The title of this blog post comes courtesy of my hilarious grandmother, who never fails to teach me new Hokkien words whenever I speak to her.

If it's not one thing, it's another. I think the BDD is getting better; I no longer recoil from looking at photos of myself, I'm starting to gingerly dip my toes into facebook again. I can take more than a horrified glance in the mirror. In short, there's progress.

But there's a new demon in the house: my weight. I've always been pretty happy with my weight, but thanks to the olanzapine I've gained well on 8kg. It's visible, this weight. People comment on it. My clothes don't fit. The bulge just sits there and taunts me every day.

I never thought I would get to this stage, but my weight occupies my mind like nothing else. I can't study. I can't sleep. I keep thinking about the 8kg I need to lose and how to lose it. I contemplate spending immense sums of money on getting rid of it. Every other thought I have is about my weight.

For several weeks now, I've instituted a programme of diet and exercise. So much depends on this that I am afraid to fail to lose weight. I don't know what kind of slippery slope I'm on, but it's not a pleasant prospect.

8kg. 8 fucking kg. The number just percolates through my brain and looms over everything.

If it's not one thing, it's another.

I got tagged for this on Facebook, so I decided to do it to waste the time I should be using to study International Relations.

1. Get a postgrad degree
2. Learn how to properly cook Chinese food
3. Get dreadlocks (Yes, I'm going to do this on Saturday!)
4. Start reconnecting with my faith, possibly by going to church more often
5. Watch one of my favourite goth-y bands live, like KMFDM or Jack Off Jill
6. Go for either the Whitby Gothic Weekend or Wave Gothik Treffen
7. Sing with a band, just to see what it's like
8. Do a coast-to-coast walk in the UK, either lengthwise or breadthwise
9. Visit another SM club and get a Florentine/Singletail flogging
10. Get more piercings, maybe labrets or something
11. Go for more riding trips in Australia/New Zealand/Europe
12. Visit Cuba
13. Own a dog (or two)
14. Get a chest tattoo by Saira Hunjan
15. Go full-on goth more often
16. Stay at the Raffles Hotel
17. Start seriously writing. A column, my blog, a book, whatever. I need the discipline
18. Get back to the same weight that I was when I was 23
19. Visit Slimelight
20. Resuscitate my Chinese and my German
21. Learn Russian properly
22. Volunteer at an animal shelter that isn't run by complete loonies
23. Meet Robert Service - or any one of the Russian history greats - in person
24. Go camping: I've heard so much about the whole filthy camping experience but never really been through it myself
25. Own a red Valentino dress
26. Own several Stop Staring dresses
27. Get married in a zombie-cabaret-circus-themed wedding
28. Eat a geoduck
29. Go skydiving/bungee-jumping/zorbing/hang-gliding or something equally EXTREME
30. Learn to Lindy properly! Argh! I keep failing at this!

Birds flyin' high you know how I feel
Sun in the sky you know how I feel
Breeze driftin' on by you know how I feel
It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me
And I'm feeling good

Fish in the sea, you know how I feel
River runnin' free you know how I feel
Blossom on the tree you know how I feel
It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me
And I'm feelin good

Dragonfly out in the sun you know what I mean
Butterflies all havin' fun you know what I mean
Sleep in peace when day is done that's what I mean
And this old world is a new world and a bold world for me

Stars when you shine you know how I feel
Scent of the pine you know how I feel
Freedom is mine, and I know how I feel
It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me
I'm feeling good

Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, I am free at last!

The dust settles, just. I can't believe it's over.

Now I just need to stop being paranoid about what's been in the press and what other people think.

Nine more days to freedom!

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
-- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116

Working on yet another project for the mouthpiece before going on course for two weeks and leaving definitively. Met an interviewee who taught literature and quoted from this sonnet - and it made me think of the Smilodon.

It's been five years and lots of water under the bridge, but I still love him.

Tendered my resignation today.

There is so much emotion behind that sentence that cannot be expressed; therefore, I content myself with a bald statement of fact.

I have resigned.

I have much to be thankful for: a loving supportive husband, two crazy but still huggable parents and the help of a very generous sponsor.

The endgame has begun. I have a month of work left. Time to wrap up the obit and start preparing the publicity material for the Project That Will Not Die.

