sarahntastic

I was married to a wealthy man from a wealthy family.  I don’t say this to brag my way out of your heart.  Obviously you know me well enough to know I wouldn’t do such a thing.  But just to lay this out:  I had an engagement ring and jewelry I was embarrassed to own, and never wore, mostly because its value was the same as a home in Silicon Valley; extravagant trips; extravagant gifts; gorgeous cars; successful investments; and so on.

But none of it meant anything to me.  Because I wanted a rich marriage, not a rich husband.  My former mother-in-law actually brought thousands of dollars worth of jewelry to me the day she arrived to take her son home to marry another woman.  My parting gifts, apparently.  I used it as an opportunity to finally tell her no.  She thought I was foolish to turn down the payoff.

As many nice things I’ve owned, seen, done, nothing matters if, well, if it doesn’t matter.

So the other day a friend said a particular car is sexy, and my reply was “I don’t think cars are sexy, I think paying rent is sexy.”  And by that I mean, taking care of your family in the simplest way is sexy.  Cars? eh. I’ve had them.  But trust, reliability, hysterical funnies, generosity of one’s heart?  Much, much sexier than a car.

*  “did you just say ‘paying rent’ is sexy?” quoted from this funny guy.

“He’s been ill. He must have mistaken you for Grandma.  Just stay out of there.”

It was a perfectly reasonable explanation to me.  When I told my parents about what my Grandfather had been doing to me for as long as I could remember, I knew his behavior was wrong simply by the way my mom’s eyes nearly popped out of her head and my dad sunk down into the bed, his head falling into his hands.  But the explanation seemed reasonable.  He was a sick old man.  We never spoke of it again.  I was seven.  It was 1979.

But something seemingly irreparable was already set in place.  I worried about everything.  I tortured myself with thinking the simplest things through to horrible conclusions, even at a very young age.  I binged in secret.  I climbed into the pantry to find my parents’ treats so I could scarf them when my mom napped.  I refused to play outside.  I fought my dad every step of the way learning to ride a bike.  The air, the sun, the openness terrified me.  I wanted to be inside.  I only felt safe inside.

School was easy for me.  Socializing was not.  I had few friends.  I trusted everyone and was always shocked when I inevitably found out everyone wasn’t trustworthy.  I liked boys but mostly stayed away from them.  I was in love with a couple but always made sure to be their best friend while they had girlfriends.  I lived with a never-ending sense of worthlessness and depression, no matter my grades, my kindness, my generosity, my creativity.  I never tracked any of this back to sexual abuse.  I actually rarely thought of my grandfather after he died a couple years after my revelation.  I was still under the impression my parents knew best.  Their explanation still held for me.  By this time I was overweight, and that was the source of all my problems.  Unsure why, just that I was.  Being fat meant I was unworthy of love, of a normal teenager’s life.  Instead I worked, bought things, took my brothers where they needed to go, stayed mostly at home.

I married way too early, under the mistaken assumption the first boy who showed interest in me I should cling to forever more.  I had no role model other than my parents, now married 40 years and mostly happy that whole time, married when they were nineteen.  Thankfully my marriage ended after not too many years.  Around the same time my beloved grandmother became ill.  Heart surgery at UCSF brought all of us together-and apparently brought out everyone’s need for gut-spilling.  My aunt revealed my grandfather molested her until she was fourteen.  And then did the same to her daughter, my cousin, just one year older than me.  My cousin who still now battles drug addiction and has never held a job or left her parents’ home to live on her own, suffered the same abuse as me but manifested her pain in a much more destructive way than I.

Suddenly my mother wanted to discuss the day fifteen years earlier I told her my secret.  I hadn’t thought of it in so many years, it seemed foreign to me, detached from my life, no longer part of me.  She felt guilty, she wanted to make things right.  But really, there is no making right what a child’s psyche does to protect itself.

I never had the anger, the confrontation, the hate-your-abuser phases some people go through.  It just didn’t happen for me.  I went to therapy.  I couldn’t conjure the anger therapists wanted me to.  Even now, realizing the indelible mark of worthlessness that the abuse left on me, that this is the legacy of my abuse, still I cannot be angry.  I just want to fix it.

