i want you to read this.

analysis

Please read this, but don't praise it or say how good it is or how great of a writer I am or anything like that. Say something constructive and even critical. I'm posting the worst for you to read.

analyze something from it, interpret it if you will. even interpret the act of my posting it, posting it for all to see, and using real names...

but don't coo at it or adore it. I don't think i can take that anymore.

:intro:
don't make fun of me! you can't make fun of me or laugh at me. i don't have these human qualities that you speak of. i don't mess up and i'm not flawed. flawed people get left behind. reflections of me in the people i dislike are the ones who get thrown out in the street. i am not like that. i am never like that. i am never ugly or wrong, and i do NOT LOOK LIKE THAT AND THERE IS NOTHING ABOUT ME TO LAUGH AT!!!
::
[being laughed at is part of being loved. not a threat of the people of your past. in order to truly be loved you also have to let yourself be made fun of, in the friendly way. you have to accept that part to be intimate? people who love you despite all those flaws, are golden. i just don't let them into my life...yet. i have to do too many things for the ones who dont love me. on with the manipulation game.]

in ballet class today i flashed back to a moment of myself in petty's grocery store...maybe because i was contemplating eating some famous amos cookies after class.

i wondered why i thought that

i wanted everything on the shelves...mom wouldn't have for that because she was anorexic but i didn't know that. I thought it was something wrong with me. ME. I guess i started thinking then i was fat. i had not really had problems with eating before fourth grade or so. i remember a time where i didn't give it much thought. but then i started to notice. maybe she would love a skinny person. my unconscious didn't want to follow with the plan. maybe because it knew the truth, it knew what was best. sometimes when something works out it's a battle we're fighting over one facet of the situation, and we make false assumptions because of our lack of knowledge or ESPECIALLY other's crafty manipulation (which i fall for quite well)...and when i tried not to eat i only ate more, becoming obsessed with food and a bit stocky, until about eighth grade, when the happiest day o fmy life and the day i would always try to repeat was when I heard the words "112. one hundred and twelve. yes, that's your weight." i lashed out on cousin sarah, i felt I had to CONSTANTLY show her that because i was thinner than her i was more desirable, because that's what i needed. I needed to be thin to be desirable, and I couldn't have a cousin whose mother was nicer to HER beat me out of this. stability of all costs. I thought i was the most superior one. i was the sickest one. because i didn't know she was anorexic i thought it was me. I didn't know why she was keeping food out of the house. I had a knowledge very early on that food and calories were related directly with weight. my mother was thin and restricted food for the whole family like it was a bad thing to want. i became very embarassed one time, when dating aaron, when I wanted to eat. embarassed at myself because it was already too much before it started.

When aaron broke up with me, i thought it was something wrong with me. Nevermind the bottles everywhere. Oh and the fact that he slit his wrists over a broken wheel. Blacked out or not.

When John B acted the way he did towards me, I thought it was all my fault and accepted the blame in the name of friendsihp. There WAS no friendship. He had been wanting to end the friendship anyway. He had wanted to attack me somehow. He wanted to hurt me.

When things got weird with Brian, I thought it was my fault. That I was going to far sexually. But he did it to, asked me for more than I even wanted to give. but I punished myself and decided i had been slutty. Yet he asked me to go down on him and I wouldn't....guess in all reality i wasn't that bad.

i assume girls will attack me so i act extra nice around them. this makes me angry.

i very easily would absorb others problems. thinking it was me. often times thinking it had to do with my weight, which wasn't abnormal at ALL but it wasn't THIN. There was an obsessive preoccupation with thin. mom had magazines with models in them, and she herself was so thin that i thought something was wrong with me. "there's nothing wrong with me, i can't eat this or that, i'm allergic" i took that at face value and became embarassed at my own existence. embarassed. that's the worst form of self hate. That is the lowest you can get on the self hate scale, the absolute lowest maybe..in my opinion. embarassment of yourself, constant and unrelenting embarassment, so terribly mortified by yourself, so terribly dragged down by yourself, so terribly mistaken (or aware?) that you cause people to turn away from you in utter disgust...it must be the food...it must be the fat...not thin enough...there's something wrong with me. So embarassed that even YOU abandon your own best friend, that being your own self. Kind of like the kid even the biggest nerd on the playground won't play with because that kid made such a mistake. I was that kid so many times. to my friends AND to myself. I would love my friends so much until someone pointed out that they were fat or a nerd. Keely Davidson. I thought she was incredibly cool because she played with all the boys on the playground. She seduced me with the idea of friendship. But she pointed out that my best goddamned friend in the world, Valerie Ward, was fat. The truth is, maybe NO one could really be friends with keely or those popular girls. In fact, I think keely may have been a big time lesbian. always with the boys, obsessed with sports...if anything she was scoping me out for a relationship, that seems closer to the truth than her ever having real respect for me. Maybe SHE wanted to hurt girls too. maybe they were too controlling or self absorbed. But the loss of my mother's attention to her own self-absorbed status made me think that a) i was too flawed to love and b) this is something to aspire to.

