At the end of my 6th grade year my teacher, Mrs. Gueswel, wrote in my yearbook how proud she was of me in that I didn’t give in to peer pressure or “fakiness”. It was the gauge to which I set the rest of my school years. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t ever try cigarettes or drugs. It’s how I knew I was still me. I went through some hard times for the next couple of years, socially speaking, and those words always helped to keep me true to myself, even when it would have been easy to give up and do what would have made me fit in to one group or another. I got through it, and I was a better person for it. I was able to make the best friends I could have asked for, and I showed them my own vulnerability and unconditional acceptance, and they felt comfortable coming to me when they had a problem. I was perfectly at ease with their imperfection and content with my own. My flaws helped shape the foundations of what I lovingly refer to as Staceyland, the name I use to refer to the place in my mind that defines me.
In my quest to live a better life as a grown-up, however, I have forgotten how to be a great person. Somewhere along the line, I let myself become convinced that in order to be worth the hassle of knowing me, I had to have a job, or look a certain way, or live life how everyone else wanted. I started giving up pieces of myself to fit into what other people wanted me to be. Funny thing is, I failed at being what they wanted, so not only did I give up myself, it was for no good reason. I could never seem to keep a job for long. I let others’ opinions guide my life decisions. I knew I couldn’t please everyone, but I tried. When one decision I made caused some people to be happy, it would make others angry. When I made another decision, the roles would reverse. Without fail, either way I tried it, I ended up unhappy, because I entirely stopped doing what it was I wanted to do. The creativity I had always found dripping from my pores had dried up. I even let someone convince me I didn’t know how to be beautiful unless I did it their way. I grew bitter, cold, and uncaring. Without realizing it, I built up walls to hide my vulnerability. I became critical of others’ mistakes, hated myself for my own mistakes, and pushed everyone away. Staceyland fell into ruin.
For several years, when I looked at pictures of myself I saw nothing behind my eyes, and it scared me. Still, I couldn’t figure out what had happened to me and why I felt (and looked) so empty… I had forgotten the words that kept me rooted to myself for so many years.
It made me vulnerable to the actions of a sociopath, and I’m not sure now if I will ever recover. Well, it feels that way at least. At first, I thought I had met the person who would help me get back to me. I was surrounded by their energy and charisma, and I was hopeful for the first time in a long time. We had many long conversations about personal change, wherein I spoke of how I wanted to be how I was before: caring, open, happy. Time and time again I was told that “everyone wants to be what they were in high school”, and that I should strive to be something else. I struggled to make my tormentor happy, to squish myself into the mold I was persuaded would turn me into who I wanted to be. I was criticized relentlessly. No matter what I said or did, I wasn’t fitting into the form set out before me, and was subsequently told that I was just not trying hard enough. I lost even more of myself, became confused. Eventually, my actions stopped being about helping myself to become a great person again; they were about pleasing a bully. Walking on eggshells turned into the primary focus. My head swam, and I tried to slip away quietly, only making it worse. For a while, the tormentor clung to me, calling daily and inviting themselves over with a frequency that felt panicked and frantic (or maybe that’s just what it made me feel). When I finally got the courage to say I needed time alone to figure myself out, I was actively shunned: invited to the parties and then dramatically ignored. After several months of no contact, I think I am finally free, but I get nervous thinking that maybe one of these days I’ll be contacted again under the guise of “working things out”. I think we both know “working things out” means “I couldn’t control you for a while there, but I’m coming back full force now”. I’m afraid I won’t yet be strong enough for a second round. Hopefully, it won’t come to that.
I feel that the last couple of years happened the way they did for a reason, though. To remember the words that had always meant so much to me, I needed that pain. To find my optimism, my positivity, I needed to see with clarity the monster suit I was wearing. I needed to lose myself completely so I could start over and rebuild from the foundations of Staceyland. I needed to see the damage letting other people define me could cause. The walls hiding my vulnerability are still up, much to my chagrin, but I am taking them down, one brick at a time. I feel a change in the wind, and my sail is full. Finally, I can see some semblance of who I used to be, covered in the rubble of a neglected playland my mind had once created. My new goal is to salvage what I can, wipe away the rust and clear out the debris of almost a decade of disregard. Now that my eyes once again hold the lively shimmering bits and baubles of my Me, I am confident it won't happen again. I can no longer bend to peer pressure or “fakiness”, or I may lose Me for the remainder of my life.
