How soon is now?

I have long-ago come to terms with the fact that I am both a mystery and a conundrum; I change my mind more often than some people change their socks. It's hard for me to commit to things and see them through into completion; part of the reason I keep shaving my hair down so short is because the idea of wearing lots of different wigs is a lot more appealing to me than the notion of growing my hair out into a particular style and then having to maintain that style.

Nonetheless, as my 27th birthday rapidly approaches, I keep thinking about the fact that this isn't where I thought I'd be in my personal life. I'm lucky enough to have the greatest group of friends in the history of friends--- better friends now than I ever dared to dream I'd have in this lifetime. Most of them might as well be blood relatives, and they are the only people in the world I feel safe with. They stood by me through the darkest, most fucked-up period of my life and for the first time ever I feel truly loved and welcome among my group of friends.

But friends aren't the problem--- my friends are perfect. It's my heart that's the problem, and the fact that even now I can honestly say that I've only ever had one truly 'promising' serious relationship. And that boy remains one of my best friends in the world, and I still adore him, but no other guy in the eight years since we broke up has even come close to rivaling him for my affections. And I don't understand where the problem stops being 'the other guys' and starts being 'me', because then maybe I could start to fix it.

When I was in high school I never had a boyfriend, though I was in a long-distance relationship with a beautiful drug addict in Tennessee. His name was Joseph, although he went by Jinx, and he was the biggest fuck-up that I'd ever known. But this was in my era of reading Poppy Z Brite novels and draping black lace over the curtain rods in my bedroom and he seemed hopelessly romantic to me; he was older by nine years, a divorced junkie screw-up father of two who bounced from his mother's house to random trailers around Knoxville to girls who would let him stay for awhile to homeless shelters. For awhile he lived at the Salvation Army and would stand outside using a pay phone and a cheap calling card to talk to me every day; we spent all of our disposable income on phone cards and 10-10-321 calls to one another, talking obsessively. And it was the first time in my life that I really learned how to talk to someone for hours on end without saying anything important. Jinx wrote me letters promising that he would get on a Greyhound and come to be with me as soon as he had the money; he called me his darling and introduced me to music I'd never heard before and read poetry to me. We wrote each other letters in the most purple prose I knew how to pen, florid descriptions of our love for each other. He fueled me; I think I wrote more poetry and stories in the years we were friends than I have since. He was also a pathological liar and an asshole; I would catch him in his lies frequently and he'd sob and agree that he was a jerk, and then months would go without us speaking. I'd wonder if he was back on drugs, if he was still at the homeless shelter, if he was with a new girl, if he was even still alive. And then, as if thinking about him was some weird conjuring spell, he would call me--- my phone would vibrate with an unfamiliar number, but if it had an 865 area code or was 'restricted/unknown', I would lunge for it as if the man at the other end was a lifesaver in a tumultuous ocean. And he would apologize and tell me how much he'd missed me, and I'd tell him how much I missed him too and it wouldn't be a lie. And then he would say "Hey, this song reminds me of you" and he would put the phone to the speaker of a cheap boombox and make me listen to Big Electric Cat or Placebo or Pitchshifter or old Marilyn Manson and I would feel my heart hurt in my chest.

I was never sure if it hurt because he had left or because he was back.

In 2002, after we'd been friends for several years, I convinced my mom that we should go to Knoxville for spring break to visit him. She was dubious--- I was sixteen, he was in his twenties and had a less-than-sparkling history. She knew that he was toxic; he would call me at 3 AM on a school night, crying because he was lonely or his depression had kicked in or he was high or God knows what else, and I would always answer and sit up with him, talking soothing nonsense until we had to hang up and I had to drag my exhausted ass into the shower. Our love was true, yes; I would've probably done some stupid Juliet poison-drinking for him if he'd asked at that point, although I know now there's no way his selfish ass would've ever taken a dagger to himself for me. But it was an unhealthy, obsessive love and I clung to it even through all of the pain he put me through. I told him that I was coming to visit and he went insane with delight; we spent weeks obsessing over every detail, planning our trip, deciding what we'd do when we met in person. We drove to Knoxville and when I arrived at his house, the screen door was closed but the main door was open. I could smell incense from the driveway; the place was Spartan at best, thrift shop furniture, the cheap shitty stereo where he'd played so much music for me sitting on the counter. He was on the couch; he was lanky and skinny, a scarecrow with greasy, unwashed hair its natural mousy brown, all of the Manic Panic washed out because he was trying to find a job at the time. He wore oversized titanium-framed glasses and smoked incessantly even though I was allergic and he smelled like every head shop I'd ever been in, cloying incense and essential oil and cigarette smoke and sweat and dirty laundry. But I loved him; we hugged so tightly I thought he might snap in half and we sat on his couch, talking and kissing and it was so much better than a phone call.

 

That night, we got into the rented SUV my mom and I had come to Tennessee in. She was in the hotel room, asleep in bed; he and I folded down the seats and lay on our backs, my head on his shoulder, talking until my mom woke up around 2 AM and realized I hadn't come inside. She came out and said that that was enough for the night--- I'm sure she thought we were having sex back there. A lot of things happened between us, some very personal conversation and some moments that have stuck with me my entire life since, but nothing physical beyond a few kisses. I was too enamored with everything else to even think about his dick at that point. My mom drove him back to his place and she and I went to bed after he made us promise we'd come back when we woke up and we'd all go to breakfast together.

 

At 8 AM I was practically bouncing on her bed, rushing her along--- hurry up, hurry up, he's waiting on us. I was convinced that he was sitting by the door, watching the clock, and I urged her through the shower, pushed her out the door of the hotel room. We drove to his apartment and I knocked. No one answered, and I thought he's asleep, he stayed up all night after all so I knocked again, and then again. After about fifteen minutes, I went and got back into the car, used my cell phone to call the only number he had, his mother's phone. His mother answered and told me that she would come over shortly with a key, that he had probably gone out for coffee or something and that we could wait for him inside.

 

When she got there with her key, she opened the door to show an apartment that looked like it belonged to a movie set. The photos were gone from their frames, the stack of burned CDs was missing, the Walkman and headphones were gone. The furniture was all there but the dresser had been emptied, the bathroom was evacuated of toiletries. She gave me a sympathetic look but offered no explanation as we all left the empty shell of his apartment. My mom and I went to the farmer's market, to a big flea market, to Dollywood, but I kept checking my phone every few minutes in case I missed a call somehow.

 

It was six months before he called me again, and he said that he'd gotten scared because of how 'intense' our connection was. He had packed his shit and gone to stay with a friend to get his head together. Once he knew I was back in Texas, he'd gone back to his apartment to 'sort things out'.

