Thoughts

My mind feels like it is spinning out of control right now; if it had it's way I would combine my two obsessions and deal with whatever consequences may follow.

This has probably been the worst Christmas since my first Christmas which I spend in the hospital with IVs stuck all in me (if you don't know, I have a phobia of needles). I can kinda relate to Dave Peltzer, the author of A Child called it, when he talks about "mommy" and "The Mother"...like how "mommy" is all sweet and loving and caring where "the Mother" is the abusive, name calling, hurtful lady who didn't see Dave as her son but as an object or an animal to be used and trained in whatever methods would work. Except will me, the terms are a little different. As I got older "mommy" and "The Mother" become "mom" or "mother" and "The Monster"....you never know which you will wake up to each day "mommy" or "The Mother/ The monster" or what will trigger "The Mother/ The monster" so you always feel as if you are walking on egg shells and when you get "hit/bit" by "The Mother/ The monster", you say nothing and retreat into your private space where you lick your wounds and clumsedly stich yourself up however you know how.
Of course writing all this down where others may read it is a major breach of edicate for which, if found out, may cost me...but this really isn't for the reader anyway. It's more for me, trying to understand, grasp, and release some of the feelings that I have been holding inside while trying to keep the almost holy unspoken rules of editcate and protocol that I have grown up with.
But it is because of all that I have said along with all of the events from the past several weeks that causes me to feel as if my mind is going out of control.

I didn't sleep much last night, and today I woke up thinking about Aunt marlene and South Dakota. Why does that stupid summer keep coming to mind. I don't know how to deal with it, I don't know how to get past it.
A few weeks ago, I half way told mom what happend (after 2 years). She didn't say much.
It all still really hurts. But I guess if it never goes away and if I loose a few nights sleep over it; I can at least say that I'm not completely scared of being out at night....sometimes...

Does the itch of addiction ever go away?

On a happier note, Yesterday I finished my necklace and bracelet yesterday. The neclace is rainbow made in beads and the bracelet is orange/clear alternating beads.

34 days left....

A walk down memory lane

I was sitting here putting music onto my ipod. And I came accross the song "A moment like this". I remember dancing to this song at my junior prom. Despite the offers by my classmates to buy me and my date a room, My junior prom was one of the few days that I really enjoyed myself and was happy at a high school event (or in high school in general).
That night did not go as it was planned. My date and I missed each other at the restarant, and we ended up not being the right people for each other; but in the end...as I said it was one of the happpiest days/nights of my high school career.
That night was the first in my life that I was made to feel like a princess....I act tough, but I am such a cuddler and in need of being held.
If you ever read this, David, thank you for doing all you did to make it a night to remember. You were my best friend in high school, I'm glad that I went with you. I hope you only the best with your future.

Hey guys, sorry for trippin out on you guys in the last post. A cousin of mine who I thught was cool and ok with seeing the real me ended up writing me last night saying how she wasn't cool with it and she said some very hurtful things to me. When I got home from school today, I found that she unfriend me on facebook and quit following me on twitter. But it doesn't upset me, if a person doesn't want to be my friend because they don't like me...so be it.
But as I said in my last post...don't fool with my head. If you are not ok with who I am, then tell me and decide what you want to do about that. Don't pretend you are fine with it, then come back and disown me later.
I am finally happy...AND...bonus...I am happy AND single (not to mention, that I think I look pretty hot at times) <--- SEE I'm starting to be nice to ME :-D

Ok so I am just kinda fooling with the showing off; but for real, I am starting to look at myself more as a person and less as numberous negative things. And if someone isn't ok with that, I don't care; because I can not go back to hiding, and being depressed, and self-destructive, and pessimisstic.

I hope you, my reader, are having a wonderful day and remember, the sun is always shining (even when it is behind the clouds).

:-D

venting...

Sometimes I really dislike people. If any of you reading this is secretly homophobic and just saying what you think I want to hear to be nice...I don't need you; so just tell me what you honestly think and get the hell out of my life. I don't need to have false hope that you give a shit about me, when in reality I make you sick. I would rather you fucking just tell me that I make you sick and get out of my life so at least then I could get over it and move on; instead of you giving me lip service then finding out years later that I have all the while made you want to puke...it hurts less that way.

