A pregnancy straight of the exorcist.

So i finally mustered up the backbone to tell my mother of the life growing in me and to my surprise, she was ecstatic.
I shouldn't have been shocked. She needs an adoring audience and i had outgrown that particular habit.
Don't get me wrong. She loves him, truly. But she always has and always will have ulterior motives for EVERYTHING.

Back on subject, as soon as It really sunk it, I really didn't know how to feel. I had tried to be excited but deep down I just knew I was going to go through the same nightmare as before. I was going to have to walk around with a dead baby inside my body an try to feel anything less than completely suicidal.
I waddled through my pregnancy completely mentally checked out. I would feign excitement but I walked, hands clasped, with dread. I took a momentous amount of pregnant belly photographs. I hadn't done that with Gage and I thought "I'll have something to remember this one by."
The physical aspects of the pregnacy were positively horrendous. I vomited constantly. The doctors tried every anti yakking concoction known to man.
Nothing helped.
Even as a big girl, it still wasn't normal to lose 30 pounds in 3 months of my first trimester. It also wasn't normal that one day i would have the belly of a 8 month pregnant woman and the next I would be back to normal. My friends jokingly called him "the phantom baby". My right leg would also swell to ridiculous proportions. The doctors had no way of explaining it. I spent the majority of my pregnancy in the hospital. I had bled alot. My blood pressure was sky high. And I was sick as fuck.

I knew he was dead or dying.
I recall being delerious on pain medication once, sternly glaring at the doctor and my mother saying "If it dies, take it out right away. I'm not waiting."

I felt him moving constantly. I waited for it to stop suddenly. At every ultrasound i would stare at the screen and ask questions like "Is his head shaped normally?" And "is there anything wrong with him that you can see?"

One day at the hospital my blood pressure suddenly shot to double over stroke requirements and wouldn't go down with medication. It was 3 months before my due date and we had to get the baby out.

Someone had to live through it.

Another life growing within a body of sin.

Today has been a bit of a rageful day in my mind.  Emotions I can't explain clawing at me from the inside.  Any little ounce of frustration at work has sent me into fits of clenched fists and irritation.  I've tried breathing it out but I need to find a way to calm down.

Well back onto my train of thought..

After the loss of Gage, I found it hard to focus.  I spoke almost nothing.  I drank almost a fifth of liquor  a day.  I worked no job, had few friends, and no one really knew how to speak with me about this tragedy.  I was in so much internal pain that I wanted to be outside of myself.  The only way I could touch that rendition was to drink until I passed out, wake up, and repeat.

I ate one tuna fish sandwich a day.
I lost weight yet looked unhealthy.

I decided to get a job for the sole purpose of funding my alcoholism.
I started at walmart overnight stocking shelves.
It sucked.  It was hard work but I slowly got used to it.  And I had the added perc of being one of the prettiest girls there.  Because I have all of my teeth.

With slim pickins at walmart I chose a severely alcoholic 38 year old loser that lived at home with his mom and had severe mental issues.

I chose the path to booze.
I moved in with him and his mother shortly after we started hooking up.  Right away we were fighting. After about 6 months I caught him shooting meth into his arm and threw my shit in the car.
I headed right back to mama's.
About 4 weeks into my return home I had a horrific thought.
When was my last period?

I ignored this notion for about 2 more weeks but I consciously stopped drinking cold turkey.  I got sweats and felt terrible constantly but that slowly waned.  I finally got up the courage and bought one of those $1 pregnancy tests from a local grocery store.

I took the test and it said negative.  To hide the evidence from my mother I stuck the tiny little stick in my pocket and went about my day.  Later on that night as I was taking off my blue jeans I heard the tick of plastic against the floorboards of my bedroom.  I continued to get dressed for bed and quickly picked up the trash and walked outside to throw it in the dumpster.
Absently I just glanced at the results to celebrate a small victory.
I didn't want to be pregnant.  It was horrible, it hurt, and I would probably kill it with my body just as I had done Gage.
I squinted at the result window to make out that singular negative line in the harsh light of a street lamp.  To my shock suddenly there appeared a line crossing over it, positive.