 

That alone should've been enough to make me walk, but it wasn't. I stayed with him in our weird off-and-on long-distance thing through my junior and senior year; the night I graduated I was at a casino party celebrating with my friends when a woman called me screaming at me and demanding to know who I was. Apparently Jinx had been living with her for months and was her boyfriend; she claimed they were expecting a child together. I told her that he and I spoke every night and that he had been begging me to come and visit again; in fact, he was excited that I was going to school in West Virginia because it was only four hours from Knoxville and we could arrange visits between ourselves. She was furious, and I spent most of my graduation night in the parking lot sobbing and screaming at him for lying to me again.

 

When I moved to West Virginia, Jinx was in one of his 'silent modes' and I hadn't heard from him in awhile even though he knew I was moving up. I met John, who was wonderfully stable and silly and intelligent and responsible; John was a child at heart, but he didn't drink or do drugs, he loved his parents, and he was smart. He was exactly the opposite of Jinx, and he was a shock to my system. What was it like to be around someone who not only wanted to see me every day, but who invited me to his parents' home for holidays instead of running to hide when I crossed the country to visit him?

 

And I guess in a fucked-up way I decided that I didn't deserve John. We weren't perfect; we were both Geminis, capable of being fickle and inducing jealousy with our flirting, and we had arguments like anyone else. But John was a level of comfort, of goodness, that I had no basis for comparison on. John liked to lay in bed reading together, my head on his shoulder, only moving when one of us had to pee or someone got hungry. He liked when I'd come and visit him in the radio station while he hosted his late-night broadcast show; we made each other silly mixtapes, not ones full of brooding, sulky music about dying for love or any of that shit. We had snowball fights and John looked damned good in my leather jacket. I started to gain a little self-respect again, a little spine; when Jinx finally did call, asking when I could come see him, I took a perverse delight in telling him that I was with John, that John was amazing and perfect and wonderful for me and everything that I wanted. It was true, but for once I was the one doing it on my terms. I wasn't at Jinx's mercy, and I wasn't at his beck and call. He could come to West Virginia if he wanted to see me so badly. And of course, predictably, he never did.

 

I only saw him once more, in 2008 I believe, when my sister gathered a group of her friends for a road trip to Tennessee and they invited me along. We rented a cabin in Pigeon Forge, very near Knoxville, and true to form, Jinx's spidey-sense must've tingled and told him to call me. We agreed to meet, and he actually drove to the cabin we'd rented. We spent the night in the basement, talking and lying there just like we had in the SUV. He stayed the night; we talked until dawn. I kissed him as an adult woman and not a loveblinded teenager, and I realized that I still loved him. But I had grown, and I had learned more about myself, about what I deserved and what I needed. So I wasn't going to fall for it again. The next day, we went to a park he knew about and walked; we saw deer and old churches, historic sites. We hiked, he in his imitation-leather jacket, hair pulled back, face grizzled and gaunt. Gone was the beautiful goth boy I'd been so infatuated with when I was a high-schooler; in 2008 we'd known each other for nearly eleven years and all of the shine had worn off of his bullshit. When the vacation ended, I spent the night at his apartment for the first and last time. We lay in his bed that reeked of cheap incense and shitty cigarettes, staring at his watermarked ceiling and listening to a Placebo mix CD I'd made him in '04, and we didn't talk. I think we both knew that it was over; it had come full circle and, as the saying goes, the time had come to put away childish things. I wasn't a child anymore, and he wasn't living in the pseudo-glamorous veil of junkie-chic romeo anymore. I kissed him for the last time and we haven't spoken a word since, not so much as an email. My number is still the same, and I know that he knows it, but I don't know if he'll ever call it again.

 

If he does, I don't know if I'll answer.

 

 

 

 

 After Jinx was finally out of my life though, I thought I could heal. I thought I'd be able to find someone who really loved me and appreciated me, who would treat me the way John had and who would help me grow as a person. I didn't want to believe that I didn't deserve a good lover, someone who would make me feel good about myself all the time.

I went on dates and I had relationships, though none of them lasted more than a few months. I have a nasty habit of sabotaging things when they start going too smoothly, and I think that's because I simply have no experience with something going the way it's 'supposed to'. My father wasn't around and I harbored a lot of resentment toward him, so I tended to bare my teeth and growl at any man who my mother tried to date. (Granted, they all turned out to be scumbags and con artists in some capacity, so my instincts were right, but the fact remains.)

I tend to drive my car off a cliff, so to speak, when it comes to love. Even if things are going well, I start finding reasons why they aren't.

I dated a married couple for awhile, and they were wonderful to me. It started with Angie, who I had a crush on from talking online; she was beautiful and funny and we were into a lot of the same things. We went to a Repo! The Genetic Opera shadowcast in Dallas and hit it off like crazy. She explained that she and her husband Blane were polyamorous and she and I got involved; shortly after, Blane entered the mix. They had a daughter who I cared about very much, and I spent a lot of time with them. There was even talk of me moving in. But I started to feel strange about things; if there was an argument or conflict, I felt like I had to pick a side, and I hated trying to choose one of my lovers over the other even if they never asked me to get involved. It was a natural progression. It occurred to me that while they were married with a kid and a house, I was always going to be the 'other woman' even if they never made me feel that way; I was the third wheel, the +1 to their relationship, and it made me feel insecure about my standing rank. I knew that if anything ever blew up, I would be the one to go; they had a steady bond that had been going for years and I had nothing to lend to that. I just drew back from the situation and we're all still friends, and I still visit them when I get the chance, but the one major thing it taught me is that I'm too jealous and possessive of a lover to be okay with 'sharing'. A threesome is hot, but in a living situation, the whole dynamic shifts and if you aren't flexible and secure in yourself (two things I wasn't), it won't work. I'm just glad that we were able to remain close after it ended, because I would've hated to lose them for something that was my own issue pretty much entirely.

A friend of mine from that same Dallas shadowcast group and I started talking a few months later and realized that we had feelings for each other; Jeremy was funny in his own quirky, dry sort of way and he could be very sweet. He was cute and had a big, comforting, teddy bear presence that made him fun to hug. We had chemistry when we kissed, and we became an 'item' fairly quickly. I drove to Dallas almost every weekend to hang out with him and we had a lot of fun together. But our fights were almost always about communication or the lack thereof; sometimes we just couldn't get on the same page no matter how hard we tried, and it was hard for him to filter things when we were talking. If you combine someone who isn't terrific at tact (him) with someone who is overly emotional and takes a lot of shit personally that she shouldn't (me), sometimes you get a really bad mixture. And after one such fight, I told him that I couldn't do it anymore, and we ended things. We're still very good friends and I still adore him, and he's seeing a new girl now who seems much better for him. She is probably a lot more stable than me, anyway. So that's something; he got the better end of the deal in finding his new woman, and he managed to dodge the bullet that is me.

