Fluff.

  

Some days are noisier than others.
Today is a "noisy" day.

The brain begins to fill with weird questions, thoughts that don't seem to link up, or fit with others.  Emotions swell from anxious despair, to inappropriate elation.  And everywhere in between.
And a feeling of desperation from the piles and piles of "unmentionables"...the thoughts that leave one sort of stranded, searching every friend in hopes of finding a confidant in whom to confide.
Knowing that most of it is best left unsaid, as there will be an immediate recoil of regret once the words are spoken.
Restless sleep that builds, and builds, until days have passed without sleep.  Awkward paranoia.  Fragile ego.  

I may be crazy, but  at least I'm not crazy! 

Whether it's genetics, or life experiences that created this, I do not know.  But I don't suppose knowing would make days like this any easier.

This post sucks.

I never want to be the kind of person who lords over her family, demanding that this or that take place in a manner timely enough to suit my ever-expanding demands.
I never want to be the type of person who tells my husband or children that they "can't" associate with someone, because I don't find it personally enjoyable.


Those are the things that I keep repeating to myself, over and over this week, as the arrival of my mother-in-law looms ever closer.

That is exactly, however, the type of person I feel like this week.


I keep telling him that his decision to invite his mother is entirely up to him, and that I will support him in whatever he decides to do.
This is what I say.  What I feel, however, and how that reads upon my person, is entirely the opposite. I dread it.  I dread her.  And I'm bothered that I have not been able to conceal it as well as I thought I could.  And it isn't for a lack of trying, either.


Of course, with her visit drawing near, my obsessive need to have an immaculate, spotless home has begun to take over, and has clashed violently with my childrens' need to be children...to be messy, and sticky, and to leave a trail of toys and dirty clothes wherever they wander.  Their promises to clean their rooms have turned into drawers stuffed with dirty clothes and trash, and the area beneath their beds turning into landfills.


My frustration is evident.  My hands are raw from bleach, and my back aches.  The better part of me wishes I could just leave the house, and return on Monday after the visit is over.  Check into a motel, and let the hired maid and the room service staff do all the obsessive cleaning.  Let the husband and the kids handle the mother-in-law, and I'll return when she's gone.


The guilt I feel has turned into some kind of stagnant, nagging sadness, because I don't like making this more difficult for my husband, nor do I like feeling like a broken record with my kids.  "Clean your room.  Pick up this trash.  Who left toothpaste everywhere?"  I don't like feeling as if I have to scour my house from floor to ceiling, and I don't like the fact that I'm just a general grouch, who is making her husband uncomfortable.

And I don't like this crybaby post.  

Suck it up, Nancy!  

Parental Fail.

I hugged my teenage son goodbye this morning, as he left for work with his father.  As I held his tall, lean person in my arms, I was suddenly ashamed to realize how long it had been since I last truly hugged my son.
We stood for several seconds together, and I mumbled "my baby boy..."  half expecting him to pull away, or to moan in that teenager-y way.  He didn't.  I swear, I think he hugged me tighter.

I think I stopped hugging him at the point that he stopped climbing into my lap and asking for it.  What a loss.

He's been the size of an adult since he was twelve.  Did I subconsciously decide that he was too big for me to hug?  That he didn't want me to hug him?  He seemed so happy this morning, to bend down to my level, so I could wrap him in my arms.

This is a short-lived mistake.  I do not intend to make it again, and until he tells me he doesn't want to be hugged anymore, I will continue to fold him in my arms, regardless of how he towers over me.

I miss my sweet, blond-haired, cuddly baby boy.  But he has been replaced with someone even greater, and I will not miss out on those precious opportunities any longer.  

Why I'm high in front of my kids.

This has been the bulk of my day.   If you haven't read it, it's a link to my previous entry, Zig-Zag Rainbow, which is a very detailed, very in-the-moment description of what it's like when I experience a severe migraine attack.
Resembling stroke, these attacks are raw, violent, and most of the time, extremely terrifying.  Every time, I become sure that I will never recover, and am forever doomed to live my life in some kind of sensory-confused, hallucinatory hell.  I don't wish such a thing upon anyone.

