Uppercase Woman

Proof that I'm an Equal Opportunity Pet Tormentor: My Cat Spot

Reason #484 That I Love My New Therapist

When she asks, "What are you good at?" and I say, "Blowjobs!" she bats not an eye, merely pauses and says "I don't think I'll write that down."

Ho hum

Not much going on these days. It’s busy at work, but not busy enough, sadly. Sales at the shop are not what I hoped for. With any luck, I’ll sell a lot of big paintings in the next two weeks.

I did see my new therapist on Friday. I must say, I’m very excited about working with her. She was really wonderful—just what I’ve been looking for. She exudes compassion and dresses like Sarah’s mom, which makes me feel safe. She seems just as likely to hug me as to shake my hand, which is good—sometimes I want a hug, and sometimes a handshake is more than I can bear.

She observed that I am “holding on very tight” which means she’s not clueless. Holding on tight is what I do. She asked me to write about my relationship with food, and what I get out of it. I journaled at home about it, and figured out what I already know: comfort and distraction. The comfort is obvious—when you eat yummy food, you feel comforted. Everyone does. The distraction is a bit more complicated.

While I’m actually eating (otherwise known as cramming food into my mouth at lightning speed), I’m distracted from everything—I’m shut down, numb, gone. It’s a very pleasant feeling when reality is painful. But then I feel shame, guilt, remorse, and that provides an additional level of distraction. Then comes body shame and self-hatred, which distracts me yet again from what I really feel.

Highly efficient of me, isn’t it?

I’ve been attempting to modify my eating in this last week. It is the Christmas season, so I don’t have any grand plans to diet or anything (last week one of my artist’s brought me a huge box of chocolates—I ate about half a layer before giving it to some coworkers in another room to finish). But I can do better.

Last year I did Weight Watchers, and liked it quite a bit. I’ve re-signed up on-line (much cheaper than going to meetings) and have learned all about their latest plan. The new plan, as far as I can tell, allows you to eat lean meat, vegetables, and fruits as often as you like without weighing, measuring, and counting (god, how I HATE weighing and measuring my food). Whole-wheat pasta (which I actually like), brown rice, or potatoes you can eat once a day. Whole grain cereals can be eaten once a day as well. Anything else you have to count and you get an “allowance” for. If you exercise, you increase that allowance.

This seems like something I can live with, so I’m giving it a half-hearted try. Meaning I am NOT going to beat myself up if I don’t do it perfectly (that is another favorite distraction).

I’ve been going to the gym again, and actually lost three pounds last week. I’ll take it, and I’ll try really hard not to think of the 56165465195 more I have to go (yet another distraction technique).

So I feel like I’m taking care of myself, to the best of my limited ability. I see the therapist tomorrow, and I’m actually looking forward to it, even though it’s early in the morning (for me). That’s saying something—I was filled with dread each time I had an appointment with the male therapist I briefly saw this summer.

I’m also working hard at getting into the Christmas spirit. Last night our good friends came over to help decorate our tree, and it was an absolutely lovely time. Since Sarah already posted a photo of us tormenting our dog during the festivities, I won’t do that here. Oh, ok, I will.

Life just keeps moving on, dragging me along with it. As we say in recovery, I’m “trudging the road to happy destiny.”

At the Gym

Scene: the pussy-ass weight machines.

Characters: Me, and a youthful twig of a personal trainer.

Her: (cheerfully) I haven’t seen you here before!

Me: (grunting as I try to do a lateral pull down) Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve been here.

Her : Oh really? Why’s that?

Me: (irritated that I’m not near the free weights so I could throw one at her) I had some medical issues that restricted my exercise.

Her: (faking concern--although, maybe not, could be a liability thing) Really? Like what?

Me: (wondering if I could maybe pick up the whole machine and throw it) I was pregnant.

Her: Oh, congratulations!

Me: (grateful to finally have something to say to make her go away) No. I didn’t have the babies. I developed severe preeclampsia and was forced to terminate the pregnancy at 22 weeks. I lost twin boys.

