Poetry Attempt: Rose-Colored Glasses

My fingers feel through rose-colored glasses
Everything is soft
I feel soft lips whisper gentle words
But I cannot help but remember
Words that were not soft
And I am afraid
That now gentle words
Will become hard
Again

Long Term Projects Presents: A Novel?????

I've decided to take on a long term project. Something that requires dedication, time, energy, love, thoughtfulness, imagination, and concentration, among other things.

I've decided that I want to write a novel.

I wrote a novel as a 12 year old, that I recently (as in 2 days ago) found in my sent box while looking for something else! I was overjoyed to realize it was the most recent (probably) version, as far as I know, and I could probably work on it if I wanted to. Which I do. Just not yet.

For now, I want another project.

I'm still searching for plot details. So far I know two things.

My main character's name is Nemmy Barren and she's going to steal the sun.

Putting the Space in S P A C E

"trying to convince myself
i am allowed to take up space
is like writing with
my left hand
when i was born
to use my right

-the idea of shrinking is hereditary"

-rupi kaur, milk and honey

This is a poem from page 29 in Rupi Kaur's book of poetry. It's a read that I highly recommend to anyone, especially those that hurt and/or are healing. I read it for the first time last fall and I annotated the heck out of my copy. So much resonated with me. So much eased my soul and helped me to remember that I am not alone in my struggle.

Today, I want to talk about this selection. Page 29.

My whole life I have been bigger. When you're always a few sizes up from other girls, you try to make yourself smaller. Other people don't notice. But it happens.

I remember sitting on the bus in high school, always shrinking up next to the window. My sophomore year I had friends that I sat next to, and it was always an anxiety-ridden experience. Getting on the bus. Avoiding the gazes of people that looked up. (Maybe they were just looking for their friends and found me instead. Probably. But I didn't know for sure and it was scary.) Looking for my seat. The one three rows back, on the right. Were my friends there yet? No? Good. Window seat is mine. Yes, they're there? Oh no. I have to sit on the edge. I can't shrink as much. I can't make my wide hips and flabby thighs shrink into the seat without hanging off the edge. I can't hide from the people getting off the bus, knocking my thigh or shoulder as they passed.

Desks in high school, and even more so now, are a nightmare. They're uncomfortable and I always find myself comparing how much my thighs hang off the sides to how well-made the desks were for girls that were much smaller than me. They sat quaintly in their desks, with plenty of room to cross their legs or lay their hands in their lap to text discreetly under the desk.

Movie theaters? Ouch.

Crowded restaurants? Do you know how hard it is to squeeze between tables and chairs occupied by people? "Sorry," "excuse me," galore. I can feel the impatience resonating from every pore in the bodies of the people whose meal I'm disrupting. Me. So much of me. Too much.

Need to be smaller.
Need to be smaller.
Need to be....normal?

But this feeling of needing to shrink for others doesn't just translate to my being overweight.

It's my laugh, too. And my emotions. Someone once commented on how my laugh was "really big". I stopped laughing like that, how I naturally laughed. I laugh softer now, less. Because I don't want to make people uncomfortable. I don't want to drive people away.  And I don't want people to get mad.

More than one person has commented on the enormity of my emotions and it's been one of the causes of the destruction of more than one relationship. It's not that I have incredible mood swings. It's that when I'm upset, oh boy, I'm upset. Crying uncontrollably, hyperventilating even. "Are you okay now?" No. The tears keep coming.

When I'm happy, oh boy, am I happy. I could be excited about some things for days. I laugh at jokes sometimes for 20 minutes uncontrollably. But I feel people getting impatient. I feel them wanting to move on. I force myself to stop. I shrink back into normal-size emotions even though what I really want to do is keep laughing.

I shrink.

One day, I'm going to stop shrinking for others, though, as best as I can. I'm not a rubber band. I'm not made to grow and shrink and grow and shrink and GROW AND SHRINK.

I'm not a rubber band.

I'm a person. I'm allowed to take up space.