Because here I am, still, fifteen more years on, learning, making mistakes, massive and small.  Self-loathing ruling my life, fat ruling my life, poor choices ruling my life.  But I choose this, right?  I have always told myself that it’s my doing, my choices.  But is that more self-hate?  Blaming myself for things I happen to not have the skills to do well?

There is no happy ending here, yet.  There is still more learning.  And I must say, I get tired of the lessons.  But there is no other way.

I lost a lot of weight.  I stopped losing weight.  I gained 20 pounds.  NO ONE is more disappointed, sad, depressed, horrified, terrifed than I am.  I don’t need you to look at me, comment toward me, or otherwise spend any energy on me and my fat.  Because, rest assured, I think of little else.  One doesn’t get fat without obsession and addiction.  And the obsession and addiction doesn’t just stop with food.  Anger, shame, disgust, self-hate, worthlessness are all things I am plenty skilled at feeling-obsessing on-being addicted to feeling all on my own.  If I could replay the tape that is on loop in my head 24/7 you couldn’t handle it.  Because it’s horrifying.  How much I hate myself.  So, thanks, but no, I don’t need you.  I’m already plenty fucked in the head about this.  You? I just want to beat the shit out of with all my fat.

I don’t miss him.  He did, after all, leave me. For another woman.  And marry her before we were divorced.  And had a kid with her.  After he (we) had been so distraught about my miscarriage the year before.  And ruined my credit.  And left me with no savings or retirement.  And left me to rot on the couch in paralyzing depression.  And after all that I still allowed him to be my best friend as he had been for 10 years.  And it was OK.  Because we had that history.  And it served a purpose for me, too.  Until he stole a lot of money from me last year and cut off all communication from me.

So no, I don’t miss this specific person.

But I miss the familiarity.  The best-friendship.  The jokes that only we thought were funny.  Because dude and I were super funny together (we all already know how funny I am, yo.  He was, too).  I find myself still, now, even last night, nearly saying something out loud something only he would know was hysterical.

Funny men, let’s do this.  Because I need some new funny.

I’m over it.  Entertaining myself at night with a buzz.  I never used to do that.  I never used to have alcohol in the house.  I’d certainly have drinking nights out but until this last year, never did I entertain myself in the evenings with drinking.  I used to do things like read, and write, and simply be bored if I was bored.  Drinking feels like shit.  And has stunted my weight loss.  And makes me feel like a complete idiot.

So, I just poured out 2 bottles of vodka and 4 bottles of wine.  Peace out, party of one.

OK, a question for my friends:  is it better to have caught a tiny glimpse of a person you **know** would make a good partner or remain ignorant that such a person exists?

I’m not trying to be all dramatic, you know I suck at choosing partners, and I don’t have a clue what it’s like to be with someone who adores me, who I adore equally.  It just has never happened for me.

Right now I’m thinking ignorance is what I would have preferred, but that might just be the PMS poopy-head talking.

Tell me what you think.

I’ve been accused on this here blog of stereotyping and generalizing about ALL men.  That’s not what I’ve done.  I’ve told stories about the fucktards I know, or have dated.  I’ve blamed it all on myself.  Because I don’t choose well.  I get a tiny bit of confidence that YOU MIGHT LIKE ME and I immediately start suffocating with WHY DON’T YOU LIKE ME AS MUCH AS I LIKE YOU? Or SEE HOW MUCH I LIKE YOU? I LET YOU TREAT ME LIKE SHIT!

So, my life, my fault.  And who knows if I have learned anything.  Probably not.

But I do know at least one thing:  there seems to be this very rare commodity out there of smart, funny single men.  I see glimpses everyday.  I get twitterpated (<<<—hilarious!) and all mushy inside with just the knowledge that you are out there.  Because there is nothing more appealing than a kind man with a brain that he uses.  And when he’s funny?  Well, I just can’t really explain how fantastic that is or I might start sounding weirder than I already do.

So, I know.  You’re out there.  Somewhere.  And I appreciate you.  I have a hard time finding you, and usually a woman smarter or quicker than me has found you already.  But I know.  You are lovely and sweet and funny and goofy and weird and smart and funny.  I already said funny.