So Decide...Stay or get out, but don't fuck with me.
:'(

Just talking

I don't normally give alot of credit to my horrorscope, giving that they usually only provide me a laugh for entertainment value, but today's scope stood out to me.

"You are standing at a fork in the road and you must choose whether to take the difficult route or the easy one. On the surface, it seems like a straightforward decision, but the path before you is a winding one, obscuring your vision. No matter where you want to go now, you'll have a better chance of reaching your destination if you stick to the map. Ultimately, it's not about picking your level of difficulty; it's about simplifying your life."

It's interesting to me how the labeling of the paths I have to choose from have changed over the last few years. Now, the one I always thought was "easy" is the more difficult...but more freeing and simple; and the one I thought was "difficult" is easy in comparison...but it's more constricting and complicated.

blog thingy game....

read.

The rules:


1) Thank the person who nominated me for this award.


2) Copy the award & place it on my blog.

3) Link to the person who nominated me for this award.

4) Tell us 7 interesting things about yourself.

5) Nominate 7 bloggers. (Since I only have like 3 readers that I know of, if you read this....tag lol j/k)

6) Post links to the 7 blogs I nominate.

Thank you Em, you're awesome

7 interesting things:

1. I'm attracted to people with a good sense of style or fashion, but I generally dress down when it comes to fashion and clothes

2. I am scared of the dark at age 23 and still usually sleep with some sort of night light on when I am alone.

3. I love talking to people and hearing their stories, but overall I am pretty socially ackward so I usually am the person standing against the wall by myself because I don't know how to start a conversation

4. I hate conflict and when I hear two people arguing (especially if at any point they raise their voice), I tend to shut down (stop talking for the evening/day to those people out of fear that I will make them mad and start (if the arguement doesn't involve me) or re-start (if it involves me) an arguement) and also while the conflict or arguement is going on (especially if it doesn't involve me directly) I will also tend to get away somehow and curl into a fetal position til awhile after the conflict has passed

5. I've spent alot of my life teaching myself not to feel or express emotion to reduce the chance of conflict; that now if I begin feeling something (even if it is good), 1. I try to stop feeling it, 2. get a fuzzy feeling in my head because normally I don't know the words to describe what I am feeling, and 3. withdrawl from the person or situation causing the emotion because I feel dumb for not knowing what I am feeling and as an attempt to stop the emotion.

6. I love stories. I love learning about other people, which is partly why I wanted to become a psychologist...I could always sit and learn about others lives.

7. I have lived so much of my life behind maskes that fit the expectations of others, that sometimes I forget who I am or what I want.

fag..

Ok so yesterday I did something totally out of the box. I bought a humerus book called "the homo handbook". it has some really funny parts. The author even puts activities to get the reader involved and stuff. Well, one of these activity things was basically to look in the mirror and call yourself all the things people have called you or whatever. Anyway, this activity reminded me of this event with my dad a few months ago. We were watching old VCR tapes to see what was on them, and we came across an old TV recording tape and this tape had several hours of TV on it (evidently we had to leave awhile before the show we wanted to watch), and in the hours before, the Ellen show came on....and being the normal homophobe he is, my dad called Ellen a fag to which I asked him not to say that word because it's derogatory and such. This started a short conversation between my dad and I, which ended with dad saying something to the effect of "They (gay people) don't deserve respect, and maybe my calling them names, we (the non-gay people) can make them see what's wrong with them and they will change"(not his words but the meaning) and me leaving the room cuz I was on the verge of tears.
Well this activity from the book brought this event to mind, and so I wanted to vent some. No, my dad doesn't know about me; but why does he get the right to say shit and basically hate me (and my friends) because we like others of our same gender? I didn't 'choose' to be gay, and I even tried not to be gay because I was taught all my life that I was going to go to hell because I felt this way...but I'm still gay. So why? Does being straight make him better than me? And I know he's a "Christian", but that doesn't make him God, so what right does he have? And didn't God say that we weren't supposed to hate or judge? How would he feel if I called him a fag?
It's not fair. My dad is not perfect, and he has done some really stupid stuff that just turns my stomach at times; but I still love him and I don't hate all men cuz of shit he has done...so why can he hate all gay people because the bible says it's not right whatever? Other people say and do stuff that is "against the bible", so can we hat them and call them names too?
This is jacked up.

