I have been pretty busy these days. Sorry to not have written sooner.
I am continuing to eat a bit haphazardly. I am buying a few cakes a week, eating the parts I like and throwing out the rest. This may sound normal, but the act of eating the cake is totally embedded within abnormal behavior. The cake seems to be my only outlet for some sense of comfort. It gives me that feeling of cohesion and order, even though the very act of cutting up the uneaten parts reminds me of the internal chaos that sometimes surrounds me.
I am feeling down about my hair these days. I feel that my looks have diminished because of it and I also feel angry and remorseful for it no longer being a part of me. I had to attend a student meeting this week, and I noticed how self-conscious I was of my looks because my cranium is so bare. I am trying to move beyond this way of thinking by interjecting some positive aspects of myself – but it doesn’t work as quickly as I would hope. I will continue to analyze if this positive thinking can in fact take the place of the negative thought processes. I so want to move away from this line self-abuse.
Stay well, MBI
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Saturday, September 20, 2008
AT THE GYM - COMMENT
First – I am not writing as often these days because classes are keeping me quite busy. However, I will try to write at least once a week. I am contemplating whether to write a shorter amount but more frequently. I shall figure out what works best.
At the gym this morning, a guy (who I see at least once a week) commented on my looking thinner. He asked how much weight I had lost. I was a little surprised by his comment and stated that I didn’t think I had lost weight, may be I had just toned a little. His comment should have made me feel good, but it didn’t. I felt awkward, confused, scared and self-conscious. I took his innocent remark and turned it into an instrument to punish myself with. Throughout the workout I replayed his words. I felt as if I had something now to prove and hold on to. I wondered if he was going to notice if I was going to gain weight or look less toned. Would I have to live up to his expectations? Would I have to guard against other things I do at the gym or eat at home and outside? In contrast, his words also made me feel empowered and I tried to tell myself that empowerment was a good thing. It was not something that I needed to fear and fight against. Internalizing a good feeling was not going to alienate me from the man I wanted to be. I am always so frightened to be conceived of as a strong person, because I believe people will not like me if they view me as such. I need to think differently. I think another matter that surprised me was that this was a straight man telling me that I looked good. It felt strange because I would never make a comment to a straight man about his face/body unless I knew him really well. I would not want to be conceived as having an attraction to him. As a gay man, I am so very sensitive about who I look at and how the other person may judge my look if they were aware of it. The behavior still speaks to my childhood and adolescence when I had to conceal who I was and what I was thinking. It also says something of my continued internalized homophobia. I projected my own anxiety about male attractiveness to this guy and therefore interpreted his comment as strange (aside from the whole body issue stuff) and bordering on the flirtatious. Wow, all of these feelings from something that took only 10 seconds. Amazing!!!
Stay well, MBI
At the gym this morning, a guy (who I see at least once a week) commented on my looking thinner. He asked how much weight I had lost. I was a little surprised by his comment and stated that I didn’t think I had lost weight, may be I had just toned a little. His comment should have made me feel good, but it didn’t. I felt awkward, confused, scared and self-conscious. I took his innocent remark and turned it into an instrument to punish myself with. Throughout the workout I replayed his words. I felt as if I had something now to prove and hold on to. I wondered if he was going to notice if I was going to gain weight or look less toned. Would I have to live up to his expectations? Would I have to guard against other things I do at the gym or eat at home and outside? In contrast, his words also made me feel empowered and I tried to tell myself that empowerment was a good thing. It was not something that I needed to fear and fight against. Internalizing a good feeling was not going to alienate me from the man I wanted to be. I am always so frightened to be conceived of as a strong person, because I believe people will not like me if they view me as such. I need to think differently. I think another matter that surprised me was that this was a straight man telling me that I looked good. It felt strange because I would never make a comment to a straight man about his face/body unless I knew him really well. I would not want to be conceived as having an attraction to him. As a gay man, I am so very sensitive about who I look at and how the other person may judge my look if they were aware of it. The behavior still speaks to my childhood and adolescence when I had to conceal who I was and what I was thinking. It also says something of my continued internalized homophobia. I projected my own anxiety about male attractiveness to this guy and therefore interpreted his comment as strange (aside from the whole body issue stuff) and bordering on the flirtatious. Wow, all of these feelings from something that took only 10 seconds. Amazing!!!
Stay well, MBI
Saturday, September 13, 2008
EATING WITH FAMILY
As I write this, I'm headed to a family dinner at my sister's place. Iadore my sister but I do not look forward to being with the family. Yes, I love them - but it is a love based more on instinct and theory rather than an actualized truth. I don’t know – perhaps there is a real love present and I don’t know how to recognize it. I still have trouble understanding what love feels like. I don’t even know when in the moment I love myself. How can I possibly understand when another loves me? Even when one of my family members does something kind for me, I am always trying to figure out why.
