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Archive for the ‘anxiety’ Category

Taken after my shower today, here are some of the red welts and engravings and rashy areas that appear on me for seemingly no reason:

In the past couple of years my skin has become very . . . expressive.  To the point of being really inexplicably and sometimes unbearably itchy and rashy and/or just freaking out when hot water touches it (not itchy or painful, just looks like I’ve been scratched and/or rubbed in places I can’t even REACH to have accidentally sandpapered myself or scraped nails across my skin).

I’ve eliminated some of the possible triggers, but have wasted a neurotic amount of time googling stuff like dermatographic urticaria. I think it’s like a mild version of that, so unfortunately I don’t have that exciting ability to make myself look scarified with lettering just by gently writing words across my body, but the way I look sometimes reminds me of Michelle Remembers, and how the trauma of satanic ritual abuse made her body recall these events years later with physical manifestations, such as clearly(!) visible welts in the shape of forked devil tails on her skin or whatever.

I read that book on a field trip to the Seattle Public Library that our English teacher took us on in high school, hoping to expand our small-town horizons. Obviously he did not succeed in my case, since I was magically drawn STRAIGHT to this sensational and informative book (and a homeless dude with a porn magazine “hidden” in the center of a more respectable book). I have no idea what we were really there for, but maybe I should make up some stories about some repressed memories that my body is trying to tell me about.

Like maybe I was kidnapped as a child and held for a year by a bizarre, EXTREMELY WEALTHY couple who gave me a whole closet full of tutus in every color imaginable and let me SLEEP in them.

Baby blue, lilac, bubblegum pink, fuschia, soft pastel princess pink. White satin with rhinestones, matte white, white satin WITHOUT rhinestones. Emerald green with sparkly green beads and glossy black bows.

After so many days, weeks and months of wearing and lying upon flipped-up tulle skirts and shiny, scratchy little sequins, it did in fact irritate my skin. That’s why I hate musicals so much but somehow know all their words. You should have seen me in Safeway last night when Whatever Lola Wants came on . . . I immediately started sashaying and singing along. And don’t think I didn’t also know the words to that Phantom of the Opera number that came on right afterwards. It hurts me, but I can’t stop myself.

Someday my abductors’ names will appear in a wedding invitation font on my back and I’ll be able to find and blackmail them into paying me large sums of money for not sending those tutus along when they returned me to my parents. All because I cried that one time at the pageant and ripped off one of my false eyelashes. Of course I’ve repressed these memories, but my body will never forget the sensation of 24/7 tulle.

*****

Here’s an example (also from today) of the more irritating itchy belly-rash I get:

Last week I got it on my left forearm. Just as a way of saying, “I couldn’t possibly be more localized and seemingly random!”

It’s fucking bullshit, or maybe not always because a lot of times it happens when my body gets really hot from excitement. Not sexual excitement, but emotional: frustration, agitation, anxiety, stress, over-enthusiasm, manic thinking, etc. And maybe from eating too much carbs and simple sugars. I don’t really fucking know. But I should stop fantasizing about a closet full of tutus and passing out with cake batter all over my face because it’s really getting me wound up.

Before my webcam show today:

My boobs pressed against the glass of the cabin door.

After my webcam show I went shopping for some Christmas presents for our nephews while Delia and The Hunter had some private time at home alone. A guy hit on me while I window shopped, but I was enjoying being alone too much to try to get a free dinner out of it (yes, I do think that way). Instead I treated myself to a solo Mexican dinner.

Christmas mannequin I saw tonight

All of these years that it was just the two of us — Delia and I — when I chose to spend time alone I always felt like we both missed out on sharing something together. One of the things I love about The Hunter living with us is the feeling of freedom I have to be alone, like nobody is missing out on anything if I eat out by myself or take a walk by myself or spend the night by myself.

