I was texting back and forth with my friend Gabriel this past week, giving him some advice as he has started his own blogging project, and it wasn't until after I texted him that, "If I hadn't been blogging over that whole year and change after my breakup I wouldn't have known what to do," that I realized I had not posted anything new since the day after Christmas, and before that, the last new blog post was from three months before. In the thickest, murkiest part of my post-breakup depression, I was posting twice a week, and then three times a week when I faced my first romantic let-down. I blogged every single detail of my stupid broken heart and my disappointed vagina to such an extent that I got into trouble. I lost one friend, who I thought was my best friend, and I kind of pissed off another friend who eventually got over it. I shared too much, but I still regret nothing. I did make my ex not want to be friends any longer, and I can't say I wasn't expecting that to happen eventually. We were only going to be friends until I started saying no to him.
I know the fact that I haven't been blogging my fingers down to the bone lately is a good sign. Blogging was what I did instead of therapy, and it paid dividends I can't imagine therapy ever would have. I can actually go back and read through how painful it was, and even though some of the really melodramatic things I said make me roll my eyes now, I got them out. I can visually chart my progress because I recorded everything, every high and low moment, and I am glad that I listened to the friend who told me that starting a blog might be a good idea. It was a useful outlet, albeit an outlet that has closed itself off a little recently.
The truth of why I haven't posted much lately is because of how mundane being single is once you are settled into it. There aren't a ton of big, crazy revelations about it: it's lonely, but not all the time, and every once in a while I get to spend time with someone I really like, and even though I miss him when I don't get to see him, it's fine. I have the typical problems most people have with being alone. Every good thing comes with something I don't particularly like stuck to the back of it like a security tag the store forgot to remove. I like not having to ask anyone's permission to do whatever the actual fuck I want, but I hate having to sleep alone at the end of the day. I still wake up at least once a night and the loneliness of that moment where I realize I am by myself still hurts, more than it should. I like that I can cook what I want, without having to check what anyone else feels like having, but I hate having to portion everything down to just make enough for one person. Being single feels wonderful when you go to a party and don't have to make sure someone else is enjoying it as much as you are every thirty minutes, or when you can take a day trip to New York without notifying anyone, but feels a little horrible when you get home and have no one to talk to.
These are not new things, so I haven't felt the need to catalog every single one of them. The point of therapy is to treat something that isn't working. By making writing my therapy, I treated what was disordered, and now that I don't feel disordered, I'm no longer treating. I know I can always turn to blog therapy again, but right now, I don't feel I have that much to say. It's almost, in its own way, a little bit sad. Realizing that I haven't blogged much of anything felt like realizing that I haven't called a friend I saw almost every day for over a year, and that I just don't need that much any longer. It's tantamount to realizing I haven't spoken to my ex face-to-face in almost a full year, and I used to think I could never go a day without seeing him. The difference between my ex and blogging is, I am certain I will never need him in my life again. Blogging, however, I am pretty sure I will end up coming around to again when I do need it, and when I feel like I do have something to say again.
But definitely check out Gabriel's blogging project because I think everyone should read it:
http://www.squidheadfiles.com/2014/01/no-dj-is-better-than-his-crowd.html
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Tabula Rasa
"Thanks. My ex never said anything nice about my (insert anything about me here)."
This is what keeps coming out of my mouth every single time the man I am dating/seeing/whatevering says anything about me. I told him the line I wrote about my ex, into my List Of Things I Still Want To Say To All Of You (In No Particular Order) poem, which reads, "You say that you're an ass man only because you don't like what being a tits man says about you."
"That's a good line," he says, "But, you know, you've got those things too."
Before I can tell myself to shut the fuck up and just lean into this championship-round snuggle that is already happening, I say, "Not enough of one. Too much of the other."
Self-deprecation is my knee-jerk, my fallback, and now I have to see it as my bad habit that I might just have to break myself of. I like myself, I just assume the rest of the world doesn't. This is the manner in which my self-confidence has grown in the past year and a half or so: I have come to own the way I feel about myself, all the while assuming the rest of the world, apart from maybe three or four people, does not actually agree with me. I brought it up with Gabriel when I was sharing with him my big problem: the fact that this young man even wants to spend any time with me. "I can't get over it, because he is just so... much, and I know I should stop talking shit about myself in front of him but I can't quite stop it."
"That's a dangerous thing," Gabriel said, "Sometimes guys hear a woman's self-deprecation and think, 'Well, maybe she knows something I don't'".
Giver of best advice as always, I slump down into my seat away from the truth he is holding up in front of me again. Of course, I think, and because I don't see things until they are really obvious, I can see now why my ex undervalued me, and why he thought he could do better: I put those thoughts in his head. I fed him a steady diet of flattery paired with constant undercutting of myself, and he was just believing the hype. And now I'm seeing someone who is even funnier, more clever, more attractive, better at sex and more fun to be around than my ex, and even though I am trying not to keep falling into the frozen mud puddle that is my self-deprecation, I am still struggling with how easy it is to bring up various shitty things my ex said when we were together. I have identified what it was that made my ex think he had permission to do this, but it hasn't entirely taken the sting out or made me stop thinking about it whenever this young man who I get to spend time with, occasionally at least, says something nice.