But this isn't about the nightmare experience of suffering thru migraine.
This is about the "after."
The post-migraine euphoria.

Once the blindness is gone, once the pain has finally stopped,  once my limbs find their way back to their correct places on my body, an almost excruciating relief creeps in, and my entire being is absolutely high.

I feel a definite softness in every part of my body.  Even my feet feel as if they've been shrouded in cotton.  My head buzzes with a peaceful excitement, and a giddy relief that the attack is over, and that I found my way back out of the strange, dark migraine tunnel once again.
My stomach finally returning to normal, food never tastes as good as it does in this stage.  Even something as simple as this pear feels and tastes glorious...those little bits of sugary grit, the texture dazzling, the sweetness dancing circles on my tongue.
Everything will taste this good today.  Even my ice water is clear and sweet, against the insides of my cheeks.

My arms and legs, having tensed to the point of exhaustion during the attack, are finally rubbery and content, in a way that I can only experience after extreme exertion.

My brain is warm and happy, and I truly believe that nothing could possibly be greater than the sensation of not being in pain.  I am giddy.  I am relieved.  I am exhausted and happy, thoughts all swirly and warm.  I am high.

If not slightly slow, and somewhat tongue-tied, as evident from the choppy, lame attempt above to tell you what I'm feeling.
But I'll certainly take it.  

The Happiness of Soap

I make my own laundry soap.  Partly because it's a gazillion dollars cheaper than buying it from the store, (I can make ten gallons for less than three dollars) and partly because it's just something I like to do to.  I'm definitely not a professional at homemaking, but I do like doing those few "Little House on the Prairie" things that I'm good at, in order to help keep us afloat. 

I bottle it up, and store it in the utility closet until I'm ready to use it, then I start washing away, secretly wishing for a wringer and a clothes line.  It makes me happy. 

A few people have discovered the secret awesome-ness of this homemade wonder, and from time to time will send me their empty jugs to fill.  This also makes me happy. 

I'm happy to share with them, something that makes me happy. 

Happiness everywhere. 

Filling my bottles today, feeling, well, happy, and full of old-fashioned domestic satisfaction, I thought, "I should send this bottle to my mother!  I'll bet she'd love it.  Maybe I'll call her today and invite her over to get it..." 

Eh? 

Happiness wilted. 

I don't have a mother that I'd just invite over on a whim, without some definite back-up plan to get her immediately out of my house.  I don't have a mother that I'd invite over for soap, and ask her to stay for coffee, while we chat about the current goings-on in our lives.  I don't have a mother that my children will be happy to see upon arriving home from school...

I have a mother who will keep people waiting on her indefinitely, and then, back out of plans, simply in order to have control over whether or not people wait on her.  I have a mother who will say "I'll be there in ten minutes," and who will then be four hours late.  I have a mother who will promise her grandchildren one thing, and then do completely the opposite. 

There are times, when I want, sometimes desperately, to rise above my petty resentment, to get over what is passed, and just start over.  When not having a mother in my life creates a feeling of actual sadness.  When I consider those who have lost their mothers permanently, and think, "you ungrateful brat." 

Sometimes I literally want to shake her, shake the "phony" out of her.  Shake out of her the piece of her that gives such a shit what other people think of her, her hair, her skin, her weight, her goddamn fingernails, and find out if there is actual substance there. 

Shake her, until the part of her that skips family reunions because she's "too fat" comes rolling out of her, so I can stomp it to death. 

Shake her, until she accepts my unease about her...husband...so that she never asks me to reconsider again. 

Shake her, until she sees that being perpetually late is disrespectful, and that breaking every single promise is even more damaging. 

Even shake her until that goddamn baby-talk, phony telephone operator voice of hers is gone forever.  Just talk to me.  Just talk to my kids.  We're mature enough to handle your real voice, and don't need such feigned politeness. 

