“I don’t play well with others.”
- Buffy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
24
May
2007
Oh my.
Also, I should be reading Wiscon-appropriate material, yet here I am, frantically devouring Gone With the Wind… what’s the change, you may ask, as I’ve been trying to hammer through this book for months?
Well, I finally got to the Seige of Atlanta.
It is great.
23
May
2007
I had a wicked craving for a quesadilla or pancakes at 10pm tonight. Man, that sounded uber-tasty.
But you know, I’m working on staying in my clothes cause you know, clothes are expensive, and sweet fuck I just had to buy two pairs of size 18 – 18!!! – trousers for job interviews.
So I brushed my teeth and went to my room to shadow box with free weights and I realized that though the craving was certainly surprising, it was nothing at all like the carb cravings I used to get before I got sick.
I’ve always been a ridiculous carb addict, which I found out later was also sort of something that went hand-in-hand in diabetic families. Craving carbs is the reason diabetes still survives, I think. I think the two genes are linked; I mean, back in the day, living until 26, I would have popped out a handful of kids by then and spread those carb-loving diabetic genes all over the fucking place. Having an intense desire to scarf high-calorie food at all costs and being able to retain that weight would have put me at a distinct advantage.
My cravings used to be so bad that I would literally shake – shake, like a drug addict or alcoholic – during particularly bad cravings. This was one reason why the Atkins diet worked so well for me back when I was 18/19. After two weeks of withdrawl, I was finally able to live without those intense cravings. They didn’t go away, mind you, but I no longer thought I was going to die if I didn’t eat something loaded with sugar.
Food and weight are touchy subjects. We have very clear ideas about what sorts of people overeat, about what “fat people” are like, and I know that to some extent, having these incredibly out-of-control cravings (and, particularly in South Africa, some really awful bingeing sessions) has left me with a huge feeling of personal shame. Here I am, this out-of-control fat person.
But what’s been worse is to no longer eat the way I did during the most stressful times in my life – the last couple years of high school and my time in Durban – and to still be gaining weight and struggling to get back into shape. I’ve said before that I’m pretty happy at 200 lbs. I have no desire to attempt a cool 155 lbs, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen in my life, except maybe a brief period in fourth grade. No, I like being big and strong and tall. But once you get up past a certain size, it gets harder to find clothes, and not being able to maintain a steady weight – no matter what number it is – is fucking maddening. It takes all your self control to not beat yourself up about it.
And it’s funny, you know, because I did work so hard to come to terms with this body, with what it can do. I like being powerful. I liked not having to think about my weight constantly. It’s one of those big societal traps we get into; thinking about weight is a huge mental timesuck. It takes away time from writing, learning French, even getting a job. It sucks a lot of brilliant mind power into struggling with something that is, at the end of the day, rather trivial.
Yet, even knowing this, I’ll catch myself shopping for clothes and I’ll want to burst into tears. I’ll think, “Oh God, I want to kill myself,” and it’s the intensity of that thought, the sudden brutality of it, that will stop me short.
Dear fucking christ, how important is another inch of flesh? How important is it for there to be less of me in the world? So important that I wish I wasn’t here? There’s this sick guilt you get when you *don’t* feel guilty. What if you’re too confident and outgoing and pretend nothing’s wrong and then people come up to you and go, “So you know you’re fat, right?” What do you say to that?
“I sure as hell am, and I love not being able to find clothes.”
Or you laugh nervously and say you’re working on it.
Honestly, I don’t want to work on it. I want my weight to stay steady. I just want it to stop. I’ll take a steady weight. I want my body confidence back. I don’t have to be a size 2. I just have to be a size that stops moving.
Pretty please.
I need this angst for more productive things.
23
May
2007
“Only a species under threat would reproduce this way.”
Well, then. That does give me some ideas for a few SF novels…
23
May
2007
CAPRICORN (Dec 22 – Jan 19)
Drinking style: Capricorn is usually described as practical, steadfast, money-hungry and status-thirsty — no wonder they get left off the astrological cocktail-party list. But this is the sign of David Bowie and Annie Lennox, not to mention Elvis. Capricorn is the true rock star: independent, powerful and seriously charismatic, not too eager to please. And if they make money being themselves, who are you to quibble? But just like most rock stars, they’re either totally on or totally off, and they generally need a little social lubricant to loosen up and enjoy the after party, especially if they can hook up with a cute groupie.
Check out yours… (just in time for a con weekend!)
23
May
2007
As of today, I’ve gotten at least four calls for temp jobs that would take place over Wiscon weekend (the one I was called in for today would start… tomorrow. I have a 2:30 flight to Madison tomorrow).
Blast.
But hey, once I’m back from Wiscon, I’ve got nowhere to be until September. Then maybe somebody call give me money. Or maybe even health insurance!
Boy would that be exciting.
22
May
2007
I liked living in Chicago. I liked feeling young and hip and successful. I liked my shiny shoes and my corporate card. I liked having money. And spending it.