Her: Oh, I’m so sorry. I know how that can be.

Me: (eyeing her flat belly and youthful face doubtfully). Uh huh.

Her: I’ve got five children.

Me: (thinking, oh please, that’s totally not possibly, you’re like 22): Gee, I just want one!

Her: But I’ve had nine pregnancies.

Me: (trying to pretend that the hanging of my head in shame is helping me lift the weights) Oh, God, I’m so sorry.

Her: I lost twins too.

Me: (hanging head so far down it looks like I’m trying to prevent myself from fainting) Really? How awful. What happened?

Her: I was on a city bus and it got in an accident and I went into pre-term labor.

Me: (visibly shocked) Oh my god.

Her: Yeah. Then I miscarried the next one, and the one after that, had my oldest daughter, and then miscarried again.

Me: (finally able to look her in the face). Jesus Christ. I’m amazed you were able to continue.

Her: It was hard. But I love my kids now.

Me: I’ll bet.

Her: Let me know if you need any help! When you get pregnant again, I can help you develop a nice low stress workout that will keep you in shape!

Me: I will. I promise.

What are the fucking chances?

 

Well, no wonder she killed herself!

Thanks, again, everyone, for offering such great words of support and encouragement. I felt better after posting, and after going to the gym, and after scheduling a therapy appointment for Friday morning. I’m going to be ok.

Oddly enough, I also found great comfort in the words of a woman who killed herself.

Like any other angst-ridden-wanna-be teenage writer, I read “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath in my youth. It’s still a favorite of mine. But when it came to poetry, I was always more of an Anne Sexton fan. I read plenty of Sylvia Plath’s poetry, but I’d never really gotten into her.

While reading an article on Slate about the re-release of her book of poems “Ariel,” I noticed that she had a poem called “Barren Woman.” Well, you know that peaked my interest, so I began doing some research.

Apparently, Ms. Plath went through several years of infertility, only to get pregnant twice and miscarry. She eventually went on to have two children, a boy and a girl (who she was kind enough to give bread and milk, and seal their bedroom door shut with tape, prior to gassing herself in the oven).

The poem led me to two other poems by her (see below). “Childless Woman” kicks my ass, it’s so good. “Three Women” is just, frankly, astounding: it seems to be told from the perspective of each of her fertility experiences: one voice is for the infertile Sylvia, one for the miscarrying Sylvia, and one for Sylvia the mother*. It’s amazing. It’s too long a poem to include here, so go read it here instead.

Barren Woman by Sylvia Plath

Empty, I echo to the least footfall,
Museum without statues, grand with pillars, porticoes, rotundas.
In my courtyard a fountain leaps and sinks back into itself,
Nun-hearted and blind to the world. Marble lilies
Exhale their pallor like scent.

I imagine myself with a great public,
Mother of a white Nike and several bald-eyed Apollos.
Instead, the dead injure me attentions, and nothing can happen.
Blank-faced and mum as a nurse.

Childless Woman by Sylvia Plath

The womb
Rattles its pod, the moon
Discharges itself from the tree with nowhere to go.

My landscape is a hand with no lines,
The roads bunched to a knot,
The knot myself,

Myself the rose you achieve---
This body,
This ivory

Ungodly as a child's shriek.
Spiderlike, I spin mirrors,
Loyal to my image,

Uttering nothing but blood---
Taste it, dark red!
And my forest

My funeral,
And this hill and this
Gleaming with the mouths of corpses.

Bounce

How do you know when routine grief becomes depression?

Routine. Yeah, right.

I have the edges of a cold, but I mostly just couldn’t deal. I stayed in bed a really long time, like until after 1 pm, and I only got out because some dude was coming to fix our dryer.

And then I ate.

I ate toaster strudels (someone needs to hunt down that inventor and KILL him), bar-b-q potato chips, port wine cheese, and microwave popcorn. ALL DAY. Well, the part I wasn’t in bed anyway. Did I mention that I’m still supposed to doing the low salt thing?

