The art of not being…

dusty keyboardI don’t know why I have such an adverse reaction to dusting off my laptop.

To sitting down at a blank blog page and do what I did so well in the past. Slinging words at life with a desperate need to understand all the inner workings that made me who I was. Who I am. And I guess in some emotional grasp to get my shit together at who I desire to become. For weeks I’ve had long conversations in my head (and by long I mean maybe the entire length of a minute because right now that’s about all I can stand when alone in my own thoughts). Emotions get confusing and the urge to slam my fingers on these black little squares in hopes of finding even the most minute understanding becomes so intense I stop thinking about it. I don’t even take the slightest step towards the laptop. I silently wish that by ignoring what’s happening “up there” and NOT blogging about it, it will just get pushed aside and eventually stop nagging at me.

Then I think “okay maybe today”…Maybe today I’ll just go somewhere and sit and try to find some cohesion with what I thinking and this stupid laptop of mine. So I sit…

And I stare….

Then I begin to digress into this mess of “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?”…or maybe it would be better to phrase it: “What the fuck are you NOT doing?”. Then this internal diatribe unfolds that maybe things aren’t so bad. Maybe I should just shut up, stop thinking about life and just be. Be okay with food choices. Be okay with not working as much as I would like. Be okay with your “in this moment” gender. Just be okay.

Even now, sitting here “in this moment” I feel like this is a waste of my time.

But I have to be honest about how things have been going and how it’s affecting me. Even if, at the end of this post, I still feel like it’s been a waste of my time at least there will be some sort of dumping of the emotionally filled files that fill my head and then maybe some clarity will follow.

I’m really upset at the weight gain. I try not to let it bother me because in the grand scheme of “putting on the pounds” I still fit into most of my clothes (though I have gone up a size in pants). I try to let it go because my partner in crime has also been dealing with her own gain and lack of loss no matter how hard we work at it and I don’t want to make a big stink about it for myself because I know how our brains work….We all know how our forever ingrained morbidly obese brains work. I think about it constantly then get so angry at myself for making it a “thing” that it becomes this cycle of “You’re fat”/”That’s not fair to think that way so stop it”. Even if most of this 25 pounds came about because my weights are heavier therefore (dot dot dot) my muscles are bigger, what I see in the mirror are not muscles but hips I wish were non existent but now made more prominent from the gain. What I see in the mirror is a chest that doesn’t fit as easily into it’s binder and is becoming increasingly uncomfortable because the idea of buying a larger size is more emotionally scarring than the physical uncomfortableness of shoving my  “can’t I just get rid of these” breasts into my one savior on this gender journey.

Not working is taking it’s toll on me. It was different when I first got here and COULDN’T work. I understood the process now matter how impatient I was. I’ve spent the last 2 years busting my ass trying to at least help in the financial department with my sandwich making, hot dog slinging, and shelf stocking work history. It was a conscious decision to leave my position at Costco during a time when it made sense. I still had west coast envisions of what interpreting *might* look like during the summer months but I was not prepared for what the last 3 months has brought…

*crickets*

I would be exaggerating if I said I managed to eek out 10 hours a week of work since June. 10 hours was all I needed to still be on par with what I made at Costco as a full time employee. 10 fucking hours. Its an exaggeration to say I even worked 10 hours in the last month. My whole being as a person is wrapped up in what I can provide professionally (and financially) and this summer has chewed me up, spit me out, shit on my chest and then stomped on it to rub it in for good measures. I feel like a failure and while I know most of it is because it’s the “slower” time of the year, it’s difficult not looking in the mirror and whispering “you’re such a fuck up”.

I’m falling into this whirlwind of “you shouldn’t eat, you shouldn’t go to crossfit, you shouldn’t buy yourself a damn thing” because when you open up your wallet and pull out the bankcard, that’s not your money you’re spending. Where is your money? Oh that’s right you P.O.S, you don’t  have any” It seems like several times a day I want to go back to Costco and beg for my job even though I know that’s not the answer. Working for me is like when some people look at their children. Everything they know about themselves is wrapped up in their offspring. Their children are their purpose for getting up in the morning. Work is that purpose for me. My career as an interpreter is the equivalent of my offspring. Working and having the ability to provide financially for Mimi and myself is what keeps me the farthest from being my mother. Paying my bills on time and not juggling this dollar to cover that and that dollar to cover this is how I measure escaping the past of upbringing (or lack thereof) and for the last three months it’s been a constant struggle to not go back into that head space of “you’ll never be good enough”.

I would be lying if I said I’m trying hard to be patient and not be angry at the universe. Angry at my choices for leaving a good job to pursue doing what I’ve loved to do for the last 15 years. It’s been eating away at me. Going home to the west coast and then returning to an empty (and new) home on the east coast while Mimi is working internationally is making shit worse. I’ve not slept well in over a week. My “in bed by 9” is overruled with “it’s 1 a.m. and you’re wide away…good luck with that shut eye”…In the last  three days I think I’ve slept 6 hours and I can feel the breaking point happening. Missing Amers and Melly. Missing Mimi. Missing my Old Man Chester. Missing me. Missing the rest of my biological family because the web weaved is so complicated it’s easier to just not so I don’t.

I keep thinking just stop. Stop with this rotten thought process. Nothing good comes of it. Get up and go workout. Go outside and breath in some fresh fucking air. What are you doing? You know this isn’t good for your emotional well being. Spend some time in the kitchen. Spend some time verbally vomiting your life into a blog post. But at the end of the day (especially these long days of summer where I’m spending a lot of time with myself), it’s hard to stop.

I see that dark cloud approaching and in all the brutal honesty I can muster, I’m just sitting here waiting for it to takes it’s place. No fight. Just a feeling of “I deserve this”…

I’m not looking for anyone to come to my aide. Except maybe Mimi to return home so at least I have a sense of purpose in the kitchen. This is just where I am today. Where I am in this moment. I know historically this may pass and I’ve got a pretty good track record in working through this stuff. I think today was more about acknowledging the feeling(s). Of forcing that verbal vomit to happen so that the desire to physically shove the closest sharp object down my throat dissipates. To feel like I’m worth understanding and to remember that this is just today, but this isn’t necessarily tomorrow.

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