And then there was Scott, and that one is still a little uneasy for me. He is a wonderful guy, sweet and funny. OKCupid said that we were a 92% match, and when I read his profile I was instantly interested; he's a baker, into horror movies and special effects, and we had virtually the same taste in movies and books. We started chatting and right away the connection was insane; he was like a male me in some aspects, and we could ramble about things for hours. When we met, the connection was still there, and we started seeing each other. It had to stay casual because I lived two hours away and my calendar was insane at the time; my mom was still sick and fighting cancer, I was taking a huge courseload at school and trying to maintain a 4.0 GPA, and I was still working. When I did have a little down time, I didn't often feel up to hanging out because, for some reason, when I'm around a significant other (or potential one), I feel like I have to be 'on' all the time, charming and funny and cute. And I just didn't feel like it, so I would cancel plans or refuse to commit to them altogether. I treated Scott like shit when he didn't deserve it, but in truth, I think a part of me pulled a 'Jinx' and panicked because our connection was solid. We had so much in common and he wanted to make it serious; we talked about the future sometimes and he just made it sound like a possibility instead of a hypothetical scenario. And I wasn't sure if I liked that or not; for some reason I balked and just shut him out, not once but twice, and pulled away. Everything was pulling me in a dozen directions and I realized that I just wasn't going to be good for Scott; I wasn't ready to be a serious girlfriend, or get married, or have kids, or anything else that seemed like a possible outcome from dating him. I am still too immature and too irresponsible for that, and so I hurt him to make him back off. I didn't know what else to do and I'm still angry with myself for it, and I still want to be friends with him because he's a wonderful guy. He just doesn't want the same things in life that I do, and I can't 'grow up' fast enough to change that. Nor am I sure that I want to; I don't know who I want to be, and I can't find out if I'm already trying to be somebody's somebody.

My last ex, Thomas, was great on paper. He was intelligent, almost intimidatingly so, and he was attractive. He had a good, steady job with financial security and was responsible with money. He liked adventure and was a photographer who enjoyed going out and shooting with me; it was a hobby we could share. He likes to cook and kept a neat apartment; he paid everything himself and still had money left over to take me out. In short, he was a sensible guy who should've been great.

But almost right off the bat, I was getting warning bells. He barely knew me before he seemed ready to drop the 'L' word in reference to me; we went from texting casually throughout the day to him wanting to drive an hour after work every afternoon to see me each night and became annoyed or put-out if I declined. He asked me to go on a fun weekend trip to a small German touristy town down south; I agreed, and what began as fun window-shopping, food sampling and exploring quickly soured when he became too clingy and got passive-aggressive over a miscommunication on Saturday night. After, when I told him that I thought things might be getting too intense too quickly, he blew up at me, blaming me for everything and saying that I had intimacy issues. Then he wrote horrible things about me in his blog and Facebook, posted things on our local craigslist about me, and painted the whole scenario that I was a cruel, lying bitch who had led him on. All because I told him, from the beginning mind you, that I wasn't ready for something super-serious right out of the gate and because I told him that I was beginning to be uncomfortable with how fast things were moving. I called him when I saw the blog posts and confronted him, calling him out for lying; he removed some of the offending statements, blocked me from all forms of contact, and immediately reposted another ad on Craigslist looking for a new girlfriend. He has since found one; she's got a young son and he is already singing her praises from the rooftops, telling everyone how she is his soulmate and the best thing that's ever happened to him.

And I hope that's true for him, I do. I don't wish ill on anyone. But fuck. For the most part I'm relieved to be rid of him, but another part of me thinks Damn, remember when he said you were the 'best thing that's ever happened to him' and he was writing blog entries about how smitten he was with you?

Two of my best friends have been in love for almost a decade; they're married, although Texas refuses to see it that way, and they have one of the most beautiful, loving, wonderful relationships I've ever had the pleasure to witness. They fight just like any other couple, and I'm sure there are some real doozies when there's no one around to see. But they are always looking out for each other, defending each other, keeping one another in check. Their balance is symmetrical and perfect and beautiful to see, and it makes me hopelessly jealous because I want that. I have always prided myself on being an independent person; I was an only child who never had to share the attention with anyone, and I'm sad to say that I like it that way. I like being able to do what I want without having to answer for it or ask permission. But at the same time, fuck I want somebody who will understand that and roll with it instead of trying to mold me into something I'm not. I want to cuddle until we're about to fall asleep, and then I want my own side of the bed. I want a partner in crime, not an inhibitor. I want someone who understands what a tone in my voice, or a hint of my body language, means; I watch Shawn and Jeff read each other like large-print books and I just wonder if I'm ever going to get as lucky and as fortunate as those two are. I also wonder if I am strong enough to work at it, because nothing worth anything is free or easy, and I tend to run when things get tough and scary for me.

It gets fucking lonely sometimes. I'm writing this from Boston, where I took myself on an adventure--- a filmmaker I love, Adam Green, is holding a charity benefit this week for the Boston Marathon victims and their families, and I flew out to attend. None of my friends could come, which sucks, so I'm here alone in a hotel room outside of Holliston, MA, and while I should be having an amazing time, tonight I sat alone in a steakhouse eating by myself, watching everyone around me, and then I came back to the hotel and sat online for a few hours. I started listening to music which in turn made me think of the Ghosts of Exes Past, and now here I am, crying and lonely at 1 AM in Boston in a La Quinta bed and thinking about how nice it would be if someday, some other little fucking weirdo would stumble along and lo and behold they'd be the perfect puzzle piece I've been missing all my life.

I know how to fall in love. What I haven't learned yet are two things: how to love myself, and how to let myself be loved.

