what is love (baby don't hurt me)

I really need someone to occupy my chest.  When it comes to love, I'm the 99%.  (Is it too late to use that play on a phrase?  In my defense, I've been working on this entry for a while so I came up with it way before it became played out.)

I've pretty much eliminated the word "love" from my vocabulary.  I kind of feel bad about it but I guess not bad enough to actually do anything to remedy it.  And, really, what could I do?  I guess I just don't feel comfortable using that word because I really don't even know what love is or what it means to me.  I'm not even speaking about romantic love but just love in general.  I suppose I've always assumed it to mean a great affection for someone or something but for some reason, it doesn't feel that simple anymore.

And I think I used to love.  I felt affection for people, cared for them.  I wished the best for them and hoped they were okay.  I suppose that was love.  But the one person I cared for the most, someone I believe I loved at one point, completely shut me out in an instant and  ruptured my world forever.  And that's when my idea of love fell apart.

Why does it seem like the people that you give the majority of yourself to are the ones who hurt you the most?  I guess it's because you invest your time and your heart into that person so that you are more connected to them than anyone else.  You become vulnerable.  Your defenses are down.  You are allowing someone else to come into the soft fleshy places, sensitive spots that hurt when tampered with.  I suppose the tightest ties bleed the most freely when cut.

And on a somewhat similar yet different strain of thought, why is it that two people who are so in love can end up hating each other so much?  It always perplexed me how girls and guys get into relationships, become partners in crime, then suddenly turn into each other's worst enemy.  Things turn sour, love turns to hate, and it takes a while for that hatred to boil away.  I suppose some couples who split do so amicably and remain friends.  But it doesn't seem to happen often from what I've seen.  The breakup is usually ugly.  And I wonder why that is.  What does it take to get to that point?  Abuse?  Infidelity?  A love that has died?  An understanding that you are on a different path than your partner?  When does heartbreak turn to hate and is it always justified or only under certain circumstances? 

So that whole experience with being cut off from my friend really screwed me up.  Now, I don't believe in love because it feels like someone who loved me wouldn't do that to me, no matter the excuse.  Some would argue that's not real love but I'd hate to think she didn't love me.  I used to have a hard time believing anyone could love a mess like me but she gave me hope, made me feel that I could be loved despite my plentiful flaws.  It wasn't a case of her saying she loved me and me not believing her.  I knew enough of her to know that she did.  It wasn't always in the words but in the gestures and actions, in how she made me feel, how we made each other feel.  I held onto that and it helped me to feel like a real person.  I'd hate to know that it wasn't real, that what I thought was love wasn't.  But what was love to me back then?

She made me not believe in love.  She even went as far as to make me stop believing in friendship.  At the same time, maybe there's a small part of myself that is making me not believe in it, or at the very least, not allowing the microscopic part of myself that still does believe in it to actually experience it because I'm not sure I can go through another rejection like that.  I don't want to work on something for so long, give so much of myself to another person just to have it all torn down one more time.

It's so silly because I used to council people in my predicament when I was in high school.  These girls broke up with their boyfriends and they came to me to vent and said they'd never fall for another guy, never let them get close because it hurt too much when they left.  And I always said that not every guy was going to do that to them, not ever guy would hurt them and they'd be missing out by keeping their hearts so guarded.

Now, here I am, the guy with the guarded heart, eating my own words.  Sorry, girls.

hunger pulse

"We all have a sickness
That cleverly attaches and multiplies
No matter how we try..."
-Dig, Incubus

Life put together.  Life pulled apart.  Life semi-assembled.

Most people are screwed up.  Maybe everyone is screwed up to a certain degree.  And it's weird to realize that.  I've been envious of people who I thought had their lives together.  It happened a lot throughout my life but never more than when I was in college.  When I was in high school, no one really had it together.  Some of my peers were more organized in their future plans than others but we were all still slaves to the educational system.

But college came around and there was more freedom.  Most of the kids I saw chose to be there.  It was a part of their plan.  They chose their schedules and professors and classes.  And they began to assemble themselves into the adults they wanted to be.  They knew their strengths and utilized them.  They were forming themselves, from their clothes and hair to their behavior and attitudes to their education and careers.