I can't just come from a place of appreciation, I immediately have to swallow the nice comment and regurgitate something awful my ex once said to me about the same thing. I'm starting to wonder if this is just what comes with the territory when you are dating someone our age, someone who has dated literally anyone else and has any experience to draw from. It's impossible to approach anyone with an entirely blank slate, especially when you are someone like me, who has mined most of my personal life for the sake of my writing already, polished it up, took out the parts where I acted like a total jackass, and published a lot of it on this blog. I am trying to be the kind of person I want to be, who does not cock up the mood with too much information about my past, who can just be in the moment without perpetually bringing up some other jerk I dated, but I don't even think that is possible to stop altogether. If you are in your late twenties or early thirties and are not brand new to dating, even if you haven't been involved with a lot of people, like me, the bones of all of your past involvements are buried underneath your feet wherever you are standing. Whatever you build is going to be over a foundation of bad dates, awkward kisses, uncomfortable sex, and painful breakups, as well it should be. If you haven't had your heart broken or even just had a really embarrassing moment with someone by the time you are over the age of 25, you are either lucky or haven't really gotten out enough.
The past doesn't just stop existing because it is in the past, but I know I don't need to bring it up constantly, especially when I don't get to see this person that much. When I am lucky enough to spend time with him, I need to remember that at this point, whatever this is kind of only exists inside of a bubble, a bubble that really is too small for the rest of the world to even get into. Looking at it this way, it gives me the freedom to not think about my ex, and not talk about him. It's a relief.
This is what keeps coming out of my mouth every single time the man I am dating/seeing/whatevering says anything about me. I told him the line I wrote about my ex, into my List Of Things I Still Want To Say To All Of You (In No Particular Order) poem, which reads, "You say that you're an ass man only because you don't like what being a tits man says about you."
"That's a good line," he says, "But, you know, you've got those things too."
Before I can tell myself to shut the fuck up and just lean into this championship-round snuggle that is already happening, I say, "Not enough of one. Too much of the other."
Self-deprecation is my knee-jerk, my fallback, and now I have to see it as my bad habit that I might just have to break myself of. I like myself, I just assume the rest of the world doesn't. This is the manner in which my self-confidence has grown in the past year and a half or so: I have come to own the way I feel about myself, all the while assuming the rest of the world, apart from maybe three or four people, does not actually agree with me. I brought it up with Gabriel when I was sharing with him my big problem: the fact that this young man even wants to spend any time with me. "I can't get over it, because he is just so... much, and I know I should stop talking shit about myself in front of him but I can't quite stop it."
"That's a dangerous thing," Gabriel said, "Sometimes guys hear a woman's self-deprecation and think, 'Well, maybe she knows something I don't'".
Giver of best advice as always, I slump down into my seat away from the truth he is holding up in front of me again. Of course, I think, and because I don't see things until they are really obvious, I can see now why my ex undervalued me, and why he thought he could do better: I put those thoughts in his head. I fed him a steady diet of flattery paired with constant undercutting of myself, and he was just believing the hype. And now I'm seeing someone who is even funnier, more clever, more attractive, better at sex and more fun to be around than my ex, and even though I am trying not to keep falling into the frozen mud puddle that is my self-deprecation, I am still struggling with how easy it is to bring up various shitty things my ex said when we were together. I have identified what it was that made my ex think he had permission to do this, but it hasn't entirely taken the sting out or made me stop thinking about it whenever this young man who I get to spend time with, occasionally at least, says something nice.
I can't just come from a place of appreciation, I immediately have to swallow the nice comment and regurgitate something awful my ex once said to me about the same thing. I'm starting to wonder if this is just what comes with the territory when you are dating someone our age, someone who has dated literally anyone else and has any experience to draw from. It's impossible to approach anyone with an entirely blank slate, especially when you are someone like me, who has mined most of my personal life for the sake of my writing already, polished it up, took out the parts where I acted like a total jackass, and published a lot of it on this blog. I am trying to be the kind of person I want to be, who does not cock up the mood with too much information about my past, who can just be in the moment without perpetually bringing up some other jerk I dated, but I don't even think that is possible to stop altogether. If you are in your late twenties or early thirties and are not brand new to dating, even if you haven't been involved with a lot of people, like me, the bones of all of your past involvements are buried underneath your feet wherever you are standing. Whatever you build is going to be over a foundation of bad dates, awkward kisses, uncomfortable sex, and painful breakups, as well it should be. If you haven't had your heart broken or even just had a really embarrassing moment with someone by the time you are over the age of 25, you are either lucky or haven't really gotten out enough.
