[ovulating and such]

My script for my birth control ran out earlier this month. I've been taking Microgestin FE 1/20 for about a year. Before that Lo-Ovral, Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo, Yasmin, and probably a couple other 'Lo' brands.
I began taking birth control when I was 18. I don't remember the brand but I do know I was terrified of gaining weight. Instead I lost ten pounds and spent the two months I was taking it spotting and feeling more emotional than usual. I was also terrifyingly bloated. Thus began the merry-go-round of birth control pills.

At some point in the last five years I came to terms with never having a BC pill that didn't give me some undesirable side effect. I'd already learned this was the case with psych meds but something about birth control being so essential to every woman's life made these side effects feel completely unfair.

With the expired script I took the opportunity to confer with friends and the internet for a better pill. Sure enough everyone has horror stories with one brand or another. Most of my girlfriends have settled for pills that are mildly inconvenient. Brands that didn't give them cysts or months of bleeding this time around. WebMD shows a similar story. With easily over 30 brands reviewed, you'd be hard pressed to find anything at all rated over 3 stars, most barely garnering 2. I spent hours pouring over these reviews and was left pretty discouraged. If I'm lucky I won't get an ovarian cyst but if I don't, I'll go crazy or gain 50lbs or stop finding men attractive because of their smell.

Because there's no winning I've decided to just take what a friend is taking and hope it's better than the Microgestin I was previously on. But we'll see, I'm not going to hold my breath. Besides, there's always the future of the male pill. Here's to that.

[sometimes I feel like a Cathy comic- ack]

Saturday was mostly good. I woke up at noon and made breakfast to go with a french press of Stumptown. I spent a better part of the day putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a wolf and watching internet-tv. Around five I noticed how blustery it was outside and decided to go for a run through downtown. Everything was light and easy. I love how running without headphones in the rain feels like it could be something very important.

I jogged by bed bath & beyond and remembered I needed to pick a few small things up. As I wandered through cosmetics and every exciting little product I could ever want, I happened to walk right through the scale isle.

I threw my scale away 4 months ago. The scale I bought when I was 13. The only scale I fully trusted through the worst of my eating disorder. Since moving into my own place I'd weighed myself maybe a handful of times. I felt like ditching my scale was huge but finally, also easy. I had not weighed myself since. I have seen scales in others' bathrooms, random stores, I have been so good at knowing a trigger and walking away.

Yesterday out of curiosity or weakness, I pulled down the most expensive scale, breathed in, told myself it was evening and I was fully clothed, then looked down.

I don't know what number it could have been that would have made me feel okay. If my head is in that space, every combination of numbers is wrong.

I meekly bought cotton balls and a shower curtain while trying not to cry. How can everything I've learned be completely forgotten from one action? I walked outside and it was pouring but I couldn't go home because I was fat and fat was the end-all. The berating started the was it always had before, my head knew all the paths to wind through and the solutions to draw. Everything is worthless and doomed because I am fat. I should lose xx pounds and stop allowing myself to do anything until then. and then I should lose 10 more pounds for good measure. I started calculating meal plans and exercises for the following month.

Before I knew it was in the middle of a closed Pike Place Market, crying, and soaked from the rain.

No, no, no I thought. I got a grip. Three years of recovery would not be easily thrown out the window. I am not my old self. I get to enjoy life now. I am in an honest, genuine relationship where I share myself fully.

I got a hot chocolate and walked home in the thunderstorm. I reminded myself that I was just fine and would be the next time I felt a pull in a backwards direction.

[Currents in May]

Currently:

  

considering dinner

Current Album:

Current TV Series:

Current shame inducing guilty pleasure:

hours a day, every day.

Current Links:

www. tvduck.com

Current Drink:

Current Fetish:

Current Wish List:

No more!

so I can have James back

Current Song:

http://www.melophobe.com/audio/06-girls-just-want-to-have-fun.mp3

Current Triumph:

Current Scent:

Current Excitement:


Current Mood:

 

[brightness]

did you know that everything is going to be so beautiful and okay? sometimes I get swirlled up in the depression and manic meloncholly and I forget that I am no longer at where I was. That life is already beautiful and perfectly scented. I am so in love and this love is like honey and I'm going to be in school and eventually I'll have a career and enough money to not be stretched too thin. And there are so many wonderful adventures in front of me and I have a lifetime of goodness and interesting things in front of me.

James and I had this great conversation last night when I called pre-panic attack and he reminded me about everything being so in place right now and we could count our real worries on one hand. And most of those worries were long term, far away things.

breathe, breathe, breathe. everything is lovely and good.

[satiety]

I have been sending one million resumes and personalized cover letters to one million employers. I have also met with the school advisor and planned my fall schedule. It is simple and includes just math, english, and yoga but I am excited, and scared, and a little worried but mostly excited! I am worried about being able to work enough without stressing myself out too much. We will see when we get there. I am wishing for a secret relative who reveal themselves to be rich and really wants to see me get through school and supplement my income! Oh, dreams...
James has already promised to help me with homework and projects and any schooly-problems I might have. Him being a professional school-goer these past 30 years. I am nervous for math even though it is the lowest they offer (!). I haven't taken a real math class since I was in 8th grade, thank you Washington school district (and Integrated Math). hah.

It is nearly the weekend again and this one will be full. My sweet sister has her BFA show tomorrow night and then she graduates on Saturday. Very exciting stuff all around. Also a birthday party and hopefully a picnic.