Of course they are quick to point out that they are missing out on time with me, but I don’t care or feel I’m doing something stingy the way I did when it was just Delia and I. I was able to walk up and down and up and down and up and down the streets tonight with no regard for time or preoccupation with “what is my girlfriend doing now? Is she waiting for me?” No automatic decisions against doing something nice by myself because I would rather do it with her.

We did everything together. Barely spent any time apart, really. In lots of ways we were isolated together against the rest of the world. I wanted everything to be safe and stable and predictable and routinized at home with no surprises or discomfort. Experiencing that was important, for both of us, I think. But right now it seems important for us to grow relationships with other people and restore some of our independence from each other without growing apart.

I didn’t think I wanted or needed to spend more time alone and with other people, but The Hunter and his relationship with Delia and the upsetting of my soothing routines and space cushions have been catalysts for me to seize time alone and talk to other people more, including inviting a lady friend to go to the movies with us! Except for four couples we’re friends with as a couple, I really haven’t cultivated relationships with people as an individual. I felt like I only had energy for three relationships: my relationship with Delia, my relationship with work, and my relationship with myself with a tiny bit available for my family and the friends we have in common.

I believe in brain plasticity. I believe I’m becoming more capable and flexible by intimately sharing our space and time with a third person we care about. And on an observable level I can now see that I have more opportunities instead of less by our being in a close relationship with a third person. Not just any third person, but this particular third person and everything that he brings to the table.

I’m not adjusting to everything with the greatest of ease and I know I will never be a social butterfly or able to juggle work and a hundred relationships and home life with the kind of energy and skills other people do, but I do think I’m changing for the better even if I’ve had a handful of immature outbursts. I also can’t say that any one of us in this new triad has been devoid of jealousy, but I think it’s okay because we’re talking about it openly and it’s kind of exciting/stimulating.

I’d be lying if I said I feel 100% safe in our new relationships. What I do feel is wholly alive. Every day is different, like we’re kids who don’t know anything so every 24 hour period is crammed full of measurable huge growth. Like 25 new vocabulary words a day.

Check out this blog entry from Delia for some more background on The Hunter.

After getting into a big fight with my mom last Christmas in front of my nephews (ages 2 and 5) I really didn’t want to spend Christmas proper with her and my sister’s family again until I can learn to be less of an asshole/accept that my mom is crazy (and so am I). But we’re going to do it again this year anyway!

Note: this means we’ll have our members-only group webcam shows on Thursday and Friday that week instead of Friday and Saturday.

Here’s the email exchange between me and my sister:

ME: We will drive up on Christmas Eve and stay the night so we can be with you all, provided it’s safe to travel.

MY SISTER: The baby Jesus thinks that’s swell.  We will have hot meat fondue, because nothing says Christmas like boiling oil.

ME: Are you trying to give Mommy and I an anxiety attack with that boiling oil plan? That doesn’t sound very child-friendly . . .

MY SISTER: We’re starting a new holiday tradition,  where each child gets to try to be the Bearer of the Boiling Oil.  Whichever one can successfully carry a fondue pot of boiling oil around the Christmas tree three times gets all the presents under the tree, and the loser gets, well, skin grafts I guess.   We’re looking for a name for it…

While packing up and moving, I rediscovered a lot of jolly useless crap that I’ve hoarded, including these fortunes I saved for some reason:

Rediscovered fortune-cookie fortunes

Guess which one I like best (if I were to choose one to be my REAL fortune or that I actually believe in)?

Definitely not “you will have many friends when you need them”. That one gives me an anxiety attack – total fortune cookie curse. I thought they stopped making those kinds!

I like “you are the center of every group’s attention” marginally better, but again, it sounds like a curse pointing out a strong character defect. It might as well say, “you are an obnoxious narcissist and/or a buffoon.” Like, everywhere you go YOU WILL MAKE AN ASS OF YOURSELF!! Have you ever considered being seen and not heard? Okay, how about if you just take a shower next time because you smell like a stale cookie baked in a butt oven. Decorating your face with your own smegma isn’t as cool as you think it is. And for Christ’s sake, put your tits away and stop talking like a fourth grader impersonating an Asian comedian.

