Lately, I have been struggling with the meaning of living. Cliche, I know, but when you find yourself in that state of mind, it is hard to find anything worth doing. And I am not talking about the suicidal or depressed "What does it all mean?" mentality, but I guess more of a philosophical tune.
Anyway: do you want to know what I found out?
Life, in itself, isn't anything special. Nearly everything on this planet--hell, one could argue that even the universe could be included--lives and dies. What counts is the meaning we give life. For me, I want to be a good person, which battle with my need for perfection, but I also want to be good to other people. I want to help others in any way that I possibly can. I know what depression feels like, I know what hunger feels like, I know what pain and fear and weakness are to people. I don't want others to have to suffer alone through that shit.
I also realized that in living, there are people, there is music, there is food, and there is love. All of those mean so much more than merely being. With ever breath I take, I am here, I am changing something. Although I may feel insignificant, small, and unimportant, if I weren't here then the future would change. I can affect those around me, and I want to in a good way.
With living, there is sunshine, cool breezes, warm embraces, lazy Sunday afternoons, dancing... I never want to miss out in any of it. I do not want to exist in the environment and in life, but rather to experience it, cultivate it, make it my own so I always appreciate what it means to feel.
All of this suddenly welled up within me and I felt that I had to write it all down. It may seem all will-nilly, but I think it is quite beautiful that I came to this realization. I think it coincides with me going to the gym nearly every day this week, but we'll see :)
I hope everyone is swell.
-X.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Hormones Suck.
I think the title says it all for this past few weeks. You see, I am on birth control--not because I have sex, but because if I'm not, I will not get my period for eight months at a time--and I ran out about two weeks ago. I asked my mom when I only had a week left to send me more so that I wouldn't have to go cold turkey for long. But, like always, I didn't get it until this past Sunday. I hadn't been on the pill for a week. And honestly, it was quite amazing. I wasn't hungry--ever. And when I was, I could stick to raw vegetables and pretzels like nothing I had ever seen before. I wasn't eating meat, sugar, or fat, and I could feel my abdomen shrinking a little by Saturday. It was blissful, amazing, and, more importantly, satisfying. It felt as if I had finally done something right, something that would make me happy again, and the best part? I wasn't over emotional at all. Sometimes throughout the day, I'll have random mood swings, but when I wasn't taking the birth control, my mood was pretty stable all the time. Yes, maybe it was me doing it subconsciously, and yes, maybe it was because I was feeling so damn good about myself that I had no need to be bitchy, but I seriously think my hormones were quieting down for once.
Then enter the pill once more. Let's see: I got the pills Saturday morning in the mail, and I started taking them Sunday morning. By that evening, during the superbowl, I was craving everything. My friends ordered pizza, so I scarfed down a large slice and two bread sticks. We went to a tea shop nearby and I had to get a not-so-healthy smoothie. Then, once Glee was on and everyone was chilling and winding down, I bought a pint of ice cream from the convenient store close by so I could eat half of it and feel amazing about myself afterward. That night, I think, was when I started blogging. I was waiting for my stomach to love me again (to be hungry again) because I sure as hell was not going to bed until I had digested all of that crap.
Monday and Tuesday were similar, the former being worse than the latter. I was still craving everything that was bad: sugar and fat. Tuesday, though, I only had two meals until my insomnia kicked in and then I just spiraled downward into a jar of jam with crackers, frosted mini wheats, and hershey's chocolate.
Needless to say, I am feeling quite bloated. I haven't noticed my clothes fitting any tighter, but I am bracing myself for it. If I don't get a handle on this, on my emotions and hormones, I am going to get to a place I never wanted to reach again.
And what sucks the most? I feel like crying every other minute. I hate birth control. I hate my body for not doing what it is supposed to do in the first place. I am seriously considering talking to my doctor to just get off the pill altogether. I mean, it's not like I have sex everyday. It should be a simple request, right?
I am exhausted. I don't want to eat at all today. But I know if I go too long without eating, I'll just get ravenous and then eat really bad stuff for me.
Oh, yeah. I am visiting the counseling center Friday. I think I might need it.
Then enter the pill once more. Let's see: I got the pills Saturday morning in the mail, and I started taking them Sunday morning. By that evening, during the superbowl, I was craving everything. My friends ordered pizza, so I scarfed down a large slice and two bread sticks. We went to a tea shop nearby and I had to get a not-so-healthy smoothie. Then, once Glee was on and everyone was chilling and winding down, I bought a pint of ice cream from the convenient store close by so I could eat half of it and feel amazing about myself afterward. That night, I think, was when I started blogging. I was waiting for my stomach to love me again (to be hungry again) because I sure as hell was not going to bed until I had digested all of that crap.
