The Cheese Grates It: My Lack Of Beauty Does Not Give You the Right to Treat Me Like Crap

Seen in the photo at the end of the post:

Miss Piggy's doppelganger, one morning after work.
The knee jerk reaction from many people will be to say to me "oh no, Cie, you don't look like Miss Piggy!"
But I do. And there's nothing wrong with that.
If I refer to myself as "fat," there will be people who will immediately tell me "oh, you're not really that fat."
But I am. And there's nothing wrong with that.
There will be people who will tell me "it doesn't matter. Confidence is sexy!"
But I'm not confident. And I'm not sexy. And there's nothing wrong with that.
If I refer to myself as old, there will be people who will say "but you're not that old!"
Well, I may not be "that" old. But I'm not young either. And there's nothing wrong with being old.
It took me a long time to get to the point where I could truly feel that it was okay to not be what society considers pretty. It took me a long time to be able to say "fuck this shit" to constantly trying to starve my body to a place it doesn't want to be. It took me a long time to be able to say, no, you do not have a fucking right to insult me or anyone else just because you deem us unattractive.
I may not be everybody's cup of tea. I may not be anybody's cup of tea. But that does not give anyone the right to be an asshole about it.
I am not in love with myself by any means. But I have gotten to the point where I respect myself enough that I won't allow anyone to bully or belittle me.
I don't take a lot of "selfies." There are a lot of things I'd rather take pictures of than my face. But this is my face, such as it is. It is on my body, such as it is. You don't have to think either one is beautiful. But you do have to treat the person who owns them with common decency.
You don't have to find anyone attractive. But if you think it's okay to hate on people and broadcast your hate, you have a lot more problems than I do, and I have quite a few.
~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Cheese Grates It: Inappropriate Fan Behavior: Dumping Problems On Your Faves