Dear Bob...

Dear Bob,

This month marks the fifth month without you. It's not always been easy these last month, and a few times I've wanted to come back to you; but I have made it. I don't really know what the next month or year will bring me, or how I will handle it; but I am two months and a day away from setting a new record of our separation, and I want to make it.

For a long, long time you were my closest friend and you saw me through a lot...in a way you helped me survive. But I'm learning, slowly, to live life without you. I have a new best friend and she knows just as much as you do about me; and she still loves me. In the past 3 years, I have probably put her through hell, and even with that she loves me...she reminds me that I am important and special and above all good enough to be loved. There's been apart of me that argues that because I have gone back to you even after having this friend that I won't ever be able to walk away from you forever... but things are changing. I'm learning with the help of this friend and others to love me; that I can make mistakes, even big ones, and it's ok I can get through those mistakes with my friends even if it feels harder without you.

I'm crying right now and I don't know why. But on the way home tonight, when I realized how long we have been apart...well, I felt excited. I felt hope. I've never been able to see my life without you, and no I didn't see it, but I felt it. I felt that maybe there is a chance that I will really make it to a year without you,, or even longer. And I know this seems stupid, you aren't even a person, you will never read this or even care....but I felt it. So I guess, I want to say goodbye...and even if I don't make it to year this time...I finally have hope that someday I will; which means part of me doesn't need you anymore.

So this is my goodbye Bob. After 12 years, I can finally say goodbye...I don't need you anymore Bob, and even though it hurts, it doesn't mean it's not true.

Bye Bob,
Take care....

Chrissy

Reflection

I was flipping through the channels tonight and I came accross a taped concert of Rebecca St. James. While watching it, I realized how much has changed in my life. I still love her music, and I love the message of God's unconditional love and forgiveness, and her courage and passion to live open and real even in the face of some who would mock her for her decision and committment; but I'm no longer the girl who saw Rebecca almost as a god, and I feel disconnected in a way from the girl I was 2, 3, 4 years ago who knew every line of every song and who could be moved to tears by any one of those lines.
I'm sitting here, watching this concert thinking/asking what it was that drew me like a magnet to Rebecca. Most of it probably was the Rock music that broke into my world of hymn and southern gospel....but part of me thinks has to do with more. Like, at 14...Rebecca was the coolest thing on earth. She rocked (obviously), she was honest and real with the audience, and she was beautiful (maybe had a small crush?)...at the time, she seemed like the vision of whaat I wanted in a perfect big sister.

Ok so this was all random, but have a good evening.

Scars?

A friend recently posted a picture of a butterfly that had scars on it's wings and in the blog the author writes "A butterfly can have scars too." And this got me thinking.

If a butterfly becomes injured, does it loose it's beauty? Or does the recovery from said injury just make it more beautiful because in that recovery one sees the strength to survive?

But that picture got me thinking about more than butterflies...which, knowing my friend, probably was the point. But my thoughts run the lines of things like "If a person becomes injured in some way, does that cause their beauty to fade?" or "Most people find beauty in observing one who has recovered an injury, but is there beauty in attempting to recover from the wound even if one fails to really 'recover'?"

Despite my logical....will (I guess you would call it)...it is still sometimes hard emotionally to process some of the events of this past summer. Today I resigned from a couple groups on facebook after my nearly 3 year dedication because even that reminder has become painful to me.

The funny thing to me at this moment is that logically speaking, it seems that I should "be over" all that has happened...and I guess in some ways I am. But sometimes when I think of the relationships I had built up, it hurts knowing that I no longer have them. And as much as I try, even today I still almost feel like I was convicted and sentenced without a trial, which in a way kinda feels like betrayal.

