A Little Self-Confidence Makes The Medicine Go Down...the medicine go down...

So. I ran about a mile and a half today and sweated like a pig, and then I went for a two hour long bike ride. Just enjoying myself. I don't do that very often.

I'm trying to calm myself down and start following some of my dreams. "How does running and bike-riding follow a dream," you ask? It's just a really simple thing. I've always had some minor self-esteem issues with my body, and recently they've been pretty bad and have actually started to effect my life a little bit. I always kind of get this way in the summer, though, since it's just a given that you show more skin due to the heat.

If you read my posts closely you probably understand why I have issues with my body...Psoriasis. Yeah. I've had it since I was around seven or eight years old. It's not that big of a deal...and by that, I mean it's not a very bad case of psoriasis, but it is very visible on my elbows, and I have a few patches on my stomach, one on my knee, and one on the upper side of my left foot, and it also destroys my nails (to make them look normal I paint them). I'm as pale as pale gets, and they're a bright pink, almost red, against my milk white skin.

I've come out pretty good on this end considering that I grew up a freak. I've been paraded in front of more doctors than I care to admit, and when I was a little girl one of the first doctors I saw (to get diagnosed with psoriasis in the first place) used me as an example for twenty medical students who all came into my examination room to get their first eye-full of psoriasis. That wasn't normal. Ever since then I've been traumatized by this disease more times than I can count. I've been drug out of my sandbox and away from my friends to drive fifteen miles just to stand in a light box for twenty minutes out of a hope for "improvement." I was given ointments with steroids that thinned my skin and gave me stretchmarks at the age of nine. I was called "chicken pox girl" and even the teachers were scared of me. When I was in third grade my teacher was walking down the hall, leading our class to another room for our music lesson...she looked at my hand, freaked out and told me to go to the nurse. The nurse called my parents and asked what it was. Every grade after that up till my first year of middle school we had to sit down with every teacher I had and tell them what the hell was wrong with me so that they wouldn't have a conniption fit over my diseased body.

At one point or another I've had to explain my skin to every one of the friends I've had in my life. Answering the questions: "does it itch?" "Does it hurt?" "How long have you had it?" "What's it like?" "Why aren't you normal?" The answers to those questions are: yes. It friggin' itches sometimes. Yes. It hurts when my skin is so dry from it that it cracks and bleeds. And yes, it hurts when it gives me Psoriatic arthritis in my right knee occasionally. Finally, what's it like? It's like hell, darling. It's annoying, it's embarrassing, and people don't understand it.

The only thing that's kept me sane all these years is that I've been in a state of denial over its existence for around 90% of my life. I don't really see it when I look in the mirror. It's the assholes of the world that see it and remind me it's there with their backwards glances and raised eyebrows.

Every once in a while I look in the mirror and ask "Why, God? Why me?" Well. It made me a better person. It took a long while to accept myself, and there are still days that I look in the mirror at the shit and wish that I could tear it off of my skin. But...it made me a really good person. I understand so many things, I see the beauty in almost everything. I love hard, and I believe what comes out of my mouth. I KNOW a good person when I see one, and I understand what's worth fighting for. I've raised myself for years. I'm an old soul because of what I've lived through. I will always resent psoriasis a little, but I understand why it's been in my life.

Anyway, my psoriasis has been flaring up a little bit more than usual lately, and has been really annoying me. Also...it was really hard losing my ex...he wouldn't touch any part of my body with a patch on it...I know that's not why we broke up, but of course it didn't help anything, now did it? So I've felt really bad about myself lately. I just want to fix it all. I just want to be normal, you know? This psoriasis has been holding me back a lot recently, and I'm tired of it.

So what does this all have to do with bike-riding and running fulfilling dreams? I've been so depressed for the past few months because of being left alone again with my crazy mother, and losing the only person I've trusted in five years, and my psoriasis, that I haven't done anything. I've always said that I wanted to be in really great shape and take care of my body, so I'm doing it. Damned well I'm doing it this time. I will have the body I want by the end of this summer. I will. So, basically: I'm listening to myself and loving myself instead of listening to the shit of other people's mouths.

