Fat Friday: Finding Balance

 

Image by GraphicMama-team from Pixabay

Balance is one of those things that I struggle with. I tend to have an all-or-nothing approach to pretty much, well, everything. It is deeply ingrained for me to criticize myself harshly regarding my imbalanced nature. I need to stop and remind myself that I am just now learning certain things that I should have learned a long time ago.

I am going to discuss physical exercise, which is a bone of contention for many of us because we have been scolded for not working out well enough, hard enough, long enough, or for not having achieved significant weight loss through exercise. While you are welcome to share your own experiences, I will not tolerate pro-weight loss commentary or body shaming. 

It is fine to mention that your parents, gym coach, personal trainer, or such body-shamed you and this led to an obsession with weight. It is not okay to say "yes, but if you just adhere to the Nuts and Bolts Lemonade Cleanse Cabbage Soup Diet while working out for six hours a day, you too could lose your unsightly fat!" Fuck right off with that shit. Also, saying things like, "well, it's fine as long as you're not THAT fat. If you weigh X pounds, that's okay. But if you weigh more than X pounds, that's unhealthy, teh obeeeeesiteee, blah blah blah," yeah yeah yeah, heard it all before. Fuck off with that shit too.

All the above shit does is sabotage any desire to exercise or engage in eating a nutritious, balanced diet. When I say "diet," I don't mean dieting for weight loss, I simply mean the food one eats. There is only one diet that I endorse, and that's the Fuck It Diet. I'll put a link at the end of the post.

I'm actually fairly careful with my diet because I'm diabetic. I'm not able to be as careful as I'd like to be because most of my food comes from the food bank. I would prefer to eat more vegetables, but I'm working with what I have. I am not better than someone who isn't in a place where they're able to eat a balanced diet or someone who is struggling with an eating disorder. I am not a lesser person than someone who can eat a perfectly satiating plant-based diet. I'd probably have to hire a chef to make that happen, and if I'm having to get my food from the food bank, hiring a chef isn't high on my list of things to do right now.

I have difficulty coming to grips with exercise. It isn't that I don't like to exercise, but I'm no longer able to do many of the things that I used to do. I also have that shitty voice in my head that tells me if I'm not able to run like a racehorse for miles while interspersing jumping jacks and other high-octane maneuvers and then lifting weights for an hour, well, what the fuck am I even doing? 

This kind of all-or-nothing thinking is toxic and leads people to stop exercising.

Diet culture fucking sucks. One of my missions in this life is to keep pointing that out until people finally start getting it. 

Eating "too much junk food" does NOT cause a person to develop diabetes. Being "too fat" does not cause a person to develop diabetes. The only thing that causes diabetes is having a genetic vulnerability to diabetes. It is likely that I would have developed diabetes eventually even if I ate the perfect diet and was the so-called "perfect" weight for my height. The rest of my endocrine system is a trash fire, so it was coming. However, I might have been able to stave it off for a few more years if I hadn't been in a constant state of food insecurity, because of poverty and self-inflicted food shortage, aka dieting. 

Dieting changes a person's body but not in the ways that the multi-billion dollar diet industry tells us. It fucks our metabolism. Eventually, the chronic dieter can no longer lose weight even when they adhere to an extremely restrictive plan.

I have my abusive life partner ED (Eating Disorder) under wraps most of the time, so we're not going to discuss him right now. Instead, I'm going to concentrate on discussing my struggles with exercise. 

In the early 90s following a difficult pregnancy and emergency c-section, while at the same time having severe food poisoning (campylobacter,) my body was torn up, and I was physically weak. I was ashamed of the way I looked and ashamed that I couldn't even push the pedals on the exercise bike hard enough to keep the display screen on. I enrolled at 24 Hour Fitness. 

Instead of suggesting that I concentrate on rebuilding my strength and endurance and advising me not to worry about the number on the scale, the focus was all on getting me back to my pre-pregnancy body. 

Stepping back in time for a moment, when I was taken to the OR to undergo an emergency c-section, the technician or nurse comforted me with the knowledge that I would be able to wear a bikini again because I would receive a horizontal incision. Even as obsessed with my appearance as I was at 25, I found this ludicrous. I couldn't have given a fuck less about being able to wear a bikini again. My child and I were going to die if he wasn't born, stat. 

Even in that horrible moment, the sexist attitudes that make prioritizing the idea of being able to wear a fucking bikini again during an obstetric emergency even a remote possibility enraged me. Above all else, women are to be pleasing to the male gaze. Is any woman who doesn't measure up to the Photoshopped and pornified standards of men's magazines even a woman?