Several things have me concerned. First off, I’m having a hell of a time getting out of bed every day. I don’t have to go to work until 11 am. I’m usually in bed right after the Daily Show, then I read a while, but I usually am asleep no later than 1 am. At 10 am, I am still laying in bed, trying to convince myself to get up before the show changes on NPR. I am usually late to work. I’ve screwed up Charlie’s careful scheduling more than once.

I’m often quite content to go three days between showers (I’m not very greasy, in fact I have supremely dry skin and hair, but still).

Then there is the rage. Oh, god, the rage.

In the last ten days I have gotten angry to the point of shaking about a half dozen times. Once, because Charlie wanted to keep our horseback ride on Saturday to just an hour. Yesterday, it was because the TV wouldn’t turn on (I threw the remote at it hard enough to mark the glass). Usually Charlie is the victim witness, but today I did it in front of my employee because a website wasn’t working the way I thought it should. She actually patted my shoulder to try to calm me down. This isn’t good.

The rage flees nearly as quickly as it arrives. But I can’t control it. One second, I’m being totally rational, and the next second, I’m screaming and hitting things. I’ve raged before, but I usually have a bigger wind-up than that.

I have never been medicated for depression, but I’m wondering if it’s time.

I found a therapist that’s also a grief counselor. I left a message for her, and I’m hoping she’ll call back soon. I could see the therapist I was seeing a few months ago, but I just don’t feel like I could work with a man right now.

I wanted to thank everyone for their kind words about Saturday. I made it through the day, but it was a forced march the whole way. We did do the horseback riding, and had a nice dinner, then looked at tacky holiday lights on people's houses (I didn't get the tattoo--yet!). Sunday I just collapsed, and I already told you about yesterday.

I did come to work today, and I did make it to the gym at lunch. I’m trying to bounce back, but as I said to Sarah earlier, I think sometimes I don’t stay down long enough, so I just keep bouncing… I don’t know. I’m trying, but god, it’s just so motherfucking hard.

I read “Good Grief” by Lolly Winston recently (thanks Pam!). In it, the central character loses her young husband to cancer. She struggles with the grief, calling out sick to work a lot, etc, until one day she just stops getting dressed and goes to work in her robe and fuzzy slippers. I’m not there yet, but I can see it coming.

Oh Boy

Tomorrow was supposed to be my baby shower.

Blah.

We're going to do some fun things, like go horseback riding, and maybe I'll get that daffodil tattoo.

But I'm still sad.

And Sue? You fucking rock, girl, for sending me flowers at work. Da bomb, baby.

Tidbits

Do you know what's depressing?

When it's a Wednesday night and you're really tired and want to watch TV but because it's the holiday season none of you favorite shows are on between 9 pm and 10 pm and there's nothing on any cable channels you want to watch so you watch the Nick & Jessica Christmas special.

And sing along. Even when they commit heresy by singing along to Bing Crosby's version of "White Christmas," while digitally projecting his image, proof that they are evil incarnate.

Yeah.

What's up with the way that girl sings, anyway? She has a good voice, why does she fuck it up by acting all cute? Brian McKnight looked like an opera singer next to her. Sheesh.

But you know what's cool?

I'm back in the top 100 on the Google search for the word "cunt."

Also, this site dedicated to troll reports is pretty cool. And not just because they linked to me either.

I am a Drama Queen, and more questions

So you know those moments, like back in middle school, where you act like a big drama queen to get attention? Yeah? Well, that was me last night.

I’m a terrible sleeper. I have been since I was a little girl. I would crawl out my bedroom window when I was four and go play in the yard naked until I got sleepy (back in the day before pedophiles, or fear thereof, roamed the earth). No, my mother didn’t know. I have immense difficulty falling asleep, and lord help me if I wake up—it’s all over for the night.

A few years ago, I discovered the powers of melatonin. If I go to bed, slip two melatonin tablets under my tongue and let them dissolve while I read a book, I’ll be asleep within a half an hour. It has totally changed my life.

