.


"I wish I had your willpower."

I don't have willpower. I try to listen to the voices of my body. I try to allow myself the pleasure of eating without punishing myself for it. I don't always succeed. I don't always succeed in eating every day. I don't always succeed in keeping the food in my belly. I don't always succeed in resisting the urge to lament, "I'm so fucking fat." But I usually do; and it's a thousand times better than that hell I called living before.


"Oh my God, you're eating chocolate!"


Yep. It's really good. Do you want some?


"I would love to be skinny like you. I wish I could have anorexia for a little while."


Well nobody would say that to me anymore because I'm a normal weight. But if they did I would have to just give them a blank stare and a number to a therapist.

And Now You've Seen it All

Just when you thought I couldn't get any more personal, I offer you this, a picture of me wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt and sporting a mullet-esque hairstyle.

And this, a picture of my baby sister being man-handled by Pinnochio (seriously, dude, let go of her head) and my brother doing his best impression of Don Johnson:

And this, me in 6th grade with very weirdly curled hair. I don't think a picture exists of me in all our family albums where my hair doesn't look like something went horribly wrong.

The Bridge

I was debating whether to link my review or talk about it on here. That is because the review itself stung like Nutjobber’s proverbial “cluster of bees”. It’s what I asked for, what I deep down knew would happen. I was, like in so many other ways and choices I’ve made, drawn to the hurt of it.

So I let it sit there silently in the time-out chair of my brain. And, of course, at first I railed against it. “But you just don’t understand me”, “You don’t get me, or what I’m doing here.” After I got over the little girl tantrums I realized that a good writer should be able to transcend that divide between universes. A good writer should be able to build a long, sturdy bridge with her words so that a foreigner can make the trip safely and pleasurably into that private world. The things that are the most different than us could be the most interesting; we should want to go there and if that bridge is artfully constructed we don’t mind staying there for a little while in that place that is so different from our own. My bridge is in disrepair.

I’m not on a cross. Truly, I’m not. I’m just trying to work out what it is exactly that earned me 1 star out of a possible 4. I was the nerd in school who would get an A- on an essay and get all fucking worked up about it. That minus would, like, destroy me. So a 1 star feels like a D, which honestly would have had me swallowing a bottle of pills back in the day. So the result of the review is that now I am embarrassed by this body of work, by all that sloppy angst clogging up my archives. But it is what it is and this whole experience of blogging has been me learning and trying to reach different parts of me that were buried. And in the process, I’ve managed to eek out a lot of bleak and joyless blobs of words.

I realize that Nutjobber is right when he says, “Hopefully, she'll continue on her current path, resolutely elevating her writing to allow it to transcend her emotions, making them work for her instead of the other way around.” I let my emotions lead me around like a puppy on a leash and they are always the driving force behind what I put to paper.

The last thing I want is a reader to get a headache from my writing or to put his or her head in hands. And after hearing that my writing had that effect on someone, well my first reaction was, “What the fuck am I doing? Why am I doing it?” And then I wanted to take down my blog and start over somewhere new where I could reinvent myself and not be weighed down by previous failures. Stupid, stupid, I know. Then I read the comments, and I realized that I had readers, awesome readers, who do like my blog, my bleak, self-indulgent, bright red scream of a blog. So I’ll stick it out for a while and see if I can’t just be a big girl about this and actually use the criticism to morph into a better writer. Because I think I’m capable of better writing, at least I hope I am. I’m just not ready to give up just yet. This writing thing is in my bones and even if I stop blogging, I don’t think I’m capable of not writing, even if it is just for me.

So thanks Nutjobber for your honest and well-thought out opinion. It hurt to read it, but maybe I needed a kick in the ass to get me out of my rut and start writing like a grown-up instead of a little girl drowning in a pool of tears.