I could have the closest friends who love me unconditionally, but the MOMENT a seductive offer comes to walk into another's conditional and manipulative "love", I think, "this is it! this is really it! i'll show the world Im the one who changed him! everyone will think i'm so cool if i'm friends with her!" I walk into there, thinking this is the time I can really win my mother's love.

Partial. Fucking. Reinforcement. (I urge urge URGE all of you to look up and do research on partial reinforcement vs continuous reinforcement, it will open your eyes on whose behavior you accept and whose you don't and why.) If i hit the slot machine ENOUGH times, i will win. See the problem was in the past I wasn't DOING ENOUGH to win the love of those who didn't actually love me. You have to win love, right? right? ...right?

or maybe, those friendships that felt like fake closeness may have been a different kind of love?

not the lowest on the totem pole, obsessed with status enough to deliberately show how much better i was than anyone i could find...so i would put down the nerdiest, fattest, ugliest people because then automatically i had status. in sixth grade my former best friend jenny mccarthy, when i sat down by her, said very loudly "i would not sit with you if my LIFE depended on it!"

utter humiliation. sunk further into delusion. later after never winning with the popular girls i became as outgoing as possible with the "nerds", winning mass love would at least be good, and hey they were controllable. I could get them to always like me. Maybe I could love THEM conditionally and keep them on their feet, so that they would never betray me?

If I help you and fix you you will always love me. Maybe that was my manipulation on aaron. Maybe I was controlling too.

Maybe I still am. controlling. in the aftermath of things.maybe sometimes i project this conditionalness of MINE onto others, I seek out something that will not possibly work out and then act the whole thing out...the lowest common denominator...it's only how i survive.

well, that guy won't love me. But i'm better than him. so I will WIN him over. i stay around and don't know why. maybe it's revenge, when i see the kind of person who could turn me down i see if i can hurt them. or if i see the kind of person that is maybe a little on the pathetic side i try to control HIM. win the battle. change his life, calm his anger, or have him on a string. because i can't do that with mom. or grandma. or whoever.

but when those projects turn on ME, those petty inferior projects (the ones I viewed inferior because i felt i had advanced to a stage where i mastered their type when formerly their type rejected me, "I HAVE CHANGED IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW MA! IM NOT THAT LOSER ANYMORE! IF YOU COULD see me now David Mudd, if you could see me now Beth Murphy, if you could see me now anyone who hurt me before I could lash back, Erica and Matt Silverstein"

But when those projects turned on ME and i realize they hated me all along and I didn't have control over them and them over me, when the seduction game was up, when i fall for them because now they do have control over me...rejection controls me...it makes me think i can win them back...then they are not losers anymore they are GODS, the are the IDEALIZED, they are the parent whom in the infantile stage is viewed not ONLY as an extension of the self but as the all powerful being. And then they're absolutely FANTASTIC!

They turn into mom and I chase them like the Rapid Muffler dream where she left me in a two story building as her car drove away and ANYONE who gets in my way (such as a new boyfriend or friend that suggests hanging out when I must go see the one whom I will win back)..becomes my brohter Scott, the boy who got right in the way of my chase. I hated him for getting in my way even though he loved me. maybe he was afraid and maybe part of him hated me because i took valuable attention away. but i was trying to get to mom and now i had a challenge.

my unconscious did not speak loud enough to me when it said "You're never going to find her. there's no way to win. The reality is that you are AT that rapid muffler, staring out the window as she drives away. She gone. There is no way for you to win. Up is down, and yes this is irrational. But it's not you. It's her. Right now, though you look hard and though she occasionally smiles and once broke down and apologized to me at the age of five or so, and once was nice to me opening presents at three when it was her me and dad and all love and smiles...and that time they made pancakes for all of us kids, as if we KNEW each other and were actually a family instead of guests at a cheap hotel...those rare moments were not WON by you, you did not WIN them, they were NOT in your control. But you thought they WERE, and you transferred that to boys and your weight and eventually your recovery from DP". Everything could be controlled, just find the right answer because see, this magic DID work a few times I just need to retrace my steps.

No.

The magical thinking was strong. no one can predict the future, but i did because this magic prevented bad and brought good. It DID work a few times.

If someone puts a dollar in a pepsi machine and nothing comes out, they won't put another dollar in. They will likely walk away or complain to someone. But they would not put another dollar in. Why would they waste more of their precious money? they know something is wrong. and it's not them, it's something with the machine. if the machine has already accepted the dollar and simply won't dispense, they don't stop to think that maybe it was a bad dollar they put in there...everything went to plan, just not hte desired and expected result. They would not stop to think that maybe their dollar was not GOOD enough for the machine, they would assume that the machine dispenses to EVERYBODY but them, they would not judge themselves based on the fact that the machine did not give them their soda. they would not pick themselves apart and think something wrong. They might sigh and give up right then and there and they know that this is a freak occurance and next time they put a dollar in the machine they'll get a pepsi. They don't feel they have to cast a spell on the machine to get it to do right.

Not only did I always put more dollars in, I had CREATED from the BEGINNING a machine that was NEVER bound to work, but I swore up and down I could magically make it work and if it didn't then it reflected on me.

