#one time was because i had developed anorexia and the other time he was drunk

[slippery-minghus]

oh... just had a sad thought. was skimming reddit for recipe ideas and came across a post with parents discussing tactics for helping their kids with very food aversion-restricted diets get enough nutrition and. i just thought to myself. i really wish i had had the luxury of refusing food i couldn't stand as a child. i still cringe at the thought of my mother's chicken soup. or pork chops. frozen mixed vegetables?? (if the veggies had even just been on the side, it would've been okay!! but mixed into every pasta dish i was allowed to eat? with an added guilt trip about the pasta and veggies being "friends" and that they'll miss each other if i don't eat them both, every time i complained??) (i didn't even dislike vegetables!! she just refused to ask how i wanted to eat them!!)

but i didn't have the luxury of refusing to eat the things i couldn't stand!! at best, i would have gone hungry. at worst, guilt tripped to hell and back, and left alone at the table till i could eat through the tears. and my intake was restricted by my parents' fatphobia enough, i couldn't afford to skip meals. sure i knew when my next meal would be (though snacking was not a Thing in our house) but when i'd be allowed to actually eat enough to feel full? (even though that always meant eating more than the people around me.... but if i'd been allowed to eat til i was full regularly that probably wouldn't have been the case) hell... i wasn't even allowed sweets most of the time. "only on weekends"

it makes me so sad and... aware of the hollowness inside me when i think about how little space there was for me in my own home and childhood.

and i was thinking similar thoughts this morning. about my asthma, and how cruel it was that in high school gym class i was forced to trigger it every single day to avoid both a failing grade and bullying from my teacher. i thought about what i would have said to the principal of the school if i had been in the shoes of one of my parents. how i would have put a stop to it. how much more i would have done beyond the angry letter my dad wrote the school to keep me from failing gym that was more about preserving my GPA than me.

but then i realized—if i had had a parent willing to stand up for me like that... why would they have waited until high school? why wouldn't that have been something done from the start, and kept consistent throughout my k-12 years? why, aside from that letter, was the only thing done for me about it the awful "not allowed to run" sign my mother pinned to my shirt the first day of kindergarten, and the rescue inhaler kept in the nurse's office? (an inhaler that by high school my parents wouldn't even bother signing the waiver for, so i was always afraid of getting in trouble for carrying it in my backpack)

if you ask my parents, i was always their first priority. my mother starts to cry every time she says as much.

but then why. why does all the evidence point to the contrary?

how do i reconcile being wanted and loved but not cared for?

[simplygoingmadd]

Main para introduction!!! ⚠️TW⚠️ mentions of SH, ED, ab*se, and SA while explaining my main 3 paras’ past and trauma.

Name: Peter

Pronouns: He/Him

Sexuality: Gay

Role: Parame

All paracosms

Age range: 15-38

Height: 5’6

Hair: Dark brown

Eyes: Brown

Wade’s boyfriend, Member of the chaotic 6

Peter is very sweet and he always does what’s right and stands up for what he believes in, he has a bubbly contagious personality. He’s a huge dork and was considered “gifted” throughout his childhood. He was bullied a lot in his childhood. Peter suffers from depression, general anxiety disorder, adhd, ptsd, s*lf h*rm and ocd relating to food. He was a victim of s*xual assualt in his late teen years as well as a victim of domestic ab*se (not with Wade). Peter tends to be very active in the mental health awareness community as well as other social activism. He’s very smart and quick witted.

Name: Wade

Pronouns: He/they

Sexuality: Pansexual

Role: Parame

All paracosms

Age range: 15-38

Height: 6’2

Hair: Dirty blond

Eyes: Blue

Peter’s partner, Member of the chaotic 6

Wade is a very sarcastic and humorous person. They have a tough exterior to guard his sensitive and emotional side. He uses humor to to cope with their insecurity. They’re very intuitive and observant, they can read a person very quickly. Wade suffers from borderline personality disorder, adhd, ptsd, social anxiety disorder, body dysmorphia, and s*lf h*rm. He had an ab*sive, drunk father. They’re also a victim of s*xual assault. Wade prides himself in standing up against bigotry no matter what. They have a short temper which gets them into a lot of trouble. He’s guaranteed to make you laugh in any situation while still being able to take you serious when necessary.

Name: Amy

Pronouns: She/her

Sexuality: Bisexual

Role: Para

Most paracosms

Age range: 15- late 30s

Height: 5’7

Hair: Ginger

Eyes: Green

Peter and Wade’s best friend, Member of the chaotic 6

Amy is a blunt and brutally honest person. She’ll tell you what you need to hear without being rude or hurting you. She takes shit from no one and defends Peter with her life. She’s very outspoken and has no issue saying what’s on her mind. Amy suffers from unspecified anxiety, anorexia, and depression. She has a lot of issues with her family and avoids being home as much as possible. She always knows what to do in every situation and considers herself the most put together of their friend group.

Name: Sky

Pronouns: They/them

Sexuality: Unlabeled

Role: Para

Most paracosms

Age range: 15- late 30s

Height: 5’9

Hair: Platinum blonde

Eyes: Hazel

Member of the chaotic 6

Name: Nikki

Pronouns: She/they

Sexuality: Omnisexual with a preference for men

Role: Para

Most paracosms

Age range: 15- late 30s

Height: 5’4

Hair: Brown

Eyes: Dark brown

Member of the chaotic 6

Name: Zach (Z)

Pronouns: He/Him

Sexuality: Asexual & Biromantic

Role: Para

Most paracosms

Age range: 15- late 30s

Height: 5’11

Hair: Dark brown

Eyes: Golden brown

Member of the chaotic 6

*Notes* These face references are how my paras look and dress in most of the paracosms around their mid-teen years, their appearances and style do vary over time and across paracosms. The reason I only gave back stories for Peter, Wade, and Amy is because the other 3 are slightly less developed as their pasts are less significant to most plots and are only briefly mentioned in my plots. That being said I love all of my paras very dearly, let me know what you think of them!

[cohentm]

✮     ∷     ╰  𝖚𝖕𝖉𝖆𝖙𝖊𝖉 𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖗𝖔𝖉𝖚𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 .

             I FEEL LIKE i just ran away from home and then realized i’m five and, unfortunately, cannot survive without my parents. LMDFLKDFGM i missed u all and had to return… we hate to see it. anyway! whew. i figured i’d post a refreshed lil intro for cohen to make sure i hit on some key changes before i hop back into the game! the most important / group-related part is right at the top, so if u read nothing else, read that! ily all and i’m excited to jump back in like i never left. i’ll be sliding in dms and makin’ starters asap, so if u wanna make some connection changes my door’s always open! x

✮     ∷     ╰  𝖈𝖔𝖍𝖊𝖓 𝖘𝖊𝖌𝖚𝖗𝖆 : 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 .

cohen currently lives in a glorified, raggedy frat-esque house ( he is NOT a fratboy but he might as well be huh ) of his own right off campus, about a five minute drive / ten minute walk from the stadium ( it’s about four bedrooms large with three bathrooms, all on one floor. think david dobrik’s house–click here to see–except much uglier and CHEAP MVDFLG ). 

he’s fiscally very protective of his savings. he’s been working since he was 12 with his dad, and never ever spent his money, despite some repetitive near-misses where his parents tried ( and failed, bc cohen’s slick ) to steal money from him. basically he now pays for his share of the house using the money he saves/has always saved working for factories, farms, & fixing people’s junk cars. 

his only current roommate is foster, meaning he has two spare rooms he’s not really doing anything with. beer pong table’s outside, the kitchen is the alcohol hot spot, there’s a pool table instead of a dining room table, u know how it goes. 

regardless, he throws open invite house parties literally every weekend. they take place every friday night up until the sun rises on sunday morning–whether he’s around the house for all of five seconds or all night doesn’t matter, because they’re always a-go. 

you’re all 100% free to use his house entirely at your leisure for character fun / development / a place for ur thread to take place / etc! you don’t even need to get my okay beforehand! just do it! think of it as a known dillon fact that cohen’s having a house party every weekend NFKDFNDFKJG. 

no matter who you are, whether cohen likes you or not, he will not care if you show up with some randos or familiar faces and party it out. he’s socially bored 24/7 and full of apathy and alcohol at all times so mans probably will be plastered drunk out doing donuts in the parking lot and fighting someone he doesn’t have beef with anyway. ur muse probably won’t even see him there. LMKGDFLG if you’ve ever seen burlesque? literally him showing up to his OWN house for a visit / to get plastered and then wander off during the weekend party is…. real. so yeah! use his house like it’s ur own. just be out by sunday afternoon bc he likes to pretend none of it ever happened as soon as he wakes up and has to be sober for school. x KMVFBLFG love u all.

✮     ∷     ╰  𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬  &  𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐬 .

tw: eating disorder mentions ( food & lifestyle ), drug addiction / recovery, alcoholism, & mentions of past steroid use.

full name.    cohen anthony segura.

aka.    co, jet.

character inspiration.    adam parrish ( the raven cycle ), vince howard & tim riggins lovechild ( if y’all watched fnl…. let’s cry together ), a much more problematic  &  asshole-ish david dobrik ( the vlog squad ), nathan scott ( oth ), steven hyde ( that ‘70s show ), emily prentiss & aaron hotchner lovechild ( criminal minds ), & noel miller ( tmg ).

age & d.o.b.    twenty-two. birthdate tbd.

zodiac.    virgo sun, aries moon, & aquarius rising.

pronouns.    he / him.

orientation.    openly bisexual.

this has never presented as too large of an issue for cohen, despite living in dillon. he isn’t afraid of being talked about, and has a history of making sure people know he can hold his own if anyone has anything to say about his personal life.

university major.    architecture  &  architectural technology.

after living in a trailer for the duration of his life, the idea that he would be invested in architecture is astounding. however, here he is. his passion for home creation stemmed from growing up and envisioning a real home to live in. his parents are both into self-taught carpentry, and his dad was shoving tools and measuring tape into his hands from the time he was young in an effort to instill in him a firm “get it done yourself” mindset. he spends his time studying structure  &  building planning, and secretly has a journal full of dream house mark-ups.

occupation.    wide receiver for the dillon panthers, full time student, & prospective architect / carpenter post-college.

tattoos.    many riddled throughout his body. brandon arreaga’s tattoos are cohen’s.

face claim.    brandon arreaga.

alignment.    neutral evil.

hogwarts.    slytherin.

positive & negative traits.    ( if u’ve already read this do not read it again i promise u nothing here changed LSMFLD )

hardworking–he works himself to the bone and is entirely unapologetic about it. you’ll rarely catch him slipping, but if he does, he’s the first to get ear-splittingly angry with himself over it. he’s way too hard on himself & he knows it, but he’ll never admit it. 

he nitpicks at the flaws of others in an effort to feel superior, and always acts unaffected when he’s called out for bringing the team down when he’s not taking care of himself ( cue vince howard from fnl or nathan scott from oth scenes where they’re bragging about how good they are on the field even though he’s apt to get himself hurt because of how desperate he is for some kind of validation–cohen had a huge issue with restricting and abusing stimulants / testing steroids throughout high school and college in an attempt to boost his football persona. he was always incredibly fast and beat literal ODDS to maintain his wide receiver position, but especially thanks to his small build he’s used to being underestimated / downplayed, which puts a really heavy weight on his shoulders. today, he’s eating healthily, he’s off drugs, and he’s taking care of himself better than he ever has before, but it’s still incredibly hard and he still reaches out for ways to overcompensate, which is where alcohol usually comes into play ). 

transparent–sure, he can turn into a stressed out & irritable jerk within a fraction of a second, but at least he’s upfront about when he switches lanes. LDFGLMKFG

he’s incredibly focused, which means he’s never going to linger in uncertainty for too long before he admits that he’s just not down to be around you / to be there / to talk / etc. he’s no bullshitter by any means. he’d rather hurt your feelings and keep his environment stable and tactile than stick around and put his easily shaken emotions at risk just to make you comfy. 

he’s also accountable. he knows when he’s causing shit to fuck up & hit the fan, and he’s always quick to right wrongs when things are on him. ofc he’s bred from a family full of blame-givers, so he unhealthily picked up a bad habit of being really good at sounding like he’s apologizing sincerely when he’s really just trying to end a fight because he’s annoyed. LDCLDKMFDFG. 

he’s blunt, temperamental, & incredibly selfish when it comes to his own lifelines / vices, but wholeheartedly selfless when it comes to doing anything to protect or lift up the people he loves.

mental diagnoses.    anorexia nervosa ( in recovery ), alcoholism ( ongoing ), an addiction to various stimulants ( in recovery ), & frequent past attempts at steroid use.

physical diagnoses.    n / a.

phobias.    has an irrational fear of accidentally burning down his house. will get immensely stressed–to the point where he’s absolutely annoying and intolerable to put up with / be around–if someone’s cooking or baking “irresponsibly.” will probably yell at you and hover-cook until you let him take over so he can make sure nothing goes wrong. LMSDFKLFG

scars.   an appendix scar on his lower left side.

drug use.    frequently.

alcohol use.    frequently.

diet.    very decently rounded. he loves to cook, despite being self-taught. growing up the way he did, he settles for making simple dishes very well. he’s not the type to go all out for dinner. he meal preps like it’s his job. he usually just settles with some kind of pan-friend chicken and pasta dish at home.

birth place.    dillon, texas.

parents.    "jude" judith & anthony segura. 

two lower class parents with deep-rooted anger issues. they currently live in the same trailer park together, in separate trailers, and fight with each other constantly. they claim they’re divorced, and are seeing other people, but they’ve never actually filed for anything, since anthony segura thinks it’s just a ploy for judith to take “half [his] shit.” cohen visits them often, and acts as a middle ground child who hates but loves both of them equally. his dad enjoys / tolerates his son’s presence more than his mother does, but only marginally. his mother’s much less concerned with the fact that she has children, since, in her mind, her relationship issues are the most important things in her life. cohen spent many nights as a kid with his drugged up mom in his lap while she cried about not being loved by anyone. his dad, even though he’s rough with cohen, at least spends time with him every now and again. as a kid, his dad was handing him beers to drink and tools to learn to use to prove he was a man ( despite being a ten y/o child bfkjgk oh well! ). regardless, today cohen lives on his own but is still the financial backbone for his parents–since his mom is unemployed and his dad is a seasonal construction worker–and has been since he was fifteen. they ask him for money every chance they get, and cohen never says no.

siblings.    a younger sister ( by two years ). loves her to death. would protect her with his life.

pets.    he’s notorious for letting a certain set of strays run amuck in his house. he feeds the neighborhood cat, is a-okay with people bringing their animals to his parties, etc. but he’s too scared of permanence and obsessed with independence to ever follow through with getting his own animal.

education.    current senior at dillon university. 

he has always been a decent student. he got into architectural honors college his sophomore year of college. however, he’s still not by any means incredibly intelligent. he’s decent grade-wise, but only because he tries really hard and puts in the effort it takes to keep up in a field like architecture. he’s also a chronic cheater, but c’est la vie! lmfgdflkg he spends the vast majority of his time either studying or practicing, and gets very irritable very quick doing either activity because he doesn’t know how to manage stress, so he drinks in the evenings in an attempt to make up for his tense demeanor, but he’s an angry drunk so… whomst are we really kidding here. LMDFKLG

languages.    english & american sign language.