I walked around and saw so many people who I thought had it together.  My first roommate, Keith, seemed like he had it together.  He knew who he was, even if he was a giant asshat.  But he embraced it and was comfortable with that.  He was also a musician and good with girls.  My other roommate was an extremely talented artist.  His work was fantastic and he had drive and passion and knew exactly who he was and what he wanted out of life.  He went on to work on the latest Chipmunks movie.  Good for him.

Even the roommates and classmates I had who were not fully formed at least had some direction.  They all spoke of far away dreams in a sleepy manner, as if they were slipping away into a daydream of what their day job would some day be like.  As for me, I was just trying to lose weight, just trying to get my next project finished, just trying to make it through the day without cracking.  I had no goals beyond the sunset because I was weak and incapable of being okay with who I was.  All the social/emotional/physical/spiritual development that a lot of adolescents experience in high school was lost on me.  I was always behind everyone else.

Everyone experienced physical changes during puberty but mine happened before my balls dropped and my voice deepened.  I got fat first.  And that was a hard adjustment to make.  And when I went through puberty, I got fatter and pimply.  And that was even harder to bear.

While everyone else dealt with their changes, even embraced them, mine made me feel hideous.  Guys started shaving and girls started wearing bras and everyone got braces and I hid in my room because my face and waistline had exploded and when I was forced to go outside, I wore layers of clothing to hide my belly, which just made me hot and perspire.  I was the token fat sweaty guy.  Nice to meet you.

I was ashamed of myself and never socialized because of it.  And then I lost the weight and I felt better about myself but I was already years behind my classmates.  They were already starting to form real relationships with people based on commonalities deeper than an enjoyment of television shows or songs on the radio.  They were discovering who each other were as people, how they felt about the world and life and the future, how they felt about their significant other.

And right when I started to think I could really be something, when I felt good enough to become an actual person instead of a label, I gained the weight back and ended up a hermit again.  I realized the only real relationship I had in my life was with food.

My classmates focused on their futures with their girlfriends and boyfriends and the colleges they would go to and the professional world they would some day enter.  But I couldn't get to that point.  I couldn't see beyond my belly.  Literally.  I was stuck in the moment, stuck in my body and that's all I could envision.  I had to lose the weight, had to be thin.  To me, everything else was determined by my weight.  If only I could be thin, I'd be social and make connections and fall in love and fall away from the depression that drove me deeper away from the world.

Diet pills and exercise and leafy green vegetables and dirt road walking.  Sixty pounds lost.  I was ready to enter college.  I was the average weighted, slightly less sweaty guy.  Hello again.

a funny thing happened on the way to my toes

It's weird to me how out of touch we can become with ourselves.  We go along, oblivious to our actions, behaviors, perceptions, or in some cases, our bodies.  As for me, I think I've been oblivious to it all, walking and working and eating and sleeping with my head in a different dimension.

When I entered college, I was the thinnest I had been in years.  And it took me several years to get to that weight.  Yet, I still thought I was fat.  Did I still have a fat boy outlook on life?  Could I not accept that I was no longer the chubby dude who could draw, as I was known as in high school?  Was I so out of touch with myself that I didn't notice the way I was thinning out?  What was I truly seeing when I was looking at my body?  Was I seeing the physical or the fear?

When I graduated, I returned home and became depressed and ate to cope.  And I gained all the lost weight back.  Plus some.  All the while, I still remained unaware.  I lived in elastic sleep pants so any expansion went unnoticed.  Yet, I looked in the mirror every day.  How did I not see my face getting fuller?  Was I out of touch with myself?  Or was I just not wanting to see the changes?  Was I denying myself, lying to myself yet again?  Or maybe I was just too apathetic to deal so I looked but I didn't really look.  I ignored.  And I carried on.

It's just sad to look back and realize all those years I worked at losing the weight was ruined.  All the calorie counting, the sacrifice, the working out and sweating and being frustrated, all gone.  All wiped out.  And I'm left where I began.  I have a long, hard journey ahead of me to lose the weight all over again.  It feels like such a waste of time, like I should have already conquered this, like this shouldn't even be an issue.  I have so many other aspects of my life I need to figure out and weight shouldn't be one of them.  But it is.  But it always will be.

