This New Year

I had two resolutions for 2013 and I kept neither. But when I wanted to be moved out this year, I was working full-time, and now I'm lucky if I get 10 hours a week. And when I looked back and saw my hair hadn't grown at all, it felt pointless to keep dreaming long, and it's so much healthier now. Perhaps this year I'll finally choose to stop dyeing it. At the very least, I know a move is in my future, and I want to resolve a few things for 2014.

• stay healthy. something I've managed to do without trying this year. luck, mostly, but true motivation came when I learned I was pregnant. and true motivation will remain, to stay healthy for my baby. because a person who is obsessed with weight lost and starvation can't take care of herself will have trouble properly taking care of another life.
• build my life. I don't know what this means just yet, but it's important. I'll become a homemaker for the first time. I've don't know what I'm doing, but I know I can make a house full of love. a safe place for my baby, and a comfortable place for my man. I get to learn how to manage bills, and clean up after myself and others, and cook for two. it's all new territory, but I'm excited for it.
• do my best & accept it. I know I won't be perfect. I haven't got a clue how to do any of the things I'm going to do this year. I'm going to mistakes, but I'm not going to beat myself up over it. I'm doing the best I can. and that's good enough.

Thankful This Morning

I am not pleased to be up at nearly six in the morning. Perhaps if it were summer, but it's still dark out, and I really feel I ought to be sleeping. And in four hours, I'll be ready to help my mommy in the kitchen with Thanksgiving dinner. I'm sure this is the first I've ever helped with, and I haven't a clue what I'm doing, other than making bread for breakfast. But as long as I'm unable to sleep...

• I'm thankful I have a boyfriend who lets me wake him up in the middle of the night for silly things. Usually, it's that his computer has started talking and I don't know how to make it shut up and how can he expect me to get back to sleep when it's freaking out like that. Right now, it's that at 4am I said, excuse me, Mr. Six-Foot-Six, but Five-Foot-Three is getting claustrophobic and could you please give me some leg room even though clearly you need it more and I'm just insane? Awesome, thanks. Even though I feet bad that I wasn't able to get back to sleep and so I disturbed him for nothing and I only hope he won't remember the ordeal or have cramped legs in the mornings.
• I'm thankful I've always got a roof over my head and food in my belly. Especially since I ask of it from a lot of people. All four of my parents, my boyfriend, my best friend and her family. They're always saying, sure sleep here, and eat all this food while you're at it. I feel like such a burden on them all at times.
• I'm thankful that when I needed a new car this year, I had the means to actually buy one, through work and savings. And even though I'm not working enough right now to even cover my monthly car insurance bill, I've got a savings to get me through until things pick back up for me. 
• I'm thankful I was able to continue my education this year, again through a savings my daddy kept for me for many years (for which I'm thankful also I have simply had the self-control not to waste on frivolous things). I've not been very good at finishing the program, but my teacher has been wonderful and worked with me and my youthful ways of preferring to seeing my boyfriend to hunting down torture victims all week. I've got more testing to do, and I'd really love more practical hours even if I don't need them anymore. Still, I've learned a new skill, and I hope to someday actually feel competent in it. If I finish proper certification, I can do this wherever life may lead me.
• I'm thankful that this year, I was able to keep my eating issues mostly in check. I went on one super-restrictive diet in mid-January, probably eating no more than 600 calories a day, which has left my stomach shrunken this entire year to where I still can't eat very much (it used to be I'd starve and it'd shrink up, but when I started bingeing again, it would quickly allow me to eat enough to compete with many college boys). I can't say I'm sad about this, as I feel it offers me a certain amount of portion control that a lot of the country lacks... even if I did date one guy who claimed his 6- and 8-year old daughters could eat more than me. I also couldn't tell you where this new found ability to remain healthy comes from. Did I gain confidence when I finally started dating, something I'd never really tried before? Doubtful when you consider some of the rejection I felt. Is it because I just decided to be healthy at last, tired of the inner melodrama? Again, doubtful. If only because I know that no one can "cure" themselves. Most likely, I've simply hit a recession for a while. I still call myself a fat pig almost any time I eat but I'll enjoy this ability to do it without anger while I've got it.
• Hand-in-hand with eating issues, I'm thankful my self-injury is also gone for the time being. This was definitely harder early this year, when boys kept rejecting me. After one guy stopped replying to me, my legs were black and blue, punishing myself for whatever I did wrong. I needed to place blame, and since they weren't around anymore, that only left me. I think being in a stable relationship now though is just a small part of its current disappearance. I think the main reason it's stepped into the background is simply my ability to eat without feeling the need to punish myself for doing so.
• Despite all my roaring insecurities, I'm thankful to know that I'm actually a fairly attractive person. It's shallow, yes, but we live in a world where beauty is valued far more than brains (although I've got myself plenty of smarts, even if they're not all the most useful smarts). You need to have looks to get by in this world, it seems. I know I'm not stunning or drop-dead gorgeous by any means, but I'm cute, verging on pretty. And also despite insecurities, I'm thankful that I can leave my home on a daily basis without piling on a pound of makeup. I like to play around with it every now and then, but I know I don't need it to make me pretty.
• I'm thankful for Brandon in general. Above I was just thankful he sleeps through anything and feeds me. But he's so much more than that. When I met him, I learned real fast why things didn't work out with the other boys I dated this year. With Brandon, it felt natural right away. He thinks I'm beautiful and constantly tells me so, and while I brush it off, I appreciate it. He lets me correct his spelling, actually asks me to do it! He deals with all my lame jokes (and I make a LOT of them). When I need a concert buddy for someone he's never heard of, he's right there driving and then standing next to me. As I said above, he feeds me! And not being able to eat very much in one sitting, I want to be fed every few hours. I'm sure it's hard to keep up with sometimes, especially since I'm hungry first thing in the morning, and he's not. He's supportive of me trying to get healthy, and encourages me to work out, not to lose weight as is my usual goal, but to build something on my body that resembles muscle. Honestly, he's just supportive of me through-and-through. He's always there for me when I need someone, and he's become my best friend.
• I'm thankful for my long-time best friend, Kendra. She's been there for me for the last year and a half like I don't even deserve. She mended my broken heart last year, and this year she's just been there constantly for me with advice and company. It's so nice just having her to talk to while we watch tv all day, and I know I can trust her with anything. I'm so happy for her this year, and grateful she let me be a part of her wedding.
• The rest of my friends, I'm thankful for you too, even if we don't talk often and see each other even less. You're all important to me, and to those of you I do talk to regularly, I'm especially thankful for you.
• I'm thankful for my family. I know it goes without saying, but I am. My parents put up with a lot from me, and they really don't have to. My younger brothers let me pick on them as if I would actually stand a chance if they fought back. My cousins always give me entertaining glimpses into their lives on Facebook. I don't see a few of you as often as I'd like, and I know that's my fault too. Still, some people have a lot less in their lives.