[dvstbunny]

hey my friends!! i am finally bringing in my danzig fc which i have meant to do for literal month but i always struggle with him the most muse-wise and i’ve revamped this particular muse with his fc multiple times... so we’ll see how well it goes this time and fingers crossing i can keep him around! this muse of mine may be a little less active at the moment while i try to find my footing with him, but i’ll be trying my very best! four is usually the maximum of muses i can keep up with because i prefer being as active as possible on my muses rather than sporadic and i had to debate long and hard about picking up another, so we’ll test the waters and see how it goes and if it doesn’t work out... it doesn’t work out! anyway he’s the most chaotic energy second to cy so... enjoy

TRIGGER WARNINGS: eating disorders, violence, cults, drugs, alcoholism, neglect, abuse

{ Dustin ‘Dusty’ Graves } is { 28 } originally from { Suicide Creek, Canada }. They spend their time as a { model, hairdresser, and drummer of Avant-Garde Society }. They live in the { The Chalet } and have been known to be { callous and flamboyant } but can also be { moxie and cosmopolitan }. They strongly resemble { Dustin Bates } and go by { he/him } pronouns.

name: dustin solara graves

nicknames: dusty, dustbin, dustbunny

birthday: may 25, 1989 (age 28)

hometown: suicide creek, canada (later los angeles, ca)

occupation: model, hairdresser, drummer of avant-garde society

orientation: panromantic pansexual

relationship status: single

children: none

education: bachelor’s in scientific research, cosmetology license

VARIOUS INFORMATION AND FACTS:

call him bash if you’re not close to him and he’ll probably kick you in the face

though his mother is originally from canada, he was born in paris, france, where she had moved a few years prior to his birth to follow the love of her life, a french businessman. the businessman wanted nothing to do with the baby and she was forced to return to canada and unable to afford him with her occupation, she abandoned him at an orphanage and subsequently, he grew up never knowing who either of his birth parents were, only his birth name

essentially raised in a monastery, one would think he would grow up to be rather religious. instead, he had too many questions and received answers that didn’t quite satisfy him and started to gravitate toward analyzing every piece of religion in the monastery that he could grasp and unfold it in a way he thought was most logical

throughout his childhood, dustin was extremely alienated by other kids in the monastery and the lack of attention and connection with the other children prompted him to begin growing more and more bitter with every passing year as he got older and began to vie for negative attention from the others and positive attention from the adults at the monastery

with a knack for exploring, he made a terrible mistake when he was around the age of eight: he wandered off the property and into the woods in the canadian winter. being he was still an adolescent with no cellphone and too deep in a place that he had no idea how to find his way out of, he found himself lost and unable to make his way back to the monastery and as the night hit and temperatures dropped, the cold and hunger began to set in, distressing the young boy

miraculously, a local hunter came across him a couple days later when an angry bear (likely woken from hibernation by starvation) tried to attack him. managing to get away with only a few scratches, the hunter took him back to his cabin to clean him up

to his misfortune, he wouldn’t be going back to the orphanage. this hunter in the middle of nowhere seemed to have darker intentions for him: as part of a strange- and likely satanic- cult, he wanted dustin to learn from his ways. those ways were not the kind any eight year old should ever be raised by, though, often violent and bloody with other people who were typically strangers and animals, acts of violence served as a marker for the older man’s idea of salvation or worship

living the rest of his youth in the middle of the woods like this, aside from going to school, he reluctantly took a part in what this father figure wanted from him. given he was so young when he was taken in, he never really thought to get out of the situation, simply letting it be for what it was. hating every minute of it, school became his only escape, opting to stay there as much as he could to work late on science projects that would win him hefty prizes and acknowledgements from his peers

his father figure was baffled by his love for education and instead of receiving pride for his excellent marks in school, dustin was physically and verbally abused with the accusation he was putting too much focus on it and not enough focus on the homefront. outside of his accomplishments, his father figure took little interest in what he did outside out of the house and often ignored him when he wasn’t expected to be doing something. frustrated by his father figure’s lack of care for him, he began acting out again, which only led to more violence between the two

eventually, the neglect and the abuse he received when he acted out took a toll on him, and he grew up to be a rather selfish person, and became incredibly guarded and mistrusting of letting other people in, struggling to make connections and holding people at arm’s length

he swore to himself that when he graduated at eighteen, he would never see him again and make a better life for himself. on the day of his graduation, he packed all his belongings up and quietly left the house, only to dump it elsewhere in the woods on the way to the high school and set fire to it with gasoline. after the ceremony was over, he asked his friend to help him get to los angeles on account of obtaining a full ride scholarship to attend as a student in the department of science at USC

almost immediately, he was signed onto an eight million dollar modeling contract with men’s vogue, and he couldn’t think of anything else he had ever dreamed of as much as that moment in time, free to stay in the country and as far away from his father figure as possible

ever a popular person, he quickly excelled and made his way through the business, getting to know all kinds of people in high places and experiencing the luxurious life for himself on his own- the good and the bad sides of it

though he had delved in plenty of partying in his high school years, and dabbled in social drug use at said parties, he never developed an addiction. when he was in hollywood, everything changed, starting with the development of his addiction to alcohol when he was nineteen, finding it as a way to cope and to tone down the harsh shades of his personality that blossomed as a result of his childhood

as always, the modeling business wasn’t as glamorous as it seemed, either. behind closed doors, he faced pressures to either lose weight or dehydrate himself in order to gain the illusion of the “ideal” body image of men- naturally wanting to keep the business happy and unable to deal with the anxiety every time he looked at the scale and felt as if he were still missing the mark, bulimia and anorexia reared its ugly head in dustin’s life

among the societal expectations of the modeling business and the partying, he faced other abuses that often remained hidden. someone was too rough here and there during a photoshoot- a manager, maybe- and he would leave covering a bruise, or the sketchier photographers of the business would drug him out of his mind to achieve the intended “look” and “aesthetic” of the shoot. in a way, he felt that at least on the bright side, it deterred him from ever considering doing drugs again, disgusted and mortified by the experiences he would endure, and at times still does

dustin chose to turn his life around when he was twenty, convinced by a mentor that he should check himself into rehab after news that cy’s sister was involved in a drunk driving accident that nearly killed her and cy’s brother, reluctantly- and grudgingly- giving in to accepting help from others, coming out the other end feeling more rejuvenated than he had in the past several, miserable years

life went on and he continued the same routine of frequent travel and business calls and so on, so forth over the next few years, purchasing a summer home in paris, and he graduated with his bachelor’s in scientific research a year early at twenty-one with high honors

unfortunately, the road to recovery couldn’t last forever, and he slipped back into the arms of his vices when he was twenty-two, drinking himself out cold one day when he was twenty-three and waking up in a hospital on the premise of a friend finding him and concerned by his extremely low pulse

luckily, the situation was enough for him to receive a wake-up call loud and clear and taking it upon himself this time to check into a rehab facility, searching for his own happiness and perhaps a scrap of self-love. at this time, he decided to take up cosmetology school on the side of the band he ended up in at twenty-four and managed to obtain his license

lacking confidence in himself to remain on steady ground after the first round, unable to find it in himself to make up for his lack of self-love, the sobriety only lasted until he was twenty-seven and he found himself crashing and burning back into old ways when he moved to queens in the big apple, entranced by the bustling life and atmosphere of it in a lonely way that drew him back to his demons

still has an apartment in los angeles and a summer home in paris, owns his own cosmetology studio in queens where he primarily deals with hair, but has other employees specialized in nail art. still a science nerd but isn’t really sure what he wants to do with that degree at the moment

despite his wayward upbringing, he remained to have a strong moral compass and actually grew to despise violence and lack violent tendencies

has a hobby of photography and painting, a soft side he doesn’t expose to many people to avoid being taken advantage of more than he already is, has never owned a pet in his life because he can barely care for himself, and can come off as an emotionless void with how terribly guarded he is, incredibly vain to the point he has to fix his hair when he walks by a mirror and has a rather sarcastic sense of humor

despite seeming like an asshole outright to try to keep people from getting close to him, anyone with patience or kind words can quickly gather that he is nothing short of a gentleman when it comes down to it, very hard-working and dedicated, and underneath a seemingly selfish personality is just someone who’s never experienced much affection and likes to pretend he’s allergic to it

probably carries a comb in his pocket, trims his own hair over his bathroom sink, wears nerd glasses, lives off of takeout but is an exceptionally decent cook, too many suits in his wardrobe and not enough normal clothes, passed out in the afternoon unless it’s work-related, and would stab someone in the back if he was given a reason to, terrible habit of smoking and cannot make coffee to save his life, lives life in the fast lane

still actively struggling with his alcoholism and eating disorders, starting to slowly come apart at the seams over the last year in the city out of struggling to make connections that really seem to matter

[zombolouge]

Body Dysmorphia - An Evil Parrot

So, as you guys may or may not have seen, I made that lovely post about my journey with weightlifting, which was largely what sucked all my time away in 2017.

Anyways, I thought I would share some of the psychological developments that went along with it, part of which includes my concept of reality collapsing in on itself like an ill-tempered flan.

Discussion of mental illness and weight loss below. Buckle up, babes, I’m gonna get salty.

Y’all probably heard by now, but I have some brain-space friends. Namely: Anxiety, Depression, and PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, for those that don’t know and are too lazy to google).

It’s not a secret that I have a trifecta of mental illnesses, like I dropped down a well and found the world’s shittiest triforce with my goddamn face.

I’ve got this whole episodic, cyclical Zelda game happening with my thinking all the time, and it isn’t as fun as you would think. Link is running around my head for anxiety, sticking his sword in things and throwing pots full of bees so that I’m all twitchy and convinced that a swarm of murderous cuckoos are following my every move. Zelda is moping around the castle basement, Princess Depression herself, pointing out all the times where we failed to save ourselves and how nothing we do really matters, so who cares if we ever have fun or sleep or see the light of day, it’s all going to crash in a repeating cycle of despondence and chaos at some point. Then there’s Ganon, big ol’ behemoth PTSD, stomping around my brain and messing with my perceptions so that I don’t trust myself, I’m convinced I’m wrong, I’m convinced everyone I know is slowly coming to hate me or is out to get me, I’m sure that I’m messing something up at all times, and when anything bad happens it is obviously my fault. Worst of all, he’s just back there laughing maniacally the entire time and spilling more miasmic gooze all over everything.

I might have been playing too much Breath of the Wild lately.

Still, my point stands. It’s a shitty triforce, and it can make my life difficult because sometimes these pieces are working together to slow down my functionality while other times they’re all fighting each other, and I’m just caught in the crossfire.

I’ve coped, however. I lived (poorly, miserably) with the PTSD for about 5 or 6 years before I was diagnosed. It was my general physician that caught it (apparently constant, unrelenting nightmares that occur every time you sleep is not a normal thing. Go figure!), and she referred me to a therapist, who diagnosed the additional depression and anxiety. Those two were probably always there, but the PTSD came later. We theorize – “we” meaning myself and all the professionals I’ve ever seen – that the PTSD started very early when I was quite young. It wasn’t until I was in an abusive relationship that it really got powered up, however. The severity was probably exacerbated by my age – I was 17 when we started dating and just under 21 before I left him.

In any case, I got diagnosed, I got put on an assortment of medication, and I got treated. I spent 6 months in somewhat intensive therapy before it all sort of clicked together. One day I just…woke up. Having PTSD the way I did was like sleepwalking through life, as though someone had taken all of my essence and boxed it up somewhere inside me. When the therapy clicked, it opened the lid to the box, and I found myself in a life that felt incredibly foreign to me, like someone else had borrowed my body to live for a bit, handed it back with all these new shapes and situations.

Foremost of that – and more to the point of this post – was my weight. In the first year of my abusive relationship, I gained 100 pounds. After the relationship, the weight stayed around. After all, losing 100 pounds doesn’t exactly happen by accident, and I was still addled with PTSD for a large portion of it, which compounds your ability to lose weight. It would sometimes fluctuate by ten or so pounds, but never more than that.

The weight never seemed to bother me, though. After all, it never held me back from having relationships or making friends (nor did it contribute to any of the times I set those bridges I was building on fire, but that’s for another post). I didn’t feel like it stopped me from pursuing my writing career. I read a lot about body acceptance and I got to where I was at peace with my size. I can’t say that I found myself beautiful, per se, but I knew that I wasn’t ugly, and if I was ugly, it wasn’t because of the weight.

Now, fast forward about three years, and I find myself sitting on a hospital gurney in a hallway, a brace strapped around my neck and the world spinning and blurring around me. I had fallen about 30 hours prior to that point, slipping in ice. I had known that I bit the concrete hard when I went down, but I had thought I was okay…until the next day when I couldn’t type, started feeling drunk, and just barely got myself to an urgent care before I was slurring my speech. I won myself a concussion, a sprained wrist, a sprained ankle, and a sprained cervical spine, which is a terrifying thing to be told you have sprained.

After that, I spent about two months recovering. I couldn’t write much, had to avoid reading, so I just sat around and played a lot of video games that didn’t overload me with text. I thought I was fine, but I think not being able to read or write broke something in me, though I tried to deny it. It also highlighted how very little I enjoyed life without those things, even if I kept promising myself that my writing would be fine, that I would get to come back to it.

The end result of this storm of doubt and escapism was that I realized my life was full of a lot of waiting. Waiting to recover, waiting for the right time to publish my book, waiting for some random sign to descend from on high giving me permission to do all these things I wanted to do. I mean, I had a list a mile long of things I would like to be or do, but I just wasn’t taking any steps towards them. I had it in my head that somehow I wasn’t “ready”, and I was metaphorically pacing and twiddling my fingers as I waited for someone or something to tell me “it’s time”.

Turns out a concussion is a good way to snap out of that kind of bullshit.

Initially, I started my journey with weightlifting for two reasons: to use exercise to help control the symptoms of my triforce of garbage, and to gain control over my body that would allow me to do the things I wanted. You see, I like doing things. Things like going to concerts, wandering around a new city, trekking through the woods so that I can point at animals and shout their names like I’m five and discovering the world for the first time.

When I was in high school I did all sorts of active things before my abusive boyfriend came into the picture. Some of my fondest memories were from playing rugby in the park, often after dark, screaming with glee into the night air as we slammed each other into the grass with tackles that were more about clobbering ourselves than they were about getting to the ball. I was also in marching band, which doesn’t sound like much, but holding up a trombone for extended periods of time builds some decent arm muscles. I used to go hiking and fishing all the time with my dad when I was little, and regular swimming trips were a requirement until I moved to New Mexico where water is only a figment of your imagination.

The point being, I wasn’t doing a lot of things that I enjoyed doing, and part of that was because I wasn’t physically fit enough to do them. So, I started with lifting weights.

Now, again, initially this was not about weight. It was about getting stronger and giving myself more energy, it was about getting to a point where I could be the things that I wanted to be. I ignored the weight loss aspect in the beginning because I didn’t want to focus on it. Focusing on weight in the past had gotten me into unhealthy habits (‘sup, anorexia), and that was certainly not what the journey was about this time.

That attitude lasted up until the point where one day, almost out of nowhere in its suddenness, I looked in the mirror and recognized myself. Until that point, I hadn’t even realized that I didn’t recognize the shape that I had become. I mean, I was certainly used to it. It wasn’t as though the face in the mirror was unfamiliar. I saw it every day, after all.

But there was one day that I looked up in the mirror while I was brushing my teeth, and I saw a version of me that I felt a kinship with. Suddenly the image of myself that existed in my head had become physically represented. I looked into my own eyes, and I didn’t see the armor of weight that I had draped on my frame during the years of abuse. I saw the person that I felt I was underneath.

It was a bit like living for 10 years with cloudy skies, and then one day the sun breaks through and you remember that the fucking sky is blue, not grey.

This had a tremendous effect on my mood and confidence. I realized that I wasn’t happy with my weight, not because it was high, not because being fat was anything to be ashamed of or anything terrible, but because it didn’t look or feel like me. That life that someone had been living for me while I was locked in the PTSD box had included a body that just wasn’t mine, and I’d still been using it without realizing it wasn’t a good fit. Shedding the pieces of that ill-fitting suit of armor was liberating and poetic in its beauty.

I went through a period of deep and illuminating emotional discovery alongside the physical changes. I’m now more in touch with who I am and who I want to be than I’ve ever been, which is great most of the time. I would like to say that I continued getting to the size that I wanted, reached it, and lived happily ever after.

If that were true, nobody would complain about how hard it is to have mental illness. If there was really a magical happily ever after where we never had any issues with our mental problems ever again, well, it wouldn’t be so damn hard to exist.

In October of 2017 I lost someone important to me. The death was sudden, which was awful, and almost assuredly preventable if they had been at all focused on self-care, which was infuriating. In my grief, my triforce of terrible brain function reared its ugly head, and I developed a bad case of what I would later learn is body dysmorphia.

