Tried to read up on Binge Eating Disorder. I sort of fit the "grazing" thing (eating small amounts of food but very often). Most of the emotional issues are there.

I got suepr super anxious reading the site. I could hardly breathe, my heart was racing, I had to stop reading because I felt life cannot go on etc. etc. WTF was that about?

Why do I get anxious? Is it a sign that I DO have the BED or that I DO NOT? It's hard to tell.

Although, judging by the BED site I read, depression might be the cause of BED. Which might tie into what my therapist said about the food stuff coming to focus when I feel better about myself in general.

There's a really deep dark pit inside me. I'd frankl rather die from overeating than deal with it. I just, I can't. I can't deal with it.

Maybe I'll be able to deal with it better later.

PS. I'm eating a huge chicken bacon burger with fries and energy drink and I have no idea if it's part of my eD or not.

OMG Bad Boys Blue's "How I Need You", the Long Distance Mix! How nostalgic.

..It's actually a really repetitive song. It seemed way cooler back then.

"After what we've been thru, you've got to give me another chance."
"Or dear why."
"Yes, because it's me. I thought you loved me."
[exact same tone] "Yes, I do."

Sometimes I feel like I'm a difficult person. I try not to argue or re-educate people most of the time, but I've rethought everything to the point where it might be a bit demanding to be my friend online. But the thing is, I can't go back to the things I used to believe, i.e. that fat is bad, diets work, marriage is for man and woman, you should only fuck who you love, gender is man/woman and all biological, Jesus is the son of God without a doubt and there's Heaven/Hell.. I realize these things are very different in nature, but they are all commonly held beliefs. I understand why people have these beliefs, and I can never know how long I'm going to disbelieve them anyway, so I can't be all arrogant and "I know better than those people". I don't. I just can't believe in these things at the moment. 

There are things I worry about. People I otherwise care about and love, but don't agree with, finding my blogs. I write under a fake name (well, various fake names right now, Deniselle and/or Willow), because I don't want to have to explain myself all the time. I like the idea of offering myself to the internet naked and without bounds, which also eliminates a lot of people who don't like my real opinions and ideas. I like discussing things with like-minded people. I don't have the spoons to keep up with every conversation and post in a bunch of forums, but I read and write blogs, I reblog stuff on Twitter and Tumblr. I'm where the political activists are, I hear their heartbeat. That feels like being part of the action, even when I write nothing original. 

I wish I had the energy to write more original stuff, but I have the ED and depression recoveries to juggle with. Not doing so great at the moment, but I'm mulling things around, I'm growing, so all is well. Also, I think I finally recovered from my sinus infection after two (2) courses of antibiotics. I'm on a nasal spray and an antihistamine that tires me out but takes away some of the stuffiness. So maybe I won't need any draining of the sinuses. I hope. 

I changed my Twitter url to Deniselle Jordan, from the old BaltarStar. It's no longer my identity, the "I'm a James Callis fan and that's pretty much it :)" thing. It was fun for a while, but my life and identity is about more than that. I'm not sure how to fit the fan thing into politics, because I don't know what opinions James has on a variety of issues. I'm quite sure he's less racist than I am, and I know he's gay friendly, but fat acceptance is probably too much to hope for (he's empathetic and smart, but it's just so out of the mainstream, he may not have encountered it at all). Which is fine per se; fat doesn't seem to be a big deal for him, like it is for me. And I'm sure as hell not changing any of my views for his sake, let the record show. But if I keep posting/reblogging almost exclusively FA stuff, I can't do it under a JC fan identity. It's just not part of that. 

