the devil and god are raging inside me

"And over the sea in a warm sunny place 
men and women sit watching TV 
they say, 'it's a shame anyone has to die
but it was either them or me' 
all safe and snug, tucked away in our mansions 
we smile feeling comfortably safe 
and over the sea there's a dark cold place 
out of sight, out of mind, out of reach, washed away..."
-Showbread, Escape from Planet Cancer

"The death, the rape, the tragedy

the world is an ugly place

what's capable inside of me

is going to rear its ugly face..."

-DIES, Aesthetics of Violence 

"And in my best behavior 
I am really just like him 
look beneath the floorboards
for the secrets I have hid..."
-Sufjan Stevens, John Wayne Gacy, Jr.

Several years ago at my former job, I sat down at my makeshift desk, which was really just a folding table propped up against a wall.  I was a temp, hired on to help the company catch up on their paperwork and they had no proper office to give me.  So they made due and assembled a desk from extra parts they had in storage.

As I sorted through the stack of files, I noticed the room grow dim on my right side.  I looked up and saw the florescent light on the ceiling had gone out.  I looked at the wall three feet in from my face and saw the light and the dark encompassing the same portion of polystyrene.  To me, it felt like the technological equivalent of the angel and devil on my shoulder.

When I was a child, as I came to understand myself and the world and people around me, I realized I wanted to help people.  I lived in a small town with small minds.  Religion reigned over everything.  God was not at the center of people's hearts but at the center of social normalcy.  And with that warped sense of religion came a warped sense of right and wrong.  They did not look to the Bible but to their biased pastor to see who should be shunned or celebrated and a mess was made of everyone.

Fortunately, I was able to avoid such brainwashing.  I did not grow up in the church and it spared me from being taught to discriminate (disclaimer: not all churches teach hate, just all the ones I attended).  I wasn't told to hate the gays or keep my distance from the blacks and shun the atheists and fornicators and underage drinkers.  In fact, all these "bad" people comprised the majority of my friends.  I liked them and I was a good judge of character.  How could they be bad?  And how were they any worse, open with their vices, than those who hid their sins on Sunday and resumed their wicked ways the rest of the week?

Although this "Christian" behavior was hypocritical, it didn't anger me at the time.  It only inspired me.

I realized I wanted to help people. I wanted people to love each other, to realize we are all the same underneath our skin and sexuality. I wanted people to know we all have the same desires and defects. I wanted to use my art to inspire and incite revolution. All I really wanted to do was open people's eyes.  I just didn't think I was good enough at the time. I wasn't quite ready yet.

I was a child, still developing my skills and message. What did I want to say? How was I going to change the world? I had lofty ambitions and I didn't want my life to go to waste. I grew up deformed in several ways and I felt so much pain inside because of my feelings and fears. I didn't want anyone else to go through that. I didn't want anyone to feel as alone as I did. Despite my personal demons, I thought people were basically good. The world was bad and we would get corrupted but we could be saved. We were worth saving.

consumed

"Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us."
-Peter De Vries

"Well, I hate myself.  I already have a pint of ice cream, a pizza, and mini eclairs.  I don't need these cookies.  I'll have to put something back.  Pizza.  I'll put that back.  I have pizza at home.  But no, that's why I came here.  I want this kind of pizza, not the kind I have at home.

"I'll just put back these eclairs.  I can do without them.  Yes, I feel good about this.  Actually, no, these eclairs remind me of the time when I was in college and went to Publix and bought eclairs and ate them all in my car to soothe the pain of being a gigantic loser.  Those were good memories and I think I want to re-capture them.

"And I really want this ice cream.  And the cookies.  I haven't had the cookies in a long time.

"I'll make chili dogs when I get home.  I don't need this pizza.  But if I bought the pizza, I could have that the day after.  That way I could satisfy my cravings for chili dogs and pizza.  Yeah, I have to keep the pizza.  But I have one at home.  But this one has a cheese stuffed crust.  I'm definitely keeping the pizza.  Nah, the one at home is just as good.

"Okay, pizza is gone.  Too many sweets here.  Okay, ice cream gone.  Just eclairs and cookies.  That's not too bad.

"Okay, the ice cream is back.  I know I can do without it but it will literally be on my mind, making me crazy, until I eat it so it's better to go ahead and get it so I won't drive myself nuts.  But that means I'll have to, have to, put back the cookies.  I've got to compromise.  I don't want to spend too much money.  Or calories.  But my diet is already shot.  What's another weekend binge?

"Damn it.  Okay, keeping the eclairs for sure.  It's just...I'm so annoyed right now and these frozen foods, these processed pizzas, is what soothes me.  I know I'm hurting myself.  This is not normal, healthy behavior.  But I'm sad and so I just don't care.

"Screw it, I'm gonna get the pizza too."

This is an average conversation I have with myself when I go to the grocery store, except I use a lot more foul language and stand around being indecisive for a longer period of time.  People passing by probably think I'm lost.  And in a way, I am.

I've struggled with my weight over half of my life.  You'd think it would be easier to deal with by now but it's not.  I think about food and my weight every single day.  I think about everything I put in my mouth.  I chastise myself for the bad things because I know it will lead to weight gain and I complain to myself about the good things because I know it won't bring satisfaction.  I have to assess my wardrobe every day and wonder what I can or can't wear because I've gotten too big or small.  It's a struggle between calories and comfort.  I get lost in the swirl of butter cream and bat shit crazy and there are days when I wish I could just get it under control.  There are days when I wish I didn't care so much.  Or at all.

There's the logical part of my mind that knows I can lose weight.  I've done it several times before.  But there's the insecure hurting child deep inside that craves the satisfaction that only sugar can provide.  And when it comes to logic and pain, pain will always win out.  It's the underlying weakness that's the strongest force within me, popping up and making its way to the surface during my struggles, filling my cells with the urgent need for food, any carb to curb the current crisis.

It's embarrassing to lose weight and have people notice...and then gain it back...and have people notice.  It's like, "Have you seen Brannon?  He's getting fat again.  He was doing so well.  It's a shame he's letting himself go."  But they just don't get it.  I didn't suddenly find myself overweight and then took control of my body and lost it and that's the end of the story.  It's a constant, brutal struggle to stay sane, slim, and satiated.

It's made even harder because you can see my struggle.  I wear it around my waist.  I feel exposed, like my pain and shortcomings are out there in the open for everyone to see.  It gets tiring and I think it's especially hard because I can't avoid food.  It's in ads in magazines and on television.  It's in my kitchen.  It's always in my head.  It's cultural.  It's social.  Celebrate with food.  Gather the family around a buffet. 

But for me, it's not cultural.  It's not social.  It's emotional.  It's sacred.  It's spiritual.  When I meet someone for dinner, I'm more excited about the meal than the company.  And I want to gather my food and go into a private room and eat it alone.  I want to go through my ritual of chewing and swallowing and savoring, of experiencing different combinations of condiments and mixing all the sides and seasonings.

Every time I eat, it's a religious experience.  Pasta is like a prayer.  It calms and centers me.  It takes away the hurt and the pain.  How could I not want to recapture that transcendence again and again?  Especially when my head is in chaos most of the time.  It's a legal high, a harmless elevation.  But it's only harmless when experienced occasionally.  Otherwise the side effects add up and suddenly I can't button my pants anymore.

I don't want to blame my crappy job or lack of friends for my unhealthy relationship with food but those things really do drive me to eat.  I'd like to say if things were better, I would eat better.  I don't know if that's true.  It's not even a good excuse.  We all have our problems but not all of us deal with them in such unhealthy ways.  Sure, a lot of us do but a lot of us don't.  I just wish I could be one of the healthy ones.