Monday, December 06, 2010
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Running Away Toward...
Life handed me an interesting moment today. For weeks I’ve been looking forward to a concert of sorts, worried that I would change my mind at the last moment for concern of money, or that I’d forget only to remember after the music had already begun. I imagined the evening, the building, how I looked, what songs would be played, how I would meet the musical hero and what words he would write in my notepad, all the while knowing inside that daydreams rarely turn out as I expect. After so many of those disappointing moments, the shattered reveries, I finally had a life experience that turned out almost exactly as I had hoped it would, bringing my imaginings into reality. I sit here, running our brief conversation through my mind, wondering if I sounded silly, or if I did anything wrong, simultaneously believing- as so many fans do- that I had some sort of connection with my star, a minute of something real that the others before and after me couldn’t possibly have had, that moment of knowing someone understands my plight in a way those around me every day can’t comprehend. For that one strange instant, all was right, and I can now be happy.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Shortspam
I've got a case of the grumbles today. Sleep has been evading me for months now, and I think it's finally taking its toll on me. I believe I have lost a close friend, and the drama is maddening. I have about 3 or 4 hours of sewing ahead of me, and it's making me anxious. My pain has been, well, a pain... but none of this is what set me off today, the proverbial "straw". I read a friend of a friend's blog. Yes, that is what made me cranky today, a stranger's blog. What this person put in their blog isn't even the whole of what burned my biscuits, either. I got thinking about people I know who believe they are somehow more enlightened or intelligent than everyone, and use a blog or a social setting to toot their own horns. The blog I read today was talking about issues, and the person was stating opinion and assumptions as fact, pulling random made-up statistics out of nowhere. A friend of mine (the one I have recently lost) does the same thing, and it annoys the hell out of me. If someone wants to have an opinion, fine, but if they want to state an opinion and call it "fact", they NEED to cite sources for their information. Without getting more specific, there's my ridiculous problem today...
Monday, July 12, 2010
Pain and Zombies
I feel like there’s a line drawn through my lifeline where before, I was healthy, and after, I wasn’t. When I was 18, I got sick. Very sick. We didn’t have health insurance at the time, so I didn’t go to the hospital, which I should have, so we aren’t exactly sure what it was. The other three members of my family got it also, but I got symptoms earlier and more severely, and got over it after my family members were all well again. We believe it was food poisoning, since the four of us had eaten dinner together at a restaurant a day or two before I got sick and my boyfriend at the time, who had not gone to dinner with us that particular night but spent almost every free moment he had at our house, did not get sick. I spent two or three days (can’t remember how long now, it’s been 6 ½ years) in bed or in the bathroom, projectile vomiting, terrible fibrous diarrhea (my apologies for the tmi factor, that’s the only way I know how to describe it), and feeling like I had a million tiny spiders biting me all over my body. It was the first time I ever felt sick enough to call in to work. I haven’t felt 100% since then.
Soon after the illness, I started having an aching pain all over my body, like I had been doing physical labor all day every day. Lower back pain that I already had during physical activity became almost constant. I found myself going out less, moving less, doing less of the things I like. My mind became cloudy and I couldn’t seem to focus for very long, becoming distant and flaky. My already sensitive digestive system went haywire, and my doctor diagnosed me to have Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I gained a lot of weight within the next year, and when I suddenly started exercising a lot and lost some of it, the pain became unbearable and I had to stop and rest, gaining weight back. My boyfriend had gotten a much better paying job, so since I still didn’t have health insurance (and by that time, no job) he paid for me to start going to the chiropractor. I went for about a year, and that was the least pain I had been in since it started getting bad. I started losing weight again, going out again, participating in activities I liked. I started working again.
When we got engaged, my now fiancé and I had to stop going to the chiropractor and start putting our money toward our wedding, honeymoon, and house. The pain came back with a vengeance. I once again became couch-ridden and unemployed, gained all my weight back and then some. Most of my friends accused me of being lazy. I spiraled into sadness, becoming antisocial and hostile to everyone close to me, including my poor fiancé, the only person who may not have understood my pain, but accepted its reality and never pressured me to do more than my body would let me. I felt like I was wandering around in a haze all the time. Our wedding was small and a little lonely; I worry it was a byproduct of my alienating our friends.
