Underneath my yellow skin

In sickness and in sickness

It’s time for my annual check up on my thyroid, and I should probably get a physical as well. I need to get another doctor because my old one left the network, so I’m not looking forward to that. I’ve had my issues with doctors, and I have a string of problems that have seem to stump the best of them. It’s one thing I want to figure out by my 50th birthday–what the fuck is wrong with me. Physically, I mean. I already know what the fuck is wrong with me emotionally, even if I haven’t fixed it yet.

Side Note: I’ve realized that I will not be able to fix everything that’s wrong with me (emotionally in this case) by the time I died, and what’s more to the point, there were things that I considered flaws in myself that I didn’t care to change. What, how can that be? Because they’re either not worth the effort to change or I’ve learned to live with them. One example is that I work to the back of a deadline. This use to cause trouble between my mother and me because she would send me something she wanted me to edit and give me a timeline, say, a month from the time she sent it to me. Cool, fine, I think to myself. I’ll start it in three weeks, and it’ll be fine.

Except. She’ll start emailing me a week later or maybe two to ask about it. I would say I hadn’t started, and I could feel the disapproval and stress radiating through the ether. I finally had to bring it up with her because it was driving me crazy, and I’m sure it wasn’t doing anything good for her, either. It turned out that she was giving me a deadline that was the last possible time she could get it back–and with agony. In my mind, she was giving me the reasonable deadline. I told her that if she wanted it comfortably in two weeks, she had to tell me so. She thought she was being thoughtful by giving me two extra weeks. I took her at her word that I had the whole month.

It actually worked out because I did move up my own schedule a bit and she gave me something closer to an actual deadline. I know there are people who do the things the second they get the assignment, and while I admire them, it’s not me. I do my best work with my back to the wall, and I’ve actually figured out a way to do it with a small amount of comfort. Once I let go of the idea that I would be the kind of person to do it from the start, I was able to manage my time better. In other words, I wasn’t blowing sunshine up my ass and was better able to assess my actual ability.

I’m really tired of being sick. And exhausted. And feeling like my physical health is out of control. My thyroid has been stable for the past few years, so I don’t expect that to be the issue. It might have something to do with my digestive problems and the FODMAP elimination diet. Which, by the way, I’m still stalled on the adding things back part of the diet. After going two months being 90% better, the idea of willingly poisoning myself again is repulsive to me. The first time I added garlic to something, I had a middling response. It wasn’t running to the bathroom, but it was a bloated uncomfortable feeling. I haven’t tried it again, but I don’t want to lose garlic. It’s in almost everything I eat for one thing, and it’s just goddamn tasty on the other.



I know I have to look at the long run and think about how great it’ll be to have pinpointed WTF is wrong with my digestive system, but I also remember sitting on the toilet for up to an hour and why the fuck would I do that to myself willingly? Gah. That’s another of my flaws, and one I would like to get over–seeing the bad in everything. I was reading a post on Doctor Nerdlove by a guy who was way into red pill beliefs about women wanting men with ‘value’ and that he was ‘genetically inferior’. He’s active in the comments, and it’s clear that his biggest problem (as many commenters have pointed out) is his negative attitude–both about himself and about women. He talks about being bullied about being weak at work, and I have a hard time imagining that he’s not projecting some of this belief himself. He actually agrees with them, and he calls himself weird–though the things he said he liked weren’t weird in any way, shape, or form.

I was getting impatient as I read his replies, so I can imagine having to deal with him in person. Any suggestion someone made was knocked down as to why it wasn’t true or wouldn’t work. He kept talking about what women wanted and how he was competing with other men, and at some point, I wanted someone to just smack him down. One commenter did, and I appreciated it very much. This person said to the original guy, let’s call him Rufus just because. Anyway the commenter said exactly what I was thinking that Rufus seemed to just want confirmation that he was the worst and that all women were this that or the other thing. The commenter excused themselves from the conversation saying it wasn’t worth their time.

That was exactly how I felt, though I would have been ruder about it. I would have said, “You’re annoying the fuck out of me, and I’m only reading your words. I can’t imagine how I would react in person to your negativity–which you can be sure leaches out into your conversations.” I know part of the reason he annoys me so much is because he reminds me of me, but I’m better able to keep it to myself. This guy, however, really just wanted confirmation of his own views, but he didn’t have enough insight to realize it. Any suggestion of finding a hobby or using makeup to cover up the bags under his eyes was met with resistance. He thought it inauthentic and he didn’t want to take up a hobby just to meet someone. He really did seem like a person who was so stuck in his own head, he’d rather be comfortable with his misery than do anything about it.

Again, I say this because I see it in myself, but at least I have the good sense not to natter on about it because I know it’s unreasonable. This guy says things like, “Let’s be real. Women don’t want weak men.” Which, I don’t even have the words. Oh, wait. Yes, I do. That’s utter shit. First, what the fuck is a weak man? Second, how the hell can he state with utter confidence that ‘women’ don’t want this? Third, there are several women in the comments directly opposing what he’s saying, but, nope, he knows better.

It’s fucking exhausting. Honestly, I would tell him that the reason he can’t get a date is because his ugliness is seeping from his pores. Most people don’t want to date someone who has contempt for them, and that is what he is showing underneath his self-abnegation. Also, he very carefully slid in there that he was more conservative with a few leftist ideas, which, to me means libertarian. Not gonna touch that with a ten-foot pole. Basically, he’s clinging to the idea that it’s his looks when it’s the whole package that is off-putting. But, it’s easier to blame looks or ‘weakness’ than to actually, you know, try to make yourself a better person. The aforementioned commenter leaned heavily on doing some internal work, and Rufus was like, “But that’s so vague.” When the commenter explained, he had no real response.

I would be the worst advice columnist, by the way, because of my own weak spots. Guys like this make me want to verbally slap them and shout, “Wake up and smell the fucking coffee, asshole.” I washed my hands metaphorically, but I can’t stop watching. It’s a trainwreck, and I have no doubt this guy will continue with his red pill ways. So, yeah, again better if he’s not dating anyone.

Anyway. My point is that I have the tendency to shoot down every solution to a problem because, yeah, sometimes it’s easier to just be stuck. Then I don’t actually have to do anything. I have to change that, though, and starting with my elimination diet. So, garlic it is.

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