A disturbance in the force....

Well, everybody, long time no talk.  Life hasn't been very eventful, I'm sad to say.  The coffee battle is going pretty well though! Go me! I've only been drinking a cup of decaf a day.  And I think I've decided I'm going to let my hair grow.  I think its time I let myself be a girl for a change.  Maybe I don't have to hide behind this distorted identity anymore? For so long I've defined myself by my short hair, I think I'm ready to make a change! Well, it's going to be a looooong journey!

Nothing too insightful tonight...

But I'm trying something new tonight for my soothing nighttime drink! I'm hoping it hits the spot and helps with my cold!

Mmmm yummy

Good for thought:

Dear Me

Dear me...well I thought I would write you a little note to tell you I forgive you.
You aren't the same you, I know.
You've been dying inside and hating yourself even now.
But you aren't all that you think you are.
You are so much more.
Stop holding yourself back
Stop holding a grudge against the mirror.
Its always going to show the same thing
No matter how long you stare.
Live again, I dare you.
The past was then
We all know it can't be undone
So why try? Because you're always going to fail.
Promise me this, Me.
You'll lower the bar, just a little bit
You'll give yourself room to breathe, if not just a little bit.
Dear me,
I just want you to know
Everything you think
Everything you feel
It's all okay
And even if it wasn't
That would be okay too.
I promise you this, here and now
It's not wrong to move on
It's not wrong to forgive, just please don't forget.
And don't forget that you've been forgiven.
If you only hear one thing from me, Me
Let it be this:
The only one unforgiving is you.
God did it, so you can too.

Gonna share a smile today

Found this in the bathroom at school, and thought it was a great thing to pass along!

A little off topic

Well I'm laying here trying to take a nap but my brain won't stop running....today's lesson at church has me going a mile a minute. Our fathers love....well, um, what exactly is that? I want so bad to give it all up and surrender into his fatherly arms, but well, to put it gently, I have never had very good results when I do that. I know he will never let me down, but the thought makes me apprehensive. And then there is the whole.....forgive others and care about those who have hurt you. Gosh, that one is an uphill battle. I keep thinking about "the other guy" and how much I hate him. I don't want to, I want to be free of that hate and that anger but at the same time, it makes me feel victorious over him, like yeah, he used me and left me to pick up the pieces, but I have the last laugh now. Except....I don't, do I? I know hatred is like an ulcer slowly eating away at the soul, I know it's a poison, but I feel....content in it. Powerful almost. Gosh that is so wrong, I don't want to be that vengeful person, vengeance isn't mine anyway. So I keep those wrong, nasty things to myself, and I think that if I'm nice enough, if I smile enough, if I'm perfect enough, it will make up for what I did, and how terrible I feel about it all. Oh I know, it's just so wrong. God help me with that. I don't want to feel a demand for perfection, but I can't help it...if I'm perfect, no one will see the truth. Me: the vengeful ex-Mormon cheater. Geez, maybe I should be in therapy. :p. I'm going to sleep now. Thanks for listening

Well well well...what do we have here?

Why is is that sometimes the simplest, most unlikely suggestion is the right answer all along? Why is it that an insignificant plight can wreak detrimental consequences?  Coffee.  I love it.  I don't think I bleed blood, I bleed coffee.  For months now I've been agonizing (whining) over this battle with picking.  Sometimes I just wanted to scream about it!  I hated it, but I loved my coffee. My day went something like this:

Wake up at 6:45, shower, get ready for school, make coffee.

Out the door at 7:30, sipping on coffee.

Get to work at 8:00, settle in, sip my coffee, pick at something.

Go to class, finish up my coffee.

Lunchtime, 11:20, find another cup of coffee somewhere, go to next class.

Sit in second class, finish off my coffee and pick at something.

Head to work without any coffee.  Pick at a lot of somethings.

Go home at 16:30, make a cup of coffee, pick at something.

Put Sam to bed around 20:00, watch TV, sip some coffee, pick at something.

Go to bed, dream about coffee.

OK, just kidding about that last part. (Partly) Here is the irony, you ready? Irony: the coffee was the trigger.  Granted, not the underlying cause of the problem, but...I guess it could be best described as the stimulant.  So this begged me to research a little further.  I was not going to blindly accept this depressing phenomenon, I am a Social Work major after all, and I don't always take things at face value.  The SVSU Journal database allowed me to do whatever prying my little heart desired.  What I found, I can't honestly say surprised me.

Association between ADORA2A and DRD2 Polymorphisms and Caffeine-Induced Anxiety

"Caffeine is the most widely used psychoactive substance in the world. In the United States, approximately 61% of the population consume caffeine daily (Dews et al, 1999). The mild psychomotor stimulant effects of caffeine, such as increases in alertness and arousal, are presumed to be the basis for its widespread use. However, at high doses, or in some individuals at moderate doses, caffeine produces anxiety and dysphoria. In particular, some people are sensitive to the anxiogenic effects of caffeine, perhaps because of polymorphisms in the genes that encode receptors where the drug acts. Thus, functional polymorphisms in genes relating to the central actions of caffeine may be related to anxiogenic responses to caffeine."  (Emma Childs, Christa Hohoff, Jurgen Deckert, Ke Xu, Judith Badner, & Harriet De Witt, 2008.)