Soon after we married, our finances required that I get another job. My sibling got me a job working rotating 12hr shifts manufacturing movie film in a darkroom, lifting 32lb rolls of film hundreds of times a day. At first, I loved the job, I was getting exercise, I was earning money, I was meeting new people, and most of all I was good at what I did. The pain started to subside. I lost about 25 lbs and was proud of myself. After several months of physical labor and sleep deprivation, I started aching again, but not so badly that I couldn’t handle it. Having a pretty mindless job, it was ok that I had problems concentrating, because by then I had stopped going out and everyone took my brain fog as a result of my work schedule. I started looking up vitamins and supplements to see if I could find something to help the pain, my digestive issues, or my concentration, and started taking Calcium, Magnesium, Vitamin D, B6, and C, and those helped slightly, but with my schedule I could never seem to remember to take them, and stopped a few months after starting them.
When we became short-staffed, they started expecting each of us to make more product at a faster pace, so we were working much harder physically than before. The pain became worse than ever, and I worried that taking it too easy would cost me my job. Aside from the all-over ache, my lower back started having sharp stabbing pain and my legs would begin tingling by the end of the work day, causing me to limp slightly, despite taking the maximum amount of OTC pain medicine every day. Coworkers of mine told me they could see I was in pain and that I should talk to my boss about it, so I did. I made a doctor’s appointment, where they focused only on the lower back pain, not the all-over ache. I was put on restriction, meaning I was not allowed to lift film until I was better. I started taking painkillers and muscle relaxers, going to physical therapy, the works. The pills turned me into a zombie, and the physical therapy didn’t do much for me, as the pain was still there. I was sent for x-rays, they found nothing wrong. After a couple of months on restriction and pills and physical therapy with very little result, they sent me for an MRI(thankfully that job had good insurance!!!). Still they could find nothing wrong. My boss grew annoyed with me; my doctor thought I was faking and ignored me when I tried to explain over and over that I was hurting everywhere, not just my lower back. When it was announced at work that our department would be closing production in the fall, 6 months away, and all of us would be laid off, I decided to “grin and bear it” and start running production again. I was taken off restriction, I stopped going to physical therapy, and I stopped taking the pills. Once again I was in daily agony, limping my way through work, relying on OTC pain medicine.
After I was laid off, my husband and I decided I would not get another job until I was ready. I rested for a full month. The pain started to subside once more, and then I started going on weekly walks with a friend of mine, trying to slowly build up my strength. I didn’t want to get into physical activity too much too quickly like I had in the past, and though I was getting a small amount of exercise, I gained back all my weight, topping out higher than ever. After the New Year, I gradually started working out more and more, we were up to three days a week going for walks, I was using the Total Gym regularly, and I started riding my stationary bike. I lost 23 lbs. and the pain receded again.
We then took a very stressful 2 ½ week vacation, and when we got back, I had such bad jetlag that I was nearly bedridden for a couple of weeks. I stopped exercising again, and the pain started getting bad again. I’m still working on getting out of this slump of bad days, but at least I now know it’s possible. I just have to remember to not push myself too hard, take my vitamins, and try to stay positive.
Soon after the illness, I started having an aching pain all over my body, like I had been doing physical labor all day every day. Lower back pain that I already had during physical activity became almost constant. I found myself going out less, moving less, doing less of the things I like. My mind became cloudy and I couldn’t seem to focus for very long, becoming distant and flaky. My already sensitive digestive system went haywire, and my doctor diagnosed me to have Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I gained a lot of weight within the next year, and when I suddenly started exercising a lot and lost some of it, the pain became unbearable and I had to stop and rest, gaining weight back. My boyfriend had gotten a much better paying job, so since I still didn’t have health insurance (and by that time, no job) he paid for me to start going to the chiropractor. I went for about a year, and that was the least pain I had been in since it started getting bad. I started losing weight again, going out again, participating in activities I liked. I started working again.