Monday and Tuesday were similar, the former being worse than the latter. I was still craving everything that was bad: sugar and fat. Tuesday, though, I only had two meals until my insomnia kicked in and then I just spiraled downward into a jar of jam with crackers, frosted mini wheats, and hershey's chocolate.
Needless to say, I am feeling quite bloated. I haven't noticed my clothes fitting any tighter, but I am bracing myself for it. If I don't get a handle on this, on my emotions and hormones, I am going to get to a place I never wanted to reach again.
And what sucks the most? I feel like crying every other minute. I hate birth control. I hate my body for not doing what it is supposed to do in the first place. I am seriously considering talking to my doctor to just get off the pill altogether. I mean, it's not like I have sex everyday. It should be a simple request, right?
I am exhausted. I don't want to eat at all today. But I know if I go too long without eating, I'll just get ravenous and then eat really bad stuff for me.
Oh, yeah. I am visiting the counseling center Friday. I think I might need it.
Monday, February 7, 2011
A Fresh Start.
My name is Luka. Or at least, you can call me that. I am nineteen, in college, and have no car. I also have no money besides the loans and scholarships that are slowly dwindling to nothing. But, more importantly, I am like you and everyone else out there.
Why I started this blog? Well, I actually had been authors of various blogs before, copious amounts, but all have long been deleted and discarded. I was too afraid to write myself into a small box and send it out into the internet for people whom I have never met to read. What if they didn't like what they read? Found me boring? I Hell, I even found myself boring when reading back over the passages and entries; why would anyone else like it? Well, I hope this will be different.
I promised myself that this would be it. This would be where I was absolutely honest about everything I wrote about myself. There would be nothing to hide, nothing to alter to make myself look better or uglier. I want this to be real. And if no one likes it, then fine. At least I will.
Recently, I have been losing myself in the people around me. I am a social person--so painstakingly so that when I am not around others, I can get insanely depressed. I think it is has everything to do with needing instant gratification and feedback from others, since I don't rely too much on my own opinion for my self-worth. I always thought that people were what mattered and what they saw or thought, not what is internally going on inside of me. It didn't matter if I thought I was funny, attractive, or smart; if no one else thought so, then what I thought couldn't be true. I hate that I do that to myself. But can you blame me?
What has actually been eating me is the fact that I have this need to be perfect. My routine revolves around it. When I wake up, I have to have perfectly styled hair, perfectly white teeth and fresh breath, prefect clothing choice--perfect. But it is all about appearance and other people. I have to say the perfect things to others in order to seem like the perfect friend/student/girlfriend/whatever. But the thing is, I realize and even advise others that perfection is never what matters. Yet here I am, stuck in this loop of being and acting perfect. I want to love my flaws and mistakes, but I just see them as ugly. Why? I do not know. Maybe it can all be traced back to the media or some childhood experience that has haunted me since then, but it's there. It is there all the time.
I used to be fat. Not obese-fat, but fat nonetheless. Slowly, but surely, it has taken me four and a half years to lose most of the fat and to look normal. I still have the small love handles and, in some jeans, the muffin top, because all my weight rests not in my thighs and butt, but on my torso. I have the lollipop figure, unfortunately (well, I guess it is more popularly known as the "apple" body type, since it isn't as drastic as a lollipop. But I use lollipop since I have rather large breasts for my frame, which only adds to the top-heaviness). So I now fall within the healthy and normal range. Being a woman, I have never been happy with the way I look since puberty. It is almost a law that no woman can like the way she looks the moment she turns thirteen--that's just how it goes. And recently, since being at college and living on my own, I have been losing even more fat (I do not use the term "weight" because I have been the same weight for a year or so now, but my fat and muscle mass are still changing), but not necessarily in the best way possible. At first, it was eating leafy greens and colorful vegetables instead of cake and waffles. But I had this rule which kind of started it all: never go to bed with a full stomach. My parents, concerned about my weight years ago, always insisted that one should wait a few hours after eating in order to fall asleep. So I just took it as "go to bed hungry," and I learned to just live with it. So over the years, that's just how I slept. It became such a habit that now, I cannot sleep unless I feel my stomach growling and the hunger pangs. Even now, as I write this, I am waiting for my stomach to growl and for me to feel that emptiness so that I can finally get some sleep before classes tomorrow. I have been waiting for about three hours now, but because I had ice cream, it is taking unusually long for me to become hungry again. And here's the thing: I find myself gradually increasing the time between meals to have that hungry pain I have come to rejoice as my sleeping partner. I thought that by feeling hungry more often, I would lose more fat and look better--perfect. I know that this is unhealthy, yet my want to slim down even more is like a steam roller and crushes my common sense. I have never wanted anything more in my life than to be beautiful, which, these days, includes being thin as well.