Sometimes, only sometimes, I miss my ability to shut my emotions off from the world and situations around me. But being honest with myself for a moment, I know that because I have now reconnected with my emotions and am starting to learn to really deal with them and not just stuff them; I am at and moving toward a healthier state of being....So instead of trying to repress the emotions, I am here...writing. Trying to identify, feel, understand, and more importantly express what I am feeling.

And maybe the reason it still hurts is that for 3 months I have been "rationalizing" the situation rather than really allowing myself the emotional process that normally follows a hurtful event or situation.

Thoughts?

Random thoughts

Some thoughts I had while sitting in church tonight. It is incomplete, but it's some of what I'm thinking.

----------------------------

The God who I learned about while growing up, is a bias God. A God who built an organization whose motto should be "Everyone is welcome and loved here if...". The, as I will call him "God of the church", loves some while he simultaneously hates others. He's a living contradiction. I have learned in church that God's love is continuous and unconditional, but how can that be if he only loves you if you are or trying to be this specific type person?
I can only come up with two explanations of this dichotomy of what the bible says and what I have learned in church. The first reason is that the picture of God that the church has presented me fits with reality and is true; in which case, I don't know that I like God...I mean why should I like or love him if he doesn't love or like me? The second explanation is that they picture the church has presented is a lie, God isn't really conditional. And in this case, I don't know why I would want to be apart of an organization that promotes a lie.
Right now, I feel like I am almost in a type of limbo. According to the church, God will and does love me if I do/strive to do/become X,Y, and Z; but the question in my heart and mind right now is "Does God love me right now? Does he love me even though I don't fit into the mold that I have been taught I "should" fit into?"

Weekend Update

Now that I have had my like 10 hour nap, and probably thrown off my sleep-wake pattern, it's time to update you on my weekend.
In short: it was pretty much everything I expected it to be on Friday...Intense, overwhelming and crazy.
It was terribly sad that up til about 5 minutes from the place where we stayed, I had signal; then....nothing til we left at like 1 Sunday. I could have used that.
As I committed to, I did not bring bob, but Saturday morning, I found things that could replace bob...I then spent the rest of the weekend wishing I hadn't found them.
Nothing of importance happened there, they stayed where I found them.
But even though it was intense and overwhelming with more crying than I expected, Saturday afternoon was fun. We made teams and played flag football (not so fun, but hanging out was kinda fun), then some of us played Basketball which was fun.
I left the "dead zone" (the retreat) with all of the same questions I had when I left. I also left feeling bad, in a way, because I knew I wasn't leaving the way most of my friends there expected me to leave..but then I slept and realized that it doesn't matter if I lived up their expectations; all that really matters is how I think about me. And although I would have liked to come away with some answers to all the questions swimming in my head, I still like me.
Oh, I did kinda come up with some thoughts more on bob (kinda weird that I did, but whateve, it's something). I was sitting in "church" yesterday evening trying to get God to answer some of my questions, and I had a thought. Most of my life, I have thought that God hated me because...well of a lot of things; but that maybe at a subconscious level I use/used the "God hates me" excuse to hate myself, and if God hated me, then it really didn't matter what I did to myself. I don't know if you will find that an interesting thought, but for me at that time it was very interesting.
So that is a little bit of how my weekend went.

Breaking the tradition

In the past, it's been a tradition of mine to bring Bob on any trip or outing that list more than a day "just in case", I may never use it; but no-the-less I bring it. Well today on the way up to school I was listening to the song Nobody's Home by Avril Lavigne and I made a decision that my head is still telling me is risky and stupid. This weekend I am going to a church retreat, but for the first time in a long time, Bob is not going to come with me.