But it hasn't all been a series of failures.  Through writing about my struggles with food and emotional eating, I think I've come about as close as I can to identifying why I eat the way I do.  Unfortunately, that's about as far as I've come.  Despite determining many of the causes of my caustic relationship with food, I have yet to find a way to fix it.  All the multiple episodes of weight loss have occurred despite my bad habits and habitual cravings.  I never cured them, only temporarily deflected them.  But there comes a time when I feel too good, too accomplished, and the ugliness, that weakness, bubbles up again and I'm put back into the clutches of agony and the resulting addiction.

Eventually my body is going to give up.  How many times can you bounce back from extreme weight loss to extreme weight gain?  I also fear eventually my heart will give up.  How many times can you bounce back from extreme accomplishment to extreme failure?

It's mind over matter, food vs face, health and heft.  It's nothing new.  But it doesn't get easier with your head in the way.  And no one understands unless they've been there before, as many times as you have been.  Can I beat it?

I want to sit down to dinner with someone and not have food be the main course.  I want to be satisfied with one slice of pizza.  I want to skip dessert without feeling like I have deprived myself.  I want to go to the grocery store without getting into a mental argument with myself.  I want to be able to skip the candy and enjoy a glass of water.  I want to use food to celebrate, not medicate.  I want to feel normal.

I don't want to starve anymore.

heterotaxia

"You love, love, love
when you know I can't love
you love, love, love
when you know I can't love you
so I think it's best we both forget
before we dwell on it..."
-Of Monsters and Men, Love Love Love

If someone says they love you but they don't show it, does it really count?

It's like living in poverty with a million dollar bank account no one told you about.  You're rich but you're not rich.  You're blessed but you're not blessed.  You're loved but you're not loved.  

I don't want to say not being in a relationship has been detrimental to my self-worth but I don't think it's helped.  I just keep thinking how I'm 27 and have never connected with anyone on a deep, meaningful level.  And the one time I thought I did, well, it disintegrated and completely changed the way I saw people.  If that strong of a friendship could crumble, there was no hope for me and anyone else.

But stuff happens.  People form relationships and those relationships sometimes end due to any number of circumstances.  And sometimes you're left wallowing in your own cesspool of self-doubt because no one else comes along to help you correct your interpersonal errors.  Sometimes locations and circumstances make it hard to hone in on a partner.  Or even a friend.

There must be some benefit to being told your loved by someone outside your bloodline.  They can be with anyone but they choose to be with you.  They open their hearts to the possibility of pain and see through the marks on your skin and the mistakes in your mind.  Someone out there came to you and decided to stay because you were worth getting to know.  For me, people have come into my life but it's the staying part that seems so difficult.  Do I subconsciously drive people away?  Do they just get tired of my incessant self-deprecation?  Or do they get bored with my personality?

I often feel like a novelty act, a brand new Brannon still in the cellophane and once the protective casing has been cut away and I've been squeezed of jokes and encouragement and conversation, I am discarded.  The newness wears away as the imperfections poke through the shellacked surface that's eventually worn away through long exchanges and lots of laughs and eventual awkward pauses.  Then missed e-mails.  Unanswered text messages.  Phone calls not returned.  There's something about me that hooks people in but once they've penetrated whatever "thing" magnetizes them to me, they realize I am too flawed, too flat, too frail to stick with and they eventually pull out.

I'm not trying to make myself look like a victim.  I know you think I am.  But I'm not.  And I am not blaming anyone who has gone away.  I wouldn't want to put up with someone like myself either!  The novelty becomes a nuisance after a while.  And everyone says they aren't like everyone else.  They'll stick around.  They never do.  Some stay longer than others, but for me, it's just a waiting game.  Classmates never called when class was over.  Co-workers never kept in contact when they found better jobs.  Old roommates haven't written.  It hurts.  It hurts so bad.  But I'm not bitter about it and I don't blame them.  I just take it for what it is: another form of rejection, just a slow kind, a knife plunged inside by inches. 

cacao kapow!

Valentine's Day hit me like Chris Brown in a Bronco.  I'm not talking about just being alone (although that did have a lot to do with it).  I'm talking about the enormous amount of crap I ate.

I won an entire plastic container full of Hershey Kisses from work and then the store gave everyone a box of chocolates and my mom bought two boxes of chocolate for me.  After consuming that much sugar and chocolate and lard and fat and lard and sugar and chocolate and fat and lard and more lard and the occasional coconut cluster that slipped past my security measures (yuck), I felt like total garbage.

It's kind of amazing how you don't realize how bad you stopped feeling until you start feeling bad again.

I always thought I was impervious to sugar, caffeine, Aspartame, vitamins and minerals, love, legally obtained prescription drugs, etc.,  because I can have that stuff and it doesn't make me more energetic or foggy or good or bad.  I've always walked around generally feeling like crap.  So, when I started exercising and eating less greasy, fast food-type items, I didn't feel more energetic or "alive" or better physically or even mentally.

All it took was a near month-long binge of boxed chocolates to make me realize I didn't feel as bad as I believed.  And you might say a month-long binge of chocolates will make anyone feel that way, no matter what condition they started in.  Even the most lethargic sloth would come away from three boxes of cocoa-coated caramels feeling worse.  But that chocolate wasted feeling was how I used to feel all the time before I started dieting and exercising.

I felt bad that I indulged so heavily.  I write these entries about doing well.  I write about moderation and it's okay to cheat every once in a while and you just get up and do better the next time around.  And then I binge.  And it happens to everyone but I still feel like I should be a better example.  I've battled food and my weight and my addiction to food for years and you'd think I'd develop some sort of resistance to the constant cravings.  But, no.  In a lot of ways, I'm no better now than when I was seventeen and bingeing on Doritos and Diet Coke.

I also feel like I'm not as in touch with my body as I should be.  I don't know what's going on inside.  I can't detect the changes in my mood or my middle.  There's a giant disconnection there and I don't know how to harmonize my senses and awareness. 

If anything, I guess this overindulgence was a good lesson.  There might be something to this diet and exercise after all, folks!  Maybe it does make a difference, even if the differences are subtle and fluid and not easily recognized by those who aren't in touch with themselves.    

cotard's syndrome

I was talking to my supervisor at work the other day and out of nowhere, she said, "Brannon, from some of our conversations we've had, it seems to me like you're dying a very slow death."

"Been there, done that," I said.  "Now I'm just rotting."

i am not my beard

I buzzed my beard off the other night because I was tired of the rough texture.  I went to work the next day and was met with audible gasps.  Not good audible gasps, either.  More like shock and terror.

"What did you do to your face?"

"Where's the beard?"

"You...you shaved it?"

"Grow it back!"

People acted like I was missing an eye or a nose instead of facial hair.  I know they didn't mean to make me feel bad but they did.  I didn't realize I was some gargoyle and the only thing that kept people from bursting into tears at the site of me was my beard.  It was a mask, a filter, a softening lens that cranked down my deformed face.

Or maybe it was just the shock of seeing my face look so different so fast.  As I grew the beard, everyone was slowly introduced to bearded Bran, including myself.  And taking it all off with a few strokes of the clippers was a bit jarring.  I had the beard for nearly three months and it just became a part of me as if it were always there and suddenly it wasn't.  I didn't recognize the smooth stranger in the bathroom mirror.

I didn't like everyone's reaction.  I didn't even like my own.  I didn't regret buzzing it off but I do like the way I look better with a beard.  But my face feels so much better without one.  When I had the beard, I combed and clipped and conditioned and even through in some argon oil to soften the facial hair but it still felt too rough for my liking.  And sometimes when I slept on my side or stomach, the facial hair against the pillow really irritated my cheeks.