I have been so afraid to write down in my journal (which is on paper and is bounded) that I like feeling hungry, that I like losing weight this way, and that I don't want to stop because what if someone found it? What if that person was my mother, my friend, my sister? I know that they would see me as sick and needing help. But I need someone, somewhere to tell about the thing I think about most all day, every day: losing weight. What better place is the internet where no one has to know who I am, where I am, or what I am doing? All I ask of you is to listen to me--that's all.
I think this will be enough for tonight. I am starting to feel hungry, which means I can safely go to bed soon. Thank you for reading. Goodnight. X
Why I started this blog? Well, I actually had been authors of various blogs before, copious amounts, but all have long been deleted and discarded. I was too afraid to write myself into a small box and send it out into the internet for people whom I have never met to read. What if they didn't like what they read? Found me boring? I Hell, I even found myself boring when reading back over the passages and entries; why would anyone else like it? Well, I hope this will be different.
I promised myself that this would be it. This would be where I was absolutely honest about everything I wrote about myself. There would be nothing to hide, nothing to alter to make myself look better or uglier. I want this to be real. And if no one likes it, then fine. At least I will.
Recently, I have been losing myself in the people around me. I am a social person--so painstakingly so that when I am not around others, I can get insanely depressed. I think it is has everything to do with needing instant gratification and feedback from others, since I don't rely too much on my own opinion for my self-worth. I always thought that people were what mattered and what they saw or thought, not what is internally going on inside of me. It didn't matter if I thought I was funny, attractive, or smart; if no one else thought so, then what I thought couldn't be true. I hate that I do that to myself. But can you blame me?
What has actually been eating me is the fact that I have this need to be perfect. My routine revolves around it. When I wake up, I have to have perfectly styled hair, perfectly white teeth and fresh breath, prefect clothing choice--perfect. But it is all about appearance and other people. I have to say the perfect things to others in order to seem like the perfect friend/student/girlfriend/whatever. But the thing is, I realize and even advise others that perfection is never what matters. Yet here I am, stuck in this loop of being and acting perfect. I want to love my flaws and mistakes, but I just see them as ugly. Why? I do not know. Maybe it can all be traced back to the media or some childhood experience that has haunted me since then, but it's there. It is there all the time.
I used to be fat. Not obese-fat, but fat nonetheless. Slowly, but surely, it has taken me four and a half years to lose most of the fat and to look normal. I still have the small love handles and, in some jeans, the muffin top, because all my weight rests not in my thighs and butt, but on my torso. I have the lollipop figure, unfortunately (well, I guess it is more popularly known as the "apple" body type, since it isn't as drastic as a lollipop. But I use lollipop since I have rather large breasts for my frame, which only adds to the top-heaviness). So I now fall within the healthy and normal range. Being a woman, I have never been happy with the way I look since puberty. It is almost a law that no woman can like the way she looks the moment she turns thirteen--that's just how it goes. And recently, since being at college and living on my own, I have been losing even more fat (I do not use the term "weight" because I have been the same weight for a year or so now, but my fat and muscle mass are still changing), but not necessarily in the best way possible. At first, it was eating leafy greens and colorful vegetables instead of cake and waffles. But I had this rule which kind of started it all: never go to bed with a full stomach. My parents, concerned about my weight years ago, always insisted that one should wait a few hours after eating in order to fall asleep. So I just took it as "go to bed hungry," and I learned to just live with it. So over the years, that's just how I slept. It became such a habit that now, I cannot sleep unless I feel my stomach growling and the hunger pangs. Even now, as I write this, I am waiting for my stomach to growl and for me to feel that emptiness so that I can finally get some sleep before classes tomorrow. I have been waiting for about three hours now, but because I had ice cream, it is taking unusually long for me to become hungry again. And here's the thing: I find myself gradually increasing the time between meals to have that hungry pain I have come to rejoice as my sleeping partner. I thought that by feeling hungry more often, I would lose more fat and look better--perfect. I know that this is unhealthy, yet my want to slim down even more is like a steam roller and crushes my common sense. I have never wanted anything more in my life than to be beautiful, which, these days, includes being thin as well.
I have been so afraid to write down in my journal (which is on paper and is bounded) that I like feeling hungry, that I like losing weight this way, and that I don't want to stop because what if someone found it? What if that person was my mother, my friend, my sister? I know that they would see me as sick and needing help. But I need someone, somewhere to tell about the thing I think about most all day, every day: losing weight. What better place is the internet where no one has to know who I am, where I am, or what I am doing? All I ask of you is to listen to me--that's all.
I think this will be enough for tonight. I am starting to feel hungry, which means I can safely go to bed soon. Thank you for reading. Goodnight. X
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