When we got engaged, my now fiancé and I had to stop going to the chiropractor and start putting our money toward our wedding, honeymoon, and house. The pain came back with a vengeance. I once again became couch-ridden and unemployed, gained all my weight back and then some. Most of my friends accused me of being lazy. I spiraled into sadness, becoming antisocial and hostile to everyone close to me, including my poor fiancé, the only person who may not have understood my pain, but accepted its reality and never pressured me to do more than my body would let me. I felt like I was wandering around in a haze all the time. Our wedding was small and a little lonely; I worry it was a byproduct of my alienating our friends.
Soon after we married, our finances required that I get another job. My sibling got me a job working rotating 12hr shifts manufacturing movie film in a darkroom, lifting 32lb rolls of film hundreds of times a day. At first, I loved the job, I was getting exercise, I was earning money, I was meeting new people, and most of all I was good at what I did. The pain started to subside. I lost about 25 lbs and was proud of myself. After several months of physical labor and sleep deprivation, I started aching again, but not so badly that I couldn’t handle it. Having a pretty mindless job, it was ok that I had problems concentrating, because by then I had stopped going out and everyone took my brain fog as a result of my work schedule. I started looking up vitamins and supplements to see if I could find something to help the pain, my digestive issues, or my concentration, and started taking Calcium, Magnesium, Vitamin D, B6, and C, and those helped slightly, but with my schedule I could never seem to remember to take them, and stopped a few months after starting them.
When we became short-staffed, they started expecting each of us to make more product at a faster pace, so we were working much harder physically than before. The pain became worse than ever, and I worried that taking it too easy would cost me my job. Aside from the all-over ache, my lower back started having sharp stabbing pain and my legs would begin tingling by the end of the work day, causing me to limp slightly, despite taking the maximum amount of OTC pain medicine every day. Coworkers of mine told me they could see I was in pain and that I should talk to my boss about it, so I did. I made a doctor’s appointment, where they focused only on the lower back pain, not the all-over ache. I was put on restriction, meaning I was not allowed to lift film until I was better. I started taking painkillers and muscle relaxers, going to physical therapy, the works. The pills turned me into a zombie, and the physical therapy didn’t do much for me, as the pain was still there. I was sent for x-rays, they found nothing wrong. After a couple of months on restriction and pills and physical therapy with very little result, they sent me for an MRI(thankfully that job had good insurance!!!). Still they could find nothing wrong. My boss grew annoyed with me; my doctor thought I was faking and ignored me when I tried to explain over and over that I was hurting everywhere, not just my lower back. When it was announced at work that our department would be closing production in the fall, 6 months away, and all of us would be laid off, I decided to “grin and bear it” and start running production again. I was taken off restriction, I stopped going to physical therapy, and I stopped taking the pills. Once again I was in daily agony, limping my way through work, relying on OTC pain medicine.
After I was laid off, my husband and I decided I would not get another job until I was ready. I rested for a full month. The pain started to subside once more, and then I started going on weekly walks with a friend of mine, trying to slowly build up my strength. I didn’t want to get into physical activity too much too quickly like I had in the past, and though I was getting a small amount of exercise, I gained back all my weight, topping out higher than ever. After the New Year, I gradually started working out more and more, we were up to three days a week going for walks, I was using the Total Gym regularly, and I started riding my stationary bike. I lost 23 lbs. and the pain receded again.
We then took a very stressful 2 ½ week vacation, and when we got back, I had such bad jetlag that I was nearly bedridden for a couple of weeks. I stopped exercising again, and the pain started getting bad again. I’m still working on getting out of this slump of bad days, but at least I now know it’s possible. I just have to remember to not push myself too hard, take my vitamins, and try to stay positive.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Put back together
I'm not sure what happened. Maybe this New Year, fresh start thing has gotten to me. Maybe I'm just scared enough of the future to do something for once. Maybe Kodak had a stronger hold on me than I thought. Hell, maybe being around Kara has given me massive inspiration. Any way I look at it, this new year has started out a career-related blessing. Granted, I haven't done anything to actually make money this year, but I have done more to get doing things to jump start my life than I have in the past. My writer's block is gone. I'm (slowly) getting my vocabulary back. I actually did an audition for a voiceover job. I've even been a bit inspired to start singing again. Granted, I didn't get the voiceover job, none of my writing is even finished yet, and I've only once in my life sung in public. I know that this is my year. I can't explain it, but I just know.