I also realized maintaining facial hair was actually more intensive than just shaving it clean off.  There's a lot of maintenance involved.  Clipping.  Washing.  Conditioning.  Keeping the neckline even and clean.  Trying not to get food or bugs or girls' fingers caught in it.  Serious upkeep.

Yes, the beard will come back but I won't do it for anyone else but myself.  This is kind of a big deal because I've always been so used to doing things the way others wanted, living and looking the way others have dictated.  But I'm not doing that anymore.  In fact, I am thinking about holding off on growing the beard back even longer than I normally would just out of spite!  Take that, jerks.

It's gonna be my choice, no one else's.  And I'm going to rock it either way. 

I think just about every guy has done this at least one time when debearding.

fearfully and wonderfully slayed, part 2

"Just let your faith die..."
-AFI, Sacrilege

I hear people say that unanswered prayers are still answered.  I keep thinking of that stupid footprints story.  Maybe you've seen me through all the pain and I never realized it or maybe I just made it on my own.  How will I ever know because you'll never tell me!  How can I keep the faith when there's no sign, no feeling, no subtle recognition to keep me going, to let me know I'm doing the right thing?  Am I just wasting my time? 
 
I kept praying, turned away from my sins, tried to think positive thoughts, focused on you and nothing ever changed.  I was empty on the inside and disappointed with the nothing in the sky.  Why couldn't I get a sign or a feeling of reassurance?  Why was there such a disconnect between me and you?  Was I still doing something so wrong as to keep you so far away?
 
I looked for you and only saw sadness.  I saw confusion over the course my life had taken.  I saw this little boy who sat alone, teary-eyed, wondering where the love and comfort was that was promised to him in a big book with big words and big promises if only he would believe in it all.
 
I believed in you.  But you didn't believe in me.

I put everything into college and it was the biggest financial and emotional mistake of my life, one that I will likely pay for until I die, which will probably be sooner than later.  Not only did college not work out but I barely scraped through graduation with all of my limbs.  My mind was destroyed as well as my spirit.

fearfully and wonderfully slayed, part 1

"If I ask you 'what is truth' will you be silent still?
My questions and doubts made a chasm
That I fear you can not fill..."
-Showbread, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things
 
I met up with God the other day.  He actually let me record our conversation and I have conveniently transcribed it for you.  We had a long talk, or actually I had a lot to say to him.  You might notice he was sparse with the responses, which wasn't surprising.  Below is our exchange.

Me:  What's up, Lord?  I know you're busy not answering prayers and and standing idly by as the world crumbles, yet somehow swooping in and saving certain individuals from damnation to propel the proselytizing of non-believers, but we need to have some tea and a chat.  You've been dodging me for twenty-six years so the very least you can do is spare me a few minutes. 

God:  *irritated, pointing to iPhone*

Me:  Sure, I'll let you finish your call.  Tell Jesus I said hi and that I miss him.

God hangs up after several minutes, looks at me, becomes morose.

Me:  Please, have a seat.  Can I get you a Snuggie?  Nescafe?  Comfortable?  Good.  This is gonna take a while.

God:  *rolls eyes*

Me:  I hate to be negative right from the start so let's get to the good stuff first, shall we?  First of all, I am an incredibly fortunate individual.  I guess you'd prefer the term "blessed".  Sure, we can use your terminology.  I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say you played some part in the positive aspects of my life.  I've never starved because my family couldn't afford food.  I've never been beaten by my mother or molested by my father.  I've never been left out in the cold or went without adequate clothing.  I've never had loved ones torn away from me by death or divorce.

My life is easy.

But I am absolutely miserable.   

I know this doesn't make much sense but please hear me out, okay?  As much as you might want to lambast me, I've already beaten myself up about it plenty of times.  I feel guilty and selfish because there's no real reason why I should be so miserable.  Looking at me from an outsider's point of view, I have no reason to be sad or even complain at all.  There are people who struggle twice as much as I do and aren't half as unhappy.  It's not something I can explain.  Believe me, I've tried to figure it out.  It's just those small things I've mentioned before, the small slices of pain life inflicts, the paper cuts that add up to amputation.

bullets or bitters?

"It feels so much like falling
dying while I wait to die
the fear of something or nothing
lonely empty lie..."
-Flyleaf, Much Like Falling

"I'm on my way to hell,
well I've tried
God knows that I've tried..."
-Brand New, Noro

"When are you leaving here?" a coworker asked me one day.

"5:30," I replied.

"No, I mean leave leave," he said.

"Oh.  Whenever I get up enough courage to take that entire bottle of Tylenol I have in my medicine cabinet."

He just laughed.  "Uh, no, I mean just quitting this job."

"Well, once that Tylenol has absorbed, that'll be my resignation."

He laughed again.  "You're warped."

"Yeah...I know.  Hence the Tylenol."

I was joking.  Mostly.  But even though I was kidding around, it occurred to me that I kid about suicide a lot.  And back before I was moved to a different department,  when I wasn't busy and the boss was away for the day, I often slipped to the edge of my counter and wrote.  One day, a supervisor came through, saw me, and said, "What are you writing there?"

Without missing a beat, I said, "My suicide note."  She too laughed and kept walking.  I guess she didn't take me seriously or maybe my coworkers all laughed out of discomfort.  It makes sense.  I can dish it out to others but I don't know how I would react if I found someone who could match my morbidity.  I might be a little uncomfortable, too.

I often think about dying, about getting out of this place, out of my skin, shimmying my way out of the mess I have made of my life.  If I'm left too idle, if I'm not distracted by television or music, I think about my life and it horrifies me.  It settles in that this is my life, this is what I've become.  It's hard to realize this is not practice.  I'm not test driving life.  I'm living it and I'm hating it.  When I sit back and really think about where I am and how I'm living, it makes me so despondent.  It's like, this is really it.  This isn't a fantasy.  This isn't a book or a movie where things are comically bad until I win the lottery or fall in love and everything is suddenly wonderful on the series finale.  There are days when I want nothing more than to just get out, you know, to just hit the eject button and be done.

There's always been a part of me that has longed for death, from being a little boy who prayed to God to kill me in my sleep so I would never have to wake up again to working at the electronic bingo facility a couple of years ago and nearly driving myself off the road.  I got into my car and made the hour and a half trip to and from the job and I often thought about crashing my car into a light pole or tree or even just accelerating as fast as my little Honda would allow until I swerved off the cement and into oblivion.  Maybe I'd lose control and flip.  My neck would snap, my spine would break, my brain would squish between the tree bark and transmission.  Or  maybe I'd just rupture my spleen and be taken to the hospital, stitched up and sent home to face the anger of my parents over totaling my car.

insanity

I'm on the third week of the Insanity fitness program and it's every bit as intense and intimidating and painful as the advertisements suggest.

I feel like there's nothing left of me after every workout.  I'm pouring sweat within 5 minutes of the typically 40 minute programs and I'm completely drenched by the end of it.  I've never sweat like that before and have never felt so exhausted by the end of a workout.  My arms and legs are screaming and my lungs are gasping for air and I feel like I've just endured a boot camp session from hell.

But my title doesn't refer to the program.  It refers to my mental condition regarding my continual struggle to lose weight.  I noticed my weight loss started to slow down so I began the Insanity program to kick things back into gear.  Additionally, I started taking Alli consistently and have tried to cut sugar out of my diet.  I hoped the pounds would really drop with all that going on but they haven't.  Yeah, I'm still losing but it's still going so slowly.

