A smallNyA period of time can make a big difference.

OK, so the house purchase is all complete and I am now the lord in my own manner (so to speak).  In the process of leaving my old bank (HSBC) they managed to damage my credit record and use my details without my consent - breaching the Data Protection Act.  They have offered to settle out of court for an amount that pleases me so that is now all tied up and I have finally cancelled my accounts with them and closed that chapter.

So despite the stress of the past few weeks everything has pretty much come back on track so far.  Now the biggest worry that I have is that my decision to paint the bathroom olive green looks like a big mistake.  It was originally sage green and I think that I'll have to stick with that - I just don't like it very much!

On the work front, I had a 7 dayer last week and I've got another next week - that means cash money pounds of overtime.  Probably just as well as it looks like I might not be getting much of a bonus next month.  If you cant get a bonus, get some overtime!  They can't take the overtime away even if the work fucks up on the other aspects.  Overtime is always a safe bet!

Anyway, the project to renovate the bathroom and kitchen in my new place carries on.  Ive re-grouted the bathroom, replaced the shower, replaced the silicone sealant around the bath and sink and repainted all the whitework.  There's still the walls to do - when I can decide a colour - and then its on to the kitchen.

I've already made a start in there too - but mostly with the little bits.  Seeing as I had a tube of silicone open it seemed sensible to do the silicone round the kitchen sink before the tube went off, so that's been done.  The grout on the tiles was fine but a little discoloured so I have freshened that up with some grout reviver and it looks like new.  I've also replaced the shitty carpet remnant that passed for a floor mat in front of the cooker with something a little nicer looking.

I did have a clock lined up to replace the nasty piece of crap that's on the wall right now but the courier has smashed it up - thanks My Hermes...  nicely done!  What did you do to it?  From the looks of the box (and the footprint on it) someone stood on it!  Nice, thanks for that.  Never mind the 'fragile' labels all over it, just tread on it - it'll be alright, some sucker will sign for it anyway...  Doesn't matter really, I'm getting refunded from the seller - the only irritation is that it was an ebay purchase, used.  There's nothing else like it on ebay right now and no way of getting another one.  So the search continues.

Right now the UK is being hit by a massive heatwave - 30+ degrees a day.  For anyone overseas, you may be used to hotter, but here in the UK that's pretty unusual.  The heat is nice, I like it but it is having a detrimental effect on my plants on my balcony, they're looking pretty sick - and in some cases they've been toasted to a frazzle!  Going down the gym is a nightmare as they don't seem to have heard about air-con.  If it's 30 outside, its 40 in there!  How are you meant to work out in that?!  Weights, fine - just about.  But cardio work - in 40 degree heat.  How about NO?!  So the only thing I can do is try to keep control of my eating and compensate for the fact that I am not working out as often as I want to.  I am still managing 2x a week but my eating is slipping a bit.  More precisely, my drinking has crept up again.  The weight loss is still continuing to a degree but I am sure it is not as efficient as it could be.  I need to revisit and regroup.

But right now, I need to give thanks and praise.  Thanks to my family, who have carried me through from down here on earth.  Thanks to God, who has moved mountains and guided me from on high.  Somehow the seas have parted and I have found my way safely to the other side.

Praise be to the Lord

Feeling a little empty

I have to say that I am feeling a little empty right now.  There's a sense of lethargy that I haven't felt for a while.  I only managed 45 minutes down the gym tonight for the sake of feeling tired and lethargic.  And now Im home, putting down these words when I really ought to be doing some paperwork for work.  What I really want is to leave all this behind and just get to an emotionally even keel.

I feeling pretty fed up with waiting at the moment - patience has never been one of my strong points, especially with things that seem to really plod.  I just want to fast forward through time, I guess about 6 months or so would do it.  Past the point where I have to cope with a certain someone going out of my life, to the point in time when I have lost enough weight not to be classed as 'fat' any more.  I have been slowly chugging away at the weight loss thing and can now proudly say that I have managed to loose 2 stone since Boxing Day.  Most weeks I am still managing the two pounds but it just feels so slow.  I cant really see / feel that much of a change most of the time.  Occasionally something comes along that makes me realise that I have lost weight and can now do something that I could not before, or I can fit into clothes that haven't fitted me for a while.  If I can keep this up then I should be at or near my target weight in another 6 months, and the maybe I will be confident enough to actually meet someone and do something about what I really want out of life - a wife and family.

At the moment though I am still fat.  Despite the progress, and the positivity that I try to gain from that, I just want to get rid of it all now.  I don't have a problem with people being whatever size they are - as long as they are happy.

I used to pretend I was happy with my size until I was enlightened and came to see that I was self harming and binge eating.  Now I am most definitely not happy with my size - it is a constant reminder of the abuse that sparked the cycle of harm and the years that I proliferated it.  I hate what I see around the person that is inside.  I don't hate myself, I hate the layer of fat that stops the person inside me from being free.

I don't want to be ungrateful, there are many people who are really struggling to loose weight and so far it hasn't been as hard a challenge as perhaps it might be (and may yet become).  I don't want to play down what I have achieved.

The only way I can describe it is that it is like Christmas, when you know what you will get because you asked for it long in advance.  You build up to that big moment when you get what you want but you just want time to rush by quicker.  It doesn't mean that you don't appreciate the anticipation, you just wish time would go by quicker to get to the end reward.

One day I WILL be a normal weight, one day I WILL accept that I deserve to be loved as a person, one day I WILL have the confidence in my own appearance and my own worthiness to do something about finding a long term relationship.

God Willing.