I Believe I Can Fly

Just got home from a whirlwind family vacation; my grandma hadn't traveled since around 2004 (and that was a car trip; her last flight was in 1999) and my uncle hadn't been on a vacation since the 1980s, so my grandma and I decided to plan a trip to Los Angeles and Las Vegas. We flew out to LA and spent three days there, then headed to Vegas for two days and flew home from there. From Vegas, I drove almost directly to the set in Dallas so that I could help work on our film project. So needless to say, it's been stressful and tiring! But I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I did notice a few fantastic things though. One was that my size 22 jeans, which I wore into the Barker Bariatric Clinic in January for my surgery consult, were literally unable to stay up on my hips. When I put my cell phone in my pocket, it weighed them down so much they fell down around my thighs and I had to hold them up as I walked through the airport. Secondly was that for the first time that I can remember in recent memory, I didn't need a seat-belt extender. Some planes, like Virgin America, are naturally built a bit more generously but even then I would have to pull the belt to its maximum length when I flew to LA each year. Flying American Airlines made me nervous because I knew their seats were a bit more narrow (though not as small as the Southwest ones, which Kevin Smith had to deal with in his famous fiasco). However, the moment I got on the plane I realized a difference; when I walked down the aisle, I didn't bang my hips on the edges of the other seats and didn't rack my thigh on any protruding armrests. I got to my seat without a problem and clicked the seat belt into position without needing any extra inches. This alone was enough to make me elated. I was sitting in the middle seat on a three-across row, and I wasn't spilling into anyone else's personal space. I am still a long way from skinny, but I wasn't pressing my thigh against the woman next to me, and I didn't have to shoot any apologetic glances to the man beside me when my fat elbow brushed his as he tried to use his armrest. I even managed to put the tray table down all the way to hold up my heavy hardback of the new Joe Hill book (a fantastic read, by the way, and highly recommended). Usually the tray table hits the fleshy top of my thighs and refuses to lower all the way down, causing me to have to use the table at an angle. This time it had no trouble falling into the fully-descended state. Needless to say, I was elated.

And we walked around Universal Studios, me in regular sneakers and baggy Bermuda shorts, and I didn't have a SINGLE problem. No ankle-rolling, no calf cramps, no out-of-breath windedness as we walked the miles through the park in the blistering LA dry-heat. I didn't drink soda, just swigged water and Powerade Zero throughout the day. I didn't eat anything junky for me except a small bite of my grandma's pretzel at one point. I had more energy than I remember having in a long time. I got on every ride, fearless as to whether or not I would fit; the lap bars went down without difficulty, my ass fit into the pre-molded indentions on the seats. I didn't have the embarrassment of having to get up, red-faced and stammering an apology to the bored ride operator as I climbed back out of the ride and slunk to the exit. I was like everyone else.

After Universal, we walked around Warner Brothers Studios and the same situation; I fit comfortably in the smaller tram seat, I walked miles without complaint, and my body seemed ready for more when we wrapped for the day. I can't remember the last time my body felt this good. I was able to keep up with people.

In Vegas, one of my best friends Stephanie and I went into a pin-up store. They carry plus-sizes, but even these run small. I found a Bettie Page dress that not only fit, but it looked great on me; when we went to a similar store in LA in October, the only dress that fit me was very tight and difficult to get on. This one fit like a glove and wasn't even the biggest size they had available. So of course, I had to buy it. And then Stephanie and I walked miles up and down the Las Vegas Strip and Fremont Street, and my only complaint was wearing Converse because my feet ached. Other than that, nothing--- my thighs rubbed together as always, but there was no blistering, painful rash afterward from excessive friction. My legs didn't ache. My hips didn't hurt. My back felt alright.

I may complain about the surgery sometimes, about missing food and the social implications of going out to eat with my friends, but believe me... I felt amazing on this vacation. It was a challenge to avoid the shitty food everywhere, especially when my body wanted to taste everything, but my one big indulgence was gelato because I looked it up and found out that it had enough protein that I could justify eating a small serving of it. (I didn't even finish a single-scoop cup so it wasn't too bad calorie-wise.) But once I adjusted to not being able to indulge in the junky, fatty, delicious foods of my past, I realized that it was worth it to walk around without pain, to enjoy myself on rides that I previously had concerns about fitting into, and to realize that while I certainly can't buy clothes in just any store I walk into, my options are certainly more abundant than they were when I was nearly 100 pounds heavier.

When I weighed myself upon arriving back home, I hadn't lost any weight in that week--- which makes sense, since I was eating sporadically and my body was probably desperately clinging to those calories I did ingest due to all of the exercise we were doing. But I feel great, and that's really what this is all about.

 Stephanie and I with showgirls in Las Vegas, May 2013.

 My grandma, three Elvises and I. 

Stephanie and I on our way to see a show.

The Bettie Page pinup dress, May 2013.

Down One Calf... Moo?

When I started this journey on January 16, I was 348.1 pounds, which, on my 5'7" frame, meant I wore a size 22/24 in jeans, a 2XL in men's shirts, and an 11 shoe.

I felt like crap all the time. My ankles and shins ached horribly if I had to walk around for more than a brief period of time, especially if it was uphill; a trainer told me that my ankle rolled to the side to compensate for the width of my body, resulting in joint pain. I had no energy and poor circulation; if I sat Indian-style for more than a few minutes, my legs would go to sleep.

Weight loss surgery is not an ice cream sundae with cherries on top. I'm a member of a support forum and everyone there is constantly congratulating themselves on "rocking their sleeves" and "loving their sleeves". I am not among these people. Having a gastric sleeve procedure has definitely changed my outlook on food and the way I think about my body, but it hasn't made me wake up in the morning singing and dancing around, grateful that it took cutting a body part in half to get me to control myself. I wish that I'd had the self-control and the willpower to simply walk away from the junk food and avoid the fast food.

Do I miss food? Like a phantom limb of an amputee. I went to a fancy restaurant with my best friends for a birthday celebration and could sample a bit of everything, but I couldn't really relish the smoked mac 'n cheese or the cream cheese and raspberry cake we got for dessert. I can't go to Freebird's and enjoy a big salad with chopped steak on top. I can't eat a breakfast burrito, or drink one of the new peanut-butter-and-jelly milkshakes from Sonic.

The problem is that everything we love is bad for us, and it's that lack of moderation that got me into trouble in the first place. I want to eat the way I used to; I want every bite to be delicious and rich and disgustingly bad for me. But there isn't a place for that in my life anymore. This morning I had a bite of my grandma's hashbrowns at breakfast and my stomach lurched at how greasy they were. The smell of bacon made my belly growl, but the bacon tasted flat and dead in my mouth. My very desire to love food has been stripped away from me, and for so long that was something I used to identify myself. I considered myself an amateur foodie; I loved going with my best friend Shawn to exotic ethnic restaurants and trying weird things. We went to New Orleans and ate our way through the whole vacation with rich, delicious food, some of the best I've ever eaten. Under his tutelage I've tried so many things I would've probably never eaten on my own. And now I don't have that luxury; I have to think "protein first, then veggies, and if there's any room left, carbs" and of course there's never room left for carbs. My tasting of exotic meals has turned into 'sampling', bite-sized portions stolen from my friends' plates, meals shared because I couldn't hope to make a dent in my own.