Moving on...
I have a friend on Facebook who said (or wrote I guess) how annoyed they get with, well, their friends' unimportant status updates, like game achievements, how they are upset but won't elaborate, pictures of what they cooked for dinner, etc. They said they would just start deleting friends over it if they got too annoyed. I'm still trying to figure out why I've been so affected by this. It's probably because I do some of that stuff. I like to post song lyrics when I'm sad and my own words fail me. Sometimes, I post game achievements and request help from my friends who are also playing the game of Facebook. I have been known to write about and post pictures of dinners I'm proud of. When I say I lost 2 1/2 years to Kodak, I'm not kidding. I didn't cook, I didn't clean, I hardly ever went out with friends. All I did was sleep and work, because I couldn't physically do more. Sometimes, posting a sad song lyric gets people to ask me how I'm doing, and just that tiny little acknowledgment is enough to help me feel a little better. Playing games with others is fun, and since I'm kind of a homebody, is my source of social interaction sometimes. I stopped cooking for so long, and I've just been happy about getting back into it, and I wanted to share my... progress?... with my friends and family. I realize I shouldn't take something like Facebook so seriously, but it's pretty much my connection to the outside world at this point and (not that she was necessarily talking about me specifically) I would hate for an old friend to delete my name from their friend list over something like that, especially when there is an option to block said annoying person's status updates without getting rid of them entirely. I know that deleting someone from a friend list isn't like saying "I don't want to be friends with you anymore" to everyone, but it means that to me. It means that what I have to say and what is important to me doesn't matter. Personally, I love reading about other people's trivial moments in life. Really, it kind of helps me keep my own humanity, and keeps me grounded and sane. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's true. I've always been a little crazy (We all go a little mad sometimes, haven't you?) and sometimes I lose my connection to reality. Things like Facebook help me stay in touch, not only with my friends and family, but myself. Who knows, maybe she was just in a bad mood, and won't ever think about it again, but I'm afraid it'll affect my interactions on Facebook from here on out, and that makes me a little sad. I really do enjoy sharing too much.
Moving on...
I have a friend on Facebook who said (or wrote I guess) how annoyed they get with, well, their friends' unimportant status updates, like game achievements, how they are upset but won't elaborate, pictures of what they cooked for dinner, etc. They said they would just start deleting friends over it if they got too annoyed. I'm still trying to figure out why I've been so affected by this. It's probably because I do some of that stuff. I like to post song lyrics when I'm sad and my own words fail me. Sometimes, I post game achievements and request help from my friends who are also playing the game of Facebook. I have been known to write about and post pictures of dinners I'm proud of. When I say I lost 2 1/2 years to Kodak, I'm not kidding. I didn't cook, I didn't clean, I hardly ever went out with friends. All I did was sleep and work, because I couldn't physically do more. Sometimes, posting a sad song lyric gets people to ask me how I'm doing, and just that tiny little acknowledgment is enough to help me feel a little better. Playing games with others is fun, and since I'm kind of a homebody, is my source of social interaction sometimes. I stopped cooking for so long, and I've just been happy about getting back into it, and I wanted to share my... progress?... with my friends and family. I realize I shouldn't take something like Facebook so seriously, but it's pretty much my connection to the outside world at this point and (not that she was necessarily talking about me specifically) I would hate for an old friend to delete my name from their friend list over something like that, especially when there is an option to block said annoying person's status updates without getting rid of them entirely. I know that deleting someone from a friend list isn't like saying "I don't want to be friends with you anymore" to everyone, but it means that to me. It means that what I have to say and what is important to me doesn't matter. Personally, I love reading about other people's trivial moments in life. Really, it kind of helps me keep my own humanity, and keeps me grounded and sane. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's true. I've always been a little crazy (We all go a little mad sometimes, haven't you?) and sometimes I lose my connection to reality. Things like Facebook help me stay in touch, not only with my friends and family, but myself. Who knows, maybe she was just in a bad mood, and won't ever think about it again, but I'm afraid it'll affect my interactions on Facebook from here on out, and that makes me a little sad. I really do enjoy sharing too much.
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