The past doesn't just stop existing because it is in the past, but I know I don't need to bring it up constantly, especially when I don't get to see this person that much. When I am lucky enough to spend time with him, I need to remember that at this point, whatever this is kind of only exists inside of a bubble, a bubble that really is too small for the rest of the world to even get into. Looking at it this way, it gives me the freedom to not think about my ex, and not talk about him. It's a relief.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
First Responder
I work for a civil litigator. She emails me, on average, fifty times per day, and expects an immediate response to each one, even if it is just the word, "confirmed" to which she usually replies, "tnx". If I don't respond quickly enough to let her know I have read and understood one of her emails, she yells out from her office, "Did you understand that?!" because as someone who is operating under 100+ deadlines at any given time, she needs to know that I am paying attention to everything as much as she is. I have become conditioned by working for her into thinking that this is normal, that when someone texts me, they want a response as quickly, no quicker than that, as my fingers can type it out on a virtual screen. It's hard to switch it on and off all the time. I have to be hyper-vigilant for eight-ten hours of the day and then go back to acting like I give zero fucks the rest of the time. It's transferred over into how I react when someone takes too long to reply to me. I was talking to my dear friend Gabriel about this. We are similar in terms of how quickly we respond to people. Turnaround time for me on a message is usually within 1-5 minutes. Gabriel is just as prompt, usually. Any longer than that feels rude. It's partially due to my job, but I have always been pretty prompt. I asked him why his wife, my best friend, who I love more than anything (no lesbo) hadn't yet answered a text I sent her days before. "It's been two days!" I said
"She is in New York," he offered, "Working."
I knew that she was in New York on a buying trip, but I was still indignant about it. "No excuse," I said, because I don't see why she can't Swype me a quick LOL while checking out accessories.
Most people are not this way. I asked my co-worker why it occasionally takes boys a full 24 hours to respond to a text, and he said, "Guys don't do it to hurt anyone- we just start watching Games of Thrones or playing Angry Birds or something and we forget that literally anything else exists."
I think I'm just too used to multi-tasking. I'm not actually just sitting by my phone, staring at it and waiting for a reply, I'm knitting something, watching an episode of Community, making dinner, possibly reading an article on Jezebel, AND checking my phone every few minutes. When I finally get a reply, I respond too quickly, and I know I probably come off like this:
And then the other person is probably all, "BITCHES BE CRAZY!!!!!".
I try to lock down my neuroses- if I can. When I was seeing Mike, I would leave my phone in my car when I was at work because if it was near my desk, I would text him just out of habit or if I was bored or if I thought of something funny, and nobody needs all that noise. Once it was clear that I had changed from a cute girl to a buzzing irritation to him, I didn't want to give him the motherfucking satisfaction of getting annoyed with me. I still sometimes just turn my phone off because I will keep checking it and not even realize how many times I have. It's the modern-day nervous tic, checking your screen to see if anything new has happened, if you have a reason to keep smiling today.
It's especially hard to not look like an overeager puppy when it comes to someone I think I like but can't see in person because they don't live near me. It's trying to build something on the fragile foundation of Facebook messages and Instagram likes, even if it's a friendship. I keep trying to be a really cool girl and pretend I have better things to do than respond to every message they send me as quickly as I can, but I'm not, not if I like someone and I don't care if they know it. I'm not subtle, and I'm not good at hiding how I feel. I know I come off as overenthusiastic because I am overenthusiastic. I do have more important things to do than send someone a video of baby sloths while I am also typing up a cover letter to the court and responding to one of my boss's emails, but I will send it while I am in the middle of this and probably fifteen other things, because I just want them to see it. And because everyone needs baby sloths.
"She is in New York," he offered, "Working."
I knew that she was in New York on a buying trip, but I was still indignant about it. "No excuse," I said, because I don't see why she can't Swype me a quick LOL while checking out accessories.
Most people are not this way. I asked my co-worker why it occasionally takes boys a full 24 hours to respond to a text, and he said, "Guys don't do it to hurt anyone- we just start watching Games of Thrones or playing Angry Birds or something and we forget that literally anything else exists."
I think I'm just too used to multi-tasking. I'm not actually just sitting by my phone, staring at it and waiting for a reply, I'm knitting something, watching an episode of Community, making dinner, possibly reading an article on Jezebel, AND checking my phone every few minutes. When I finally get a reply, I respond too quickly, and I know I probably come off like this:
And then the other person is probably all, "BITCHES BE CRAZY!!!!!".
I try to lock down my neuroses- if I can. When I was seeing Mike, I would leave my phone in my car when I was at work because if it was near my desk, I would text him just out of habit or if I was bored or if I thought of something funny, and nobody needs all that noise. Once it was clear that I had changed from a cute girl to a buzzing irritation to him, I didn't want to give him the motherfucking satisfaction of getting annoyed with me. I still sometimes just turn my phone off because I will keep checking it and not even realize how many times I have. It's the modern-day nervous tic, checking your screen to see if anything new has happened, if you have a reason to keep smiling today.
It's especially hard to not look like an overeager puppy when it comes to someone I think I like but can't see in person because they don't live near me. It's trying to build something on the fragile foundation of Facebook messages and Instagram likes, even if it's a friendship. I keep trying to be a really cool girl and pretend I have better things to do than respond to every message they send me as quickly as I can, but I'm not, not if I like someone and I don't care if they know it. I'm not subtle, and I'm not good at hiding how I feel. I know I come off as overenthusiastic because I am overenthusiastic. I do have more important things to do than send someone a video of baby sloths while I am also typing up a cover letter to the court and responding to one of my boss's emails, but I will send it while I am in the middle of this and probably fifteen other things, because I just want them to see it. And because everyone needs baby sloths.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
When You Decide To Love Your Curves
Before:
1. Your journey will start when you are eleven years old. The 34-C's that you will appreciate eventually will sprout up on your chest in sixth grade like unwelcome guests. You will spend most of the year trying to force a grown woman's breasts into a little girl's training bra, watching them spill over the tops and sides like marshmallows expanding in the microwave. Your flat-chested friends will hate you a little. Boys will always be trying to put their hands under and over and inside of your shirt just to say that they got there first, and this will never be about you. It will be about tits you still don't even think of as being yours. And when you tell on the ringleader, like you have been trained to, you will be called a liar. And a troublemaker. And, somehow, worst of all, a tease. You will not own your body yet. You have barely even been introduced to it.