But you get over it. It's only been five months for me, and that isn't very long when you consider that I've been obese since I was a pre-teen. I have to get used to the idea that this is permanent, that that part of my stomach is never coming back, that I'll never be eating a Big Mac or a whole steak or a fully loaded baked potato again. I made four pans of brownies for an event, and everyone raved about them, but I felt nauseous just from licking the fork and tasting how much sugar was in them.

But I can walk around without pain. In fact, I have a lot of stamina now, and my leg pain is almost nonexistent. I do still have shitty circulation, but when I lose a little more weight I'm thinking about taking up yoga or Pilates or some other kind of stretching exercises to help with that.

Last weekend I had a major health setback, and it was entirely my fault. After surgery, my doctors told me what kinds of vitamins I should take and how many of each to take every day. The problem is, I've never liked vitamins (except Flinstones chewables when I was little, and that's because I'm pretty sure they're actually Sweet Tarts), and so when I felt pretty good without taking them I decided "Meh, I don't need vitamins, I'm fine!" I thought I was getting enough nutrients from eating food, which is ridiculous because I'm consuming maybe 500 calories a day and even that is a big stretch. Still, I wasn't taking vitamins, and then something weird happened. I woke up with absolutely no appetite. I was tired, I was stressing about my upcoming finals at school (I'm taking 22 hours this semester, which for non-students--- 12 hours makes you a 'full time' student. I was taking 3 classes more than that), and I was constantly on the go. I wasn't taking care of myself. But it slipped my mind to eat--- God, when could Fattie!Me ever claim that? I used to watch the clock waiting for the next chance to eat something. But I suddenly looked up and realized that I hadn't eaten in three days. Not a bite. So I poured myself some of my Mootopia, the protein-enhanced milk I drink, but one swallow made me gag and I dumped it down the sink. I tried a protein shake but it made my stomach churn. The nausea was overwhelming and I had nothing to throw up, so I would just dry-heave until the feeling passed.

Unfortunately, that weekend was also Texas Frightmare Weekend, a huge convention in Dallas where the film I'm working on was running a table. I was so nauseous and dizzy and I was unable to keep anything down; my boys kept bringing me bits of sandwiches or what have you, but I couldn't eat more than a mouthful before I started gagging and had to run for the bathroom to throw up. This continued for the entire three-day weekend, with me getting progressively sicker, weaker and more tired. The fact that I literally couldn't ingest protein meant that my body was kind of shutting down; it had no idea what to do with itself. My gums were bleeding when I brushed my teeth, even though I've never had gingivitis or a cavity in my life; I was experiencing neuropathy and numbness of my feet and legs. I got dizzy spells when I stood up too fast, and after a jammed elevator forced the boys and I to climb one flight of stairs, my heart was beating so fast that I had to go to the bathroom and throw up again. I thought that maybe I needed to go to the hospital to get on an IV to rehydrate; I was sipping apple juice for the sugar just to keep my body running on something.

Shawn to the rescue--- he bought me a bag of oranges and practically stood over me while I ate several of them. I couldn't eat the pulp but I sucked the juices out, and the next day I managed to drive myself back to Waco. There I forced myself to eat and called my doctor, who informed me what I already knew; the vitamins and the protein were not something I could skip out on, especially for over a week. I had sent my body into shock.

I got myself back on track thanks to finishing the oranges, eating some steak from a hibachi grill near my house, and making some tuna salad, and everything feels better now. There's some lingering neuropathy in my feet but it's minimal compared to how it was, and I am feeling light years ahead of where I was four days ago.

When I weighed in today, I realized that I was at 256--- that's 92 pounds down in five months. My brain can barely wrap around something like that, but there you have it. I have lost 26% of my body weight, if my calculation is correct. My original 'goal weight' was 250 because I wanted to pick something reasonable and attainable--- little did I know I'd be attaining it before my birthday.

I looked it up--- a newborn calf weighs 90 pounds. I've lost a calf. 

There are so many things that I am looking forward to doing, and one of them begins tomorrow. I'm going to Los Angeles with my grandma and my uncle, flying out for a few days to see West Coast friends, go to Universal Studios and Warner Bros Studios, and then drive to Vegas for a few more days. I am really looking forward to it; it's partially a birthday present for me, partially a congratulations for finishing such a backbreaking semester with a 3.7 GPA, and partially because fuck it, I love Los Angeles and Vegas and I wanted to go. After that trip, I come back, see Priscilla, Queen of the Desert onstage in Dallas, and then fly to Boston because one of my favorite horror icons, Adam Green, is putting on charity events to benefit the people impacted by the Boston Marathon bombings. June 9 is my birthday party, and one of my dearest friends Sarah is driving from out of state to attend!  All this while shooting a movie in Dallas!

It's a crazy life, but I love it.

Insecure Ramblings and Struggling to Find Footing

Today I weighed in at 276.1, which is pretty cool. 72 pounds down in four months. Can't really complain about that. I joked that I wanted to be 250 by Texas Frightmare Weekend, and in all honesty I'm not very far off, but I'm not going to make 250 in the next few days. Ah well, I look a lot better than I did this time last year.

Or so the scale says, anyway.

I still don't see it visually; when I look in the mirror I'm still grossed out by what I see and insecure about the flaws that, to me, are huge and glaring. I was trying on clothes this weekend with my best friend, the two of us sharing a dressing room, and I still turned my back to her while changing my shirt. I didn't want her to see my lumpy, misshapen stomach or the scars like vibrant purple hatchmarks across it. I'm losing weight in my arms and thighs but my calves are as huge as ever, making it impossible for me to wear any of the 'stiletto/skinny jean'-style capris. For some reason, whoever the hell is buying clothes for plus-sized store Torrid right now is smoking crack--- all of the summer line consists of halter tops and Daisy Duke shorts. The store carries up to 4X, but I don't know a lot of size 26-28 girls who want to be parading around in tiny shorts that barely cover the hemline of their panties. I have so much cellulite my legs look like pantyhose filled with marbles, and in no way do I want to strut that shit this summer. I'm pretty pale in general but my legs are paper-white thanks to never seeing the light of day; I hate wearing shorts even when it's in the firm triple digits in Texas. In elementary school, when I was just starting to get big, a girl named Jeanette told me that I looked like I didn't have any knees because my legs were so fat. At the time, I was playing softball and running a lot, so they were thick with muscle anyway, but they were one of the first places I started to gain weight. My mom, even at 400 pounds, had slender ankles and shapely calves. I have dumpy, thick legs. They're one of my least-favorite features about myself; I don't think I've ever seen a picture of myself in a dress or shorts or anything else and not cringed or tried to crop it to remove my legs. I'd rather be a disembodied torso in the photo than standing on these tree-trunk stalks of mine. Wide-calf boots aren't even usually big enough unless they have a stretch panel somewhere in them; this is also the reason I can't own cowboy boots even though I've wanted them since high school.

