The Dreaded Hump Head, Among Other Things

"I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?" ~ Jean Kerr

I thought long and hard yesterday about making an entry here, but I was just never able to summon the interest. It was one of those days. It began with my hair. I curled my hair yesterday morning before work and, when I looked in the mirror, there it was--hump head. One side of my hair was poofed up taller than the other side. It was also poofed up more than all of the other hair on the same side of my head. I tried to flatten it out, but no matter what i did, it wouldn't budge. I spent the rest of the day avoiding the mirror because every time I would catch a glimpse of myself, all I could see was the hump head. then I would be obsessed for a while with trying to get it to flatten it.

Aside from that, whenever my attention to something would lag, I kept hearing my critical voice inside my head telling me what a terrible person I am. There wasn't any precipitating event, I just was having a self-hating day. I was able to notice when those thoughts arose and try to stop them. Sometimes I was successful, sometimes not. I was answering an email from a friend and I kept thinking about how lame my email was. I started feeling very needy, which is not a feeling I find acceptable.

I've also noticed that for the past several days I've had random thoughts of my dad that just simply infuriated me. It wasn't new material arising from some deeper part of my memory. It was just the same old shit. It was stuff i should be angry about, but I found it a little disorienting nonetheless. I'm thinking that maybe that anger at my father was directed at myself. It certainly wouldn't be the first time I decided that it was easier to hate myself than to hate someone else. Yesterday afternoon, in pursuit of understanding, I started to try to find some information on sadistic personality disorder on the web. There wasn't a whole lot out there beyond the obvious. Symptoms are predictable and fit my father perfectly. I was really searching for an answer to why someone would find pleasure in others' pain. Naturally I thought it was something that happened in early childhood. I may be correct in that assumption, but I was never able to verify it.

It's another manifestation of my need to understand my father. I've always thought that if I could understand his behavior, I could forgive it. There's just so much to forgive. At this point, I question whether understanding will lead me anywhere in particular. I just always think there's some way to soothe this terrible tension between love and hate. Maybe that's just a belief left over from when I had to deal with him every day, when I wanted to make that interaction more bearable. At the very least, I need to not take out my anger on myself. I also need to try to always avoid having the dreaded hump head.


america held hostage day 1855
bushism of the day:
"Then I went for a run with the other dog and just walked. And I started thinking about a lot of things. I was able to—I can't remember what it was. Oh, the inaugural speech, started thinking through that."—Pre-inaugural interview with U.S. News & World Report, Jan. 22, 2001 issue

website of the day: Fourth Way Home
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/1236/