I wanted to talk first about those folks who come to Jared Padalecki and spill their guts to him. Jared is the actor who plays Sam Winchester on Supernatural. He lives with depression, and he created the Always Keep Fighting organization in order to help bring awareness to mental health issues and end the stigma on people who live with them.
 These folks who tell their sad stories to Jared come in two classes. Some of them mean well but are very desperate and don’t have very good social skills. They tell Jared how much the AKF campaign means to them and tell him an awful and depressing story. This is inappropriate on their part, but they aren’t trying to be bad.
It makes me sad when I read things about how “pathetic” these people are, because I used to be one of those people. I still have the tendency when I get really depressed and am having high suicide ideation. I just try to confine it to dark and miserable posts rather than spilling it out on someone like Jared.
I would never go to a convention or meet and greet and try to tell the person or people I was meeting my life story at this juncture. I did send a brief bio to Jared for one of those mass emails for his birthday or such. I kept the gory details about my previous self-harm, which did leave scars, or my fight against my tendency to self-harm out of it. Reading such things would only make him feel sad and helpless. It wouldn’t do any good.
There is another class of people who want to spill their guts to anyone who will listen. These people are walking wounded too, but they aren’t the sort of sad souls I mention above who are simply desperate to be cared about but are severely socially impaired.
This class of people are sociopaths. The focus isn’t on their feelings of connection with someone like Jared. Their focus is literally “look at me!”
I’m not saying these people aren’t damaged. They are. However, they do not feel emotion in the same way a person who is not a sociopath does. A sociopath does not feel empathy. When a sociopath says they love someone, what they mean is that they are obsessed with that person. In truth, the person means no more to them than any other possession.
These people are good at pulling the “poor me” card to get attention. Where the first class of people would be saddened to have hurt Jared, the second class of people wouldn’t care that they did, so long as they get the attention they seek.
I dealt with such a person during the past two years. This person attacked me by going to various Tumblrs and leaving nasty replies to threads I’d commented on regarding things I’d written on my own Tumblr. It took a while to figure out that all the attacks were coming from the same individual using several sock puppet accounts, but when I did, I was not surprised at who was behind the curtain.
The reason for these attacks was because this individual, whom we’ll call Victoria, felt threatened by my expressions of sympathy towards the object of her obsession. We’ll call him Mitch.
When this individual discovered that Mitch was terminally ill, she went on and on about how terribly devastating this was to her. It was so awful that she had to stay home from school and nurse her wounded feels. There was a red flag in all this. Not once did she say anything about how sad this situation was for those people who were actually close to Mitch, such as his children and grandchildren, or his brother Mac, who is not only his business partner but his platonic soul mate.
Victoria had a plan to get backstage when Mitch and Mac’s band came to town so she could give Mac a long letter she’d penned about her miserable existence and how the only thing that saved her was being so deeply in love with Mitch. Her plan, which I seriously hope she was never able to implement, gave no thought to how tremendously uncomfortable such an action would surely make Mac feel.
Victoria was not planning this ill-conceived plot because she is overly emotional and misguided. I have actually had occasion to converse with her online, where of course she pretended to be friendly to me. I can assure you that she is emotionally cold. She does not care about Mitch, she cares about having other people praise her for her devotion to him. She said to me “I haven’t thought about what I’ll do when he dies, but I’m sure I’ll be okay.” That sort of statement is the hallmark of a sociopath.
Let’s look at this from Mac’s point of view. His brother, the other half of his soul, is critically ill and there’s nothing he can do about it. Along comes this young woman, young enough to be his grand niece or even great grand niece, telling him that she is in love with his dying older brother and she wants to give him a letter all about how much Mitch means to her.
Mac is a polite person. He would probably force a smile and thank her for her thoughts, all the while feeling like ice was climbing up his spine. If he read the letter rather than tossing it in the trash the moment she left, it would not make him feel good. It might just make him sick, or it might make him angry that this self-centered person felt the need to dump her problems on him without regard for the fact that he is constantly grieving for the loss of his best friend. He might feel conflicted, telling himself that he shouldn’t be angry at such an obviously sad and pathetic person.
In other words, spilling your guts in this fashion to people who are themselves struggling is an erroneous act at best and a cruel one at worst. Some people who do it are misguided. Others are malevolent.
When I had the opportunity to attend a meet and greet with Chris Isaak, one of my longtime musical heroes, there were so many things I wanted to tell him. However, I knew his time was limited. If I were ever lucky enough to be able to spend any significant amount of time with Chris, I would go into detail about why his music meant so much to me. I confined my revelations to telling him that Blue Hotel was the first of his songs that I heard, and when I introduced my son I said “Ian here was born in 1990, so he’s been listening to your songs since before he was born.”
Chris told me that his father had made the guitar case that he’s carrying in the picture that I had him sign. I said that was wonderful. I knew his father was a very important person in his life. If I’d had time, I would have told him that my father suffered a major stroke too. If there had been time, we probably would have bonded over talking about such things and maybe even developed a real friendship. Unfortunately there wasn’t time, so I respected his time.
Folks, what this boils down to is the fact that these people who mean so much to you have problems of their own. They have limited time and their emotional resources have limits as well. I have no doubt that Jared would love to help each and every one of you personally. I know he feels sad because he can’t.
For the people who actually care about Jared but may have dumped your problems on him, don’t beat yourself up. You will know better in the future.
There’s nothing I can do to change the actions of those who don’t care how their actions affect other people for the simple reason that they don’t care.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

What is God?

What is God? 

According to monotheists, and others, God is a deity. The supreme being who created everything. If this is so, argue Atheists, then God is a very flawed designer. You would surely expect from so powerful a deity perfection in his creations, if not that then a single lack of cruelty? For is cancer, famine, pestilence, AIDS, children with severe disabilities not a flaw in design?  No. Not if it is nature. Not if it is Tao. Nature makes no mistakes. Those seeming flaws are our perceptions based on judgement's made by long established conditioning. It is no different than when we suggest this person is ugly, that person is fat, the other is to be feared. These thoughts have no basis in God's mind only within human's. They are reactionary judgements. 

Shackling God to such man-made logic is questionable. How would those who follow him know His methods let alone His intentions? However, if God is the supreme spirit that lives within all of us, a Christ-like presence awaiting our personal discovery, then what some call God becomes more than a distinct possibility. 