I hit a plateau recently where I could not get under 200 pounds.  It was so frustrating because not only was I not losing any weight but I could not break that 200 pound barrier.  It was also frustrating because every plateau was time wasted.  When I committed to losing weight back in January, I wanted to lose 60 pounds in 6 months (10 pounds a month, average of 2 pounds a week, which is safe and recommended) but it's now the 8th month and I've only lost 44 pounds.  I'm very behind and it scares me because I do not want to be overweight for Christmas.  I know I have a few more months left and I even told myself that I had a couple of months of cushion room in case I didn't make my goal right on time but that cushion is slowly dwindling.  And now that I'm running out of time, I'm feeling the pressure to knock of these last 20-30 pounds.

But fortunately, I have finally broken the 200 pounds mark and I am down to 194.8 and it feels good but I am just so impatient and just want the weight to be off already.  I'm already exhausted from the Insanity workouts and frustrated because I can't eat pizza and all I want to do is inhale one so bad.  I know having a cheat day every once in a while is acceptable but not for me.  I'm an all or nothing kind of guy and I've put up a dam when it comes to food and as soon as I let a little grease slip through, the dam will break and I'll find myself on the floor, clutching a Little Debbie in both hands with lard dribbling down my chin.

Despite the 44 pounds lost, I'm still fat.  How much more do I need to lose before I feel good about myself?

There's been this wave of weight loss at work.  Several of my coworkers have gotten on these health kicks and have lost anywhere from 10-20 pounds and they are thin and look great and they didn't have as much to lose or had to work as hard as I have and it sucks because I've lost twice as much as they have and yet I'm still bigger than all of them.

They've reached their goal and can move on with their lives.  But even when I reach my goal, I won't be able to move on with my life.  This is forever.  I'll be on a diet when I die.

It also upsets me that I can't see my progress.  Well, I can.  I look in the mirror or see older pictures of myself and I can see a thinning in my face and frame but I still think my perspective is skewed.  I don't see enough change to be encouraged.  I have a problem seeing my body they way it is.  When I was heavier, I mostly ignored my condition.  I ate because I was depressed and couldn't see the damage I was doing.  I was in survival mode, eating so I wouldn't throw myself onto railroad tracks.

But when I finally faced it, I couldn't see how big I had gotten.  You have to remember, I was thinner in college, the thinnest I had been in my young adult life, so I graduated being as close to thin as I have ever been.  I fell into an intense depression after college and I went into my room at 174 pounds and came out of my room at 238 pounds and although it didn't happen overnight, it felt like it did.  I think in some ways I still saw myself as still being thin because the weight slowly crept up on me.  I was used to seeing myself as thin and since I didn't face myself as I gained the weight, I went along unaware.  I wouldn't have noticed at all except for the fact that none of my jeans or shirts fit anymore.  And they weren't just a bit snug.  I literally couldn't put my clothes on.

And now that I've lost weight, I can't see how smaller I've become because I've shifted my perspective to being "the fat guy" again.  I couldn't see how big I had gotten and it's only now that I've lost quite a bit of that weight that I'm starting to see how big I was/still think I am.  My body is always changing and my mind is always working to keep up with the bingeing and purging of fat.

It's hard but not impossible.  I'm going to keep going and I'll probably continue to be unsatisfied with my performance and the slow rate of weight loss, all along beating myself up for over eating and under exercising.  But it'll be all right because I'll get there.

But this is forever, remember.  So when I get there, I'll have to then shift my focus and fight to stay there.  No matter how much weight I lose or gain or maintain, I'll always be the fat guy.  I'll always have that mentality, always think about how what I put in my mouth will make me fat again.  My head goes to fat content and calories and the fear that comes along with it all.  There's no taste without trepidation, no dinner without despondency, no satisfaction without slicing myself open.              

getting to know gluttony

I don't want to say my mom is the reason why I'm fat but...it is her fault.

I kid.  Sort of.  But my mom equates food with love and living in the South, food is fried.  We fry everything.  We fry chicken and potatoes and vegetables.  We fry desserts.  We'll fry anything.  We'll fry milk if you give us the chance.  So my mom equates fried food with love, which means I was doomed from the start.

My mom learned that kind of love from her mom, who probably learned from her mom.  I don't think that's an unusual parenting style, especially in the South, but it's a slippery slope.  I don't see much wrong with showing someone you care by feeding them as long as that's not the only way you show love.  You also have to teach your kids to have a healthy relationship with food, just like you'd teach them how to have a healthy relationship with people.

My mom skipped that part.

My parents were not very affectionate, especially my father.  Once again, not unusual, but Mom's love shined through the most when she cooked.  She conveyed her love through cornbread instead of kisses and while she just did what she knew, it had an unintentionally negative impact on me.

When I was younger, Mom asked me what I wanted from the grocery store.  I told her I didn't want anything.

"But the kitchen is practically empty." 

It wasn't. 

"I just hate the idea of you and your sister walking into the kitchen and not having anything to eat."

That sentence struck me.  My parents have been very fortunate to have always been able to provide us with more than we needed as kids.  I don't think her concern came from a place of fearing she might not being able to have access to proper nutrition, but came from a place of fearing she might be a bad mom.  I say that because she never said she worried about us opening the closet and not having clothing or opening our backpacks and not having enough school supplies.  It was all about the food.

And so my mom passed down the notion of food and love to me, whether she meant to or not.

Even as far back as recent months, as much as I've tried to diet, I still look to her as a compass of sorts, following her lead when it comes to eating.  I tried to be good and follow a strict diet but if I see her eat a small plate of food in the middle of the night, I feel like it gives me license to do the same.  Or if she asks if she wants to go get a pizza for us, she knows I'm going to say yes.  Sometimes I'm only as strong as she is.  And when she gives in, I have no trouble caving as well.

I'm not exactly sure how my weight gain started.  I don't think it was anything tragic that led me to the linguine.  At least not at first.  I was an active child.  I often played with my cousin, who was around my age.  But as I grew older, I simply grew out of playing outside.  I was not a rough and tumble child.  I was sensitive from the beginning.  I was artistic.  I liked to draw inside instead of kick up dirt outside.  I simply think the combination of an ever stocked kitchen coupled with inactivity caused my initial weight gain.

I didn't notice my extra bulk until a classmate of mine pointed it out in fourth grade.  We had all come back from summer vacation and the first thing he said to me was, "You got fat over the summer."  I'll never forget it.  It was the moment I became aware of my appearance.  And over the years, I've only become more and more aware of myself to the point of obsession.

That was around the time I went from eating out of pleasure and convenience to eating so I could comfort myself.  I took those notions of love and feel good feelings I inherited from my mom and ran with them.  Any time I felt bad, I used food to recreate those feelings, to cover up any pain I felt.  And this continued into adolescence.

When I hit puberty, everything only got worse.  Not only was my stomach expanding but my face exploded with acne.  I was an awkward mess of excess oil and body parts padded with fat.  And so I ate to forget the freak show in the mirror.  I felt ugly and inadequate and eating only made things worse in the long run but I either didn't realize or didn't care at the time.  As self-aware as I thought I was, all that weight certainly creeped up on me.

But eventually, I got sick of being so big and so I lost around 20 pounds during the summer after 11th grade.  I came back to school and felt and looked decent.  After I graduated, I continued the weight loss journey and ended up losing a little over 60 pounds and went to college with a better attitude and a better body.  But I hadn't defeated the cause of my weight gain.  I was still insecure.  I was still sad inside.  I still felt inadequate.  Somehow I had found the resolve to lose weight despite my overwhelmingly negative attitude about myself.

And then my first year of college destroyed me and once again, I turned to food to cope.   But only for a while.  Eventually, I got a hold of myself and dieted and exercised away all the weight I gained that first year.  But the issues remained, nagged at my mind and wouldn't let me forget the gross, fat guy I still thought I was.  I buried the feelings with school work instead of food.  I hadn't overcome my issues, only ignored them again.

