I did something that no one here has ever known me to do. I took down a post that I wrote last night. Obviously, if you subscribe to the feed, you could read it, or someone could forward it to you or something like that, and if that’s your bag, go for it, but I took it down for my own good reasons.
Namely, in that post, I outlaid, very descriptively, my last decade of history with something I hesitate to call mental illness. And I hit publish, feeling much as I usually would, done writing.
Then I got a comment on one of my old flickr photos, asking if some of my pics could be added to a pool for thinspo photos – images anorexics look to for inspiration to starve. I felt sick over myself, really. I felt sick again, when I was chatting about how 78 wasn’t the lowest weight I’ve ever been. I felt sick of myself, again, when I re-read last night’s post from an outside perspective.
And I felt completely vulnerable.
Most of you, I’m fairly comfie having carte blanche into my psyche – quite a few, in fact, have spent some late hours hashing stuff out over email, IM or the social media format du jour. Intimate friends are truly welcome into every nook and cranny of my head and heart. Where things get mucky is where strangers, or worse, people you’re concerned with driving running away with shouts of ’she’s fucking mad!’ are reading.
I’m not saying there is any people like that in my life.
But if there were, then the post I wrote last night would have left me embarrased, not emboldened or freed. I would have felt as if I was attention-seeking, a sad sort of individual, really. That comments of strength and amazement and such would have been received and made me feel worse. Because I neither deserved them, nor any more attention.
Because you know, sometimes I sluff off this crazy shit with jokes and honestly and blunt unfeelingness. And sometimes, I get a little bummed that all of this shit has taken place, both in and outside of my head. Then others? I feel ashamed, like I haven’t worked hard enough to be normal. Like I’m the only problem and I am completely to blame for this chemical make-up.
And it’s a main driving force for the still lingering self-hatred, really. And since I wrote that post last night, the shame and feeling of being on display at the circus’ freak show stage is a little too prominent. And I’m still really not good at feeling vulnerable, but am not in the position where I’m going to cover up those feelings by getting some self-esteem back organically, via sex, drugs or drinking.
That’d be too easy.
So instead, I did the harder thing, for me. I took down a post.
