Which is particularly bad timing because I desperatly need to plan and figure out the mess I am in.  But instead I am just floating on the waters, not particularly caring that I am headed for a thousand foot drop.

This can’t be good.

Dissociation is an unexpected partial or complete disruption of the normal integration of a person’s conscious or psychological functioning that cannot be easily explained by the person. Dissociation is a mental process that severs a connection to a person’s thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity.[1] Dissociation is a normal response to trauma, and allows the mind to distance itself from experiences that are too much for the psyche to process at that time.[2] Dissociative disruptions can affect any aspect of a person’s functionin

Derealization (DR) is an alteration in the perception or experience of the external world so that it seems strange or unreal. Other symptoms include feeling as though one’s environment is lacking in spontaneity, emotional colouring and depth.[1] It is a dissociative symptom of many conditions, such as psychiatric and neurological disorders, and not a standalone disorder. It is also a transient side effect of acute drug intoxication, sleep deprivation, various occult practices, and stress.

Derealization is a subjective experience of unreality of the outside world, while depersonalization is unreality in one’s sense of self. Although most authors currently regard derealization (surroundings) and depersonalization (self) as independent constructs, many do not want to separate derealization from depersonalization.[2] The main reason for this is nosological, because these symptoms often co-occur, but there is another reason of great philosophical importance, namely, that the phenomenological experience of self, others, and world is one continuous whole. Thus, feelings of unreality may blend in and the person may puzzle over deciding whether it is the self or the world that feels unreal to them.

Wikipedia seems to think there is something wrong with me

Do you have a Control Freak in your life with OCD?  One for whom nothing you do is ever good enough?

One who wants to control everything you do and never believes or trusts your expertise in anything?

One who could not possibly conceive of the possibility that they might be wrong?

I am so ANGRY.  I want to punch everything.

It is called ‘pooping-out’  when your body had adapted to the medication, and is no longer working as effectively.

The prospect terrifies me.  Effexor is the only thing that has staved off the life destroying depression– I could raise the dosage again, but at some point I would run out.

What am I going to do?

I wish I could explain this to someone.  But my mom is freaked out becuase of money problems, and my Dad has never been depressed so does not really understand.  Plus I feel like a jerk complaining when I am living off their largesse at the moment.

I wish someone would fix my head.

What the hell can I do?  I can’t afford to see my psychiatrist.

I am sad all the time.

The problem?  I just finished a 400 calorie meal.  It is nine at night.  I have taken vitamins, medication, high protien, high whole wheat food (for the most part) and not much sugar.  I have drunk 8 glasses of water.  But I feel the desire to eat, even though I should be healthfully sated.  I have had my 2,000 calories.  I should not be hungry.

Either I have a tape worm, or I am a food addict with binge eating disorder.

I wish it was the tape worm.  I would name it Trevor.♥

I feel….pathetic.

It is pathetic to be afraid of going out for a walk, because I might buy and eat too much food.

It is pathetic to make yourself go to sleep for 3 hours in the afternoon, because at least if you are unconcious you are not eating.

I am supposed to ask myself the question:

What is triggering me?

Notice I am being Triggered

Acknolege the emotion

take 15 seconds to breath

I choose my response.

It works….sometimes.  But sometimes you are in such an out of control state of feeling that you can not start the process, let alone hold some control over it.

So here’s the thing. You have problems. How do I know this? Because everyone has problems. And as problems will do they will manifest themselves in the physical world. Maybe you drink too much, maybe you are constantly anxious for other’s approval, maybe you buy alot of crap you don’t need, maybe you do drugs, maybe you sleep around, maybe you do nothing but watch tv, maybe you are controlling, maybe you are super judgmental, maybe you cheat on your signifigant others, maybe you need meds to get through the day. But if any of these are true, you have one advantage over me. Because your problems are private. No one can tell by just looking at you. But everyone with eyes can see what my problem is. And because of this, my problem is now completely public, and for this reason this makes me public property. Strangers think they have the right to mention it. News agencies publish headless pictures, because our bodies are apparently public wares. The world feels a feeling of entitlement to judge me.

