mer-m-a-i-d-s - Tumblr blog

[mer-m-a-i-d-s]

on the house

okkkkkkkkk I guess I have avoided writing for a few days because it helps me but it also makes me sad. Also sometimes I get embarrassed about how fucked up I really am and also how willing I am to let strangers or people who actually know me know these very intimate details about my life.

like whats UP i’m LONELY and HATE MYSELF please act NORMAL when you see me in public PLEASE.

Anyway, tonight I want to talk about the house. My house. Because this house hurts me in a big way. It represents a future I will never have and that really kills me.

Before I met my ex I was living on my own in a studio in Costa Mesa. It was great, I loved it and still think back fondly to my time there. But then I met my ex and decided that I wanted to live with him in Anaheim. The apartment he lived in was hell. I’m not going to lie about it. I hated it, I hated the area but I was happy to be cohabiting with someone I loved so I dealt with it. His goal was to purchase a home so my rent allowed him to save a larger down payment.

We ultimately decided on the Inland Empire as he is from Ontario. I was happy to get away from Orange County because..I just don’t like the vibe there sometimes. I won’t lie, I had BIG TIME OC snobbishness about anywhere east of Yorba Linda, but once I actually went out here and saw how beautiful it was in certain places, I kind of fell in love. Especially Riverside. ESPECIALLY the Wood Streets area. Riverside felt like old OC to me in a way I can’t really explain. The last faint shreds of memory from my childhood that I had of the very late 80′s in unincorporated Tustin where I grew up. The history is here. The victorian influence, the craftsman homes, the 1940′s-1950′s cottages and ranch houses, the 1960′s businesses. I love it all. 

Our house was kind of a whatever. I was in love with a scary ass Victorian home over on Lime that had a fucked up foundation but was way out of our price range and he kind of probably just wanted to get a shit ass track home. I just can’t vibe with that...sorry if you live in a track home. No, really, sorry because that just ain’t for me but I have a bad habit of talking shit about them. ANYWAY, I told him that it was 1950 or older or NOTHING. This house was kind of a “whatever...should we go to the open house and see?” But when I saw the neighborhood, when I saw the back yard and the adorable 1940′s influence I just fell head over heels. It had to be mine....it had to be ours. This was THE place.

So we got it. And it was the happiest time of my life. Even when I had to spend my first month alone here while he was in Spain. I learned to love my home even more. It reminded me of my childhood home, only better and I intended to fill it with period appropriate antiques and love.

My house is a 1942 Harry Marsh cottage. It is so full of potential. Everyone who saw it said “WOW, that is a Maile house.” It has two bedrooms, real wood floors, it has beautiful built ins, a rounded ceiling in the dining and living room, a backhouse/room that we used for the home gym. But what I really loved most was the front and back yard.

There is a beautiful old Ginkgo tree that turns yellow in the fall, but I don’t know what color it is right now because going out there makes me cry. I have a raised bed garden in the back, but I’ve let it go fallow because I can’t bear to plant or or dig my hands into the dirt or even look at it anymore. There is an amazing blood orange tree that gives me beautiful fruit and smells like my childhood (I grew up next to an orange grove) when it blooms but I can’t enjoy it anymore. There are fruit trees, flowers, bulbs, herbs and vines that used to bring me such immense joy and now just make me so, so sad. I’m crying right now because gardening is such a huge part of what makes me happy and I’ve let it go because now it's just marred with sadness. 

I’ve let so many things go. My room looks a little bit like a bomb went off in it. There are pictures I never put up on the walls. I never cook anymore and I haven’t for almost 10 months. I rarely sit on my couch and watch TV. I don’t enjoy my home because it doesn’t feel like a home anymore. I feel displaced. And at the same time, I think it would hurt me very much to leave here (if I could even afford it, which is it looking very much like I cannot at the moment.) So I’m trapped in this colorless kind of purgatory. I come home, glue myself to a screen and then sleep. Work has been my respite and I am very happy for it. I stayed until almost 8PM tonight in order to leave early for Halloween but to be honest, I would have stayed, unpaid, just so I didn’t have to go home. And I do that. I stay until 5:30 all the time now until my Chief and the captains leave, citing an hour break but in reality...I just don’t want to face my reality.  

