kimberry33's Diaryland Diary

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chewing.

we got back the engagement pictures. overall, not too bad. several usable ones. i couldn't have picked a less flattering shirt. seriously.

we walked today for a while. i need to lose weight. i know i'll never get back from a 16 to a 6, but i'd like to get some more tone, you know? i'm really not healthy at this size... and i've already lost a good 12 lbs.

i always wonder about those diet drugs. i find i am scared of them. i mean, phen-phen gave people heart attacks and phenterimine (sp?) made a friend of ours crazy. it is akin to speed and tends to contribute to erratic behavior if you're already unstable. and she was.

my mom complained about her weight for years, even when she was skinny. me? i was always skinny until the steroids. i have lots of allergies and kept breaking out into hives. round after round of steroids... 30 lbs later... and they went away. i wish i had the discipline to be a true dieter or to be the kind of person who goes to the gym. i just lack motivation. and there's no one here who would go with me if i joined a gym, which is why i bought a wii and got wii fit for christmas. which i have been on once in the past 30 days. when i can bother getting on it, it really does kick my ass. but that's when i can bother with it.

my mom never had engagement pictures. my one wedding is so much better than her five already.

i bought the Silverchair album "frogstomp" yesterday. i have it on cassette tape, but i have no cassette player. man, it had been a long time since i heard those songs. i really enjoyed it but struggled with the lyrics. most of the songs on the album are lyrically devoid of content. it brought back some memories, though, and i do not regret that purchase.

the music i listented to in high school wasn't whiney, but it was angry. it reeks of feelings bottled up.

i wasn't allowed to have feelings growing up, you know. my mom was "ill" and had to go to the "hospital" for a year. i went to live with my grandmother, who put me in therapy every week for that entire year. the therapist is reported to have said that i was "broken" and that "they have stolen her childhood." oh. good. that bodes of hope.

my job as a kid was to be my mother's emotional buffer. my behavior could control how she felt, or so i believed. and i worked very hard at being helpful and perfect and to not upset or disappoint her. inevitably, the disappointments came. after all, i am only human. and i was to bear her wrath for my faults.

if i attempted to calm her down and reframe the situation in a less upsetting way, i was called "cold" and "heartless". if i tried to cheer her up, i was "not seeing life for what it is, kim." if i agreed with her, i was "useless". she could be depressed on her own, you know.

i really struggled those years- adolescence. she was gone most of the time because she'd been dating my stepfather and staying at his condo, leaving me to stay with my brother (who was selling crack out of the house, pushing me down the stairs, stealing my things, and his "friends" coming in and threatening me with guns. oh, and his many attempts to overdose which never worked. and his subsequent stays in "hospitals".) and my maternal grandmother (god rest her soul, but she was not all there. she was just a naive child inside an old woman's body. "ok honey. whatever you want". no ability to discipline whatsoever.). i was stuck with the two of them. the only one there who was in her right mind. i became obsessed with kurt cobain and decided what i wanted to do with my life was to make it to where people didn't have to kill themselves. and that's sort of what i do for a living, except people who want to die still really die. sometimes i can help people find other things in their life that can change for the better.

i spent a lot of time on the internet in my bedroom. i listened to loud and angry rock music. i went to hundreds of concerts. i slept with many boys. i experiemented with cutting. i messed around with girls for a while. i never smoked or drank, but aside from that, you could say i was a typical empty rebellious teen. i had no parents. i was raised by wolves. and i still made honor roll.

when i was 18, they got married and suddenly we were all in one house and there were suddenly supposed to be rules. only they were different rules every day or so. and it didn't matter what i did because it wasn't good enough. somehow, i would be wrong. she seemed to stabilize somehow. the codependents always do that, you know. once they unite with their object of affection, they seem suddenly to be strong. the woman i'd been taking care of since i was a small child, the woman i made feel better, the woman who wasn't secure enough to make her own choices... suddenly she decided to be the boss. that's a confusing transition. it would have been nice to have a talk about it, like "ok, with all of us living together, there are going to be some changes..." or some shit, but you know that didn't happen.

my brother moved out or went to jail or something. my grandmother got an apartment. and we four- mom, stepdad, sister, and i- moved into a 3-bedroom house. i made every attempt to get out of the house as much as possible. and i held my breath until fall when i could go to college.

naturally, once i reached an environment where i was safe and where i could have my feelings, i fell apart. i had stupid relationships. i had a very nice serious relationship that i wrote about yesterday. the one i emailed my mom about. i had more stupid relationships.

i graduated with a significant amount of personal credit card debt. that's what happens when you get dropped off with no money, no car, and no phone on a friday and meal plans don't start on sunday. that's what happens when your parents don't seem to understand that your books cost ninety dollars apiece, and that's for used books! "ask your father. i'm not made of money. it's about time he contributed." "i ain't rich, kim. i don't have it." Most of the time, i wasn't asking for anything expensive. give me $20 for food. take me to the grocery store and pick out what i'm allowed to eat. i went hungry. i went days without eating. then they both show up on graduation day like they did something special. like they went pee-pee in the potty. my mom blew my stepdad's money on bullshit while i starved. she'd bring an $80 hairdryer and lingerie and i had no money to eat. "I'm not made of money." then don't buy me crap. or reserve that money for things i need. like underwear with elastic that still works.

my whole family told me they weren't made of money. and so i got credit cards. i'm still working on paying them off and with some generous assistance from my grandmother and godmother (some on a credit card with low interest that's not in my name. hello, balance transfer. i pay over the amount every month. it's on autopay. some on an interest free loan i have to pay back one day) i have been able to improve my credit score to the point where i actually bought a new car last fall. just in time to miss the stimulus.

they wish i would have said something at the time. but again, i didn't have a phone. i had campus phone. which means local calling. they were 900 miles away and this was before cell phones. they're not perfect either. because when i did ask, guess who wasn't made of money.

i worked my ass off through school- always had at least one job. they said not to go to grad school. that would be a "waste of money". but i went. and graduated with honors. and have $70,000 in student loans right now. it would be nice if some of that stimulus could hit me back in the student loans, eh? and now i have a career. whereas before, i had a degree i could do nothing with.

all these details i've been chewing on. if i go off course too many more times, you'll be imagining i'm virginia woolf. i feel i have to chew on my life some more before i'm done ruminating. i feel like there's something hidden in all this muck. what am i looking for this time? usually, when i do this, something comes out at me. today, i feel like i'm missing it. i'm missing something obvious. part of me thinks it's about the continued criticism of my self (by her and by me). i don't know. need to chew more.

10:42 p.m. - 09 March 2009

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