Shake her.  And shake her, and shake her.  Until nothing is left, but...a mother.  A grandmother.  A mature woman who has had some fifty years to learn her way around herself, and has come to a conclusion that she is as worthy as the next woman.  And that others are as worthy as she.  An equal balance of self-esteem, and respect for those around her. 

I know that if I invite her over today, one of two things will happen.  She'll be delighted, she'll keep me on the phone for two hours, she'll say she's coming, and then she will call and cancel after I wait on her all afternoon.  And I will wonder why in the hell I invited her over in the first place. 
Or, she will show up, talk incessantly about her fatness, make awkward comments, (in her baby voice) about my parenting, my person, my husband, and I will not be able to push her out the door fast enough.  And I will wonder why in the hell I invited her over in the first place. 

Why is it so hard to just be with her?  Why is it so hard for her to just be with me? 
And why, after 33 years of trying and trying and trying, do I still care?  I have a fantastic family of my own.  I have amazing friends.  Besides the millions of dollars I seem to have misplaced, I am blissfully content.  So why on earth do I give such a fuck about one, selfish, neurotic person? 

I suppose the only simple answer is, "she's my mother." 

Fucking soap.  Fucking thoughtful soap.      

Fat Shame

I wasn't kind to myself.  I believed that I was grotesque, that I was less-than, that I didn't deserve the same treatment as a "skinny" person. 
I believed I was ugly.  I believed that it was impossible for the words "fat" and "pretty" to exist in the same sentence, unless that sentence declared that I was "pretty fat." 
I forced myself into too-tight clothes, feeling miserable and uncomfortable, and desperate to hang onto the notion that as long as I didn't go up a size in clothing, I could feel less ashamed. 
I cried and cried, and cried some more, as I went on believing that my husband would never love me, not fully, not really, unless I weighed a certain amount. 
My journals filled with hateful descriptions of my soft, round, wavy body. 

And I am sad for all that wasted time.  I was lovely.  I AM lovely. 
And I am fat. 

And I am no longer ashamed of the word, as if it were something to hide from. 

Now that I have a clear head, and a rational grasp of the matter, the subject of fat shame enrages me. 

How many times have we seen the former fat guy on TV, holding up a pair of his gigantic pants like some kind of trophy?  Stuffing two people into those pants, and declaring victory over his former chub, while someone else looks on in awe, gasping, as if they'd never laid eyes on a fat person before. 
How many times have we seen the woman standing next to a cardboard cut-out of her former round self, giggling with glee over the fact that she can "wear a bikini now!"?  (She could wear a fucking bikini before, but we'll get to that momentarily.) 
I'm happy for these people.  If they felt so miserable and unhealthy before, then good on them for doing what they needed to do for themselves, to feel better. 
But these stupid scenes do nothing but perpetuate the idea that it's shameful to be fat.  It's wrong to be fat.  It's bad to be fat, and being thin is better.  Those "before and after" pictures...the subject frowning in misery over their own fatness, and then, grinning with glee in their second, "after" picture.  It asks us to accept that one of those things is bad.  That one of those things is unfavorable. That one of those things is just downright shameful.


 What the hell is so wrong with someone being fat, and *still* loving themselves?  What is wrong with feeling confident, or, heaven forbid, even sexy within one's fat skin? 

Confidence?  How dare you, Fatso! 

                                                               
Does this woman deserve our ridicule, our jokes at her expense?  Absolutely the fuck not.  No more than the black person or the gay person or the tall person or the person missing a finger deserve our ridicule. 

"But, being fat is a choice.  Those people should do something about their unhealthy habits, and then they wouldn't be so fat." 

Maybe.  Maybe it's a choice.  Maybe it's not.  Maybe they have some sort of metabolic disorder that causes their unacceptable condition, and they hate being fat just as much as *you* hate them being fat. 
Maybe they're gluttenous and lazy, and maybe they'd rather eat donuts for dinner than a salad.  Maybe it's been twenty years since they've bothered to take a walk or touch their toes. 
Maybe. 
But either way, isn't that *their* business?  Don't they have the *right* to choose fucking donuts over a salad?  Don't they have the right to decide not to take a jog? 