Forward to today. I am struggling with the extremist attitudes that have been ingrained in my brain regarding exercise. Once I am finally able to make myself do a little workout, it's so psychologically taxing that I avoid it until I can psych or shame myself into doing it again. 

I know that it is important for people with ADHD to develop a schedule, so I "should" just schedule a certain time of day when I work out, right? Why not right after I get up and take my meds?

Not so fast, Sunshine. It's not quite that easy. I can't eat for a minimum of a half-hour after taking my thyroid medicine. 

Well, couldn't I just work out on an empty stomach?

Not if I don't want to risk tanking my blood sugar. I don't enjoy having to re-regulate things when my blood sugar is too high or in the toilet. The last time my blood sugar crashed I literally thought that I was on my way out and I was too drained to give a fuck. I forced myself to eat the world's most uninspiring sandwich and a packet of Bel-Vita breakfast biscuits and I didn't even inject any insulin. When I got home, I measured my blood sugar, and it was only 134. That's how depleted I'd been. So no, exercising on an empty stomach isn't an option.

Well, why not exercise right after breakfast?

Because I need to let the food digest a bit. Have you ever exercised right after a meal? Blergh. 

Okay, well, wait an hour and then exercise.

This is a good idea. The problem is, I'm usually into a project by then and don't want to lose my hot streak. Plus, I'm fighting the voice in my head that tells me if I can't be EXTREME, then what is even the sense?

I have to start low and slow. I have to give myself permission to realize that even five minutes is a triumph. Yes, I used to spend five hours a day at the gym on days that I didn't have to work. I'm not exaggerating. That's called orthorexia, and it isn't a good thing. I missed chunks of my son's early childhood because of it, and people still considered me "too fat." 

Body dysmorphia and all-or-nothing attitudes are something that I will have to combat for the rest of my life. I have mostly accepted the reality that I will always be heavy unless I become terminally ill the way my great-grandmother did. Since I still have plenty of damage to do, I'd prefer that not happen anytime soon, so the size-shamers can just kiss my fat ass. There's work to be done. 

Spirit of the Universe, please help me keep fighting my negative programming and society's hateful attitudes towards larger people. Please help me remember that my worth is not tied to a number on a scale and that good health, while desirable, is not a measure of personal value. Please help me to encourage those who may be fighting a similar battle. Amen.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

The only diet books you will ever need.

The Fuck It Diet

https://bit.ly/FIDCIE

Health At Every Size

https://bit.ly/HAESCIE

Free Use Image from Open Clipart Vectors

Fat and Ornery

Free Use Image from Pixabay

Hangry says "fuck dieting."

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)

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Come As You Are Party + Charity Sunday: Association for Size Diversity and Health

 

Free-use image from Pixabay

Content warning for brief mention of self-harm and suicide ideation

What if neither of the bodies depicted in the image above is "bad" or "wrong?"

What if they are both just bodies?

This is the concept promoted by the Association for Size Diversity and Health.

https://asdah.org/

The Association for Size Diversity and Health adheres to the principals created by Dr. Lindo Bacon in their book, Health at Every Size. 

https://bit.ly/HAESCIE

A full explanation of the HAES approach can be found here.

https://asdah.org/health-at-every-size-haes-approach/

The Health At Every Size® (HAES®) approach is a continuously evolving alternative to the weight-centered approach to treating clients and patients of all sizes. It is also a movement working to promote size-acceptance, to end weight discrimination, and to lessen the cultural obsession with weight loss and thinness. The HAES approach promotes balanced eating, life-enhancing physical activity, and respect for the diversity of body shapes and sizes.

Speaking as someone who tried to hate myself thin for 33 years to no avail, the diet approach did me more harm than good. My thyroid fried itself as I entered my teens and I developed PCOS. I have been treated shabbily for my size not only by the general public but by those who are supposed to "do no harm." 

When I was in nursing school, size-shaming was not just overlooked, it was actively encouraged. 

Even my current GP, who does not harp on weight loss and generally treats me with respect, honed in on weight as the focus for why I should increase my dosage of thyroid medication, which I am reluctant to do because too much thyroid medication causes my blood pressure to rise and my pulse to race. 

She suggested adding in another blood pressure medication, an idea which I gave a hard pass. I am already at the maximum dosage of two blood pressure medications, Irbesartan and Amlodipine. I can't take ACE inhibitors, which make me cough, or beta blockers, which exacerbate my asthma. I refuse to take a diuretic because I already have to pee all the time thanks to diabetes, another gift from my trash fire endocrine system.