I stood for a moment, stock still and staring in confusion. I bit my lip and raced in my mind for a simple explanation.  That something in the laundry detergent in my jeans had caused a false negative.  That it was a fucked up test.
All I could really make out clearly in this jumble of thoughts was "How could something that costs a buck determine my future?"

I didn't go back in the house. I didn't think.  I walked to walgreens and bought 3 pregnancy tests.  Different brands.

I went home and drank glass after glass of water, just staring at the test on the counter waiting for the result to go back to negative.
I took the first test.
Positive.
I took the second test.
Positive.
I took the third.
If you guessed positive then you would be RIGHT!

I just walked into my bedroom and went right to sleep.

The next morning I awoke to a line of positive pregnancy tests on my dresser and more thoughts in my head than I could deal with.
The main thought at that time was "He's going to die. Just like Gage."\

My poor child's death, and the birth of a worsened me.

I went to the appointment alone.

I read diligently in "What to Expect When You're Expecting" so when Gage's active manner suddenly fell flat I recalled a passage saying not to panic, that sometimes the baby just moves when they want to.

During the ultrasound I stared at the unintelligible blob on the screen with a silly smile.  Recalling just a few days before picking up that onesie that said "Mommy's little jelly bean".  I didn't notice the alarmed look on the ultrasound tech's face, I didn't notice her smashing the "record" button down, or the look or pity as she wiped the gel from my belly.  I just looked at the baby in my tummy on the screen and loved him with all that I had.

I could love him.  And that was my world.

After returning to the sterilized smell of the examining room I sat blissfully ignorant on a paper scrunched table waiting for the doctor.  He walked in with the darkest look of pity a person could possess.
I still smiled.

He put his hand on my shoulder and said "I'm so sorry, Ms. Wire"
I only regarded him with a look of smiling confusion.  In my mind I thought "Sorry for what?"

He then began to explain to me one of the horrific mysteries of the body.  Something called a missed miscarriage.

Gage had been dead in my body for weeks.  His heart had stopped beating altogether.  He stopped growing. He stopped thriving.
My body and mind had starved so much for the pregnancy that it refused to let it go.

He scheduled an appointment for a vaginal ultrasound right away.
I believe I had a thought following his words. I think that I just set a row of denial in my head a mile wide and refused his "medical" news.

My mother took me to the ultrasound. Her face grim.  After a short wait my feet were in stirrups and they had begun.  My mind clung to Gage so tightly that through THIS ultrasound I could make out the gentle slopes of chubby cheeks and curled eyelashes.  I just stared in love again.  I was told that I was I staring at so preciously was a dead baby.  Malformed and under grown, decaying within my body.
The soonest appointment would be in 3 days, I recalled hearing someone mumble to my mother.  I made it a maybe ten quick and determined steps before I hit my knees with the realization.

My mother could understand an ounce of my pain, as she had had a traditional miscarriage with twins when I was 16.  She gathered me from the floor and put me in the car.  I spent three days in zombie mode. Not eating, not drinking only sleeping and clutching my belly, begging him to move.

I went into the D and C appointment comatose without emotion.  Somewhere in my mind I was convinced that they would get in there and find a living normal healthy child ready to be placed in my arms when I awoke.

I awoke to a room with my mother's pitying face and empty arms.  My heart shattered.
I screamed and cried until I fell asleep exhausted.

For the next several years and a few times to this day I've had a reoccurring dream.  I'm standing looking at myself.  My second self is naked and largely pregnant. standing before a mirror.  She caresses her swollen belly and smiles.  She admires her adorable pregnant body for a while but then the bottom of her belly takes on a grey green hue.  And with no reaction from her, its obvious that her flesh is rotting away.  It degrades all the while she is smiling and admiring until a grey and swollen baby arm, mangled and deformed flops out of the side of her rotting stomach and I awake.  I'm covered in sweat and shaking. I'm nauseated and crying.
It is an unimaginable pain. It is something I cannot even describe.

It was another hell.

Captain Asshole of the Biggest Mistake Brigade and the painful world he created.

So shorty after my 18th birthday I got the hell out of there.  I got my own apartment and was working a shit job at KFC.  And going to community college between highs.

I started hooking up regularly with a guy who then staked a claim.

Lets call him Captain Asshole of the Biggest Mistake Brigade, or CA for short.