So the other day I kind of came to the conclusion that maybe, despite the fact that I feel my time here is limited, that I should try to enjoy it. Originally, I told myself no, fuck no, I wouldn’t be putting any more of my money, time or effort into something that was supposed to be ours but turned out to be plainly his. He drew the line in the sand. He can do that shit. I’m fucking out. I’m a boarder. I just rent here, man, you fucking mow the lawn alone bro. Pick up all the rotten fruit off the ground by yourself, asshole. Last year I would probably be listening to 1940′s music and making jam in an apron or some shit BUT NOT NOW. Now I’m listening to Lana del Ray and skipping dinner to cry in the bath like a lil bitch. ITS SAD BITCH HOURS 24/7 NOW, MY GUYS. I’m done playing house. Playing wifey to someone who’s grand gesture to me was “on second thought..” once I was already one foot out the door. I’m pretty fucking desperate and alone but I don’t need any fucking scraps. I don’t need to be someone’s second fucking thought. I should have had a fucking ring on my finger already but now he will join the list of men who have loved me and looked me in the eyes and told me that losing me will haunt them for the rest of their life. Fucking great. But I’m still alone and you feeling like shit about it doesn’t make me feel good.

Whoa. Apparently I’m pretty mad still. So where do I go from here? Should I start trying to put love into my house again, even if I won’t be here forever like I thought? Should I plant a winter garden? Will it hurt? Should I put up pictures in my room? Even if I have to take them down soon? I feel like maybe I should instead of forcing myself into the purgatory. Maybe I can make peace with the fact that this is a fleeting moment in my life. That this beautiful house was here to teach me a lesson in appreciating things in the moment. Because I don’t think I will find a better place...at least not on my own and at least not for a while.     

[mer-m-a-i-d-s]

on body image

I guess I should just say it out loud. I hate myself. I’m not proud of it and I don’t really know why. It’s actually a weird ping pong game between thinking I’m actually kind of great and then quickly popping that ego balloon and settling on wanting to punch myself in the face instead. It’s like the rational part of my brain is constantly in a battle with the unhealthy part.

My body image and self worth is a war zone and my body is the battlefield. Dysmorphia is such a shitty thing. You can’t even trust your brain to accurately reconcile what you are seeing.

Some days, I look at myself and am somewhat pleased. Never 100% satisfied but I tell myself it’s because that would be giving up. But WOW your hair is great today! Your skin is healing really well! Nice eye makeup, you totes look like a cat and you love cats! You’re curvy, you’re voluptuous - you’re practically Joan from Madmen. Speaking of men, they probably will really enjoy seeing you and that will make you feel good inside for like 5 seconds (the male gaze has always been a litmus test for my self worth..I know it’s unhealthy as FUCK but ...it’s just how I’ve been and how I especially am right now [which is extremely unhealthy, duh])   

Other days I look in the mirror and it’s like a fucking monster is looking back at me. All of the small bits about myself that my brain decides are flaws seem magnified in whatever reflection I’m looking at and I take an inventory of these things like I’m trying to pass inspection on fucking hating myself. Dark spots, acne, somehow dry but oily - your skin is trash, crooked teeth, tooth gap..wait I thought I liked that? no, fuck you, not today you don’t. Whats wrong with your small ass eyes? Nice hooded lids, you uneven eyelidded twat. Why is your hair so flat and lifeless? you look like a 17th century midshipman with that ponytail. Nice double chin, asshole. Did you know one ear sticks out further than the other? Well it does and you should feel bad about this. I see you’re getting some chest wrinkles now. What was the point of getting implants if you’re just gonna have old ass looking chest skin, you absolute bag of bitch.

There is no middle ground, there is no self acceptance and holy fuck, there is absolutely no love for myself. 

I was on a bit of a high for most of the summer because my intense sadness had kicked off my weight loss (aka another thing I base my self worth off of) and I dropped 25lbs...I’ve stopped losing as a direct result of my shit ass stress eating habits and now I’m on a low. It hurts to look in the mirror and despise yourself. It hurts to second guess everything about yourself. To second guess everyone’s intentions. I don’t let people get close to me because I am afraid they will see what I see and be just as repulsed. I try to tell myself this is because I don’t feel loved right now but I purposely will push people away or pursue unattainable options because I know that way, I will be safe. However, someone else’s love is so integral to my ability to love myself. In the past, I have been marginally happier with myself when I have a partner to help build me up. But I don’t think that’s loving myself for myself is impossible (if I was emotionally healthy which I am not..). I know I can’t rely on someone else’s love to make me love myself (though feeling like someone was crazy about me and all my flaws probably wouldn’t hurt). 