But I am not public property. I am not a celebrity. I did not put my self out there on tv or youtube for fame or fortune. I never ran for public office. My life is not funded by your tax money. I am just Fat. That’s it.

1) They are made for fat people, not workout crazies. If you are 2% body fat and own a muscle shirt or a midriff baring top, we clearly live in different worlds. I have owned many many workout tapes, all to failure. Why? They are Boring as hell, and clearly made for skinny people. Boring skinny people. This has stretching, warm up and cool down included. The workouts are enough to get you sweating and breathless, but not dying of heart failure.

2) You don’t need a lot of money. I don’t know about you but I don’t have a lot of spare green. Certainly not enough to buy a heart rate monitor, A Step, weights, those rubber stretchy things, a blow up doll, work out clothes. Nope, all you need is a pair of Sneakers. And today I didn’t even have those, and everything was fine.

3) Diversity. In most work out videos this means 1 lady who is a size four and 1 person of color. Both in the back and both frequently the same person. This is bullshit. As if fat people can’t work out. In the Oldies DVD, there were about 15 people, all ranging from 100-300 pounds. And people of all Colors in the Damn front row.

Richard Simmons is basically all about acceptance. Accepting all bodies, all colors, all sexualities, all short shorts. All terrible eighties hair.

4) The music is Good. There is a reason they are called classics. Much better than than new age musac silliness that gets me to sleep. Or that hard core stuff that sounds like I am training for the apocalypse. It is familiar and energizing.

5) I have never been able to complete an excersize video on the first or fifth try because I have no coordination. No matter how many “Begginers” tapes I tried, I ended it feeling stupid and frustrated. But I could follow the Simmons DVD, the first Damn time.

6) You don’t need to do it in public. Like most fat people out there trying to lose weight, I have had the lovley experience working out at a gym. Nothing like being surrounded by 30 hardbodies staring in a mirror and your body flab wiggling about to give you the motivation to do it again. You might feel silly jumping around to oldies with Richard, but no one knows but you.

7) There is no Yoga. I actually have a ton of respect for Yogis. I think the way they are in tune with their body is amazing. But there is nothing worse than trying to do those positions with body fat in the way. They can be painful and harmful. Think about it this way. Take a normal gym goer, then strap 100 pounds of cotton to their body. They would collapse, and if they tried to work out, they would get hurt. But this is what a fat person deals with every day. I walk around all day with a 100 pound backpack strapped to my front and then have to function, why people sneer and wonder why I don’t “Just” lose weight.

8 ) It is Virtually impossible to Get Hurt. Way more people get hurt exercising than you would think. This is even easier if you are overweight. You only get 2 knees, my mother can attest to that.

9) It is fun. Really. Once you stop with the stupid judgment of others blathering in your head, let lose and have some fun. Really, this is the truth.

10) Almost everyone dancing with him has lost about 100+ pounds, ranging from 55 pound loss to 200 pound loss. So they are with you, and you feel part of it. It’s nice.

11) He is the Opposite of Pretentious. I am so sick of pretentious, arragant, excersize folk. They are never inclusive or understanding, and why should they be. They are 120 pound people who became 100 pounds of muscle. They could never understand (no pun intended) the burden under which we work. He may be squeaky and earnest, but it must be nice to be someone who is so self confident that he could care less what you think of him, and he is happily his sweet, campy self.

12) Warm Up, Stretch, Prance About, Cool Down. If you are anything like me you skip the introductions in books, and also tend to skip the warm up, stretching and cool down with a workout because it feels tedious and you just want to get to it already. In the tapes these are part of the workout and they meld seamlessly with the rest, so you have a more successful work out/

Even my parents laughed when I told them I was going to do Richard Simmons, but you know what, Fuck it. I am going to do these tapes and laugh all the way to 100 less pounds.

So there.