I have been cooking more these last few weeks. I am hungry all the time. Ravenous. I am not sure about it. It's scary and feels various degrees of wrong. My quieter parts had been toying with the idea of diets and exercises for summer and skimpy clothes. My louder parts were worried, and mostly I hadn't changed any of my food routines yet. But this whole week! I could eat a steak the size of the ocean! I tend to think that my body knew I was meditating on less calories and just the knowledge made is insatiable. But I also tend to think of my body as always trying to spite me and maybe I should break out of that thought pattern.
Last night, I became depressed and then really angry with myself for still starving after a big dinner (again), I went to bed early and hoped I wouldn't be hungry in the morning. Of course I woke up wanting to eat out my fridge. I skipped breakfast thinking I could scold my body. Just coffee and a sandwich once lunch time. You'd think I would learn! you would think!

Okay, okay. No skipping meals. I know it. I do. I don't know why I am craving everything in mass quantities. It might be James' absence and my subsequent loneliness. It might be medication dose changes. It might be just a regular, silly body thing that I fail to understand. I have spent the afternoon brainstorming solutions. Bigger breakfasts, better snacks, more attention to fibers and proteins in every meal. Continue drinking silly amounts of liquids (sooo much peeing!).
Hopefully this plan of action will work. It's hard to be hungry all the time, it makes my head worry for the past eating disordered me and the remnants in the future.

[on a monday]

Flying off in three days time. I downloaded all 7 Audio Harry Potter's for the plane ride. I haven't flown in six years and I've never even been to the East coast. (Excitemnet!) James has most of our meals already figured out. The important things you know: Italian, french, sea food, pizza, chowder, breakfasts. We will both be well fed by Monday. There's a really good chance we're going to drive up to Maine and spend the night. Maine! I have always (always) wanted to go.
Mostly I can't wait to see James, I don't really care too much about any of the adventures. Four months is entirely too long.

The bunnies have been crazy the last couple days. They are speed hopping from all corners, jumping off of whatever gets in their way. Last night while I was trying to sleep they were pushing everything off the end table next to my bed, chasing the cats from the window sill, somehow finding my paints (!), and eating the last couple couple skittles in a bag. They also peed in my left slipper, again... I am beginning to think that the bathroom should be their home during the night. In the morning they were so excited that I was awake and played their bunnie games by rubbing their chins/noses on my ankles, flying across the room, and then back to my ankles. I would try to pet their bunnie-bottoms but they are so fast! Beaumont's sneezing is nearly gone but I'm worried because he just finished his antibiotics with a sneeze average of one every two days.

I'm in the thick of SSRI withdrawal. Ick x 10 you know. Nothing as bad as NRI's but still... I have two pills left that I've been carving slivers from every day. Every time I go on something new I am so hopeful that they will work it rarely enters my mind the time and torture it takes to come off them later. I would at least be tapering off more carefully if my former dr would give me one more script but since I haven't seen her in a year she won't unless I make an appointment. Between no health insurance and her office being too far away for me now, it can't happen.
I am doomed to brain-shakes, nausea, dizziness, and extra stomach problems for who knows how long. In happier news I'm applying for health insurance. My employer is willing to pay half and James volunteered to help me out when I need it for prescriptions and such... it would be nice to be steady again.

three days! and soft crazy bunnies when I get home.

[The Sea]

Over the last few weeks I've been turning over the idea of genuine connectivity. I am aware that I've been over using the word 'connected' in reference to James and myself. It fits though and it will probably continue as one of my favourite adjectives for us.

When things were clearly at the point of being very very broken in my marriage, I was sort of seeing a therapist. She was big on taking home books, packets, and various audio recordings.
I listened to audio sessions on mood disorders, eating disorders, and perfectionism. They were all relatively basic and filled with information you know if you've experienced any of those. The one cd that I did like though, was on relationships and the way we connect to one another. Some of it was simple like the previous cd's but listening for two hours about the importance of finding effective, constant ways to connect to your partner really bore into me. It made me more aware of the gaps in my relationship.

I knew things were horrible but I knew with near certainty that they were irretrievably broken when I took the time to address our complete lack of connectedness. For years, we had nearly matched up when things were great but even then never quite. and when things were bad. It was like we were on different planets. of course it was my job to fill the holes and make concessions and be the 'unreasonable' one but that's not what I want to talk about right now.

It has become so apparent to me. I have been racking my brain to find memories where we were ever genuinely connected. I want to find the times when I felt that the relationship was so beautiful. When I wasn't talking myself into it being good or allowing awful things because I thought I had unrealistic expectations.

I can't.
I'm embarrassed and sad for myself.

The other day one of my long time friends referred to Tyler always being sleazy and things always being bad.
There had to have been great moments, right? not just a string of mediocre events... right?

When I was 16. When we rode the ferries, and floated in lakes, and kissed on thrift store couches. Those were sweet memories. They count as much as they can. I was connected to Tyler as much I could be to someone of the opposite sex at that time. But after 18, was there ever anything? I can barely read paper and pen diary entries without feeling so ashamed of my then-self for allowing so much. We wanted to connect (I think). We pretended that what we had was right enough. That's the best you can do? But we got married and everything was very wrong and it was obvious the entire time. It was painful how much it did not work. How much I tried and how much Tyler treated me with no respect. How disgusting it all ended up.

It's been rolling around my insides for weeks because I continue using 'connected' to describe my life with James. It is glaringly obvious now. It would have been without James but it's easier to see with him.

I am constantly amazed at how I allowed myself to believe that I could not be treated as well as I really wanted. That in relationships someone is always abused. That it was okay that he thought I was ugly and too much. And stupid and loud....

I am tangenting, I know.

I feel connected now in a way I did not know (believe) would happen for me. I've accepted that most of what I had with Tyler was not genuine or healthy or mature.

That's all. It is good now though, all of it.