Friday, September 25, 2015

T-15

Including today, 15 days 'til my birthday.
15 days for 15 pounds?

I weigh about the same that I did a few weeks ago, but I've been dancing a lot more, so I feel a lot fitter/a bit leaner.
But still.

I dunno, man.
I'm starting to be a little more social again--catching up with old friends who aren't in the area anymore, making plans with people who are. On Monday night I went to this theatre awards show (some people I've worked with won! Glad I was there to support them!) with H, my old college roommate who's heavily involved in the theatre scene here. H and I are going to a dance awards ceremony in a couple of weeks, and H, some other friends, and I are going to a burlesque show next week.
Which is to say that I'm doing things again.
Also have a crush. We'll call him W. (I should come up with better pseudonyms than just initials. Meh.) He did the lighting design for a show I was in back in May and I got to know him a bit through that; he also came (alone!) to see my Fringe show, and I ran into him again at the awards ceremony. He actually spotted me first and came to say hello.
I dunno. He's really sweet and funny and intelligent and involved in the arts and cute and I don't know how to approach him! He's involved in a show that open next week and runs for a month, so obviously going to drag H and maybe some others to see that and hope to run into him there, but otherwise... I dunno. I don't have his number, and I've never interacted with him outside of arts things, but he's wonderful and even if nothing happens, it feels so nice to have a crush again.

Having a crush also acts as motivation, right?
In a different way than the normal self-hatred that motivates. It's more positive. It's nice. You want to be better because you want someone to think highly of you, not because you hate yourself so much.

But anyway.
15 days and 15 pounds. So far today I've had hot lemon water, coffee, and oatmeal, totaling 300 calories. It's after noon. I'll probably have more oatmeal this evening, and a cup of vegetable soup (carrots, bell pepper, and butternut squash puree: 72 cal for a cup). Lots of dance tomorrow. Will report back on losses.

<3
--The Dancer

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Cautious Optimism

Food's been a bit out of control, but not in a bad way?
I've been constantly hungry and eating too much, but I think the naughtiest thing I've had in the past four days would be a mix of dark chocolate chips, almonds, and walnuts. All of the vegetables.
I weighed myself this morning and I haven't gained since the last weigh-in last week, so that's nice.
My skin looks a lot better, too. Not "good," because I'm pretty sure I will literally never have "good skin," but SO MUCH BETTER.
I feel better, too. I mean, I'm still hungry all the time and, oh hey, it's 3 am here and I'm not sleeping, but just day-to-day is better.

Let's see.
Sunday and Monday I didn't workout at all. Holiday weekend. Got food back on track in a big way, though. Cleaned a bit.
Tuesday I had work. Was going to take class in the morning (I work for a dance company; a HUGE perk is free class whenever I want, including during the workday), but had to train in a new volunteer instead. Alas. Still took two classes after the workday; 3 hours of dance.
Wednesday (yesterday) I didn't work; hit the gym in the morning for some cardio/weights/stretching, then two more dance classes in the evening (2.5 hours of dance+an hour-ish at the gym). Didn't do anything of note in-between.
Thursday (today) I work, and I'll hopefully be able to take class in the evening, but we're having issues with our volunteer coordinator not doing her job (see: me unexpectedly having to train a volunteer on Tuesday), so I might have to work during the class. I might take a morning class instead if I can get my shit together/get work done quickly enough beforehand. Today's also the farmer's market, so that's lovely. Lots and lots of fresh produce that's so much less expensive than at the grocery store, AND it's on the street that I work on, so I quite literally cannot miss it walking to/from work.

So food has been good, and exercise/dance has been good.
Another audition was announced, as well. So I have an audition on the 19th and another on the 27th. The 19th is the super commercial-style audition, but the 27th is actually for a pretty cool company.
Also attending a theatre awards ceremony with my old college roommate on the 21st, so that's a potential networking opportunity.
So those are my reasons to lose weight, but they're also reasons to do so in a way that keeps me strong.

My to-do list is still too long, though: fellowship stuff, mostly, that I've been ignoring because it's so huge that even beginning is daunting. Also cleaning: again, see "so huge that even beginning is daunting." And I have a new piece that I want to start working on, just to make something. Maybe my goal for today will be to ask a few dancers I'd like to work with if they'd be interested.

