The girl in the glass bubble.

As obvious as it might be on my most recent attempts at blogging, I'll say this: I'm struggling, I'm always anxious, I'm depressed.  I have become my outward self: "the fat chick who..." and not "the girl/woman who..."  I am stuck in my own head like a bad cassette tape that keeps replaying a five second clip of a song.  "You're fat, you're worthless, you're fat, you're worthless."  Intellectually I know that I'm not worthless, but the emotional side of me has taken over my brain and I'm just in a horrible place.

This week I think I had my first panic attack. I was driving in the most stressful city in the world (DC), and pulled into the parking lot of my new therapist.  Late because of traffic (never going to get used to how bad it is in DC), and there was this guy meandering slowly across the parking lot from my left. I made the decision to park on the right side, so probably left around 5 feet between us and turned / parked. In front of him? Sure, probably.  A risk to him? Not at all.  I've been driving for more than a decade, and I'm not a moron.  He was in no way a risk.

He came up to my car and just started shouting at me about paying attention.  I just flipped him the bird and ignored him.  So he laid into me. "Oh wow fattie, what a real lady you are. Wow chunky puff, really? Big woman, wow! pay attention, or are you too fat to see??" I mean, this man was at my car window. I just kept saying "F--- off a-hole, go away." My years of compounding PTSD set in and it was all I could do.  My seatbelt was still on, and I felt absolutely trapped, filled with rage, angry, sad, disgusted with myself, hating him. Out of control. Who was he to yell at me about my WEIGHT??

He kept threatening to get my car towed, saying that he didn't think I had a parking permit, kept calling me fat and everything like that.  I've never experienced this kind of fat discrimination before, it was always just looks from people.  But this was something else.  I started to get out of my car, because I was honestly going to hit the man.  I'm not a violent person, I've never wanted to physically go crazy and punch people, but this was amazing. As soon as I opened the door he walked away and into the building. I got my stuff and left to go in, and by that time, only seconds after him, he was gone.  He ran away like a b----!!

I went to my therapist and when she started talking about our last session I looked down at my hands and realized they were literally shaking. Never having experienced this before I did a quick mental check of my body.  My breathing was off and I was absolutely tearing up. Heaving with sobs and losing it in a fit of tears, out came the panic attack.

My therapist seemed surprised. I explained what happened and annoyingly she was calm and tried to ask me to repeat what he said. I wanted to just shout "BE ANGRY WITH ME. SIDE WITH ME. STOP ASKING ME QUESTIONS!!!" something.  But nothing came out. She tried to have my do deep breathing, but that kind of relaxing makes me panic. I get angry. I get frustrated and annoyed.  So we changed the subject. It worked within two minutes and I was able to talk about other things.

I got home and surprisingly (as I'd usually just push it down), I told my roommate.  She was angry at him, saying 'What a child! Who does he think he is?' and pretty much defended me.  That was nice.  I actually told another friend and he told me that this man wasn't worth it, because he's clearly not a good person.

When and why did I become 'the fat chick who' instead of just 'the girl/woman'.  When did my physical appearance become my identity?  A few weeks ago I watched a Lifetime movie (yes, I'm that depressed) about a girl who faked a pregnancy in high school for her Senior Project.  One poignant thing at the end of the movie was that people saw her as 'the pregnant girl who COULD have done...' instead of 'the amazingly smart girl who is destined for...'  I feel just like that.  My whole life I have felt like someone who should be able to just unzip this suit and a thin, pretty, happy, innocent again version of myself would just step out. That would be my life.  Problem solved.

My good friend told me today that I need to see 'me' as the person he sees: fun to be around, nice, easy-going, a good listener, funny, charismatic, smart etc. But I see 'the fat chick who has these attributes:.." then they're listed.   I don't know if I learned anything from this panic attack. I never want to see that A-hole again in my entire life though. Ever.  I heard a quote today 'she has the knowledge, but not the understanding', about a little girl who was overweight who knows that her health will be affected if she doesn't keep changing, but doesn't understand all of the exact consequences.