The First is brain chemistry. I have great respect for brain chemistry. Anyone who has woken up one day inexplicably wanting to slash up their wrists and the next day is perfect normal will. It is not the be all end all but it is very influential on our lives. I have noted with my friends before that different people respond differently to different things. Some people will drink and have an incredibly euphoric, powerful response. I generally just feel tipsy. I enjoy it, and it is fun with friends. But I don’t consider the experience remarkable. But I have seen friends who drink and are suddenly happier and more alive. This is brain chemistry. I cannot explain to someone like my mother the rush of delight that eating a delicious meal brings me. It is wondrous. While some have keen noses or eyes my tongue can memorize a delicious dish forever. I can remember meals from years ago as if they were right in front of me. But alcohol? I enjoy a nice cocktail, even several of them but I can’t drink it if it does not taste good. The experience is no longer worth it for me. But I have friends who can sip lukewarm vodka straight from the bottle quite cheerfully. This is not to say that I equate either enjoyment or even emotional connection with addiction. I don’t think those who experience that euphoria will necessarily become alcoholics. Only that it probably increases the likelihood.

This is one of the reasons I believe my memories of food are so vivid. I think it is the chemicals in my brain that give me this attribute. I do not characterize this as good or bad per say, it is what you do with it really.

And then the other end: social experience. Certain cultures do have more food attachment and association, and my father’s Jewish family is no exception. Pastrami on Rye, lox, bagels, rugulah, I associate these things strongly with the joyful experience of visiting my father’s family in New York. Then there are all the great foods I have had growing up. I remember dole pineapple ice sherbet with my Dad at the Tiki Room in Disney Land. I remember the lemon poppyseed muffins my mother would get me on special occasions in those early foggy mornings before she had a car, and we would wait for the train. Blocks of Tofu, plain sour yogurt, and quesedilla’s the only plain food my stubborn appitite would consume as a little girl. The wonderful homemade meatball subs by the little woman on the corner of Irving. The fried Oysters and Salmon Teriaki from the Japanese place I would want on my birthday.

All these fill me with Joy, not just because they were good food, but good experiences. Not just celebrations but simple memories from a time before my head got all screwed up.

But of course, memories, like mirrors lie. Have you ever gone back to a place where you had an amazing meal and it is just not the same. You may think to yourself maybe the chef just had an off night but the truth is we don’t just pack sensation into memories but emotion. I can’t replicate the euphoric giddiness of going out with friends at two in the morning for cheeseburgers and teasing each other relentlessly. All the little things, the weather, your mood, the time of your life all tie in with that memory. Influencing how you remember the taste.

Brain chemistry changes the taste of things too. There have been studies where they have shown that certain foods have addictive qualities, so the more you eat the more you have. This colors the taste of certain foods. Once I gave up my favorite indulgence, Chocolate, for 6 weeks. When Lent was up (I just did it for kicks) and I ate chocolate again it was not as good….it took 2 weeks for the taste of Chocolate to become as divine as it had been.

External influences as well….smoke pot or have a few drinks and what you desire in a food has changed. When under the influence of mary jane I can barley taste food, all I am aware of is the texture of it in my mouth. And have a few drinks and suddenly heavy fried food sounds perfect! Mid level pizza or burger can be ambrosia after a few strong drinks.

Truthfully I don’t really remember where I was going with this– simply that things are never perfectly straight forward and you can never really re-create an expierence. But maybe sometimes we try, without even being conscious of it. I donno. I am bored now.

and not in the good talking chicken way either. But in the even though you know cutting up your hand solves nothing and leaves ugly scars and kind of hurts you want to do it anyway. And even though you feel as if your circumference is similar to the moon you kind of want to eat your weight in pancakes. And even though you need a job and so far no one has responded to your charming resume instead of trying harder you will sleep for 5 hours a day.

And the more you think about your own absurdity the more clear it becomes that your whole existence is absurd. You are just a dot in the grand scheme of things, in 100 years no one will remember you or care, and you have never done a damn thing to justify your existence to this doomed civilization, and you most likely never will. And the more you think about it the more it makes you sad and you realize you should not think because all thinking does is make you sad, but the only way to not think is to pull out the exacto- knives, or the vodka or the pot or the pancakes, and really, that stupid stuff is what got you here in the first place.

Goodnight Everybody!