I do not belong to any group, I am simply an object of every group’s derision. There is “every group”, and there is me. I don’t think I have low self-esteem, I truly think that’s all implied by the wording of the fortune.

“Put the data you have uncovered to beneficial use” resonates with me. STRONGLY. Like a whisper of truth from the great computer in the sky, urging me along to fulfill my virtual destiny on the gameboard of “life”. I can feel proud of being chosen to uncover data and succeeding in dusting off this wisdom — these necessary components of information –  and look forward to more being revealed as I take the Next Logical Steps in applying all of it. My future is certain, but I do not know what it is . . . yet. But everything will most certainly fall into place and I will either end world hunger or win a lifetime supply of personal awesome, which I may build in the form of a vault filled with cakesters, lost Patricia Highsmith novels (imagined and written by moi, of course), benzos, and the interchangeable body parts of my robot sex drone*, “Vector” (affectionately named after my favorite affordable fountain pen by Parker, which I will have cached by the thousand).

Despite the allure of that fortune, I’m fated to accept “you have remarkable power which you are not using” as the true script written exactly for me. I could look at it as the forty-year-old’s new age version of all of my report cards stating over and over again that I fail to work up to my full potential, like the punch in the gut every time a family member on Intervention tells the addict, “you could be so much more . . . will you please take this precious opportunity today to be the Person You Are Meant to Be?” I would be like, “why do you think I take drugs in the first place?? Too! Much! PRESSURE!!”

But I don’t know . . . there really is something magical about that little slip of paper saying it like a promise from the universe instead of a disappointed father to his teacher-turned-whore daughter. So even though I threw away the fortunes, I’m going to try to use that one as an affirmation, and every time I say “I have remarkable power which I am not using” I’m going to feel a mountain of sparkling gold coin growing under my feet, strong and heavy, feeling like a reserve of money in the bank that I may withdraw at any time. I snap my fingers then open them a quarter of an inch, and coin flies up in between them! I snap my fingers on my other hand and open them again and a cakester appears in my fist! I tap my tall shiny boot on my platform of tinkling, clanging gold and a platinum-furred gopher appears in my arms!

Then I start the engine on my golden mountain of reserved power and fly across the world as though on a fertilizing-lawnmower hovercraft, gilding everything with my perverse tinkling laughter, and everyone has to put on masks like when Mount St. Helens blew or run inside lest they pollute their lungs with my infectious 14 carat gold ash. Then me and my platinum gopher land at the top of an extremely soft and unbelievably tall grassy hill that we roll all the way down until we land — laughing gold even harder than before — on a pillowtop mattress that floats off into a shimmering blue lake filled with lily pads holding bowls of mashed potatoes and gravy.

*is it redundant or actually just plain inaccurate to call something both a robot and a drone?

I’m not going to feel bad about part of my boob falling out at the farmers’ market when there were so many guys in the seventies wearing tight white pants you could see their pricks through.

I mean, so what if a sliver of my shiny areola puffed out into the open without me realizing it? My dress and bra got tired. There’s only so much you can do to restrain these puppies.

No wonder those old ladies were giving me dirty looks. And the younger women were too busy to notice, strutting their gorgeous tan legs around. That’s also probably why I didn’t notice until I got to the car. Too busy checking out the ladies . . .

I’m on the 16th day of a 90 day thing. Not a diet or a cleanse or a new pharmaceutical regimen. No, not rehab either. But I think by the 90th day it might appear that way.

The reason I’m (vaguely) sharing this is to ask people to be as patient with me as I’m trying to be with myself instead of telling myself I don’t have time or that something good is taking too long or I’ve been healthy for four days so it’s time to go back to “normal” already! It’s definitely cutting into my routine because I’m going to a support group of sorts every single day, or twice in a day if I skip a day.

