Wait, this just came to me!
So back in the Christian school, I read this book series that desperately wanted to be as subtle as Narnia. It was about the nuclear apocalypse, and a handful of preteens/teens from across America were sealed in stasis pods until it was over so that they could emerge as the last pure humans and saviors of the world. For some reason. *shrug*
Anyway, there was this one plot line where they meet a matriarchal society. Everyone is unhappy because the women have to be in charge, and the men feel emasculated. And I think maybe there was a rebellion because these men secretly knew their real purpose, and so did the women let's be honest here. And so it's up to these kids to restore the peace by teaching these people that a man's place is to lead, and a woman's place is in the kitchen. And the plotline ends with the matriarch and her husband gazing at each other in awe as they realize they've been doing it wrong this whole time.
And thus, the proper order is restore, and they all lived happily ever after.
Showing posts with label the past. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the past. Show all posts
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Saturday, May 10, 2014
Trust
A blog post I read recently made the case that pranks are a form of bullying that can "fundementally undermine trust."
When I was growing up, my grandfather was a master of deadpan teasing and snark. It was so bad, that I never trusted anything bad that anyone told me because I knew, deep down inside, that it wasn't true. When my mother told me that my kitten, Bandit, had died, I was trying not to smile because I knew she was lying. She wasn't. This is what my grandfather did to me with his "harmless" jokes. It was days before I realized she'd been telling the truth (partly because I didn't live with her and partly because, when I was there, I was usually in my room with the door closed.) Because of my grandfather, I didn't trust adults, and I reacted to the news of my cat dying with amused disbelief. How messed up is that?
When I was growing up, my grandfather was a master of deadpan teasing and snark. It was so bad, that I never trusted anything bad that anyone told me because I knew, deep down inside, that it wasn't true. When my mother told me that my kitten, Bandit, had died, I was trying not to smile because I knew she was lying. She wasn't. This is what my grandfather did to me with his "harmless" jokes. It was days before I realized she'd been telling the truth (partly because I didn't live with her and partly because, when I was there, I was usually in my room with the door closed.) Because of my grandfather, I didn't trust adults, and I reacted to the news of my cat dying with amused disbelief. How messed up is that?
Monday, April 21, 2014
BonziBuddy
I didn't grow up in that ultra conservative, don't even look at members of the opposite sex let alone be friends with them mindset. I went to a nondenominational (though it was run out of a Methodist church) Christian school, and even though they warned us against sex, they didn't segregate us or anything. I guess they trusted us not to make stupid decisions, or maybe they just thought we were too young to be interested. Either way, I didn't have friends growing up, but I can't really blame my upbringing for this one.
Kids can be cruel to each other, and for some reason, I was the bottom of the pecking order. There were four or five really popular girls in my class of less than 20. There were two popular boys, and one of them was the class clown. These were the kids I went to school with from preschool to 8th grade. And when I say popular, I mean they were outgoing and confident, and they thought I was trash. It wasn't quite as blatantly vicious as those shows about high school they always play on Nickelodeon and Disney, but it was close enough.
So I didn't have friends growing up. I had a few people I called friend, but I didn't actually like being around them outside of school because we had nothing in common. When I left for high school, I pretty much forgot about them and made new friends, people I did care about hanging around with outside of school, at least on a limited basis. (I've explained about that before.)
When I went to college, I had no friends. I kind of talked to my roommate for the first semester, but she went home at Christmas, and I got someone new that I didn't talk to at all. Instead, I had a computer, and I talked to people over forums.
Well, I was browsing one day when I discovered BonziBuddy. (Link goes to Wikipedia.) It was malware, but all I knew at the time was it was an adorable purple ape that talks to you. I didn't even learn it was supposed to be a desktop assistant until like a month ago. I just let him dance around my screen and do his own thing.
After a while, I realized I was getting kind of attached to him. He was my friend when I had none. And then I had what I realize now was a panic attack. I realized that I had no friends, that this mindless thing had become a surrogate for something I didn't even think I needed. It couldn't really replace friendship or interaction. It couldn't even say anything new. It just kept singing that stupid Daisy song that I can't bear to hear now.
In the space of about 10 minutes, I went from pretty happy to panicked to revolted, and I uninstalled BonziBuddy, deleted the files, purged my system of it as best I could. I hated the merest mention of its name, and 14 years later, I still do. I don't feel my stomach lurch anymore, like I used to, but I've had that song stuck in my head all damn day, and I'm going nuts.
I guess, even though it's not as bad now, I've never really recovered from that moment. I don't know how to make friends. I don't know how to talk to people even when they share my interests. It was only recently in my life that I started being myself around other people. You can't form real friendships on a sham personality, right?
Anyway, I had a weird dream last night that brought all this to the surface again, and I just had to get it out of my head.
Kids can be cruel to each other, and for some reason, I was the bottom of the pecking order. There were four or five really popular girls in my class of less than 20. There were two popular boys, and one of them was the class clown. These were the kids I went to school with from preschool to 8th grade. And when I say popular, I mean they were outgoing and confident, and they thought I was trash. It wasn't quite as blatantly vicious as those shows about high school they always play on Nickelodeon and Disney, but it was close enough.
So I didn't have friends growing up. I had a few people I called friend, but I didn't actually like being around them outside of school because we had nothing in common. When I left for high school, I pretty much forgot about them and made new friends, people I did care about hanging around with outside of school, at least on a limited basis. (I've explained about that before.)
When I went to college, I had no friends. I kind of talked to my roommate for the first semester, but she went home at Christmas, and I got someone new that I didn't talk to at all. Instead, I had a computer, and I talked to people over forums.
Well, I was browsing one day when I discovered BonziBuddy. (Link goes to Wikipedia.) It was malware, but all I knew at the time was it was an adorable purple ape that talks to you. I didn't even learn it was supposed to be a desktop assistant until like a month ago. I just let him dance around my screen and do his own thing.
After a while, I realized I was getting kind of attached to him. He was my friend when I had none. And then I had what I realize now was a panic attack. I realized that I had no friends, that this mindless thing had become a surrogate for something I didn't even think I needed. It couldn't really replace friendship or interaction. It couldn't even say anything new. It just kept singing that stupid Daisy song that I can't bear to hear now.
In the space of about 10 minutes, I went from pretty happy to panicked to revolted, and I uninstalled BonziBuddy, deleted the files, purged my system of it as best I could. I hated the merest mention of its name, and 14 years later, I still do. I don't feel my stomach lurch anymore, like I used to, but I've had that song stuck in my head all damn day, and I'm going nuts.