It's taken me an hour and a half to write this, I've so much to be thankful for. And I've been trying to shop for my nephews even though I haven't seen one in a year and a half, and the other never at all, and the last time my older brother emailed me was last Christmas when I asked what the heck to get the boys. Still, like I said, I thankful for my family, every one.

Perceptions of Self-Injury

I watch a lot of television. Too much, honestly. I watch Buffy with my mother. Honestly, the most painful thing for me on the show is in the first episode of the series, when Buffy lands on her back along the side of a tomb and bends in half basically. Every time I see that, I cringe. (I'm also shudder-y towards ankle injuries, having a weak ankle myself and knowing how much it hurts.) However, the one scene in the entire seven seasons of the show that makes my mom say "ow!" every single time we watch it, is when a young man is carving a demon's initial into his arm. All the pain, the fights, the stitches, the broken bones, the eye gouging, the flaying in the show and my mom is most turned off by someone who inflicts the pain himself.

Today, the Sun is Shining on Me

I never feel the so-called onset of Season Affective Disorder (if I even have it) but at times like this, I can certainly feel it lifting.

The Fear of Writing

One of the things that often keeps me from writing a blog or journal is the fear that eventually, it’ll turn into nothing more than a simple log of what I ate that day, what my current weight is, etc. Of course, it’s fine for me to digress occasionally to writing about my struggles with food and weight, but to turn what I always wanted to be meaningful writing into self-indulgent and useless prittle-prattle about how fat I feel and how much I hate my life… I don’t want to do that again.

The worst of this is that I never know how it happens, either. I’ve gone back over my old blogs at least a dozen times (oh xanga, the days of high school), and can’t find where I went from happy teenybopper posting about hot actors to girl who hates everything about her life to the girl who starves and cuts and faints all the time. I’d always start out trying to write about meaningful things, and somehow it always turned into bullet points of my weight that day and all I had eaten, with the occasional “personal” post, no more than two or three sentences long.

So once again I’m facing a very real fear that this blog (and my accompanying journal) will not free me, but rather trap me again into the endless cycle of trying to lose weight, and giving up, and trying to lose weight again. I don’t want this blog to make me feel bad about myself, I want to use it as a way to free myself, really.

If you can, wish me luck, please.