New year and all that jazz

OK, so its a new year - something that I don't normally bother with.  I mean, what is the point - it's a day like any other day, it just happens to be an occasion when they year number changes as part of the date.  Its all relative anyway, ask a Chinese person what year it is and they won't say 2013, thats for sure.  Anyway, all this jazz aside - it is the tradition to come up with new years resolutions.  Again, I don't usually bother - aside from some glib crap about drinking more and eating what I want.  But that was the 'old' me.  The me before I developed some kind of drive to try and deal with my problems, before my problems has a title - CED/BED - gotta love those acronyms...  Anyway, so I understand a bit more about what is going on with me psychologically.  There's more as well.  Seeings as this blog is pretty anonymous and I am not Identifiable by name, I can share what I feel comfortable with.  So here's another revelation.

For a long time I have struggled with gender identity.  I don't think it goes as far as gender dysphoria, but then I'm probably not qualified to make that judgement anyway.  All I know is that from a young age - 4 or 5 years old - I have not been comfortable being male.  It has just felt like the badge 'male' doesn't fit what I feel inside.  Biologically I am male, genetics can't lie - and I am ok with that, I mean, I  like women as my chosen type of partner, and whilst I would describe myself as sexually adventurous, the idea of sex with another male does nothing for me.  That said I do have a thing for she males - traps - ones that are convincing as females - but I can't say that I have ever thought about 'penetrative sex' in either direction.  I think it is the idea of gender fluidity that I fond more attractive than anything else.

So anyway, the genetics that deterring my biological make up do not seem to fit with the emotional personality.  Yes sure there are things that when you know me, they could be seen as masculine traits - an interest in cars, motorbike, the whole DJ / Producer alter ego that goes with my music.  But who is to say that they are not 'tom-boy' traits?  There are many other things that go with my personality that are generally classed as feminine by society as a whole.  I like 'chick flicks' (even the name has gender connotations), I'm not about sex, I'm about romance and love, I'm generally quite a touchy-feely kind of person, given the chance and I am definitely in touch with my emotions and my feminine side.

I am sure that, if you described what I like, how my personality is etc, to a person who did not know me, and did so without using gender constructs, they would guess that the person described is female.

I'm cool with all this.  I've had years to come to terms with it - but I think that when I was younger it became a reason why I was bullied and abused at school.  And also why eating became a problem.  It became the self harm that I have recently realised, and the person that was being harmed wasn't the false outer construct, but the real person within.  At this point, these things start to come together into one interwoven thread.  There is an outer me, the one the world knows as 'James' -  there is an inner me, male in biology, female in gender identity, that occasionally comes to the surface with people that I know and trust.  I think that I have come to terms with that over the many years and reached a situation where I am comfortable with who I am, even if I do not have the courage to go public.  I don't think I ever could whilst my father is alive.  I don't think he would be able to understand it all.

So this come back round to the eating as self harm.  I want to start this by making the following perfectly clear -

SIZE / WEIGHT IS IRRELEVANT TO ATTRACTIVENESS AND IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT USED BY THE IGNORANT WHO CANNOT BE BOTHERED TO HAVE AN OPEN MIND.

There are many people with many different numerical sizes that I find attractive, the size part is irrelevant.  If you are a certain size - bigger or smaller - and that is what nature has made you, fine.  If you choose decisions that have an outcome on your size - bigger or smaller - and it is not affecting your health, fine.  No-one has the right to judge.

I am never going to be a size zero, nor would I ever want to be. [I've just realised that, without prior conscious decision, I have equated my body to female clothes sizes...?...]  But what I need to get a handle on is that I am not meant to be this size either.  Much of it is self inflicted, in an attempt to destroy that female part of me that has been the cause of so much pain from other people.  It has been a shell to keep others away from the real me, relationships could be complicated if I have to explain and rationalise these things.  So that has been the defence over the years, self destruction of the real personality and a subconscious attempt to be as unattractive as possible.

So I need to tackle this head on; 4 areas that can change my life and get me to being me, and not 'James'

1.  Eating.  As I have realised, it has become a form of self destruction and only minorly as a way of dealing with pain.  So I need to eat less - sounds easy - and maybe it is - what I need to do is take the 'pain' I inflict with over eating, and use against it a 'pain' from not eating.  I'm not talking about anything like anorexia or bulimia but to 'run with less in the tank' so I feel hungry before meals, eat a sensible amount and carry on again.  That way, when I reach the pinch points when I want to binge, the hungry feeling is never far away and I can use that, instead of the bloated feeling.

2.  Drinking.  This is nothing to do with any of the above - I simply drink too regularly.  I don't often exceed RDA, but I do drink most days.  I need to find a sugar free, alcohol free alternative to drink on weekday evenings and only have alcohol on Saturdays & Sundays.

3.  Hygiene.  I fond it very hard to have a shower or bath.  Despite part of me that loves the pampering of a candle lit bubble bath with some gentle music in the background, the truth is that at school, most of the abuse happened in the showers.  It has actually been a conditioning against it.  the emotional pain that started the cycle started there.  A bath or shower means getting undressed - I have to confront the body that I have destroyed and see the physical manifestation of my hatred.  I need to break this cycle, partly for hygiene reasons but most importantly as part of breaking the spell that is holding me back

4.  Exercise.  Never my strong point, partly because I have a low lung capacity and I have the feeling of being breathless after cardio work - but I can do some basic weights, some recreational cycling and so on.  This isn't going to be a big one, but I have to make an effort in this area.

So this is it.  this is my action plan.  God willing, I can break this affliction and become the butterfly inside this pupae.  As with all these things, there shall be one last hurrah.  Today is the last day without limits.  I shall celebrate the new year today and clear the little that is left in the fridge adnstart a new tomorrow with all temptations out of the way.