Nerves

Man, I can't even starve myself properly.
I end up binging nightly...I have no self restraint and I hate that!

On another note: Yesterday was pretty awesome. :3
I met up with a friend and went out to supper (yum yum, salad!) and then? Oh man, Hairspray for the third time! XDDDD
I went home and listened to the soundtrack all night long. ;D

This brings me to today. Nothing really exciting happened, other than being shown the archives and wanted, desperately, to steal the Head Archivist's job. (I'm sensing a possible post-library sciences goal).
I have to sit around here until 9:30 PM, which sucks in numerous ways, mostly, though, because that means I won't get home until after 10. Genius, really.
I have a lingering migraine today too. I almost didn't make it out the door, and I'm starting to think that maybe I shouldn't have bothered. Other than the archive thing. That was pretty awesome. It smelt nice, too. :3

But, throughout the day, my stress level has been steadily mounting and causing indigestion.
Friday. "Stupid Friend From Laurier" is coming. I have to "collect" her at the bus terminal.
It took me about 40 minutes to figure out how to get to said terminal and, even though the more I think about it, the more assured I am about it, I'm still nervous beyond belief about it.
I don't know.
Maybe it's the whole "gotta make my room/the other room spotless" thing.
Or the "I'm just kidding myself with the being assured" thing.
Or maybe the "I really don't want to go walking around, downtown, at 7PM," because ever since the attacks at York, I've had this silly, sort of terror about being out at night.
Maybe that's it.
Oh, bravo me, bravo.

Well then, time to start slowly heading towards the library where my "Women in History" class is meeting today. Time for another round of "this is how you find a book online...this is how you order books from Weldon to the school..." mini-lectures.
(Really, Kate was right: after second year, if you don't know how to get a book from the library, you should leave school.)

Strategically Starving Since September 15th

Everything in my life right now is going about a million miles per hour and I can’t seem to get a foothold or a finger hold on anything.

I’ve opened the book my older sister sent me last year: “Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws” by Kate Bornstein. I was flipping through it last night, amidst emo-tears, and came across number 81: “Starve Yourself.” It says that “starving yourself is a valid alternative to killing yourself, but only just barely. If you’re starving yourself either by not eating or by throwing up what you eat – or if you’re thinking about doing that – it doesn’t make you a bad person, but you do need medical help. Use another alternative in this book to stay alive while you stop doing this one.”

The author of the book has “been an active anorexic for the past forty years,” and her anorexia has been “periodic, meaning it comes and goes.” She claims that her “anorexia has kept me alive on several occasions when I just wanted to die. It seems I can handle not eating like some people can handle alcohol…either way, there is no real payoff except the few more days it gives you to find some other reason to stay alive.”

I know, like my “Beauty Diary” (which has, at the moment, failed miserably and consists of one page, and dust in the bottom of a drawer) that this is a bad idea. But see, this is why I started this journal: I don’t care. Friday, my grandmother was out. So I went across the street to the grocery store and bought Pizza Pockets and chocolate and pop and binged and binged and binged. It was horrible. I’m a violently emotional eater. Number 61 is “Eat is all and Keep it Down.” She says “ a lot of people go through eating binges. I always have. It’s when we know what we’re eating isn’t good for us and that it’s too much to be eating. Often, we even pass the point of enjoying what we’re eating and anxiety about that starts to creep in.”

That’s what happened to me on Friday. I binged. Binged to the point where I felt like puking was the only was to feel better about the shit I had just eaten. I can’t throw up, though. I can’t stand it. I’ve had migraines since grade 2 and (in grade 2) was throwing up literally every other day. So, if I can help it, I refuse to let myself throw up. But the feeling…Friday, I felt like I betrayed myself. This happens every time I binge. I go on a radical guilt trip. So my grandmother came hone around 6 and spent the entire evening trying to get me to eat. I told her I had eaten leftovers in the fridge that she had left. I had actually thrown them out. I went to bed feeling sort of proud of myself. I opened my book, found number 61 first, then number 81. Saturday morning rolled around and my mother woke me up around 10AM (she had come to visit for the day and had arrived around 9). She and I went grocery shopping for my grandmother, and I complained of a headache. Mom told me she had brought a doughnut for me. I ate it in the car. We went home, and sat around for a bit, until after noon, when we went to meet relatives at Angelo’s for lunch (there’s a cafeteria style setup there). I ate nothing. I drank nothing. I complained of a headache and heartburn, and got away with it.