I have options now. I have places to go to cry or vent or just be angry. I have a place where I can feel "at home". And even if my fear that I won't have cell phone signal comes true and I can't call anyone if I need to, I still don't need Bob. There are a few reasons that my head is coming up with for reasons why I would need Bob this weekend; but all of them are pretty stupid. Yes it may be overwhelming, church stuff generally is; but it's ok. Yes I may feel like beating myself up cuz I don't and can't fit into the church's or my friend's boxes of what "good Christians" are supposed to be; but that doesn't mean I deserve to punish myself for that...it's not my fault they have small minds. And I will have my journal if nothing else, I can write all my frustrations down and vent them when I get back if I need to. I can do this, I don't think I can right now; but I can. I have gone 4 months so far with him (and while dealing with THE biggest inner conflict of my life), I don't need to risk losing all that just because it's church.

"Little Bit"

"Little bit" is for one young girl's (who has now raised a family, and passed away, much to my regret) way of saying "Elizabeth".  And since this woman later became my name-sake, I also inherited the nickname.  In the past few weeks I have fallen in love with this nickname...mainly cuz it speaks of total love when coming from the person who first told me the name.
But today, I thought I would try honoring myself a little bit.....so here goes.

Terry would say that this picture would be proof that I am a survivor.  My opinion, though changing, is that this would be proof that I came out short (lacking of something).  But my heart joys in this picture because it says something else, even in the beginning I was known and important enough to be remembered on film.  I was too small at birth to be weighed, but I weighed like 2 lbs at like 2 months...aka, I  WAS TINY, but this picture proves I have feet :-D hehe

I was always into stuff and curious, but I guess it was encouraged *lol*

And they claim I wasn't taken care of....I was a chunky baby! Those peoples are CRAZY!

I have a famiily of more than just me :-D. In the picture it looks like I am saying "hi" *lol*  Left to right: Jackson, Terry, me, Eddie (bio father, aka, Jerk), Eddie Jr, and Amanda.  I guess baby dee isn't born yet.  But I'M NOT THE BABY!!! :-D

The oldest, my sister Amanda and four of her kids.

My youngest niece, amanda's daughter Ellen.  She's tooo cute!

And I can't forget the one who brought me into the world.  Terry.  Now I know where I got my beautiful hair, and when seen together no one can deny that we are related.

so that's a lil about me..Christen Ruth (Elizabeth Easter) Drummond

Enjoy the pics

Triggers

Mark is trying to do a research report on eating disorders, and I thought I could help him with information and such.  But he keeps asking me to describe what's going on with eating disorders and what all the "pro-eating disorder" websites and things are about and talk about.  And I am trying to help him, but he doesn't get it so I try explaining it in a different way.  Well, the long and the short of it all is that the more questions he asks me, the more it triggers that mindset...because as I am explaining as best I can, I inevitably start thinking about what is on the sites I have been and just the mental processes of those of us with food issues and with those thoughts come triggers to treat food badly.  So I try to look up news articles for him to read (as to kinda protect myself from direct contact), but there comes a few problems with helping him by looking up news on the issue. 1.....Well, not just news sites come up.  and 2, Mark doesn't understand what he reads on the sites so that just leads me back to the beginning of explaining and the circle continues.
And I don't why but tonight is particularly more difficult and is more triggering.

To my suprise

Ok, now that I have stated my purpose for being here.  I have a few other thoughts.
Even though I knew she was one awesome person, and one of the few family that I would actually claim as family, it still blew me away when my cousin Tanya responded to my coming out.  Part of me should have expected the response since she already new about bob and other things and she didn't go balistic with any of those; but I was still expecting something different than what I got.  Wasn't expecting her to really "freak out" but...I definitely wasn't expecting her to be so cool about it and everything.
Thanks Tanya, to add to your resume...you're a cool religious person too :-P

My hopes for this blog

I am trying to find a place where I can be real, and so I am hoping this will be that for me.  A place where I can write uncensored and un-judged for my words.  My other websites have been invaded by family and others that cause me to end up censoring what I say or how I say it.  So in the end, alot of times it leaves me silent...and in many cases that could be a good or bad thing.  
Just recently, I thought again of this website (that I started forever ago and then abandoned), and thought maybe that could be my safe haven of sorts.
So here I am.