For the next two years I went through things that would make a POW cringe.  And I don't mean he just hit me.  Alot of chicks go through abusive relationships and get off easy by just getting the shit kicked out of them a few times.  This man spent the first 6 months putting me into some moronic hypnotism spell.  He cajoled and convinced me that as hideous and fat as I was that I was LUCKY to have him.  That he would even spend his time on me.  

He never was sweet to me.  He never tricked me into being with him.  It was just shitty, then it became outrageous.  All this time with people around me and words swirling in my mind had me convinced.

I was fat. I was ugly. I was worthless. and I deserved to be punished.

Shortly after our 4 month mark we got into a minor argument, (I don't really remember it but I assume it was his outrageous jealousy)  He demanded that I drop out of school and quit my job.  I refused.

He grabbed my neck and choked me.

It was the first time in my life (other than bouts of court intercepted child abuse by my mother), that I had ever been put into a position that I literally could not defend myself.

I was panicked, clawing at his hands and punching his chest, I tried everything to free myself. But the world swirled and blackened and the only thing that would loosen his grip was my unconsciousness.  I awoke to find him in a heap next to me sobbing his "I'm sorrys"  

I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to say.  I was LUCKY to have him. Noone else would have me.  He SAID he loved me.  Maybe it was just a moment of rage. 

And then I came upon the single driving most ignorant thought that has ever and commonly does cross an abused woman's mind.   

It was my fault.

I allowed him to put his sobbing head into my lap and I told him that it was alright.

I quit my job and dropped out of school.

In the months to come he became more involved in something from his past that I would NEVER do.  

Meth.

This made him into a completely psychotic rageful lunatic. And I just stayed.  In all honestly, I really didn't have anywhere else to go.  No friends that were around. A distant chilly feeling I still retained for my mother, who had since moved onto a thieving psycho boyfriend.

I became a punching bag.  He was a little mad, slap.  He was really mad, choke, punch.  He called me "Cunt ass bitch" in place of my name.  I rarely spoke, lost 30 pounds in the course of 4 months, and I stayed zoned out of pills to numb the pain.  

I had lost all ounces of me and began just watching from the outside.   He would beat the hell out of that girl and demand she pull her bruised body from the ground and cook dinner.  He was 6 foot 3 and 300 pounds of muscle.  

He cheated on her. But that was almost a feeling of mercy.  He would take what he wanted even if she could hardly bend her bruised ribs to accommodate, even if she had an eye swollen shut.  

Then a special kind of hell fell over me.  I became pregnant.  I was horrified.  I cried all of those tears that I had kept buried inside myself. The ones I would NEVER show him in weakness.

I was bringing an innocent child into my hell. And that made me hate me more.

With news of my pregnancy CA changed completely.  And much like my biological father came to ignore my presence completely.  The only words I heard him direct toward me were to make fun of how weak i was when morning sickness got the best of me.

And the most painful part of this story comes to now.  One night when I was nearing the marker of 6 months into my pregnancy with a baby boy I had planned to name Gage, we had a slight argument. I remember exactly what it was about.  He thought I was looking at one of his friends.  He suspected retaliation from the news that he had recently cheated on me with a 13 year old girl.

I lowered my head and prayed he wouldn't hit me.  He didn't.

He pushed me. And I spun and hit a plate glass window and went right out of it.  It cut my arms, and legs, and my face but not my precious tummy.  

None I even suspected were needed for stitches.

But that was enough for me.  I waited for a sneaky moment and called my mother for rescuing. I knew she would allow it if It made her out to be my hero in other's eyes.

She came and got me.

A month later at a regular OB appointment I received some painful news....

Becoming the violent rage monster, as requested.

Now during my junior year of high school I came about a major psychological break.  I went from being this "Say what you wanna, I don't give a damn" to "Fuck with me and I'll tear you to pieces,"  all in one instant.

A girl I went to school with had singled me out for bullying. In that I mean she called me fat, shot spit wads into my hair and spread rumors of sluttitude throughout the school. (In a class of 30 students, it doesn't take long from something to go from awful to gut wrenchingly mortifying.)  One day after school, all of our school kids went to the regular hang out until returning home,  our towns ONLY gas station.

Spontaneously I decided to confront my accuser and stand my own ground.  She was a below average intelligence 17 year old with a child and I felt had no right to stand on a soapbox and preach my (false) sins to the masses.