I dunno.
I'm cautiously optimistic about my future/about life in general. I often feel lazy--like I should have a full-time job, or at least work more than I do, that I should do X and Y and Z and then I have weeks like this where I remember that, hey, I'm a freelance dancer. Taking class and going to the gym IS part of my job. It's not indulgent or lazy, it's my career.
That sounds like a silly thing to not always have in mind, I guess. But watching those I graduated with having full-time jobs in their fields, and fielding questions from my parents about when I'm going to grad school, because as far as they're concerned this is a "break" for me, and knowing that I'm not able to fully support myself just by performing, sometimes it's hard to take it seriously as a career.
I've always been a bit Type-A, I guess. I went to a performing arts high school AND danced outside of school AND played a sport AND founded/ran the Model UN team AND was National Honor Society vice-president AND was on/captained the Academic Olympiad team. In college, I double majored in VERY unrelated things at one of the top ten liberal arts schools in the US (rankings just came out! Still up there!) AND taught at a dance studio AND founded a dance company AND set work outside of classes AND debated AND did Model UN (well... those last two I gave up after sophomore year). So post-grad life, in which I'm definitely doing things but not doing Everything All The Time, just feels like I'm not living up to my potential. Like I'm a disappointment. Like I'm a failure.

But it's okay. I'll figure it out. I'll dance more and nail these auditions and be brilliant with this fellowship and follow through on making this new work, and it will be okay.

Cautious optimism.

Stay strong.
<3
--The Dancer

Saturday, September 5, 2015

Fabulous

I don't let myself think about these things when I'm sober.
They're too scary.
They involve want.
And want leads to hurt. I've learned that over and over.

But godfucking motherfucking earthfucking dammit, I'm going to do it.
I am going to achieve every single thing that I want.

I am going to be an absurdly sexy size two.
I am going to land another gig as a professional dancer.
I'm going to re-dye my hair and only wear things that make me feel fantastic and be That Person that turns heads and is so completely themselves and so completely fabulous that there's no question when you look at them. They just KNOW. They know who they are, what they want, and where they're going.

I'm going to fucking be that person.

This comes out of a couple of things.
Out of watching videos of myself dancing in college. We had a few different dance organizations: some pre-professional, working with faculty and guest artists. Some semi-professional, working with students who wanted to experiment with movement and investigate and make something interesting. And, of course, some just for fun: fun and sex and pop music and I fucking OWNED every single performance in every single group.
Because I had people telling me I was awesome. Because I had K telling me I was awesome. Because I had choreographers who begged me to be in their pieces.
I felt like fucking dance royalty.
Or, even without the dance, because all of campus came to at least one show a year. Everyone knew who I was. I felt like fucking royalty.
So I will be royalty outside of school, too. Out in this real world.
I will be fantastic. I will be enviable. I will act like a choreographer is lucky that I've even considering their piece, because they ARE lucky, goddammit.

That amount of sass and snoot isn't me, not really, But damn it feels good to pretend.
And fake it 'til you make it, right?

Friday, September 4, 2015

Friday Night, Let's Have a Go at Normal

I didn't gain weight this morning.
I lost only .2 yesterday, then tried to binge to hurt myself, but all I had to binge on was vegetables and a couple handfuls of nuts and today I woke up not having gained at all and actually feeling a bit leaner than yesterday.

If I can maintain into tomorrow, as well...
but that's probably asking way too much.

Having a girl's night in with some friends from undergrad. Take-out (Chinese or schawarma) and many bottles of wine. I said I'd bring dessert.

Won't eat until then, of course. Coffee all day, hopefully a quick workout.
I'm debating between this lovely chocolate mousse (silken tofu, dark chocolate, sugar/sweetener, and berries) which would be relatively safe, and making something much more sinful. I'd leave leftovers at their place, of course, so this is my chance to make something absolutely delectable and only have one go at it.
We'll see.

~

I found an old note from K today.
Just... empty. Empty from it.
"Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it."
Old things that don't matter, that don't count, that aren't true anymore.
Old things that I want to let go of, that I want to forget, that I want to not matter.
"It is better to have loved and lost" etc.etc.