Now, I am by no means an expert on body dysmorphia. I can talk at length about depression, anxiety, and PTSD, because I’ve spent enough time with them and done enough research that they’re old friends by now. Body dysmorphia is something new to me, an unknown beast that’s camping out with the others. I didn’t even have a name for what I was going to until I had been venting to a friend about my frustrations with my self-image, and they turned to me from their position on the neighboring treadmill and said “Girl, that’s called body dysmorphia and it’s fucking normal when you lose half a person like you have.”

Well, shit.

So, I can’t speak for everyone’s experience with this particular issue nor can I tell you what’s common or average. What I can do is talk about what I’m going through personally, and shed some light on what happens when body dysmorphia hits during weight loss.

It was about three days after my loved one’s funeral that I woke up, looked in the mirror, and was convinced that I hadn’t changed at all. According to my eyes, I was exactly the same size and shape as I had been back in April before I started lifting. I could no longer see the muscles, I became convinced that my face had rounded out once more, and I stared at my stomach like it was an alien creature attached to my waist. I was certain that any minute an evil spawn wearing my ex boyfriend’s face would burst out of my torso, cackling wildly as it taunted me for having thought I escaped all those negative thoughts and habits.

This was, naturally, quite depressing. I sank into a deep, dark hole that didn’t really have a bottom or a top. It was just rough dirt and mud in all directions, and I was drowning. The only thing that saved me, that kept me from sinking into that muck for good, was – of all the strange things – numbers.

You see, what I saw in the mirror wasn’t matching up with what I knew to be the inalienable facts of the situation. If I was back to the size I was in April, how could I still be wearing pants that were 5 sizes smaller? If I had gained it all back, how could I still be wearing all the smaller shirts? Why would the measuring tape still show a one inch loss around my stomach from the last time that I had measured?

If I hadn’t been marking my progress with these things, I might have panicked. I don’t quite know where my headspace would have led me if I didn’t have actual evidence that was contrary to what my perception was trying to tell me. I know that it wouldn’t have been good, that’s for sure.

I suffered with this depression for only a couple of days before I blurted out my frustration to my friend, largely because I had just gone through a weightlifting session and wanted to cry after each lift, for no other reason than I had to see myself in the massive, wall-length mirrors the entire time and the visual made me feel weak and horrible. I wasn’t lifting less, I was still increasing my progress on-pace with my plan, but I didn’t look good in my own gaze, and therefore hated every bit of effort exerted that day.

That’s when he mentioned body dysmorphia, and this beast in my head was given a name.

I tried for about a week to resolve the issue on my own, but my depression kept getting deeper and darker. I started having obsessive, negative thoughts. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever had obsessive thoughts, but they’re quite frustrating, especially when you don’t want to hear them, and you certainly don’t intend to listen to them. It’s like I had a parrot hanging out on my shoulder, right next to my ear. It spent its time repeating the phrases that it had learned, all day long, and the person that had originally trained it fucking hated me.

Why would you ever think you could be strong or pretty? You’re hideous and you’ll never get anywhere in life because of it. Look, you’ve fallen back to where you started, because you fail at everything you do. It was downright delusional to think you had made progress in the first place. Welcome to reality, fuckup. Everyone who knows you must be so ashamed. They all doubted you and now you’ve proven them right. You’re probably terrible at writing, too. I mean, you can’t even exercise, what makes you think you could do anything else? You’re so stupid for trying. You’re stupid and your stories are stupid. You should die. You should definitely just kill yourself. You should take every pill in the house, lay down, and give up. You should drive your car off the side of a bridge. Nobody cares if you finish your stories, just forget about all of it. Just stop existing.

Yeah, that parrot was a piece of shit.

My experience with my garbage triforce is that those thoughts and feelings are always there, in the background. They never really go away. BUT. When I am handling the triforce well and coping in healthy ways, the parrot’s voice is so small that I can ignore it. I can barely hear it because I’m doing well and focused on working towards my goals. It’s like, when I’m functioning well, I get to shove a bunch of crackers in its mouth and I get some peace while it tries to talk around them. When I’m not coping well, the voice gets louder, and sometimes it will drown out everything else.

A week after giving my body dysmorphia a name, I knew that I was not coping well. I couldn’t muscle my way out of this rut on my own because the body dysmorphia and depression were gorging themselves in this big feedback loop. The more depressed I got, the worse my self-image was. The worse my self-image got, the worse the depression got. I was trapped in a circle of suck, and that parrot was fucking screaming at me from the minute I woke up to the minute I finally passed out at night.

Fuck that shit.

I did the research and found myself a therapist, after which I promptly requested (and was given) antidepressants.

This has been a lifeline, and I’m starting to see improvements even though it’s only been about a month. Therapy is helping me dig up the emotions that are at the root of this spiral, and the antidepressants are a nice supply of crackers to shove into Polly’s spiteful face. It’s not perfect – I didn’t wake up and find myself magically cured. Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I see myself again and all the progress that I’ve made, and I feel amazing. Other times I can’t bring myself to be positive, and the parrot starts squawking all over again, though it’s not as obsessive. The suicidal thoughts are gone, which is nice. I never had any intention of acting on them, but when your brain is calling for death, it can certainly dampen your ability to do anything besides beg it to shut up.

I’m confident that I’ll get back to where I want to be, though. With the combined powers of therapy and antidepressants, I should be able to drive the parrot back into its cage and get control of my triforce once more. In the meantime, the steps I’ve taken keep all those problems from holding me back, so that I can still do all the cool things I want to do with my life, like writing and hiking and finally getting all those damn Korok seeds in Breath of the Wild.

But I wanted to share this aspect of my story, in case anybody else was grappling with whether or not they should go to (or go back to) therapy or get some antidepressants. I know it can be hard to know when that breaking point is; when you should throw your hand out into the darkness and ask for help. I figured out what that point was, and I’m glad I did it when I did.

Never let yourself suffer for longer than necessary. Always remember, it isn’t supposed to be that hard just to live. When it is, it’s time that you found someone to help you through it.

Get help, and tell that parrot to shut its goddamn face.

[theechoofadistanttide-blog]

Feeling like I’m having a nervous breakdown

Hey guys so ok this is gonna be a very long post ‘cause I’m having a nervous breakdown and I dont think I can keep going like this.

From where do I start? 

I’m listening to “Fuck you” so probably I should start by speaking about Federico. Federico was my ex boyfriend and we were together for about 4 months (you may think it’s not so much time but for me it is). So you know how we broke up? No? Well, me neither. I was just getting very annoyed by his attitude and he gradually stopped asking me to hang out. So one day I called him and he didnt answer. After that day we didnt see each other anymore. That sucks right? No it doesn’t because I am a fucking strange person that can’t prove normal feelings.

I just let it go. That’s the end. And when I see him around the city with his friends, I’m only able to complain about them being all FUCKBOYS! 

I FUCKING HATE FUCKBOYS 

You wanna know where my hate comes from? All the guys I meet in this fucking city (which is making me wanna throw up so bad) anyway, all the guys just wanna fuck me and I’m fucking fed up! I deserve love and emotions and all those beautiful stuff that you get when someone CARES. I feel like no one cares, so why should I?

I went on a therapy till december, then I had to stop taking ZOLOFT ‘cause it was giving me more anxiety. So I started another therapy. On my own. I started building self-confidence. And now I seriously believe that I’m worthy and that I am unique and that no one can put me down. I SERIOUSLY believe that I’m an amazing creature with all the right stuff in the right place. So where’s the point?

The point is that I’m fed up of being forced to separate sex from emotional commitment: SEX IS EMOTIONAL COMMITMENT, YOU STUPID HYPOCRITES, IF YOU DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE OTHER PERSON IS LIKE YOU’RE MASTURBATING WITH A DOLL YA KNOW.

But that’s not the end of my relationships’story: ever since I lost virginity I only ended up with guys who wanted to have sex without using fucking condoms. That’s thei point of view: OK YOU KNOW GIRL YOU’RE AMAZING BUT I CANT TAKE ON COMMITMENT CAUSE I’VE LOVED TOO MUCH IN MY LIFE SO JUST LET’S HAVING SEX! AH BUT SWEETIE I DONT USE CONDOMS: I CANT FEEL YOUR VAGINA, YA KNOW. BUT DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT: I CAN CONTROL MYSELF!

YOU KNOW WHAT? NO YOU CAN’T CONTROL YOURSELF! NOBODY CAN! Your fucking penis produces seminal stuff even BEFORE and DURING sex!

What about getting sick??????????? Syphilides? HIV??? FUCK YOU ALL!

This year I had to take 3 (THREE) day-after-pills... Which is like killing your uterus.... I was stupid but what else could I do? Ya... maybe being more conscious and force them to use condoms... But you know, when you fucking hate yourself you don’t care much about future and consequences... You’re just not able to think critically. You do the bad things, you choose bad. 

All I thought about ever since a while was being high...

So now we get to another big point of this overwhelming situation: PARENTS... Ya it seems like I got the perfect family: mum’s lawyer, dad’s a doctor... What could be wrong with ita? Just another bored girl complaining about not getting enough attention. NO

I mean, I’m aware of the fact that my life is not SERIOUSLY bad, but anyways: my parents are divorced, my dad is still a fuckboy. He got used to living alone so he does whatever he wanna do, he goes wherever and whenever, without caring about two daughters’ real problems. What if my mum wants to leave for a weekend and leave my little sister with him? She couldnt because “HE’S GOT PROGRAMS”. FUCK I GOT A PROGRAM TOO: I WANNA GETAWAY FROM HERE RIGHT NOW!

Anyway there we get to the other big problem: MY MUM... She’s been developping anorexia’s mentality since a couple ago, she doesn’t eat (like 1 coffee and half of a zucchini during all day, when she gets really depressed)... Oh, depression... Ya, a single mum with two problematic daughters, a private career (which is falling into pieces) and other shitty problems CAN GET DEPRESSION. It’s easy, though... But the bigger matter is that she denies it and she gets worse everyday ‘cause her situation gets worse (my grandma is sick, one of my mum’s best friends got cancer and she cant sleep because of worrying too much)... And when I told my father, he said I was wrong after she immediately denied.

Ah, my little sister gets mad with me when I tell my mother to eat. She’s like: “stop telling her what to do she’s an adult, she can take care of herself”

FUCK NO SHE CANT STOP SAYING THAT! SHE’D DIE IN A COUPLE OF MONTHS! SHE SUFFERS OF HEART RATING PROBLEMS! IF SHE DOESNT EAT AND KEEP GOING THIS HARD ON THINGS SHE WILL DIE! FUCK YOU STUPID TEENAGE GIRL

So I’m under pressure. I’M UNDER PRESSURE OK! MY MOM IS NOT ABLE TO GROW MY SISTER UP LIKE SHE DID WITH ME! SHE DOESN’T GET ANY RULE! I DON’T GET ANY RULE! Ok I’m 18 so I can understand when it’s time to stop a little back but SHE CAN’T EVEN UNDERSTAND WHEN IT’S TIME TO TIDY UP HER BEDROOM! She never does it cause nobody tells her! Nobody ever told her! And that’s a stupid example.

Ok, so I’m 18 right? And I got no rules ok? Yeah... cool... I can avoid sleeping, eating and going back home and living properly... I got sick for a week this summer and had to stop smoking.. But then I got better and kept smoking and drinking. Yeah maybe it’s not because I got no rules but because I like it and because it’s the only way to have fun and enjoy your time out in this fucking deserted city full of fucking bastards.

Maybe smoking and drinking arent an issue apparently. But what about taking care? That’s the issue. Here nobody teaches you how to take care of yourself.

So I feel like falling down... And it’s a fucking fast fall. And I get fucking blamed for this.

“You don’t help enough. You’re never happy. Everything someone does for you is shit. You always blame others for your faults. Don’t you think that maybe I’m so tired and depressed because of you, do you? You make me worry so much.”

That’s what my mom keeps repeating. And I keep feeling terribly guilty. For what? For being an adolescent and for having my mother tired to death... I’ve always paid attention to other’s feelings and conditions... I can’t help with this.

I CAN’T HELP WITH THIS OK. STOP. SAYING. THAT I AM. A. FUCKING. MESS. ! Cause you know what, mother? I’M NOT! I’M SUPER COOL AND I NEVER DISAPPOINTED YOU! I WAS PERFECT AT SCHOOL, I GOT THE BEST GRADES IN MY CLASS AND EVERY FUCKING TEACHER COMPLIMENTED! WHAT DO YOU WANT? I’M ONLY 18 AND I’VE ALREADY WRITTEN A COUPLE OF BOOKS! I GOT PLANS FOR MY FUTURE!

SO WHAT? I’M DEPRESSED? I SMOKE? I DRINK? I AM NOT EMOTIONALLY BALANCED? I AM NOT GOING TO APOLOGIZE FOR THAT. NEVER.

IT’S NOT MY FUCKING FAULT! I DIDN’T CHOOSE TO BE CONSTANTLY SAD AND TIRED! ! IT’S NOT MY FAULT.... 

(My mother doesn’t eat at all when I don’t want to eat... I can’t help with this... Sometimes I just cant think about eating...)

AND FUCK YOU NEVER APPRECIATE MY GOOD MOMENTS AND PERIODS! Like when I’m on top, when I feel like I can do everything.... You never get that.... FUCK YOU!

So being in this fragile situation gives me a lot of stress and anxiety... Luckily I finished school so now I can focus on things I like (and even there, when I wanna do things that I like, there are always problems)..

FUCK THIS CITY FUCK PEOPLE WHO LIVE HERE FUCK MONEY PROBLEMS FUCK FAMILY FUCK MUM FUCK EVERYBODY I WANNA SET YOU ALL AND MY FUCKING LIFE ON FIRE 

So you’re reading a lot of anger in my words.. Your’re right, but anger is the only true feeling for me... Sometime I imagine really bad things (like tonight I started thinking about me being raped by my ex’s friends... with my ex being there knowing everything) just to check whether I’m still able to feel sorrow or not.

I often imagined my parents dying... Just for curiosity.. So I think about my feelings: how would I feel? How much would I cry? Would I cry??? What about my sister??

And sometimes I can’t answer, like if there was absolutely nothing in my soul...Just darkness and perdition.

I know it sounds so stupid and pathetic but that’s how I currently truly feel.

Lost.

I used to be really sensitive and cry for everything but then I stopped. Now I am just disgusted. DISGUSTED.. By humanity, first of all.

Lost and disgusted: is there any remedy? 

Maybe being high and drunk all tha way. 

I fucking hate this place and wanna go away.. Still have to wait for october for university... but actually I just wanna getaway.

The most important thing for me is living a pleasant life and never regret anything.... This city and this situation and the people surrounding me are making me regret a lot. They are making me live with anxiety etc..

SPLEEN. ok? Maybe spleen is my problem.... That’s all.

Fuck. Thank you guys for reading 

I just want to let you know that if you read all this you’re my super-heroes. 