So, there.  I am not a man hater.  I love men.  My life, my fault.  But you?  The men who I haven’t had the pleasure of scaring off?  Your presence in my life, or even if I haven’t met you yet, is appreciated.  Mucho appreciated.

After two nights of being able to string 4 hours of sleep together, last night sucked.  No sleep. Fitful sleep. Sweaty sleep.  Frantic sleep that means bolting up in bed to check the clock.  For what, you might ask, does an unemployed woman need to check her clock?  Right, nothing.

My brain is a freak of some sleepless, practical joking sort.

This morning I’m back to the crazed delirium that drained me last week.  And the week before that.  And the months before that.

And now that I actually have things that I need and want to do, I can barely function normally to do them.  I wanted to look at bikes today, but I’m so pissy and stabby that I just don’t see how I can go.  I am supposed to visit two friends, and it will be all I can do to send them each a message telling them that once again, I am too far gone to come by.

Everything is exaggerated when I’m like this.  I feel like everyone hates me and everyone is mean.  I am mean.  Nothing tastes good.  Everything is horrible and terrible and sad.

So, yes, Neighbor, you did just see that.  You, who already hates me because my gorgeous little dogs don’t like you and your dogs whose vocal cords you clipped.  You who doesn’t ever go to work yet your wife, who also doesn’t work, has had two babies in the last three years. You have purchased four new cars.  You live in a $2500 per month apartment. I know I’m off-topic here, but what the hell do you do?

Yes.  You did just see me pull up to our building in my dad’s enormous vehicle that I hate driving, pick up my phone to tweet, but instead just threw my head down on the steering wheel.  And burst. Into. Tears.

Bawling, sobbing, ugly-wrenched-face crying.  Beacuse I’m exhausted.  Because of a lot of things that make me crazy and are confusing right now.  But mostly because I am exhausted.

Depression is excrutiating.

So, I was wrong.

I thought I figured out how to not be obsessed with, and controlled by food over the last few years having fairly easily lost nearly 100 pounds and starting a decent work-out routine after doing neither in my life before.  But, it turns out, 2009 was a huge piece of shit.  And not big piles of shit, but various and many smaller piles of shit that I didn’t always notice until I realized the fetid smell following me was not going away.

I am more and more bogged down and depressed as time passes.  More later on the deep fear I have of  another depressive episode.  I’ll leave it at this:  it can’t happen again.  I won’t survive it, I am sure.  And not in the suicide-type of survival way, but the simple emotional-type survival way.

Food.  My greatest love, and my worst enemy.  My sustenance both physical and emotional.  My hobby and my joy.  My poison and my torment.

I’ve gained nearly 20 pounds this year, most of which piled on in the last few months–the hardest months I’ve had in a long time.  When I binge, I know intellectually I am hurting, and bandaging with food.  I hover above myself, watching the preparation of snacks and meals comprised of ingredients that have not, until recently, even crossed the threshold of my front door for years:  peanut butter, butter, chips, tortillas, cookies, candy, half and half.  I used to allow myself a dinner out for these trigger foods, and the results were fine.  However, I’ve talked myself into believing I somehow have control over these things, so I’ve brought them into the house.  But of course, that’s a huge lie.  I’ve brought them into the house for bandaging and love and support.

Funny thing about medicating with food.  It has the opposite affect of what you want.  It’s the same as any addiction.  Goddam, I feel good right in the minute.  The tastes, the smells, the textures, the sensual memories.  And then.  It ends quickly.  The high is gone.  Maybe it doesn’t come at all depending on how much I’m hurting, how deep the hole is that day.  Sometimes I graze forever.  Sometimes I have the strength to sit on my hands as it were.  Most of the time I don’t.

I have no answers here.  I carry my pain and fear in a constant lump in my throat, on the verge of tears most minutes of the day; in my folds of flesh that reveal my weakness and hurt to the world; in my chest that is always tight; in my head that always aches.  Today serves as a day of forcing honesty.  Reminding myself I’m fooling no one, least of all me.  I need to somehow get back to the high I got from losing weight, getting into the next smaller size jeans, people noticing my confidence and happiness and lightness–and not the size kind.  Because I’m not sure how my mind twists from knowing how good it feels to lose weight and being in control to bingeing on food and false control.