Holding up the Universe: A Fat Girl's Journey to Self-Love

I finished reading a book today called Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven. It's a book about an overweight girl and a boy with face-blindness and how they end up connecting with each other and falling in love. It was an authentic read, which I greatly appreciated, plus I just really enjoyed reading it.

In the book, Libby, the overweight girl, goes through many challenges related to her weight. She's bullied, sent hate mail, misjudged, and treated like she's not worth anything.

I don't have much experience with bullying or hate mail, but I do have experience with people misjudging (or just simply judging me) and treating me like I'm not worth anything. I know what that feels like.

I'm going to list some quotes from Libby's perspective that really resonated with me and we'll go from there.

"And this whole 'pretty for a fat girl' thing. I mean, what is that? Why can't I just be pretty period? I wouldn't say, 'Oh, Bailey Bishop, she's pretty for a skinny girl.' I mean, you're just Bailey. And you're pretty." (page 100).

"You know how far I've come and I know how far I've come, but everyone else just sees me for how large I am or where I was years ago, not who I am now." (page 65).

"He will never like you no matter what you do, no matter how thin you are, no matter how nice you try to be him." (page 58).

"Yes, I'm fat." (page 52).

"I've lost 302 pounds. The size of two entire people. I have around 190 left to go, and I'm fine with that. I like who I am." (page 8).

I've been working on for about 2 and a half years now the idea of self-acceptance. Loving myself beyond what I look like. Self-care is another thing that I have been working on, too, and it goes right along with loving myself.

While I was dating my now ex-boyfriend, he pressured me a lot into trying to lose weight. "For your own health," he used to say, although really he just wanted a trophy girlfriend. But that's another story. I started working out and practically starved myself for months. Coincidentally, I lost no weight. I was hungry all the time. I felt terrible, physically and mentally, because I wasn't making "progress" and my ex kept telling me that I was "a disappointment" and that I wasn't "trying hard enough" and that I "didn't care".

I did care. But I was self-aware enough to realize that as long as I was trying to lose weight for a person that wasn't me, I wasn't going to get anywhere.

After years of hating my body, I really wanted to love myself. I wanted to take care of myself. But that takes time, and my ex was only concerned with the math of "okay, if you cut down to 500 calories a day, that means you'll lose this many pounds in a week, so this many pounds in a month, and you can be healthy in about 6 months!"

Now, I'm far away from him, and I have been working on loving and taking care of myself. My new and improved boyfriend and I work out together a few times a week. Because we want to. Not because we have to. Not because some controlling asshole will leave us if we don't. Because we want to. I watch what I eat, and although, yes, I do count calories, I don't restrict myself too much. If I'm hungry, I allow myself to eat because my body is telling me that it needs something. I may do my best to choose healthier options, though. But if I want to have some icecream sometimes, then I am allowed to eat that icecream.

I am allowed to eat whatever and whenever I want now (I've actually been allowed to the whole time, I just didn't realize it) and knowing that is almost as freeing as knowing that I am allowed to be the size I am. I am allowed to be fat because that's just what my body looks like right now. My size does not define who I am as a person. It doesn't define my intelligence or my sense of humor.

I'm working on losing weight not because I want to be pretty (because I'm learning to believe that I am already pretty), not because I want to please or impress other people, and not because I want to stay with some immature boy whose mom doesn't like me because I'm fat. I'm losing weight simply because I want to take care of myself. I want to love myself. My body needs to lose weight to feel good and to work better, so I'm going to give that to my body because loving myself means loving all of me.

Something about Peace, Clouds, and The Giver

The thing about being visually oriented is that as much as I want to write about things I see, I also want to paint them. Which wouldn’t be a terrible thing except that when I see things I want to write about, I don’t know what to say. And I’m not a good enough artist to express the beauty, pain, or other emotions that I felt while seeing whatever it was that I saw.