I can do it again.  That is not the question.  The question is how long can I make it last before I succumb to this sickness one more time?  And how many times do I have left in me?

It's weird how we can lie to ourselves, how we can become estranged from our own bodies, minds, and souls.  You'd think you would know yourself and know more about yourself than anyone else but that simply is not true.  You are in your head every minute of the day and you have access to all that you know and believe yet you can still be disconnected from yourself, still not even know who you really are.  It's kind of astounding, actually.

Once, I was who I was and then something happened and I wasn't who I was anymore.  But I didn't know that.  I lost myself, somewhere deep within my mind or soul or psyche or whatever.  I became disconnected.  Broken.  And maybe that's how I lost my way.  I wasn't whole and because of that, I veered off my path and ran right into a ditch.  I've been stuck there ever since.

I've been working out ever since the first of the year.  I get off work and all I want to do is eat a pizza and take a nap but I don't do that.  I change out of my work clothes and pop in a workout DVD and get going.  And I hate it.  Every time.  And I dread doing it and I never feel better afterward.  I'm still waiting around for those alleged endorphins to kick in.  But I keep going because I know I'm doing something good for myself, although it doesn't feel too good.

Usually I wear athletic pants to work out in because it makes me hotter and makes me sweat more.  Helps get rid of some of that water weight.  Plus, I just like to be covered up at all times.  I'm painfully modest.  But I recently split the pants right down the crotch because of my huge package because I stretched too far and ripped them and all I had was a pair of cotton shorts to work out in.  So, I slipped them on and began to sweat.

I never wear shorts.  I don't own any shorts of any kind.  I was surprised to find those shorts at the bottom of my chest of drawers.  See, I always like to be covered.  I'm a pant guy.  If I weren't so hot-natured, I'd probably wear long-sleeved shirts all year round as well.  But that's just not feasible as I am the human furnace.  So, it was a strange feeling being bare below the knees.  It was cool and comfortable but still strange.  Foreign.

As I was on the floor stretching, I walked my hands up to my knees and felt my shins as I was trying to get to my toes.  This is going to sound kind of lame but go with me on this.  I felt my shins in a different way than I had before.  Like, really feeling them.  It wasn't like showering with the buffer of a bar of soap or scratching an itch through thick denim or plaid cotton.  It was skin on skin, exploring what my legs felt like without all the other stuff getting in the way.  And I realized that these were my legs.  They felt cool despite the sweat I was working up.  The skin was smooth and pale beneath the abundance of soft dark hair.  My shin bone was rigid like a steel pipe beneath a slippery satin sheet.  My calf muscles were pliable while at rest, hugged by a pad of fat, yet firm when I flexed them.

And I thought to myself, "Damn.  This is my body.  And I don't even really know what it feels like."  And that's when I realized I couldn't even get to my toes because of the enormous layer of fat around my midsection that acted like a pillowy barrier.  I recalled all those years ago when I first started seriously losing weight, how I could reach beyond my toes.  I had become so inflexible and so fat all these years later and I could barely get to my ankle.  And suddenly, everything started clicking.  That was my bulbous stomach.  That was my jiggly thighs, my doughy waist, a roll of fat between my stomach and chest, man breasts, thick arms and back fat.  Hindering my movements.  Hindering my life.

There was only one other time I can remember when I really looked at myself.  Back when I was in college and at a decent weight, yet still thought I was fat, I can remember lying on my back on my bed.  I was preparing for my afternoon nap when I looked down at myself and realized I could not only see my toes but my feet, legs and thighs.  There was no mountain of meat distorting my view.

I lifted up my shirt to my chest and visually explored the landscape of pallid skin.  My hip bones stuck out at each side of my waist and dipped inward, meeting the corners of my belly that sloped upward in a small pad of fat.  Back then, I thought I was fat.  I realize now that I was probably just slightly chubby.  No where near as big as I am now.  I massaged my belly and ran my fingers along the hard bone of my hip.  Deep shadows formed in the concave formation of my hips, shadows that led into my underwear, the elastic waist forming a smooth line from one side of my waist to the other.