I just don’t know. How do I undo 31 years of self hatred? How do I undo 31 years of feeling like I am only worthwhile if someone else tells me I am? I know I have so much more to offer MYSELF and others than just the way I look (and lets be honest, I don’t feel like I’m offering too much right now) I am witty, funny and intelligent but I’ll second guess that shit too any day of the week. 

Thankfully, one thing I don’t second guess about myself is the ability to love others. Even when they don’t fucking deserve it...it’s still like an endless fountain that I give freely from to the people I care about. It really does fill me up as a person to heal another person’s pain with love and compassion and make them feel good about themselves again..hell, I spent the last 4 years doing just that. I would do it again. Maybe that’s why I feel like someone needs to do this for me. But why am I unable to do this for myself? 

I guess I don’t really know how to end this journal entry. I don’t really see a positive right now and I just see a rather glaring flaw in myself that I just don’t know if I can fix.

[mer-m-a-i-d-s]

on one

lol I’ve written two long ass posts and then freaked out about them and saved them as a draft until I can get my shit together.

Positives: I drank 100 ounces of water, was mostly productive at work and edited a pretty badass self portrait.

Negatives: I have been getting pretty intense anxiety every night this week, not getting enough sleep and am extremely lonely for companionship/friendship/love and physical touch.

Goals: 

Finish painting my dresser 

Roast the vegetables I bought on Monday before they all go to waste like they always fucking do I stg maile people are dying out here and you can’t even bring yourself to cut up a fucking bell pepper.

[mer-m-a-i-d-s]

on anxiety

I felt a lot less like writing today/tonight. I decided that I should even if it isn’t a worthwhile post because I have a bad habit of starting and never finishing projects. I don’t really even know what embarrassing facet of my life that I want to talk about today. OCD tendencies? body image? eating? self worth? my failures? love? interpersonal relationships? my health? cats??? my unmet potential? the passage of fucking time as the planet descends into chaos and we all get old and watch our loved ones die before we ourselves die a horrible death alone? the fact that for some reason I seem to be incapable of spelling embarrassing without the aid of spellcheck? cats??? Really the list could go on and probably will unless somehow this blog bites me in the ass and I am made a social pariah in my personal and professional life. 

I guess I will start with some positives: 

I drank a ton of water today. 

I’ve had a fun time at work this week and really enjoy my job and the people I work with.

I was super productive today and got a lot of stuff done that I had been seriously procrastinating about. 

the two new korean skincare items I purchased seemed to be doing a good job so far. 

I settled on a halloween costume and I don’t look half bad.

Ok, I’ve decided. Anxiety. I have it. I’m sure everyone does to an extent and probably many people have it worse than I do. It’s funny how the symptoms kind of creep in and we all live with this unnerving feeling like it’s a perfectly normal thing and then suddenly you realize that you’ve chewed at your cuticles so much that your fingers are in constant pain (I realized this about 45 minutes ago) or that your OCD is showing and you’ve taken 5 showers in one day (sunday) and washed your hands so much the skin is bleeding a little bit (last week) or that you’ve eaten roughly a dozen large cookies like it was nothing because they were there and you needed them to not be there anymore (this morning). But those things feel routine. I routinely overwash my hands and body, I routinely eat until I feel sick. Anxiety is part of me (and especially the last year) and I don’t know if I know a time when it wasn’t or if I would be okay if it wasn’t there. 

Today at work I turned in some photos I had taken of a training. The documentary style photos I’ve been taking for my work are not really my forte but I think they’re fine...even good? Either way, I submitted them to a woman that works for a different department as asked. I made sure to end my email with the pitiful “I hope they’re okay! :(” She happened to come by my office and let me know that she had gotten the email but hadn’t seen them. I echoed “I hope they’re okay :(” again and I got a weird look (BECAUSE THAT’S A WEIRD THING OF ME TO SAY OVER AND OVER.) and a “I’m sure they’re fine.” UNSATISFACTORY. I’ve been thinking about it since then and even now I am pondering the possibility that she hates me. Does she hate me? Rationally no... She’s super nice to me all the time and by all accounts a caring person with no reason to hate me. She has bought me lunch..TWICE. BUT HERE WE ARE.