Whenever the focus is placed on my weight as opposed to my overall health, I go into a shame spiral. I starve myself. I don't want to go out in public. All the hard work I've done to accept myself goes to shit as I once again start imagining cutting the adipose tissue away from my body, calling myself a worthless, fat piece of shit, and thinking that the world would be a better place if I killed myself.

I wrote about how it feels to be a large person in a world that loathes large people in the following poem, which you can read if you care to.

https://poetryofthenetherworld.blogspot.com/2020/11/i-eat-myself.html

Ragen Chastain, creator of the Dances With Fat blog, wisely observes that people don't take care of the things that they hate, and that includes their bodies. Teaching people to hate their bodies is emotional abuse, not "tough love." If shame worked, there would be no addicts, no alcoholics, no fat people, nobody with mental illness, and no smokers.

A person's size is more complex than the "calories in, calories out" model proposes. One can't determine anything about a fat person's food intake, level of physical activity, medications, or medical conditions by their size. The only thing one can determine is that the person is that size.

Even medical professionals who agree that many larger people have endocrine problems still deem it acceptable to shame these same people for their size. I can't wrap my head around that.

I told my PA that the numbers I care about are my blood pressure and my labs, including my blood glucose. I said that discussions of my size or weight are off the table. 

I am more likely to comply with treatment protocols if I'm not mired in self hate.

Emotional abuse doesn't work to mold people into what others think they ought to be.

Imagine that.

I will be donating a dollar to ASDAH for every comment on this post. 

As this post discusses a sensitive topic, I would appreciate that comments be respectful or not made at all. As someone's mother once said, if you can't say something nice, don't say anything.

My share for today is my entry for Day 25 in my perilous diary, Breaking Free from My Addiction to Validation. This journey has not been without it's setbacks. I am obviously still fighting my demons, and they win more often than I would like them to. 

Day 25

October 29, 2021

Spirit of the Universe, please set aside everything I think I know about myself, about my story, about my need for validation, and especially about you, Universe, so that I may have an open mind and a new experience with myself, with my story, with my need for validation, and with you, Universe. Please help me to see the truth. Amen.

I’m going to say something shocking.

You don’t need to “love yourself.”

If you’re like me, self-loathing is behind many of the difficulties in your life. I have trouble asserting myself and standing up for myself. It is very difficult for me to form bonds that go deeper than the superficial. I don’t trust other people and I tend to put myself last. The problem with the median nerve in my left arm stems from the fact that I kept pushing myself well beyond the warning signs that something was going wrong until one day I was in excruciating pain and could no longer work.

If you don’t stand up for yourself, people will walk all over you.

However, if you’re like me, you just can’t hang with the idea that you need to “love yourself.”

When people tell me that, it makes me cringe.

The only person who can say that without it making me cringe is Ru Paul.

Therefore, I advise you not to focus on “loving” yourself.

Accept yourself. Respect yourself.

You are as good as anyone else. Nobody deserves to be taken advantage of or treated like crap.

You don’t need to believe that you’re beautiful. I’ll never be able to think that I’m beautiful. Honestly, the idea feels kind of creepy to me. “Beautiful” has never done me any favors. It’s a lie that guys who want to get laid without caring about who they’re hurting tell.

I once saw a post on Tumblr that said something along the lines of “I don’t think my stretch marks are beautiful. They aren’t ‘tiger stripes.’ But they are human and deserve to be treated with respect.”

That is what I’m talking about.

I will never think that my too-small eyes with their skimpy eyelashes are beautiful, although I’ve always liked the color even though it’s a moss-green rather than a scintillating emerald green.

I will never think that my chipmunk-cheeked face is beautiful.

I can’t see my double chin as beautiful.

I don’t think that my gray hair is beautiful although I’ve always liked the thick texture (except that it’s a real pain in the ass to take care of) and I do like the way it looks right after I’ve applied the silver dye that I use to give it a bit of pop.

I don’t think that my big ass, chunky legs, jelly belly, or saggy boobs are beautiful.

And no, I don’t think that my stretch marks are “beautiful” or “tiger stripes.”

What I do think is that people don’t need to be “beautiful” or “fuckable” to deserve to be treated with common decency.

This old, fat broad deserves to be treated with the same levels of common decency as someone half her age and/or half her size.

You don’t need to think I’m beautiful and fuck off with “seeing the potential” in me. That shit is just creepy. Honestly, nobody wants to be made into someone’s project.