I guess, even though it's not as bad now, I've never really recovered from that moment. I don't know how to make friends. I don't know how to talk to people even when they share my interests. It was only recently in my life that I started being myself around other people. You can't form real friendships on a sham personality, right?
Anyway, I had a weird dream last night that brought all this to the surface again, and I just had to get it out of my head.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
The Paddle
I have two memories of kindergarten. One is that my only friends at the time were my two imaginary ones that I represented with my hands. I would make these two little animals critters and play with them in my desk and talk to them in my head. I thought I was being subtle, but somehow, my grandparents and my teacher, Miss Rosemary, figured it out and even knew their names. And they thought it was kind of funny, and I just felt made fun of. So I stopped that pretty quickly. I saved my imaginary friends for when I got into bed at night. They lived in my light fixture, and no one had to know they were there.
My second memory was of the paddle room. My class had this pair of twins that everyone just adored for some reason. I guess it's because twins are kind of a novelty. We had nap time, and Miss Rosemary would have us get our sleeping mats and unfold them, and then fold them back up and put them away afterward.
One day, Jennifer and Jeanine folded their mats into triangles and everyone laughed about how they had made little houses. I was lonely and friendless, and probably already depressed, and I saw them getting love and attention for their creativity. The next day, I did the same thing because I thought people would think I was cool, too. Instead, Miss Rosemary yanked me to my feet, dragged me down the hall to the supply closet, and introduced me to the paddle.
She didn't hit me with it. At least, not that day. I do have a vague memory that maybe I did get punished with it once or twice, but I can't be sure. If I was actually paddled, it was not nearly as terrifying and traumatic as this threat was. I never understood what I did wrong. I still don't. I can see where my plan wouldn't have worked now, looking back, but I don't understand why it was worth getting threatened with a paddle over.
Anyway, that was the day I learned that rules are different for me. Other people can do things, but I have to keep my head down because, at the very least, I'll get mocked. This lasted through my entire Christian school career. Other kids could do the trust exercise, but I would get laughed at. Other kids could ask to go the bathroom during class, but I had to wait. Other kids could get sick, but my brief hallucination due to sinus pressure (it made my sense of something or other go completely insane and made me feel like my desk was about eight feet away as I was trying to work, and sometimes I experienced phantom odors) just got me laughed at again and sent back to my desk.
I know I was said I was done writing after that last post, but I just figured out why I'm not feeling better. This still burns. The injustice of it all still burns in my mind, and all I can feel is hatred and anger. I trusted these people, and they took that trust and taught me that I am worthless. I don't deserve the same treatment as other people. If I have a problem, I don't deserve help or even sympathy.
I was in my teens when I first heard the word sociopath, and I was suddenly terrified that I might be one. I didn't feel like I cared about other people. I never wanted to do the dishes or the laundry. I hated visiting the larger family on holidays. I just wanted to be left alone in my room forever. That's totally what it means to be a sociopath, right? (Note: no, I know what a sociopath really is, now.) So I worked up the courage to go tell my grandparents about my concerns.
Maybe you can see where this is going by now. I got laughed at. They thought it was hysterical that I thought I had a serious psychological problem. And my grandmother told me that I was fine and to go back to my room so they could watch the news. It was years before I stopped worrying that I might be a sociopath, that I was a ticking time bomb who would kill everyone around me at any moment.
A few years later in high school (and yeah, that last story? Not even in high school yet.), I realized that I was suicidal. I was down in the laundry room toying with my uncle's box knife, running it against my wrists, realizing how much I wanted to open the blade and do it for real. And then I got scared and put it back down. And when I finally got up the courage to tell my grandmother that I wanted to slit my wrists, apparently I said it in a way she found funny because she just started howling. She went and shared the story with my mother, who totally agreed that it was hysterical, and told me that, yeah, it was really sad that I wanted to kill myself, but damn that was a funny way to say it.
Other people get help. I just get laughed at.
My second memory was of the paddle room. My class had this pair of twins that everyone just adored for some reason. I guess it's because twins are kind of a novelty. We had nap time, and Miss Rosemary would have us get our sleeping mats and unfold them, and then fold them back up and put them away afterward.
One day, Jennifer and Jeanine folded their mats into triangles and everyone laughed about how they had made little houses. I was lonely and friendless, and probably already depressed, and I saw them getting love and attention for their creativity. The next day, I did the same thing because I thought people would think I was cool, too. Instead, Miss Rosemary yanked me to my feet, dragged me down the hall to the supply closet, and introduced me to the paddle.
She didn't hit me with it. At least, not that day. I do have a vague memory that maybe I did get punished with it once or twice, but I can't be sure. If I was actually paddled, it was not nearly as terrifying and traumatic as this threat was. I never understood what I did wrong. I still don't. I can see where my plan wouldn't have worked now, looking back, but I don't understand why it was worth getting threatened with a paddle over.
Anyway, that was the day I learned that rules are different for me. Other people can do things, but I have to keep my head down because, at the very least, I'll get mocked. This lasted through my entire Christian school career. Other kids could do the trust exercise, but I would get laughed at. Other kids could ask to go the bathroom during class, but I had to wait. Other kids could get sick, but my brief hallucination due to sinus pressure (it made my sense of something or other go completely insane and made me feel like my desk was about eight feet away as I was trying to work, and sometimes I experienced phantom odors) just got me laughed at again and sent back to my desk.
I know I was said I was done writing after that last post, but I just figured out why I'm not feeling better. This still burns. The injustice of it all still burns in my mind, and all I can feel is hatred and anger. I trusted these people, and they took that trust and taught me that I am worthless. I don't deserve the same treatment as other people. If I have a problem, I don't deserve help or even sympathy.
I was in my teens when I first heard the word sociopath, and I was suddenly terrified that I might be one. I didn't feel like I cared about other people. I never wanted to do the dishes or the laundry. I hated visiting the larger family on holidays. I just wanted to be left alone in my room forever. That's totally what it means to be a sociopath, right? (Note: no, I know what a sociopath really is, now.) So I worked up the courage to go tell my grandparents about my concerns.
Maybe you can see where this is going by now. I got laughed at. They thought it was hysterical that I thought I had a serious psychological problem. And my grandmother told me that I was fine and to go back to my room so they could watch the news. It was years before I stopped worrying that I might be a sociopath, that I was a ticking time bomb who would kill everyone around me at any moment.