Mom and I then went to the mall, she kept suggesting cinnamon buns, cookies and Tim’s, “healthy food” at the food court, Orange Julius, and I kept telling her I just wasn’t hungry. Which was somewhat true. By the end of the mall trip, she was telling me to “stop playing games” and I kept telling her “what games?!”
Before we went home, though, she bought me some hot chocolate at Tim’s. Afterwards, throughout the entire day, was the first time since the morning that I had to go to the washroom. Bravo. Because I hadn’t eaten all day, I was more or less “Aww come onnnnn” forced into eating supper. Which I did.
Mom went home again, grandmother and I went for a walk, then (when we got back to the house) I went upstairs, on my computer.
I refused any fruits and the like.
I went to bed around 9PM, which is freakin’ early for me on a weekend! My head was killing me, though. I was out like a light and slept all night.
Today (Sunday) my grandmother went out with relatives again, and I went across the street and bought pre-made sandwiches and chocolate. I binged. I feel like throwing up. Tomorrow, I’m not going to eat again.
I’m calling it (and I’ve been repeating it to myself this entire weekend as a form of…mantra) “Strategically Starving Myself.”
I can control it. It’s pretty much the only thing I can control these days. I don’t care anymore.

Also, number 74 is “Frame Your Debate”
So I think I’ll take my problems and draw them out. It’ll be shitty, mind you. But who cares? This is for me. And she did say to “use another alternative in this book to stay alive while you stop doing this one.”
We’ll see how it goes. What with school, my grandmother and all.
Wish me S.S luck.

Old Biddies and Laundry

Okay. I think I need to find a new residence in London.

This is just getting ridiculous.

I told the woman I live with (my grandmother), yesterday when she asked for my laundry, that she was NOT to do it, that I was going to do it myself. She mumbled in German and I went upstairs, thinking I would do my laundry on Friday, when the woman was out with her German people.

I came home from class today to a less than stellar reception. Chilly. Cold. I wondered why. I found out why.

“You need to hang you stuff up,” she says to me as I head towards the stairs. I turned back, so my voice would reach the kitchen where she sat reading her German paper, and said “Did you go up, into my room again? You’re not supposed to go up, into my room.” She’s 81, she has bad knees and a bad hip, so she’s not supposed to go upstairs, and yet (it’s either German stubbornness or utter German stupidity) she does anyways. And then gets mad at me for “making” her go up.
She says back “I didn’t know what was what and what was wash.” And I just started loosing it. I’ve had this discussion with her before, about not doing my laundry.
She claims I’m not allowed to do it because I “don’t pay for the water” and that my doing laundry would waste water. Keeping in mind, the old bat washes most things by hand.
So, she did my laundry. And was complaining that she didn’t know what was actually laundry because I had my clothes thrown around the room. She doesn’t understand that it’s the first, official week of classes and all of my jeans are on rotation, so yes, my shit’s on the floor but it’s where I can find it, because in the mornings I’m in panic mode. Each morning, I panic.

So she lectures me on hanging things up and I go back to the kitchen and stand in the doorway and say “You’re NOT doing my laundry! I TOLD you that.” And she just ignored me.

Yes, right, I have a “sweet life.” I go to university, my parents pay for all that shit, I have no student loans, yes. I should stop complaining. Yes. I should just say no to her. Yes. But it’s hard when the old bat’s 82 and doesn’t care how she affects others anymore. "No" means dick-all to her and she knows it.

Move out, some say. Why, says I. like I said, “sweet life,” right? I don’t have to pay rent. I don’t have to pay utilities. I don’t have to pay for food. “Sweet.” But what some don’t understand is that all of that is payed for by a German 82-year-old biddy who has, just this year, discovered that this fact makes her my overlord. A position I’m sure she likes. Being German and all.

I can’t do my own laundry, because I’d waste water.

Just tonight I got a lecture on my mug. MY MUG. Apparently, when I put my big mug from home in the microwave to heat water for a single cup of tea (as opposed to using the kettle and therefore too much water, of the stove and her led-covered-death-trap pots) I waste huge amounts of Hydro. Another thing I do not pay.
I’ve been semi-lectured, as a reminder, that I am not to take daily showers. Wastes water, “ruins skin”.
She tells me, when I come home from school, when I have to read, when I have to study, when I should be doing my work, all the while asking why I’m on my computer, that I “should be outside.” I don’t listen to her here. I just close my door and pretend I’m deaf.
She feeds me. “Sweet life.”
She feeds me various and undistinguishable fried meats and then tells me I’ve “gained a lot of weight” and need to “exercise exercise exercise!” And she refuses to let me just not eat.