I had, at some point, decided that this would become physical, but that I would make her get physical first. I did what I do. I talked mad shit until she swung at me.  That was good enough.  I proceeded to use her to set an example for all that chose to victimize me, to humiliate me, and to hurt me.

I hurt her back.
I beat that poor girl's face until my brother pulled me off of her.
I had a tiny scratch on my face and her face looked like raw hamburger.  She, of course, called the police on  me.  When they got there, the entire school was there, and all witness statements showed her as the aggressor so I never came upon and troubles with the law at this point.
The next day at school, students clapped as I entered the hall.  I felt like a champion.
In the weeks to follow I realized my mistake.  No one liked me more, no one wanted to be friends with me.  People were simply afraid of me.

I was the fat girl that beat the shit out of the ugly girl.
Kids are cruel but I was transformed into something else.

I was violent and rage filled.
I had become the monster the world had bred me to be.
And I didn't mind at all.  

Backroad Parties, Sex, and Personal Demons.

So shortly after I returned home to this debacle, My mother decided that that would be the best time to make permanent ties to this man and they got married.  The night she told me that they were engaged I took an entire bottle of Tylenol PMs, more as a threat than an actual attempt.
My mother never took me to the hospital.  Only told me to sleep them off.
She was a different person to me.
No longer did I see her as this woman that loved me unconditionally, that was there to protect me and guard me from harm.  I realized at that moment that she wasn't a singular individual. That she needed someone to need her.  Like a leech, she needed to gain her nourishment from the suffering of others. And to this day I see that this is true.  I'm still close with my mother but I no longer view her as such and I no longer rely on her for the basic things that should be provided from a mother.  Love, Caring, and Protection.
She simply never had them to give.

So after the couple had tied the knot, I continued living in fear. I slept with a knife under my pillow, avoided situations where I would be alone with him and began sneaking in his belongings when noone was around so that I could break shit.
I HATED him. More than my biological father. I preferred someone to show me an uncaring, nonchalance than direct intention to break me down as a person.
I had never been kissed, never had a boyfriend and He had taken those firsts from me for the rest of my life.

By the time I was 14 I had become deeply involved in drinking and pills.  I partied with older teens and drank until until I threw up.  But I was still terrified of anything sexual. I maintained my virginity until 17 when I simply threw it away on some guy that I can't picture in my head.  He was 28.  I only remember the vague squeaking of the truck bed and how sweaty I felt.

It was stupid.

I then proceeded after 17 to push myself into a psychological demolishon derby.  Ramming useless, abusive substances into my body until I self destructed, rise from the ashes and repeat.  I never really "dated" but I used my body as a means to manipulate.  I began trying to substitute sex for feelings. Although I found myself completely unavailable to care for anyone.  I never cared that everyone always said I would lose a boy's respect for putting out. I didn't want their respect.  I don't know what I really wanted.
All I know is that I never got it.

Somewhere between 15 and 16 I had been bouncing around different therapists and psychiatric drugs with horrible side effects until I settled on something I believe was called Trileptal.

This shit made me fantastically high. I'd never felt so high before and I loved it.  One night, armed with a new bottle of said pills, I went over to my best friends house.  My mother called me and told me in her most manipulative voice that she would be at her lover's house and to tell my stepdad that I was with her.

The thoughts hit my mind in rapid succession.  When I was in pain, It was fine, He could stay.  But when she felt underloved, she could sacrifice their bond.
Armed with pills and an uncontrollable rage I began popping those pills into my mouth like they were the magic cure-all.  I soon realized that I had taken the last one and I went to lie down in the floor of my friends living room to talk to her sister.

All of a sudden it was as if someone was dripping black paint on my eyes.  My high went away.  I was blinded.

Then next thing I remember I was waking up in ICU.  I had called my mother and she and her lover had driven me to the hospital where all attempts to flush my stomach out had failed.  They had to pump it, while I was unconscious.  When I awoke I had to deal with a swarm of well concerned nurses telling me that life was worth living.  I could look their sweet faces and say "I just wanted to get high."  I don't remember my mother being there at all.