You don’t need to “love yourself” or think that you’re “beautiful” to be worthy of respect and dignity, and that includes from yourself.

I have a graphic that I use in blog posts with reasonable frequency. It says: “the pressure to be perfect is purely for profit.”

Who is benefiting from convincing people (women in particular) that they need to be a certain size or look a certain way, or they are worthless?

The beauty and diet industries have perpetuated this trash for years. They benefit from our self-loathing. They encourage it. It’s time to hit back and knock these multi-billion-dollar bullies on their asses.

Two of the items in my son’s and my recent food bank allotment were Smart Ones turkey dinners. These things were awful. There were four tiny morsels of turkey in a weird-tasting runny gravy with watery garlic-flavored mashed potatoes on the side. Aside from the fact that this isn’t enough food for an adult, it was entirely unpalatable.

I used to sink a lot of money into diet frozen dinners and shakes that left me ravenously hungry an hour later. This crap prompted binge eating because starvation does that.

The only diet you need is the Fuck It Diet.

https://bit.ly/FIDCIE

I eat many more healthy foods and binge a lot less since I stopped dieting.

This doesn’t mean that my story has a Goldilocks ending where I magically become the “just right” weight and the handsome prince comes and swoops me off my now-svelte feet and we live happily ever after. I’m still fat and there is no prince, not that I even want one. But I am healthier and feel better at the size I am. Not that this is a measure of my moral worth. As Ragen Chastain says, nobody owes it to anybody else to be what they consider “healthy.”

Spirit of the Universe, please help me to accept myself at whatever size I am and wherever I am in life. Help me to discern what I really want to focus on in life and to follow my dreams.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

Fat and Ornery

Free-use image from Open Clipart Vectors on Pixabay

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This work is the intellectual property of Naughty Netherworld Press/Poetry of the Netherworld.

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. Odysee’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on Odysee. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

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Fat Friday: Standing My Ground

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

Nothing is wrong with your big body.

The way people with big bodies are abused, bullied, and devalued is wrong.

So, I told myself that I was doing all right, but I was actually starting to spiral. It all came crashing down after I ended up making a casserole that was a culinary disaster and then reading a post on a medical site by a dietitian looking for a punching bag so she turned to fat people, but of course. The sharticle in question used terms like "glorifying obesity." 

After leaving this unoriginal twatwaffle a scathing reply pointing out that there is no "glorifying obesity", there are merely people daring to exist in public while fat and it offends her delicate sensibilities, I deflated like a balloon that had been poked with a pin. I crawled under the covers and went to bed without dinner, falling asleep while watching Clone Wars and wishing I was dead.

People do not take care of things that they hate, and that includes our bodies.

Assholes like this dietitian who rail against fat people like we were the fucking second coming of the black death end up pushing fat people away from seeking help for whatever may be ailing them rather than engaging in preventative or maintenance care. Fat people tend to only go to the doctor when things become critical because of the way we are treated by the medical establishment. This goes a long way towards explaining why doctors only see unhealthy fat people. Who the hell wants to go to a place where they know they are going to be bullied?

This is why size shaming and diet culture don't work. Health at Every Size works.

I'm fat, not stupid. I know when I'm being othered and scapegoated. It's a bullshit approach, and if you use it, I'm going to tell you to go fuck yourself. 

Believe it or not, I used to be a really nice, sweet person. Being bullied and made to feel ashamed of myself at every turn beat that right the fuck out of me.

Right now, t 'is the season for "so, how's your New Years Resolutions (translate: diet culture adherence and burst of orthorexia) going?" posts.

I ditched diet culture ten years ago after 33 years of yo-yo dieting and trying to hate myself thin. I don't do new year's resolutions. If I'm going to exercise, I'm going to exercise. It's hard to do much at this point with my disabilities, but I do try to get in a walk every day. 

I absolutely do not diet. Dieting destroys a person's metabolism. I was a serial dieter and every time I dieted, the weight I lost came back with friends. 

Yes, I'm fat, and if people are going to be jerks about it, they are not people I want around me anyway.

“Is 'fat' really the worst thing a human being can be? Is 'fat' worse than 'vindictive', 'jealous', 'shallow', 'vain', 'boring' or 'cruel'? Not to me.”

― J.K. Rowling

Fat and Ornery

Image copyright Open Clipart Vectors

"Fat isn't the problem. Dieting is the problem."
--Dr. Linda Bacon

The Cheese Grates It + Fat Friday: Is It Worth It?