2. Men like you-for a little while. Up until they realize that this is the way you always look, that this isn't just your going-out body, that you cannot just get rid of these hips, these thighs, this everything that was made to be held onto for dear life. You are an adventure. You are a bouncy castle at a kid's birthday party. He knows he will have a really fun time with you but he isn't sure if he wants anyone to see him do it. You are vacation sex. Men will come at you hard just because they have to see what it is like, especially if their last girlfriend was skinny and not very nice. They will think they can hide inside of your curves, use them as a flotation device to keep themselves from drowning, and then realize they don't need you when they sink their fingers into dry sand and know they are safe now. You're not for wearing out in public. You're a secret garment- the silk kimono he wears when he is alone in his house.
After:
3. The world still might not love your curves even if you do. Your husband will show you Amazonian plus-size models in an attempt to make you feel better about your 5 foot one frame that can still hold all of this body. You will try not to point out that this is not the same thing at all. He will be able to deal only with very specific parts of you, and he will barely touch you while you are trying to enjoy the sex that only happens once a week now, and he won't look at you, and he won't forgive you for gaining more weight and giving him even more of you to ignore. You will need to wait until after he separates from you and your problem areas to realize that he was wrong. You will believe it because you will tell yourself that it's true.
4. You will be so amazed at how good you look in that one pencil skirt, you will want to cry. You will be asked the question, "How do you fit all that ass inside your jeans?" You will be told that the song, "Ms. Fat Booty" is about you. You will be told you have the perfect waist-to-hip ratio. You will see a picture of your mother from 1977, her silhouette outlined against the sky, and for a split second think it is a picture of you. You will pretend to double-dutch jump-rope in front of a room full of people while wearing shorts and give zero fucks about it. You will realize that you are a silk kimono, and a bouncy castle, and an adventure. And you will understand what it means to be all of those things.
1. Your journey will start when you are eleven years old. The 34-C's that you will appreciate eventually will sprout up on your chest in sixth grade like unwelcome guests. You will spend most of the year trying to force a grown woman's breasts into a little girl's training bra, watching them spill over the tops and sides like marshmallows expanding in the microwave. Your flat-chested friends will hate you a little. Boys will always be trying to put their hands under and over and inside of your shirt just to say that they got there first, and this will never be about you. It will be about tits you still don't even think of as being yours. And when you tell on the ringleader, like you have been trained to, you will be called a liar. And a troublemaker. And, somehow, worst of all, a tease. You will not own your body yet. You have barely even been introduced to it.
2. Men like you-for a little while. Up until they realize that this is the way you always look, that this isn't just your going-out body, that you cannot just get rid of these hips, these thighs, this everything that was made to be held onto for dear life. You are an adventure. You are a bouncy castle at a kid's birthday party. He knows he will have a really fun time with you but he isn't sure if he wants anyone to see him do it. You are vacation sex. Men will come at you hard just because they have to see what it is like, especially if their last girlfriend was skinny and not very nice. They will think they can hide inside of your curves, use them as a flotation device to keep themselves from drowning, and then realize they don't need you when they sink their fingers into dry sand and know they are safe now. You're not for wearing out in public. You're a secret garment- the silk kimono he wears when he is alone in his house.
After:
3. The world still might not love your curves even if you do. Your husband will show you Amazonian plus-size models in an attempt to make you feel better about your 5 foot one frame that can still hold all of this body. You will try not to point out that this is not the same thing at all. He will be able to deal only with very specific parts of you, and he will barely touch you while you are trying to enjoy the sex that only happens once a week now, and he won't look at you, and he won't forgive you for gaining more weight and giving him even more of you to ignore. You will need to wait until after he separates from you and your problem areas to realize that he was wrong. You will believe it because you will tell yourself that it's true.
4. You will be so amazed at how good you look in that one pencil skirt, you will want to cry. You will be asked the question, "How do you fit all that ass inside your jeans?" You will be told that the song, "Ms. Fat Booty" is about you. You will be told you have the perfect waist-to-hip ratio. You will see a picture of your mother from 1977, her silhouette outlined against the sky, and for a split second think it is a picture of you. You will pretend to double-dutch jump-rope in front of a room full of people while wearing shorts and give zero fucks about it. You will realize that you are a silk kimono, and a bouncy castle, and an adventure. And you will understand what it means to be all of those things.
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Eliza Pilgrim Vs. No One
One of my favorite comic book series, just after Sandman, is Scott Pilgrim. I found the series, as well as the movie, really comforting when I was at my lowest point. Maybe it's because I identify so much with Scott Pilgrim as a character. He's kind of a nice guy but he's kind of a dick to the girls he dates, he's not really that good at anything, he has friends but they don't really like him, he falls ass over teakettle in love with a girl he sees in a dream and then finds out is a real person. I haven't been there on every single one of those instances, but you get my point. I have literally told someone,"I'm going to leave you alone forever now," just like Scott does the first time he actually speaks to the girl of his dreams.