University applications are due. The inner Russophile must be fed.

It's the final countdown.

I don't have to hide this any more.

"She'll happen do better for him nor ony o't' grand ladies." And again, "If she ben't one o' th' handsomest, she's noan faal and varry good-natured; and i' his een she's fair beautiful, onybody may see that."
- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

So I followed the psych's advice today and came clean about That Day in Oxford, That Day which took place a year and a half ago. I told the subs at the office to expect a late-breaking crime story, but so far, it looks like I might stay alive.

The parents are taking it remarkably well, all things considered.

Now all I need is to stop hating my photos enough to take a look at them.

One more week to endgame!

I've been avoiding Facebook a lot lately, because it's usually on Facebook that I get confronted by pictures of LV or DL. Those two are like my patron saints (or patron devils, depending on how you look at it): Their photographs hold an almost irresistable magnetism, but never fail to make me feel like utter shit afterwards. I also stay away from photographs of myself and that's hard to do on a voyeuristic social networking site. So I've missed out on quite a bit of stuff from the fine folks at the office, including Andrew's excellent Objects of Desire album and Yvonne's Myanmar photos.

The psychologist told me not to avoid Facebook, but face my fears head-on. My response is: If I get into a tailspin every time I see a photo of someone, how am I supposed to face anything, much less my fears? If I can't help but start dissecting each and every one of my photographs, zooming in on the flaws with pin-point precision, how am I supposed to progress? I mean, I stare at those photos, I analyse them, I memorise them and play them back to myself in my head. The psychologist suggested that I start with the mirror, paste on it a couple of good thoughts that I can refer to whenever I feel like I'm being overwhelmed. It's a good idea and one that I think I should take up - if I could get over the sensation of utter loathing that I get whenever I approach a reflective surface.

Like I told Crank on Tuesday, I'm sick and tired of feeling ugly, of being ugly. I'm tired of hating every inch of myself, tired of that sinking feeling I get whenever I see one of my photos. I know my generally middling mood is the result of the brainmeds and that makes me all the more worried about what will happen when I do stop taking them. I'm tired of the knowledge that my ability to handle this is artificially buoyed up by medication.

I would take a knife to my face if I could. Sometimes I wonder why the psych trusts me enough to give me several weeks' worth of medication at one shot. Perhaps he's confident that I won't do anything stupid. I know I won't, but the temptation is there, it's always there. I don't want to have to live with this face. I don't want to have to go through life being laughed at and sniped about because of it.

I wish I were like LV or DL. I used to read LV's blog but I've stopped, just in case I get triggered again. I know DL is in London now; one part of me wants to get into contact with her but another part suspects that she secretly despises me and thinks I'm a fake. The two of them, they've got class. They've got grace. Whereas I'm a singularly spectacular wannabe who's never going to measure up, who's completely without dignity, who's forever going to ape something but never wear it like skin. I'm just pretending. I'm trying too hard. But those two, they succeed. They win.

Crank said that when I put on my makeup and dress up, I seem like a shell, like a ghost. What she doesn't understand is that all that makeup and clothes is who I would be, if I felt that I could live up to it. I don't want to be the geek in glasses with a too-flat nose and dirty looking freckles. I don't even think that's really who I am. And when I heard Crank say that, something in me just kind of curled up and whimpered. The person I want to be is just a shell. The person I really am is ugly and ridiculous and hated.

Ah well.

I know what I am now.

I know why I'm crazy.

I was never meant for respectability. I was never one to toe the line.

I've always been insane - because I don't know how to be normal.

I've always been the odd one out - because I can't be anything else.

I am tattoos and piercings and cigarette smoke and empty bottles of beer.

I am red lipstick and black hair and an unhealthy dose of self-hatred.

It's exactly what I told Janice in Yangon: I find normal fascinating, because I have no idea what it's like. The everyday is exotic. That sort of mindset is completely alien to me.

I should stop being afraid of what I am. Embrace it. Care less about what people think. (Perhaps that tattoo in Bagan was part of the whole process, but heck, maybe I've got Aids now because of it.)

And here I am contemplating a diplomatic career. I laugh bitterly.