Reading the Bhagavad Gita you discover how much symbolism there is in the Hindu faith.   They are not alone. Jews and Christian's too have a great deal of symbolic storytelling found within the pages of the Old Testament.  Krishna is the light, a sublime force, that exists in all mankind. The old Egyptian god, Horus, like Jesus and Mithras, was a virgin birth. More pertinently, Horus is a symbol of the goodness within us all. It is a goodness Buddhist's call enlightenment. Zen Buddhist's have a saying, I'll have to paraphrase it I'm afraid, which goes something like this - 'if you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha.' This is an ironic statement suggesting we all, by our flawed personallities, by the manner in which mother nature has created us, can never acheive full enlightenment. We can, however,endeavour to make that change. To better ourselves.

This may be so but when I meditate I join with that which is far greater than me. Some would call it God. It is not an authorative presence but a collective force, gentle in the extreme. It aids in realsing a Christ-like sense of being one with all, of wanting to improve oneself until God, Tao, Krishna are finally released within the individual.

God is within us and without us. God, like Tao, is just a word. It is our understanding of what God is that causes us so many problems. But there is one word that combines all our beliefs admirably well, that word is love.

101 Facts About The Human Body

The Cheese Grates It: There Is No "Good" or "Bad" Food, But There Is Plenty of New Age Bullshit

The following is a response to a post on Alternet, which refers to "good" fats and "bad" fats.
http://www.alternet.org/food/when-youre-stressed-good-fat-isnt-so-good-anymore

To save what is left of my sanity, I stopped categorizing food as "good" or "bad". I aim to eat fewer highly processed foods, and because of my diabetes I should try to moderate my carb intake. However, I find labeling foods as "good" or "bad" unhelpful at best and triggering of disordered eating behavior at worst.

I like to eat guacamole any time. I ate a lot of guacamole after a really bad breakup. Guacamole was much better than my crappy so called boyfriend, who was a thing that was way more unhealthy for me than even either bad guacamole or deep fried food could ever be.

The aforementioned article is one of those New Age "health" pieces. I fell for the New Age mindset for many years, to my detriment. More on that in a minute.

Commenter Freydis had this to say:

AND we're supposed to be responsible for the amount of stress in our lives! Family, children, tRump, gun violence, plummeting finances, etc., have no relevance.

This was my reply:

That whole "you're responsible for your stress levels" line of thinking always increased my stress levels. So, is the person writing such Pollyanna poppycock going to get me a better job which pays more than 30,000 a year (for a credentialed person to do skilled work, mind) and allows me to work 40 hours a week or less as opposed to the average of 50-60 hours a week that I actually have to work? My 30,000 dollars a year has to cover more and more every year. Plus, I suspect that my mother may be developing dementia. Plus, my son is a high functioning autistic person who has trouble with anxiety and depression and has never been able to hold a job due to said anxiety and depression. But yeah, I'm just supposed to "think myself happy," and it's my fault if I'm not. Sorry to rant. Your thoughts are spot on, and I'm so over this New Age crap, which I used as yet another reason to belittle and berate myself for many years.

So, that's what I have to say about that. New Ageism has been more hurtful than helpful to many people, and Diet Think has certainly been more hurtful than helpful to our entire society.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Cheese Grates It: The Hate that Hate Breeds

I was replying to a post by the wonderful Russell Duffy, when I realized that my reply had  morphed into a post. It is necessary to read Russell's post to fully understand why I was inspired to write what I have here, so here's the link:

http://openmindedsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/2016/09/no-room.html

I try not to let hate in. For instance, although I dislike Donald Trump with a fair intensity, if I were to allow myself to hate him, it would hurt me a lot more than it does him. Hate is an emotion with a lot of energy invested in it. It is a poor investment, and we should avoid it.

It wasn't always this way. I've mellowed with age and with the proper diagnosis of my mental illnesses. Taking Lithium turns down the intensity of my more extreme emotions.

Whenever I have felt hate, it's because I feel threatened by the person I'm feeling hate for.

I remember in my late teens on up into my thirties, I felt ire towards women that I perceived as "slutty." Having been brought up in a misogynistic society, I perceived "slutty" women as both threatening and entirely responsible for their presentation. I feared that these "easy" women who put their wares on display so readily would "steal my man." I was disgusted by "skanky" actresses making men put all the more pressure on ordinary women like me to transform into some sort of perfectly proportioned and ever available nymph there for the taking.