I read Sandman again, particularly the book The Kindly Ones, when I know something terrible is about to happen and I want to revisit something I know like the back of my hand, but I read Scott Pilgrim again when I need to be reassured that even the least remarkable person can learn, and I've spent a lot of time feeling pretty unremarkable.
When I first read it, I really wanted to be Scott's love interest, Ramona Flowers. I have concluded that I will never be a Ramona Flowers. I will never get that many people to fall in love with me and then hate me that much. I kind of still wish I was a Ramona Flowers. Ramona is mysterious. She does not give much away. I give too much away. I dominate a conversation with so much information, all of it about me, or I try to impress someone with how many trivial facts I know about one specific thing to try to get them to like me. I wish I was guarded and unattainable, but I'm not. I will fall hopelessly in lesbians with someone I have only just met and I will always go too far trying to prove it. I will always be Scott Pilgrim.
It might be better to not strive to be a Ramona. Ramona is kind of a jerk. Almost all of her relationships end with her cheating on someone and she's kind of a coward. It would also be really annoying to be her. She tries to have a relationship with this charismatic, mysterious guy who wears awesome glasses and he pays her back for trying to leave when it gets to be too much by inflicting her with the Glow and pushing her around until she vanishes into Subspace. Then he forms a League of Evil Exes to control her love life? And every time she wants to date someone new, even someone as basically harmless as Scott, she has to see all of them again? Jeez. I don't have evil exes. My exes just kind of don't like me anymore. My exes are like Scott's exes. I have my Kim Pines, my one Knives Chau somewhere back there, and my one Envy Adams still fucking things up for me. The difference is, my ex isn't even some slinky, sexy rock star girl with a crazy awesome Evangalion hairstyle. He's just a guy who gave up, who runs into my stepmother and doesn't even ask how I'm doing. He has no interest in sabotaging my future happiness, but that is all due to the fact that he has no interest in me. And I still ask his mother how he is doing when I run into her even though I really want to not care.
There is something to be learned from how much Scott is willing to do for Ramona. It makes me wish I had that kind of pull with anyone. He is so obsessed with her that he is willing to fight everything and everyone that gets in his way. He mans up so completely, and so almost needlessly, that it holds up a dark mirror to my own past. Every time Scott does something in the name of all of that need, just to impress this really cool girl, I just want to reach into the book, pluck him out by the scruff of his neck and tell him, "Ssh, stop it. Just stop it," because I want to be able to do that to myself. I wish I could have pulled myself out of so many situations that arose over someone who didn't really warrant that kind of shit. I will never run out of Ramonas to fight over or new ways to look foolish.
I keep forgetting the point of all of it, or at least what I see the point as being. Ramona doesn't even end up being the reason for Scott becoming a better person. She's the impetus, but not the reason. The best fight, of course, is between Scott and Ramona's evilest ex, Gideon Graves, but before that, Scott has to battle himself. The most important fight is between Scott and Nega-Scott, who was created out of Scott's inability to see his own flaws, and the point is that Scott isn't meant to actually fight him, he is supposed to merge with him, and thereby accept all of his faults that he has ignored up to that point. I keep thinking about all of that negative, black energy I manifested when I got my heart broken, how it felt like carrying around a whole other person who hated me. I wonder where it actually went, or if it's still following me. I'm still trying to figure out if I did it right, if I actually zeroed in on what is wrong with me or if I've just spent the past year and a half identifying what is wrong with every person who has ever hurt me. Every time I get depressed, I feel like I am still just fighting the meanest, darkest version of myself, the side of me that wants to watch me drown. And I am still not sure I can even trust my own memories. I don't even have the luxury of blaming my one-sided recollection of things on someone implanting false memories in my head, the way Scott Pilgrim does. This is entirely my own doing. The ultimate enemy is always going to be me, but it's not even an enemy I can fight, it's an enemy I need to learn from. More to the point, this isn't a fight at all, so there is no chance of winning. Maybe the upside of that is that there is therefore no chance of losing. The game is rigged-you cannot lose if you do not play. Oh, shit, never mind, that's from The Wire. Fuck it, I'm going to go watch The Wire in its entirety from beginning to end for the fourth time and get Lance Reddick's face tattooed on my chest. And try to be a little less like Scott Pilgrim and be more like Deputy Cedric Daniels.
I read Sandman again, particularly the book The Kindly Ones, when I know something terrible is about to happen and I want to revisit something I know like the back of my hand, but I read Scott Pilgrim again when I need to be reassured that even the least remarkable person can learn, and I've spent a lot of time feeling pretty unremarkable.
When I first read it, I really wanted to be Scott's love interest, Ramona Flowers. I have concluded that I will never be a Ramona Flowers. I will never get that many people to fall in love with me and then hate me that much. I kind of still wish I was a Ramona Flowers. Ramona is mysterious. She does not give much away. I give too much away. I dominate a conversation with so much information, all of it about me, or I try to impress someone with how many trivial facts I know about one specific thing to try to get them to like me. I wish I was guarded and unattainable, but I'm not. I will fall hopelessly in lesbians with someone I have only just met and I will always go too far trying to prove it. I will always be Scott Pilgrim.