I'm turning myself back into the person I lost when I was in high school. Well, even middle school. I'm trying to make myself trust people, because I lost that ability long before I had my first memory. I'm turning myself into what and who I want to be because I absolutely refuse to become my parents and lose myself to bickering, ignorance, hatred, and a loveless marriage.

I want myself a good boy. Who loves me more than anything in the world. That's why I'm making me love myself. And that starts with taking care of myself. Which is why...why I will keep running, and riding, and eating well...and smiling every day...and playing the violin...and reading...and drawing.

These are all things that I stopped doing so long ago...so very, very, long ago.

To everyone that reads this: Don't lose your self-confidence. It is the single most important thing you have in this world...and, if you've lost it, do whatever it takes to find a reason to love yourself.

A little self-confidence makes the medicine go down, baby doll. You can do anything when you live for yourself, love, happiness, and all things that you believe in. If you're in a bad place in life, get yourself out of it, or find a way to deal with it so that you don't lose yourself, and let that be a healthy way. Drugs only get you deeper into your own shit-hole.

Even if it's as simple as watching the sunset alone every night. Get yourself out of the situation for a little while and do something you love and have been promising yourself that you were going to do.

Only you can help yourself.

This Has Been,
~A Little Lonely Wisdom

"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live." ~Norman Cousins

A Little Lonely Rambling

There's something positively wonderful about the time of month for us women when all the hormones flush out of our bodies and things...finally seem "right." It's been a hard, lonely, crazy week for me since I last posted. I heard my ex's voice for the first time in six months. I've been denying it to myself all this time, but I do still love him. I will always love him. Every boy that I ever love: I will always love them. Until the day I die. I've finally accepted that about myself.

I still don't know what the Lord or the world intends for us two. What it ever intended for us two, but I know I miss him. The sound of his voice, the feeling of his touch, his laughter, and his genuine love for me. I miss it greatly. I really need somebody to replace that now, or I'll end up loving that boy for the rest of my life and pining hopelessly after him.

I guess it's so hard simply because my heart craves those feelings so badly. To give me that kind of love and companionship is to set ripples to a pool that is always still otherwise. So still that a mirror would be jealous of the reflections it puts forth. I prefer the slow, rippling, tides of love. It refreshes the pond so that the water doesn't go stagnant from too much vanity and the poison of a broken heart.

I suppose I put love on a pedestal because of how I've lacked it in my life. Friends are few and far between, and those I rarely trust. My family is full of self-serving egotistical people. Albeit, my dad is a good person...everybody else is questionable, and mostly the world has just managed to disappoint me in the realm of trust and love. I don't get it. How you trust somebody. I don't think I've ever trusted anybody. No. I think I did when I was a very little girl, but ever since I got my trust crossed for the first time, I haven't been able to give it fully ever since. I had started to give it to my ex, though, and that's why it hurt so bad when I lost him.

Anyway. You know you're in a bad world when you feel like you can't even tell your mother anything for fear of judgment. That brings me to my topic of the last week or two: shit comes in threes. The first was talking to my ex, the second was that my best friend got herself pregnant (of course not on purpose—at least we all hope not—but still), and my mother has been treating everyone in the family like dogs. Like she always does.


She needs therapy. All the shit she's gone through...she really needs therapy. I don't even want to talk to her anymore. Yesterday she pissed me off so badly and made me so disappointed in her as a human being that I was seriously considering disowning her as a mother.


I've always had trouble with that woman. I remember being a little girl and not wanting to be related to her, and being thankful that she wasn't given more children to destroy like she tries to do me—they probably wouldn't be as strong as I am. They probably would've let her destroy them. She's a life-sucking bitch, that woman. She destroys everything good that ever comes to her. She's still my mother, and I have to love her, but if I had the choice of whether or not I'd been born unto her, I would've chosen somebody else. For both myself and my father. That man doesn't in any way deserve the way she treats us.