Image by Erich Westendarp from Pixabay

I approached this post with trepidation and end my experience with applause because the author is that rare person who takes a position similar to Health At Every Size.

I became bulimic at twelve. My thyroid burned itself out in my early teens. I had PCOS (I say "had" because I've gone through menopause and now my ovaries are atrophied so I don't think it's an issue anymore.) I struggled with yo-yo dieting, orthorexia, and trying to hate myself thin for 33 years. None of it made me thin, it just made me hate myself. I had to stop dieting so I wouldn't gain more weight because every time I lost weight it always came back with friends. I can tell you from personal experience that it is NOT worth it.

These days I won't let people get away with being jerks. This includes medical professionals. Think what you want about my appearance, but you are not entitled to be abusive about it.

I still struggle with my abusive life partner, ED (Eating Disorder.) People don't believe me, but I am actually very good at restricting food. I went through a couple of days this past week where I refused to eat all day. Considering that I have diabetes, this is not a good thing.

This time of year is rough because so many people take up the rallying cry of "new you in 52," "I'm going on Keto (or whatever diet is currently in vogue)," or other such crap that I don't want to hear about any more than I want to hear about their bowel movements.

Thank you so much for being a voice of reason.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

Inner Champion Workbook Chapter 5: Take the First Step (Fat Friday Edition)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through any of the links in this post, I receive a small commission from Amazon.

Fair warning that I am having a dark day despite it being bright and sunny outside. In fact, the bright sunniness makes the inner darkness worse. I hate when people say things like "how can you be depressed when it's so beautiful outside?" Please, if you say that sort of thing to someone who tells you they're feeling depressed, STOP! It doesn't help.

And now, on with the show.

An important goal that I’m going to achieve:

I don't know if this will happen or not, but there is an empty building across the street from my home which is zoned for commercial use. I will be able to access my 401K without penalty at 59, in other words, about four years from now. If the building is still available at that point, I am thinking about investing in it and bringing my idea to life.

"It won't be available then, Cie," you are probably saying. "Real estate goes fast!"

In the city, yes. Not out in the middle of nowhere. The house I'm currently living in had been empty since 2013.

"Well, what the hell do you think you're going to do with a building in the middle of nowhere, Cie?" you say now. 

I am thinking about opening a goat yoga studio.

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

"Goat yoga?" you sniff. "Who the hell is going to drive to your stupid goat yoga studio in the middle of nowhere?"

As my son observed when I postulated that I could probably pull in a few yuppies from Denver to drive out to Podunk on weekends for a goat yoga session:

"Denver? You mean Boulder."

He's right.

"Oh, and are you going to teach yoga, you disabled lardass? Who would want to take a class from you?"

No, I'm not, because I don't know the first thing about teaching yoga. I plan to put out a call for volunteer instructors, who would be allowed to record their sessions, pass out business cards, recruit people to sign up for their regular classes, and have a tip jar available.

By the way, a big rule at my studio will be this:

NO BODY SHAMING!

No fat-shaming.

No thin praising.

No encouragement of weight loss. No selling weight loss programs.

I want to provide an encouraging environment for every body. I want my studio to operate with a Health at Every Size (and every ability) approach.

Why this goal is important to me:

Most yoga classes shame larger students, behaving as if a literal monster just walked into the room when a big person comes in. It is also difficult for disabled students to find a class. I want the classes at my studio to encourage EVERY BODY, regardless of size or physical ability.

Image by filinecek from Pixabay

Why goat yoga?

Well, for those who have never heard of it, goat yoga is actually a thing. The presence of the goats is shown to have a calming and encouraging effect on those participating in the class. The goats won't have to learn the yoga poses. They'll be free to wander in and out of the classroom. And if a participant spends the entire session just playing with the goats, that's perfectly fine! Basically, the goats are therapy animals.

What has been preventing me from taking the first step?
Lack of access to funds.

How can I remove these obstacles or work around them?

Currently, I'm just waiting for four years and hoping nobody buys the place in the meantime. I also have a potential secondary site in mind.

The first step I am going to take toward achieving my goal:

I am currently making micro-investments with my small and undependable pay. I am hoping these will start generating passive income. I am also trying to promote my freelance literary services, as well as continuing to do reviews. I am going to apply to Kirkus Reviews at the beginning of next year in the hopes of bringing in another income stream.

For support and accountability, I am going to share my goal with:
My son knows, and now you all do too.

I feel better after writing this post. Sending positive energy to Lauren for the gift of her workbook, to Linda for the gift of Health at Every Size which helped me break out of the diet mindset almost 10 years ago, and to Caroline for the encouragement not to fall back into that limiting mindset.