The only problem arises when I am near the end of a really good book. Well, last night I was close to finishing “Pattern Recognition” by William Gibson (fascinating) and I stayed up too late reading it. When I went downstairs to get a new book, I unfortunately woke Charlie up. After a few benign noises about me turning off the light, he finally woke up enough to actually be irritated, and threatened to go downstairs. For some insane reason, I stormed out of bed, yelling, “No, I’ll go!” and slammed the door and stomped down the stairs naked.

I guess what I wanted was Charlie to come after me, so I grew more and more irritated as I could hear his snores shaking the floorboards upstairs (you knew what I was thinking, right? “You snore like that and I put up with it! What’s one little light?”). I stopped reading after a while and tried to sleep, but the couch blanket wasn’t quite big enough to cover both my shoulders and my toes. So then I watched some TV, including some really cheesy soft-core porn on HBO (give me hardcore any day over that crap). About two hours later, Charlie finally woke up and told me to come upstairs but I was too irritated, so we started yelling back and forth up and down the stairs. Yep.

I finally went up, and we both read for a few minutes, and when I turned out the light I crawled into his arms and burst into tears.

I better be PMSing, that’s all I can say.

So, more cool questions!

Name a TV or movie character you can relate to.

Hmmm… how about Lisa Simpson, and Abby from ER.

Do you have any phobias?

A couple of years ago Charlie and I toured some caverns and I was really, really uncomfortable being that far under the earth. I guess I’m a touch claustrophobic, and can’t stand the idea of a room without a window--and that’s why we splurged on the balcony room on the cruise! But anything else, heights, spiders, mice, rats, nothing bothers me.

What do you think about Birkenstocks?

I don’t think about Birkenstocks at all. The only thing I’ll say is that they are nowhere near as comfortable and they should be. What’s with the toes being higher than the heel?

What's your favorite book and why?

That is so tough to answer. I taught myself to read when I was five, and I grew up without a television, and I’ve been reading 3-5 books every week for most of my life. My favorite genre is fantasy, usually by women and featuring women characters (no, not a huge Tolkein fan, although I’ve read them all, and liked the movies). If there is magic, excellent—talking animals are an even bigger plus. I do try to read regular fiction with great regularity, though, and usually the book I’m into is my current favorite.

But if forced to choose, I would have to say my favorite book of all time is The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis. I know it’s a big old Christian metaphor, but gosh how I love that book—and Hollywood had so better not fuck it up. I dreamed once, many years ago, that I met Aslan (the Jesus/God character). I ran up to him and buried my face in his mane with my arms around his neck. I have never, ever felt so at peace and content in my life than I did at that moment in that dream—and that memory is the thing I cling to when I’m losing faith.

Best thing you cook and a recipe?

Christmas Dinner and a steak dinner over a campfire. Sorry, but I don’t use recipies.

South Park or the Simpsons?

Must one choose? I love them both, although since the Team America movie the bloom is off the South Park rose for me, so I guess I would have to say Simpsons. I have loved them since they were a crazy short on the original Tracy Ullman show.

How would you say your home is decorated? Is it modern/country/hippie-free spirit-ish?

It’s free-or-cheap-furniture-covered-with-cat-hair-ish. We have, for some psycho reason, a maroon velveteen couch (I know, I know—you should see what I have to do to get the cat hair off—it involves a weird squeegee thing and Febreeze). We also have a really good oriental rug we inherited from Charlie’s mom and is currently stained from cat puke (but I hear that increases the value). We have a nice comfy chair that I snagged from Barnes & Noble when I worked there, but it’s worn through. Coffee table I bought at a thrift store. A lovely two-tiered table I got from my grandparents. Get the picture?

I think CUNT is a perfectly acceptable curse, and I use it often myself. How many times have you said CUNT out loud today?

Not once, sadly.

What is your absolute all time favorite meal?

Dude, I’m a food addict. That’s like asking a junkie which ‘brand’ of heroin they like best. But… I love really good diner hot roast beef sandwiches with too much gravy.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I’m not sure, but it should be with animals. Dogs or horses, preferably.

Do you prefer milk chocolate or dark chocolate? Coffee or tea?