A few years later in high school (and yeah, that last story? Not even in high school yet.), I realized that I was suicidal. I was down in the laundry room toying with my uncle's box knife, running it against my wrists, realizing how much I wanted to open the blade and do it for real. And then I got scared and put it back down. And when I finally got up the courage to tell my grandmother that I wanted to slit my wrists, apparently I said it in a way she found funny because she just started howling. She went and shared the story with my mother, who totally agreed that it was hysterical, and told me that, yeah, it was really sad that I wanted to kill myself, but damn that was a funny way to say it.
Other people get help. I just get laughed at.
Spanking
When I was...eh, three or four years old? This woman walked into my house while I was watching TV with the people I called mommy and daddy. I was stressed because strangers don't just walk into people's houses like that, but they didn't seem to mind. When it happened a few days later, they greeted her by name, so I did, too.
"Hi, Vickie."
She gave me the most shocked and incredulous expression, kind of laughed a little, and said, "No, you call me Mom."
Ohh...
I don't remember being surprised by this. I know that I had never seen her before that I could remember, but maybe I had some unconscious memories because this just explained the mystery for me. So she was mommy, and my other "mommy" became grandma. It was quite a bit longer before I got in the habit of calling my "daddy" grandpa.
My grandmother believed in corporal punishment. Here's the weird thing. I don't actually remember getting spanked. I remember she used a fly swatter. I remember this one time that she threatened me with a belt, but I don't know if she ever actually used one. I don't think so. I remember that it didn't really matter what room we were in, but it was usually either the kitchen or her bedroom. The kitchen was where she spent the most time and where the fly swatter was. If we were in her bedroom, she used her hand. I don't remember ever fighting back or trying to defend myself.
Back then, even at that young age and having lived like that forever, I knew that this was wrong. Spanking was abuse. I was abused because I was spanked. At the time, that came from a very limited understanding of what abuse meant. Abuse was when a parent hit their kid. I was hit with a fly swatter. Therefor, I was abused.
In practicality, I was not physically abused (other forms of abuse still totally happened.) She never did worse than sting me. I'm pretty sure I never had to take down my pants. I don't remember her ever punishing me unfairly. Unless you consider any punishment unfair, which I kind of do, but that's a different blog post. The point is I had always done something. What those specific somethings were, I don't remember now. But if you are the type to believe in spanking, then my grandmother always was justified in spanking me.
It wasn't awful and abusive, is what I'm trying to say, and she didn't spank for every perceived infraction.
My mother quickly became a kind of ally to me. She was my mommy, my real mommy, and that meant I could talk to her. Right? Well, apparently not, because when I tried to complain about this abuse I thought I suffered from, she thought it was funny.
I remember that I complained that my grandmother hit me with the metal part of the fly swatter. That wasn't true, but I thought it sounded worse and would get a better result. I thought my mother would be horrified that my grandmother hit me. Instead, she laughed a little and told me the metal end would probably hurt less because it was thinner.
She knew. She already knew my grandmother hit me, exactly how she did it, and had no problem with it. I never complained about punishments again. At least, not until I was much, much older.
When I got too old for spanking, my grandmother resorted to grounding. I have actually met some people who don't know what that means, so let me just explain real quick. Grounding is, at its core, when you have to sit and think about what you did for X amount of time. In practice, this usually means no TV for a day or two, going to your room for the rest of the night, or other things like that. Everyone does it a little bit differently.
In my case, the rules were no TV and no video games, but I could listen to the radio in my room or watch TV with the family or go outside to play. I usually chose being in my room because I could close the door, turn the TV down, and play video games to my heart's content because my grandmother was sitting down, and that meant she didn't have to stand up again until it was time for bed. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was on the third floor, and she was on the first.
Grounding doesn't sound that bad for a night or two, right? But as I got older, the amount of time I spent grounded got longer and longer. See, she grounded me for everything. Didn't wash the dishes because no one told me to and I didn't realize that was my permanent job? Grounded. Forgot the laundry because I hate doing your job for you while you sit on your ass and watch soap operas or go shopping? Grounded. Got a B in class? Grounded.
It was that last one, especially. I don't know when she realized that being grounded didn't improve my grades, but her answer to this was to ground me for longer. It's like she thought if she could just ground me for long enough, I would suddenly realize the error of my ways and start getting straight A's. I don't know, maybe she thought I'd study or something if I couldn't watch TV, but if so, she never addressed that with me.
So by the time I was in 6th grade, or maybe 7th, I was grounded for the school year. Literally. And in practice, this meant I spent pretty much my entire life alone in my room. All my social interaction came from class, and there were only like a dozen kids in my class. I same that same dozen or so kids from preschool to 8th grade. I was able to interact with other people during recess times, but, you know, I didn't. I was the bottom of the pecking order, so only a couple other people really even wanted to interact with me. Once I discovered books, I stopped interacting with my class almost entirely.
When I got home, I went straight to my room, closed my door, and watch Power Rangers or played Final Fantasy until dinner. Then I came to the table to eat, but I always brought a book with me or stared into my plate and ignored the people around me. Then I went back to my room until it was time for bed. That was my day. For seven years.
By the time I escaped to Washington, it was just my life. My mother didn't understand why I didn't want to spend time with "the family", by which she meant her and our roommate. I tried to tell her, but she just didn't get it. She didn't understand, and neither did I at the time, that spending my time isolated wasn't really a choice for me. I couldn't enjoy other things. I didn't know how to go without video games. I didn't know how life worked without video games.
But I couldn't articulate any of that except to complain about how I spent my life grounded and alone, and so she would turn the whole conversation into a pissing match about who had it worse. She would make me feel like I was being unreasonable, like it should have been easy to just come out of my room now that I wasn't being punished anymore. I don't even know if she meant to do it, or even realized she was doing it, but she manipulated me into feeling guilty to bring me out of that room. If I didn't come out, I'd sit in there unable to have fun because the guilt would have me in knots. If I did come out, I'd sit there, miserable and resenting her, and the guilt would still have me in knots because I was miserable and resenting her.