It was only when I graduated from college and moved back home that I let food back in again.  It was like meeting an old, familiar lover.  And we made sweet, sweet love.  60 plus pounds worth of love.  I was more depressed than I had ever been and I did not care about anything except filling my stomach up with everything I could get my hands on.  I was in self-preservation mode.  If I didn't reach for pie, I probably would have reached for pills.

All the weight I lost, all the hard work I put into changing my body and my mind slowly unraveled with each passing day.  I packed the weight back on over the course of two years.  And I ignored it.  I didn't want to face myself and so I simply didn't.

And one day I looked at myself and saw that I was back to where I started.  Overweight and still miserable.  I realized I hadn't changed, hadn't learned, hadn't accomplished anything.  I felt like I had wasted my youth.

For me, food was the only constant in my world.  It wasn't just my comfort.  It was my companion.  It was my best friend.  And although some best friends can be destructive, I didn't care about the long-term damage.  I was looking for the short-term solution.  I couldn't just give up on food.  I felt like I was abandoning someone who had been there with me through thick and thin (both literally and figuratively).  Me giving up food would be like me telling you to suddenly cut your best friend out of your life.  I just couldn't do it.  It was a ridiculous notion.

But one day, just like that one  magical day in high school, I said I was tired of being like this.  I didn't want to see another birthday as big as I was.  I didn't want to ring in another year overweight.  Since January, I've made the decision to lose the weight I had gained not once, but twice.  And I've managed to lose 39 pounds so far.  I still have a long way to go and I've hit several obstacles along the way but I've done it before and I'm confident I can do it again.

But it's still hard.  Even now, despite how far I've come in trying to recognize bad food behavior, when I'm at my lowest, all I want is food.  It's still the only thing that soothes me.  No person, no god, no orgasm, no compliment or accomplishment is as satisfying as food.

And I even tell myself to stop.  I'll grab some chips or reach for the frozen pizza and I'll pause and tell myself it's not going to help.  It's only going to make things worse.  But I eat the chips or the pizza anyway.  I don't care if it's going to make things worse because I'm hurting in that moment and need to make the pain go away.  I say I'll deal with the consequences later.  I never do.  I deal with it by eating more pizza.  By eating  more cake and pie and chips and candy.  I deal by not dealing.

I've realized that it's easy to lose weight.  That's a bold statement with the seemingly insurmountable weight struggle so many people are going through but it's simple science.  More calories burned than consumed.  In fact, you can even pinpoint how much weight you want to lose on a weekly basis.  1 pound equals 3,500 calories.  Eat 500 less calories than you normally would every day and in 7 days you will have saved yourself 3,500 calories, which totals 1 pound.  The trick is finding out how many calories you usually eat and how many calories you need to consume to maintain or lose more.  But that's the basics.

But my point is, physically, losing weight is easy.  It's the mental part that is the hardest.  Diet and exercise can change your body but what is going to change your mind?  It's all a head game, a constant fight with the demons inside you pointing you in the wrong direction.  And until you tackle those demons and exorcise them from your brain, you'll always be in the middle of sensibility vs. gluttony.  I should know.  I've been caught in the crossfire more times than I can count.

My mom's not really to blame.  I was just kidding.  If anything, the combination of fried food love and my stunted social skills and possible mental defects that no one had any control over is what contributed to me being this way.  It's all just circumstances, random events and chances that led me here.  But I'm at a place now where I can take responsibility for my own body and actions.  Looking into the past and finding the cause of my weight issues is good because I can learn and grow from it but I don't play the victim here.  Not in this case.  I don't look back to blame, only to resolve.

I've managed to lose the 39 pounds despite not having dealt with my issues.  And until I do, it's very likely that I'll gain the weight back.  That's why it's imperative I try to fix the inside while simultaneously correcting the outside.  The problem is I just don't know how to do that.  So until I do, I have to stay on top of my eating and working out.  I gained all the weight back because I didn't stay on top of it.  I let myself go.  I allowed my inner insatiable beast to roam free in a playground made of pasta.  I've temporarily caged him but with makeshift bars.  He's still clamoring to get out.

I can only hold him back for so long.

battlefield

Just as I suspected, as soon as I started making progress with my weight loss, I stopped trying as hard.

I have yet to get past thirty pounds.  I'll get really close and then gain another pound and then lose it and then gain two and then lose three and then gain it all back again, etc.  My eating is not great and I'm getting tired of my workouts.  I know I can change it up and do a different workout but I think I'm just tired of exercising in general.  I'm tired of the monotony of getting up and putting on my shoes and bouncing and punching and kicking for half an hour.  I'm also tired of not being able to have pizza.

Like I mentioned before, it took losing some of my fat to realize how fat I was.  As the pounds started coming off, I became more critical of myself.  I think it took me getting serious about losing weight again to see how bad I had let myself go.  Despite my thinning frame, all I could see was fat.  I was oblivious to how big I was.  I most likely just blocked out the fat because I couldn't handle it but once I knew I was making a difference and taking the weight off, I allowed my eyes to be opened to the damage I had done to myself.

The thing that sucks the most about being a big guy is even though I've lost thirty pounds, I'm still fat.  A fact that people still point out.

I still say retail is horrible.  It's demeaning and thankless and you run into some of the rudest people.  I had a guy come in the other day who needed help finding a dress shirt.  Like most guys who come in, he didn't know what the numbers on the shirts represented but he said he was a small, which was around a 14 1/2. 

"What size do you wear?" he asked with a smirk.  Completely irrelevant question but I knew where he was going with it.

"Probably a 16 1/2," I answered with a slight sigh.

"Yeah, you're a big boy, aren't ya?"

"Yeah, I am, and I'm working on it," I said and then walked away from him without another word.  What a dick.

I've had similar experiences at work with people calling me fat, whether they said it subtly or straight out.  I already struggle with trying to lose weight and trying to remain determined and it doesn't help when I get that kind of negative attention because of my body shape.  It's another deterrent.  

Despite the douche, I have had two other experiences where I ran into people I hadn't seen in a long time and they both noticed I had lost weight and told me I looked good.  And that felt good.  But not good enough to keep me going, at least not in the long run.  It temporarily motivates me until the depression sets in again and nothing settles my soul (and my stomach) like chocolate chip cookie dough.

I still struggle every single day.  When I get off work, frustrated and mentally exhausted, the only thing I can see is fast food.  The only thing I want is ice cream.  And when it comes to exercising, it's the last thing I want to do.  Food is forever my temptress.  My mind is forever my tormentor.  My body is forever a battlefield and representation of the feud between me and food.

All you have to do is take a look at me to see who is winning that day.

dead alive

"All I want is to feel alive, but I'm dying on the inside
And I've wasted all my time just waiting..."
-Attack! Attack!, Honesty

"They're not dead exactly.  They're just...sort of rotting."
-Dead Alive

Does anyone ever become completely hollow?  Who ever reaches that point and what becomes of them afterward?  I often wonder what has become of me and if I still have some emptying out to do.  It feels like every time I have nothing left to lose, something comes around and takes more from me, whether it be my job situation, losing my looks and my faith or struggling to just feel good enough to mean something to someone.  Have I finally been hollowed out and if not, how much farther until I fall?

Lately, I've been vaguely away of something stirring inside me.  It's not quite a heartbeat but perhaps the hope for one.  It's a residual pumping of blood and better times that echo inside the wasteland of my ribcage.  It's a feeling of skin splitting from sinew, a separation of flesh.  It's an aching in the bones like something gestating.