I was never the "there for the taking" kind, and I was anything but sexy. I really did not even want to be sexy. I hated these women for "making" me hate myself more than I already did.

Years later, I learned that most of the women I felt threatened by also suffered because of these perceptions, and that they aren't "perfect" either.

Britney Spears is attractive. She's pretty and can certainly present as sexy. More importantly, she's genuinely beautiful, as in she's a good and kind person. Britney insisted on releasing the unretouched photos from her Candies Shoes photo shoot to show that she does not actually have the impossibly perfect body that so many women are led to believe we should have, not only to our own detriment, but, I believe, to the detriment of society as a whole, to the detriment of the entire human collective consciousness, if I may be so bold.
Personally, on a purely aesthetic level, I think that Real Britney is very lovely and nothing needed to be done to "correct" her physique. I wonder if a day will ever come when we don't erase what people actually look like. For my own part, I like real people.
When I was younger, I would never have said something so kind about Britney Spears. In my view, she was a skank who was putting herself on display and making life more difficult for women like me. I didn't want to put myself on display. Doing so makes me very uncomfortable. Unless I'm posing for art classes, which is something I did in order to help myself get over the mindset that only "slutty" people allowed themselves to be seen nude. More on that in a minute.
I learned over time that Britney Spears was a nice young lady who wore sexy costumes while performing. She wasn't a "slutty man stealer." Like many of us, she was looking for The One. She was disturbed by all the focus on her breasts, particularly when she was still a teenager. She was struggling with untreated bipolar disorder. She is a good person, and I was wrong to judge her the way I did. My prejudices clouded my true intuition.

Angus Young has taught me so much, even though I was never fortunate enough to meet him in this life. I don't know why that is, considering that I feel like we would be friends if we had been allowed to know each other, but that's a post for another time. Unfortunately, he didn't teach me how to play the guitar. Musically, I have all the talent of a hammer. I bash on instruments and hurt them, or at least hurt anyone listening to the cacophony I produce.
One day while watching Angus strip off and drop trou, it came to me that here is a person who does not think of himself as attractive, who has, in fact, referred to himself as "that ugly little man," and yet he's baring it all for the world to see. Now, I realize that what Angus does is not art school modeling, it's burlesque. However, I was inspired to take my body, such as it is, stretch marks, scars, fat rolls and saggy breasts, and put it on display for pay at art schools in my area.
I started seeing myself as less ugly when I was modeling. Also, it's a different culture. Modeling for art schools is not sexy. Yes, I had idiots saying I was an "exhibitionist" for doing this. I'm not. I had people praising me for being so "uninhibited." I'm really not.
Being a man, Angus does not have the added fuckery of people thinking he's "slutty" for taking his clothes off. A naked man is not "slutty," he's just naked. A naked woman is seen as a "skank" who is "asking for it." More on this another time.
This realization made me very angry, both at myself for having bought into it and having wasted my energies on hate for others because of it, and at the society which teaches it.
I have a million reasons for wanting to find Angus in the spirit world after my body boots me out for good and give him a big hug. This is one of them. And then, maybe we can be friends. It's something I like to think is possible.

My uncontrolled borderline personality disorder certainly played a part in my hateful thinking. People with borderline personality disorder tend to see the world in shades of black and white. People are either wonderful or they're terrible. This extreme love/hate dichotomy is very disconcerting, especially considering that people are terribly flawed creatures who inevitably fuck up.
However, I place more of the blame for my hateful attitudes on a society that views women in terms of being virgins or whores. You can't tell how promiscuous a person is by the way they're dressed or whether they've ever appeared nude in a movie or even if they've appeared in porn. You can't tell what that person's morals are when it comes to having sex with a person who's in a committed relationship.
Hate is a strong and destructive emotion. There are rational reasons for disliking a person, but rational reasons for hating someone are few and far between, and are of a catastrophic nature such as when hate is directed at someone who murdered a loved one.
Beating yourself up for irrational feelings won't help. Try to get to the root of the feeling. It generally boils down to learned prejudices and/or personal insecurity.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

30 Days of Haiga 2016: Day 26: Spice

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Tears of the Moon 2

Photoshop manipulation by The Real Cie

With love and tears for Malcolm Young

Dementia destroys beautiful minds