Last night I dreamt two boys, my son and a friend’s son, had painted my stairs with clay-colored shit. On close examination, it wasn’t shit at all, but mud they’d dug out of the water-creek area centered at the heart of our house, the outside elements inside, below the stairs. There were shovels there; they’d been digging for water in fun, until they were scolded by my friend, the one boy’s mother, for spreading shit inside the house. She had climbed down and brought up a clump in her hand, smelled it and insisted it was crap. I, then, knowing this to be false, proceeded to the site of the wet muddy bank and scooped up my own lump. I held it to my face, with only a touch of doubt, and inhaled deeply. It was dirt. I was certain. Wet dirt. “It’s not shit,” I insisted, a bit irritated, but thankful feces were not smeared across my carpeted steps; but my friend, the son’s mother, she insisted it was shit. And that was that. The last words spoken: Shit.

I think my angels are telling me something. It’s actually quite clear. Where I am at right now, currently, feels like shit, looks like shit, and even, quite frankly, when I first wake up, tastes like shit; but a part of me, the analytical and hope-filled part, she knows it is just all mud, and like all mud, this too will be swept up in the rain, cleansed and removed.

This is all coming about, this feeling of “shit” because of my hormones and that “time of the month,” aka
“Hell.”

I have gained weight. The weight gain could be the result of the reduction of thyroid pill, or my binge eating from PMS, or reduced walking…… or just the cold winter season. Regardless, bodily changes freak me out. Really do, to the point I don’t want to wear nice clothes and I don’t want to leave the house.

Unless of course I deem the changes positive.

And it makes no difference how often someone reassures me I am still pretty or enough, or beautiful on the inside. It just doesn’t. I get comfortable when I weigh less. Not super skinny, just enough skinny so the fat doesn’t disgust me.

Now, other people, like my friends, if they gain a little weight, I don’t care! It’s so unfair. I really don’t care if they are ten pounds heavier or one hundred, as long as they are healthy and happy. They are lovely no matter what. (sidebar: In all honesty, I have to say with boyfriends in the past and in considering my husband’s weight gain or weight loss, I can be bothered, because I see that person daily and….clearing throat….naked.) And I mean that. Some people even look better with a little more weight. Especially as the female face ages and grows more gaunt. But for me I have a double-standard. I must be a certain weight or I am deemed “not enough.”

Truth be told, last I prayed, I wished to go head-to-head with my bodily issues and with my hang ups on appearance. To face the demons. So here it is! The shit, at least appearance of shit, being dug up and hitting not only the fan, but the stairs leading to advancement and a higher place…hmmmmmm Tricky angels I have.

I must be careful what I pray for. I must. I must!.

When I gain weight, I wig. I spazzzzz. I obsess. My “fatness” becomes my fixation.

For me, it feels like my weight is one of the few things in this world I can find familiarity in; something that doesn’t shift and vary with each ticking second.

I hate being me right now.. I would pay someone to take me ahead five years, preferably un-aged, to menopause. Don’t age my children though; I don’t want to miss out. I just can’t stand these spikes in emotions.

I blame some of this on the changes of hormones since I stopped the natural pig hormone for thyroid issues. The pig hormone, I concluded after much research, was causing peaks of progesterone and then rapid drops which lead to the muscles in my tongue responding while I slept, which led to waking up with sore throats, which led to a head cold every month for two days before my period. And cystic acne (which I never had before) caused by the imbalance of other hormones.

Even though I quoted 50 other people whom had cited cystic acne after starting thyroid meds, my natural path didn’t believe me; however, my gynecologist did. And I have been doing this ping-pong battle of rights and wrongs in my head for seven weeks. “Stop the thyroid pill for six months, and then get retested” ……words served by gynecologist. “Cut the pill in half”… words served by natural path doctor.
I stopped. All symptoms seized. Weight came on quicker.

Well I have grown not to trust my natural path doctor. Even though I adore her and have trusted her for the last two years.

She had me at thyroid levels well enough left alone and then upped the dose in August to decrease my levels more. And as a result I was in a state of hyper-thyroid behavior for months, e.g., hair falling out, heart beating fast, rapid thoughts, increased OCD and need to process, and not gaining weight, no matter what I ate.

Now, my body is confused, as I’ve stopped, or not so much confused, but readjusting, and the equilibrium they are finding is not to my liking. I hate feeling tightness around my waist. And I hate disliking my image, an image I already was uncomfortable with, but slowly getting used to before I began to change…again.

I do not like the uncertainty of the world. I can’t deal with it at times. I can’t deal with anything right now: no noise, no decisions, no nothing; and this is likely why I have been housebound for three days, entirely on the couch or at my dining room table, fixated on organizing my blog and talking to others, fixating on escaping who I am.

I don’t get it, and I don’t get me; and I don’t like how hormones happenings can change ME. I dislike health issues; they are my major tipping point, my trigger, a fear-based swampland. I don’t do well with anything related to sickness. But even in the fowl, muddy-mood I am in, I do recognize my fear of health issues has in the last two months decreased ten-fold…a miracle in itself.

Which leads me to my angels. I can feel them still, sitting back and watching me go through this mucky mud. I know they are there. I know this is necessary for whatever reason. But it doesn’t stop me from wanting to turn them into visible, little fairies that I can stomp on for pleasure.

They get that. They do. And I think I can hear them laughing at the joke, and even giggling in relief they don’t have to be human. But I do. And it sucks. It stinks like shit even though I know it “ain’t.” And that’s the hell of it: Knowing it’s passing mud, but feeling and believing it’s shit that sticks.

I don’t know what to do except to write it out, to pound it out, and hope that someone out there is touched and healed, or at least relieved in some way. Perhaps in the knowing that as hard as I try, as much as I do, as strong as my faith is, that sometimes through it all, all I see is shit.