Milk chocolate, duh. I don’t drink either coffee or tea with any regularity, but I do love a nice cup of mint tea with honey now and then.

What's your favorite band? Favorite song?

That’s almost harder to answer than the book question. I’m totally into music (current fav cd—the Time-Life “Queens of Country” disc 2), so it’s hard to pick one. “Precious Things” by Tori Amos wins hands-down for best kick ass lyrics (I wanna kill those boys/those Christian boys/so you can make me cum/that doesn’t make you Jesus). “Blackbird” by the Beatles for best melody. “Ode to Joy” by Beethoven for best choral piece for listening to, and “The Hallelujah Chorus” by Handel for the best choral piece to sing. “It’s Raining Men” by the Weathergirls is my favorite song to dance to. “Puff the Magic Dragon” by Peter, Paul and Mary cause it makes me cry. “Arms of the Angels” by Sarah McLachlan cause it came out after my friend Web killed himself and makes me think of him. “Abiyoyo” by Pete Seeger just cause. “Why” by Annie Lenox cause it’s our song.

But probably, my absolute favorite song would have to be “Cecily’s Song” that my mother wrote for me when I was little, back when she was a coffee house folk singer. I don’t really remember it, it’s been so long, but I know it was written just for me with nothing but love. So it’s the best.

Probably Beatles for a band. I mean, who else could it be?

Will you get a tattoo in honor of the boys, or does memorial art go against your sensitivities?

I’m not much of a believer in ever putting names in tattoos, but children are permitted (never, ever a boyfriend or girlfriend, seriously, people). I was thinking about just getting a little “N & Z” somewhere next time I got something, but then Sarah said I should also get a daffodil, and that made me cry, so now I think I have to.

If money weren't an object, where would you go for vacation?

New Zealand.

Are you a vegetarian?

You may have guessed this already, but no. I was once for two years, but I realized that I loved meat so much that if it weren’t readily available in stores I’d probably hunt it. So I figured I wasn’t being a hypocrite (except for the whole I-have-pets-and-love-them-and-wouldn’t-eat-them-even-though-
they’re-animals thing).

How exactly do you pronounce your name? My lurker friend says "SISS-ily" and I say "SESS-ily."

Sess-il-y. As in cesspool, then ill as in vomiting, and lee as in, oh, I don’t know.

What was your last drink and where?

On December 21, 1995, I had the first beer I’d had in a few months (other substances were much more important by then), and it was also the last. I don’t remember what kind, some microbrewery shit. It was in my house. Two hours later I was in the emergency room.

How many & please describe the porn-focused google hits have you gotten with all the mention of cunts & cocksuckers.

None. Nada. I’m so bummed. For a while there I was in the top fifty google hits for the word cunt.

But here are a few random porn-themed hits I found today:

“Tattooed Whores” yes!

“Fucking Nicolette Sheridan”

“I am feeling to fuck girls pictures” huh?

And then there is a whole bunch from some poor person who wants to fuck his mother. I do not know why he was linked to my site nine times. Possibly because I use the word ‘motherfucker’ a tad too often.

What one thing can your cats do tempt you to give them away, and what's the one thing they can do to melt your heart and make you change your mind?

When Frank (the 18 year old that won’t die) pees when he feels we’re ignoring him—on bookcases, on walls, into electrical outlets—we wonder if he’s old enough to put down even though he's healthy. When Dylan is shrieking at me for no apparent reason, I wish Sarah would take him back. When Annie pees on the dog bed, I…well, I’d never get rid of Annie no matter what.

Watching Spot drink—either from the dog bowl via her paw, or from the bathtub faucet—I just want to squeeze her (sadly, she hollers bloody murder if you lay a finger on her). Annie was bottle raised, so instead of purring and kneading, she bites our fingers—cute as hell until it hurts, since she’s now nine. Fifi when you scratch her back and she sticks her tongue out is just too cute. Dylan when he lying on the floor, flat on his back, is adorable. Frank never does any thing appealing, I swear to God. But when he was younger, he once caught a hawk.