Nobody comments to my entries anymore. I must be terribly boring.

[napoleonherself]

Soooo... today I'm having trouble breathing, because everything that CAN be clogged up, IS clogged up. The cough I developed yesterday is also worse.

In addition, I'm horribly horribly in need of a shower, but I am afraid that if I shower and then sit around with wet hair then I will make myself sicker, which will in turn make me more in need of a shower because you just get grody faster when you're sick.

In exponentialism (see... addition... exponent... ah, you're none of you any fun), I am in the middle of an ongoing funk about myself in general. I am good at temporarily distracting myself from it by escaping into things like playing Sims, but in the background is still the nagging self-hatred. I have so very many bad traits. I have so very many mental hangups -- I can't even go out in public like a normal person because if someone walks by whistling a jaunty tune the sound will almost certainly send me into a panic attack. And of course, the whole "fat == stupid, worthless, and generally not actually human" thing. It is crushingly depressing to know that as I am out there going about my own business, chances are that at least a couple people around me have decided to instantly hate me simply because of my appearance. No, not everyone does this, true -- but how do I know which ones are and which ones aren't?

And I know I shouldn't care. But I do anyway. I can't help it. Sometimes it's all I CAN think about, just cramming myself into the corner of a classroom or a bus seat as small as I can so maybe I won't take up too much space in everyone else's world. Usually I can shove it down a bit and somewhat function. But it's almost always there.

So, yeah. Blatherings about my mental state the last few weeks. Please no patpat type comments. And no "fine then, just get off your lazy ass and lose weight" ones, because despite all this I still know intellectually that I AM healthy as I am right now, and that trying to change myself just so everyone else will accept me more is a GREAT way to wind up even MORE mentally screwed up than I already am, and probably a lot LESS healthy.

... *goes up to add lj-cut*

Man, I've posted this all before, haven't I? Like a billion times. I've got the weirdest feeling of deja vu.

So yeah. WHINE MODE OFF

*plays KoL*

Comments

[whitenoise.livejournal.com]

Nobody comments to my entries anymore

Please no patpat type comments. And no "fine then, just get off your lazy ass and lose weight" ones...

Um...

Er...

Oh! I know! I think you're awesome and bugger the people who judge you based on...

Wait... does that count as a "patpat" type comment? Damn rules, get me all confused. =P

[napoleonherself.livejournal.com]

YOU HAVE BROKEN THE RULES

THE PUNISHMENT:

ITALIANS STEAL YOUR ARCTIC CIRCLE-CANDY!!!!!




THAT IS ALL

[nidoking.livejournal.com]

I haven't been commenting much in general, recently. But I know you don't read my journal posts, so it's hard to get past my tit-for-tat attitude and give tat for no tit. Or something.

Um, hi.

Some people are just jerks and don't need any reason to dislike you, so appearance isn't even an issue there. There's not a great deal you can do about that. Some people will be elitists and dislike you for a particular, generally meaningless reason. Your appearance might be the reason they choose. They, also, are jerks and there's not a great deal you can do about it. What you might want to do is try to meet more people who WON'T judge you based on your appearance. And the easiest way to do that (other than going out of your way to meet specific people who might, say, live in Bloomington, not know many people in the area, and have shown some interest in meeting you... can't think of anyone who fits that description offhand, but you never know) is to meet more people of all of those kinds, some of whom are bound to find more valid reasons to dislike you, or possibly even end up liking you because they're not jerks. They're rare, but special people.

And having a better self-image helps, although there's a vicious cycle in that area that I'm painfully aware of. It takes a lot of work to improve your self-image, but again, the best thing to do is get close enough to people that they're willing to share their hang-ups with you, and yours will start to seem less out of place and more like exactly the sort of thing we all have to deal with. Everyone has them... only some people let them ruin their lives.

I hope that doesn't count as a pat-pat or a fine then. I further hope that it helps you in some way.

[napoleonherself.livejournal.com]

> and give tat for no tit.