If he said something my politics don't agree with, I dunno what I'd do. I can't re-educate him, I just have too much respect for him somehow. I disagreed with him on the London riots, but then he was so nice and respectful about it that I ended up hedging and being all "OMG maybe he's right". So that's not a great debater quality, but I realized I don't WANT to debate with him. Some people butted heads with him about the Joseph Kony thing and maybe they were right, but all I saw was "awww, he cares about the children". Do I cut him too much slack? I just think it's a bit ridiculous when a celebrity posts something he believes in and people tweet back at him that he's wrong. It happens every time he posts something political, and I've started to wonder if us online political peeps aren't a bit too eager to defend our views, to the point where we don't want others to even say what they think. We can't convert every actor and singer to think like us. It's not their job to debate politics, and I don't blame James for getting exasperated with such responses. Also, he's a well read guy and knows about stuff, so we can't just tell him "read up on this dummy". (I see I'm using "us", so I'm automatically siding with the people who disagreed with him, even if I don't know much about Kony. Do I always assume I'm part of the activist squad, no matter what the cause? I must inspect my soul.) 

Maybe this has something to do with having a positive personal encounter and him being really gracious about my various neuroses. It's not like he had to reach out or say anything at all to me, ever. If I freak out about him, it's my own problem. But he was really nice, and that makes me want to be nice to him. I hope I am. He deletes tweets now and then, and I doubt it's because of me, but sometimes I wonder if I sound mean about his looks/outfits/dashes/whatever. Maybe he's easily embarrassed? You'd think he's confident, being in the public eye and all, but celebrities have feelings too. I realize worrying about this too much is just neurotic, because he doesn't sit around reading my stuff and finding offense, but it's good to be careful. I think in my previous fandom, I became hyper-critical and a bit mean and saw negative things in everything certain band members did, and I want to avoid that with James. He's just a human being, he deserves his respect. I don't want to fawn over everything he says and does, but I don't have to look at it with a microscope either. 

In other news, I got drunk last night, perhaps more so than I've been before. It wasn't fun anymore, I got depressed instead and felt huge and miserable. My belly's getting bigger and slightly droopy, and I seem to be going through an identity crisis over "but I have a pot belly that jots out, not one that hangs O.O". I bet people imagine that fatties just... I don't even know, don't think about their body shape, don't scrutinize it? Like after a certain point, it's no use? That's what I used to think. Not so.

I had a crazy busy week at work and then went to this evening thing for my work (where I also got drunk). I had fun there, the depression came aferwards when I came home. I had a great dinner, saw a great show about Tina Turner/Mick Jagger, clapped and sang along and had fun. I think I'd really enjoy going to concerts. And I really really like 70's music! I liked basically all of the 70's songs better than the 80's songs. Toby introduced me to Pink Floyd and I love them so much. (Not "Another Brick in the Wall" so much, mind you. They have tons of better songs.) (Heh, listen to me explaining like a fan.) I'm a strange hybrid between a fundie Christian and an atheist lately. I enjoyed "Sympathy for the Devil", performed deliciously by the Mick Jagger imitator. But I kept drawing crosses with my finger the whole time, Just In Case. 

I felt my human value for a moment, like I'm one of the crowd, I'm part of making this fun, they want to perform for ME. But when I came out, there were a bunch of drunken teenagers on the bus and I was the fattest around and felt insecure of myself. I think young drunken boys remind me of being bullied, and I automatically start to shrink mentally. Not sure what to do about that. It's a good thing I don't go to bars much. 

I really like my new job, and they really like me at the job. It's a job I can do well, it's something I can develop at, it's a place where they respect me. The question is why I still haven't quit my Gallup job but keep going back every month or so. I think it's because my mother insists I keep it, just in case. It seems as necessary as drawing the crosses during a song though, so maybe I will just run like the wind and never look back. I still have no money, but now I have a life I enjoy living. It helps my moods so much. 

I think it'd be easier if there was a way to DEFINE gender, and what makes you a man or woman or something in between. Are there other genders? If so, what are they and how are they recognized? 

And how do you recognize an eating disorder, for that matter? In a world where most women are said to have disordered eating, where the behaviors considered sick for a thin person are considered healthy for a fat person... I mean who can tell? Some people even think all fat people have an eating disorder, which I don't buy because it's too simplistic and anti-fat. 