She is horrible, but people only know that if they live with her. She's got everybody else bamboozled. I absolutely despise that.


And there's a little bit of wisdom for you all today: just because somebody's nice to you doesn't mean they aren't insane, cruel, and horrible to be around behind closed doors. It doesn't mean they're not fucked up beyond belief. If somebody tells you somebody's a bad person, they're probably not lying. Believe them and help get them out of that situation if you can...they probably want out but don't have the courage to ask for a helping hand.


I know if somebody gave me a helping hand out of this situation I'd take it. I'm tired of the way she treats us. Disgusted by it. I'm disgusted by her racism, her prejudice, her "my-shit-doesn't-stink" stance, her condescending voice, and her endless crying fits and glorified hallucinations over stuff that happened to her twenty years ago.


I'll tell you, people. One of my biggest damned pet peeves is someone who begrudges you with shit that happened fifteen years ago to win a fight. Because of my mother, I will never allow anybody to do that to me again. I'm done with it. Absolutely done. If you're my friend and you do that to me, I will stop talking to you immediately and you will have lost all my trust until I receive an "on-bended-knee" apology from you. No exceptions.


Shit from the past is not relevant today. You learn from it and you fucking move on. End of bloody story.


Sorry. /End rant. You can tell I don't get along with my mother very well anymore.


To her I'm not good for anything unless I'm doing something she wants me to do or having sex to produce grandchildren for her. Hahaha. Funny. You thought I was kidding.


Anyway, enough of that. I've ranted long enough about the shit that's been going down this week. Suffice it to say that I'm ecstatic to know that my "three" is up. Things can't get all that much worse now, and at least now I know what I'm handling for the time being.


If I know what I'm handling, everything is alright.


That's enough for today, I think. >insert laugh here< I hope you liked my little ramblings. ;)


This Has Been,
~A Little Lonely Rambling


"You must feel what you're saying, not just have a good presentation of the language." ~Cecilia Bartoli

Pretty Little Understandings

This has been an odd week. Not a bad odd, but odd.

I've gone back to school after my three week break, and it's summer now. The birds are singing in the morning, and the days last till 8:00 p.m. People walk with a skip to their step and smiles on their faces. Little girls whirl happily in their summer bell dresses just to see them poof out around their legs, and the only thing that interrupts my afternoons is the sound of the church down the street ringing a happy tune at midday.

The music on the radio is peppier, the clothing brighter, and the smiles genuine. I love this time of year. There's just something about it. Even the darkest of hearts crack open a window and hope for something.

And I can look out my back door to see this.

Anyway, it's been an odd week. A friend of mine had a breakdown and I went to stay overnight with her to keep her company in her sadness, my father went off on me for no reason, my mother has been going through phases of depression and über happiness, and I've been okay with everything going on. I'm handling it all well. That being the only reason this week wasn't particularly bad other than the fact that I had a great day on Saturday. I'm handling things well. That is so odd for me. I think it has to do with all the strifes I've been going through over the last few years.

Finally, they're paying off.

Aww, man. I just cracked myself up. "Strifes that are paying off." I said that like I purposely put myself through the loss of my personality, a bout with an alcoholic family member, psoriasis, parents constantly on the verge of divorce, endless work, and a broken heart mixed with a helping of "long-distance-relationship."

I'm feeling better because I'm letting myself feel better. I'm feeling better because I'm following my dreams. I'm feeling better because I'm listening to my passions, and, finally, I'm feeling better because I'm making sure that I'm doing what I want to do along with what I have to do.