I'm in a bleak period right now because it's been almost a year since my mom and the ripple effect of her death is still hitting me hard. This weekend I'll be attending the annual horror convention in Dallas, Texas Frightmare, and this will be the first one I've ever gone to without my mom. She was friends with virtually everyone who goes and this year simply won't be the same without having her there. I spend my days in this house surrounded by memories of her, not just her tangible things but thinking about lying on the couch watching TV or climbing on her bed to tell her about my day, and it's rough. I come home and the only person waiting here for me is my cat, who while great company is a poor substitute. I miss her so much sometimes it hurts to breathe. I went on a bender for the last two days where all I did was lie on the couch eating sugar-free Popsicles and watching Disney movies. I just had to turn the real world off and live in the familiar for awhile.

I don't know how to shake this. It feels like my heart isn't in anything. From the outside my life is going fine--- I'm losing weight, I have incredible friends, I'm doing well in school (I got named Marketing Student of the Year at my college this week), I'm about to start working on a feature horror film, etc. But I am just so sad, and I'm sleepwalking through everything I'm doing.

Protein Bliss?

First off, this is going to sound like a product review, maybe because it is a little.

I cannot say enough good things about the company "Chike", which makes delicious protein shakes for bariatric patients. If you're drinking protein shakes for bulking up or getting muscle or something, these aren't gonna be what you want, but if you need a good source of easily-digested protein, Chike is your best bet in my opinion. They also have amazing customer service--- I bought their sample pack from their website and the next day a rep called me and was really nice about the whole thing. She wanted to know how I'd found out about them, which product I was most excited to try, etc. When I got the package and tried the French Vanilla shake, it was by far the creamiest and yummiest protein shake I'd tried yet. Same with the chocolate. I haven't tried the banana, orange dreamsicle or strawberry one yet, and I don't like coffee so I may pass on the mocha one. But the two I have were pretty delicious and they didn't have the weird chalky aftertaste that comes with  most protein shakes. After a few days, the same rep actually called me back to verify that everything got here okay and ask how I liked the shakes, which was my favorite so far, etc! If I DO buy more protein powder in the future, I will be giving my business to "Chike"... they have been bar-none the best experience I've had since the surgery.

I had a 'day' today--- as most of you know if you follow the news, yesterday a fertilizer plant in West, Texas exploded and killed or injured a lot of people. My sister Heather is an EMT/firefighter and I was afraid that they would be sending her into the chaos to help; there were massive search and rescue efforts going on all night and most of today as well. The body count has been climbing as they find casualties, and everyone in the community has come together to donate supplies, blood, money and anything else to the almost-three-thousand people who were displaced or rendered homeless by this tragedy. It's all anyone's been talking about around here, so soon on the heels of the Boston Marathon tragedy, and it makes it hard to remain cheerful.

After screwing up a math test and tuning out most of my Business Law class, I headed off to run errands. I needed an eye exam because my contacts prescription had expired, so I made a beeline for the mall. There I ran into my old friend Anne and we talked while I picked out two new pair of frames. Then I went into Forever 21 to check out their plus-sized section. Much to my surprise they had plus-sized swimwear; even though their stuff is sized pretty small, it's amazing to me that they would even carry it. Most other stores don't, unless they're somewhere like WalMart. And the swimsuits are actually cute, and very affordable; most of the ones I looked at were around $25 each. I decided to try one on, knowing that a few times this summer I'll have access to a pool, and I wiggled into a strapless 2x with flamingos on it.

Me posting that photo is NOT me saying 'whoo, I love my body!' because good lord, I do not. But I was kind of happy about the fact that I could wear a 2X, not a 3X (and many were the times when I tried on a 3X in their plus-sized section and couldn't even wiggle that up over my hips). I got it on and more importantly, I looked cute in it. I didn't buy it, because my boobs kept falling out, but I was kind of excited that I could actually fit into it.  That kind of thing alone is no easy task.

After a fairly triumphant day at the mall, I went to Drug Emporium. I have no idea why I don't go more often--- half of the store is health/alternative food and you always find something really cool! I bought a box of pasta made entirely of spinach (9g of protein per serving and almost no sugar at all!), a new kind of protein bar with no sugar, and a few other exciting things that I can't wait to try. Maybe the most stoke-worthy of them--- I found PROTEIN CEREAL.

Okay I know this means NOTHING to the people who haven't had weight loss surgery, but when you get it, they tell you that protein always comes first, then veggies, and carbs if you have any room left afterward. Which you NEVER do. And every time I try to take a bite of a hamburger or something, the bread makes me feel like I just ate Thanksgiving meal and I'm done a bite or two in. Ironically, I don't really miss bread--- it's kind of nice not eating carbs. I indulge every now and then in a few bites of spaghetti, but I'm certainly not going for the Neverending Pasta Bowl at Olive Garden ever again. Still, I do miss cereal. Breakfast for me, when I eat it, is usually a glass of my Mootopia or, if I'm starving, egg whites with turkey sausage crumbles and cheese mixed in. Most of the time it's just Mootopia though, or a piece of string cheese on my way out the door. Maybe Greek yogurt. The point is, I used to lay on the couch with a mixing bowl of Captain Crunch and watch a movie on lazy weekend mornings, and I MISS cereal.

So the idea that I could have cereal, and the cereal has like 9g of protein per serving, is more than okay with me.

Now there are two so far that I've met with this criteria; Kashi GoLean makes the claim that one serving of their cereal has as much protein as an egg in it. The new brand I bought, which is Kay's Natural Protein Cereal, comes in apple cinnamon and french vanilla flavors. At $5 a box, and running the risk that I'd hate it, I splurged and decided to try the apple cinnamon since I realllly miss Apple Jacks.

To my surprise it was really good! I mean, it's no Apple Jacks or Cinnamon Toast Crunch, but it's pretty tasty. The cinnamon covered up whatever weird proteiny aftertaste was inevitably going to happen. Plus, I ate it with Mootopia, which is 12g a serving, so really, in one teensy little bowl of cereal I got 21 grams of protein! Yay me!