Although I thought I was fat, I was becoming aware.  I hadn't quite gotten there but I was close.  So close.  I was beginning to realize I wasn't as big as I thought I was, that the shadows and protruding bones were evident of something my mind wouldn't allow me to understand, wouldn't allow me to believe.

I kept touching, exploring, realizing, becoming aware.  The cool skin of my stomach was interrupted by jagged red lines, stretchmarks that scarred me from my shoulders to my inner thighs.  Yeah, no matter how much weight I lost, they'd always be there.  A reminder of my gluttony.  Another thing to be ashamed of.  And suddenly, the awareness was gone and I was still fat and stretched out and ruined.  I'd never be smooth.  I'd never be flat.  I'd never be good enough.

Just like that, I lost whatever it was I was so close to finding.

And through the years, through the binge eating and consistent weight gain, it was my body going through the changes but I wasn't aware of it, didn't realize how big I was, didn't realize what I felt like.  You'd think because it was my body, I would at least have some kind of awareness about what was going on with it.  But that's how out of touch I was with myself.  I had ignored the problem for so long, choosing not to touch or even look at myself, just masking the problem, literally covering it up with clothing.  If I didn't have to see it, I didn't have to worry about it.

And I wasn't just out of touch with my physical body.  Obviously, I had to be out of touch in other ways to ignore and/or be so unconscious of the changes.

So, how do I fix it?  How do I become in tune with myself, with my mind and my body?  How do I get back inside myself and take an inventory of problems, both physical and mental?  Does it start with a touch?  Does it start with acceptance?  Or does it start with a frustration, an admittance, a confession?

Do you ever look at yourself, really look at yourself?  Do you ever realize that you are in your body?  I know that sounds like an obvious statement but is it, really?  There are times when I look at myself, examine myself and find flaws that fluster me.  But this is my face and this is my body and I have to accept it.  This is the only body I will ever have and this is what I was given to work with and it's scary sometimes.

I always wish I had a different body, different face, different hair and skin and eyes and teeth.  And I can spend so much time wishing for things that I forget that I'll never have them (with the exception of plastic surgery which isn't likely for me).  Like, this is it.  These are my eyes, whether I like it or not.  This is my jawline and my receding hairline and stretch-marked stomach and nipples and penis and fingers and lips and flat butt and freak lump in my throat and this is all that I have.  This is mine, all that I will ever possess, no matter how I like it or don't like it or accept it or don't accept it.  It's still all there, all mine for the taking or for the destroying.

But this is what other people see.  My eyes and jawline and receding hairline, etc., define who I am to others.  They look at me and that is how they identify me.  That's what Brannon looks like.  That is his body.  That is his face.  This is the vessel that I move around in, express myself in, communicate with others in.  And it's surreal to me.  This is it.  It will never get better than this and it hurts because it's not very good to begin with.

But I can take myself out of myself and put my head somewhere else where I don't have to deal.  I can eat away the shame and think about how I could look if I could just get myself together and it's a momentary comfort.  I disconnect again, lie again.  I can separate myself from my body and fantasize, dream, hope, envision something else.

And that will get me by for now.

depriving depravity

"I was like the wild animals in my Homes and Habitats of Wild Animals book who spent their lives hunting down other animals and eating them raw. Nobody much liked me, I thought, because they sensed that I wanted to bite into their bare arms and bare cheeks and rip off chunks of them and chew and chew and swallow. I wanted to eat them not because they looked particularly tasty or even because I was hungry, but because I was empty and I needed to feel full."
-Fat Girl by Judith  Moore

After all of these years of struggling with my weight and writing about it and thinking about why I am the way that I am when it comes to food, I am still such a mess.  As much as I feel I have learned a lot and have come a long way in my struggle, I still keep losing out to food.  Maybe I don't know as much as I think I do or maybe I know enough but I'm just not strong enough to face it.

I already know that I'm a stress eater.  I already know that I use food to comfort me when I'm sad.  I use food to celebrate when I'm happy.  I'm a glutton.  I'm a carbaholic.  I like sweets and sweets like me.  Food is the only thing in my existence that makes me happy.  God doesn't make me happy.  People don't make me happy.  Writing, painting, drawing doesn't make me happy.  But food does.  Every.  Time.