Thanks, seriously

xx

theechoofadistanttide

[wewontliveforeversomakeitworthit]

My Story

Hi, my name is Lisa and I am an alcoholic. My sobriety date is January 3rd 2017 I have a home group, love and service in Rochester NY, i have a sponsor, i have a service position and I am currently working the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Today I shared at the forensics unit at our psych center and nothing came out right and i didn’t actually know how to share my story so I’m going to try to gather my thoughts and share it on here before my next share. I grew up in what would appear to be just a totally normal middle class home in Henrietta NY. I have 4 older sisters and 2 incredibly loving amazing supportive and sometimes absolutely insane parents. While i was growing up I felt exactly how alot of people say that they did too, i felt different, left out and not good enough for anybody. In elementary school I was already a compulsive liar, telling people that i had boyfriends and stupid stuff like that. I turned to food to hide my feelings and to hide myself and that turned into me being bullied for being over weight. And even from that young age i took the things that those people said to me straight to heart and it was gospel and they were right, I was fat, i had awful acne, i was ugly and nobody would ever love me because of my appearance. I decided I wanted to lose that weight when i was going into 8th grade and I lost some of it and was actually pretty normal for the most part at that time. I then thought i was completely in love with a guy in 8th grade who was also my best friend and we hung out over that winter break and i thought something was going to happen, like obviously we were going to be in love and get married but instead he told me that he didn’t want me in that way, turns out hes actually gay now but it sent me on a downward spiral into mental illness that was lurking in the shadows of my life since I could think. I developed anorexia and starved myself every day until i got down to about 100lbs, my family and I went on vacation and being around them i wasn’t able to eat (well not eat) the way that I was. I cried every single night on that vacation because of how utterly disgusted with myself i was. I then came home and developed bulimia because the control of the starving was completely gone. But the night that boy told me he didn’t want me, something else happened. I drank, it was NYE at my sisters house and I was 14 years old, her friends asked me if i wanted a drink and god did i want a drink. I wanted to feel the careless joy the people around me were feeling. They made the mistake of showing me where their green tea vodka was and i started drinking and didn’t stop until it was gone. I remember while i was drinking that something inside of me started to change, i wasn’t shy and concerned with what other people were thinking of me anymore, i didn’t care at all about anything. I remember my tongue and my cheeks getting numb and i was on cloud nine.  After that night i was too preoccupied with my ED to give a fuck about drinking or drugging until bulimia came into play. I started snorting adderall so that i wouldnt eat and that went on through ninth grade until i went to program for my eating disorder and those people saved me from dying from that disease. But after i got out of that program, life got real. I had about a year of decent normalcy but at the beginning of my junior year things started to progress. I started to not give a shit about school at all, i started skipping classes and going to parties on weekends and drinking whenever it was an option for me. I started dating guys who were really just not good people and i had only one friend. We went out when we could but it never dawned on me that I was drinking any differently than any of the other kids i was around because really I wasn’t but the way it was affecting me and the way i was thinking about it was COMPLETELY different from those kids. They would stop drinking so they could drive home or they literally had DD’s but to be honest i dont remember much about those couple of years. I graduated highschool early because i hated literally everyone and i was convinced that they all hated me and judged me because most of the time they did. In my senior year i started using the tinder app and i would go over to random guys houses and meet them and every time that happened id get to drink, in my bio it even said “alcohol enthusiast”. boy was i wrong. I thought it was normal to do what i was doing, i really didnt think twice about it. Meeting these guys and being able to get black out drunk and then maybe sleep with them just seemed like a normal thing to do. Until my parents started asking questions about where i was going and why there were alcohol containers in my car and i would lie and say they were someone elses but theyre not stupid they knew they were mine. Things slowed down a little while i was in my first couple semesters of nursing school, i still drank but just on weekends with my boyfriend at the time and his roommates, and i thought i was drinking normally but i guess blacking out and starting fights on purpose because of your drinking isn’t neccesarily normal. I wouldn’t walk around the park ave area with him at night time unless he wanted to drink and that became a norm for me. I needed a drink if i was going to do anything at all, go to the movies? drink. hang out with literally anyone? drink. watching some tv? drink. While my boyfriend at the time went on vacation for christmas i decided to go to a party because if i saw anything about anyone drinking on social media i was on top of it, i made sure i had a way to get drunk whenever and i went to that party and i did cocaine for the second time in my life. the first time i really dont remember much but it was before i had met Kenny. So he went away and I went to a harmless party and kept my drinks near me like they were my children. I heard they were doing shots downstairs and i went down there and took probably 7 tequila shots in a row and blacked out, i came too when i started doing lines and by the time it was 7am i was calling him asking him to help me. That was a thing of mine, was to get drunk one place and then message or text as many people as possible to help me because i needed to go somewhere else or do something else because i didn’t want the fun to end. I kept on drinking the way i was drinking but because of how sick and awful i had felt i didn’t touch drugs again for a little while but i did wind up finding them again. but then all of a sudden over the summer of last year, shit hit the fan. I was drinking every single night and one night i went and hungout with a guy i had met probably on tinder and he said he needed to stop by a friends house for a birthday gift and i was like oh yeah ok cool, turns out his friend was the supplier for the whole town he lived in and she offered me some and i actually said no. i scolded him for his awful decision making and we went to Durand beach to get drunk and by the end of that night i had at some point asked if i could have some of his drugs so that i could safely drive home and obviously he said yes and then life went crazy. i went back to durand with that same person but met a whole bunch of other people and some how met a small group of people another time on that night and i wish i had clearer details but i was really a black out drinker and i wouldnt come to unless i had something else in my system. So we met this other smaller group of people and my life changed. some how i started attracting people who had what i thought i needed and wanted and id switch back and forth between these peoples houses getting free drinks and drugs and staying up for days at a time and not coming home and moving from job to job trying to keep my head above water. I wouldn’t stop thinking about being able to get the next drink or drug. Id go to morning classes after not sleeping in two days and be completely strung out or just not go at all. I got to a point where i couldnt drink without putting a drug in my system and i tried. I tried to stop myself from getting too drunk by switching drinks or not having as many and i was convinced i didn’t have a problem because i didn’t drink during the day so i clearly wasn’t an alcoholic. I would try to drink around people who didn’t approve of me doing drugs and i still somehow managed to go from house to house to house getting drinks and drugs until there was nothing left. One night i was at a house with all of these people i had been drinking and drugging with who i thought i really was just living the life with and i went upstairs and had a panic attack. I wanted to go home because something in me created a feeling that told me i no longer belonged there. So after 3 days of not being home and countless cries for help to my therapist and other people i called my parents at 4am and told them i was coming home and sobbing i told them i needed to talk to them. That night i told them about what i had been doing and got myself an intake appointment for outpatient. And i still at that point thought i probably only had a drug problem and that it wasn’t the drinking. i really didnt think it was the drinking. But once i started outpatient, i couldnt for life of me stay sober but i wanted it i really did. and when i tell you that night i went home that i was desperate for help i mean i wanted to die. i spent so many days of coming down just praying for god to take my life because truly i couldn’t live it anymore. Times id come home so sick and dehydrated my mom would have to run IV’s through me and id lay on that bathroom floor wishing it would all just end. I had known about AA but it was introduced to me through a girl in my outpatient and she told me she was going to a meeting and i told her i wanted to go. I had just relapsed for what would be the last time and i wanted to be sober more than anything and i couldn’t handle the constant relapses. My first AA meeting was wits end when it was upstairs at Rosedale and i was not buying any of it. I was convinced that all those young people car pooling were getting drunk directly after the meeting and that they were all just liars and fakes. I was texting someone ABOUT getting drunk at that meeting but luckily nobody would comply because on that Sunday i went to a womens meeting in fairport and i felt so engulfed with love and acceptance it was incredible. These women gave me a coin and hugged me and even though they talked about god they were something i hadnt experienced in a long time and that was happy without needing a drink or a drug to do it. I was handed that 24 hour coin and I decided maybe I’d do a couple more of these meeting things but i wouldn’t get involved like they were. My friend and i started going to a 5:30 meeting that was mostly old people or people off the street who were drunk but i stuck around for long enough to meet Pat and he was the FIRST person i heard share within my 2 months of meetings that i could actually relate to and for the first time i went up and talked to someone after they spoke and i told him how much i related and he told me to go to his home group Love and Service and that he wanted to introduce me to someone and that someone turned out to be my sponsor. I had no idea what i was doing and i knew that if i didn’t start to actually do something other than meetings that i was going to drink again and i didn’t want that for myself anymore. So my sponsor and i didnt even discuss her sponsoring me it just happened and she told me to get phone numbers and find a home group and a service position and it took me a couple weeks but i did it. meanwhile, my friend who introduced me to AA asked me if i was calling my sponsor every day and i was like uhhhh what do you mean call her everyday?????? and my friends like yeah duh thats like an unspoken aa rule and i called my sponsor right after that i was like OMG IM SO SORRY I DIDNT KNOW I WAS SUPPOSED TO CALL YOU EVERY DAY. Mostly i just didn’t have any idea how the hell to communicate with people anymore without being drunk. My social awkwardness was at level 100 and im still working on that lol. but we met up and she started to pray and she said “hey god” in the beginning of the prayer like he was just a friend and i was like oh good i got a crazy one idk how well this is gunna workout. but she started taking me through the book and something else changed, i started to grow. this is the longest ive ever done literally anything in my life and it has changed my life drastically already even just at almost 6 months sober. Today I have a full time job that i actually go to every day, today I’m able to be a daughter, a sister, a friend. Today I am learning who i am and how to deal with life on lifes terms and im becoming patient and im just in this constant growth and its absolutely amazing. I’ve found a higher power that i dont understand at all but I know its there and im able to learn things about myself every day and get called out when i’m wrong and just begin to actually live and its amazing. I’m still a work in progress but I am so beyond grateful to be here. Thank you

[emilylasalle-blog]

My Story.

I guess I should start off by explaining who I am, where I come from, and the whirlwind story that is my Eating Disorder. I should also preface by saying that I have always had a negative relationship with food-- whether it be allergies, anxiety, or my Anorexia. My Eating Disorder has been present my whole life, masking itself and becoming like a chameleon-- taking the face of many different things, Eating disordesr can take the shape of any form. One doesn’t have to have Anorexia to have any “claim” to ED. Know that ED’s range from all different shapes and sizes just like body types, and yours is just as valid as the one next to you. 

Okay, now that I have got that out of the way, I guess I should start at the beginning. For me, that started the day I was born. My mother has an anxiety disorder, and my whole mother’s side of the family is coursing with paranoia, fear, and obsession-- these characteristics have formed me to become the person I am today, flaws and all. So, yeah. I was born. I was also the first child, and definitely the guinea pig, which meant I was the one catching all of the helicopter-parenting. At age three, my mother put me into my first ballet class. Single-handily the best and WORST thing to ever happen to me. Best, because it gave my love of performance and helped me to become the actress that I am today... Bad, because it was the beginning of the end for my Eating Disorder and self-loathing. Ballet is a beautiful and breath-taking art form, however... the ballet world (at least growing up), was insistent on maintaining an abnormally skinny figure. They wanted twigs and if you were anything less, you would get phrases (and I quote) shouted at you such as: “Emily, I don’t want to see that bagel you ate for lunch today...” “Suck in DAMMIT.” “Have you put on weight? I see it in your face.” “You need to be able to fit into this costume.” Yup. Real things shouted at me, while a long stick was smacked onto my stomach and thighs. Absolutely brutal and cruel to be saying things like this to such a young child in the formative years of her life. So, I spent 15 years of my life constantly comparing my body to other girls, never feeling good enough, and constantly looking in the mirror-- I mean heck they were on all sides while I was exposed in a tiny leotard and tights. 

So. Now that we know where my anxiety and OCD stems from, and why I had such negative thoughts drilled into my mind at such a young age, I’ll introduce the FIRST MASK my eating disorder took. SIDEBAR: let me be frank, I had a happy childhood, don’t get me wrong. My family loved me and fed me well, and they told me no when I craved fast food constantly. However, I didn’t have the enforcement for healthy eating that I needed. It was encouraged, but not enforced. So, my picky habits came into fruition. On top of that, I over the course of my short 10 years of life, had developed several food allergies-- deathly allergies-- to the point of having a significant number of shots a year. Food was scary. I was scared-- scared of everything in my later years of elementary school. My mom had drilled a significant number of scary thoughts in my head about food and my allergies. Don’t trust anyone, don’t eat without labels, check everything twice. It was my default state- anxiety. This is the first mask. I was scared to eat anything, even foods that I had eaten my whole life. I would ask my parents over and over again about whether or not I would have gone into anaphylactic shock already as I ate at meal-time. And I HATED meal time. I would create these psycho theories in my head about how my food could have cross contaminated in absolutely ridiculous ways. This mask was scary-- this mask could quite literally KILL me with one bite of egg, peanuts, tree nuts, coconuts, or sesame seeds. 

Which brings me to middle school, where my anxiety was peaked at an all-time high. Not only was I petrified of food due to my food allergies, but I grew (due to events in my childhood) to have an IRRATIONAL fear of vomiting. And I mean, I would go days without eating for fear that the food would somehow cause me to throw up. I would eat dinner at 2pm to make sure I was “fully digested” before going to bed. I would call my mom crying, asking to be picked up because my anxiety had spiked so high and kids were pretending to throw up and be sick around me to watch me cry, It was a sick and traumatic three years (6th-8th.) I was so utterly and insanely scared of food. I had these insane scenarios built up in my head about food being able to “come alive” inside of me and chew me from the inside out. I had theories that all food was not FDA approved, and I would ACTUALLY call the companies to double check if it had been. So, I started to see Dr. G, my therapist of 12+ years, and a special doctor to help me gain weight (as I was like 70 pounds at MOST.) DR. G focused in childhood and familial therapy, and she saved my life. I was so hyper-fearful of everything. I couldn't eat without the huge fear of the risk of death, sickness, or worst of all... vomiting. So, that's tier number three. The second masked form my ED took on. Illness. 

Which brings me to my last tier. I have grown up hating putting food into my body, for various reasons. But it wasn't until end of senior year the seed I had always had planted in my mind (ED) really began to sneak his way into my life. The first two years of high school were marvelous, I was gaining my womanhood (that's period), meeting new friends, finding my sexual awakening (thank you to the drunk guy at my first high school party for so effortlessly slipping your tongue down my throat that fateful sophomore year night), and loving my life. I ate what I wanted , danced in ballet, and didn’t give  FUCK about what other people thought about my body (which is a lie because I always wanted to be skinny and I always compared myself to others). But, as rejection from boys came, jokes about unflattering pictures of me roamed about, and the yearning to look like other people began pressing in, ED began to stick his claws into my psyche. Junior and Senior year were... well, fucking awful. I was extremely depressed, ridden with anxiety, sadness as teenagers I knew in my class died, constantly stressed, and never feeling good enough. I began committing self harm to myself. Was it for attention? Was It a cry for help? I’ll never know. But, I’d cut myself with razor blades. Never super deep, but enough to hurt and bleed. I was able to CONTROL the pain. Control. CONTROL. That is a red flag to remember here, my anxiety and OCD all stems from loving to be in control of my surroundings. I hate feeling at loss. I NEED power. And ED was my sick and twisted form of that. So, I cut myself. And I made the brilliant and amazing mistake of telling my cousin who I adore, and she then proceeded to tell my parents. So, they bust into my room at approximately 11pm on a school night, crying and yelling, demanding that I go back to therapy. THATS RIGHT, BACK. TO DR. G I WENT. And she did help, a lot. Round two, and she still didn’t want to put me on medication, she said it wasn’t good for such young kids and that she wanted me to use my own power and tools within myself to conquer my anxiety and depression. And ya know what, I did. For a while. 

Then I went to COLLEGE!!!! And oh boy, leaving a summer of romance from my high school boyfriend and entering college-- a whole new world of beer, sex, and theatre- I was a new woman. I quit ballet back in high school to focus on my musical theatre career, and I was in HEAVEN. I was cast in all the shows I wanted, I was in LOVE with a new boy at college, and I was making so many new friends. I ate whatever the HELL I wanted, because I was 18, on my own, and FREE! This meant pizza and fries at 2am, this meant buttered bagels for breakfast, microwaved mac and cheese for lunch, McDonalds after acting class, it didn’t stop. But, ED wasn’t gone... he was waiting patiently behind a nearby street corner, lurking, waiting, plotting. He had a plan, and was preparing the perfect attack. I was always his target. So, freshman fifteen happened. Maybe even 20, I don’t know. All I know is that I was at my college “dream-boats” house weighing myself, when I began to panic. ED was slinking back. The number had grown a lot since I weighed myself two semesters ago. I felt, “fat.” It was the first time I admitted to myself that that’s what I thought I was. And it was a nightmare. I was able to brush it off and push the thoughts away, I had a fun summer coming up, friends to see, etc. I managed to focus on the positives, that is... until the end of year banquet. 