I just don't know where I fall, or whether I fall in between, and now I hear that voice in my head again, "oo you special snowflake, you think you're sooo different". 

I'll just go to bed, I think, and listen to Alice Munro stories on audio. I'm not sure why Munro's stories soothe me so; they're usually set in the old days when things were considered simple, and life had a very strict order. But I like how she dissects that order and turns it on its head. 

Meanwhile, Osku the cat is digging in the bookshelf for possible stray treats and sneezing from the amount of dust up there. She's aodrable but also really annoying. I can't decide which one wins tonight. 

Will there ever be a phase in my life where I see my parents enough, but not too much? I just saw them for five days and I have to see them again next weekend, because its' fucking Easter. Easter means nothing to me but I bet it would break Mom's heart if I didn't go. 

Constant exposure to parents = makes me tolerate them less and less. All of their visits and all of my visits there feel so forced, maybe because I can never be away from them long enough to actually miss them. 

Sometimes I just want to run away with Toby. Just never see them again. Be free and surrounded only by people who are SMART and who I genuinely LIKE to spend time with. 

I've been rethinking faith/religion a lot lately, and I thought I'd write a post. Like, a proper post with proper analytical thinking. If I can. Religion is a slippery eel though, when it comes to logic; it keeps slipping away from you. The only safe way to talk about religion and remain logical is to say religion is all crap because it makes no sense. If you really want to believe and justify why you do, and what exactly you believe in, you feel it slipping from your fingers over and over again. This is why it's so hard to write about it. 

I've been lucky in that I was raised in the Lutheran church. This means more incongruities than some other churches, but also more freedom. The Lutheran church in Finland is very divided; there are super Biblical people and super freethinking people and everything in between. My family has always been supportive of my need for space, at least to a certain extent. There's been this idea that faith has to be MODERATE. Lutherans don't join convents or speak in tongues in their meetings; the services are boring but well controlled, and no one in my family insists that I take pledges or make Decisions or renounce bad habits in the name of the Lord. 

The way I was taught, Jesus is a friend who wants to help me with everything, and as a child, I was automatically loved and saved. I was six when I found out about Hell, by reading it myself in the Bible. It was one of the most awful discoveries I've ever made, and I still remember how it dipped me into the dark. I recovered, and I still believed, but I've never been able to accept Hell. It doesn't seem fair to me, no matter how you spin it; I know we all do bad things bla bla, but are we really so horrible and is God's love really so small that he has to throw all unbelievers into Hell? Why does he NEED for us to believe in him, serve him, etc.? Is he the biggest narcissist ever? I know this is blasphemy now, but come on. 

Interestingly, even with all the Jesus-loves-the-children rhetoric, my family believes in emergency baptism. Meaning that if a baby is about to die right at birth, you have to baptise it ASAP or it won't go to heaven. My aunt lost a baby, and it was baptised before it died. "Original sin" and all that, even if the baby has never done anything in her life, and never will. I don't know. (This is where I'd ask if God even gives a soul to such a child, if he KNOWS she won't make it and won't live, ever?) 

The old Lutheran baptism words actually contain the idea of "saving you from Satan". I bet Satan sits tightly around the cribs of non-baptised infants, preying on their souls, if this is true. It's a pretty disgusting idea, to be honest. Adults sin so much that you'd think Satan has his hands full. 

Lutherans frequently criticize Catholicism, Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, etc. All these faiths are "misled" and contain "the wrong" teachings; they emphasize "the wrong" parts of the Bible; they are still going to Heaven (except maybe the JW's because they don't rely on Jesus' blood!), but they're just making their own lives harder.

But who decides what life is too hard and what is hard enough? Who says the Lutheran church, as it is TODAY, is the only right way to serve God? This idea in itself doesn't make sense. 