Here are a couple more books to help you say FUCK YOU to diet culture and instead concentrate on REAL health, both mental and physical.

Inspire Me Monday (on Tuesday) #211: My Wait Problem

Copyright Taro Vesalainen

Inspire Me Monday is a new blog hop that I've just discovered. So, even though this is post #211 for them, it's my first one. 

I'm going to play nice and keep this post family-friendly, with the caveat that my blog is not entirely family-friendly. There are no naughty bits here, but there is cussing. That is how I roll.

With the realization that I am not a petite delicate flower and that buttah does indeed melt in my mouth and I am on the opposite end of the spectrum from nice and normal, you may be wondering what in the blazes kind of role model I am and how in the Universe I could possibly inspire you.

Well...

I do not claim that I can inspire everybody or even anybody at all if you want the truth. However, if you are like me and get absolutely nothing from reading cheery platitudes by shiny happy people because you know you are the furthest thing from being what they are, then I may just be the bundle of snark that you need to light a fire under your butt and get you on the road to success, your way.

You see, I was sidelined for many years by being unpretty and unskinny and having a brain that was trying to kill me. I had a very serious Wait problem. Like most girls of my generation and the generations before and possibly the generations since, I was fed a line which involved living Happily Ever After. But since I was unpretty and unskinny and Not Normal, I had to Wait. 

First of all, I had to Wait for the Handsome Prince (TM) that was going to come and rescue me, because, you see, Girls are Petite Delicate Flowers who cannot handle making their own way in the world. They will need a Handsome Prince (TM) to fight the Beasties that live in the Wild Wood. 

However, before setting out to catch a Handsome Prince (TM) I needed to Wait until I became Slim and Pretty. Because a Handsome Prince (TM) will never see fit to rescue a maid who is unskinny and unpretty. 

The years went by while I attempted to become Slim and Pretty. There was a prince or knight or something who liked me well enough and I liked him well enough. It wasn't love, but we did have a son, who isn't normal--he's better. The prince or knight or whatever and I ended up divorcing, but we got along better afterward (as friends, not romantically) and became a Forever Family together with our son.

I did not, however, live Happily Ever After. I was still unskinny and unpretty and my brain was still a mess, and I was still Waiting to catch a Handsome Prince (TM) to save me from myself. I never did catch a Handsome Prince (TM), but I did let quite a few Knaves into my life before realizing that my son didn't deserve to be exposed to these abusive not-gentlemen, and, in fact, neither did I. So I stopped waiting for the Handsome Prince (TM). 

It would take a while longer for me to stop Waiting to be Slim and Pretty before living my life. Then one day when I was 45 years old, I was hit upside the head with a couple of bricks. One was called Health at Every Size. The other was called Size Acceptance. A bright golden light shone down on me as I realized that it was not necessary to be Slim and Pretty to pursue my goals. It wasn't even necessary to be young, which was a good thing, because I'd left that attribute lying in a ditch years ago.

Unfortunately, I still believed that I needed to be Adored in order to be Successful. I gauged the worth of my writing on whether I got a lot of comments. I gauged my own worth on whether I got compliments. I was often left disappointed and sullen. Despite shedding so much Wait, I was clearly still suffering from a tremendous Wait problem.

I needed to make a critical decision: either accept the fact that my work will never appeal to the mainstream, or stop writing altogether. Since I become a tremendously sullen sod when I don't write, I decided to stop caring about the opinions of others, whether it be their opinions of my writing or their opinions of me personally. 

At that moment, a great, rotting albatross and a millstone lifted from my neck, and I felt as free as I did as a young child writing and drawing and giving no rips what anyone else thought of my creations, simply enjoying the act of creating them.

At this point, I engage in a few different types of writing. One is non-fiction writing, such as what I have done here. This type of writing divides into subtypes. One is promotional writing, the other is anecdotal and possibly encouraging in nature, such as this post. The more sanitized posts appear on the Deliver Me blog and sometimes the Horror Harridans Writing Sisterhood blog. The more raw and dark examples of this writing can be found on the Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp blog.

I also write and edit fiction, which, again, divides into two categories. There is work slated for publication. You can view examples of this kind of writing on the Horror Harridans Writing Sisterhood blog.

I write poetry as well, but this tends to be confined to two times a year: April and October. The NaPoWriMo blog hop takes place in April and the OctPoWriMo takes place in--you guessed it--October.