To this day, I have trouble putting down my games. I don't even like watching movies or TV shows on Netflix with my girlfriend. I want to, and I know I'll have fun once I get into it, but my initial reaction to her asking is a resounding no. I have to stop and try to figure out if I don't want to because habit or because I'm really just not in the mood. And sometimes I say yes when I don't actually want to because I couldn't figure it out. That old sense of guilt just starts tying me into knots, and even though she says I can say no if I want, I really can't in that moment. I can't say no, and I can't say yes, so I say yes because maybe I'll be able to relax and enjoy it. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.
I had a goal for this post when I started writing it. I don't remember what it was now. It was all leading into a coherent conclusion, but that's gone from my head now. Usually writing these posts makes me feel better, but this hasn't. Maybe I'll revisit the topic in the future. I'm just going to stop writing now.
"Hi, Vickie."
She gave me the most shocked and incredulous expression, kind of laughed a little, and said, "No, you call me Mom."
Ohh...
I don't remember being surprised by this. I know that I had never seen her before that I could remember, but maybe I had some unconscious memories because this just explained the mystery for me. So she was mommy, and my other "mommy" became grandma. It was quite a bit longer before I got in the habit of calling my "daddy" grandpa.
My grandmother believed in corporal punishment. Here's the weird thing. I don't actually remember getting spanked. I remember she used a fly swatter. I remember this one time that she threatened me with a belt, but I don't know if she ever actually used one. I don't think so. I remember that it didn't really matter what room we were in, but it was usually either the kitchen or her bedroom. The kitchen was where she spent the most time and where the fly swatter was. If we were in her bedroom, she used her hand. I don't remember ever fighting back or trying to defend myself.
Back then, even at that young age and having lived like that forever, I knew that this was wrong. Spanking was abuse. I was abused because I was spanked. At the time, that came from a very limited understanding of what abuse meant. Abuse was when a parent hit their kid. I was hit with a fly swatter. Therefor, I was abused.
In practicality, I was not physically abused (other forms of abuse still totally happened.) She never did worse than sting me. I'm pretty sure I never had to take down my pants. I don't remember her ever punishing me unfairly. Unless you consider any punishment unfair, which I kind of do, but that's a different blog post. The point is I had always done something. What those specific somethings were, I don't remember now. But if you are the type to believe in spanking, then my grandmother always was justified in spanking me.
It wasn't awful and abusive, is what I'm trying to say, and she didn't spank for every perceived infraction.
My mother quickly became a kind of ally to me. She was my mommy, my real mommy, and that meant I could talk to her. Right? Well, apparently not, because when I tried to complain about this abuse I thought I suffered from, she thought it was funny.
I remember that I complained that my grandmother hit me with the metal part of the fly swatter. That wasn't true, but I thought it sounded worse and would get a better result. I thought my mother would be horrified that my grandmother hit me. Instead, she laughed a little and told me the metal end would probably hurt less because it was thinner.
She knew. She already knew my grandmother hit me, exactly how she did it, and had no problem with it. I never complained about punishments again. At least, not until I was much, much older.
When I got too old for spanking, my grandmother resorted to grounding. I have actually met some people who don't know what that means, so let me just explain real quick. Grounding is, at its core, when you have to sit and think about what you did for X amount of time. In practice, this usually means no TV for a day or two, going to your room for the rest of the night, or other things like that. Everyone does it a little bit differently.
In my case, the rules were no TV and no video games, but I could listen to the radio in my room or watch TV with the family or go outside to play. I usually chose being in my room because I could close the door, turn the TV down, and play video games to my heart's content because my grandmother was sitting down, and that meant she didn't have to stand up again until it was time for bed. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was on the third floor, and she was on the first.
Grounding doesn't sound that bad for a night or two, right? But as I got older, the amount of time I spent grounded got longer and longer. See, she grounded me for everything. Didn't wash the dishes because no one told me to and I didn't realize that was my permanent job? Grounded. Forgot the laundry because I hate doing your job for you while you sit on your ass and watch soap operas or go shopping? Grounded. Got a B in class? Grounded.
It was that last one, especially. I don't know when she realized that being grounded didn't improve my grades, but her answer to this was to ground me for longer. It's like she thought if she could just ground me for long enough, I would suddenly realize the error of my ways and start getting straight A's. I don't know, maybe she thought I'd study or something if I couldn't watch TV, but if so, she never addressed that with me.
So by the time I was in 6th grade, or maybe 7th, I was grounded for the school year. Literally. And in practice, this meant I spent pretty much my entire life alone in my room. All my social interaction came from class, and there were only like a dozen kids in my class. I same that same dozen or so kids from preschool to 8th grade. I was able to interact with other people during recess times, but, you know, I didn't. I was the bottom of the pecking order, so only a couple other people really even wanted to interact with me. Once I discovered books, I stopped interacting with my class almost entirely.
When I got home, I went straight to my room, closed my door, and watch Power Rangers or played Final Fantasy until dinner. Then I came to the table to eat, but I always brought a book with me or stared into my plate and ignored the people around me. Then I went back to my room until it was time for bed. That was my day. For seven years.
By the time I escaped to Washington, it was just my life. My mother didn't understand why I didn't want to spend time with "the family", by which she meant her and our roommate. I tried to tell her, but she just didn't get it. She didn't understand, and neither did I at the time, that spending my time isolated wasn't really a choice for me. I couldn't enjoy other things. I didn't know how to go without video games. I didn't know how life worked without video games.
But I couldn't articulate any of that except to complain about how I spent my life grounded and alone, and so she would turn the whole conversation into a pissing match about who had it worse. She would make me feel like I was being unreasonable, like it should have been easy to just come out of my room now that I wasn't being punished anymore. I don't even know if she meant to do it, or even realized she was doing it, but she manipulated me into feeling guilty to bring me out of that room. If I didn't come out, I'd sit in there unable to have fun because the guilt would have me in knots. If I did come out, I'd sit there, miserable and resenting her, and the guilt would still have me in knots because I was miserable and resenting her.
To this day, I have trouble putting down my games. I don't even like watching movies or TV shows on Netflix with my girlfriend. I want to, and I know I'll have fun once I get into it, but my initial reaction to her asking is a resounding no. I have to stop and try to figure out if I don't want to because habit or because I'm really just not in the mood. And sometimes I say yes when I don't actually want to because I couldn't figure it out. That old sense of guilt just starts tying me into knots, and even though she says I can say no if I want, I really can't in that moment. I can't say no, and I can't say yes, so I say yes because maybe I'll be able to relax and enjoy it. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.