And while we're at it, they have the right to wear a bikini.  In public.  They have the right to dress themselves any damn way they please, and to not have some dirt bag boost his or her ego by making fun of them. 
Truly, that's all it amounts to.  By shaming someone else, by belittling someone else, a person is merely demonstrating their own insecurity, their own foolishness.  A person gains nothing by bashing someone else.  But the person receiving the bashing loses lots...

I grew up being ridiculed for my "fatness."  I was a size ten in 8th grade, and evidently that humiliated my mother enough to nickname me "Fatty Arbuckle", "Two Ton Tilly", and "Thunder Thighs", to name a few.  As a size 12 to 14 in high school, I believed I was sub-par.  I believed I was grotesque.  I believed that because I didn't look like the cheerleading squad, that I was less, and that I deserved less.  I thought my mother was right, and for being "fat", I was very, very wrong. 

I wasn't wrong.  The woman in the picture up there isn't wrong.  Not in the least. 

My diet, not that it's anyone's business but mine, consists mostly of food that comes solely from nature.  Whole food.  Good food.  But I have the same right to a donut, or four, that a thin person has.  If I choose to take a walk or a jog at the park next door, or if I choose to sit literally for hours in front of my TV watching a cooking show, it's my right to do either, and it's not the business of anyone who would shame me for it. 
The argument the fat-hate bullies like to make (to look like less of an asshole) is that it's "unhealthy" for the fat person.  They're worried about their health. 
Well, good.  Then pay for their membership to the gym of your choice, and go start making fun of smokers in the same manner, as their behavior is obviously unhealthy, too.  If they are genuinely speaking out of concern, there would be *action* and not hurtful, ugly words. 

The bottom line is, I'm fat.  I'm not ashamed of that word, and I'm not ashamed of my body.  Of course, I have "bad" days, just like anyone else, and wish I were smaller/taller/thinner/perkier...but I know that I am just as lovely as my thin sisters.  I am just as worthy.  I am just as important, or unimportant as the person who eats lettuce all day. 
My fat does not define my personality, any more than the tall guy is automatically a douche bag because he's tall. 

So in the words of bat-shit Tyra Banks, if you don't like it, you can "kiss my fat ass." 

Nervous jibberish

My heart might literally burst out of my chest. 
The phone will ring, and it will be terrible news...
Someone will come to the door...my uncle is outside in the field.  He might come to the door...
Breathing fast enough to make myself dizzy.
I think I'm having a heart attack.  I'm probably having a heart attack.  Chest pains.
I might faint. 
My heart might explode. 
I might die. 

I won't die.  I know this.  I'm not having a heart attack, and I'm not going to faint.  As abnormal as this is, this is normal. 
I know this.  Rationally, I know this. 

But in the midst of it, I know that something terrible will happen.  Someone will come to the door, and catch me...catch me what?  There's nothing illegal, or immoral, or humiliating happening inside my house.  I don't even have any dirty dishes in my sink.  What am I afraid they will see? 

I have no rational explanation.  I have no reason to be afraid, and yet I am.  Beyond afraid.  Terrified.  And I have no rational explanation.  My heart bumps rapidly as if I've just seen something frightening.  My hands are weak with tremble and fear.  My mouth is dry, and my chest aches. 

Over nothing. 
It's helpless.  And embarrassing. 

I am a woman, entirely in control of the demons in my past.  Fully aware that I have fought, and won.  That I do not exist within the grips of some emotional torment, struggling to continue despite every effort to stop me.  I won.   I am well.  I am whole. 

Until this.  It has the ability to knock me literally from my feet, and make me, for a few brief minutes of hell, question my entire being. 

Then, quick as it came, it's gone. 


Fucking panic attacks.