YOU BOYS, ALWAYS AFTER ONE THING

OR IN THIS CASE TWO

i mean hi

Meeting people is just hard. Really hard. Pressure. Argh. Except when I don't care at all and then it's easy but then I don't tend to care about the PEOPLE and so nothing good comes of that either.

And yeah, I know most everyone has similar hang-ups... just mine always seem alive, sentient, and bent on eating my spleen. Alas, knowing and feeling continue to be about a zillion miles apart.

[nidoking.livejournal.com]

What you need is more positive examples. More cases of people NOT judging you by your appearance so you can begin to conclude "Yes, there are enough people who like me for who I am that their opinion matters," and from there, "I am a likeable person." It won't happen overnight, or even over a month, but it will happen. It's happened for me, and sometimes I still make an idiot of myself but feel good about it because I didn't hold back for worrying what people would think of me.

If you really want to meet someone, I can arrange that. I don't bite unless I feel threatened and the thing that's threatening me is food.

In closing, I shall quote from the Red Dwarf episode "Parallel Universe" where the crew visits a universe in which gender roles are reversed.

ARNOLD: You're only after me for one thing!
ARLENE: Why, how many have you got?

[napoleonherself.livejournal.com]

I don't get why Listerette (what was her name? Danielle? Something.) would smuggle a dog on board. Cats are manipulative and evil, women are manipulative and evil, women should therefore like CATS! ...I mean, hi.

Also, how do I know you aren't a cannibal? Because to a cannibal, I am food.

[nidoking.livejournal.com]

Deb. And remember that the gender roles were reversed. Women in that universe weren't manipulative and evil... any more than men are in this universe.

If I WERE a cannibal, I'd have been shot out of a CANNON. Duh.

[(Anonymous)]

A pat pat comment is one of those sympathetic, sweet-nothing ones, isn't it? Well, going by this definition, I shall continue my comment.

The weight issue is a common one. My mother is extremely obese, so I see it every day. And so I can relate, regardless of my own body shape.

Self image is a hard thing to give an overhaul. For years I was convinced I'd fallen out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. I grew my hair long so I could hide my face, and prevent other people from being offended by my visage. I wore baggy clothes so no one could say snide remarks about my figure.

I still do all this to some extent
(this is relevent, I'm just getting to it!)

You're fine as you are. You know this. You just need your conscious to get into gear and so that the *knowing* that you're fine as you are because second nature, so that the whole trying to avoid notice thing ceases and you can be yourself no matter the location. Eventually, this will happen, probably while you're not looking. Is the making sure you don't relapse that'll be the hard bit.

[napoleonherself.livejournal.com]

Indeed, that is a pat-pat. The description, I mean. Not your comment.

And yeah, I know, I know. Cognitive dissonance is just eating my brain. With mint jelly. And really, I suppose the conscious-getting-into-gear bit DID happen... a bit... for a while... and really I'm just relapsing back to the bottom again.

Stupid brain. Hate it. Kill it.

[chess]

When being ill, I generally consider myself a waste of oxygen. You are ill, and consider yourself a waste of oxygen. This is not an unusual opinion. Solutions include sleeping until you are no longer ill, and finding Things Which Are Useful to do, so that at least even if everyone in the universe does hate you and think you should die, you know you have done Something Worthwhile. Simply going and clicking on stuff like www.thehungersite.com is a very simple example of such Things; there are many charities and stuff which want people to write letters and things which don't cost any money and simply replace displacement activities with Stuff Which Makes You Feel Good About Yourself.

All this is based on my own solutions and I am generally incapable of taking my own advice, however...

[napoleonherself.livejournal.com]

Perhaps someone should start a service where you tell them what your own advice is and they tell it back to you only it sounds slightly different so you actually LISTEN... I know I could use something like that...

[nidoking.livejournal.com]

You should start a service where people tell you what advice they want, and you rephrase it in wiser words and recite it back to them. That will make it seem like advice from someone else, rather than their own advice, and they might be more willing to follow it. If you hire more people, you might even avail yourself of it on occasion.