I told my sister about it and she could barely believe it: “Wow, that’s A LOT of leaving the house for you, Trixie. How’s that going for you?”

So yeah, as people who are close to me know, I don’t have a lot of stamina for interacting with people or even just being around them much (even though I *love* people!). Or even just leave the house much, as my sister pointed out. I’m able to do these meetings, though, because I know how long they last and there is a structure to each one and guidelines for behavior. And because I get so much out of going, even when some of the meetings start out and I’m like, “oh my god how the fuck am I going to sit through this?!?” and then every single time IT IS WORTH IT.

*****

The really big thing that’s happened in the past couple of weeks is that I’ve asked people for help. One is for help with the above stuff and the other person is for help with stuff YOU are interested in, stuff that has to do with our porn sites! This person is super DUPER awesome. We’re gradually going to tell you more about this person, and this person may tell you more and more, too. If you’re lucky! Most of the work she’s doing is behind the scenes, back-end stuff but it will free Delia and I up from having to do it (or in my case just sitting around being afraid of doing it. SO MUCH of it).

While two weeks in is too soon to get people (me included) looking around for grand results, I do already feel immensely relieved and things look (and feel) a lot simpler than they were in my agonizing, trying-to-do-it-myself, totally-confused-and-overwhelmed brain state. We’ve exhausted ourselves over the past ten years thinking that first we had to “get rich” to hire someone to help us, insanely getting the cart WAY before the horse. Delia’s been working her ass off on cam for the past few months so tell her “thank you” for making the money to help attract the work-time of this super duper new friend of ours! And thank you to all of you who buy shows with her and memberships from us!

On my way to the cabin this morning, I almost hit a wee little fawn. It may actually have bounded into the side of my wheel but still been okay enough to bounce off and go away in a safer direction.

One block later I saw some crows feasting on a dead rabbit on the side of the road which made the idea of killing a deer less traumatic, even if a spotted baby. Especially when I think that it’s highly likely (or am I exaggerating?) I will someday hit an animal while driving. Better something small that won’t also kill or injure us upon impact, right?

I’m actually not even sure it’s the idea of killing an animal that bothers me. What I think I’m really anxious about is what I’m supposed to do afterward. Ideally the animal would obviously be dead and clearly not somebody’s pet so I could just leave. I mean, I *think* you can just leave or can you? I’m also not sure if it would be genuinely hard for me to put an animal out of its misery or if I’m just afraid someone will catch me doing it the wrong way. And what the fuck am I thinking I would do? Would I stomp on a baby deer’s head or what? I wouldn’t even know where to look in our vehicle for an implement to deliver a killing blow. What if I bashed in a baby deer’s head when all it had was broken legs and another person would have taken it to the wildlife rescue people to put four long skinny white casts on it? What if someone sees me walking away from something they think it’s wrong to walk away from? What if it turns out I don’t know the difference between right and wrong at all?

There are way too many deer in our town. What difference does it make in the grand scheme of life, anyway? Why do I spend time thinking about cradling deer heads in my lap while I watch the light go out of their dumb pretty brown eyes?

I know you’re supposed to call the cops to “dispatch” the animal, though. I don’t want to sit around with a hurt animal waiting for help, but I guess if it’s in town it wouldn’t take that long. But what if we’re in the middle of nowhere? What if we have no phone reception? What if I don’t have a phone at all? Do I pick it up and take it somewhere to be euthanized or doctored up if mendable? What if it’s too big to move or if it’s so broken up it’s all falling apart in chunks? Is that how I relieve it of its pain? By ripping it in two? Or is that the effort that brings the reality of the situation home? When is it worth it to be covered with an animal’s blood and guts? Would I tell somebody, “I’m sorry I left your pet on the side of the road but I’m allergic to cats and couldn’t pick it up to bring it home to you?”

Why do I waste time thinking about things? Why is my mind so occupied with fears?