I had a goal for this post when I started writing it. I don't remember what it was now. It was all leading into a coherent conclusion, but that's gone from my head now. Usually writing these posts makes me feel better, but this hasn't. Maybe I'll revisit the topic in the future. I'm just going to stop writing now.
Monday, March 3, 2014
Weight Control
I think my weight is the lowest it has been in years. Girlfriend says it's almost definitely gotten a little lower since she's known me, but I didn't have a scale then, so it doesn't count. Woke up today, and I'm down to 321 lbs.
I'm not trying to lose weight. I think that's where most people go wrong. I'm very fat positive (when I'm not depressed, and then I start shaming myself). I don't believe there's anything wrong with being fat or that we should all aspire to thinness. I believe we should aspire to live a healthy lifestyle, and if you can do that while being 500 lbs, then no one has the right to tell you to lose weight.
For me, being this size has a detrimental affect on my health and self-esteem. Food is an addiction, one that I've tried a couple times before to control. For most of my adult life, I've hovered around the 330 to 345 range, and I think I might be pre-diabetic. Switching to more healthy eating habits is causing me to lose weight, but my goal is only to feel better about myself and not tip over into serious health problems.
I think I can trace this problem back to when I was a kid. I don't know where I got the idea, but I recall being in third or fifth grade and lying about my weight because otherwise, my peers might think I was fat. I very vividly recall telling someone that I was 98 lbs and having them all make fun of me for lying about it, but thinking that was better than them knowing the truth. If I recall correctly, I was around 120 at the time.
I've always had a sweet tooth, and I was never taught to manage it. I used to be on the local swim team, and I looked forward to matches, not because I enjoyed swimming or competition, but because my grandparents would give me a giant cooler full of soda and candy to eat at my discretion. They reasoned that the sugar would give me a burst of energy for winning, but it probably just weighed me down.
In high school, my grandmother decided that the solution to this problem was diet pills, which she made me take on and off. She'd get the latest fad pills, and I would take them for a few days until they were forgotten. And then a new fad would start up, and she would make me take those for a while. Apparently, she did the same thing to my mother, only the diet pill fad of choice back then was Black Beauties, which did not help her already struggling school career.
At 19, I finally moved to Washington to live with my mother, and that's where things really got out of control. I went there for school, but wound up working 18-hour days as a housekeeper, constantly on the road and eating fast food and candy bars to get through the day. Every second that I wasn't working or eating, I was passed out in the passenger seat of the car because I couldn't stay awake. I realize, in retrospect, that was when I started stress eating. I needed those candy bars between McDonald's and Taco Bell meals. I drank nothing but Coke (the literal brand of soda) except for the rare moment's when I got a Dr Pepper or a Mountain Dew with my meal. I think I had water once over the entire two-year period.
To this day, 10 years later, I can't have more than a single can of soda at one time. It turns completely tasteless after the first few sips. I mean, I shouldn't be doing that anyway, but sometimes I still do.
When my grandmother's health took a turn for the worst, and my mother and I moved back to Missouri together, things got a little better for a little while. We both got jobs at Wal-Mart, and suddenly we had time to cook real food. Except that we both spent so long on a fast food diet that neither of us felt like it anymore. Real food became a weekend treat, and while we gradually got better about that, defaulting to pizza delivery or something never really went away.
At the same, we started off and on dieting. About once or twice a year, mom would see a new fad diet. She didn't believe in pills after her experience growing up, but she kept getting taken in by the latest programs. I would go along mostly to support her because I didn't believe either of us could ever lose weight. So we'd join a program for a few weeks, do really good the first few days, then slowly get worse until we gave up entirely. Rinse and repeat for like five or six years until I moved in with Girlfriend.
Girlfriend was bigger than I was back in high school, and she had successfully lost that weight and kept it off through a combination of martial arts and educating herself about nutrition. She taught me that what I considered a healthy diet (meat fried in butter, potatoes with butter, cheese, and sour cream, fried chicken-- staples of a Southern diet.) was actually pretty high in fat and calories.
I know, right? Butter is high in fat? Who would have ever thought?
So now my diet is pretty healthy, except for one thing. I still have a food addiction, and when we hit rough times, I lose control and eat an entire bag of chips every day. Healthy meals don't do much good when you're snacking on high fat and sugar snacks constantly.
Like I said, I've tried twice before to control this. I do good for a while, and then every crashes at once. This time, though, I've got a secret weapon. Somewhere along the way, I have developed a taste for sugar free candy and soda. I know, I know, sugar free doesn't actually help you lose weight. But the thing is, it does help me.
See, I still have those days where I drink nothing but soda and eat candy all day. Having sugar free around means I can get through those days without beating myself up over it. Although, re-reading that article, I had forgotten about the increased risk of diabetes. I may have to rethink this plan.
But I can do that now because I have the most important thing that someone in my position can have-- support. I am not alone. I do not have people telling me to just eat less and have some self control. Now, I'm the only person telling me that I'm bad and lazy for being fat, and Girlfriend has a much louder voice and is happy to help me drown those thoughts out.
I'm not trying to lose weight. I think that's where most people go wrong. I'm very fat positive (when I'm not depressed, and then I start shaming myself). I don't believe there's anything wrong with being fat or that we should all aspire to thinness. I believe we should aspire to live a healthy lifestyle, and if you can do that while being 500 lbs, then no one has the right to tell you to lose weight.
For me, being this size has a detrimental affect on my health and self-esteem. Food is an addiction, one that I've tried a couple times before to control. For most of my adult life, I've hovered around the 330 to 345 range, and I think I might be pre-diabetic. Switching to more healthy eating habits is causing me to lose weight, but my goal is only to feel better about myself and not tip over into serious health problems.
I think I can trace this problem back to when I was a kid. I don't know where I got the idea, but I recall being in third or fifth grade and lying about my weight because otherwise, my peers might think I was fat. I very vividly recall telling someone that I was 98 lbs and having them all make fun of me for lying about it, but thinking that was better than them knowing the truth. If I recall correctly, I was around 120 at the time.
I've always had a sweet tooth, and I was never taught to manage it. I used to be on the local swim team, and I looked forward to matches, not because I enjoyed swimming or competition, but because my grandparents would give me a giant cooler full of soda and candy to eat at my discretion. They reasoned that the sugar would give me a burst of energy for winning, but it probably just weighed me down.