“Just say no.” It’s hard to “just say no” when the old bat pays for mostly everything and is your mother’s 82 year old mother. Try it. I dare you.
Go up to your grandmother and, when she asks you to do something, “just say no.”
It’s hard. And even if you manage it, she might pull a move my wonderful grandmother likes to pull. You know, the “come oooooonnnnnnnnnnnnn” move, followed shortly by the “fine, I’ll just go all alone/I’ll just eat it all myself/I’ll just sit all alone/I’ll just do it all by myself/If you really don’t want to *sigh*”
It’s a fun one, let me tell you.

She also doesn’t want me going (borderline refusing to let me go) to the “Take Back the Night” mach on the 20^th. Something I’d really love to go to.

Fuck, man. I'm 21 years old. I want to do things for myself!
But, shhhh K, you “live a sweet life!”

God, you people don’t know the half of my “sweet life.”
La de da, candies, puppy dogs and icecream!

“Everything is absolutely, positively, without a doubt fantastic! Sunshine, rainbows and kittens. Perfect.” --SWS

I forgot.

I can't believe it. I seriously forgot.
I forgot to tell my mother about that lump under my arm.
Genius.
Pure, unmedicated, genius.

Also, my younger sister and I went to the mall with my re-reconciled friend.
Oh hurraaaah!
It was humorous.
They bought shit, I didn't.

We went to look at DVD's (on sale) and there sat "Love Actually." I've never seen it, but my little sis was all "There's 'Love Actually.' and my friend was all "Oh, that's an okay movie." and I said "Wait, isn't that the one with Keira Knightly in it?" and my friend was all "Yeah." and I was all "OMG I LUUURVE KEIRA KNIGHTLY!! DDDDD:"
And she, like, spun on me and said "Whaaaat?!" and I said "Yeah, I love her!" and she said "But, eww! No!" and I (trying to make myself sound less stupid for liking her, because that's how my friend is [which was one of the reasons I stopped talking to her], she makes you feel guilty and stupid for liking something she doesn't. She makes you question your own views like that) so I said "Well, not necessarily all of her movie roles, but her as a person." And I should have kept it at that, but no, I had to add on "And Pride and Prejudice. I loooove that movie soooo much!"
Mistake.
I should have sensed the mistake before I even opened my mouth.

She spun again and rasped "What?! But that movie's so BAD. It's AWFUL! The original, well not the ORIGINAL original, but the one with Colin Firth is THE only version that's worth anything. Gah! We shouldn't even be talking about this!"
As though I was beyond retarded for even thinking the 2006 version was "worth anything."
She then spun around and sort of stomped off to look at the "2 for $20" dvds.

It hurt.
And she's talking to me on MSN right now.
I'm digitally fake grinning through it.

It's like before. Already.
I feel like I'm not allowed to like the things I like, do the things I do. We went looking for music, I was just browsing for She Wants Revenge (I already have their music, I was just browsing for kicks) while my little sister looked for something in particular. My friend asked me what I was looking for, I said "Oh, some stuff. Nothing in particular. Just...stuff."
Like before: I'm too much of a chicken to tell her what music I'm listening to because I'm afraid I'll displease her or something.
Anyone want to go to the She Wants Revenge concert here, in Toronto, with me in October? 'Cause there's no one to ask, and I've never been to a concert before and I'm to chicken to ask her for fear that she'll make me feel like I'm stupid for even mentioning their name.
Genius.


I have absolutely no backbone.
Mom actually told me, last week, when she dropped me off: "Don't her control everything." and I said "Ya, well Omi (grandmother) has a way of getting her way." and mom said "Well, yes, Omi, but [my friend] too. Don't let her take over." because, of the (maybe) 2 reasons I was willing to tell my mother as to why I wasn't talking to the girl, one of them was that, even though she's a year younger than me, and sometimes acts like a 3 year old, she treats me like I'm below her. Like I'm shit on the road. She always has. And, I think, she's starting again.
I don't think she realizes this, but it still hurts. And I won't say anything because I'm a chicken.

Allison Kilkenny: "4000 Missing Madeleines"

Something everyone should read:

"The lead story on the BBC website is about how the Portuguese police have named Kate McCann, mother to four-year-old Madeleine McCann, a suspect in the little girl's disappearance.

In case the reader does not own a television and has not read a news headline in the past five months, Madeleine disappeared from the family's Praia da Luz resort apartment in Portugal during early May.

Did Kate do it? I don't care. Though it's very sad that little Madeleine is missing, and I hope with every cynical fiber of my being that they find her, unharmed, there are larger stories unfolding in the world right now.