On the Deliver Me blog, I also share ways to make a bit of extra income. I do not claim that I am any sort of expert, only that I have learned a few things over the years, and I would like to share them with you in case they might help you too.

I am not an expert of any kind. I don't offer up soothing platitudes, either religious or otherwise. I am an agnostic and prefer to keep my spiritual beliefs and theories separate from my business writing. I have had a difficult life and, while I'm less overtly angry than I was when I was younger, I can't say I've completely accepted the things that have transpired in my life, even if I do understand them better. I have not been "cured" of my psychological dysfunctions, I have simply learned to cope with them. I am not here to tell you "feel good" stories or to tell you that it's all going to be okay because I don't know if it is or not.

So, how in Hades can someone like me possibly inspire you?

As I said before, it's quite possible that I can't. However, while I can't make everything right for you, what I can offer you is this: 

Honesty.

Not just honesty about the products or earning opportunities I may recommend. 

Honesty about myself and the world as I see it. 

No rose-colored glasses.

Just bare-bones, bare-knuckled honesty.

It's unpretty, but it's real.

Personally, I've never gotten anything out of saccharine platitudes. If you don't either, you may find me a--dare I say--inspiring change of pace.

This is how I may be able to inspire you.

~Cie~

Cross-Posted to:

Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp

Deliver Me

Horror Harridans Writing Sisterhood

Netherworld Writers Guild

One Love

Cie's Year-End Wrap-Up 2018

Image copyright Conger Design

I love the above image. Back in the late 1990s, I went to school for one semester for graphic design but dropped out. I didn't know it at the time, but I had untreated type 2 bipolar disorder, OCD, and borderline personality disorder, three exciting co-morbid conditions which happen to feed each other in ways that are just, shall we say, really special. I wouldn't be properly diagnosed until 2004.

When I think of how many years were wasted mired in shame and stigma because I had no idea in this Universe what was going on with me, I thought I was just an attention-seeking fuckup, it makes me very angry. Granted, some of the tools available to me now simply didn't exist when I was younger. E-commerce was in its infancy in the 1990s. There were no smartphones. 

Hell, even GPS was still in its infancy. (I still have my TomTom Go.) The job I have today could not have existed in the 1990s. Back when dinosaurs and Ronald Reagan roamed the Earth in 1984, I delivered pizzas. Even the TomTom Go was as yet unheard of. How the hell my dyslexic ass didn't get lost more often, I'll never know. When I think of trying to do my job without Waze, it gives me that feeling of waking up with a start after a terrible dream and praising whatever powers there might be that the dream isn't real.

So, I didn't initially come here to talk to you about type 2 bipolar disorder, but now that I've thought about it, I want to talk about it. This is how people tend to think of bipolar disorder, and it's a reasonably accurate depiction of type 1 bipolar disorder.

Image Source

The post that the image comes from is worth reading.

The late Patty Duke had type 1 bipolar disorder. She is a personal heroine of mine. Her book, Call Me Anna, helped me understand better the things that I had gone through and to help me forgive myself for some of the truly awful decisions I made while hypomanic. 

Being diagnosed with type 2 bipolar disorder helped me understand why I had seen some features of bipolar disorder in myself but was convinced that I didn't have it because I'd never experienced a full mania. I tended to go from crushingly depressed to positive and overly functional. I never flew off to Vegas and got married to a guy I barely knew or anything of that nature, although I did convince myself several times that the Universe wanted me to be with guys who raised red flags like nobody's business and who, unsurprisingly, turned out to be horrible and abusive.

When I was hypomanic, I would take on second jobs and be the world's greatest employee that everyone loved until everything came crashing down and everyone ended up thinking I was the world's biggest flake and fuckup. I would be mired in depression which felt like being at the bottom of a dark pit that there was no way out of. 

When I would finally, miraculously, find myself pulled out of that pit, I would admonish myself that from now on I would be positive and productive and would never go back THERE again. When I inevitably went back there again, I would shame and berate myself for being a worthless fuckup.

Click to enlarge. 

This is a fairly standard bipolar disorder screening questionnaire. It tends to miss people with type 2 bipolar disorder.

Was there ever a period of time when I wasn't myself? No. I was always myself, although I often didn't like it very much. 

The late Peter Steele of Type O Negative, who had type 1 bipolar disorder, describes reflecting on occasions following a manic episode where he felt that there was something he could have learned from the time in question if only he could remember it. I never experienced anything like that.