It might be better to not strive to be a Ramona. Ramona is kind of a jerk. Almost all of her relationships end with her cheating on someone and she's kind of a coward. It would also be really annoying to be her. She tries to have a relationship with this charismatic, mysterious guy who wears awesome glasses and he pays her back for trying to leave when it gets to be too much by inflicting her with the Glow and pushing her around until she vanishes into Subspace. Then he forms a League of Evil Exes to control her love life? And every time she wants to date someone new, even someone as basically harmless as Scott, she has to see all of them again? Jeez. I don't have evil exes. My exes just kind of don't like me anymore. My exes are like Scott's exes. I have my Kim Pines, my one Knives Chau somewhere back there, and my one Envy Adams still fucking things up for me. The difference is, my ex isn't even some slinky, sexy rock star girl with a crazy awesome Evangalion hairstyle. He's just a guy who gave up, who runs into my stepmother and doesn't even ask how I'm doing. He has no interest in sabotaging my future happiness, but that is all due to the fact that he has no interest in me. And I still ask his mother how he is doing when I run into her even though I really want to not care.
There is something to be learned from how much Scott is willing to do for Ramona. It makes me wish I had that kind of pull with anyone. He is so obsessed with her that he is willing to fight everything and everyone that gets in his way. He mans up so completely, and so almost needlessly, that it holds up a dark mirror to my own past. Every time Scott does something in the name of all of that need, just to impress this really cool girl, I just want to reach into the book, pluck him out by the scruff of his neck and tell him, "Ssh, stop it. Just stop it," because I want to be able to do that to myself. I wish I could have pulled myself out of so many situations that arose over someone who didn't really warrant that kind of shit. I will never run out of Ramonas to fight over or new ways to look foolish.
I keep forgetting the point of all of it, or at least what I see the point as being. Ramona doesn't even end up being the reason for Scott becoming a better person. She's the impetus, but not the reason. The best fight, of course, is between Scott and Ramona's evilest ex, Gideon Graves, but before that, Scott has to battle himself. The most important fight is between Scott and Nega-Scott, who was created out of Scott's inability to see his own flaws, and the point is that Scott isn't meant to actually fight him, he is supposed to merge with him, and thereby accept all of his faults that he has ignored up to that point. I keep thinking about all of that negative, black energy I manifested when I got my heart broken, how it felt like carrying around a whole other person who hated me. I wonder where it actually went, or if it's still following me. I'm still trying to figure out if I did it right, if I actually zeroed in on what is wrong with me or if I've just spent the past year and a half identifying what is wrong with every person who has ever hurt me. Every time I get depressed, I feel like I am still just fighting the meanest, darkest version of myself, the side of me that wants to watch me drown. And I am still not sure I can even trust my own memories. I don't even have the luxury of blaming my one-sided recollection of things on someone implanting false memories in my head, the way Scott Pilgrim does. This is entirely my own doing. The ultimate enemy is always going to be me, but it's not even an enemy I can fight, it's an enemy I need to learn from. More to the point, this isn't a fight at all, so there is no chance of winning. Maybe the upside of that is that there is therefore no chance of losing. The game is rigged-you cannot lose if you do not play. Oh, shit, never mind, that's from The Wire. Fuck it, I'm going to go watch The Wire in its entirety from beginning to end for the fourth time and get Lance Reddick's face tattooed on my chest. And try to be a little less like Scott Pilgrim and be more like Deputy Cedric Daniels.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
I Learned It From Watching You
"I can't believe it-every time I look at you, you look more like your mother," my aunt said to me a few weeks ago.
I said thanks, whatever, and tried to fight against the shameful blush that takes over every time this happens. My knee-jerk reaction, every time someone tells me I look like my mother, is still to say, "No, I don't," like they have just made a mistake.
It still feels like it can't be true. Everyone, or maybe just me, has one picture of their mother where she just looks so beautiful, you cannot even fathom how you came out of this person, how you were made out of the same materials they were made from. It's like a biological experiment gone wrong-a sow's ear that was made from a silk purse. It wasn't until very recently, when I started to really see the resemblance, not just in the shape of my eyes and my cheekbones but in the shape of my body, which is the same as the shape she hated so much and fought against, that I realized what this negativity actually puts out into the world. All I am doing by hating this body I have been given is feeding into the self-hatred she carried on her back like a thousand extra pounds until she died, and I learned it from watching her.
It is hard to undo the years of learned self-loathing that I learned from my mother, because it did not come just from her. I used to have friends who encouraged my bad behavior, who congratulated me for weight loss that was usually brought on by just being too fucking sad to eat. My family, to a degree, has encouraged my past self-abuse, by only remarking on my weight when I was that sick. When I gained it back because I was happy, they were not so thrilled. In my family, skinny equals pretty, so I've only been pretty on and off to them, and only when I've been sad. This negative thinking is starting to go away, little by little, just by surrounding myself with the right people, but it's a very slow process. Now I have better friends. No one is trying to feed me diet pills or telling me it was better when I was "bulimic-looking".