Why don’t we have a gun in our car? Why don’t I have emergency numbers programmed into my phone? Why don’t I know the name of the road I’m on and the cross street and my location on the map?

*****

Last night on a longish drive home I  wondered out loud to Delia, “have we seen any owls this year?”

No.

Three minutes later an owl flew across the road in front of us into the trees. With her wings rowing through the air the headlights made a strobe effect because of the white of her body and under her wings compared to the darker on top.

I hope I never hit an owl. But for some reason I feel like I know exactly what the right things would be to do if that ever were to befall us.

Why don’t I always have a thick blanket with me to wrap around someone that’s hurt and scared so they won’t bite off my nose or scratch off my skin when I try to help them?

*****

Sometimes I think I’m really helpless and stupid and don’t have the answers to anything useful or important or the right tools for the job.

I don’t even know where the fuck I am.

*****

Someone we know died last night and in the interest of making “normal” conversation I forgot that her death is finally a good thing, and nobody needs or wants us to be sorry that her friends were with her as she left. I forgot that it would have been okay to smile with relief when our friend told me and to hug her with celebration instead of loss.

*****

Yesterday our friend showed us something really complex he’s been working really hard on for months. It’s a teaching tool to help people make better decisions under trying conditions to dispatch the enemy with as little collateral damage as possible. In the example they are trying to maintain freedom of movement on a key route.

This is a metaphor for the rest of it but a whole lot more than that, too.

I’m incorrectly paraphrasing our friend, but most people like us have no idea what most people like them go through and what they’re like, and maybe don’t even think of them as people in the same way they think of each other, which makes them pompous hypocrites.

I’m still learning a lot from yesterday and today and right now. I even just cried and I think it was good for me.

Now I’m just going to try to “do the next right thing” which is probably a lot easier (and definitely more useful) than fantasizing about things I’m afraid of and listing all of the things I DON’T know how to do or fix or heal or change or bury.

I dreamt of a crowded seniors-only trailer park vacation spot where we went to get away from it all but then we were in my grandma and grandpa’s trailer or something (note: in real life my grandpa is dead and they never lived in a trailer park). I had to pee but every bathroom I went to was full of specialty handicapped nursing home toilets with heightened elevator-seats made of yellowed plastic, and equipment like stainless steel rails, hoses, sprayers, etc. I didn’t want to sit on any of them and a frustrated old black man (I think he was sort of like my dad, who was a deeply tanned Irish in real life but not black) was chasing me (slowly, with a hobble) out of his bathroom(s) that were for him to use, not me.

I came into a bedroom with a hospital bed. My grandma was in it, sort of gyno-exam style, with two female assistants handing her implements on a tray. My old old grandma had a pair of tongs or forceps, a long piece of sinew or thick brown dental floss or something and different needles to thread it through, and a scary circle of metal she was fashioning into a clamp (diameter: between a nickel and quarter). She was in pain but focused on the task at hand which was customizing the thin metal circle to act as a cinch on her cervix to keep everything inside. One of the women held a mirror between her legs and I was horrified by how painful this procedure was going to be for my grandma who apparently had to do it every night before bed and try to sleep with a sharp metal clip digging into the tender flesh of her insides.

A cat jumped up on the bed and its tail swished against the implements. I expressed concern over this, worrying that the implements weren’t sterile and Grandma would get an infection. She brushed me off and prepared to reach into her vagina and pinch off her loosely-gaping cervix. I saw hair and blood on gauze. I protested to one of the nurses “what about rubber or silicone or something softer . . .” as the nurse just shook her head, letting me know that YES, there were alternatives to all of this daily torture but the medical community didn’t care about my grandma. They had bigger fish to fry.

Then an overweight trailer-parky lady won an opportunity to confront the HEAD of the doctors. We walked into his operating theatre where she started yelling at him about what my grandma had to endure and that he had the power to help her and stop withholding the special silicone rings.

