Skin Deep

My thoughts are all aswarm tonight. Spotify put an old Jimmy Eat World song on my weekly discovery playlist, and I had forgotten how much I loved that band back in the day, and how much this song resonated with me as a teen:

Of course, at the time, "I wanna fall in love tonight," meant literally, I wanted to fall in love with someone. I hadn't experienced real relationship love yet, and I desperately wanted to. Cut me some slack, I was like 13. Now, however, that lyric is more about falling in love with the whole world, not just a specific person. Or, maybe it's about how I should fall more in love with myself. That's corny as fuck, but maybe it's true.

Over the past few weeks, and particularly the past 48 hours, I've fallen in love with Amanda Palmer. I don't know why it took so long for me to really seek her out, but she has finally gotten into my life, and I'm super crazyinlove. I started listening to the audio book of The Art of Asking on Monday on a whim, still emotionally hungover from Sunday and my dramatic, honest blog post. Her voice was instantly soothing during my long, rainy commute to work. I cried several times on that hour-long drive. I felt like she was speaking right to my soul. After work, I drove back down to my favorite local bookstore, and bought the paperback version of the book. When I'm finished with the audiobook, my plan is to physically read the book, and highlight and annotate the fuck out of it. Her opening chapters about art, and needing to create art, and how a lot of people who are artists don't consider themselves artists, struck a deep chord within me. Maybe I am an artist, I thought. Maybe I am a writer. Maybe I should stop being worried and just go for it. Which was the other catalyst behind my decision to write every single day this month. Oh, Amanda. You beautiful soul. Thank you for the creative affirmation; you're helping me through this weird transitional experience I am having.

I have commitment issues. I have abandonment issues. I detest being ignored. I hate when people leave cabinets open, or hang out in doorways in crowded areas. People who chew with their mouth open drive me insane. I think chewing gum is the grossest thing on the planet, along with people who constantly spit. Something about other people's saliva condensed just grosses me the fuck out. I don't like tomatoes or tomato sauce; I'm even wavering off of ketchup at this point in my life. I have panic attacks in grocery stores. Those started a few years ago, the panic attacks. I had milder forms of them throughout my life, but the real, heavy-duty, oh-fuck-I-can't-breathe-nothing-is-okay attacks started when my ex and I were together, so between 4-5 years ago, I think. Has it been that long? It feels like the blink of an eye, and also like a lifetime has passed. They occur randomly and without warning, but often in grocery stores. I think it's because, during undergrad, I had to read White Noise and I wrote a paper about grocery stores representing death. I got an A. Maybe I was onto something.

My last really bad panic attack was a few months ago, driving home from work. It lasted for over twenty minutes, as I could calm myself down enough to keep driving over the mountain pass I was smack in the middle of, the panic simmering calmly, steadily beneath my calm surface. Whenever I could take a second, though, I sobbed. I got into town, drove up towards UCSC campus, found a random parking lot, and called my mom. I tried to tell her through strangled sobs that I was panicking, felt like I was going to die or just lose my mind. She, having been trained as a yoga instructor who also practices regularly (she has a yoga room in her house), calmly talked me down, as she has so many times before. I call her when I'm severely panicking, and she can always relax me off the cliff, back down to reality. I don't call her over the minor ones, though; the grocery stores or mini moments of terror whilst making my insane commute. Those are different. Talking with her on the phone, I got to see a doe and some tiny fawns wandering the hillside of the UCSC campus. It was a beautiful moment with the sun setting, deer wandering, my mom reminding me that I am totally fine, just need to relax and take deep breaths...I felt that cliched connection to the universe and to life itself around me, the opposite of a panic attack. I balanced out. I don't live in fear of the next big panic attack; I assume it will happen at some point when I'm not suspecting it. Although the actual attack is terrifying, the balance and restoration I feel afterward is very relaxing, and I usually sleep very well post-panic. They have also stopped happening quite so frequently, and I will gladly hold out hope that maybe, eventually, they will just stop.