And I fully acknowledge that I make a great show of it though. Even now with this blog I am turning my darkest, saddest and most embarrassing thoughts and feelings into something that I hope at least makes people do that weird laugh where they blow air out of their noses. It helps me cope to act like an unsure and overly concerned hot ass mess. I like when people laugh at me making fun of myself because it makes me feel like I’m in control. But am I? I regularly roast the shit out of myself for everything. Am I protecting myself? The old “HAHA I ALREADY KNOW I’M SHITTY SO IF YOU SAY IT ITS ALREADY OLD HAT AND NO ONE CARES.” trope. But as I’ve grown into adulthood I see that sometimes this behavior does nothing but teach the people around me that it’s okay to treat me this way. And I do not want to be treated this way. I want to be admired and loved and petted and wrapped in a warm blanket. Not everyone takes this as a cue to mistreat me and not all the time but enough that I sometimes find myself the butt of jokes that I orchestrated and I really have no one to blame but myself. 

Control has been something I’ve always desired. Not in the shitty way, I don’t want to control others, I just want control of myself but I do it so, so, so badly and in such unhealthy ways that it is almost comical. I see it in my OCD and disordered eating, I see it in my refusal to do things that I am not absolutely perfect at the first time, I see it in my desire to reach this unattainable perfection. And what is the opposite? What happens if I didn’t do this? I fail? Someone laughs and judges me? I am pitiful? Am I not already ensuring all of those things happen? I used to tell myself if I obsess over the worst possible outcome, I can only be pleasantly surprised when it turns out better than I thought, or prepared when it turns out exactly as I predicted but now I am not so sure this is the best course of action. 

I think I like the idea of giving myself some small goals to work towards so I think I’m gonna do that again:

 - Give myself a compliment in front of myself

- Give myself a compliment in front of someone else

- Give someone else a compliment (I already do this a lot but you can never do it enough.)

- keep drinking water  

[mer-m-a-i-d-s]

on my fucking complexion

Oh..well I made it back. Actually, to be honest, I kind of looked forward to writing most of the day. Turns out I have a lot of shit to say. I’m like a modern day Carrie Bradshaw except I don’t actually have anything useful to offer, I don’t get paid to complain and I think I was actually called a Miranda by a friend the other day. To be fair, I don’t even know what that actually means because when Sex and the City was more popular, my mom would mute or pause the TV and look up at me guiltily because she felt like it was inappropriate for me. One of the very few times I ever saw one of my parents try to ...control? the media I consumed. Either way, I had no intentions of plopping down on the couch next to my mother and listen to some old lady on TV talk about sex toys....Nah, I just went back into my room to my beloved internet and quietly destroyed my soul and innocence with a variety of horrifying materials. But that made me the funny and dark person I am today..or it just made me depressed...Honestly, its a crap shoot at this point but I wouldn’t have it any other way because my meme game is on point.

But I ain’t here to talk about that today. I’m here to talk about something way worse - my fucking face. And now that I’ve sufficiently covered my face in 12 different slimes of varying prices and potency I’ll be the first person to tell you that I’m vain as hell. It’s some deep rooted self hatred that I will no doubt embarrassingly expand on one day in other blog post. But I am. I said it. I am vain as fuck because I don’t feel like I deserve love if I am anything less than perfect. So you can imagine my absolute panic when I started noticing some shit wasn’t right. 

It crept in real slow. I never had acne as a teen or young adult. (I guess I’m just a regular adult now and that really fucks me up) My skin was lovely and I got many compliments. I took it for granted and carelessly enjoyed something that people struggle with for their entire lives. I didn’t even wear foundation until my mid twenties. I was a lucky bitch and I didn’t even know it. 

Then the thyroid happened. Or stopped happening. In 2015, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease. I swear to fuck that stupid gland has been the bane of 90% of my life’s issues. But one day I woke up and shit was just different. 

the melasma

NORMAL stuff, obviously, some skin looked a little...less tight around 25-26. So I decided I would never tan again and began religiously using skincare products and that was cool until a horrifying day in 2017 when I went to the beach. I came back from a day of swimming and my face looked..dirty. Weird. WEIRD. Except that shit didn’t come off. A quick google search told me I had melasma. I found it was hormone related, that women typically got it during pregnancy...the thyroid, that slowly deteriorating son of a bitch, had struck it’s first blow to something that really mattered to me (being a functioning human was apparently not high on my list of things that mattered). I cannot begin to tell you how many creams, serums, acids and whatnot I have tried to get it under control. It is literally the worst. It shows through my foundation, it makes me look older because of the shadowing ON top of the signs of aging that I’m already experiencing. I will literally burn that shit off of my face and then 10 minutes of careless sun exposure brings it right back.

the cystic acne 

But recently, as of April, some other shit went down that I am just not fucking here for. I always had a few clogged pores, MAYBE a pimple on my chin but I began experiencing the WORST and most PAINFUL cystic acne of my LIFE all over my chin. HORMONAL ACNE. It’s calmed down a lot thanks to some intense research and minor lifestyle changes but it always flares up every cycle..oh and it scars. So the post acne marks look like i have some amazing double chin contour going on that just makes me feel like the bees knees. 

the ...fuck I don’t know, being old AF? is that what you wanted me to say???????

