Confessions

99% of the things I post here are things I have never told another living soul.

Lately I have been feeling really sorry for myself because I have NO ONE I can confide in.

I mean, there are people who would be happy to fill that role but I just have a complete lack of...whatever it is...to talk to anyone.

I don't know if it's trust, I don't think it is. There are people I know I could just open the dams with and they wouldn't go make a billboard and tell the world my secrets.

I guess I'm afraid to be vulnerable.

Ok, I don't guess, I know.

I know for a fact that Suzanne has gone through depression...depression WAY more severe than I've gone through and I can't tell her anything about it.

I'm aware that makes no sense. None of this does.

It's almost like a drowning person taking the life preservers that everyone is chuking at them and tossing them to the side and saying "Nah, don't want it. I'll just drown".

SO stupid.

** I haven't seen a single member of my family in about a year and a half despite the fact that many of them live less than an hour away. I missed my niece and nephew's birthdays. Thanksgiving. Christmas.

Last year I really did plan on going. I wrote about it then:

I was alone for Christmas.

It was the first time in my life that's happened.

I started several days before trying to build the momentum to go see my family. I first planned to go on Christmas Eve and spend a few hours there. I haven't seen my family since….what? April?

Jesus.

So Christmas Eve got here and I just couldn't do it.

"I'll get up early tomorrow morning…shower and get dressed and go. I'll just GO." I thought.

I didn't.

I got up around 8 that morning and thought "Ok, I will be there by 12 if I start getting ready in an hour or two."

I spent the day extending that time-frame.

Not only did I not call them, I turned my phone off so they couldn't call me.

My mom had been calling me a couple times a day for the past couple weeks and I never answered.

It was the same thing…I'd think "I need to call her. I'll call her tonight" but night would come and I couldn't - can't - make myself dial.

Christmas was also my dad's birthday.

I laid in the dark, whispered "Happy Birthday daddy" to no one and cried myself to sleep.

Right now, at this point, I can see the same thing happening again.

I still haven't talked to my mom in....a very, VERY long time.

Her calls have dropped off from just about every day to weekly to now once every other week or so.

I do the same thing there...I tell myself "Next time she calls you ARE gonna answer!" but I don't. I hit "silence" on my phone and hope she doesn't leave a voicemail.

My good friend Suzanne's mom died a couple months ago and you'd think that would have motivated me to to stop this crap and GET OVER whatever it is but it didn't.

I want to talk to my mom.

I miss her so much, despite the fact you could describe our relationship as anything but close.

I honest to GOD don't understand why I can't.

I miss my family.

The truth is I have pretty much alienated every single person I have ever had in my life and the only people I have any interaction with is people at work, Suzanne and people online from The Game.

Work is a necessity and here people have come to know my "rules" and for the most part they leave me alone and don't get offended when I don't want to go to lunch or talk or respond to them.

Suzanne I've known for over 10 years from when we used to work together and she has her own issues plus she also knows how I am and very rarely pushes me to do anything.

The online people are easy - I can disclose as little as I want and no one ever questions it really.

I never lie about myself - unless you call omission lying. None of them know what's been going on with me and I like it that way. I don't try to be someone else with them and their impression of me is pretty much the same as that of my co-workers - I'm cranky and distant but fun to be around.

** I am very lonely.

Growing up my family just did NOT display affection.

There were no hugs and no "I love you"s.

When I met the man who I would go on to marry (then divorce almost 10 years later), he was all about the hugging and kissing and told me he loved me about 20 times a day and I just soaked it up like a sponge.

After a while though, things changed and I was no longer comfortable even with him touching me, though that's a story for another time.

Thing is now, I am starting to really see how lack of that is affecting me.

I've been completely void of ANY real intimacy - physical or emotional - for so long I had convinced myself that I didn't need or want it.

But I do.

I'm still not over the hump - I still very much feel as though I am I drowning sometimes.

The thing is that I have a sense of hope now, for some reason.

I don't wanna give up and I don't want to just watch life passing me by anymore.

There is a small part of me that feels it may be too late but I try to keep that part as subdued as much as possible.

I want SO much to live again.

I think where I usually fail is getting overwhelmed by the task.

It is such a big mountain I have to climb and baby steps have never been my strong point.