Soon after, she got caught.  Her husband left.  I was 16 years old and she spent every moment of her free time with her new guy.  He was 23, a roaring alcoholic, but I didn't care.  He would buy me booze, pot, and cigarettes.  I jumped in mom's spare car and taught myself to drive. My best friend helped me.  I helped my brother with his homework, got my first job, and spent my nights spiraling into a world of backroad parties, sex, and personal demons.

The making of me: beginnings

So I've decided to tell about myself i help me beat down the emotional cobwebs.

I'll start at the start. Well as far toward the beginning that I know of or remember. I have a psychological block that forbades me to remember much before like 9th grade.
I was born in Virginia Beach, the second child to a self esteem deficient redneck gal and a overly aggressive mental case in the navy.
I don't recall much of anything about my childhood aside from on overwhelming feeling that I wasn't really "wanted" by my father and that I was overly "needed" by my mother.
Flash forward a dormant blackened battlefield of memories that my mother recalls as the end of an abusive marriage to a psychotic chauvinist. I'm ten years old, swollenly pudgy already with a deeply imbedded sense of hopelessness. I remember laying in my bed during a summer day and thinking "I wish I could just not be alive". At this point id become accustomed to watching my brother open birthday and christmas gifts mailed to him by our father. Without anything or something obviously thrown in last minute to even make notice of my existence.
And although she had no need to, my mother would tirade around bringing notice to my pain to fuel hatred toward him. I'd grown into a child with early knowledge of what an alcoholic is and I'd hated him from birth. But I still craved, as children do, any ounce of approval.
Throughout my life I'd adored my mother. But the summer after i turned 13, a new emotion developed toward her that I've never been able to put my finger on.
She was working for a county police department as a dispatcher. My brother was in his room, deftly pounding some video game's controller, lost blissfully in some fantasy world.
Now when I was 8 years old my mother picked up an old flame to serve as a stand in father. They had been together but had not yet married. He was the only man I'd ever viewed as a father.
On the day I'm speaking of, I was laying on a floor pallet in the living room floor watching tv. He came in and joined me. I'd been close to him for awhile so i didn't feel alarmed until he faced me and made a comment on the cluster of freckles and moles constructing a birthmark on my upper chest. Saying "I bet you have them everywhere.." Long story short, he put his tongue in my mouth and I spent the rest of my night brushing my teeth with comet. Literally.
I recalled a discussion with my mother in the past where I should tell her if anything happened that made me feel scared.
It took a week to get up the courage to talk to her. She did what good mothers do. She sent him packing.
A few times in the next week I'd hear her speaking on the phone quietly. Then unexpectedly she packed me and my brother up and shipped us to Texas with the bio dad for the summer.
That never went well for her and I'd soon called her begging to come home.

You could imagine my surprise when I returned home to find that he was back and i wasn't allowed to talk about it. My mother told me that i had imagined it all. I'd lost faith in her. I knew that I was on my own from then on.

I was the only protector I had.
And that was just the way it was.

A muddy past to be revealed.

I've just spoken with Danny about the blog and he's pointed out a multipurpose in this little public journal.

I plan to use this space in the mass of interwebs as a place to open up. To pull this mask down and share with the strangers and friends, even people that may harbor some negative feelings about me, the place in my mind and memories that I've tried so desperately to hide and smash down within myself.
Here, in this place. I plan to spill not only my thoughts but my struggles and my past.
So to the eyes of those who don't want to trudge through memories so muddy I've nearly smothered, look away.
Through time I will reveal myself, naked (figuratively) to the community of blog readers or to noone at all.
It'll help me understand me.
Hopefully

Worth Viewing

So I've gotten home and as I lay in bed, fresh out of the shower I've realized how much I avoid looking at my body. I mean I come in naked and throw the blanket over myself. I know that I'm not trying to hide from Danny. He's seen me naked and it doesn't seem to bother him. I literally just don't want to look at myself.

I think its probably been like this since i can remember. Photos of me reveal a girl that is constantly holding purses, pillows, bridesmaids bouquets over her tummy. The insecurities blatantly displayed in a lifetime of photographs. And yet instead of taking the steps to a thinner me, I've hidden my still pregnant looking belly with props. I've taken those tricky bitch Facebook pictures by tilting the camera just so and looking up at it to dissipate that hideous double chin. Putting layer upon layer of filters on photos to clear my skin. All the while knowing that life outside of the hiding and the covering revealed how i looked.