So besides those two amazing things actively waging war on my face, I’ve also started dealing with seeing some serious signs of aging. I’m doing what I can, I barely drink alcohol, use sunscreen, try to sleep, drink as much water as I can and put more shit on my face nightly than I ever have in my entire life and yet...it persists. I know I can’t stop it but I mean, let’s be real, if you are here, you have seen my instagram (aka horrifying shrine to my vanity where I collect internet ass pats from strangers so my brain will release dopamine) so you may have the slight indication that my face is important to me. My thyroid unfortunately also partially to blame because it makes me unable to retain any kind of moisture. I’m a fucking sad desert of sadness, fine lines and skin flakes. I don’t like it and I regularly ponder my first world problem. How do I become more moist as a human? Am I using too much acid? Not enough? More oils? DIFFERENT OILS? Korean skincare? STRAIGHT FUCKING CHEMICALS? Should I just hermetically seal myself inside of a plastic bag filled with liquid at night and hope for the best? Do I just need to accept my fate as a person that will eventually become filled with various plastics and begin my journey? Am I a Dolly Parton or a Barbara Eden? I’m probably that weird lady with the cat face.

So I mean, beyond me complaining about this shit and you reading it for some reason (seriously props to you if you’ve made it through this narcissistic bullshit) what am I going to do about it? Well, I guess I’ll do it in list form because..this shit is getting long.

- Go to the Dr and harass them into doing a hormone panel

- Continue to take the herbal supplements that I’ve taken in the past and the new ones I’ve introduced recently and give them a decent time to work

- MORE ACID but also with some heavy duty moisturizers

- ..Exercise. That is it’s whole own bloated post.

- Better quality nutrition and possibly buckle down on real intermittent fasting (not just starving myself)

- Accept it and love myself and know that the people who are worth it in my life will love me even if I have chin pimples, wrinkles and what looks like two poorly healing black eyes? Even if I have a cat face one day? No, fuck u. I ain’t there yet...but I genuinely hope to be.

[mer-m-a-i-d-s]

on returning

ok, so after what?...8ish years I make my triumphant return to blogging. It’s not nearly as fashionable as it was in the past but, honestly, I think I need this. I used to write daily in my livejournal in high school and almost up until 2012 I was pretty good about writing and it helped center me in a way. Lately, my life has been in shambles and I guess I need to let some of it out in a way that isn’t the concerning allotment of memes that I post on my instragram stories daily.

I’ve chosen to make this blog public because I know that if it were private it would become a dark place. I’ve tried before and to be brutally honest writing for an “audience” tends to keep me in check and just self loathing enough to be mildly entertaining. Thankfully, I possess just the right level of attention whoredom to display my uncomfortable inner thoughts to strangers and ...probably not strangers on the internet. I’ve made my tumblr URL as annoying as possible to type on mobile so hopefully for the uninitiated it will prove too much of a hassle. For the rest? I don’t know, I guess get ready to get mildly upset?

I’m kidding, I have enough sense to keep most of my details vague enough while still putting them in some kind of order in my head. I better fucking stick to this shit, I had to jump through a ton of hoops to find an email address of mine that didn’t already have a tumblr account...5! Five goddamn email addresses already had accounts. I wanted a fresh start. I had a bad habit of creating and abandoning various blogs throughout the years and I suspect the internet is still littered with a trail of my failures.

So what’s going on? I guess I’ll keep it somewhat brief since I know most people reading this have gotten the long version of my problems...and they are long and complicated. I live in Riverside now, I have a job that I absolutely love, I broke off a 4 year relationship in May, I’m living in a home that was supposed to be my dream house but now has become a source of unimaginable sadness, I’m struggling intensely with depression and - newsflash to absolutely no one, I still have no goddamn idea what the fuck I’m doing with my life. I was SO close to thinking it was all gonna be okay and well...*gestures broadly* here I am and it ain’t fucking okay.