When I think about what propelled me into the next three years, which also happen to be the most unhealthy and sick years of my life, I think about this very moment. The end of year banquet. I like I said, was happy and healthy (I HAVE NEVER BEEN OVERWEIGHT. EVER.). I had my senior year prom dress picked out to wear to my first year of college, end-of-year banquet! Sure, my heart was broken from my college dream-boats dumping, my lack of summer theatre jobs, etc.... rejection was written all over me, but I DIDN’T CARE. Not until the dress. I put it on, a size 2-4 dress, that I had fit into snuggly the year before, wouldn’t zip. I panicked, thinking there MUST be something wrong with the zipper... only to have my mom tell me it didn’t fit. This. This exact moment. ED took a HUGE bite out of my soul and dug his fingernails in. He was mine. I remember screaming, crying, tearing my dress up into shreds, and screaming to my mother at the top of my lungs: “I AM SO FAT. I AM AN UGLY COW. I WILL LOSE ALL THIS WEIGHT IN ANY WAY POSSIBLE, I WILL STARVE MYSELF. I WILL NEVER EAT AGAIN. I WANT TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL, I’M SO SKINNY. I’M DONE,”..... my mother was horrified. But, if there’s one thing I’ve always been, its determined. Which brings me to Tier 3. The final mask of ED. 

That summer I worked out like nobody’s business. Sweating outside in the blazing Georgia heat as I ran miles upon miles. I cut myself off from fast-food, I blocked all the asshole boys who dumped me, and I became a health fanatic. And then a friend of mine (who blames themselves, even though they shouldn’t), made the biggest mistake anyone has ever done... they introduced me to MyFitnessPal. The worst thing to ever get into my hands, and to happen to me. I slowly became obsessed with dieting. I began counting calories, comparing myself to her, treating our weight loss as a race (MIND YOU I WAS NOT FAT OR OVERWEIGHT AT ALL. I WAS 130-135 MAX AND 5.7-5.8!!!!!). She went along with it, and then slowly started to realize, that maybe I was taking it a little too seriously and a little far... she then backed out, started to become “worried” about me. Concerned that I wasn’t eating enough and dropping weight rapidly. Friends noticed, my parents noticed, but they all assumed I was just working out and eating healthier. No biggie. I dated a guy briefly at this time, and all I can remember him saying was, “you’re getting kinda skinny... build some muscle, eat protein!” Man if I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that one... So, I continued to diet. I lost weight, but wasn’t deemed “unhealthy.” Just, “skinny.” They nicknamed me Chicken Legs, and... I liked it. I liked being told I was small. It fed ED, and kept him occupied. That is until three hours later when he shamed me for drinking a glass of skim milk, stuff I had been drinking for literally my whole life. So, I did what I always did. I listened to ED, and I cut out milk, cheese, butter (haven't had real butter in four years), potatos, etc. Any food that sparked “joy” I wouldn't eat. I counted my crackers, I measured my cereal, I went to bed hungry. As long as I didn't pass that 1,000 calorie goal. 

The summer after sophomore year was the worst summer of my life. My hatred of rejection mixed with my fear of loss-of control, caused me to do things to my body that  I am not proud of to this day. I was always comparing myself to other girls, checking to see if I was the skinniest girl in the room, and if I wasn’t, I let ED decide what my punishment was. I formed sick habits. I bought a scale, I bought extra small clothing as a form of forcibly maintain a bmi to match my clothing, I ate 0 calorie foods for meals, it got bad. I would weigh myself every day, so many times. Before and after using the rest-room, and I’d buy laxatives to make me shit so that I could see if my weight had gone down. The number that was “too low” continued to be pushed farther. It was scary, and the whole time my heart and soul were fighting ED so hard. It was a full on world war in my brain, fear and anger for letting myself get so unhealthy, and shame and disgust for letting myself get so fat. I wrote notes to myself on mirrors, telling me not to be weak-- to go hungry, you fat cow-- that skinny is the only way I’ll be successful. I’d push food around on my plate at group outings, I’d stuff it in my napkin, If I was starving, I would chew up food and spit it out. Just to get the sensation. I’d measure my arms and wrists with my hands, just to double check that everything fit inside my abnormally small hands. I’d wake up crying, go to bed crying, call my parents crying, because dammit--  I was so hungry, I was so sad, and I was so alone. Except for ED of course, he never left my side. He’s watching me as I write this. 

My parents came to visit me, and the skeleton that faced back at them made them cry. And guess what, BACK TO DR. G I WENT. Everyone was worried about me, and I LOVED it. My best friends mom even had a heart to heart with me about her friend dying of a heart attack because of her Anorexia (God such a daunting word.) I didn’t want to get better, I pretended I did, so that people wouldn’t think I’m gross, but rather some kind of here. Alas, I WANTED to stay 100 pounds. I wanted to stay 99 pounds. I didn't care if it would “send me to the hospital” as my doctor said, I was happy with  watching the number go down. I wanted the number at zero, because I felt like a 0. I felt like nothing. I wanted to be whisked away. My therapist says I allowed myself to get this ED because I seeked self control, she said however, that that’s the last thing I have. ED controls me. So, I took her advice, and we finally put me on anti-depressants. I looked up group-therapy, and I made a “plan” to get better. But deep down I knew I didn’t want to. I was loving the skeleton life so much. Hungry=Strong. And I was the reigning champ. But, school came back around and if there’s one thing I fear more than no control, is failure. And that’s what I was afraid would happen if I didn’t put on some weight... I would lose the leading lady role I had been dreaming about for the past year and all of summer. I didn't, but that fear was in my brain. And quote frankly, why I think Theatre LITERALLY saved my life. 

The medicine helped, theatre helped, and I became happy again. I wasn't the weeping starving skeleton I once was... I was a happy one. My therapist explained to me why it didn’t feel real, and that it very much was. She diagnosed me and that was strange... but that’s another topic. However, I started noticing certain changes on my body. Things that other people didn’t have. Like: all my clothes were too big and falling off of me, I had brittle skin, I was ALWAYS cold (still am), I was always tired and it didn't take much to make me feel weak or out of breath, I even started losing hair. These were all consequences from my anorexia. And people noticed. In negative ways. However, I FELT better, and that's all that mattered to me. I still weighed myself, I still counted calories, I still made sure that if my parents found my scale and hid it, I’d get another one. I was sneaky. And they always say that ED’s are the most clever and manipulating people. And then I was off to summer-stock in Indiana. This was a dream for me, my first professional contract!! And just when I was feeling myself go down a dark path again. This was a miracle for me, I truly thought I wouldn't get a professional contract and was fully prepared to go back down the summer-rabbit hole as I usually do, as I have way too much time to think. But, this was not the case! I packed up my bags and flew to NYC for a trip to see family, and had so much fun I didn't count calories for three days. This was a huge deal for me, and I truly started to feel better. I got to Indiana and the biggest blast began. I made so many incredible friends, who supported me and my issues, I did some awesome theatre (and some shitty theatre lol), and I met my boyfriend at the time. I was happy, I had new people in my life who watched out for me. And I stopped counting calories! I ate more protein, I was doing well. I worked out a lot and attempted to get strong. But I felt my body deteriorating. I got dizzy very easily, I got extremely sick very easily, and I couldn’t keep up my stamina for very long. I also began birth control at this time, as I was in a new relationship and preparing to be sexually active. This changed my body in many ways, which we’ll get to later on. 

However, the summer ended. I moved home, I got back into bad habits, and the comparison and “less-than” feelings returned. However, they got snatched away really fast and here’s why: I had been on my anti-depressants for over a year, and I was way overdue for a checkup at the doctors office. I hadn’t gained any weight, and they noticed my bad habits still being there-- and I hadn't seen my therapist since before I left for Indiana. They did some tests, and I was off. Then I got a call asking me to come back in. Turns out my blood cell count was irregular-- ie: my white blood cells were abnormally low and my red blood cells were enlarged. They believed this was due to vitamin deficiency. What I hadn't told them is I had been feeling heart palpitations for some time now. They drew more blood and ran more tests on me. Alas, I received another phone call telling me that I had to come back in, as my results left them clueless. So. They referred me to an Oncologist. This, was the scariest moment of my life. I had believed it had been vitamin loss, and that it was something I had done to myself-heck I literally was happy that maybe I was so skinny my vitamin levels were lacking. But nope. My boyfriend was amazing during this time, and encouraged me to continue to eat healthy and try new things to get better. During this long waiting period I ate like a normal person. I ate healthy. I stopped counting calories. I was doing better-- but not from a place of health, from a place of fear. That’s not how you heal healthily. I was scared I had cancer. I went to the oncologist’s and was tested for Leukemia. Suddenly, I didn't like feeling this thin. I didn't enjoy being breakable. I wanted to be healthy and strong. I continued with the visits to the Cancer Center. This was three of the hardest months of my life. And the scariest. I had one half of my brain telling me I was fat and needed to not eat anything, and the other half was telling me if I didn't eat, I’d get even sicker. And that I needed to gain weight, to prove I wasn't dying of Leukemia. After all of the blood tests, and the trips to one of the scariest doctors offices I’ve ever been in... we figured out:

I didn’t have cancer. But I realized how stupid I had been for the past ten years of my life. I had been given a TASTE of how scary and haunting being sick can be, and here I was destroying my own body. y healthy body, that people WISHED for. So, I stopped listening to ED, and I moved on. However, this didn't las long. Birth control changed my body. My boobs got bigger, my face filled out, and I noticed small changes. And I began to fall back into bad habits. Limiting foods, cutting calories, I went full vegan, I dumped my boyfriend so I could stop taking birth control, I stopped my medicine (as I didn't want to be mentally healthy anymore, I wanted to be sick so that I could lose weight.). Things got bad again. All the while, still having to go to an Endocrinologist. Since they realized I didn't have cancer, they did tests to realize I had given myself thyroid diseases, blood weakness, frail bones, and heart palpitations. All because I starved myself. But what did that make me? Happy. Happy to be ‘sick” and “skinny”. And that’s MASK 3. 

And here I am today, still struggling. Better, but struggling. I try not to weigh myself anymore (some days I fail, it’s human). I still count my calories, I try to find protein substitutes, but it’s constantly an uphill battle. The calories control my life. I started this journey thinking that it would give me more control, however the exact opposite happen. 

My eating disorder is a sickness. My ED and I are in an abusive relationship with myself and ED. There’s not enough space in my head for this. So here I am today, in therapy, doing everything I can to try and make sense of why I hate my body. 

My therapist says that I have been “screwed from the get go.” I was brought up in the ballet world, with a mother who constantly self deprecates, constant comparison syndrome... Instagram is hard. Life is hard. But I will continue to fight so that I can be successful. 

[bandbacktogether]

A Letter I Can't Send: Edge Of Crazy: Lesson #12

New Post has been published on https://www.bandbacktogether.com/posts/abuse-child-grows-up/

A Letter I Can't Send: Edge Of Crazy: Lesson #12

my dad was, and still is, a serious control freak. he wants everything to go his way, all the time, forever. His need to control + my rebellious streak – any display of love or affection = a seriously fucked up child.

dad,

i’d love to write this on my regular blog, but it would upset the people who know me (and we both know that i shouldn’t upset others, right?), so i’m writing it on the down-low. anyway, this is more for me than for you, because you would never admit to fucking up. mom has put up with a lot of shit to stay married to you for 44 years, but i don’t feel sorry for her because we both know she loves to play the martyr. you two are a textbook case of how not to raise a daughter, and i’ll get to mom in another blog. this one’s for you-

i know that you and mom “had” to get married. i know that you weren’t thrilled about it. i also know that you really wanted a son, but you got me instead. while i made do with the john deere tractor and matching wagon, you and i both know i really wanted the barbie corvette. so barbie and her friends went on lots of hayrides, no biggie. because i loved you.

lesson #1- be happy with whatever i get and don’t be disappointed; any affection i may receive depends on this.

we had fun when i was little. we played football with pillows in the trailer that i grew up in, you pretended to be a horse so i could ride on your back. except you always bucked me off, every time. you’d hide in the bathroom down the narrow hall and call to me and when i came to you, you’d jump out of the dark and scare me. i hated that game, and tried to refuse, but mom would insist i go every time. when mom called that dinner was ready, you’d always hold me back and say that i didn’t get to eat. even though i knew it was a game, i didn’t like it. now that i think about it, your sense of humor was somewhat sadistic. but i didn’t see it that way at the time. because i loved you.

lesson #2 – play along, even when i don’t want to.

when i was small, and did something wrong, you whipped me. you had that fucking collection of belts and always made me pick one. i took a long time choosing, hoping you would change your mind, but you never did. i always chose the red, white, and blue one, because if i had to get whipped, it should be with a pretty belt. and it wasn’t just one or two times. no, you beat my ass. and bare legs. and back. and arms.

i stole some of your coin collection to use in the gum ball machine at the trailer court. it was only a couple of wheat pennies and a dime, but you found me at the gum ball machine and my heart got stuck in my throat. you had a wire coat hanger in your right hand and it was summer and i was wearing shorts. you beat me with that wire hanger all the way to the trailer and that was a long way and i couldn’t run fast because i was only 4. and still, i loved you.

and that time you got mad ’cause mom made chili in july. i was still in a highchair, even though i was 3. i dumped my chili onto the metal tray and you swore at me for wasting food. you grabbed me by my shirt and pulled me out of the highchair. my legs got all cut up because you didn’t take the tray off first. then you threw me on the floor of the living room, and that’s how my favorite top got ripped. then you grabbed a belt from your collection and started beating me and you wouldn’t stop. mom finally pulled you away and threw you out. she let you come back, though. because she needed you more than she loved me. i asked mom to fix my top, but she threw it away instead.

lesson #3 – i am bad, and being hurt by someone i love is acceptable. in fact, i should expect it. i need to learn the art of survival, nobody else is going to protect me.

you have never told me you loved me. never. not once. you have never told me you are proud of me. not ever. not when i graduated from college, or grad school, or got straight a’s, or stuck with my crappy marriage for so long, or left said crappy marriage when it was time. i craved your approval like an addict craves that next hit off the pipe, knowing it will never be enough. and i chased after your approval the way a child chases their shadow, knowing that they will never catch it but always hoping against hope that this time might be different. and i never hated you for it. instead, i hated myself for not being enough.

lesson #4 – it’s not you. it’s me. and it will always be me, even when it’s you.

you had a girlfriend on the side, beginning when i was 5, and ending around the time i went away to college. i know this because i rode the bus with her son in high school. he told me all about how you’d come over on christmas day when he was little. i always wondered why you left after we’d opened presents. you were going to your other family. the one with two boys.

remember that time when i was a senior in high school and my friend viki and i saw your truck at your girlfriend’s house? i rang the doorbell and asked your girlfriend if you were there and i told her who i was. after viki and i drove away, we hid in a driveway and watched you speed past us in your truck, racing towards home. and we laughed because we knew you couldn’t touch me. not unless you wanted to tell mom what you were so pissed about.

mom still doesn’t know about that time i called your girlfriend at work and called her a whore and a bitch and demanded that army picture of you back. the one that mom kept asking about and you kept telling her that you’d left it in your locker at work. only it wasn’t in your locker, was it? it was on your girlfriend’s tv, because her son told me. you brought the picture home that night. that’s when you stopped looking me in the eye and started hating me. because you’d been caught by your daughter. and i began to hate you right back.

and when you suddenly decided not to pay for grad school, i became a stripper to pay for it myself. because i had learned the art of survival.

lesson #5 – i have nothing to lose and it feels good to be a bitch.

you stopped hugging me when i turned 10, and i’m pretty sure it had something to do with my going through puberty. especially when you went on a trip and brought me back that cleveland browns sweatshirt, threw it in my general direction while averting your eyes and said, “here, this will cover up your bumps.” nice way to encourage a young girl to have pride in her body. so i started covering up my bumps, all the time. when i was in my late 20’s, i got rid of my bumps altogether by developing anorexia. then i had to cover up my bones. i began to loathe myself.

lesson #6 – my body is sexual, and sexuality is bad.

the only birthday of mine that you ever came to was when i turned 5. i still remember it because that’s the birthday i got my first barbie. you took her away and wouldn’t give her back. you thought that was funny and i played along so you would stay. to this day, i occasionally find myself playing along, for fear of being abandoned or pissing someone off. when i was 17, you never came to my high school graduation. i know this because when i got home after the ceremony, the ticket i’d left for you on the kitchen table was still there. you were still pissed about me finding you at your girlfriend’s two months prior, and calling her at her job. because i’d stopped playing along.

lesson #7 – when i stop playing along, you will hate me.