In high school, my grandmother decided that the solution to this problem was diet pills, which she made me take on and off. She'd get the latest fad pills, and I would take them for a few days until they were forgotten. And then a new fad would start up, and she would make me take those for a while. Apparently, she did the same thing to my mother, only the diet pill fad of choice back then was Black Beauties, which did not help her already struggling school career.
At 19, I finally moved to Washington to live with my mother, and that's where things really got out of control. I went there for school, but wound up working 18-hour days as a housekeeper, constantly on the road and eating fast food and candy bars to get through the day. Every second that I wasn't working or eating, I was passed out in the passenger seat of the car because I couldn't stay awake. I realize, in retrospect, that was when I started stress eating. I needed those candy bars between McDonald's and Taco Bell meals. I drank nothing but Coke (the literal brand of soda) except for the rare moment's when I got a Dr Pepper or a Mountain Dew with my meal. I think I had water once over the entire two-year period.
To this day, 10 years later, I can't have more than a single can of soda at one time. It turns completely tasteless after the first few sips. I mean, I shouldn't be doing that anyway, but sometimes I still do.
When my grandmother's health took a turn for the worst, and my mother and I moved back to Missouri together, things got a little better for a little while. We both got jobs at Wal-Mart, and suddenly we had time to cook real food. Except that we both spent so long on a fast food diet that neither of us felt like it anymore. Real food became a weekend treat, and while we gradually got better about that, defaulting to pizza delivery or something never really went away.
At the same, we started off and on dieting. About once or twice a year, mom would see a new fad diet. She didn't believe in pills after her experience growing up, but she kept getting taken in by the latest programs. I would go along mostly to support her because I didn't believe either of us could ever lose weight. So we'd join a program for a few weeks, do really good the first few days, then slowly get worse until we gave up entirely. Rinse and repeat for like five or six years until I moved in with Girlfriend.
Girlfriend was bigger than I was back in high school, and she had successfully lost that weight and kept it off through a combination of martial arts and educating herself about nutrition. She taught me that what I considered a healthy diet (meat fried in butter, potatoes with butter, cheese, and sour cream, fried chicken-- staples of a Southern diet.) was actually pretty high in fat and calories.
I know, right? Butter is high in fat? Who would have ever thought?
So now my diet is pretty healthy, except for one thing. I still have a food addiction, and when we hit rough times, I lose control and eat an entire bag of chips every day. Healthy meals don't do much good when you're snacking on high fat and sugar snacks constantly.
Like I said, I've tried twice before to control this. I do good for a while, and then every crashes at once. This time, though, I've got a secret weapon. Somewhere along the way, I have developed a taste for sugar free candy and soda. I know, I know, sugar free doesn't actually help you lose weight. But the thing is, it does help me.
See, I still have those days where I drink nothing but soda and eat candy all day. Having sugar free around means I can get through those days without beating myself up over it. Although, re-reading that article, I had forgotten about the increased risk of diabetes. I may have to rethink this plan.
But I can do that now because I have the most important thing that someone in my position can have-- support. I am not alone. I do not have people telling me to just eat less and have some self control. Now, I'm the only person telling me that I'm bad and lazy for being fat, and Girlfriend has a much louder voice and is happy to help me drown those thoughts out.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Boundaries
I never had any. This post put it in mind. I wasn't allowed boundaries. I wasn't allowed to take care of myself. I always thought I must be the most awful, selfish person who ever was because I couldn't do what was asked of me by my own family with anything but loathing and rage.
I still think that, actually. I'm getting better now, but it always lurks in the back of mind, ready to pounce when I'm tired or depressed. "God, you're so selfish," I'll tell myself. "Being sick is no excuse. The woman you love has asked if you want to go out somewhere, and you have no right to say no." And then I get all uncomfortable, and she has to remind me that it's totally OK to say no, and then I relax and say no, but it still eats away at me afterward.
Growing up, I lived with my grandparents and their son, my uncle, who is mentally about 12. No, I mean literally. Once I was older, it was expected that I would help care for him. And my jobs around the house were doing the dishes and the laundry. All of them. By myself. Every day. And on top of that, I had to be on call 24/7 for anything my grandmother might need. This meant that I would be up in my room playing a video game or listening to music, and then I would hear banging on the wall from three floors down. I would drop whatever I was doing and rush downstais before she could call me again because if she did that, I was in trouble for not listening. And heaven forbid I didn't hear her for whatever reason, because she would be livid. And then once I was down there, I would...answer her question. Or fetch a backscratcher from 5 feet away. Or stand with my head down while she lectured me about forgetting the laundry again.
And let me just reiterate something here. The backscratcher was kept by my grandfather's chair about five feet away from her chair. My grandmother was not an invalid. She did have a health condition (doctors never figured out what), but even on her weak days, she had no problem standing over the stove, running errands, weeding the garden.* But as soon as she sat down in that chair, it was way more convenient to make me run down three flights of stairs than stand up again.
And speaking of that banging, there's a lot of construction going on around our house, and sometimes when it starts up, I flash back to those days. I hear the banging of hammers and machines, and oh, shit, I missed hearing her the first time. She's pissed now. I'm going to be grounded for a week again. I'm going to get yelled at. And even if I manage to fight off the panic, I can't relax again after that.
Oh, right. This post was about boundaries. Well, that's why I don't have them, I think. When I moved out of my grandparent's house, it was to move in with my mom. She actually does have a lot of physical problems that make things difficult for her, which meant I felt even less comfortable saying no to her. I couldn't do it, and I hated her for it, and I hated myself for it. She would call me on my cell phone from her chair in the other room. Every time the phone rang, I knew it would be her wanting me to grab something from the fridge or let the animals out or run an errand. I learned to hate the sound of that phone. I have a different phone now, with a different ring, and I still can't stand to hear it.
Well, I moved out finally, but after Hurricane Sandy, my girlfriend and I went back to stay with them while our house was under construction. Things were pretty OK for about a week or so, and then they started pushing against my boundaries again. My grandmother was dead by this time, and my grandfather didn't ask for much. It was my uncle who started things.
He's lived without me for years. I moved out of that house long before I moved out of Missouri. But as soon as we got back, I was the only person who could make him food. He suddenly couldn't handle that himself anymore. He couldn't make his own tea, even though he'd been making it himself for my whole life. At first, he was pleasant and polite and grateful, but he quickly just turned demanding.