I have the knowledge, understanding, and many resources to make changes. I am fighting this battle where my intellect is going CRAZY inside of a glass bubble. It's like a 'jail cell' and my emotion is the bars, floors, walls and guard, preventing me from making a change.  Keeping me locked up. Keeping me in this "safe" place so that I don't have to live.... Breaking out will make you get cut, hurt, you'll bleed. But I WANT TO!!  How do you break out of this proverbial jail? How do you beat this system? I want all of the stuff on the "outside." I want the health, body, love life, and confidence, however I'm sitting in this emotional jail cell bubble with no way out. I know that once I get there, once I figure out how to break out I'll be unstoppable. But today.. tomorrow... who knows...

Help; I need somebody, Help; not just anybody..

I'm a morning person.  My body wakes me up at 6-7am, no matter what time I went to sleep.  If it's 8am, it's a damn miracle.  My job requires me to work late, meaning 12p-10p four days per week.  I usually have a break at around 3:30 or 4pm, so by the time I get home I'm starving, and so exhausted that I don't want to cook or prepare anything. So I eat: crap foods.

The month of December has been pure hell at work. I've been yelled at by ignorant people, we've been robbed where I work (long story), and for the entire month of December I'm working late.  I usually work these later shifts once or twice per week which is fine, it's when I take my dog to the dog park in the morning.  Now that I'm doing it four times per week, I notice that I eat crap foods when I get home.  My roommate wakes up at 5-7pm for the night because of her work schedule, so she's always up for eating when I get home, which in a sense encourages and enables me.

This job doesn't pay me well. I find that because I'm always in the poor house, when I get money I can't hold onto it. A lot of times it goes to food.  I have a feeling that it's a deep-rooted issue from childhood, because I know we had some money troubles for a few years back then, and I was always really terrible at budgeting. Also, I was always teased about my weight and turned to hiding and eating food when I was like 5 years old and older.  I know this is all related to PTSD but I can't figure out how.. I also go to the grocery store and buy fresh and beautiful foods with desires to cook, but most of the time they go wasted.  I get anxiety cleaning out the fridge, knowing a. how much money I wasted, and b. how it means what I really put in my body.

I hate waking up full and feeling disgusting.  This is a true sign that I've slipped into some of my old ways. This is truly embarrassing, but here is a taste of my old ways and what I put myself through last night.  I got home at 10:20pm and thought about ordering food. For some reason I have this thing that I can't figure out: if I think about food in a certain way ('ooh, I want pizza'), it is an all-consuming 'deal' until I actually do what my brain is consumed with: eat the food I can't stop thinking about.  By can't stop thinking about it, I mean NOTHING stops me from thinking about it. I won't pay attention to conversations, TV, music, internet, you name it.  Then I do what I'm consumed with and it's like 'okay cool, back to reality.'

Last night I unfortunately thought about a calzone and mozzarella sticks.  At 10:30pm I ordered them, and started watching (of all things, The Biggest Loser).  I ordered said food as well as a pizza, 'to tide me over for a couple of days.'  They came at 11:15; I ate my calzone and mozzarella sticks, and when I was putting away the pizza took a slice to eat. I don't know why, but !#%(&# @$%@ I wish I hadn't.  I sat on the couch in a sad state of lethargy, watching the Biggest Loser contestants run a marathon. P.S. if John wins this I would like to personally drive to his house and punch him in the face for being a bloody jerk.

So I went to bed last night, and just like in my old ways I had trouble falling asleep. It was after 2:30am when I finally did.  I woke up this morning at around 7:30, and fought off actually getting up due to exhaustion until 9. Then I got up.  I got an all-consuming desire to blog this, like I know it would help.  It hasn't, but maybe it will soon.  I don't know what to do. My job doesn't offer health insurance for more than six months, so I'm still waiting on that. I'm sure therapy would help, but I'm stuck.