in high school, you started to have me followed, instead of sitting me down and asking me about what was going on in my life, you got kids from the trailer court to tell you shit about me, a full $5 for each bit of information. that’s how you found out i smoked, drank, got high, and had a black best friend. you even sent two guys on my fucking spring break trip to daytona beach. i know this because on the last night, we all got drunk together and they told me. then they proceeded to tell me your name, my full name, where i lived and what you wanted to know. i wasn’t even safe from you 1,000 miles away.

can i just tell you how fucked up that is? that is seriously fucked up. i was the most paranoid teenager i knew, even without the pot.

you made me stop being friends with kim, you beat my ass when you found out i smoked and you grounded me for three months for drinking. fuck you. i started getting high with my dealer’s 16-year-old wife before school, i went through the bottle of vodka you had hidden in your cupboard, filling it with water instead. that’s right dad, the more you tightened the screws, the more i fucked up. i went to school drunk every day, or high, or both. i hid beers in my bedroom and drank them when you were asleep. i smoked in the bathroom after you and mom left for work. i feared getting caught, but the rush was incredible.

lesson #8 – my father is out to get me, and he will always find me.

you wouldn’t let me date the same guy twice, because you didn’t want me to get pregnant, the way mom did. you wanted me to get an education and be someone. or something. not for my sake, but so that you could say you had a college-educated child. and i was so terrified of getting pregnant that i didn’t had sex until i was 19. and then i slept with every guy i wanted to when i went away to college. because i could, and you had never taught me to respect my body. you had only taught me to get away with whatever i could. i never enjoyed the sex, but being sneaky felt awesome.

lesson #9 – sex is about power and revenge.

when i was in my final year of grad school, i met my future husband, only i didn’t know it at the time. i was smart and i knew about birth control. but when you should have taught me confidence, i learned fear. where self-esteem should have been, there was an empty well, waiting to be filled by someone else’s ideas and beliefs. fear of abandonment took the place of knowing my own worth. standing my ground was replaced by an aching need to please, at any cost. so when my future husband said “no rubbers, please” i said “ok”. because i needed to be loved, and i was afraid of losing him.

lesson #10 – do whatever i have to do make other people happy. my thoughts and feelings don’t count and should be kept to myself. they will only make others stop loving me.

and then i got pregnant. your biggest fear. and because you were my biggest fear, and because i didn’t believe in myself, and because my boyfriend didn’t want a baby and because i didn’t want to be abandoned, i had an abortion. then the self-hatred really kicked in.

lesson #11 – all decisions should be based on fear.

it has taken me 20+ years to undo what you did to me. everyday i untangle a bit more of the knot, trying to smooth out the yarn. it’s still good yarn, and everyday i knit myself.

lesson #12 – you made me stronger, smarter, tougher and braver. so fuck you.

[s0bers0ngs-blog]

THE BEGINNING

I took my first drink at thirteen years old. My sister’s boyfriend had a pontoon boat, and on the weekends, we would ride it out to the inlet for some fun. Even when we weren’t on the water, I was always so curious as to what Mike’s Lemonade tasted like, why it was so HARD, and why my sister could pound back six of them within an hour and seem happier. She was twenty-six and had been drinking since high school. She used to tell me that she would sneak out without our mother even knowing, and that she did horrible things pretty frequently, but was such a mastermind that she never got caught. She was thirteen when I was born, and used to take me everywhere with her as a toddler. Her favorite past-time was asking me what my favorite movie was in front of her friends - “The Fuckin’ Hound” (Fox and the Hound) - To make them laugh. I obviously didn’t remember any of that, but I think she just wanted me to like her, and maybe offering me a drink was her way of bonding with me. One day, as my friend Veronica sat next to me on the boat, I asked my sister if her drink tasted like real lemonade. She didn’t hesitate to hand it to me and tell me to try it for myself. I can’t remember if I was reluctant or if I went for it immediately, but I still remember the way it bit my tongue and warmed my chest, and the faint taste of lemonade lingered long enough for me to tell her that I liked it. She grabbed one out of the cooler, popped the cap, and handed it to me. “You can have one.”

Veronica was my sister’s favorite friend of mine, so she became my boating buddy, and eventually my first drinking buddy. It soon became a tradition to sit on the edge of the boat and drink Mike’s every other weekend, our feet grazing the waves, blasting “The Great Escape” by Boys Like Girls over and over until my sister made us play a different song. We loved some of the lines more than others, but our personal favorite was let’s get drunk and ride around, and make peace with an empty town. It made us feel on top of the world. Even though we argued half the time on whether he was saying tonight or today at certain points of the song, we both agreed that boating was more fun with a bottle in your hand, and that’s all that really mattered. My sister told her as long as she didn’t tell her parents we were drinking, she could come with us every time, and she did. When we’d go back to school on Monday and tell the other kids that my sister let us get drunk on the boat, our “cool” factor always increased. What kind of parent would actually let their thirteen year old get drunk? Mine certainly wouldn’t, but mine also wasn’t around, and sometimes I think the other kids forgot that. I moved in with my sister during my eighth grade year because I was becoming too rebellious for my mother to handle me. A lot of the kids were jealous of my newfound freedom and my lack of parental guidance. They would frequently ask if they could join us on the boat sometime. I always hit them with the “maybe” - That way I was able to keep them guessing, but also able to maintain my newfound popularity, which was a far cry from my elementary school days when I napped during recess and had imaginary friends. Now, years later, I was the kid whose mom didn’t even want her, and that’s probably why she was drinking. I didn’t actually know what they said behind my back, but I chose not to listen most of the time because I knew it would probably be something along those lines. I knew I’d always been “the weird one” and it probably wouldn’t change, even if I did get a pair of the latest trendy footwear or I moved to the nicer neighborhood down the street from our apartment complex. I spent my free nights in church and had a solid gaggle of friends from my youth group, and they usually proved to be better people anyway, but I didn’t dare tell any of them about the drinking. I knew I’d lose them if I did, or they’d think differently of me. But I was content having two different lives, and thriving in whatever one I wanted at whatever time I wanted. They say you can’t win ‘em all, but I certainly became the MVP of leading a double life.

Veronica and I continued being weekend warriors until school let out for the summer, usually having sleepovers at my house after our boating trips. Eventually, I graduated from Mike’s Hard Lemonade to Seagrams Wine Coolers, and my sister let us drink at home, too. I liked them more because they were sweeter and came in an assortment of flavors, but Veronica usually stuck with Mike; she insisted that he was stronger. This was before I knew what alcohol percentage was, and I didn’t want to ask my sister any questions for fear of showing too much interest. I wanted to keep my building love for booze under wraps. I never felt like I needed it back then, but I remember feeling odd if I was doing something fun without it, because I knew the fun would be magnified if I was one or two drinks deep. One night I made the mistake of taking one from the fridge without asking, and the next morning when my sister asked me about it, she told me I wasn’t allowed to take a drink unless it was offered to me. I was underage, after all, and she didn’t need me “developing a problem.” Either way, it didn’t add up in my teenage brain. I immediately apologized and returned to my room to sulk, angry at her for trying to control my new habit.

Once summer ended and I started ninth grade at a new high school with new people, it was time for me to reinvent myself. Veronica and I lost touch and I didn’t have any other friends once I switched school districts. My sister stopped offering me booze, and eventually I was okay with it because I started immersing myself in more youth group events and in the church choir. I spent three nights per week there until my grades started slipping, and my sister forbade me to go to anything except Sunday morning services until I got A’s and B’s again. I became a master of resenting her for the way she took the things I loved away from me, and before too long, I began feeling like every good thing in my life was disappearing. I didn’t have friends, I didn’t have God, I didn’t have family who loved me, and I wasn’t doing well in school - So what did I have? Depression began to build, suicidal thoughts began to haunt me every night, and I started hating myself for being such a fuck-up. I developed anorexia and weighed about ninety pounds soaking wet, only ate one small meal each day, and became obsessed with my weight. I didn’t tell a soul. It was my secret with myself because I didn’t want anybody taking it from me the way my sister took away my alcohol and my God. Towards the end of the school year, we got news that she was pregnant - Which meant I had to go back to my mother’s, because my room would now belong to the new baby. Tensions in the family were high because my mother saw that I enjoyed living with my sister so much at first, and I hadn’t spoken to her in almost a year because of it. I remember feeling like the biggest burden of all burdens because I thought nobody wanted me. But truthfully, at that point, I didn’t even want me. The suicidal thoughts continued, and were unbearable. I tried to start cutting, mostly because I was so curious as to why so many of the other kids did it, but I was always so afraid I’d go too deep that, most of the time, I’d just take a razor to my wrist until a scratch formed. That was enough to make the world stop for a little while. I never went deep enough to leave any scars because I was afraid it would hurt, and afraid that my mother would notice. After all, I’d already caused enough drama in the family; I didn’t need to cause any more.

I didn’t pick up another drink for the next three years. I call those the “dry years” - Ages fifteen to eighteen. When I moved back in with my mother, we started tolerating each other again, and I got to be active in church again. I recommitted my life to Christ shortly afterwards, and developed the understanding that it wasn’t right for my sister to take that away from me the way that she had. My mother raised me in church, and didn’t believe in that form of punishment. She used to say that God blessed her with me after her father passed away, filling the hole in her heart that he left, and that He favored me because of it. But I think that she may have been right about that, because as early as three years old, I was lifting my hands during church services like the cute little kids you see on Facebook and YouTube. I used to lay hands on people to “pray” for them, and my mother said she could physically see the difference in them afterwards. I’m not sure what kind of prayers a three year old has, but I was told there were plenty. It wasn’t uncommon for me to be humming along to worship music in the car before I could even form words, but my music of choice switched to country as I got older, and my first love was LeAnn Rimes. When I was eight, I sang her version of “Crazy” at a karaoke dinner at our church called “Spaghetti-oke” in front of an audience for the first time, and got a standing ovation. I still remember everyone jumping to their feet and clapping so loud that it hurt my ears, and my mother crying in the front row because she had no idea that I could even sing. I was a pretty shy and quiet kid, and never had much to say, let alone sing. During my dry years, I was a part of the contemporary church choir, and then graduated to lead singer of my youth band. When God was prevalent in my life, I had no desire to drink, or to do much of anything that didn’t require singing or being at church. God was the center of my life through grades ten and eleven. I wasn’t partying, sneaking out, or skipping school like the other kids. My grades were decent again, and I started feeling a little less hopeless. I brought friends to church with me, and talked about Jesus like He was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I continued life as such until age seventeen, when my grandmother moved in with us. Shortly afterward, my sister, her husband, and both of my nieces lost their house, and they moved in with us, too. The seven of us lived in a three bedroom duplex for months, and I became angry that my space was crowded with family that I didn’t even like. As tensions built and the screaming matches resumed with my mother, I slipped back into my rebellious ways, and she eventually gave up trying to control me. I would be out until midnight on school nights and even later on weekends, adventuring through cemeteries and making trips to beaches that were thirty minutes away just because I could. I always had older friends with driver’s licenses who didn’t live at home or didn’t have curfews - But still, we never drank. When my mother would bring up the fact that I stayed out so late sometimes, my rebuttal was always that I could be doing worse things than trespassing or crossing county lines, and she never had much to say after that. I told her that as soon as I was eighteen, I’d be finding a way to move out. My senior year began in August of 2011, and I turned eighteen in October - Which meant that, according to South Carolina law, I would be an adult for the majority of my senior year. I found every loophole I could not to involve her at school once I was of age, and it worked. I wished upon stars to find a way out of my house as a legal woman, and felt like I was waiting around for a miracle that was never going to come. Then, it came - And changed my entire life as I knew it.

During my second semester, I was put into Spanish II. It consisted of mostly seniors, but we had a handful of juniors as well. A girl named Anna was assigned to the seat behind mine, and something about her intrigued me from the start. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I found myself drawn to her, and started inserting myself into as many of her conversations as I could. We became friends quickly, which meant that I also had to be friends with Cora. Cora and Anna had been best friends since childhood, and were pretty much a package deal. They lived two streets down from each other and were attached at the hip - More like sisters than friends. But I was okay with it, because I quickly found that Cora was the most hilarious human I’d ever met. Anna was great, but nobody made me laugh quite like Cora. We became the three amigos, hanging out every day after school and spending all of our money on milkshakes at Denny’s. Anna owned a black Jeep Liberty, and the amount of miles we traveled that year could probably stretch clear through the Palmetto State. But once Anna got a boyfriend, it was often just Cora and I. I became her replacement best friend as Anna fizzled out, but it was a different kind of friendship than I was used to. I had plenty of best friends in the past, but none like her, and I kept trying to figure out why it felt so comfortable. I opened up to her about my home life and my disagreements with my mother, and she told me that I could come live with her and her parents, but we’d have to share a bed. I jumped at the opportunity, packed as much as I could fit into my car, and moved out the next day.

Over the next month, I became more and more distant from my mother, and closer and closer to Cora. Her parents treated me as one of their own, cooking family meals every night and doing my laundry. It was strange to have a normal home life after so many years of chaos. What they didn’t know, though, was that Cora and I were skipping school at least once a week. We’d start our mornings at Chic-fil-A, then sometimes we would go home and go back to sleep, hiding my car around the corner in case her stepfather came home for his lunch break. Other times, we would go play mini-golf on the north end of town where nobody knew us, or even drive an hour to the town of Ocean Isle Beach in North Carolina to eat our weight in Italian food and explore back roads with no destination. We always timed it just right to make sure we would be back by the time school let out, and would even circle around the parking lot to make it extra convincing, in case teachers or friends were looking for us. We couldn’t miss more than five unexcused days, so once that limit was pushed, Cora started writing me fake doctor’s notes. She said she’d been doing it for years and the office never caught on, so I let her do it for me, too. It did work for a while, until they caught us towards the end of the year and stuck us in summer school for makeup attendance. I didn’t get to walk with my class that year, but was still able to graduate a month later than the rest of my peers, and walk in the county graduation at the neighboring high school in a town called Conway.

One day, Cora and I went up to Ocean Isle Beach, and started chasing each other through the sand. It was like one of those cheesy romantic comedies where the couple doesn’t have a care in the world in that moment. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, the temperature was comfortable, and we were weightless. I’m still not sure what came over me, but something told me to stop, dead in my tracks, and grab her hands with mine. I was operating on emotions that were foreign to me - Emotions that made sense, for the first time in my life. She made life better, and I loved being around her. Once I grabbed her, we stared at each other for a moment, sincerely and nervously. The next thing I know, my lips are on hers - And it felt like a grenade was set off in my soul. I had been with boys until my newly formed friendship with Cora, but had become so uninterested in them once she swept me up into her world. I was immersed in a universe where only she and I existed, together, for months. And suddenly, it all made sense - Why I could never stay with a boy for more than six months, why I could never connect with them, why they were never exciting and never fulfilling. They never made me feel like this. They never made me feel magical the way Cora made me feel. To this day, I still can’t explain how that moment of clarity felt, but in that moment, it all made sense. I was gay - And I was in love for the very first time.

Naturally, Cora and I became inseparable. We were in the purest form of puppy love imaginable, and I’m sure everybody could see it. However, we were both new at the female dating thing, so we kept it under wraps for a few months. We were so in love and so sure of each other, yet so unsure of how the world would perceive us. We only knew a handful of openly gay kids at school, and people weren’t exactly nice to them. But they didn’t seem to care, and I became somewhat jealous of that freedom they possessed to be themselves. I never felt like I had that. I was always hiding in the shadows, cowering in corners and covering up my anger and my feelings. I had become so anti-substance since my last drink years prior, but Cora loved to smoke cigarettes because she said they made her feel better. She said she drank a lot before she met me and missed doing it, and I gave her the story of my experiences with booze, too. I didn’t miss it, and Cora made me drunk with just one touch of her lips, but we both decided that we would try drinking together the next weekend that her parents were out of town. We needed someone of age to get it for us, so I invited my friend Carissa, and she quickly obliged. She was supportive of our newly formed relationship and said we had to celebrate. And celebrate we did.