In the past it's taken just one set back to make me completely throw my hands up in the air, declare the world unfair and scurry back under my rock.

** I harbor a lot of resentment toward my mother.

Intellectually I know this doesn't do anything but hurt me - and there was a time when I thought I was past it but I'm not. If I'm really honest with myself I'm not.

I don't sit around and dwell on it and hell, I know there are millions of people who had things a lot worse and don't sit around and bitch but this is mine.

The biggest issue between my mom and I was always my weight.

There is not a time in my life I don't remember her calling me a big pig and I don't think a single day went by in the first 18 years of my life where there wasn't at least ONE negative comment made to me about it.

I was very young, prolly 6 or 7, when I started sneaking food.

My mom would bring home cookies and mini-pizzas and chips and would stick her finger in my face and tell me they were NOT for me.

It was bad enough that she did that but invariably she would do it in front of my big brother and my dad and that would just kill me.

Still, when no one was in the house I would creep to the pantry or scoot a chair across the kitchen floor and up to the sink so I could reach the overhead cabinets where she would sometimes hide the food I wasn't supposed to have.

Then, in a move that was sheer genius, I would hide the wrappers under my mattress.

The mattress that held the sheets that my mom changed every Saturday...

She'd always find them and it would lead to her yelling at the top of her lungs for me. I'd walk into my room and see her standing there, hands on her hips, my mattress halfway off the box springs and the crumpled evidence in plain view. She'd scream at me and call me names and occasionally she'd grab the closest, suitable item - a hairbrush or a wooden hanger from my closet - and she'd wack me with it a few times.

After a while she moved the cookies and cakes and all the other "forbidden" items to the huge chest freezer in the garage and made a little ceremony out of locking it and then promptly handing a key to my brother and one to my dad.

It didn't take me long to figure out that a medium flat-head screwdriver wedged in juuust right would pop the lock on the freezer in no time flat.

My mom was a Lifetime Member of Weight Watchers, having lost an *astounding* 21 pounds (can you just FEEL that sarcasm right thar??) to reach her goal weight and having kept it off however long you have to keep it off to be a Lifetime Member.

When I turned 10, she decided that I needed to go and despite my pleas and begging to not go, when Wednesday morning came she reminded me that I better not eat anything that day since I had to be weighed later and that evening she handed me a $10 bill and dropped me off in front of the Lutheran church and told me to go find the meeting, that she'd be back in an hour.

All I remember is it was very, very cold and I weighed 88 pounds and I wondered what she was going to have to say about that. Was 88 pounds fat??

After the meeting I waited outside and when she pulled up she started what would be a weekly ritual for a while. I'd climb in the car and she wouldn't say a word, she'd just hold out her hand for my little book that showed what I weighed and if I had gained or lost weight.

If I lost weight, she'd drive to Sonic on the way home and order me a dry Sonic Burger. Once it arrived she would take it from the bag, remove and discard the top part of the bun and that was my reward.

If I gained weight, it was a 5 minute berating on the way home and very dry, broiled cod for dinner.

I'm not sure exactly how long I kept going but I remember sitting in the back of the room and listening to these old women (i.e. 20-30 years old...OUCH) talk about making homemade ketchup and about the many uses for canned salmon (eat the bones, they are fulla calcuim!) and that if you had a sharp enough knife, you could get TWO slices of bread outta one.

I just wanted to go home and watch The Waltons.

The thing is, I WASN'T FAT.

I was very tall and NOT skinny but I was far from fat.

I was very active.

I took jazz and ballet lessons and in middle and high school I was on the track and volleyball teams.

I ran 4 miles a day WITHOUT STOPPING.

It just pisses me off so damn much that she let this DEFICIENCY (not being the stick-thin daughter she always dreamed of) of mine not only ruin the mother-daughter bond that I very, VERY desperately wanted and needed but it also, quite obviously, played a part in shaping who I am now.

I know that I am the only one who can remedy the latter.

Maybe finally admitting my anger is a first step in that direction.

I don't think my mom likes me.

Now, or then.

I think she feels a responsibility for me because she gave birth to me.

I don't think she loves me.

I have this....ache....to feel unconditional love.

The thing is, I have no idea how to do that or if I even can.