At the same time I'm dealing with my old pains instead of letting them float in the muck of my mind, heart, and soul. Every time something comes back to haunt me I stab it with a knife or shoot it with a bullet. My mind likes to tell me how everything that went wrong in my past was my fault and that I need to regret it forever. It's one of my dragons that needs slaying. I haven't fought it for a long time, but (like I've said) recently I've been killing it. I've been taking hunks out of it. I am so tired of being haunted by my past. It would be a good thing for it to die, perhaps mourned a little bit, but definitely needs to be left cold and lifeless in an unmarked grave. I'll never forget what I've been through, but it's nice to say goodbye for it. And you, if you've read this blog at all, know that I believe "goodbye" is a thing said only when you mean never to come back.

I also believe that shit happens for a reason. I always knew that my ex came into my life for a reason, and I always knew he would never stay, but it took me months to figure out why. You wanna know what I discovered? It's that he taught me how to fight. It's not like he told me to, but he gave me something to fight for, so I indirectly learned the lesson from him. It was really God telling me to do something. It was God telling me to stop being such a pussyfoot, and it was God telling me to get off my ass and live because there's good shit out there mixed in with all the crap. I'm glad he did. Because now I can handle my current situations, which are all easy in my mind, but I can deal with them whilst that little girl so many months ago wouldn't have dealt with anything at all.

You've got to deal with things. When you leave stuff undone, that stuff will come back to haunt you. I know that well. I definitely know that well.

Stuff comes into your life for a reason. Live through the circumstances bravely and fight your dragons. Just don't forget to slay them.

~A Little Lonely Wisdom

"The hardest battle you're ever going to fight is the battle to be just you." ~Leo F. Buscaglia

A Little Lonely Melody

I've been seeing some strange things in myself lately. It begins with humming. I caught myself at it all day today, and it's been building inside me for the last few months. I've been so lost over the last year that I had forgotten everything that I ever was to myself—my best friend, a comrade, a beautiful woman of many passions. Somewhere along the course of the last few years I lost all of my passions. They all trickled into the dusty hourglass of time because everyone had been telling me they were worthless. My own father basically told me that my dreams were shit last year. Not in those exact terms, and maybe he didn't think they truly embodied shit, but they sure smelled a lot like it. He told me that they didn't and wouldn't make me any money in my future. They weren't secure enough for his tastes. It was at that point when I started killing myself, and where I started to slowly die on the inside, all relatively unbeknownst to myself. I spent the last two-three years of my life in denial, but it wasn't until last year that I truly lost everything that I ever was. It wasn't until last year that I had the last thing I hoped for taken away from me, and my voice went silent.


I was a very brave little girl. Nothing phased me. My mother is always telling me stories about how my teachers would mention in student-teacher conferences that, "the girl knows who she is." I never fell prey to the idiosyncrasies of youth. I never, ever, tried to conform to anybody. If anything, they were always conforming to me—jealous that I didn't seem to need all the trappings they did to feel human, alive, and individualistic. I was a bossy kid. I admit that, but it's only because nobody ever had the guts to stand up to me. If I said that we should do something, they never put forth any ideas as to what. I always tended to have to come up with the plans. Yeah, it went to my head a lot, but I was always pretty nice.


Anyway, that little girl could do anything. She had a semi-crappy life, but she could do anything. She knew that what others thought of her didn't matter. She knew that the only person in the world who had to love her was her, and that as long as she was okay with who she was and the decisions she made, she would always be satisfied with herself. She knew that being able to look in the mirror every day without flinching away in shame was the only thing she had to worry about. She knew everything.


It's hard to be in a position in life where you realize that you once knew everything that you gave up on later  because others told you to, and because of the harshness of the world.


Things I've had to reteach myself lately are shameful in their simplicity. Because of my mother, I've had to reteach myself that skin color is just a pigment, that religion doesn't automatically make a person good or bad, and that my worth does not depend upon whether or not I have a boyfriend screwing me so that I can give her grandchildren. (I don't really want children, by the way. She hates me for this. Legitimate hatred some days.) I've also had to reteach myself that my parents may not get along, but that doesn't mean that my future relationships will all end up like theirs. I've had to comfort myself that, just because they hate each other and I've never heard either of them say "I love you" doesn't mean that I'll end up that way. I've had to remind myself that I know the way I love, and that one day I'll find somebody who appreciates my past and who doesn't make me live in it. I'll find a man who isn't like my father (albeit, he's a good guy, he's over-controlling and doesn't know how to talk to someone, and ignores the world around him rather than deal with it when it comes to relationships) and loves/treats me the way I deserve to be loved/treated.


When I was a little girl I understood that accepting somebody for everything they were would get you a friend in anybody in the world. When I was a little girl I understood that judging somebody and assuming the end of a situation would just end with you in a very bad place.


I understood that trust was in a hug, love was in a kiss, and understanding was in a smile, and also that these three things coincided. I understood that there was no shame in asking for help, and that trusting somebody was a good thing...because you have to trust somebody to be trusted in return. I understood that the only way to get an answer was to ask for one, and sometimes you wouldn't like the answer, but that was okay...because at least now you knew. If shit hit the fan, you just moved forward instead of caring about it. You either fixed it or forgot about it.


Last, but definitely not least, I understood that my passions were what made me. I understood that trusting myself and doing things that made me happy were what kept me happy. I understood that doing things that I didn't want to do would make me sad and frustrated—I understood....I understood that if I didn't do at least some things for myself, I would always be in a very unhappy place.


I lost all of this knowledge over the last few years, but this year, especially, was bad. This year I stopped believing in love. This year I stopped drawing, I stopped writing, I stopped reading, and I stopped hoping. This year I forgot how much I loved the sun and it's warmth, I forgot that I loved my cat and my family, and I forgot that I'd ever loved anything...because I didn't believe in it anymore. I was a very dismal person for a long, long, longgggggggg while. Then I got my heart broken, and anything that I had left of my old self was just bloody gone.


I camped out in my basement and didn't come out for two months. I didn't eat, I didn't watch T.V., I didn't talk to anybody...I didn't even cry. I didn't know if it was night or day, and I didn't particularly care. I had stopped doing anything of any value to anyone, including myself.


And that brings us back to the beginning. That's why it was so weird to me today to catch myself humming. I wasn't humming anything in particular, I was just humming the sounds of my soul. That soft, warm, and rolling, lullaby with a beat that stirs the bones from sleep...gently—like the waves of a slow-moving river against the banks of its shores. Something warmed by the sleepy sun. Golden and full of life. Reminiscent of old Egyptian tales and times full of magic. That's what my soul sounds like. I haven't heard the sound of my soul since I was a very little girl.


For a time, I thought my ex was singing that song back to me...that's part of the reason I loved him so much. It occurs to me now that he wasn't. He came close...but it was more of a moody-blues version of my strong, luscious, twining beats. Every once in awhile he got the melody right, but it wasn't ever quite what I wanted to hear, or needed to hear. I do thank him though. And I thank God. He brought him into my life so that he could sing back to me a little bit of the song I'd lost so long ago. He reminded me of the base tune, while I was left to find the rest of it on my own. Now. Now that I know that...I am completely healed. Not just from my loss of him, but from my loss of everything. Apparently somebody had to come into my life and intervene so that everything else could be okay. It's too bad that he was one that would just walk in for a time, leave footprints, and then leave...but that'll be okay now. His footprints will always be here in my heart, like the footprints of astronauts will always be on the moon, but I don't need him or his presence anymore.

If this sings to you, then you've heard the sound of my soul.

I am still looking for somebody to complete my tune...make it more robust and give me a harmony. Not an exact one, but certainly closer than the one my ex had, and certainly closer to my heart.

I'm glad I hummed today. And I'm glad I can finally see everything again.

~A Little Bit of Lonely Wisdom

"But if you love and must have desires, let these be your desires:

To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody into the night.

To know the pain of too much tenderness.

To be wounded by your own understanding of love;

And to bleed willingly and joyfully."

~Kahlil Gibran