So here's what I'd like to take from the Lutheran church: a loving God, caring about other people, and the idea that it's OK to not have that many rules. 
Here's what I'd like to leave out: everything else. Everything. Jesus, the Bible, having to belong to a church and attend regularly, baptism, confirmation, communion, all the traditions. 

I realize I'm no longer strictly a Christian, or maybe I'm sort of a doubting Thomas at this point. I'm not SURE Jesus isn't son of God, but I doubt it very much. It doesn't make sense to me. I was taught to love Jesus and I loved him for my whole childhood and youth, but now I'm not sure. Maybe he's just an idol, and there's only God. Maybe it's not a BAD thing to follow Jesus, but how petty is God if we can go to hell for not believing in Jesus? it just seems so... I don't even know.

I like to believe there's a loving God who cares about us, because frankly, if I don't I feel terribly alone. Life feels meaningless to me if there's no afterlife or meaning behind it all. I know this is not the only possible way to see it; Toby talks about how he sees the world as more meaningful because all of this came to be by accident, and it makes people more meaningful that we've created all of the good things. He also says the idea of God in such an unfair world doesn't make sense. Maybe he's right. I need to believe though, at least for now. I don't want to think we're alone. 

Regardless of all this pondering and questioning, I still maintain I hear God's voice inside me, and I still have roughly the same religious experiences as before. I have always had a strong personal spirituality that isn't bound to the Bible or church meetings. While I do sometimes miss the sense of belonging and the feeling of security and safety that Christianity gave me, I find I can't go back. Going to church just makes me angry, with all the questions piling up inside me. It feels suffocating to watch the Christian channel or listen to religious music. (Does this mean I have Satan inside me now and am going further and further away from God?)

If it weren't for the gay question and all the crap about the Bible not accepting gays, I might still be happily Christian and just "bow my head and turn the page", like Luther said we should do, when I come across a passage I can't accept. Faith can be, to a certain extent, illogical and incomprehensible. But my limits were reached with the gay thing and feeling it's SO OK, and the "voice of God" inside me saying I should embrace it. That must have come from somewhere. It sure as hell didn't come from the Lutheran church or the Bible. 

Sometimes I think it's a win-win situation. If there is no God, then we can make up our own values as we go along, and nobody is higher than anybody else. No one can claim authority over anyone's morals, and there's no Hell, so it's all dust to dust. On the other hand, we're alone. If I got stuck on a desert island, there really would be no one to see me or hear me there. And if there is no God or Heaven, why do we live? Why do some people have such fortunate lives and others are completely desolate? Why do people have to suffer if there's no better afterlife? I'd even take reincarnation, as random as it sounds; that would mean life doesn't end. The idea of just giving up everything I am, including my consciousness, is... I can't bear it. 

I can't come to any conclusion, so I guess this post has no natural end point. I'm probably going to be spiritual still in my own way, even if I end up abandoning Christianity. I always have been, so it would be a big loss to leave God completely. It would just leave a void. So I do what feels spiritually right at the moment and we'll see how it develops. I'm a bit scared that there really is nothing, and it makes me feel so alone. But as long as I can hold out a hope that there is a God, I will believe. Because I have to. 

There's a general post on the episode here, at the Baltarstar Blog. I'm continuing here, because I don't know how to spoiler cut on Blogspot. So for those who have not seen the episode and still wish to see it, don't read under the cut. For those who have seen it, or don't intend to, read on here. 

( Photos and THE MURDERER SPOILER ALERT )


So the... dammit, now the text is all blue! Well, either way, it was a great episode and I much enjoyed James's double role. 

I feel like this post should be longer, but I ended up being more engrossed in the other aspects, rather than the murders themselves. There's so much family dynamic going on there and James gets to do so much, it was quite exciting for me. Highly recommended! 