I went on to build many more machines. Machines that would be erratic and uncontrollable and so very seductive. Because when I did make them work it was like nothing else. And yet..it was like nothing.

to succeed in life i would have to build machines slowly, and build them right, and not deliberately build ones that would never work...but those machines were absent in my childhood, i had instead a machine that I had to turn myself inside out for, to get to work, and that i thought was the only way. maybe i do have a fear of success. doing something that WOULD work the right way. Doing so would not do anything to nurture the belief that I am powerful and special enough to make machines work when there are missing parts. And I have to be special...how else would I have won the love of this untouchable woman the few times i did? I should feel guilty, that she had to give so much because I KNOW her schedule was busy. I did it though. her and I must have had a deal, an understanding. because no one else could be touched by her. no one else ever received her love. my GOD, I really must have been special. It was just the two of us, making fun of all those normal people. Making fun of everyone else. I was let in on this secret.

I never saw her as a "not her", like janine saw her grandmother, i think because mom was so erratic with me ANYWAY that it wouldn't even have been noticed.

I remember i would play a game. i would sit in her room while she was in the bathroom and when i heard the toilet flush, I would run out of the room as fast as i could. for some reason i had real fear in me too. "why are you DOING that?" mom asked.

sometimes i would follow her around. "why are you FOLLOWING me?" well, that one is normal. i could see any parent doing that.

but any parent also bakes cookies and accepts the matronly role and drives their kid to school and soccer practice. I guess mom forgot about those petty details.

hm.

so i was different, and i guess it was because i was more special and smarter than everyone else and i couldn't really be touched or messed with because i was just so amazing that people must have been AFRAID. Yeah,that was it. Maybe i wasn't that smart or special and people were annoyed with me and therefore didn't want to touch me. But that would hurt too much because i couldn't bear being all alone in the world. please. don't leave me alone in this world.

I always would put dollars in.
to find someone who really cared? I don't know what that's like.

I guess i have been doing this all my life.

Never in never out.

nobody loses anything. everything stays the same.

you know, when someone gets mad at me, it's not too bad. but i always think of those times and people- like libby man-- who full out assaulted me with their anger. her and kim chiconas. why did the butch girls do this to me? it seemed to be them a lot of the times.

why wasn't i on top? why wasn't i the best? one of the popular ones? I don't know but i guess it certainly didn't help when I tried to be something i wasn't. maybe i would have been among them in a way, but maybe it wouldn't have mattered. i still thought they had something i didn't. there was always that unattainable high. this kind of humiliation

for me to think it was her and not me I would give up the incredible hold of control I have over my own body, I would give up the ability to know whether or not i will be accepted by someone else. I would have to act as I am, (remembered the hallway of the den and the movie cinderella and babysitters...i would have that movie memorized, not because of the prince but because cinderella's dress was beautiful, and what if that did not make me a lesbian but a straight woman so embarassed by her own being that she could only focus on making herself beautiful? prince be damned, he was just the accessory, the prize. it didn't matter so much if he himself though i was beautiful...it was more important that i KNEW it at every waking moment. i thought people looked like that.) i would have to act as i am and that would be too dangerous because in those moments that i did i was unbearable tortured, which caused further embarassment. made fun of relentlessly. what i didn't realize at the time was that i was made, by this rejection of anything fleshy and unpopular, to become a very judgemental (or i chose to be subconsciously) person, pitting people against each other and devaluing the poorer, uglier ones...although as jade would say when i tore down jennifer schlupe in sixth grade, "your hair looks no better!" "You're uglier!" I couldn't bear to be brought down liek that. I couldn't bear to not be adored by those perfect looking people. why wasn't i like them but why was i so obsessed with them? why did it matter more than friendship itself? i figured i was too deformed and demanding...different.

I would change. I would change. I would lose myself and I will change. On May 31, 2001, at the age of 19, I did lose myself. It was just not the way I planned.

i got what i wished for. exactly what i wished for. i transcended my own flesh and blood and drives and messy emotions. what i didn't realize though, were those were the things that were ME. those were the things that needed to be nurtured and were previoiusly attaining said nourishment from my lofty goals of status. when i asked to become not me, I asked to have these drives taken away. That's not what I wanted..see i wanted to have the emotions, I just didn't want to be the one experiencing them. I wanted to feel but not have it be associated with me. i don't quite get this yet. But i asked for my wants and needs...i needed a high. i needed to show i was better better than that normal looking girl who sits two seats over and gets all the attention better than that girl who made out once with my ex two years ago better better better. i had to have those underneath me just as much as i had to have those above me. that's what status is i guess.

i just wanted the BAD parts gone, not everything. Just...cleaning house. Just getting out the things that didn't need to be there. i guess no one can do this. but i did. and all the bad things stormed in at once, they all gate crashed, they all drove me down to breakdown, but they also kept me in check. proof that i was sane. because part of me knew it couldn't carry on with the delusions any longer. I wasn't happy to do it.

I'm really confused right now, i have no idea where this is leading me.