I don’t remember much about that night, but I do remember playing card games, and becoming more intoxicated than I ever had on the boat. This was a new kind of drunk; a powerful kind. Suddenly I realized why people did this so often. I wasn’t thinking about anything except the present moment, and Cora and I were giggling like school girls every time we looked at each other. We must have said “I love you” every five minutes - I was shocked that Carissa wasn’t getting tired of us. But when the supply ran out, we stumbled into the street for more, and walked the short distance across the street to a Bi-Lo. Cora and I got snacks while Carissa got more alcohol, and so the night continued. None of us wanted to stop, but I remember feeling like I couldn’t. If I stopped, the fun would stop, and the thoughts would come back. I didn’t want that. I wanted to stay in this newfound bliss I’d discovered. We took great care to make sure we didn’t leave any bottles in the trash can at home, or any evidence of what had taken place that night. Her parents never caught us. I woke up the next morning with my first hangover, and despite the queasy stomach and pounding headache, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much fun we had, and how quiet my mind had been for a night. I was ready to do it all over again.

Such was the beginning of a very slippery slope.

[mirilovesvictoria]

BODYIMAGE

I worte this when i was 17. I was suffering from an eating disorder. I performed it at a potry slam in my school and won first price.

It shows how much the society impacted my views on gener rolls and my body. This thinking made me sick. Adn i developed an eating disorder. I have come  a longe way. Body positivity and gender equality is so important for you girls, and their mental health.

Translation

My Hight

When I was little, I wanted to have a farm, when I am big and strong and all grown up, with cows and chickens and in such. And also my own veterinarian’s office and every day fresh eggs and home-made raspberry jam for breakfast.

Or an animal rescue centre – but nobody got what I meant with that.

Today I do not want all that any more. I am already big, too tall for my taste. 3 cm taller than him.

„Oh it is great that you are so tall. You can reach the uppermost shelf and always have the overview. “

„With your size you could model. “

Nice for you! I want to be neither tall, nor become a model and I also don’t want to be able to reach everything.

I sometimes also want to be the small little blonde that needs a strong man at whom she can look up who gets the food processor of the cupboard and the stars of the sky for me.

But no, instead, I have an honest chance at arm wrestling against quite a lot of guys – at least if they are drunk.

I do not ask much at all! Only to be small. Maybe 1,52 or something. I want to wake the protector’s instinct in every man’s heart. I want that the guys not always sit down on my lap, but sometimes the other way around and which this is then not an inconvienience. I want him to want to carry me over a gigantic puddle without hurting his back – only so my feet do not become wet and that these exact feet also sometimes can ware high heels. Not only flats and flip flops – I want high heels – seven centimeters – at least!

I want him to hold the umbrella and not me and that I fit in his jacket which he leaves to me unselfishly if it gets cold. I don’t want any more than that!

Today I want no more farm, ALDI´s jam is ok for me. I only want to be a small, elegant fairy who hops from blade of grass to blade of grass and the wind carries her a bit because she is so small and light and everybody wants to protect her and have her only for themselves.

Nobody wants to protect me! I am the strong shoulder on which one leans, I am the rock to cling to, I have the overview, I need no help of big, strong men.

„Hey, you can furnish your flat alone, you need no man who carries the boxes for you up the stairs, helps you in wallpapering and pushes the cupboard in the right corner. “

Who wants to do that shit alone?

Bloody hell: I want to need one! I want to, I want to, I want to!

Why does nobody understand?

I want the people not to fear me, when I rush with all my temperament and joy towards them. They should not tip over and not suffer too big pains if steps on their feet.

They should be simply glad to see me – spread out their arms and I want to float in their arms without injuring anybody.

Is this too big of a request?

Translation

About Diets, Doctors and Men

„A young girl must weigh less than 70 kilos, it doesn’t matter how tall she is. “, tells me this idiot of a doctor. Does this mean that its ok to be fat if one is small, but not normal if someone is tall?

Normal. – That’s what they say at least. „Oh, you don’t have to be on a diet. “ Bla, bla. Oh? Whom shall I believe?

If one opens a magazine, one sees thousand skinny girls with enlarged breasts – because there you also loose weight, maybe it’s the first area to loose it, what had recently strongly shaken me.

Does have my belly which is substantially bigger – or my hips which my family also calls life preserver – Don’t they have the right to get smaller first? But no! My Bras are immediately too big for me and my right breast is anyway smaller as my left! Where does the justice remain there?

If one turns the page, one finds a very long photo larded report on anorexia and how bad everything is. And if one turns the page then once more, one finds diet tips:

„How to outwit the Jojo effect“

„Tasty and healthy through the holidays“

„Away with the winterfat“

Everything probably helps nothing, this is not the solution.

Earlier everything was better. Look at the paintings of Rubens. Bulging breasts, round hips, smiling lips and beaming eyes. Why loose weight, only because it corresponds by chance just today to the beauty ideal?

Actually, I feel fine – at least to me, until  the TV switches on and I look into a skinny world of the superficiality and I am blinded from all thin models.

But it is, finally, also about the health and fitness.

„Yes, simply do more sports. “, tell me these idiots – without the slightest idea that I fucking do enough sports and neither have I the time, nor the desire to run to the gym more – rather it is my love – or love-hate relationship – to food which entices me with his beguiling smells.

These are the cream gateaux, cheese straws, chocolate biscuits, Viennese small sausages, puddings, noodles – which lure me – cheese, sausage, honey, chocolate, apple mash, soup, juices, bananas, raisins …

I could continue forever so and lose myself in dreams and admiration. I will never become anorexic –rather bulimic – eating is simply too good. It is fantastic, bombastic, fabulous … simply the bomb.

Now I have lost myself again, even if in words and sentences, instead of spoons and plates.

If the society cannot help me and the doctors contradict, I can only listen to myself and I change my opinion daily or even hourly.

Sometimes I am on a diet, sometimes I enjoy the life. There are for both, unfortunately, too many reasons and arguments.

Even my boyfriend who has the most contact with my fat is not quite so sure himself there. On the one hand he says, he loves me like I am and also wants to have something to hold in his arms – not only skin and bone and some other things – he wants to enjoy Tiramisu with me.

However, then he pinches my belly, stares at other skinny bitches which I would love to scrape out their eyes from their ugly faces of which the miniskirts try to distract.

Then I tell myself, he is just a man and start a new diet. If I have decided then, finally, after also the scales have shown persuasive arguments – to decrease my body fat, then it does not work, although I really try hard. And then I become angry and the frustration leads me to a bowl chocolate ice cream and I get even more frustration because then I really won’t loose weight. Then I am in the vicious circle – my tears drop and now he is sure again, to love me how I am – but can’t stop giving me bad looks if I bite into a piece of cakes, but he just had five burgers and chips from McDonalds and he remains slender. Where is the logic, can somebody please explain this to me?

[ourladybedivere-blog]

Bulimia to B.E.D. - A journey

To me it makes complete and total sense, but I guess to others it doesn’t. This became so very clear to me when I was discussing having an eating disorder with a friend a last summer. She said to me “Do you still consider yourself to have an eating disorder?” The subtext being, how can you have an eating disorder?? You’re fat. 

I get it I’m not thin. But it really made me think. 

My entire life I’ve had an eating disorder, this actually just occurred to me. In my earliest memories I have had an unhealthy relationship with food. I’ve always considered myself to be fat, as long as I can remember. When I was hospitalized at age 17 and 19 for malnutrition I thought I was fat. When I look at pictures of myself from about 10 years ago I see my arms with that sickly thin look, but I remember that day and I remember thinking if I could just loose 10 more pounds I would be “ok” not “thin” but “ok.” Whatever it is that “ok” means, I don’t think I really had any idea what this dream of “ok” I was seeking was then. Either way “ok” means something different now, something healthier. 

So like I said I’ve always thought I was fat even when I wasn’t. It started pretty early, elementary school I would say in 3rd or 4th grade. I developed faster than a lot (actually all) of the girls in my very small school. I had big ole titties by age 10, as well as womanly hips and I was nearly my full grown height of 5′7″ at that age as well. I was teased and of course it hurt, I was very susceptible to this type of teasing due to events in my early childhood I may discuss at some point but not now because it isn’t the point. Just believe me when I say some people are more susceptible than others. The idea that something was WRONG with my body was cemented in very early. 

By the time I got to middle school anorexia and bulimia where starting to get a lot of news coverage. I heard about bulimia and instead of recognizing it for the sickness that it was it seemed like just the thing to help me finally fix my body. I couldn’t make myself stop needing food to live, buy I could eat and purge it right out. At first it was hard, I would put my fingers down my throat to bring on a gag and a heave, but eventually it was like I conditioned my mind that this is simply what is done after eating. I could simply think gross thoughts and boom express upchuck. I lived on a farm miles from other people in all directions. I would take long walks in the evening and void myself away from home so no one would notice. I could usually manage most of the school day without eating at all so that wasn’t much of an issue, but if I felt the need to evacuate I would simply wait in the bathroom until it was empty. I was often accused of hanging out in there to listen to other people’s conversations. 

By high school I was experimenting with chemical intervention to further restrict my calorie intake. I took my brothers ADHD medication and would happily buy it off students who didn’t want to take it. My levels of anxiety grew and grew. The only things that made me feel “better” where purging and partying. I was a high acheiver but antisocial, I had good grades and kept to myself so I was completely unnoticed by most of my peers and most of my own family as well. During my sophomore year I had my first “episode.” I told my parents I just CANT handle IT anymore!!!! What it was that I couldn’t handle? I couldn’t really tell them because I didn��t really know. I was just sure I was going crazy and I needed help. My parents took me to our family doctor, through a blood test he found me to be malnourished and I spent the night in the hospital getting IV nutrition and a psych consult. My doctor told me I was malnourished because I ate too much junk food and not enough healthy fruits and vegetables. He never once asked about my eating habits, at 150 pounds I was actually overweight. He told me if I made healthier choices with my food I would feel better emotionally and I would also be able to maintain a healthy weight. The psych doctor at the hospital told me I was depressed, and prescribed Prozac and weekly therapy session. My parents insurance covered 6 session which I attended but accomplished absolutely nothing. 6 sessions isn’t enough to build trust let alone fix the depression I was diagnosed with, or the eating disorder no one noticed. 

When I say no one noticed BELIEVE me when I say that. No one. Not a single person noticed. And do you know why? Because we have this image that the media has put into our head of the person suffering with bulimia. That person is a waif. So thin a stiff breeze would knock her over. Even malnourished, light headed, heart racing at the slightest exertion I was no waif. I was skin and bone in size 10 jeans. I understand this will be hard to accept. My parents didn’t notice, my friends didn’t notice, my doctor didn’t notice. I was starving to death, wasting away. You know what my friends are parents did notice? My very slim friend, who did not have an eating disorder. I was told many many times that it was my duty as best friend to this thin person that I intervene and help her because she was so thin she must have an eating disorder. This very much reinforced for me the idea that PEOPLE CARE MORE ABOUT YOU IF YOU ARE THIN. If I could just be thin enough then someone would care enough to notice. 

Time passed. I kept right on bingeing and purging and partying. I finished high school, early actually. Moved out and turned up the volume on my unhealthy lifestyle. Malnourishment plus drug abuse and Prozac with a side of my boyfriend left me for his ex-girlfriend equals a suicide attempt and back to the hospital we go. This time as an adult I was treated to a 3 day observation period. My malnourishment was diagnosed as being caused by my drug abuse. Schizoprenia now replaced my diagnosis of depression. At a healthy weight of 145 pounds not a question was asked about my eating habits, or lack thereof. I see pictures of myself then, and I look sick. My face is gaunt, my skin is bad, my eyes are dark and vacant. When my face becomes gaunt I think that I look like a man, someone told me once I looked like a horse (it’s funny how the hurt sticks isn’t it). All these people who were supposed to care about me supposed to look out for me, they looked at the number on the scale and said well that’s healthy it must be something else. 

So I moved back home, I laid off the drugs for a year or so. I gained back about 30 pounds. I withdrew and tried in some way to heal myself. I was frail but I was holding it together. I had a job, it was drugs and drinking on weekends, eating only one meal a day and not purging, hating my body. This was my normal. Then I met a boy, of course it’s always a boy. This man-boy introduced me to a new and wonderful drug called methamphetamine. What made it different from all the other drugs was the EUPHORIA that and it turns up your metabolism that you lose weight twice as fast as if you are simply starving yourself. So back down the rabbit hole I went. Fast forward 18 months, a shot-gun wedding and a still-born son later and here I am. Now I actually am depressed. I’m 22 years old, I’m married to a man I knew for 2 months who has turned out to be incredibly abusive, I’ve buried firstborn and I realize I do really need to make a change. I stopped doing drugs completely and I stop purging. I cut way back on my drinking and make a real effort to eat at least 2 meals a day. I try to “fix” my husband because I am deeply in love with his daughter who lives with us. With both of her parents are far more into the drug scene that I ever was I feel like it’s my duty to protect her. And I really do want a family. I suppose I figured if I couldn’t have the family I needed when I was young I can build that family and have a different role in it. I can be the loving mother I never had, and I can CHANGE my abusive husband into the involved father I never had. I can have another son and give my step-daughter a healthy sibling relationship. 

Surprise, you can’t change or fix people who don’t want to be fixed or changed. I did have a son, who is the light of my life. However, after 7 years of physical and emotional abuse and constantly being cheated on I realized I couldn’t put any more energy into fixing this “man.” It was killing me. Though I didn’t realize it at the time I had completely replaced drug/alchohol problems with a food problem. When I was at home alone while my husband was out doing whatever/whoever he was doing I sat at home so full of sadness an worry. As I had sworn off drugs and getting drunk with the kids around there was food. The binge and purge cycle came back. When he was home and I was walking on eggshells trying not to set him off food was always there, cooking provided busy work and eating would reduce my anxiety, I couldn’t purge with him home. I was afraid it would bring on his rage, because he would certainly hear me through our paper thin walls. 

Having to constantly sacrifice and forgive is really really hard, it drains you, you start to feel like you don’t matter. Sometimes I wondered if I was real. I would play a game where I wouldn’t speak for days at a time. Just to see how long I could go before anyone noticed (3 days is my record by the way). I started thinking about dying a lot, how if it wasn’t for my children no one would notice. By the time I left my ex-husband I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW how to be happy anymore.  To make it worse after we split and I’d had 2 weekend visits, to punish me into submission my ex-husband refused to let me see my former step-daughter. I cried and cried thinking of how she must feel like I abandoned her, how I had clung so hard for so long to try to give her a happy life and how I had failed miserably. I can’t talk too much about her because I feel so emotional, but just believe me when I tell you that I still love her and wish I could be a part of her life. That was the final straw really, so I guess he “won” in punishing me. The guilt and sadness and grief of losing my step-daughter sent me into a serious drinking spiral. I hooked up with a guy at a bar, two years later I moved in with him and I realized I was making all the same mistakes I had been before. 

Instead of being physically abusive this new fellow was a narcissist. He was a master of gaslighting. It was impossible to purge because he was always around. He was also very particular about knowing where I was ALL of the time. I remember once I was about 10 minutes later than usual getting home. He demanded for HOURS that I tell him why I was late. I really didn’t even have a reason. It was 10 minutes. But somehow he made me feel like I was the one who was being crazy for not having a reasonable explanation for 10 minutes if my day, instead of him being crazy for demanding I answer him. If I was in the shower to long I kid you not he questioned me about it. He had me so convinced that something was wrong with me that I started seeing a therapist about 1 year into our relationship. I was very very fortunate to find my therapist. I came across her by coincidence, I was looking for a therapist that had evening office hours so that I didn’t have to miss work and after a short wait on her list I got in to see her. 

My main complaints were general unhappiness, angriness, being distracted, feeling overwhelmed but not really doing anything. I knew she was the right therapist for me when I told her about feeling overwhelmed, feeling pressure to get all of these things done and then not doing anything, feeling unable to do anything. She said to me that people often feel this way when they are dealing with a great deal of anxiety. It was like someone had finally given me permission to admit what was really wrong. One of the things that gives me the most anxiety is talking about my anxiety so it was really important for me to hear it from someone else. Especially after hearing from other doctors that my problems were anything but anxiety. I was finally able to talk to someone about how I coped with my anxiety first in life with bulimia and later by bingeing. She gave a name to what I was dealing with. She told me what I was feeling was real, that I wasn’t alone! She encouraged me to attend over-eaters anonymous and I did and truly experienced that I wasn’t alone. She worked with my patiently, she truly listened to what I was saying. We did hard hard work together. Though it’s a continual struggle she taught me coping mechanisms to deal with my anxiety and therefore to reduce my urge to binge. She taught me how to have self-worth, which was something no one had ever told me before. She proved to me that I mattered and that I deserve to be happy as much as anyone else. With her help I learned how to create a support system or people for myself and for her I am forever grateful. With her help I know consider myself in recovery and getting better every day. 