I didn’t like worrying about how I was holding myself when I was walking home at night, being worried about coming home a little tipsy, hauling my bike up three flights of stairs at home so it wouldn’t get stolen on the street and removing the seat downtown when I locked it up to make it less thief-friendly. I didn’t like getting cat calls on the train plateforms, getting hit on or just plain harrassed on the train at odd hours, or any of my commute times.
But downtown was a train ride away, and there were some shows, and movies, and everything you could ask for within walking distance. There were amazing restaurants, which also involved shelling out amazing amounts of money.
It was a great experience, and I enjoyed my time there, but I won’t say I’m incredibly unhappy about living in a small town for a little while after four years of City living. I got tired of being on my guard all the time. I got tired of watching how I walked, what I wore. In Fairbanks, I was friendly to everybody; in Chicago, being friendly meant getting stalked (Jenn made the “mistake” of smiling at a guy in a video store once, who tried to follow her home. The quick-thinking video store clerk called the guy back to “verify” something, and Jenn called the store later and thanked her. “Oh thank God you called,” the clerk said, “I was really worried. He bolted out of the store after you when he realized you were gone.”).
There were things I liked about Durban, too, but it’s that constant threat of violence that gets to you. B and I once got into a screaming fight with some asshole outside the same video store who kept trying to hit us up for money in an altogether menacing way. In Durban, I once got stuck at a busstop with two guys intent on blurting sexually suggestive threats to the little blond next to me. I broke down and cussed them out, too. Without getting knifed, which I thought was great.
You get tired of living in fear. You can do it, yeah, sure, and a lot of people live that way, but it gets to you. After a while, it gets to you.
Some of that is probably hype: you hear more about crime, you worry more about crime, but you know, one of the girlfriends of the guys in the apartment below ours was mugged – on our front porch, and Jenn had stuff go missing from her car. And let’s not even talk about all the parties in Durban where everybody traded stories about the latest murder, mugging, rape, robbery, or mutilation.
It gets to you.
I was walking into the kitchen tonight to get some water and I noticed that the windows were still open from when we were cooking and I thought, “I should at least pull them down and put on the burgler guard,” (which is just these two pieces of plastic that keep the window from being opened more than three inches – probably more a deterrent than anything else), and then I thought, “Well, hell, it’s probably no big deal if I don’t. We do live in Oakwood.”
This is probably foolish thinking, and I’m sure Oakwood’s got it’s fair share of thievery, but you know, my bike’s been leaning against the back of the house since I moved here. And it’s still there (knock on wood), and the only time any yellow tape is up around here is when somebody’s repaving their driveway. The neighbors actually say hello to you.
Don’t get me wrong, now – there *is* something a little Stepford about the whole thing, and I get weirded out a lot about the glaring… well… *whiteness* of this freaking suburb, but sometimes it’s nice to just sit on the grass at the park and not worry about getting hit on by some creep or worry because you haven’t locked up your bike.
Sometimes it’s nice to just… not worry.
I don’t like our culture of fear, and it bothers me that instead of confronting those fears, instead of fixing the places and situations that make us so fearful, we have, instead, these carefully tended little white ghettos; the children and the swingsets, the strollers and sports teams. Because even as I sit there in the park, I know it’s a fake existence. I know that just down the hill is the Dayton where “everybody else” lives. Where most people live. Where I’ll live again.
But up here in the hills you can walk to Starbucks and pay $8.99 for a pound of cherries and go jogging at night… without fear.
Well, without *one* kind of fear.
I have no fear that I’ll be harmed for being white and female.
But I do have a fear of being ostracized for being Other.
For being Feminist, a tad on the queer side, left-leaning. If I died my hair purple and had a face full of peircings and tattoos and rode the train in Chicago, I’d get barely a nod.
But here in Stepford…
Yes, well, it’s all about trading one fear for another, one freedom for another.
I enjoy small town living, but the small town I loved best was definately Fairbanks. We were all a bunch of fucking weirdos, and they would find the neatly trimmed lawns as strangely bizarre as I do, some days.
Yes. We trade fear for fear.
If you toe the line, look sharp, don’t do anything out of the ordinary… the white ghetto is a good place to be. It’s a safe place. If you’re white and middle class.
It’s safe so long as you’re not too different.
It’s like any small town. Once you belong, they’ll love you forever. But don’t belong, and you’re in trouble.
There are days when I’m willing to pass, if it means living without fear of violence for a little while. Just a little while.
22
May
2007
I’ll just need to write a lot on the plane…
22
May
2007
Mmmm… lilacs!!
22
May
2007
At age 27:
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. dropped out from his job at General Electric to become a full-time writer.
Henry David Thoreau went off for two years to live alone in a cabin at Walden Pond.
Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space.
Memphis millionaire Frederic W. Smith, whose father built the Greyhound bus system, founded Federal Express.
Scottish botanist David Douglas discovered the Douglas fir.
Ernest Hemingway published his first novel, The Sun Also Rises.
Boston dentist William Morton pioneered modern anaesthesiology after learning that inhalation of ether will cause a loss of consciousness.
Jimi Hendrix choked to death on his own vomit after ingesting wine and sleeping pills.
Janis Joplin died of an overdose of whiskey and heroin.