Also, I had to go buy 'little kid' dishes so that I could manage portions better and stop dirtying a giant cup for a few swallows of drink. I went to Target and checked out that area they have in the front of stuff that's a dollar--- and nearly died. This is the set of little bowls I bought.

How amazing are they? I know. I'm still kind of in awe myself. I also bought the little plates that are divided up into sections so your food won't touch, and I am thinking about buying myself a bento box to take with me for when we start filming Sacrament. I know that craft services aren't exactly going to be friendly to my weird, wonky, specific little diet. A bento box is basically a way to eyeball your portions and food groups and keep track of what you're eating, but it also happens to be tiny, adorable Tupperware shaped like a panda. And I am totally on board for that.

I keep posting reference photos because they're helping me keep track. So here's two face shots--- one is from the day I auditioned for Sacrament, back in December, and the second is from last Saturday when we had rehearsal. The wig's the same. Everything else is... not.

Adjustments.

Sorry it's been so long since I've written anything... real life is kind of kicking my butt right now and I'm doing my best to stay ahead of it. It's been a crazy month since my last entry.

As of this morning, I am down exactly 70 pounds, which is pretty great since I'm four months out. My size 22 jeans from Lane Bryant were falling off me, so I moved down to a 20, and now I have to put those in the dryer on high before I wear them or they, too, are saggy and baggy. This weekend I borrowed a pair of sleep shorts from my best friend, who is about sixty pounds lighter than me, and they fit (I was pretty positive they wouldn't, remembering an embarrassing episode when I tried to borrow an ex-boyfriend's sweatpants in college in an attempt to be cute but they wouldn't go up higher than my thighs). But when I went to buy a new outfit for a friend's birthday party, I was still trying on the same sizes I always have and clothes were still fitting me strangely. I don't notice a difference in my body but my friends say that they do. My two biggest 'non-scale victories' have been being able to wrap one hand completely around the opposite wrist, and being able to feel/see my collarbones when I turn my head. I haven't seen my actual collarbones probably since middle school.

 However, I am still having major self esteem problems. I still don't like myself very much and I don't think that I'm beautiful by any means. I am currently working on a feature film that's shooting this summer and I am really insecure about it; I don't want to see myself on camera because the whole time I will be thinking about how fat I still am as well as comparing my acting skills to those of everyone else in the film. They are all immensely talented and good-looking and at this point I have days where I wonder what the hell I was even thinking when I auditioned. I have very little faith in my own abilities and I hate that I'm like this. I wish I could celebrate 70 pounds down instead of thinking about the other 70 I want to lose.

One of the strange things is that food is usually one of the last things on my mind now, which is weird because you really don't know what to do with yourself. It's a social gathering; my friends get together for bonding, for celebration, for commiseration. We use food to communicate. Without that method of communication available to me I feel adrift. Even when I was dating, a 'dinner date' was both pointless and irritating on my end; it usually consisted of me picking at a kid's menu item, eating less than half of it and feeling unsatisfied by the heavy, greasy food while my date relished theirs. The things I always loved don't taste good to me anymore; things that were sweet are now cloying, things that were greasy and savory now make me sick or taste horrendous. I've been craving different things every day but they so rarely live up to the expectations of what I want them to taste like. I made spaghetti today, which was really delicious but I could only have a few forkfuls. I have been eating Doritos one at a time because I'm craving salty food. I found a protein shake that doesn't make me want to kick kittens (Chike, and it's pretty yummy if you ignore the blatant 'this is good for you' aftertaste/smell). I just don't want food. It's a means to an end with me, something to keep me from getting dizzy or feeling shitty. I eat just enough to make the hollow feeling go away. There've been a few weekends where I only ate maybe 200 calories total over the course of a few days. Man cannot live on skim string cheese alone but I am trying some days.

Still, the surgery really hasn't complicated my life. It's just changed the way I think about food, and I am trying so hard not to be judgmental about anyone but damn it's hard to look at food at a restaurant/fast food place when you can't have it anymore. You eat three bites of food and are full and then you see the giant platter-sized serving of enchiladas someone is eating, or the huge slab of cake that they got for dessert that you can't have, and you just get kind of 'meh' about the whole thing. I'm not bitter or jealous--- at best I'm sort of wistful. My friends got Griff's the other day, this amazing local burger joint that makes super-delicious greasy diner fare, and I didn't really want it, but I did think about offering to lick their hands clean after they handled the fries. If we could just install a salt lick for me that'd be terrific.

For reference, here are my status photos.

 This was me in October 2012, with my gorgeous friend Stephanie.

And here I am in March 2013, with my amazing friend Eva.

Things I Can't Do

Body image is something that everyone needs to deal with at some point; I'm sure even the biggest supermodels in the world have days of feeling inadequate or unsexy.

I am the epitome of frustration because I have lost 50 pounds but I can't tell. I went down from my size-22 jeans to my size-20 and my bras are looser in the cup area, but other than that I haven't seen much difference. I went to try on clothes to find something to wear for the weekend and still bought a shirt in my usual size. I looked at myself in the mirror for a long time in the dressing room, wondering where fifty pounds had come from and why I couldn't see it gone. My body is still something that I loathe to the deepest core of my being.

People react in shock when I say that, because I've done erotic modeling before. I've stripped down to corsets and thigh-highs and heels and done sexy poses in front of a camera, and then posted those pictures to the Internet. But the difference was, those pictures weren't me. They were all personas, just like an actor slipping into a role. I can play sex kitten like a harp. I made money doing phone sex audio recordings and I write erotica frequently. So why is it so hard for me to tune into that in real life? Why do I prefer to flirt and then balk back when it looks like things might actually go somewhere?

Things I can't do: I can't have sex with the lights on. Or with any part of me visible, really. I hate my body; we've been at war for what feels like centuries. Every adjective someone else could use on me to hurt, I've used on myself; I've criticized the jiggle of my ass and the way my thighs rub together and the flabbiness of my belly and the size of my arms since I was a kid. I feel insecure in my own skin. In an attempt to make it into something beautiful I began collecting tattoos, ink spiraling up and down my arms, across my chest and back, over my leg and foot, trying to hide the stretch marks and the ugliness. I wanted to see art, not a vast canvas of pure white skin.

