Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

I know I always say, “sorry for not posting,” even though I know it's not something I have to do, but sorry for not posting. I have two new pains in my leg that are fairly constant, a sort of a dull pain that starts in the tumor or the knee and extends down my shin inside the bone, and then a pain that feels like it's in the tendon above the tumor, but if I move the tendon, it seems like it's below it, so I'm thinking it's actually a phantom pain because I can't really physically locate it or touch it. But they both suck a lot because I haven't yet figured out how to change them so I can't move my leg around to stop it. I guess though that it's probably obvious if I'm struggling to post that I'm struggling offline.

I have sort of a sick fascination with reading all these stories about suicide that are in the news all the time. I think I read those stories, and stuff about breath-holding, pain control, and so on, because I'm very interested in people's breaking points (and my own — obviously if you deal with even minor constant discomfort, your brain does occasionally run over “easy” ways out). Like the guy who killed himself on a webcam after a car accident and divorce, a story about why smart people are unhappy, how acne increases suicide rates, female soldiers in Iraq committing suicide to avoid rape, and on and on and on. I worry that suicide rates are going to spike over the next fifteen years, as the self-worth bubble bursts, I think we'll see a lot of people who've backed themselves into corners emotionally and otherwise, and I'm not really sure that there will be a good result for most people when you combine that with the sort of narcissistic nihilism that covers Western society.

Wow, I am wiped out… Very tired, very sore. Serves me right for crashing out on the couch yesterday without a blanket and being too lazy to look for one in the middle of the night when it got cold… I need do something more productive than reading email.

I don't particularly trust the numbers, but according to the body fat machine at the gym (which is accurate from test to test, so I think it can at least be compared to itself, but who knows how close it gets objectively), I was at 26% body fat in September. A month or two ago I was at 12%, which is about the time that I started to worry that I was losing far too much weight (and I was dropping into the 150s, which is disturbingly small for me). Anyway, I thought I'd managed to put on fat over the last couple weeks because I'd got myself up to about 170, but now I'm down to 8% body fat. I don't really know if that's right, because I don't think I look like 8% body fat in the mirror, but either way, there's continuing fat loss (and muscle gain to compensate)… I felt rather down about it most of the day, because when we went up to do the test I was actually kind of looking forward to 15% or so, which is where I thought it was. I know objectively that I'm fitter than I have been since probably age sixteen, and there's nothing wrong with low body fat, but I really wish I could put on more weight, because I'm also smaller than I have been since, oh, fourteen or something. Outside of anything else, I don't like being told “you look thin”, even if it's a compliment, because it makes me feel out of place or out of alignment with my body. I guess it all comes back to body modification themes for me, but I feel like I've just dropped my weight to underneath what I perceive myself as weighing. I don't know if that will change if I stay this weight (since most of my life I've been 220-260).

Other than that and along the same lines, I have a theory that I'm not gaining weight as quickly as is possible because I'm not pushing myself hard enough (although I have no idea why I'm dropping fat)… One of the things about having chronic pain (and I'm sure most other physically/mentally taxing conditions as well) is that because of how hard you crash if you actually manage to chew through all your reserves (leaving you with nothing to fight the constant pain, so you pretty much just shut down), you spend your life training yourself to avoid running on empty… and I believe that manifests itself not by consciously saying “OK, stop now or you won't have the energy to swim back to the surface”, but by subconsciously screaming “you can not do this, abort, abort, abort!“ as a protective measure. I don't know if that's accurate or not… but it's the metaphor I'm going with right now as I try and figure out how to push myself as hard as I know I can. Anyway, I'm rambling and those are some serious run-on sentences.

Other than that, black is the new white.