This tendency I have always had, to hate everything about me that is like my mother-the shape of my face, my curves that will never flatten out, needs to end with me. All I am doing by hating the very things that made my mother beautiful is proving her assertions right. I don't want to prove her right. I also don't want to have a daughter someday who learns to hate herself from me. It's going to be hard because it is so much easier to be self-deprecating. It's funnier and people like hearing it more. No one likes someone who is too pleased with their own self. Still, this is a pattern that I am tired of carrying on. I am trying, every day, to not look at my body only in terms of what is wrong with it, with the relief map of areas that need to be changed or altered or made different. It's so much harder than it needs to be.
Trying to see myself differently has changed the way I feel about my ex, and how he dealt with my body. I have made a lot of accusations about my ex in terms of how he wanted me to change, but to be fair, how could I expect him to love the way I looked if I couldn't even like it? He couldn't, and I can't expect anyone else to. My father told me, years after my mother was gone, how he tried to give her what he thought she needed by telling her how beautiful she was, and how frustrating that was because she would counter-point with something she hated about herself too often. You could throw compliments at this woman all day and nothing would stick. I remember looking at her yearbook photos when I was little, telling her she was the prettiest girl on the homecoming court, and she replied, "I only got nominated because I was popular, not because I was pretty. I was never pretty."
I think back to when, exactly, my ex stopped telling me I was anything other than flawed, and it must have been when he figured out that there was no point. I pushed back against anything nice the same way my mother did, and he just got exhausted. So, I'm giving up on it. I'm giving up because I'm tired of this. I can't carry my mother's self-hatred anymore. Of all the ways that I see that I do resemble her, this is the one that has to change, and I am the only one who can change it.
I said thanks, whatever, and tried to fight against the shameful blush that takes over every time this happens. My knee-jerk reaction, every time someone tells me I look like my mother, is still to say, "No, I don't," like they have just made a mistake.
It still feels like it can't be true. Everyone, or maybe just me, has one picture of their mother where she just looks so beautiful, you cannot even fathom how you came out of this person, how you were made out of the same materials they were made from. It's like a biological experiment gone wrong-a sow's ear that was made from a silk purse. It wasn't until very recently, when I started to really see the resemblance, not just in the shape of my eyes and my cheekbones but in the shape of my body, which is the same as the shape she hated so much and fought against, that I realized what this negativity actually puts out into the world. All I am doing by hating this body I have been given is feeding into the self-hatred she carried on her back like a thousand extra pounds until she died, and I learned it from watching her.
It is hard to undo the years of learned self-loathing that I learned from my mother, because it did not come just from her. I used to have friends who encouraged my bad behavior, who congratulated me for weight loss that was usually brought on by just being too fucking sad to eat. My family, to a degree, has encouraged my past self-abuse, by only remarking on my weight when I was that sick. When I gained it back because I was happy, they were not so thrilled. In my family, skinny equals pretty, so I've only been pretty on and off to them, and only when I've been sad. This negative thinking is starting to go away, little by little, just by surrounding myself with the right people, but it's a very slow process. Now I have better friends. No one is trying to feed me diet pills or telling me it was better when I was "bulimic-looking".
This tendency I have always had, to hate everything about me that is like my mother-the shape of my face, my curves that will never flatten out, needs to end with me. All I am doing by hating the very things that made my mother beautiful is proving her assertions right. I don't want to prove her right. I also don't want to have a daughter someday who learns to hate herself from me. It's going to be hard because it is so much easier to be self-deprecating. It's funnier and people like hearing it more. No one likes someone who is too pleased with their own self. Still, this is a pattern that I am tired of carrying on. I am trying, every day, to not look at my body only in terms of what is wrong with it, with the relief map of areas that need to be changed or altered or made different. It's so much harder than it needs to be.
Trying to see myself differently has changed the way I feel about my ex, and how he dealt with my body. I have made a lot of accusations about my ex in terms of how he wanted me to change, but to be fair, how could I expect him to love the way I looked if I couldn't even like it? He couldn't, and I can't expect anyone else to. My father told me, years after my mother was gone, how he tried to give her what he thought she needed by telling her how beautiful she was, and how frustrating that was because she would counter-point with something she hated about herself too often. You could throw compliments at this woman all day and nothing would stick. I remember looking at her yearbook photos when I was little, telling her she was the prettiest girl on the homecoming court, and she replied, "I only got nominated because I was popular, not because I was pretty. I was never pretty."
I think back to when, exactly, my ex stopped telling me I was anything other than flawed, and it must have been when he figured out that there was no point. I pushed back against anything nice the same way my mother did, and he just got exhausted. So, I'm giving up on it. I'm giving up because I'm tired of this. I can't carry my mother's self-hatred anymore. Of all the ways that I see that I do resemble her, this is the one that has to change, and I am the only one who can change it.