For example, 4000 women and girls have disappeared in Iraq since the U.S. invasion began in 2003.

There are 4000 Missing Madeleines, but for some strange reason, the international media has not launched into an orgy of questions and speculations about their whereabouts.

One group, the Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq, did ask questions. Led by Yanar Muhammad, the group voiced its distress about the missing women, and criticized the U.S. and Iraqi governments for allowing the displacements. It is believed that many of the missing women and children fled, or were brought, into other countries where they have since been forced to work as prostitutes.

They were punished by having the Iraqi government freeze their bank accounts.

It is possible that the unbalanced media coverage of these separate events is neatly explained by racism. Little Madeleine belongs to a wealthy, lily white family. The 4000 missing women and children are poor, brown Iraqis.

However, combined with racism is the very real condition of "disaster fatigue". So much bad is happening in Iraq right now that it's easy to read about 4000 missing women and think: That's a shame, and flip the newspaper page without a second thought.

The responsibility rests with the reader. Shed a tear for Madeleine, but remember that there are 4000 Iraqi women and children who are lost, frightened, and victims of circumstances that they were powerless to stop. No one is searching for them. No global media witch hunt is demanding justice in their names.

There is no outrage for the other 4000 missing Madeleines."


{I'm posting this so, if someone even reads this thing, the word will be spread. I take no credit for the article, it is Allison Kilkenny's, through and through.}

Please be a pseudolump, please please please...

School starts again tomorrow.
I have "England and European History from the 16th to the 17th century", right off the bat.
I'm pretty nervous, since I technically go to one of the much smaller University-Colleges (an affiliate) and the largest class number I've encountered is 63 (Sociology of Deviance, last year).
This class tomorrow, well, a friend of mine took it last year and her class had 350+ students in it. I'm not sure how I feel about huge classes (since I've never encountered one). I don't know if I'll die of social anxiety (which is likely in my case), or revel in the feeling of being just a number.
We'll see.

Oh, I got back together with my friend. We're not only on speaking terms again, we're on "Let's find each other's classrooms and then let's go to the mall!" terms! It's great! Buuut I have a sinking feeling that her dad hates me now.


In other, more serious news, about two nights ago I was...I think...just scratching my armpit (like the lovely lady I am) and felt something...hard.
I think I've started to panic slightly.
I've been to every and all "self breast examination" websites I can find.
I really am becoming more and more scared as the days go on.
Typical of me, I've decided not to tell my mom until she comes to visit this Saturday, and then, "only if it's still there."
I've come to the self-assessed conclusion that it's either a "fibroadenoma, which is a non-cancerous overgrowth of the breast tissue (like a mole on the skin)," or a "pseudolump" which "are benign, and may be scar tissue, hardened silicone, necrotic (dead) fat, or a rib bone pressing into breast tissue and compressing it."

The websites I'm using for reference describe how the different...erm, "lumps" (just typing it is scary) feel to a person doing a self-exam. Both websites claim that cancerous lumps are "irregular shape (not round) with a pebbly surface," which is why I think I'm clear in that respect. And it's tiny. So I'm hoping it's nothing. It's just...our first family cat died of a hernia that was the size of a golf ball and the vet said he could have fixed it if it were the size of a pea, so I worry. Also, like you care or want to know, I've had two hernia operations myself, and in grade two it was a scary thought, being operated on for something my cat died of.

For the other two mentioned, though, websites still advise a doctors visit.

I just...
I'm really scared.
I have huge boobs, man, and I'm proud of them. I've grown to accept them, and (this is gonna sound really stupid) it sort of feel like, if it is something bad, they've betrayed me.
42, G's and they hate me. And I just got new bras, too!

I don't know how I'm feeling about it now.
I know I should go get it checked, but my doctor is back home (2 1/2 hours away) and I'm not going home until Christmas and whenever I do go to see her, I always feel rushed, like I'm inconveniencing her, and I don't want to inconvenience her with my breasts. It's silly, I know, but that's just how I am.
I might, actually, see what the Student Health Center offers in terms of breast-care, but it's closed until the 24th for re-vamping (or something, I just got the email about it tonight).
Maybe there's pamphlets outside...or something.

I'm just...so stressed out already and classes haven't even started yet and now this?!
God damn it! Thanks a lot, whoever's looking down at me from up there. And on "The Week to End Breast Cancer" week? Having a right giggle? Good for you, fuckers.
This minuscule lump had better be my imagination, or I'm turning really emo again! D: