I’m writing this from the perspective of someone who wasn’t there. They are sharing with me what happened on my trip, but the “me” that was there wasn’t the me that stays here. I’m not happy looking at the photos of the wedding I attended. My body doesn’t match what I know it looks like to me when I see photos of the body. It is disconcerting as I don’t wish to look like those photos, but there I am…or some approximation of “me” in the body. Given, even if I was skinnier I wouldn’t probably be ok with how I look, but right now, the size issue has become very apparent to me, along with the fact that flying was extremely uncomfortable because of me not being thin.
It has been a rough week overall on both a physical and mental scale. As for family stuff, had only two fights with the brother out of a week staying at his place, which in many ways was surprising. Yet, so much of me is still angry at him, still pissed that he gets to play the competent older brother who gives me advice and tries to tell me how to live my life when he has no fucking clue what a struggle it is to be me. He sides with my mother every time still if I complain about anything she does, she can do no wrong in his eyes and while she may bitch that he has done wrong in hers, she still has and always will love him more than she does me.
Mike brought up a good point with me is that my brother and I really didn’t have the “same” mother, that who she was with him and how she acted towards him was always different…I reminded her of her sister, of her past, of everything she hated about herself and her family. He reminded her of our father, of the man who took her away from that pain, who was charming and charismatic and frustrating all at the same time. I was the one who was the reminder of the pain and suffering: I was the one who reminded her of her struggles and therefore I was the one who had to be pushed, forced to succeed, nitpicked on every little thing.
My brother is convinced I’ve just gone insane and “put these ideas on her” rather than having any objective perspective regarding the situation, but he didn’t have the same mother.
Seattle trip in and of itself was uneventful. Things happened…the “mes” were vaguely unimpressed with feeling so out of place and alone in the crowd. They didn’t like being forced to mingle with new people and often had me holed up in my guest room playing games on my tablet while everyone else partied.
I didn’t want to leave Seattle, but at the same time I was so alone I wanted to be back here where people know me and have some idea of what I’m going through. I missed Mike and I missed only one of my friends, who also happened to be the only person I contacted during the week and the only person I’ve communicated with since I got home. It kind of surprised me to see who I didn’t miss, who I could leave behind tomorrow with no regrets. Only Mike, the kids, and one friend here made the list of people I wanted to be around.
The impulse group is very unhappy with me for now…I didn’t get a tattoo in Seattle, I didn’t find anyone fun to play with, and I didn’t even really drink other than a beer or two or a few glasses of champagne the whole trip. I did have a bit of a smoke after the wedding, but it didn’t lead to anything other than me curled up in my room sleeping because I was so burnt out after dealing with people all day.
I just have been so disjointed the past 24 hours with flying back and being in so much pain…Saturday afternoon I was in so much pain that climbing the hill back up to the house (five blocks straight uphill, ten from the light rail stop to the house) that I was crying and that, of course, was when my brother decided it would be a great time to tell me how I needed to lose weight and control my eating, and essentially give every other bit of arbitrary advice of shit I already know while I was caught between bawling in pain or screaming in anger to compensate for the pain.
I’m totally disjointed right now…need to work on mapping out the internal space a bit better. Will write about that if I can come up with a reasonable set of thoughts on it.