~

On nights when I sleep at all, I sleep with a pillow clutched to my chest.
It is you, of course: it is the memory of your body, warm, your ribcage tucked under my arm so I could carry you like a package. Like something fragile, like something mine.
I thought that I was guarding you.
Your hair tickled my nose. I inhaled you, love. I literally breathed you.
And that is not a misuse of the word literally: you always liked that phrase, “and that is not a misuse of the word literally,” so I added it to my vocabulary, piled it atop the already mountainous heap of words we shared, a language we crafted together that ended up so far away from where it began that like everything else it had to collapse eventually.
That much distance is hell on a body.

I bought this bed with you in mind.
Your ghost still has the outer half.
It is yours.
It will always be yours.
This piece of my bed, of my apartment, that I do not own.
My apartment is already small, love. You’re taking up so much, and I am letting you have it.

Won’t you please come back and claim it?
I’ll trade you for it.
You take back the bed and I’ll take back that night we told secrets. That night we asked questions and told numbers and ruined it all.
“You are more important.”
“You are more important.”
“You are more important.”
“You are more important.”

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

9-2-15

I think that date is backwards for all of you non-Americans, aka all of my normal readers.
I've have a friend who went abroad when she had just turned 18... let's say her birthday was February 8th and she went in May. So her passports and such read 2-8-91 (or whatever year), which everyone in Europe read as August 2nd. She told me a story about how she had a lot of trouble getting in somewhere until finally she and the bouncer both realized, "oh, fuck, you're American, we're totally reading your birthday backwards. Sorrrrryyyyyy."

My birthday is October 10th. 10/10. It's always tickled me more than it should that I never have to worry about which comes first.

Nothing important there, I just think about it when I write dates and it amuses me.


~

Last night was good until I tried to go to sleep, and then it was awful. But that seems to be normal now. So. Oh well.

Down .8 this morning, and I don't THINK much of that is dehydration, because I had an honestly absurd amount of water after the purging. So. Yay.
Took measurements again this morning, too. (Yesterday I took them after purging... silly goose, that's not how that works.) They're less dire than they were, but still not great. But I'll take them.

Woke up about two minutes before my alarm. Coffee with soy milk (50), gym. 45 minute elliptical, then some bodyweight stuff (push-ups, dead hangs, abs). Machine says 450 burned. Let's call it 360. Protein shake (strawberries, spinach, soy milk, water, protein powder: 158, 18.5 g protein). Some stir-fried kale and red bell pepper (205) that I had like half of. Rest will be dinner, I guess. Allowing for some more black coffee, I'm 417 cal and 31 g protein today, minus 360 from the gym.

I'm out of tofu. Maybe I'll pop into the store and buy some to get a little more protein/"safe" calories in my day.
Maybe not. I've grown fearful of keeping food in the house. Binges abound, even when you'd think there's nothing I could binge on. Invention from necessity, y'know?

~

Ask for new projects and you shall receive.
Well. New audition. As much as this city has great modern dance and lots of opportunities for independent artists, almost NOTHING runs by auditions, which means it's hell to try to break into.
But I have an audition scheduled for the 19th. 17 days. It's for more a commercial gig than I'm really interested in career-wise, but hey, paid performance and the opportunity to tour, right? 
But also it's more a commercial gig, quick (one minute of choreography) style audition, so appearance matters. 
Hello, motivation.

But just the fact that the audition exists is calming. I've been here fourteen months and there have been maybe ten auditions in that time? And some of them I've travelled for... NYC and LA. So homegrown opportunities (that are open to everyone) are far enough apart that there's always the panic of "well what if the next one isn't until next year?" But this exists, and I will go, and I have ideas for new projects of my own, and and and.
It'll be okay.

~

It's just now noon and I'm at a coffee shop. I should be applying for some internships and some jobs, and really hardcore working on the fellowship project, but I'm reading blogs and writing blogs and working on my novel (how cliche!)
Ah, well.
I'm out of the house and drinking coffee with sweetener and cinnamon. It's good.