So when my friends asks me if I still feel like I have an eating disorder (even if the sub context is that they don’t think so because I’m fat) I tell them the truth. Yes, I am in recovery. I see it as an opportunity to be an example for people that having an eating disorder doesn’t always look the way you think it does. I see it as an opportunity to spread awareness about B.E.D. so that maybe someday that friend can reach out to a friend in need. Back when I was in the throws of bulimia and B.E.D. I can imagine that my response would have been crazy, there would have been screaming, and crying, and incomplete sentences. The true gift of recovery is peace. For me peace is calmness inside of me that allows me to spread a message that is helpful instead of crazy. 

[angelstarotmagick]

Fluorite

Fluorite always reminds me of forests and flowers, mountain streams and glaciers. Looking at a fluorite crystal takes me to my happy place where I can ground myself and look at my life without the clutter of distractions. I get a feeling of calm peace and healing wisdom when I meditate with fluorite. The fact that my favorite colors-green and purple-are in this one stone doesn't hurt my love for it.

Fluorite has a long and mystical history with humankind. There is little or no evidence of its use in paleolithic cultures, but I feel pretty sure they knew of fluorite and had a use for it. Ancient China is one of the first cultures to provide evidence of using fluorite in magick. Purple fluorite was used to provide magickal protection for an individual and the community. It was believed in Ancient China that purple fluorite kept evil spirits away. In later years, it was incorporated into the practice of Feng Shui. In Feng Sui, green fluorite has a wood energy and it is kept in any space used for eating or where family gathers. Fluorite crystals were also considered makers of dreams and desires, helping people manifest dreams that were their true goal in life. At various times in Chinese history, green fluorite was substituted for jade in works of art.

A world away on a different continent, the Egyptians were carving sacred scarabs out of fluorite. Scarabs in Ancient Egypt were a symbol of rebirth and regeneration. They were often considered one of the most sacred of religious artifacts to the Egyptians. Fluorite was also carved into statues of the gods, household art, and jewelry.

Like everything they seemed to do, the Ancient Romans went overboard with their love of fluorite. Because of it's beauty and rarity, fluorite was highly sought after and prized. Fluorite drinking vessels were an important show piece in any Roman's collection, not only were they beautiful to behold. It was commonly believed that drinking from a cup carved out of fluorite would keep the drinker from getting drunk. Also, fluorite goblets were prized for the special flavor they supposedly gave wine that was was consumed from them. Unbeknownst to the Romans, that flavor they desired didn't come from the fluorite, but rather it can from a resin that was used during the carving process. Pliny the Elder is quoted for saying the following about fluorite in Roman society: “It came to be deemed the proof of wealth, the true glory of luxury, to possess something that might be destroyed in a moment.” Nero exemplified the Roman over the top love of fluorite when he reportedly paid 1 million sestercer ($240,000 today) for a single fluorite cup. Some Roman leaders kept fluorite objects as spoils of war; Pompey the Great took six vases from Mithridates and then gave them to the Temple of Jupiter in Rome so no one else could have them or Emperor Augustus who took a fluorite vase from the Pharaoh's Palace in Alexandria, Egypt.

We have no proof that the native people in the Mississippi Valley were obsessed as the Romans were for fluorite. What we do know is that the Mississippi Mound Builders carved fluorite into objects between 900 and 1650 AD. Archaeologists have found beads, jewelry, and statues in digs in several states. Most interesting of all the items found are the 6 whole or partial statues that have been found. The four complete statues show a seated figure and range in height from 9-11 inches (22.5-28 cm) in height carved from fluorite. Heads from a 5th and 6th statues have been found in Tennessee and Illinois. Because of the statues, Illinois elected to make fluorite its State Mineral.

In the 1670's, people began to use  hydrofluoric acid (an acid derived from fluorite) to etch glass. Hydrofluoric acid was only able to be produced in small batches until 1771 when Carl Wilhelm Scheele developed a way to produce large quantities of it. Highly diluted hydrofluoric acid soon caught on as a popular medicine. It was touted to alleviate symptoms of kidney disease, shrink varicose veins to half their size, and even grow hair on a bald head. We still use it as a medicine today in the form of fluoxetine, also known as Prozac, and in other applications including the element fluorine and in the miracle of non-stick cookware coatings known as Teflon.

There are over nine thousand deposits of fluorite known in the world today. Fluorite is mainly composed of calcium fluoride. It forms as veins when it fills in crevices and gaps in rocks that are subjected to intense hydro-thermal pressures. Fluorite often contains metallic ores and is often the primary or secondary mineral in marbles, granites, limestones, and dolostones.

Originally fluorite was known as fluorospar, a name that is still used for it today in the chemical and industrial trades. The name comes from the Latin word fleure  meaning “to flow.” Often it is used as a flux in the aluminium and steel smelting processes. Today it is also used in the ceramics industry as a glaze, enamel, and a specialty glass. It is used in the chemical industry as the source of fluoride, fluorine, and hydrofluoric acid. Fluorite is also processed to make high end, low distortion microscope, telescope, and camera lenses. Cannon began to look into fluorite lenses in the 1960's as a way to reduce chromatic aberration in high power telephoto lenses. They have since perfected the process and are the leaders in manufacturing fluorite camera lenses.

Fluorite is naturally colorless, the beautiful colors happen when impurities are in the material as the stone forms. For many rock collectors and jewelry makers, the colors of fluorite lend to its desirability. Many people think of a purple and green banded rock when they think of fluorite, but it comes in a much larger array of colors. Fluorite can be found with bands of the following colors: clear, white, grey, black, red, yellow, green, blue, purple, and rainbow.

Yttrian fluorite, or lavender fluorite, is an unusual form of the mineral. It often occurs in massive and granular formations. It gets its name from the rare earth element, Yttruim, that replaces the calcium ions in the mineral's structure. It is often a lavender color, but can come in several colors. It is a beautiful stone and a metaphysical helper. Yttrium fluorite is said to have the power to combat disorganization. It is also said to attract abundance and wealth, as well as increase your mental acuity. Part of the stone's wisdom is it is said to guide you to know when to remain silent, because silence is for the best. A favored stone of thinkers and dreamers, it is said to have the ability to ground ideas and aid in manifesting those ideas into reality. This is a crystal of self-fulfillment and self-actualization. It relieves stress and brings serenity by calming the mind. Often it is related to the Heart, Third Eye, and Crown Chakras. Yttrian fluorite is very useful for people who work in the service industry.

England has a form of fluorite known as Blue John Fluorite that is loved for its stunning banding. Its coloring tends towards blue and purple but it as contrasting bands of color often highlighted by other colors. Its bold coloring foretells its bold energies. It's energy is one of change and personal growth with a side of courage. It encourages spontaneity, travel, altruistic pursuits, and making positive changes in one's lifestyle. It does all this while instilling clarity of mind, deep inner peace, and guidance on how to find the solutions your need. Favored chakras of this gem are the Third Eye and Crown. Just a word of advise with this crystal, this is not a crystal to be trifled with, if you activate Blue John Fluorite to effect change in your life it will bring about change.

Not much is known about Radioactive Fluorite from a metaphysical stand point. Due to its radioactive properties it is hard to acquire and dangerous to work with outside of a laboratory setting. It was originally discovered in 1841 in the town of Wolsendorf in Bavaria. When broken, this violet-black rock releases ozone and hydrogen fluorite. Both substances together produce a fetid odor thus giving the stone its nicknames: stinkspar, stink-fluss, or fetid fluorite. It is also known as Antonzonite after the theoretical compound antozone, which was considered the cause of the foul odor.

Pure Fluorite is a clear mineral and metaphysically, clear fluorite is a symbol of purity. It is said that it has the power to purify the mind, body, and spirit; bringing a stable, harmonious order to one's life. Meditating with it strengthens one's consciousness while at the same time eliminating useless guilt, emotional turmoil, and pressures from others. Add it to healing crystal grids for a boost of Universal power or just use with individual crystals to boost their power. Clear fluorite stimulates the Crown Chakra and has the ability to align the chakras and infuse the physical body with Universal energy.

When most people think of fluorite, one of the last colors many people think of is yellow. Golden Fluorite is a sunny, happy color that has the ability to boost your mood and instill hope. This is a students' stone on many levels. It allows a person to learn with ease by integrating the information to be learned with the experiences needed to make it more memorable. It increases creativity, understanding, and logic in a way that makes information useful. It also enables one to manifest an idea into reality. Many also find yellow fluorite to be a powerful healing stone. It has been linked to healing and aiding in  controlling eating disorders (ie. Anorexia), liver and stomach ailments, joint problems, and is used for mind, body, and spirit detoxification. It has an affinity to the Solar Plexus Chakra.

One of the most common forms of fluorite is green fluorite. This stone can range from deep forest green to a vibrant day-glo green. This stone is a spring cleaning for your chakras as it naturally cleanses, refreshes, aligns, and heals them. Green fluorite doesn't just heal your chakras, it is a powerful healer of the rest of your mind, body, and spirit. It is often used to detoxify the body, resolve heart issues, sooth digestive complaints, relieve arthritis pain and stiffness, heal gout, and clear up fungal infections. The Heart Chakra benefits greatly from green fluorite's healing abilities. Meditating with green fluorite, used along with medical treatment and therapy, will allow you to release emotional trauma and worn out conditioning thus allowing you to be open to new avenues in your life and the ability to overcome or control your addictions. Green fluorite has this energy that wants to see us happy and healthy. It has the ability to clear negativity in the area around it, promote self-love, and remove blockages and narrow-mindedness.

From gentle and soothing to deep and mysterious, the color of Blue Fluorite says a lot about the metaphysical uses of the stone. It is known to help restore a person's emotional balance. In shamanism it is used to reprogram karmic programming that prevents someone from living up to their soul's full potential and heals soul fragmentation from present and past lives. Blue fluorite is a stone of justice; it will empower honesty and effective communication. It is attuned to the Third Eye and Throat Chakras, thus developing one's ability to communicate and enhancing one's psychic awareness. It is commonly used in crystal healings to repair issues with the ears, nose, and throat. Some people claim that meditating with blue fluorite helps to clear speech impediments.

Magenta Fluorite has a deep pinkish purple color reminiscent of sunlight shining through grape juice. This beautiful stone brings about a positive outlook on life. It works to bring about good decision making so the best possible choices can be made for the highest good for all involved. It has a deep connection to the Heart and Crown Chakras. It opens the Heart Chakra and reveals one's inner truth.

What's the best way to describe Purple Fluorite? Mystical and healing are what first come to mind. Purple fluorite is a metaphysical stone. It is noted to bring about mystical insights, enhances psychic abilities, and brings about visions. Part of the mystical abilities of purple fluorite come from its ability to open the Third Eye Chakra when used in meditations. It also has the ability to promote emotional stability and inner peace in a person. Students can also benefit from using this crystal, purple fluorite improves memory and aids in concentration. Crystal healers often employ it in their practices because of its ability to enhance medical treatments to heal septic wounds, shorten the duration of colds, and aid medical treatments to destroy tumors. On a final note, purple fluorite is considered a metaphysical diet aid to crystal healers because it is known to help eliminate bad food habits.

Black Fluorite is as dark as midnight and just as mysterious. It is often used to clear an area or person of negativity and has the ability to cleanse the auric field of any debris or clutter that has accumulated. If used at bedtime for meditation and then kept under the pillow, black fluorite is said to to be able to greatly decrease, and maybe eliminate, nightmares and their side effects.

Fluorite is most often purchased as a stone of several colored bands running through the stone.  This is Multi-color or Rainbow Fluorite. Rainbow fluorite is like a Swiss Army Knife of the mineral world. The energies of the crystal are determined by the colors in the stone. The piece of fluorite I own is colorless, green, and purple; and the energy it has relates to those colors. The green promotes healing within me, self love, and creativity while the colorless protects me and creates harmony within me, and finally the purple allows me a deeper understanding when I do divination. The more colors in a rainbow fluorite, the more energies that can be tapped into. Rainbow fluorite really is as powerful as it is beautiful.

Fluorite is a favorite stone of many crystal healers because it has so may uses. For relief of sinus pressure, hold a piece of  fluorite over the Third Eye and it is said to relieve that pressure. Fluorite is one of a select group of crystals believed to be able to neutralize and protect against dangerous EMF radiation. It is often used to reduce high blood pressure through mediation, because it is said to help calm the user. Its healing powers are vast. Some claim that it can help lower cholesterol, sooth a cough, relieve joint pain, clear up respiratory issues, cure pineal gland difficulties, help with nerve issues, help strengthen the body by building up the immune system, soothes insomnia, and is even said to have anti-viral properties. When using fluorite for healing purposes, remember to only use it in conjunction with the advice of a medical professional.

Fluorite has earned a place in the myths and religions all over the globe in the ancient world. The Etruscan people believed that the stone was sacred to Minerva, their Goddess of Wisdom, and they believed that stone could grant the bearer wisdom. Fluorite's gift of granting wisdom also made it sacred to Sophia, the Judaeo-Christian Spirit of Wisdom. Fluorite is the sacred stone for two Hindu goddesses, Annapurna (the Goddess of Food and Cooks) reflects the nourishing aspects of fluorite, and to Vac (the Goddess of the Spoken Word) exemplifies fluorite's aspects of wisdom. Lastly, Itzpapaloti, the Aztec Butterfly Goddess and the Aztec symbol of female strength, considers it sacred.

Fluorite is a must have for any crystal worker. It is extremely useful, affordable, and beautiful. The only warning I have been able to find for it is do not charge in sunlight because it may dull the colors. I can't recommend Fluorite enough.

Fluorite

Also Known As: Fluorspar, “Genius Stone,” Fluorospar, “Home of the Rainbows”

Color: purple, green, yellow, blue, colorless, pink, red, white, brown, black, multi-color

Associated Deities: Minerva (Etruscan Goddess of Wisdom), Itzpapaloti (Aztec Butterfly Goddess), Annapurna (Hindu Goddess of Food, Kitchens, and Cooks), Vac (Hindu Goddess of the Spoken Word), Sophia (Goddess of Wisdom)

Zodiac: Gemini, Pisces

Element: Fire, sometimes Air

Source: deposits are located in over 9000 areas of the world, United States, Britain, Australia, Germany, Norway, China, Peru, Mexico, Brazil

Chakra: Third Eye, Heart, Throat

Angels: Menadel (Guardian of those born between September 18-23), Amnixiel (Guardian of the 28th Mansion of the Moon, Pisces), Jeremiel (Helper to healing emotions), Mastema (Helps deal with adversity), Michael (Beauty Angel, Tree of Life, Helps heal fear), Scheliel (Guardian of the 7th Mansion of the Moon, Gemini), Barchiel (Angel of the Tarot card “Death”, Aquarius), Taliahad (Angel of the Tarot card “Hanged Man”), Chamuel (Archangel).

Keywords:  Energy clensing, protection, balance, wisdom, peace, spiritual development, meditation, concentration, clarity, healing, justice, psycic awaremess, purification, detoxification, inner truth, flexibility, positivity, manifestation, self-fulfillment, self-actualization, stability

Magickal Uses:  Healing spells, protection magick, meditation, spiritual and psychic development, animal spirit and totem communication, learning, peace magicks, manifestation magicks, crystal healing, posisitivity magicks, creativity, accessing wisdom, divination

Divinatory meaning: What you want may not be practical, but you should not compromise your principles

State: State Mineral of Illinois

Tarot Card: Suit of Swords

Name Origin: Latin fleure  meaning “to flow”

Warning and Notes: do not expose to prolonged sunlight, it may cause the colors to fade. Prolonged submersion in water will cause some fluorite to dissolve.