Food is my comfort.  It's my crush.  I'm in love with food.  I think about it constantly.  I crave the textures and smells and spicy zing.  I'm in love with the process of biting and slurping and chewing and swallowing.  It fills me up inside in a way that nothing else can.  It's an event.  It's an experience.  It lowers my blood pressure and temporarily distracts from the hate that boils away inside me.   It's calming.  It's soothing.  It's destroying me in the best way.

Food always answers me when I call.  It never disappoints me.  Maybe I just can't deal with people like I can with food.  People are fallible.  Food is immaculate.  Maybe I'm playing the victim and making food my savior.  But it's so much easier, isn't it?  Especially because the people I cared about the most, the ones I thought would be around, left me.  Left me for reasons I'll never know.  Left me for other people.  I was a penis placeholder until someone better came along.  I feel pretty abandoned and it's something that I've struggled with for a long time.  The why.  The not being able to understand how everything went down the way it did.  But food can't leave me like that.  It's always there to listen and make me feel better.  It fills those spaces that people left behind.

But food isn't all that great.  Food has caused me to gain a significant amount of weight since my college graduation in 2009.  I don't want to go anywhere or see anyone because I feel I look disgusting.  I don't want to see old high school acquaintances because I don't want them to think I was just another classmate that got fat over the years.  I hate that they missed all the weight I lost after high school, how I looked decent and thin for about three years before I came home and put all the weight right back on.

I hate myself for getting this way.  But I hated myself before it even happened.  Which is why I ate.  And now I eat to not hate myself so much.  And that's how people get trapped in that cycle of pain and self-soothing.   I've realized I've caught my sleeve in some machinery and I can't wriggle myself free.

I've become lazy.  I feel like I've come pretty close to pinpointing my problems with food and people and myself but I just don't feel I have the energy to deal with it.  It's just so much easier to grab food instead of legitimately dealing with what's going on.  I don't want to deal with the fact that I'm a college graduate working in a shitty retail store.  I don't want to deal with the fact that I'm one hundred grand in student loan debt.  I don't want to deal with the fact that I have never had a meaningful relationship in my life.  I don't want to deal with the fact that my Christianity is hanging on by a thread.   I don't want to deal with the fact that I have no idea what I want to do with my life because the things I thought I was passionate about don't mean anything to me anymore.  I don't want to deal with the fact that I'm fat.  Maybe my mind can't handle it, can't comprehend the crap heap I've gotten myself into.  So I ignore it with food.

I try not to eat so much but I've become so accustomed to this lifestyle of funneling food in every second that if I'm not eating, my body responds.  I get flushed and nervous.  And I tell myself that it's no big deal, that I'm just cutting back.  I'm not giving up food forever.  I'm just not going to eat as much.  But my body doesn't believe me.  I get anxious.  I try to ignore it, to focus on other things but my brain gets busy and it stirs up thoughts of eating until I literally can't concentrate on anything else but the fridge.

EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT it tells me.  It fills my head and consumes my concentration until I bust into the kitchen to soothe the sirens that blare incessantly.  I give in one more time, give it what it wants, and wait for the temporary feeling of euphoria wash over me.

And then the inevitable crash.  The hatred.  The loathing.  The sadness that sweeps in and takes over my body until I hear the EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT again.

It'll make you feel better.  You won't be nervous.  It feels good.  It feels right.  Do it.  Do it.  Do it.

I don't mean to downplay the significance of an actual addiction but in some ways, I do feel like I'm addicted to food.  It might be more of a psychological dependence than a physical one or maybe I'm just dependent on the way food makes me feel rather than the substances themselves but it's all I can think about.  I wake up to breakfast and wait out the hours until it's time for lunch and do the same until dinner and go to bed thinking about breakfast again.

And then there's the snacking and the indulgent sweets and the high that I get from eating them.  And just like an addict, the one snack high wears away after a while and then I have to have two, and then three, and then that's not enough and I have to keep eating to sustain any form of anesthetization.

