buzzfeed:

Photographer Navid Baraty captures breathtaking cosmic pictures made entirely out of food.

(via buzzfeed)

Further to my last post, it has become apparent that the men I have known/dealt with are incapable of perceiving nuanced emotion, behaving with subtlety or dignity, or even behaving with any clear consistency or goal.

… Yet expect to be treated like very important people. other reactions from me seem to foster a.) complete withdrawal, b.) insistent whining and/or drama or c.) an inconsistent pattern that oscillates between a.) & b.).

LOL good luck with finding your ladyservants losers.

I got thinking recently about why it is that I am pursuing what I am pursuing as a career. Funny how even when you know the motivation for something is steeped in the past by at least 15 years, it is hard to push through the times of pressure and disillusionment to actually complete what it is that you know you are built for.

I didn’t even know what psychology was in high school. It wasn’t offered as a subject and it was certainly not something I was exposed to through an academic culture in my family. As psychologically complex as my family is, including those close to me, I was never recommended to see a psychologist when dealing with varying forms of eating disorder from the ages of 15 to 20. 

I remember vividly experiences with my first boyfriend in my final year of high school. I can say without hesitation that it was the hardest year of my personal development. I dated way out of my age range for a teenager, and I wasn’t the only one of my friends. However, the age gap between me and my boyfriend was wider than the others, and the issues I was dealing with felt much more intense at the time. I was dating someone who was 8 years older than me and this continued for around four years. As I look back - how on earth I continued in that, secretively, I don’t know. My mum didn’t support this choice but she stepped back and allowed me the space to learn and make my own decision.

Things came to a head in that final year of school; I had put on weight, still hated myself and was offered a number of opportunities that I rejected because of this relationship. A number of dreams that I’d had were deferred, and some were never picked up again. I was offered a student exchange to France, academic mentoring and special programs that had always seemed beyond someone like me. I said no because I didn’t think I deserved it; I said no because he took it as a form of rejection.

I went to my year 12 formal. I was unhappy. I had been befriended by a girl who, unbeknownst to me, was romantically interested in my boyfriend and thus wanted a means to meet him. My friends sniggered at her and pointed out to me that they were grinding on the dancefloor in front of my whole year level. I thought it was my fault.

I again thought it was my fault when I spent half my school holidays mentoring younger students on a computer science camp. Nerdy, I know, but I loved it. I enjoyed the chance to be around people who encouraged me academically. I heard, back at school, that that girl had invited my boyfriend to some party so she could sit in his lap while her own boyfriend was elsewhere. I still thought it was my fault.

I started eating less, exercising more. Living on Sustagen. Vomiting what I did eat. I confronted her at school, she denied doing anything and our mutual friends divided. I kept him but things weren’t good. He accused me of cheating on him with the few male friends I had and would call me, threatening to crash his car into a tree because of this. It was untrue but I still believed it was my fault. I reassured him and didn’t ask him too many questions. I tried to behave so he would believe me. I was trying to get through my studies, but for what, I didn’t know. I visited the school counsellor, who said I should pray on it but didn’t make any other comments. I spent most of my year 12 exams high, but was somehow still in the top 10% of the state with my results. I remember being at home, crying, the day my results arrived. A friend visited who didn’t understand why I was still in my relationship. I thought it was all I deserved. 

I opened my results and simultaneously berated myself for not being in the top 5% but also for receiving grades that I didn’t believe I deserved. I was scared, but I didn’t know it at the time, of what I was capable of. The expanse of possibilities was too much for me, almost. I thought I wanted to study law and French. Then I settled on English and Media Studies because I thought I wanted to be a journalist. I started running more, purging more, until I started vomiting blood. No one really knew how much I struggled with the options, and how even options can be a struggle when you don’t think you deserve any of them.

I started uni and I did alright. Other boys were interested in me and my boyfriend was jealous and I spent energy convincing him there was nothing to worry about. I resorted to superficial self-harm to try and show him how bad I felt. Meanwhile, inside of me a pressure was building to get out. I eventually started to allow myself social opportunities when I had previously cut off most of my friends. One of my oldest friends was gang-raped in a dormitory bathroom and called me in tears. I knew she needed me, so we reconnected.

I went to a party where I met a girl. She was an ethereal hippy and I liked her. She started talking to me about how we meet people in life, and shake their hands. Sometimes it takes longer to let go, but we always need to let go at some point. She saw in me that I wanted to get out of my situation but I didn’t know how. I was scared but I thought about what she said, and somewhere between wanting to do the right thing by him, and being desperate to have a life worth living, I told him - “I think we should break up.” He tried to make me jealous by having flirtatious phone conversations in front of me with old girlfriends, or friends that he knew I felt awkward about. He started interacting with a girl online, who later became his girlfriend.

He wasn’t really interested in having the break-up conversation, so things hobbled along. I started to make new friends in my new music store job and realised how trapped I’d felt. I met someone that I developed a bit of a crush on and I realised that maybe other people would be interested in me. At this point I made a decision to spend time with that person and of course, my boyfriend figured out what was going on. He showed up to my house and confronted us. My mum told him to fuck off. He called my house and left voice messages calling me a slut and asking if my mum knew what a horrible person I was. My mum told him to fuck off. With some relief, for me it was finally over. My mum unplugged the phone and I tried to sleep in her bed.

I internalised all of this for a while and was convinced that this abuse was what I deserved. I considered the borderline sexual abuse and thought the same. His mum messaged me and asked why I wasn’t there for him at a time he needed me - he had tried to hang himself but his dad came home, found him and cut him down. I know he blamed me and eventually moved interstate. 

This became the template for my relationships, and I eventually realised its impacts. I decided that I wanted to become a school counsellor or similar, because of the shitstorm that affects people during their teenage years. My experience certainly wasn’t the only one, but I knew it intimately.

So glossing over other things and not detailing my self-analysis and self-monitoring, I decided to learn more. I wanted to capitalise on my sociability and change it from being used in marketing work to something that supported people through difficulty. I was inherently curious about human behaviour and thinking and how people could come learn from unhelpful choices, especially the ones that had been made during adolescence. 

I came to realise that there was something I was good at that felt like a long-term career choice, and didn’t just feel like an academic exercise. So I pursued it and I am still here.