I've never presented as talking extremely fast or seeming particularly hyper. I've never slept well anyway, so the "sleeping less than usual" criteria didn't send up any red flags. The late Julia Lennon described having periods where she wouldn't sleep for a week at a time, and doctors didn't know what was wrong with her. She was institutionalized on several occasions.

I did get involved in ill-advised relationships with abusive guys, but I never flew off to Vegas to do so. I took on multiple jobs and then crashed, often losing all of my jobs. When I was good, I was very very good, and when I was bad I was nonfunctional. 

I speak openly about my mental health struggles because I would be very happy if no-one else ever had to fight the way I've had to fight. I've been told that I should keep my psych problems hidden because people would avoid me if they knew I was one of THEM. I was told I would never find a job if people knew I'd been to a therapist. 

I was also told that I was "just being dramatic," that I needed to "stop seeking attention," that I was "just being lazy," and that I brought all my problems on myself with my "negative thinking." I can tell you that none of these criticisms did a damn thing to help me improve my life or to do anything except hide my problems and hate myself because I was never able to develop any decent coping skills for dealing with them until I was in my middle years. At this point, I'm still cleaning up the messes made by attempting to hide my problems, such as a storage unit full of stuff and a mountain of debt.

We've come a long way when it comes to mental illness in Western society, but we haven't come far enough. There is still a tendency to see people with mental issues as less intelligent or less capable or as loose cannons just waiting to explode and harm others. The truth is, people who live with mental illness are more likely to be victims of violence than to perpetrate violence.

There is a tendency to see jobs such as mine as "lesser" and to believe that the working poor, unemployed, and homeless "deserve" to not have basic amenities or a living wage. This needs to end. Everybody deserves the basic amenities, whether or not they are capable of working a "normal" job or at all.

I heard the term "lazy" so many times that I ended up with a terrible complex about taking breaks or doing things that are purely enjoyable and will never turn a profit. I once read a statement from a counselor which said that the term "lazy" should be replaced with "demotivated," because asking a person why they are so lazy shuts down the conversation and thus any chance of helping the person, whereas asking them why they are feeling demotivated leaves the conversation open and may help create a plan for helping them.

Exploitative shows like "Hoarders" should not exist. Like, at all. Capitalizing on people's illness for entertainment is twisted and barbaric. Hoarding is a subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is the symptom of malfunction in a certain area of the brain. It is not "laziness." Dealing with hoarding tendencies is exhausting, time-consuming, and life-destroying. People with hoarding tendencies need help from a compassionate professional, not a bunch of lookie-loos seeking schadenfreude at another's expense.

My son is helping me deal with the lifetime of hoarding without help contained in my storage units and the closets and spare rooms of the mobile home that I hope to have in a condition where I can think about selling it by the end of next year. With his help, the storage unit, which is about the size of a one-car garage, is 1/3 of the way clear at this point, and we are hoping to have it entirely clear by June of 2019. 

My late father attempted to "help with cleaning," but his help really only traumatized me and made me feel more ashamed, which didn't lead to me keeping up with the process. My son is understanding when I tell him that I can't deal with a certain item at the moment and we'll need to put it aside. We move on to the next thing. He also suggests creating scrapbooks and art from my vast collection of images from magazines, unlike my father, who told me that "anything that lands on the floor needs to be thrown in the garbage."

My father had piles of papers and magazines all over his house. He had OCD with hoarding tendencies too, but he came from an era when one locked their mental health issues in an attic and never spoke of them. This helped nothing, which is why I have come out of the attic and am speaking openly about my struggles.

For years I refused to make New Year's resolutions because I had learned to equate them with "new you in 52" crap, which really benefits no-one but the billion-dollar diet industry. I refuse to have or promote weight loss as a "health goal." 

I spent 33 years in yo-yo dieting hell trying to hate myself thin. There is no way I'm going to endorse that behavior. I'm going batshit at this point with all the blogs in my sidebar promoting "get paid to lose weight" garbage. You'll never see me promoting these things because dieting inevitably fails for everyone but statistical unicorns.

Diets don't work. Health at Every Size works. If you want to start exercising, increase the amount you're exercising, or eat fewer processed foods, great, but do it for overall health, not for weight loss.

We'll all be a "new you in 52" anyway. We'll have new experiences behind us, and many of our cells will have been replaced by new ones. Don't buy into the "new you in 52" crap. It only leads to frustration. Instead, pursue things that will lead to a more authentic you. 

Your authentic you has nothing to do with a number on the scale or even the amount of money in your bank account. It is the you who is true to themselves, which has nothing to do with looks or status at all.

Best wishes in the coming year,

Cie