There was one day specifically where my girlfriend and I were about to do play a game together, and he knocked on the door and yelled for me to make him a sandwich, and I dropped everything and went to do his bidding, just like I'd been conditioned to do. It wasn't until afterwards, when my girlfriend confronted me with her hurt that I hadn't even acknowledged her, that I even realized it had happened. It was just automatic.
And my mother, who's muddled along without me for a good three or four or five years at this point, suddenly needed me to do everything for her, too. She has her own house, so she wasn't calling me every five minutes to get something or handle something. But every couple days, it seemed, I had to go shopping for her or take her somewhere, and I could not say no. If I said no without a good reason, I got guilt tripped about how things are hard for her.
God, the emotional manipulation in this family...
And this went on for not quite a year, something like eight or nine months. Both of us were just so beaten down by this time that we left. We spent two months driving across country and up and down the coast because neither one of us could handle it anymore. I'm still recovering mentally, and it's been a year since then.
It seems kind of weird, actually. Staying with them during that time has ruined my relationship with my family in a way the first 28 years of my life couldn't. They don't call too often anymore, and I don't really call them. I suppose I might be willing to call them more, but I have to psych myself up for days in advance before I can even pick up the phone.
One last thing. It was towards the end of that stay. I can't even remember what we were arguing about. The incident with my uncle had been a wake-up call for me, and I was trying to set a boundary. Mother was angry and screaming. I was screaming. I don't really cuss, but I yelled at her to shut the fuck up. She was so surprised that she did. I tried to make my case about whatever this was, and here's the one thing about this conversation that I remember clearly.
"Taren, do you really hate this family so much?"
And I almost said yes. Almost. But I stopped myself because that's not really true. And then I hung up.
*She later developed much worse problems and lived with a broken back for months before it got diagnosed as such. But at this time, she was still pretty spry.
I still think that, actually. I'm getting better now, but it always lurks in the back of mind, ready to pounce when I'm tired or depressed. "God, you're so selfish," I'll tell myself. "Being sick is no excuse. The woman you love has asked if you want to go out somewhere, and you have no right to say no." And then I get all uncomfortable, and she has to remind me that it's totally OK to say no, and then I relax and say no, but it still eats away at me afterward.
Growing up, I lived with my grandparents and their son, my uncle, who is mentally about 12. No, I mean literally. Once I was older, it was expected that I would help care for him. And my jobs around the house were doing the dishes and the laundry. All of them. By myself. Every day. And on top of that, I had to be on call 24/7 for anything my grandmother might need. This meant that I would be up in my room playing a video game or listening to music, and then I would hear banging on the wall from three floors down. I would drop whatever I was doing and rush downstais before she could call me again because if she did that, I was in trouble for not listening. And heaven forbid I didn't hear her for whatever reason, because she would be livid. And then once I was down there, I would...answer her question. Or fetch a backscratcher from 5 feet away. Or stand with my head down while she lectured me about forgetting the laundry again.
And let me just reiterate something here. The backscratcher was kept by my grandfather's chair about five feet away from her chair. My grandmother was not an invalid. She did have a health condition (doctors never figured out what), but even on her weak days, she had no problem standing over the stove, running errands, weeding the garden.* But as soon as she sat down in that chair, it was way more convenient to make me run down three flights of stairs than stand up again.
And speaking of that banging, there's a lot of construction going on around our house, and sometimes when it starts up, I flash back to those days. I hear the banging of hammers and machines, and oh, shit, I missed hearing her the first time. She's pissed now. I'm going to be grounded for a week again. I'm going to get yelled at. And even if I manage to fight off the panic, I can't relax again after that.
Oh, right. This post was about boundaries. Well, that's why I don't have them, I think. When I moved out of my grandparent's house, it was to move in with my mom. She actually does have a lot of physical problems that make things difficult for her, which meant I felt even less comfortable saying no to her. I couldn't do it, and I hated her for it, and I hated myself for it. She would call me on my cell phone from her chair in the other room. Every time the phone rang, I knew it would be her wanting me to grab something from the fridge or let the animals out or run an errand. I learned to hate the sound of that phone. I have a different phone now, with a different ring, and I still can't stand to hear it.
Well, I moved out finally, but after Hurricane Sandy, my girlfriend and I went back to stay with them while our house was under construction. Things were pretty OK for about a week or so, and then they started pushing against my boundaries again. My grandmother was dead by this time, and my grandfather didn't ask for much. It was my uncle who started things.
He's lived without me for years. I moved out of that house long before I moved out of Missouri. But as soon as we got back, I was the only person who could make him food. He suddenly couldn't handle that himself anymore. He couldn't make his own tea, even though he'd been making it himself for my whole life. At first, he was pleasant and polite and grateful, but he quickly just turned demanding.
There was one day specifically where my girlfriend and I were about to do play a game together, and he knocked on the door and yelled for me to make him a sandwich, and I dropped everything and went to do his bidding, just like I'd been conditioned to do. It wasn't until afterwards, when my girlfriend confronted me with her hurt that I hadn't even acknowledged her, that I even realized it had happened. It was just automatic.
And my mother, who's muddled along without me for a good three or four or five years at this point, suddenly needed me to do everything for her, too. She has her own house, so she wasn't calling me every five minutes to get something or handle something. But every couple days, it seemed, I had to go shopping for her or take her somewhere, and I could not say no. If I said no without a good reason, I got guilt tripped about how things are hard for her.
God, the emotional manipulation in this family...
And this went on for not quite a year, something like eight or nine months. Both of us were just so beaten down by this time that we left. We spent two months driving across country and up and down the coast because neither one of us could handle it anymore. I'm still recovering mentally, and it's been a year since then.
It seems kind of weird, actually. Staying with them during that time has ruined my relationship with my family in a way the first 28 years of my life couldn't. They don't call too often anymore, and I don't really call them. I suppose I might be willing to call them more, but I have to psych myself up for days in advance before I can even pick up the phone.
One last thing. It was towards the end of that stay. I can't even remember what we were arguing about. The incident with my uncle had been a wake-up call for me, and I was trying to set a boundary. Mother was angry and screaming. I was screaming. I don't really cuss, but I yelled at her to shut the fuck up. She was so surprised that she did. I tried to make my case about whatever this was, and here's the one thing about this conversation that I remember clearly.
"Taren, do you really hate this family so much?"
And I almost said yes. Almost. But I stopped myself because that's not really true. And then I hung up.