Have you ever felt simultaneously dead and alive, like your heart is pumping mud and your lungs are housing stale air?  That's where I am.  There are days when I want nothing more than to complete my macabre metamorphosis and rest in the dirt and then there are days when I feel it's possible to come alive again.

And there are days I actually want to.

But all of this back and forth between bereavement and breathing makes me feel bipolar.  I'm tired of my body being blurred between the black and the brightness.  It's annoying and another testament to my indecisiveness.  I can't even decide if I'm dead or just depressed.

stitches & stuff

About two weeks ago, I noticed that the end of my incision was slightly opened and a stitch was poking out.  I don't know how it happened but it was red and hurt to touch.  You know, just when I think things are starting to get resolved, I've got another problem.

So I made an appointment to see the doctor.  The first thing he did was lean me back in the chair and immediately stuck a sharp metal instrument in the incision.  It felt like a bee had just landed on me throat and stung me.

"I know it feels a bit weird," he said as he dug around in there.  "Well, I can't get to the stitch.  I'd have to cut your throat."  I wasn't sure what he meant by that.  I was too stunned by the pain to make much sense of anything and didn't think to ask him for clarification.  I think he might have been trying to either tie everything back up or maybe he was just trying to clip the excess stitch.

I was basically worried that the incision would heal wrong because of the slight opening but he assured me it was okay.  He told me to put some ointment on it until the redness went down so I guess that's all I can do.  Hopefully it'll clear up soon.  Other than that, it's healing as nice as can be expected.

i look better online

"I'm so ugly but that's okay
'cause so are you..."
-Nirvana, Lithium

I wash my face and neck and when I run my hands down my throat, it's smooth, sans the scar, and it's a weird feeling, almost like a limb that's no longer there.  But it's good because it was a limb that was never supposed to be there in the first place.  It's simultaneously strange and thrilling.

Yet, I'm not completely satisfied.

I still have a bit of swelling that needs to go down, which might take a couple of weeks or months.  And although I knew and didn't mind the fact that I would have a scar, it's a bit puffier and more apparent than I anticipated.  Everyone says it will go down in time but you never really know how those things are going to work out or how long it will take so I'm still concerned that it'll always stick out.

After all that, I still have to lose all this weight in my face before I'll feel like I have a good-looking face and throat.  It might seem strange to be so preoccupied with an odd area of the body but for whatever reason, I've always been focused on having a good jawline and a smooth throat.  And that was even before the lump popped up so you can imagine the misery I endured when I had this cyst screwing up my image of what I should look like.

But even if I get all that sorted out, I still won't be completely satisfied.

I still need to fix my teeth (the next thing I plan on fixing when I have the funds) and of course I've got to lose the weight and now my receding hairline is really starting to concern me so if I had the money for that, I'll pursue a hair transplant.

It's just sad to look at myself and really realize that I will probably never be satisfied with how I look.  I can hope that I can fix certain aspects of my face and body and that will make me feel better but in all likelihood, that just won't be the case.  There is always something popping up or falling out that I need to address and it's daunting.  It's a struggle to think that one day I could possibly fix myself enough to be attractive vs. just accepting that I am not conventionally good-looking, that I am average at best.  But what's so wrong with average? 

I feel just as frustrated as other people do about how down I am about the way I look.  I know I am not the ugliest thing in the world and although I used to think so, I don't anymore but I still don't think I'm good-looking.  I know that's irrational and maybe I just have a mental problem but I can't seem to overcome it.

Maybe it's just because I don't have any self-esteem and I am under the wrong impression that good looks will make me feel better about myself.  But the thing is, I'm smarter than that.  I know better.  I was thin(ish) at one point.  My face was clear and my hair was full and I still wasn't happy.  Sure, I wasn't as miserable as I was when I was fat but I was still unsatisfied with myself.  It's just that when your life is in shambles and you're gross, it does add an extra splash of stress to the strain of trying to survive the onslaught of daily dilemmas.

I was watching a television program a couple of years ago and it followed this girl who was obsessed with getting her nose fixed.  It was all she could talk about and when she finally got it done, she was happy at first.  Then, things changed.  She eventually started disliking her nose again and she wanted to undergo the knife one more time.

I just hope I don't end up like that.  What if I get my teeth fixed or my nose fixed and I'm still not happy?

It's a big fear of mine.  What will it take for me to just accept myself how I am or is there nothing I can do?  Is surgery going to do the trick?  What if it doesn't?  What more could I do?  Or will I eventually grow out of this?  Will I one day just give up and not care?  What if I die never having felt good about myself from not only an aesthetic standpoint but from a spiritual one as well?

But it's not all bad.  Maybe there's progress being made under the surface.

While I was away from work, the boss hired three new people, two of them young, thin, attractive guys.  At first I was worried.  I saw these guys, one tall and thin, the other muscular and tanned, and both well dressed, and I felt a tinge of worry about the idea of the girls liking those guys better than me.  I am a pretty jealous person and didn't like the idea of seeing the girls I liked talking to those guys, possibly starting to prefer them over me.  I didn't want those guys "stealing" the girls away from me.  Maybe it sounds silly but it was my fear.

But when I actually met them, those fears slowly subsided.  I realized that I just didn't look like that, that I wasn't as young and good-looking and there was nothing I could do to fix that so there was no point in dwelling on it.

It was an unprecedented feeling of getting it, as close as I've ever come to self-acceptance.  

Unfortunately, it never lasts.  I have these moments where I look in a mirror (and it has to be a certain kind of mirror) and everything looks kind of good.  But then I look in another mirror with different lightening and I'm hideous again.  Or when I'm trying to take a picture of myself and it never comes out right.  And I just wonder what side of me other people are seeing.  Is it the good lighting/mirror side or the hideously flawed picture side?

All I know is I'm tired of talking about the same thing over and over again.  Tired of looking in the mirror and seeing the same sagging pores over and over again.  I'm tired of my face.  I'm kind of tired of myself.  And I need to come to some kind of resolution.  I need to either accept that with enough effort, I can become presentable or accept that I never will be and just be okay with that.

And just move on.    

cracked

Fortunately, I didn't have to travel the two hours for my check up like I did for my surgery.  I just had to wait in the doctor's office for two hours.

Turns out, they lost my  name in the shuffle of patients.

I entertained myself on my phone and for the first hour before I began to wonder what was going on.  When the appointment was originally made, the lady said today was the only day the doctor could see us and it would be a work-in.  So, I just assumed the fact that we were being worked in was what had caused the delay.

After another hour, my mom wanted to ask them what was going on.  It triggered a conversation my sister had with us several weeks ago when I went to see the doctor who performed the surgery.

We went out to dinner afterward and she told us she went to a doctor one time and they took her into a room and after about an hour, she poked her head out and politely asked if they had forgotten about her.  The nurse got nasty with her and now any time she goes back to that doctor, he comes in and is very condescending and asks her if she was treated well and if she felt comfortable and that whole bit.  It reminded me of the Seinfeld episode where Elaine was listed as "difficult" on her chart.

I didn't want Mom to go inquiring about the doctor's whereabouts and cause me to be Elained.

After a while, it looked like I was about to rain so offered to go to Mom's car and get the umbrella and by the time I came back, she was at the window asking about us.

Great.  I was going to get Elained after all.

That's when Mom came back and said one of the nurses crossed my name off by mistake and then we were basically forgotten about.

We were promptly ushered into a room where the doctor came in, squeezed on my throat, told me I was fine, and sent us on our way.  Took all of seven minutes.  No charge, though, so that was good.

As far as how I'm feeling, I can describe it as garbage.  I'm still dizzy and get tired easily.  It still hurts to yawn, turn my head or laugh and the underside of my chin is numb.  The doctor said all of this was normal considering the stress my throat went through coupled with the anesthesia and pain medication and just my body trying to heal itself.