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Different Names For The Same Thing
I was caught off-guard this past week in the dumbest way when I was bored and playing Bejeweled on my Kindle. When the little window popped up with my "high score" (ridiculous, as I am, essentially, playing against myself), I saw that when I first installed this stupid time-waster, I put in my name as "Liza Pretzel Bits". Long story, inside joke, suffice it to say it's something my ex-husband used to call me, and of course I got a little weepy and stupid over it. I miss things I shouldn't miss. Even though I feel like I am in a better place, and of course I prefer living by myself to living with four other people (in fact just the thought of my ex's shit taking up 3/4ths of the space in my tiny apartment gets me feeling claustrophobic), I can't let go of these silly little things. No one calls me by any of the nicknames my ex made up for me. No one calls me Munchkin. No one calls me Hey, Bitch. No one calls me Liza Pretzel Bits.
I doubt anyone ever looks over at their spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend/other and thinks, while they are doing something thoroughly annoying, "God, I am going to miss this when it's not happening all the time."
Not even the most insightful among us thinks of that. But now that I'm just alone all the time and have a significant, I would say, lack of things annoying me about my home life, it's created a vacuum. I don't have my ex beckoning me over to the computer to watch a forty-minute-long video on Youtube about chem-trails or following me into the bathroom just to tell me a story, and now I kind of miss being annoyed.
I was walking around in this melancholy state, just being nostalgic, poking at that still-open sore that won't heal, feeling lonely, until I saw that the little fucker defriended me on Facebook. I have never overreacted so quickly to something so trivial. This is the new passive-aggressive way to hurt someone-you symbolically remove them from your life. I wanted, so badly, above all, to not care. I wanted to not feel wounded and embarrassed and, once again, like I was just being informed that I was an idiot. I raged out just a little, roping my best friends into it, making them parrot back the same emotions I was feeling just to justify them. It wasn't until the tenth time that I pointed out that I had more reason to cut this last invisible social media thread than he did that I realized why I never scrolled all the way down that little drop-box next to his Facebook cover photo and clicked the "Unfriend" option, not even when I thought I really hated him. I kept the lines open, remained civil, listened to him talk about girls he liked even when it went so against my nature that I wanted to rip my hair out, all because, I think, I just wanted to look like the bigger, better person. I'm not more grown-up or well-adjusted, I'm just better at faking it.
I miss his friendship, really, and the nicknames, and feeling like I had someone in my life who knew me better than anyone ever had, but it's not healthy for me to miss someone who responds to me standing up for myself just a little bit with something like this. I could have stayed friends with him forever, I know, if I had just given him everything he wanted. Things were cool as shit between us when we were broken up, but still having sex, and before I told my attorney to move this thing forward. I could be wrong about all of this, of course. He could have unfriended me by accident, but that sounds like a lie a girl tells herself when a boy doesn't call. I thought, that even after he changed from someone I knew best to someone I don't know, that he would still be someone to me. I knew he wasn't going to call me Munchkin anymore, but I thought we would at least keep liking each other's status updates and stuff. That was more than he could deal with, I guess, and I think I've learned by now not to push it and never attempt to find out why. Why doesn't matter. I have hundreds of other people who not only like my status updates and stupid links, they also like me.
I doubt anyone ever looks over at their spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend/other and thinks, while they are doing something thoroughly annoying, "God, I am going to miss this when it's not happening all the time."
Not even the most insightful among us thinks of that. But now that I'm just alone all the time and have a significant, I would say, lack of things annoying me about my home life, it's created a vacuum. I don't have my ex beckoning me over to the computer to watch a forty-minute-long video on Youtube about chem-trails or following me into the bathroom just to tell me a story, and now I kind of miss being annoyed.
I was walking around in this melancholy state, just being nostalgic, poking at that still-open sore that won't heal, feeling lonely, until I saw that the little fucker defriended me on Facebook. I have never overreacted so quickly to something so trivial. This is the new passive-aggressive way to hurt someone-you symbolically remove them from your life. I wanted, so badly, above all, to not care. I wanted to not feel wounded and embarrassed and, once again, like I was just being informed that I was an idiot. I raged out just a little, roping my best friends into it, making them parrot back the same emotions I was feeling just to justify them. It wasn't until the tenth time that I pointed out that I had more reason to cut this last invisible social media thread than he did that I realized why I never scrolled all the way down that little drop-box next to his Facebook cover photo and clicked the "Unfriend" option, not even when I thought I really hated him. I kept the lines open, remained civil, listened to him talk about girls he liked even when it went so against my nature that I wanted to rip my hair out, all because, I think, I just wanted to look like the bigger, better person. I'm not more grown-up or well-adjusted, I'm just better at faking it.
I miss his friendship, really, and the nicknames, and feeling like I had someone in my life who knew me better than anyone ever had, but it's not healthy for me to miss someone who responds to me standing up for myself just a little bit with something like this. I could have stayed friends with him forever, I know, if I had just given him everything he wanted. Things were cool as shit between us when we were broken up, but still having sex, and before I told my attorney to move this thing forward. I could be wrong about all of this, of course. He could have unfriended me by accident, but that sounds like a lie a girl tells herself when a boy doesn't call. I thought, that even after he changed from someone I knew best to someone I don't know, that he would still be someone to me. I knew he wasn't going to call me Munchkin anymore, but I thought we would at least keep liking each other's status updates and stuff. That was more than he could deal with, I guess, and I think I've learned by now not to push it and never attempt to find out why. Why doesn't matter. I have hundreds of other people who not only like my status updates and stupid links, they also like me.
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