*She later developed much worse problems and lived with a broken back for months before it got diagnosed as such. But at this time, she was still pretty spry.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Purity
I just remembered. So my family wasn't big into the purity culture thing as far as I know. They never forbade me to date or anything. I don't remember them even telling me to save sex until after marriage, although I know they would have been livid if I had been having sex. I should talk about my teenage years later. Note to self, that.
So I never did the purity ball or the ring or anything. But one time in the Christian school, might have been during that sex ed/charm school crap from the previous post, I had to sign a purity agreement.
Now, my memory has some tunnel vision on this. I know I can't have been the only girl there. I wasn't singled out. But I only remember myself, the paper in front of me, and the teacher was droning about something. I don't remember anyone else around me. I don't even remember what the paper looked like or what it said or if we all signed one and passed it around or each had our own.
So I signed it. I can't remember what my reasoning was at the time, but I remember that I took it very seriously. It was a vow, after all, and you can't go back on a vow because that's sin. So I signed it, and I was very proud of my virginity for a very long time. When I got to high school, I kind of subtly lorded it over my friends who'd had sex. Mind you, they lorded it over me that they weren't virgins, too, so it was more of a good-natured ribbing among us.
But it was around that time, high school, that I also started to feeling a little ashamed of it. I wondered what I was missing out on. Didn't have enough interest to find out, but that was when I started to wish I could be like other people.
So I never did the purity ball or the ring or anything. But one time in the Christian school, might have been during that sex ed/charm school crap from the previous post, I had to sign a purity agreement.
Now, my memory has some tunnel vision on this. I know I can't have been the only girl there. I wasn't singled out. But I only remember myself, the paper in front of me, and the teacher was droning about something. I don't remember anyone else around me. I don't even remember what the paper looked like or what it said or if we all signed one and passed it around or each had our own.
So I signed it. I can't remember what my reasoning was at the time, but I remember that I took it very seriously. It was a vow, after all, and you can't go back on a vow because that's sin. So I signed it, and I was very proud of my virginity for a very long time. When I got to high school, I kind of subtly lorded it over my friends who'd had sex. Mind you, they lorded it over me that they weren't virgins, too, so it was more of a good-natured ribbing among us.
But it was around that time, high school, that I also started to feeling a little ashamed of it. I wondered what I was missing out on. Didn't have enough interest to find out, but that was when I started to wish I could be like other people.
I want to talk about sex ed
Homeschooler's Anonymous is running on series on sex education, and it's made me think. I don't remember much from school, really. I went to a Christian school that was little better than a big, group homeschool run by the local Mennonite church. I've realized, since I left, that I didn't get much of an education there, but it's only since I discovered ex-fundigelical and homeschool survivor blogs that I'm remembering and understanding the full extent of that education.
When I was 6th grade, they decided we girls were old enough to...well, I don't know, actually. I'm pretty sure they called it sex ed, but they didn't even really discuss abstinence that I remember. What I remember was it was more like charm school.
Let me back up a little further, actually. Our school had a policy that girls could wear nice slacks until a certain grade, pretty sure it was 5th, and then we had to wear skirts or dresses. Keep in mind, nice slacks means no jeans, even the black ones that are acceptable in some workplaces. But boys could wear jeans. Because jeans are for boys? I never understood. It was always unfair to me.
Somewhere around then, our principal retired, and his wife took over. And holy crap was she so much worse in so many ways. But the older girls in 7th and 8th grade successfully campaigned to remove the skirt restriction. We still weren't allowed to wear jeans, though.
This charm school thing happens when were still all in skirts. I'm pretty sure it was after Mrs. Principal took over, but that could be because I blame her for fucking everything. So you know, grain of salt. Also, I don't know what the boys did during this time. This class was girls only, so our gym instruction (who was male. He taught the boys and girls in one big class, and while certain things were gender segregated, it was mostly a co-ed affair.) took all the boys elsewhere. I don't know where, just elsewhere. Probably the gym. Maybe they had their own class about how to treat women. Maybe they just threw a ball around for 45 minutes. Fuck if I know.
Actually, it's kind of weird to me now that I don't know. Maybe they told us, and I've just forgotten. Anyway!
Now, my memories of this time are a little surreal. School was from 8 to 3, but in my head, these charm classes always took place at night. I know that they didn't. They happened towards the end of the school day. But in my head and my memory, everything is just darker during these classes. I can't remember who taught them. For some reason, I simultaneously remember it being Mrs. Principal and someone I had never seen before. The school wasn't real big on hiring new people, so it was probably Mrs. Principal.
I don't remember getting an abstinence only education, either. I know that, at some point, someone taught us that condoms always break and abortion is murder, but my memories from this class are reminiscent of a 1950s posture video. We learned how to get into a car without spreading our legs and how to show proper etiquette at a dinner table. And yes, we learned about good posture, although it wasn't quite as, uh...dystopic as the above link.
Learning to get in and out of a car is my clearest memory for some reason. The teacher pulled a chair to the front and demonstrated for us, and then called each of us up individually to practice in front of the class. Everyone else went slow, and in my memory, it was because they didn't get it. Looking back, maybe it's just because they were taking it seriously. But I wanted to show everyone how it was done, and so I went up with my head high and sat down sideways and pretended to lift my feet over the edge of the car, and then I got back to my seat in half the time it took everyone else.
Man, I was a little shit back then.
Other than that, I didn't find out what a penis looked like until I moved in with my pre-op girlfriend when I was 29. I still have no idea what sex actually looks like or how it works. In fact, I have very little interest and am kind of terrified of the idea of heterosexual sex. Everything I know about it is that it hurts, and I'm terrified of that.
And yeah, aside from that, I found out what a period was because a friend of mine was reading a book where a girl in a similar situation to me gets her first period and is afraid that it's cancer. My friend thought it was funny. When I started mine, I had some vague idea that's what was happening, but it wasn't like I expected it to be. I was afraid and resigned and knew that I couldn't possibly tell anyone. I think part of me was hoping it was cancer, so I could feel like a martyr. And then a week and three or four laundry cycles later, my grandmother and mother finally sat me down and talked to me about it. Days after it had stopped.
To this day, it's something disgusting and painful that I hate about myself, and it makes me just hate myself. I am never more self-loathing than when I'm on my period. I don't like my girlfriend to touch me, even in entirely nonsexual ways, because I'm afraid she'll suddenly realize how awful and disgusting I am, or that I'll contaminate her. Intimacy takes a lot of effort on those days.
And that was my experience with sex education.
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