I had really hoped I'd be back to normal by now so I could have enjoyed some of my time off from work but that didn't happen.  I also wanted to finish reading a book I began before surgery but I just haven't been up to it.  My concentration has been at an all time low and the thought of trying to read made me feel queasy.

Funny enough, though, I have been writing.  I really had to force myself to, however.  I just couldn't allow myself to not utilize the time off work.  I'm almost finished with the second part of my book and I only have about twenty chapters left to finished before the first draft is complete.  Of course, editing will then begin and that could take months but I'm closer now that I have ever been to finishing that mofo so I'm pretty happy about that.

I have to go back to work tomorrow and I don't see things going too well, especially with my dizziness.  I've either been in bed or sitting down for the majority of the past week and having to stand up all day might send my face to the floor.  I'm not too worried about it.  If I need to sit, I will.  Nobody else does any work at that place so if I take it a bit easy, it shouldn't be a problem.

I might just take a Lortab before going in tomorrow just to see what happens!  Let the fun ensue.

Another gross picture:

I couldn't make sense of the wound so I didn't want to put a razor to it and accidentally reopen that baby so I decided not to shave.  Well, and plus I had been too cracked out to care about being scruffy.  I did end up shaving before going to the doctor because I thought he would be able to see the wound better on a cleaner canvas.  It took thirty minutes just to shave around the wound and I didn't even get all the hair.  It was a mess. 

Also, it's not as clear here as it was on my phone but the incision caused a bruise that has spread all the way down to my chest.  I also have a nice purple one on my wrist where the nurse unsuccessfully tried to insert an IV. 

 

the excision

Thursday, Mom and I drove to my sister's house.  We then met up with my sister's husband at a crappy restaurant that gave crappy service.  And the meal made me feel crappy.

We woke up at 5:30am on Friday and left a little before 6:30am.  The arrival time was at 9:00am but my sister said the traffic would be bad enough that we'd need to leave early.  Plus, we weren't exactly sure where the hospital was.

Turns out, it wasn't that hard to get there, thanks to the map the nurse gave us during our last visit as well as the GPS mounted to my Mom's windshield.  Traffic also wasn't as bad as my sister had anticipated.  We ended up arriving at the hospital at 7:30am.

Mom and I were taken into a room where a tall black lady in brightly colored clothing took my insurance card and co-payment.  Then, we were sent to surgery check-in, where we waited over two hours.  I read and people watched and chatted with Shannon and my mom until they finally called me back to get prepped for surgery.  This was around 10:30am.

I was led into a long hallway separated into rooms closed off by sliding curtains.  A bed stood off to the right side next to a large computer.  Past the bed was a bathroom and a hand washing station.  A sat on the bed as a slew of people came in and took my blood pressure, explained the steps of my surgery, and asked me a ton of questions.  Then, I was given my purple hospital gown, footies, and a hairnet to wear.  I went into the bathroom and changed, making sure I tied up that gown as best I could so I wouldn't catch a cold front across my crack.  It was cold in there.

If you'll recall, the last time I went to the hospital to go through more pre-op paperwork, I was placed in a room with a left-handed gentleman who attempted to put my information into the computer.  I noticed he had trouble highlighting and deleting the text on screen.  I half-joked that he'd accidentally put in that I had some sort of disease.  Well, one of the nurses was going through my information on the large computer next to the bed when I noticed her raise her eyebrow.

"Mr. Jackson, do you have a pacemaker?" she asked.

"Um, no..."

"Ha, well it says right here you do."

It must have been the dude with the poor hand-mouse coordination.  I was kind of kidding about him putting something crazy in like that but turns out, he actually did!  And as much as it seems exhausting having fifteen different people asking you the same fifty questions, I suppose that's why they do.  Always cross-checking each other.  That's a good thing.

When that was done, I was instructed to lay back on the bed and rest until it was time for surgery.  Mom came in and waited with me.  We watched "Axe Men" on The History Channel until about 11:30, when a resident physician came in and marked my throat.  Then the nurse came in and asked me questions.  Then one anesthesiologist came in and asked me questions.  There was supposed to be another anesthesiologist to come in and talk to me but he must have missed me so they had to wait around until he came in and asked me the same questions the others asked me.  By this time, it was 12:00pm.

I asked them to remove some of the fat from my chin while they already had me cut open but they refused.

goiter-day, gone tomorrow

"I can tell it's winter from the

size of the lump in my throat..."

Silversun Pickups, Rusted Wheel

A lot of youngsters around here spend their spring break in Florida.  I'm going to be recovering from surgery, stuck in my bed swimming in and out of lucidity.

Eh, I don't like the beach anyway.

Today was my last day of work before taking my much-needed vacation from work.  I'm going to take seven days off and, if all goes well, the surgery and recovery will take a minimum of 3 days.  That'll give me 4 days to work hardcore on my book.  I'm almost finished with the second part and I don't think the third part is as long as the others so hopefully I'll have it finished in the next month or so.

But it's only the first draft so there will be tons of revisions.  That's fine, though, I just want to get the majority of the writing done.

Going to my sister's tomorrow, which is when the hospital will call to let us know when the surgery will take place on Friday.  If everything works out, I'll stay with my sister the night of the surgery and then go home the next day.

If there's complications, I'll have to stay longer until everything is resolved but I really hope there won't be any problems.  Not only do I not want to deal with the potential hazards of hacking up my throat but I also don't want to spend all of my time away from work inside a hospital with my butt crack hanging out of the green paper gown.

I'll update with gross pictures of my scar as soon as I can.

And speaking of gross pictures...

You wanna know how easy it is to shave over a cyst?  As evidenced by that nice razor burn I've got going on, not very.  

Yikes.

laryngocele

Mom woke me up at 5:00 am and I got dressed and we were on our way.  Drove about twenty minutes, then stopped for some breakfast, drove a couple hours more, stopped for gas and food, then drove more hours still until we arrived at my sister's house.

We peed and rested and then headed to the hospital.

I was unnerved the entire time because the city was too busy and crowded for me.  I felt like I was going to have a panic attack.  All these medical students whizzing around, staring so hard at their cell phones they aren't paying attention to the traffic and jaunting out into the street just as easy as you please.

We found a parking garage where we were met by a very bitter parking attendant who told us the one we drove into was full and then proceeded to give us directions to another one.  When she was done barking at us, my sister Shannon who was driving, looked back and said, "Did y'all get any of that?"

We managed to find out way to the hospital, where I peed, signed in, filled out a bunch of paperwork, then waited.

I was called into a small room with shiny sharp instruments and bed pans and waited.  The doctor's assistant came in, a tall lanky man in a yellow and navy striped bow tie, thick black rimmed glasses, and medical headgear.  He inspected my throat, looked in my ears and up my nose and asked a bunch of questions about the lump.  He saw that we had the CT scans from my previous doctor visit and took them.

"I'm going to hand these over to the doctor and we are gonna look at them.  Hang tight."  More waiting.

He came back in minutes later with an instrument with a long, skinny black appendage.  He squirted a numbing agent up my nose and said the doctor wanted to look up my nose and into my throat.  I sniffed it all up and he left.  More waiting.

The assistant came back in with the doctor, finally, and he sat down.  He was a tall man with a long neck and shaggy salt and pepper hair to match his goatee.  He wore scrubs and a serious look on his face.  In fact, he never smiled at me once during the consultation.  He was pretty clinical and cold.