~

"Derealization or derealisation (sometimes abbreviated as DR) is an alteration in the perception or experience of the external world so that it seems unreal. Other symptoms include feeling as though one's environment is lacking in spontaneity, emotional colouring and depth.[1] It is a dissociative symptom of many conditions, such as psychiatric and neurological disorders, and not a standalone disorder.
Derealization is a subjective experience of unreality of the outside world, while depersonalization is unreality in one's sense of self. Although most authors currently regard derealization (surroundings) and depersonalization (self) as independent constructs, many do not want to separate derealization from depersonalization.[2] The main reason for this is nosological, because these symptoms often co-occur, but there is another, more philosophical reason: the idea that the phenomenological experience of self, others, and world is one continuous whole. Thus, feelings of unreality may blend in and the person may puzzle over deciding whether it is the self or the world that feels unreal to them."

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

New Month, New Goals, New Life

Bella and Sam. <3 I can always count on you two.
Even when I'm not posting, you guys cross my mind, and I always hope you're doing well.

Some background, I guess. It's been eight months since I last posted.

That fellowship I applied for? I got it. People are giving me money and resources to make art. Holy shit.

I performed with a real company. I spent ten nights on a stage in front of a paying audience, performing. Making connections. Holy shit.

I choreographed, created a soundscore for, and produced a show in my city's Fringe Festival. People paid to see my work. I have a check from something I made. Holy shit.

These are the good things. These are the things that should make me go "yeah, okay, I've been out of school for fourteen months and that might seem like a really long time but I've been doing some shit. This is good."

But I don't have anything on the horizon. I mean, the fellowship is on-going until March, so I'm still (theoretically) working on that, but no more performances.  The last time someone else wanted me to work with them was when the show closed in May. And I've been depressed; I'm only working part-time at an office job (ostensibly so I have time to make art), and while I LOVE it (it's actually on the admin side of the best dance company in the area, and it means I'm making excellent connections with interesting people who also love dance), the fact that it's part-time means there are days that I don't have to get out of bed for anything.
So I don't.
I don't dance; it's a good week when I make it to two classes. That's not enough.
I don't go to the gym; it's an EXCELLENT week when I go twice, but more often than not I don't go at all. That's not enough.

I go to work and I come home and I binge and don't purge and watch Netflix and think about all of things I SHOULD be doing (like the fellowship work, or taking class), but I don't do any of them because I am a failure.

K and I barely speak anymore. We went from together forever to not-together-but-let's-try-to-be-friends to she's-seeing-someone-else-and-we-send-one-text-every-couple-weeks. She's the only one in my non-computer life who knows about anything, so I've completely lost my support system. It's been really, really rough. I have a couple of friends in the area and a few dancers I work with semi-regularly, but no one I really feel connected to.

(If I died on a Thursday after work, no one would notice until I didn't show up on Monday. Coworkers would probably text/call, but not think much of it until I didn't show up again on Tuesday. My body would sit for five days.)

Sunday and yesterday were hard. I barely ate and I drank a lot. Was decidedly suicidal on Sunday. I cut for the first time in well over a year, and it kind of helped. I read this beautiful poem K had written me when the suicidal-ness first started, and it made everything just so much worse, because none of the words mean anything anymore. I tried to reach out to a couple of online crisis helplines but they just made things worse. I took a couple vicodin and went to sleep.
Yesterday I got home from work and immediately started drinking again, but it was better, somehow. Maybe because I hadn't really eaten in two days so I at least felt like I was making some kind of progress. So I posted here.

Today I had a lot of coffee and then ate a lot and then purged because it's September and every decision I make in September is going to be a thin one, or something.

I don't know. The more I type the more confusing things get.

So here's what I know.
I weigh too much.
I'm too big. I have measurements, pounds and inches, but they're gross, so I won't post them.
I want to be smaller. I also want to be stronger, but right now smaller is more important.

I only have a part-time job, and the lack of a normal, rigorous schedule isn't helping my mental state.
I need more structure.

In 40 days I turn 23. I want to be 1xx pounds and either employed full-time or in the middle of a new project. Or both. The sky's the limit?

I don't have exact plans for any of those. Apply for everything, eat less, exercise and dance more.

For today, I'll drink a lot more water and that's it.

Tomorrow, I'll wake up to an alarm. I'll go to the gym. I'll drink a protein smoothie and head to a coffee shop, where I'll apply to jobs and internships.

And, of course, I'll catch up with your lovely blogs.

Until then, beauties.
Stay strong.

<3
--The Dancer