Things I can't do: I can't get out of my own head. When I was in fifth grade, a girl named Jeanette said that I was so fat it looked like I didn't have knees. I didn't wear shorts again until I was seventeen years old. Every time I went to try on a pair, I thought about what she said. When I was twenty-three, a girl made fat jokes about me on the Internet. Nearly four years later I sat in my best friend's office, sobbing so hard I could barely talk as I forced the words out and told him why a thousand 'I'm sorry's would never fix anything even if the girl meant it. I watched my mom, one of the most wonderful women in the world, date abusive asshole after abusive asshole, watching them sugarcoat everything and play her like a hand of poker for the first few months, earn her trust, get her to let her guard down before they delivered the killing blow. Each time it happened I made myself tougher, told myself I wouldn't be like that. I went on dates with boys who promised to call and never did, boys who only kissed me when they made me swear I'd never tell anyone--- boys who couldn't be seen dating the fat chick. After years of that it wore my self esteem down to a see-through pane of sugar glass.

Oh, I hid it. I'm a professional at wearing masks. I can laugh and use a tongue borne of a high SAT verbal score to tear someone apart and my friends commend me on being strong. I got up and spoke at my grandpa's funeral and then a few months later, my mom's. Everyone kept saying "You're so strong, you're so strong" and all I could think was What choice do I have? You're not strong if you're backed into a corner. You're just taking the only way out, and if that way out happens to yield a favorable result, then good for me. I'm not 'strong'. I made my friends come take the good drugs out of the house after Mom died because I was afraid there might be a night when the siren call was too strong. I used to cut myself in high school and I still remember how my mom's face looked when she caught me sawing at my wrist with a broken pair of scissors, how she yelled at me about how without  me she'd have nothing worth living for. And now she's gone and for a long time after that (and even now sometimes, when my heart hurts so much it feels like someone's kicking me in the chest each time it beats) all I have to keep me from reaching for something sharp again is remembering my best friends, my chosen family, and my grandmother. They're the only people I have left in this world who I trust, the only people I let in. These people have earned their war medals; they've sat with me through my depression and my grief, my anger and my self-doubt. They've led cheers for me when I needed encouragement and beaten my ass into submission when I forgot who I was. And they are the reason the mask slips, when it does. They are the ones who make me feel beautiful or strong or capable, if even for a moment before I remember who I really am.

When you go through an insurance company to get weight loss surgery, they interview you with a psychologist to make sure that you understand that the surgery isn't an 'easy fix', that your problems don't magically go away. I already knew that. My eating has always stemmed from deep-seated emotional issues inside of me; we could blame my dad leaving and my consequent fear of abandonment, for example. We could talk about how it felt to have him show up in my life when I was eight years old, a girl who shared his chubby cheeks and curly brown hair but not his name, and how it felt to have him put his arms around me and fill my head with lies about how much he loved me, how he was here to stay this time. We spent five days together during spring break, him visiting from Florida with his new wife and new daughter, and I met an older half-sister I never knew I'd had, and I thought This is it, this is my family. I was actually angry with my mom for keeping him from me; I was convinced she'd known how to get ahold of him, that she'd chosen to separate me from my father while all of the other girls in my class went to Father-Daughter dances or talked about their dads in their 'My Hero' papers we had to write in class. Then on Day Six when I was supposed to get picked up by him, I sat outside on the bottom steps leading to our sidewalk and waited. After an hour or so had passed, my mom called him, only to be informed coldly by his wife that they'd left the night before to head back to Florida. He'd left me without saying goodbye and his wife said we shouldn't call again, that he didn't want me in his life anymore. I remember realizing that it was my fault; I hadn't been sweet enough or smart enough or good enough. I hadn't made a good enough first impression and he'd realized his mistake in coming to see me; he'd been better off in Florida with his new family, never even knowing how I'd turned out.

Once I'd decided that things were actually sort of easier. I knew then that if my own father couldn't love me, why would anyone else? I stopped caring about myself. I filled notebooks with angry scribbles about how ugly I was, how much I hated myself. I found one recently where I'd written "I WISH I WAS DEAD" all over the page in pen so hard that it had torn through to pages beneath. It was dated 1995, when I was nine. I was full of anger but I had no way to express it. I couldn't tell my mom because I knew how badly she was hurting from it too; I could hear her crying at night. She was single and alone, struggling to raise a child by herself, working sixty hour weeks; she didn't need to know my emotional problems. So I internalized everything. My routine answer was "Fine" when someone asked how I was doing. I lost myself in books, reading because any world besides mine was better. I'd always been a reader but I was well above my grade level, and I was working my way through Stephen King and Anne Rice. People assumed I was just a bookworm and left me alone. I ate because there was this huge hole inside of me and I had no idea what would fill it up but food seemed like a viable option. My mom was a stress-eater; why shouldn't I be? The adults in my life knew I was hurting and so they looked away. When I was picked last for sports or sat out in gym class feigning injury so that I could read on the bleachers instead, no one stopped to correct me. They just let me be alone and thus it began--- an independent streak a mile wide, never having to answer for anything I did as long as it was only to myself. No one cared if I ate myself into a size 22 in jeans by high school; my mom silently led me from the juniors' section to the misses' to the plus sizes, and I watched the other girls run around in their short shorts and tight t-shirts and all of the other things I couldn't wear and wondered how they filled the holes inside themselves.

Now I'm twenty-six and it's fucking dismaying to realize how I haven't grown up, not really. I'm weaker and more fragile now than I think I've ever been before. I have the best friends now that I've ever had in my entire life, but I hate myself for relying on them as much as I do. I've worked with tons of famous people but it's always shadowed after with those inner monologues--- They don't actually like you, they just know you're desperate to be seen in their 'circle' because you're hideous. They hang out with models and actresses and other musicians. What the fuck do you think you're doing here? So I tried to make myself invaluable; I worked tirelessly, overextending myself on multiple jobs at once, busting my ass to prove my worth to someone.

I haven't worked on anything creative of my own since my mother died in July 2012. Before that really, because I wasn't writing when she was sick. But now I just feel anxiety when I open a word processing program. The stories, which have been there all my life and have gotten me through so many hard times, simply aren't there. The poems, the spoken word pieces, all of it's dried up and I stare at the blinking little cursor until the tears in my eyes blur everything and I click the X in the corner. I don't feel inspired or powerful or strong or anything else. I feel weak and small and frail and I've found that the easiest thing to do is curl up in my bed with my music on, letting one of the great songwriters tell me how to feel.

I  am not good at being the girlfriend, the socialite, or the therapist for more than a few hours at a stretch. After that I get caught up in my own head and realize how much I just like to be alone with my own thoughts and my own pressure; if I can just focus on my own problems from the safety behind my mask, then nothing external can hurt me. I don't have to worry about losing myself again because I'm not putting that possibility into anyone else's hands, the power rests solely with me. I want to be strong but I keep coming up short.

Things I can't do: believe in myself.
Things I can't do: let go.
Things I can't do: love myself.
Things I can't do: let others love me.