He took the device with the black appendage and snaked it into each nostril and told the assistant with the bow tie that things looked clear.  He then told me that it was definitely a cyst, but one that stemmed from my vocal cords.  A laryngocele.  Another brand new diagnosis.  Was my goiter really that abnormal that no one else could have came to this conclusion?

The strangest part was he said my cyst is normally found in glassblowers and people who play musical instruments like trumpets.

He sent me to complete some pre-op stuff, which consisted of moving from floor to floor, waiting around, being placed in a room and asked the same questions (what's your birthday?  would you accept blood in case of an emergency?  ever had a stroke?  drink/smoke/crack/marijuana?, etc.) and then told to go back to the waiting room and then put in another room with another nurse asking the same questions again.  And more peeing. 

I was a bit worried because the nurse practitioner was left-handed and had trouble working the mouse on the computer.  I watched him struggle as he tried to highlight and delete information on the screen.  He'd highlight one portion and the other portion that was highlighted wouldn't be anymore.  He'd project a "blam" under his breath and try again.  I wanted to ask him if he needed any help.  I was pretty sure he accidentally put down that I had Hep C.

I was then sent to another floor to get some blood drawn.  More waiting.  And then a short older lady called me back to a high chair-looking contraption, swabbed my arm and poked me.

And then I was finally done.  But not before I peed one last time.

Getting out of the hospital wasn't nearly as bad as trying to enter.  But by that time I was tired.  We got to the hospital by 11 and didn't leave until 4:30.  I was tired of the bumpy roads and a brand new diagnosis of the lump and I was put off by the doctor's dull demeanor.  At that point, I just wanted the lump out.  I was tired of worrying about whether it would get bigger or if people were secretly staring at it when I wasn't looking.  I was tired of it hurting and enlarging and tired of trying to shave my way around it and getting razor burn, which really just drew more attention to it.

I just wanted to be done with it.

We went to a restaurant and I felt like I deserved to indulge a little.  After being poked and prodded and made to fill out a questionnaire concerning my "swallowing abilities," I just wanted something delicious to mask the mental exhaustion.  Ordered some potato skins and chicken tenders and once I saw them in front of me, I regretted the decision.  Portions were too big and they were all too greasy.  After having abstained from the greasy stuff for about two months now, I was pretty sure that stuff was going to slide right on out of me, probably while I was on the road.

I surprised myself by only eating a small portion of my meal.  I was proud at my willpower but I also had to admit to myself that some of it stemmed from the fear of having to crap in a cracked commode in some shady gas station off I-65.

I boxed up the rest.

We made it home around 10:30pm and I crashed.  Work the next day.   

The surgery is scheduled on the 30th so hopefully that will truly be the last of the lump!

Snot Job

Back to the ENT today.  I have this increasing suspicion that this guy doesn't quite know what he's talking about.  He keeps changing the name of my cyst.  First, he said it was a branchial cleft cyst and now he's calling it a thyroglossal duct cyst and next thing you know he's going to claim the squishy ball in my throat is my dead twin brother's testicle, the only remnants of him from the womb when I absorbed him into myself, via Vanishing Twin Syndrome.  Also, when we first talked about treatment options, he said excising the cyst wouldn't be a problem and it would leave a very light scar.  Next appointment, he says it will leave a big scar and it could possibly damage my vocal cords.  Now, not only is he saying it will leave a big scar but it could possibly reoccur, which would require another surgery to remove it.  I don't know if he's getting his diagnoses mixed up or if he's learning more information as we continue to meet or if he's just down right making it up as he goes along but the constantly changing information makes me uneasy.  At the same time, I'm kind of tired and in no mood to see another doctor.  I've resigned myself to the fact that the lump will probably never go away.  He'll continue suggesting new treatments and I may or may not try them, depending on what I can afford, and I suppose we'll see how it goes.

And let me just reiterate how fast this guy talks.  Every time those white flecks of saliva start getting worked up in the corners of his mouth, I know he's really going on a tangent.  I almost want to hold my hands out and beg him to slow down before his teeth fly out of his face.  And today, he told me his son's friend accepted a full scholarship to SCAD in Atlanta.  I died a little inside from envy.  The then went on to mention me to this person and how I have been struggling to find a job, which segued into him going on about politics.  I checked out during his spiel because a) I don't know anything about politics and would have been lost and b) I hate politics.  Everyone who is into politics thinks they have the solution the world's problems and I find it annoying.

After he got back on topic, I snapped to attention as he went on to tell me what I was allergic to.  I was tested for twenty-three allergens and came out allergic to fifteen of them, all to varying degrees.  I was dismayed to find that I'm allergic to dogs!  And 3 out of 5 allergic, too, so it's not anything minor.  I'm also allergic to pecan trees.  We only have about seven in our backyard!  Obviously, I can never go outside and pet my dog or sit under a tree ever again.  I kid but it's still troubling.  I'm also allergic to ragweed, pigweed, all kinds of grass and even the occasional cockroach.  It seems the worst offender is dust mites.  5 out of 5.  But, there is some good news!  I'm glad to report I am zero allergic to cladosporium herbarum and aspergillus fumigatus!  What a relief, eh?  Oh yeah, and I am zero allergic to my cat.  So, that's cool. The doc wants to put me on some hardcore allergy drops in hopes that not only will I be able to interact with my dog again, but that the reduction of mucus will hopefully reduce the lump.  I'm not very hopeful.  But, what the hey, let's give it a whirl.  

In other breaking news, I did not hear back from any job that I applied to when I was visiting my sister.  What...a freaking waste of time/disappointment.  I mean, I didn't even get a call back to be a cashier at Old Time Pottery!  Come on!  Any unmarried seventeen-year-old mother can be a cashier at Old Time Pottery.  And not to brag but my application was flawless.  You couldn't tell the difference between the print on the application and my own writing.  I even included my resume.  And nothing.  Some have suggested it's because of my college degree.  These places must think I'm overqualified.  I have a problem with this.  Yes, I do understand the concept of being overqualified but it still ticks me off.  I realize that by me taking a job at, let's say McDonalds, I would be depriving some young punk with no work experience the opportunity to be employed there.  Since I'm more educated, I should be able to find a better job, right?  Well, let's not forget that I graduated at a really bad time.  The economy is in the pooper so the fact that I'm even applying to McDonalds should probably tell the hiring manager something, ya know?  If I was the hiring manager and had to choose between some sixteen-year-old douche with a bad attitude or someone with a degree of any kind, I'd be going for the one with the degree because I know between the two of them, the person with the degree will probably be responsible, on time and dedicated to doing a good job.  I mean, you can't get a degree unless you possess these traits.  And for fast food, I wouldn't feel too bad for that kid 'cause there are plenty of other establishments he could apply to.  There's a Starbucks on every corner nowadays.  Barista it up, bud, I'm snagging someone with school smarts!

So, I was thinking I should leave my SCAD time off my resume.  If I do that, I'll have three years unaccounted for.  What would I say I was doing the whole time?  Maybe I could say I impregnated three different girls and really need the job to pay all my baby mamas?  I honestly don't know what to do.  I'm not good enough to get a job in animation but I'm overqualified for everything else.  It's frustrating and the part that makes me the angriest is that I can do any job here as long as I get the proper training.  I'm not saying I can do any job ever but we aren't exactly dealing with rocket science in the deep south.  Customer service, cashiering, banking and serving food and drinks are pretty much my only options and I'm confident that I can do it all yet these a-holes don't think so.  I just need monies, dang it.  I'm capable.  I'm educated.  I'm dedicated.  I can do whatever you throw at me.  I don't understand the problem.

I have to fill in three years with some kind of experience.  I could say I traveled.  I wouldn't technically be lying.  I did travel back and forth for school.  Ugh.  I need suggestions.  Halp!