1. Esbar, Man of Principle
"They had had some rough years because of his convictions. (Or that's how he called them; Annette had other names for them that she did not like to use.) He had published a book called 'Racism - The Victimless Crime', which had caused lots of uproar. Sometimes still they had tomatoes thrown at them in public, but Annette had decided to take the artsy-crafty approach. She always carried a basket with her, which she could take the tomatoes in. At home, she would make great homemade ketchup. They ate pizza, fries with ketchup, and whatever else you can eat ketchup with, a LOT. 'When life throws tomatoes at you, make ketchup,' said Annette happily.

Esbar was less happy. 'Why doesn't anyone understand me?' he wept. 'Feminists, anti-racists, homo-defenders.. they're all the same! They think THEY are being oppressed, what about this? No one's throwing tomatoes at the ho..matoes,' he chuckled and wrote this homily down, so he could use it in his next book, tentatively titled 'Homophobia or Common Sense?' or perhaps 'Homo, What's Your Problomo?' He wasn't sure which was better. Annette was often non-committal and stuck to taking care of their children instead of helping him formulate great ideas. In the olden days, he would have been lauded as a great thinker and philosopher; he found lots of similarities between himself and Socrates, Aristotle, etc. But all he got from today's world was scorn. It was only sometimes, in a group of like-minded white men, that he felt the sense of belonging. Belonging to a right-wing gun club, to be exact."

2. Poor sweet Bogart.
"Bogart was born in a time in my life when I was troubled," his mother explained, taking him by the hand. Bogart had trouble with eye-hand coordination, not to mention his hand-penis coordination, which was downright horrific. "He has no father to teach him," his mother Wictoria said sadly. "I wish I could show him but what does a woman know of penis-handling?"
My mind is screaming NOOO WHAT ARE YOU THINKING, so I'd best stop this one.

3. PAIN.
Esmeralda felt pain. She felt it in her stomach (lower stomach to be exact). She felt it going down her legs like her skin was turning into goosebumps under her very..feeling sense. She felt it in her butt - her asshole, to be blunt. Most of all, she felt it in her pulsating, moist, painy, lumpy VULVA
WTF IS WRONG WITH ME IS THIS FEMINIST CONCEPT ART OR CRAP

4. Stories form my own life.
She played Subeta. First, she sold things in her shop. Then, she repriced her shop. Then, she took the money and bought a magical keepsake box. She opened it for Prisstina. Prisstina's theme was "spiky and soft", so she put an angelic pink pillow into Prisstina's treasure. She was annoyed that the keepsake box only had 1 space. She was angry. She felt her life fleeing away from her just like James' chest hairs might if you clipped them off one by one...

But then she realized that Wizard was the weekend special guest and that meant 50 point wizard tokens and was happy again. She collected tokens zzzzzz.

5. Stories from someone else's life.
James Callis sighed. He was sad. He had counted on reading the fans' thoughts, but where could he find any now that SOPA, PIPA and even ACTA were on? He googled himself gloomily, finding nothing but the most boring accounts of his life and work. Where was the juicy stuff? Where were the sex fantasies and fat fetishes? Suddenly he realized - there was a new link! "James C.: The Man, the Chest and Abdominal Area. Not Naming Names." On a FINNISH SERVER. Could it be - yes! it was! He gorged on her sweet, nourishing words like a tiger after the first storm of monsoon. His life was whole again ATTENTION! THIS STORY HAS BEEN TRUNCATED AND WILL BE TAKEN DOWN BY THE COPYRIGHT PEOPLE. JAMES CALLIS' ABDOMINAL AREA IS PROTECTED UNDER POTBA*. IT IS NOT TO BE MENTIONED FOR NO REASON AGAIN OR THIS BLOG IS GOING DOWN. TAKE NOTE. 

*POTBelly Act. 

Meh, I tried to read that post to myself but it's really anxious and thus flaky and hard to focus on. But it helps to write this stuff, I think. 

All in all, I'm not doing super bad, I promise. The darkest time of winter always drains me, but it's almost over. Next month will be better. 

Until then, I live on energy drinks and Subeta.