Apart from this confusion, family gatherings also cause me uneasiness because the main focal point is food. Food is an important element within my family. Certainly our being Italian has fortified a strong foundation for this to be the case, but my parents seem to have incorporated the quality very much in their lives. Food is the method by which my parents have learned to communicate. Many family activities center on food production and preparation. Before my parents immigrated to America, they farmed land in Italy. My father still maintains a sizable garden in one of Brooklyn’s Italian neighborhoods. They also continue with a lot of food traditions that have come down from one generation to the next. The family still continues to make its own wine, tomato sauce and its own marinated vegetables. All this is quite nice – I enjoy it. But, it also can be overwhelming because the food becomes the symbol for interaction and bonding. To clarify – food is not used to facilitate the communication rather it is used in place of it. As long as my parents provided me with food, they thought everything was going to be fine. Unfortunately, I required a lot more. Is it any wonder that I turn toward and away from food when I am in states of anxiety and confusion?
Being with my parents and a table full of food brings back a lot of anger. It reminds me of all the evenings when we would sit around the dinner table but nothing was ever being said. Food was supposedly doing the communicating for us. I also get very angry because some of my family members make chewing noises when they eat. This unnerves me so much that I have to leave the table. The chewing noise makes me understand the deep pleasure they are getting from the food and this aggravates me deeply. Perhaps I am jealous that they can enjoy it and I cant. In addition, it makes me feel that the enjoyment is a selfish one. They are satisfied with the food, while I am left alone with my problems and must find a way to resolve them myself. My parents provide food and nothing else.
Can anyone relate?
Stay well,
MBI
Apart from this confusion, family gatherings also cause me uneasiness because the main focal point is food. Food is an important element within my family. Certainly our being Italian has fortified a strong foundation for this to be the case, but my parents seem to have incorporated the quality very much in their lives. Food is the method by which my parents have learned to communicate. Many family activities center on food production and preparation. Before my parents immigrated to America, they farmed land in Italy. My father still maintains a sizable garden in one of Brooklyn’s Italian neighborhoods. They also continue with a lot of food traditions that have come down from one generation to the next. The family still continues to make its own wine, tomato sauce and its own marinated vegetables. All this is quite nice – I enjoy it. But, it also can be overwhelming because the food becomes the symbol for interaction and bonding. To clarify – food is not used to facilitate the communication rather it is used in place of it. As long as my parents provided me with food, they thought everything was going to be fine. Unfortunately, I required a lot more. Is it any wonder that I turn toward and away from food when I am in states of anxiety and confusion?
Being with my parents and a table full of food brings back a lot of anger. It reminds me of all the evenings when we would sit around the dinner table but nothing was ever being said. Food was supposedly doing the communicating for us. I also get very angry because some of my family members make chewing noises when they eat. This unnerves me so much that I have to leave the table. The chewing noise makes me understand the deep pleasure they are getting from the food and this aggravates me deeply. Perhaps I am jealous that they can enjoy it and I cant. In addition, it makes me feel that the enjoyment is a selfish one. They are satisfied with the food, while I am left alone with my problems and must find a way to resolve them myself. My parents provide food and nothing else.
Can anyone relate?
Stay well,
MBI
Sunday, September 7, 2008
A CHANGE
On Saturday, one of my cousins told me that I looked a lot like my father.I did not take this comment as a compliment. My father is not a bad looking guy but he is bald and although I was wearing a hat at the time she made that comment, I still took it as a crack on my hair. This and the fact that I'm also dealing with a stye that is making the upper part of my face look swollen, has certainly contributed to making me feel ugly and low.
My dark mood somewhat was alleviated with the shaving of my goatee. I amnot sure why but the feelings are similar to cutting. The shaving of my goatee removed the anxiety of my looking like my father. It removed that angst I felt about my hair. I must explore this feeling more fully because I do believe that it is very much connected with body mutilation (in a mid form). This was not simply the act of removing hair from my face. I felt it too deep emotionally to be so. If I did not remove the hair, I was afraid of what the burden of carrying the sadness and anger would do to my day. I needed to find a relief, a window that would provide some emotional escape. This incident reminded me of when I used to hit myself (a topic not yet discussed). In the past, there were moments when negative feelings about my body were so overwhelming that Iwould beat my self. I would regret it afterward but the very act would alleviate some of the internalized emotional pressure. While the act of shaving my goatee was more calculated than the impetuousness highlighting past beating behavior, the reaction (except for the guilt) was the same.
My dark mood somewhat was alleviated with the shaving of my goatee. I amnot sure why but the feelings are similar to cutting. The shaving of my goatee removed the anxiety of my looking like my father. It removed that angst I felt about my hair. I must explore this feeling more fully because I do believe that it is very much connected with body mutilation (in a mid form). This was not simply the act of removing hair from my face. I felt it too deep emotionally to be so. If I did not remove the hair, I was afraid of what the burden of carrying the sadness and anger would do to my day. I needed to find a relief, a window that would provide some emotional escape. This incident reminded me of when I used to hit myself (a topic not yet discussed). In the past, there were moments when negative feelings about my body were so overwhelming that Iwould beat my self. I would regret it afterward but the very act would alleviate some of the internalized emotional pressure. While the act of shaving my goatee was more calculated than the impetuousness highlighting past beating behavior, the reaction (except for the guilt) was the same.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
GAY PORN and BODY IMAGE
I remember being filled with bother terror and excitement. I would finally get to see what gay . . .okay. . .bi-men do when engaging in sex. I knew there would be anal sex, but I had never seen it live or through the media. I’ll never forget the film, nor will I ever forget my reaction to seeing a guy anally penetrated. I thought it was weird, beautiful, painful, and intense. I felt a closeness to the two porn actors that I had not felt with the actors in any of the straight films I had seen. I felt they were letting me in on the secret that had both eluded and scared me for so long. Although the actors had engaged in the sex and my knowledge of it was confined to whatever was scripted in the cinematic fantasy, I felt that the experience was a shared one, nonetheless. Women were still a part of the film but they were surrounded by two or more men that were not afraid to touch each other. The presence of women, once again provided that safety I needed to continue the exploration without actually branding myself into any particular circle of interest.