I haven't had the urge to hurt myself in years; but honestly, since writing it up on Sunday, I almost want to. I called up the memories. What would it feel like, now? But I know better. I won't do it. And, let me clarify what I did. I was too chicken to use a razor blade. I contemplated scissors. I'm not afraid of blood, but my pain threshold is fairly low. Plus, those methods leave very noticeable scars. I have almost none, because of my chosen method. I also didn't really want to die, per se. Well, I did when I was about 12, and contemplated all the ways I could go. I didn't actively try anything, but I did call a suicide prevention hotline once. They pretty much laughed at my pain, actually, but I was too afraid of death to attempt anything. I realized my own actual mortality at a young age, probably around 11; I'm quite aware that I will die someday, and it scares the shit out of me. Razors and scissors could cut too deeply, but I wanted the pain. I wanted to hurt myself. So, I scratched myself. Deeply. I just attacked my arms and legs with my own nails. We always had at least one cat I could use as a scapegoat if need be. It was very personal; I was using my own body to inflict pain on myself. I didn't want to die, but I didn't feel like I was worth anything. I had so much inner anguish that I had to let it out somehow. Sometimes, I wouldn't scratch for a while. Then, and I kid you not, I would wake up the next day and found that I had clawed my arms in my sleep. I would wake up with scratches on my body that I didn't remember scratching. Just writing this is making me itch, forcing me to (lightly) scratch my skin or rub the area until the feeling goes away. But I'm not drawing blood right now. I'm not making myself feel intense, self-inflicted pain.

Do you think less of me, now? Is my self-harming less impressive now that you know I didn't have a stash of razors under my pillowcase? Since I don't have (many) scars to show you the abuse I inflicted upon myself? Because I was a coward? Because sometimes when I itch, there's a tiny part of me that just wants to keep going until that area is raw and bloody? How I remember crying in the shower, tearing at myself, feeling so inadequate...I couldn't even use a goddamn sharp object on myself. What a fucking wimp.

But, that time is over. I can only remind myself that, hey, it's been almost 10 years since you stopped doing that to yourself. Be fucking proud. Congratulations, Nicole, you don't do that anymore. And it's okay that you did. We are all human; we all make mistakes. Just don't do it again. Learn and grow and accept and make a mistake then learn and grow and accept, and so on. So it goes.

I'm In a Glass Case of Emotion

I'm sitting in the middle of my floor, my bed is covered in crap, I have so much to organize and clean but all I feel like doing is writing. So I'm going to write. This is not your typical date post. It's not funny and lighthearted. Serious Nicole is here.

I'm currently dating three people. Well, sort of. It's all very casual and thus, very complicated. This is my first time ever being in this sort of multiple-people-dating, polyamorous, fluid space. Mostly, it's amazing. I feel so powerful and sexy and happy; three (!!) men are at my beck-and-call. But it's not that simple. It's all open, and that requires a lot of communication and honesty, which can lead to hurt feelings, particularly when this is a new arena for at least one party involved (namely, me). Plus they're grown men with lives; they're not really willing or able to drop everything to be with me. And I'm a grown woman with a life, too. I would rather be up-front about my anger or sadness, though, and communicate openly instead of holding grudges or pretending everything is fantastic when it's not. That is something that is improving with this whole new relationship sphere; if I get pissed off or something is wrong, I tell them, and, we have to talk about it, because holding grudges in any relationship is unhealthy; but, in these kinds of situations, it makes it even worse. It is not an easy thing to do, this weird multi-dating/polyamory/slutty triad I find myself in. And before you ask, yes, they're all aware that I see other people. Yes, they all see other people as well. Don't worry, safety is our #1 priority for all involved. No need to lecture me on that front.