I saw this cloud last night at the beach, It looked like a phoenix. It wasn’t a thick, bushy phoenix. It was thin and wispy and you could see the sky through it. It’s beak was right next to the brightest star in the sky. It was beautiful.

I felt calm during the moments I gazed at it. It was almost as if it were watching over all of us.

I don’t have a picture, because no picture would have done it justice.

Sometimes I wish I were like the boy in Lois Lowry’s The Giver. I wish I could transfer memories to others, like this one for example. I wish I could give you the experience I had. The cool feel of the ocean’s wind, the water and sand against my feet, the awe of seeing the phoenix in the sky. Awe is not enough to describe it. I felt beauty and I felt beautiful looking up into the sky. As though me and the sky were one, connected by all the space between us. As if there was no space between us. Just me being caressed by the sky. Relief. Calm. Peace.

It was nice to feel at peace, even if for a few minutes. Peace is something I’ve been searching a lot for recently.

Searching: A Confession

I left the Catholic church when I was a senior in high school. I felt alone and empty, and having battled depression and hallucinations (although, at the time I didnt know I was hallucinating) since I was about 14, I was tired of the endless battle of one step forward, three steps back. I gave up on God and religion.

I remember driving home one day in October I think, crying in the driver's seat because I was so tired of feeling defeated. I finally just admitted that I'd had enough and cut off my struggling relationship with God.

I fell into a lifestyle that was still spiritual, but not religious. Once I went to college, I stopped going to Church. I still held the basic values I had grown up with (you know the ones: be kind always, life begins at conception, etc.), but I dropped all of my religious attributes. 

I pretended for a long time that the emptiness I felt was just me adjusting to living a life without God.

But almost four years later I still feel empty.

My situation is complicated by the fact that I hallucinate, which I found out my first semester of college at the age of 18. I don't always know what's real and what's not, so I can't rely on physical feelings of "God is in the room" because I feel that regularly when I hallucinate and I have to believe that that feeling isn't real, for my safety and sanity.

When I was Catholic, I relied a lot on the physical aspect of "I feel Jesus's presence in the Eucharist" or in Confession or Adoration or just prayer.

As someone that hallucinates, I can't rely on that anymore.

As a Catholic, I heard God speak to me on several occasions. I can't rely on that anymore either because it could very well just be a hallucination.

One of the reasons I like going home to see my family is that I like going to Mass. When I first left the church, I hated it. I felt trapped and suffocated. But now, I desperately miss it. Mass brings this sense of calm and quiet relief. This feeling like I'm home. I want to go back to the church. But I don't know how. I feel utterly lost.

I'm still searching for a way to balance a life with God with my mental illness. This doesn't even get into some of my opinions that are against Catholic teachings that I would also have to come to terms with.

I'm still searching for a cure to the emptiness inside me. Maybe one day I'll find it. I hope one day I'll find it.

But for now, I'm still searching.

Poetry Attempt

May 16, 2017

"The plants are dying.
So next time it rains, let's collect some water in a bucket.
The sink is too tired.
The bathtub too sad.
It rains. It weeps. I collect tears in a bucket.
I drizzle salt water rain over some succulents.
Not at first, but soon they wither.
I guess you can't cure sadness with sadness."

Sometimes Something, Sometimes Nothing--A Welcome

I wanted a place to write. Not to rant (although I might sometimes), not to spill my guts and feelings all over the floor (that's what tumblr is for). A place to write. A place to think. A place to express some of the struggles and stigmas and difficult experiences that I go through.

I stumbled upon my blog from my early teens. I thought about continuing that one, but that is a former me. That was five years ago. I am a different person now. Many of my thoughts have changed. The way I see the world is very much different.

So, I started over.

I remember my fifteen year old self writing a lot about metaphors in relation to God. I don't believe in God anymore (I'll probably write about why later on), but I still look for life lessons in the little things. I've struggled with that a lot, to be utterly honest with you, because without God as a foundation I'm not sure how to find the meaning in the little things anymore.

But there is meaning. And I am going to find it.