Considering my above listed schedule, I have classified myself in the "high doses" category of caffeine use! Oh boy, whatever will I do now? Maybe these people are just crazy? Doubtful.  I guess the question is, do I have this gene they are talking about here? No way to know really, but I do know that I will be cutting back (when my lovely husband will let me) on my caffeine intake in the future.  In fact, I might take as bold of a step as to drink decaf!!  OK, so that is a little extreme, but we're talking about my mental health here, remember?  Well faithful reader, if you're out there, I hope you have learned something today! I have! It's not just a rumor or something my hubby and therapist have agreed on, it is actually a statistically significant (learned that definition and how to come to it in my Statistics class today.) result! So it's time to make a change....

P.S. Sorry about the font change and the white highlight....I've been trying to twenty minutes to make it go away, and I eventually just gave up!!!  And do you like my progress????

Day 3? Or is it 87?

OK, so I forgot to have my coffee the other day, and my hubby noticed I was hardly picking at all.  So he, being the sweet little brainiac he is, suggests, or rather, tells me, to stop drinking caffeine.   I say, coffee, or caffeine all together? *please just say coffee*.  Both, he informs me.  No joke, my heart started racing at the thought.  No coffee?  Is this man insane? Does he want me to go postal or something? How can this possibly end well? Literally, panic was starting to set in at the mere thought of parting with my beloved morning (afternoon/evening/before bed) cup of Heaven.  "Liz," he said, "I think you have a serious problem."  Yeah, well he would know, he's been married to me for four years now, I guess he knows me better than anyone else possibly could.  Soooooo, maybe he's right.  Needless, to say, we are on day 3, and though exhausted, I feel perfectly fine.  And my face is showing improvement as well!  Score one for the Hubster.

Ladies and gentlemen, the results speak for themselves!

Oh, and speaking of results, I went off and got the tattoo I was talking about the other day.This battle with picking and some of my weird OCD things have been controlling me for a long time. When I came across this verse, I just knew I wanted it close to my heart. I couldn't literally put it on my heart, so I put it on me. Whenever my hand reaches to my face to pick at something, this verse hits me in the face. It's a constant reminder that God has given me a sound mind, I do not need to be afraid of anything. It's a symbol that the battle has already been won, and I do not have to fear! I have the power, and I'm never going to forget it.

Thinking about things...on a cellular level

Ok so I'm in a human biology class this semester, and the first few weeks, although really boring, have also had a few hidden gems.  I'm willing to bet that I'm the only one in my class who has thought about science outside of our two our window of scholarly enlightenment. OK, I'm sure you're wondering, where is this girl going with this?  Well stay with me here.  When we look at our bodies, what do we see? Hair, eyes, skin, nails, freckles, acne? It's hard to remember that we are so much more than that.  The funny thing is, I'm not speaking metaphorically, or even spiritually, I am speaking literally here.  We are more than those things, we are trillions and trillions of little miracles.  The human cell performs mitosis thousands of times every day.  Without us even knowing what is going on, our body is healing itself...on a cellular level!  Too small to be seen by the human eye, our cells run everything.  A liver cell belongs in the liver, it operates there.  A liver cell can't go into the eye, or the skin, it just wouldn't work like that.  It boggles my mind that even though our brain controls almost all of our bodily functions that allow us to live, these tiny, microscopic fragments of ourselves are operating completely separated, yet for the same purpose, of each other.   

So what, you wonder?  How does that apply to me and why am I writing about cells? I admit, it's probably kind of weird, but stick with me here...so now that I have this visual in my head:

I can't help but think that every time I pick at something, this microscopic cell is destroyed, or damaged, or has to start over again.  Maybe it's dumb, but I feel like, knowing that these little things are the building blocks of my life, it's almost as though I'm destroying a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of me every time I do something to myself.  And it's not like this little thing is just some waste of space, this little thing is what makes me physically me! Are you following? Or did I totally lose you? When I pick at myself, yes it's only skin deep, but when you're microscopic, that's not that small! 

My Little Twilight Zone

I want to try to blog regularly, so I can get my thoughts out in some productive way, but sometimes it feels like....I don't know, like I have no thoughts.  I've noticed that when I get going on one of my picking sprees, I go blank.  It's like my mind is in a trance and I get lost in the moment.  Or the hour, or however long it is at the time.  It's like I sign out of life, and trap myself in this little bubble where nothing can hurt me. I am invincible at that moment, because I'm not really there. My mind is just lost somewhere in space. Maybe that's what it is?  Kind of a dumb form of self preservation, huh?  Hurt myself little bits at a time to shield myself from the bigger hurts?  Except nothing really hurts right now, so why do I still do it? It's like I'm hypnotized.  I'll be in my stats class trying to pay attention, and the harder I try to focus, the more I find my hands wandering to one of my little spots of temptation.  Once I find it, I'm flooded with relief, and my mind can slow down and focus on the lecture.  Everything else is gone at that instant, and I am only in ONE place.  

Gosh it would have been nice to be in one place when I was growing up. My parents, they did their best, I know my mom did. She didn't want to ship me off every weekend to a different house, a different family, a different set of rules, a different set of expectations.  My heart aches for her.  Saying goodbye and knowing where we were headed off to every Friday.  I don't know how she handled that, and I love her for it, for being strong enough.  So why am I not strong enough? Why do I still have to escape into this nothingness?  I don't want to hide there, not anymore.  The sound of my little girls' voice echoes in my head, "I'm a big girl!" Maybe that's a philosophy I need to adopt.  That was then, this is now, there's nothing to hide from but memories, and I control my memories, they don't control me, right? 

In the book Bondage Breaker, he talks about how our dark memories only have as much power as we give them.  We will only live life the way we think we are supposed to live it.  Geez, I guess I need a drastic overhaul.  I guess Jason Castro says it best....

"This is only a mountain."

Bondage Breaker Prayers

Neil Anderson on his book....