Tonight, though, is a sad one. I struggle with anxiety and depression, and sometimes, no matter how happy you were earlier, life overwhelms you and throws you back into a black pit of anxiousness that makes you want to vomit. That's where I am right now, the vomit pit. I'm choosing wordvomit instead of actual vomit. I thought that maybe going through and doing some cleaning would help me. I did a closet clean-out and reorganization last week, and I thought tonight I would clean out the old bucket storage shelf I have next to my bed. I found a lot of garbage, and a lot of wonderful memories that made me cry. I found a picture of me at 14, holding my young nephew. I'm tan, thin, gorgeous. At the time, though, I felt so poorly about myself. I was self-harming, though I didn't tell anyone about it for a few more years. That little boy gave me so much hope and happiness. Now he is 14 and a total sweetheart, despite having a rough life of his own. I love that kid, and I miss him terribly. I can't believe he's a teenager, and I'm nearly in my 30s. I found a necklace given to me by my beloved pseudo-grandfather George, who passed away earlier this summer. Tucked into the pouch with the necklace was a post-it note that made me burst into tears.

Picture it: November 24th, 2005. Buffalo, NY. A beautiful young girl (who doesn't know she's beautiful) is staying overnight with her sister in the apartment her sister and her boyfriend share. It's just after a Thanksgiving celebration with the girl's stepmother's family. After the sister and her boyfriend have gone to bed, the girl uses the computer and signs on to AIM, and proceeds to have an hours-long, incredibly intense conversation with her high school crush. They talked about everything in the world, and he said something so magnificent to her, she wrote it down on a post-it and saved it to this day. That girl was me. And the boy, was Pablo Picasso. Okay, it wasn't Picasso. 

We never ended up dating; although he did lots of nice things for me and we were good friends (he even wrote a song for me, swear to RuPaul). But that night, and what he said, I will hold in my heart forever. It was one of the first times a guy was truly nice to me. I had a rough childhood, to put it mildly. Yes, I was still self-harming at this point; yes, I continued to do so until almost the end of high school. I confessed it to a friend one particularly bad day and she made me stop. I think I only ended up doing it once or twice after that point, and I haven't for years. I've never mentioned it to anyone else, but I think it's time I put it out into the world that I used to hurt myself, because I did. I'm not proud, but I'm not ashamed. Sometimes we need to be reminded of what we've been through and how far we've come, and how far we still have to go. Sometimes we forget our value, or place all our value onto what someone else thinks of us. It's not about other people. We forget that others' actions towards us often have nothing to do with ourselves and everything to do with that person and what they are going through at that moment. I am sensitive and hurt easily, but I pretend to be otherwise; as such, though, I feel very deeply, which is both a blessing and a curse. When I'm happy, I am HAPPY. EVERYTHING IS PERFECT. But when I am sad, I get very depressed, and it can be hard to see the way out. Which is why we have to remember our inherent value and worth. It doesn't matter if other people can see it or not. If they don't, well, that's terrible for them, but it doesn't diminish who I am. This is why friends are so important, those people who always see the good in you no matter how far you have sunk in the emotional vomit pit. I am lucky enough to have some of the most incredible people in the world on my side. I have an army of female (and a few male) friends who are always there and always supportive. They are the people I need to remember and focus on. Romantic relationships are secondary; although mostly fun, they are a horse of a different color. Particularly when dealing with casual romantic relationships, I need to remember that my life does not revolve around those people. Because it doesn't. No offense, dudes.

I'm going to write the contents of that post-it here, now. Not because of the man who said them to me (although I'll always have a soft spot in my heart because, awe sweetness), but because they have been echoed in various ways to me by friends and lovers alike in the subsequent ten years so often that they must be true, and I need to remember them. For myself.

"Not only are you talented and smart, you're also beautiful and unique. You're funny, and yet you're profound. Furthermore, I don't know what word to use the quality you possess to be open with people, but you obviously can see that you've touched me in the course of three days or so. I've been more open with you in three days than anyone in my life. And if that's not something that's amazing about you, I don't know what is. And did I ever tell you you have gorgeous hair?"