The women remained a constant presence within the films until I was finally prepared to view a total gay porn. Taking that step seems quite harmless and easy but I assure you it was a very long, emotional and insightful one. That one move was symbolic of all the work, contemplation and thought I had placed in myself and in the therapeutic process. To finally let go of the woman porn actors meant that I was ready to give breath to my homo – sexuality; an acknowledgement that was to open up more doors of eventual and progressive exploration. Immersing myself within the fantasy created by an all male cast slowly enabled my mind to venture into male sexuality and I started to own some of that sex within me.
All was not fully positive, though. The male gay porn actors had phenomenal bodies – physiques that seemed even more muscular, lean and toned than the bodies of the heterosexual men I had seen in the straight porn. Their bodies intimidated me even more since these men were gay and I felt more a part of their community. My body did not measure up to theirs in so many ways, how was I then to be considered sexually appealing and attractive in the gay sphere. Were other gay men going to expect me to have a similar build? Media fantasy was slowly meshing into my vulnerable reality and the combination was deteriorating the esteem of having finally “come out”. Although I was attracted to some of the gay porn actors, I knew that they were well out of my league but there was an expectation that I must be like them in order to be priced as a high commodity within the gay community.
The women remained a constant presence within the films until I was finally prepared to view a total gay porn. Taking that step seems quite harmless and easy but I assure you it was a very long, emotional and insightful one. That one move was symbolic of all the work, contemplation and thought I had placed in myself and in the therapeutic process. To finally let go of the woman porn actors meant that I was ready to give breath to my homo – sexuality; an acknowledgement that was to open up more doors of eventual and progressive exploration. Immersing myself within the fantasy created by an all male cast slowly enabled my mind to venture into male sexuality and I started to own some of that sex within me.
All was not fully positive, though. The male gay porn actors had phenomenal bodies – physiques that seemed even more muscular, lean and toned than the bodies of the heterosexual men I had seen in the straight porn. Their bodies intimidated me even more since these men were gay and I felt more a part of their community. My body did not measure up to theirs in so many ways, how was I then to be considered sexually appealing and attractive in the gay sphere. Were other gay men going to expect me to have a similar build? Media fantasy was slowly meshing into my vulnerable reality and the combination was deteriorating the esteem of having finally “come out”. Although I was attracted to some of the gay porn actors, I knew that they were well out of my league but there was an expectation that I must be like them in order to be priced as a high commodity within the gay community.
Monday, September 1, 2008
CHEWING AND SPITTING - RESURFACED
With the start of another academic year, I find myself full of nerves, excitement, anxiety and let's not forget, fear. My mind seems to race in so many directions that I get lost in a surreal existence - one that borders between the present and a projected gloomy future. I mention this because the feelings directly affect my body image and my intake of food. The mesh of emotions makes me turn to the sweets. As described in previous entries, I am eating more sweets and certainly chewing and spitting a lot more than I was doing a month ago. Although there is a load of guilt associated with practicing this behavior, I also see it as a familiar comfort I turn to in order to gain some sense of equilibrium. I have spoken to my therapist about this and we both agree that the behavior has prominently resurfaced during this time in my life because of the emotional pressures surging from my academic ponderings. I have so many misgivings about my pursuit of phd. Some are based in reality and follow a course that has conventional logic. The other apprehensions are steeped more in traditional fears of success, negative empowerment and a belief that I am pursuing something that holds little value - except for the aggrandizing of an esteem that should find worth only in self-love. My therapist is trying to make me understand that esteems can be more complex and that restricting my esteem to one source to fulfill a sense of wholeness can be quite impossible - most especially when measured against my background. I am really trying to keep this mind and I suppose I do when I give myself permission to eat some of the cakes while spitting the rest out.
This is also coming at a time when my gym has closed for a few days. I am able to exercise at the park but I miss the intensity that the gym's equipment provides. I am caught in a quandary of realizing that I need the rest from the gym but also feel the guilt of not exercising and being somewhat okay with that. These little advances bring a lot of emotional fury, which I try to tolerate as best I can.
This is also coming at a time when my gym has closed for a few days. I am able to exercise at the park but I miss the intensity that the gym's equipment provides. I am caught in a quandary of realizing that I need the rest from the gym but also feel the guilt of not exercising and being somewhat okay with that. These little advances bring a lot of emotional fury, which I try to tolerate as best I can.
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