Before Danny, I knew right away that if a boy told me I was pretty that he was just trying to get some easy ass. Because i knew I wasn't pretty. I wasn't even pretty on the inside.
But somewhere along the way I've found an endless inner beauty in my heart. I've dealt with my trauma for the most part to learn to empathize with others. To love others.
Knowing this I've decided to dig under the layer of past snack cakes and cheeseburgers, of broken hearts and abusive ex boyfriends and find an outer beauty. To feel beautiful. To feel like I'm not just trapped in a hideous costume of some fat girl.
I need to feel like I'm worth viewing.
Even if i just feel worth of being viewed by myself.

The path to fat.

I've always been fat.

I mean like ever since I could remember I've had people tell me that I'm fat.  In high school that all came to a roaring halt once I set anger in the way and beat some poor girl's face to a pulp. 
I followed the typical fat girl path.  I dated guys that were mean to me, substituted sex for love, and built a high and hard wall of emotional protection to gird off anyone that could potentiality harm me.  I adopted this persona of "I don't give a damn" and lugged it around with me my whole life. (Hell, its still there)

But deep down I've always been the "fat girl."  I've cried while clothes shopping. clutching that pair of jeans to my chest begging the number to move down.  I've swam in t-shirts, (Like that fools anyone).  I've kept the lights off during those times when the clothes fall off.  And the #1 fat girl move....

Drum roll please...  I've accentuated my big boobs to draw attention away from its likewise counterpart, the belly.

Emotionally I've been torn between depression and rage.  I'd stuff it all into a deep dark corner of myself and ignore it.  Then I would console these feelings with a big ass order of fries and some cheesecake.

I'm starting to realize that although I've found a happier part of my life where I feel more fulfilled, I've still got the after affects of 23 years of hatred and anger laying on top of me.

And IT NEEDS TO GO.

I desperately need to love myself and I intend to start now. 

Tawny McFlabbers.

So a little about me, I live in central Arkansas and I run a nonprofit program called Cinderella's Closet.  The program provides a free rental of prom dresses and shoes to area girls that cannot afford them for prom.  I run this program from my TINY home.  I fund everything out of pocket (no government aid).  I have collected, through generous donations, over 400 dress and 200 pairs of shoes.  I have just finished my second prom season with Cinderella's Closet and have sent over 100 girls to prom since starting.

I'm extremely proud of what I've done with the starting the program and donating a large portion of my time and limited funds to it.  I run it for the most part completely solo.  I get help from my fantastic boyfriend and help from some pretty great friends for fundraisers. 

After prom I am EXHAUSTED.  So my wonderful man has planned a simple vaca at a hotel not far from here for some R&R for 4 nights and 5 days starting May 3rd.

I plan on starting my journey to health on May 8th 2013 in real stride.

So far I have been replacing 2 meals a day with a meal replacement shake but I haven't been weighing or checking progress.

So on Vacation I am going to have my last showdown with junk food and then I will begin transforming Tawny Mcflabbers to Tawny Mcfabbers. 

Long term goals for my body.

First off, I discovered this site awhile back and its wonderful.  There are too many women out there that don't have the ability to actually "see" what you look like.  On mybodygallery.com you can input your personal stats (height, weight, shape, etc) and see pictures of other women with those stats. 

I used it today to see a preview of what my body looks like (I will post actual photos this week) and what my long term goal body will look like.

It's going to be a hell of a journey but if I keep my eye on the prize. I KNOW I can get there.

Wanting Less of Me to Love

The first picture in the line is of me and my beautiful son March 2013,  the second is me at my brother's wedding September 2012 and the third is at my mother's wedding reception in May 2012.
Let me start off my saying that I HATE these pictures. I feel so ugly looking at them.  And I think this hate will fuel me to become more motivated to put the damn cheesecake down and get to fixing this unhealthy bullshit.
I have demolished my body. I've used my mental issues and depression to throw those pounds on like I'm stocking up for the winter.  I've smoked and drank and pushed my body into this form and situation as a form of self loathing.
I'm ready to love me for me.  I LOVE my personality. I LOVE my son. I LOVE my heart.
I WANT TO LOVE ALL OF ME......... I just want less to love.