He looked at me with utter disdain as he snapped on latex gloves and reminded me that we need to think about the soldiers on the front lines and THAT was what he cared about and how dare I be so selfish when there is a war going on. The men, the heroes, the stupid stupid women crying about their soft trivial cunts, lying in cozy beds. I couldn’t get the words out about how she couldn’t possibly sleep, the agony she was in. I wondered how he could treat us this way when she’d won the contest; how could he humiliate the winner on national television and not even LISTEN? Did this happen to all of the winners in their confrontations? Maybe it was my fault for being there with her. Maybe my presence made it null and void.

We were loud and fat and the other doctors in scrubs didn’t even look at us. I felt ashamed. Our place in the world and the futility of struggling against it was very very clear to me then. We were the cats contaminating the sterile atmosphere, endangering the lives of the heroes and progress in the war just by distracting them with our voices, needs and complaints. Stupid and selfish.

*****

Not a dream: my cousin died of cancer at the end of April and I never cared much one way or the other whether we were to kill Osama or not. But I do seem to care how and that even though I see people talking about it, I haven’t randomly seen anybody worrying about us killing his “human-shield”/wife or killing three of Qaddafi’s grandCHILDREN-under-twelve. I know this is nothing unusual, “good” guys killing kids and other civilians and apparently only the stupidest of idealistic bleeding heart peacenik liberals would question whether or not its worth it to the point where I had to google it to see whether or not I dreamed that, too, since it seems to be a matter of so little concern that I haven’t seen any mention of these murders in my social network though I HAVE seen plenty of OBL talk. It seems pretty obvious that we (as a general population) don’t consider those kids human or valuable or much of anyone to mourn. WE’RE FUCKING HEROES BLAAAAAHHHH! Do you feel safer now? I don’t. Not at all. I don’t believe anybody is safer anywhere; there is no army or bomb we can trust not to kill kids and the other people we pretend we’re helping. BUT OH MY GOD WOMEN WHO HAVE ABORTIONS SHOULD GO TO JAIL (if you google the Qaddafi grandchildren story get a load of how few stories even MENTION these kids were under twelve – not that if they were thirteen or over it would be a-okay, it’s just hilarious when the pro-”life”rs don’t seem to mind these things, but sucking out a blob of cells is MURDER)!! Fuck the world.

So I’m kind of depressed and just want to watch Star Trek, that much-ridiculed series of shows that actually has a fucking moral compass. What would Jean Luc Picard do? None of this bullshit, that’s for sure. Though the whole Robin Hood redistribution of Qaddafi’s wealth plan sounds sort of cool. Definitely a Captain Janeway kind of move.

Note: I am not writing this to change people’s minds or get in arguments or anything, I’m simply sharing my feelings with those who are curious. Because this is my blog. I understand why some people have different feelings and perspectives on this/these issues.

Also, I feel much better after sitting on this post for a day. I’ll try to post something more jolly soon, I just wanted to make a record of this nightmare.

I took a walk by myself before dinner today.

Kind of gloomy here at 4:30-ish, but I love it.

Skinny Moss Dragon COMING AT YOU!!!!

winter in Washington state (could be spring, summer or fall)

Didn’t spend more than three hours working today. Trying to get over some kind of a sore throat thing that’s been going on way too long (it left, then it came back). Lately I wake up about 53 times a night in a panic because I think my throat is closing up and I can’t breathe. My throat isn’t that bad, but my anxiety is. I feel like taking a honey-covered pumpkin-scooper to the back of my throat and hollowing out an air-path.

My dreams are filled with phlegm-vacuums. You can hear thick scabby clots of green goo getting temporarily lodged in the tube before being sucked away.

Not really. My dreams are actually way more disturbing than that. ALL. NIGHT. LONG. I wish I knew what it looks like where your sinuses meet your throat. I wish I could reach into that place and unblock it.

I’m tired.

Why do they put lactic acid in cough syrup?