I've tried replacing food with some other form of stress relief.  Yoga.  Meditation.  Writing.  Drawing.  Listening to music.  Petting a cat.  Nothing does what food does for me.  Nothing feels as good or as fulfilling as eating.

Most people treat food as fuel but I treat food as a friend.  I know I have a tendency to personify objects.  Not just stuffed animals but televisions and bedding.  I create personal attachments to inanimate objects without thinking anything of it so is it that much of a stretch to think I would personify food as well?  To think of food as an actual something that I can see and talk to and touch?

Maybe the reason I can't stop eating is because I'd feel like I was leaving the only friend I ever had, the only person who made me feel good inside.  The only one who never left me.  I wouldn't want to leave the way I've been left.  I wouldn't want to turn my back on food.

Or maybe I just don't want to give up the one thing I feel like I have left.  If eating is the only thing that makes me happy and I give up my favorite indulgent foods, what do I have?  Nothing.  And how would that make me feel?  Devastated.  Angry.  Impossible to handle.  I'm already on the verge of snapping at everyone and if I can't self-soothe with food, I might just blow up on someone or find life even more unbearable than I already do.  I don't want to deprive myself because it's too hard but I know I have to because it's also too hard being in this body.

I feel like I can't control it.  There's just something inside that clicks.  All of a sudden, I get it and I can diet and deal with it and lose the weight.  And then whatever it is that keeps me in control goes away and all progress is lost.  I've lost weight before and I can do it again.  I just have to wait for the click.  I can feel it coming.  I can do this.

I just have to stop self-sabotaging.

job prospect paralysis, part IV

Aboot a couple of months ago, there was an opening at a local company and you know I jumped all over that.  Even better, I finally had connections.  A former co-worker works there now and she said she'd put in a good word for me.  My current co-worker's husband knows people there.  She said he'd put in a good word for me.  My dad knows people who work there so he got them to put in a good word for me.  Another co-worker's mother works there and I asked her to put in a good word for me.

I had a lot of people on this.

I was pretty excited because the job requirements didn't seem like anything too drastic and I knew people.  I felt better about that job prospect than many I had before it so that was a nice feeling.

I turned in my application and never heard anything back.

I was slightly bummed until one of the girls I work with said her mom told her they wouldn't be doing any new hiring until the craziness of Christmas was over.  That relieved me and I didn't think too much more about it (except for when the frequent rude customer came in and pissed me off, rekindling my fantasies of quitting and starting the new one).

For a good month, I tried not to get too excited but at the same time I knew I had at least earned an interview.  My resume was good.  I had good references and a lot of inside people.  Obviously, it was all up to me to sell myself during the interview but I felt confident that I could do it.  I allowed myself the occasional fantasy of being able to resign from my old job, get the new one, have nice benefits and vacation days and not have to deal with the public.

The timing felt right, too.  Near year, new job.  Possibilities.  I could see the doors opening.  There was a lot of prayer and a good amount of hope and a bit of dreaming, too.

Couple of days before Christmas, one of my coworkers told me someone else had gotten the job.  Boom.  Just like that.  Didn't even get an interview.  That month of anticipation fizzled away in seconds.  I was pretty disappointed.  But I didn't have time to let it set in because I still had the Christmas rush to deal with.  I silently swore, suited up, and carried on.  I didn't have the time or energy to be annoyed because I had already reserved that feeling for the rude and smelly customers who waddled through my department. 

And speaking of my department, my boss still hasn't told me what's going to happen to me in March, although a lot of other department supervisors have been informed.  Pretty sure he's going to wait until maybe a week before he screws me over to tell me.

I have to say, whatever higher power in the universe and/or beyond is screwing with me is getting really good.  It sucked enough not to even get to the interview stage but it made it all the more miserable for me to have to dwell on possibly getting it.  I have to laugh.

All these paper cuts are really adding up.

And I love it.   

The pain, the disappointment, the rage feels so good at this point.  It just proves what I've been saying and feeling all along.  My life is so predictably shit that I can call it now.  It's confirmation.  It's recognition.  It's acceptance.

It's just making it easier for when I decide to disengage.