My first boyfriend (because Shawn went straight to fiancé) – 329

Although Casey left a scar on my heart, my outward behavior did not really change for the next few years. While I held it as a hard and fast rule that you do not reveal whom you like, I continued to notice whether or not boys were cute pretty regularly. I continued to play with boys a lot, primarily basketball, and Jennie and I were usually accompanied by boys when we would play on the tire trees. (We would pretend to be on flights with Graveyard Airlines. Yeah, I guess it was a little weird.)

I was also an avid participant in after-school sports, and when I got to pick teams, I would actually pick the cutest boys first, instead of the best athletes. To be fair, the first two picks were always the same, because JT and his friend (whose name I wish I could remember) were both good-looking and good at sports. It’s unfortunate that, as friends, they were rarely ever able to be on the same team, but it must be nice to be wanted. Anyway, there were plenty of boys around, but not really anyone significant until Stephen moved here in fifth grade.

I don’t know why I fell so hard, but I don’t think being new hurt his chances. We were in the TAG (talented and gifted) program together, and all of our classes were together, so we were able to bond that way, but he was not the only guy fitting that description. Of course, he was much taller than Josh, so it looks like that preference of mine started early.

If we remember back to first grade and Adam (the kind of weird guy who kissed me on the knee), there were guys who liked girls all the way back then, and by sixth grade there were boys who would talk about sex, though I think it was with very limited knowledge. Somewhere between those stages, “going with” people became all the rage. No one ever called it “going steady” or “going out”, and as fourth and fifth graders there was nowhere to go to, but still, it was very important.

Stephen hurt me greatly by going with Lora, but I stayed friends with him and was supportive when he was ignominiously dumped. However, the relationship did not really take off until we were at the end of sixth grade, and there was a special TAG outing. It was on a Friday, and we were going to hike from Hoyt Arboretum to the Pittock Mansion and picnic there, and we could all bring one guest.

Having extra students along, who were not TAG students, probably changed the dynamics a bit, and it was a picnic and the school year was ending, but somehow as Stephen and I were walking along carrying the picnic basket between us, jokes started flying about how it was like we were the parents and the others were our kids, and so there were other marriage and honeymoon and future jokes. I think I was able to get in some effective flirting, because later on the bus he awkwardly, but nonetheless sweetly, asked me if I meant it, and suddenly we were going with each other.

The euphoria was surprisingly short-lived. First of all, there were spectators and they were trying to get us to kiss, or at least each bite off the ends of the same pepperoni stick. (Shawna was involved again. She had come with Gabbie.) We went for the pepperoni, but I didn’t want to kiss him. Perhaps that should have been my first clue that my enthusiasm had waned.

Ultimately, I may have just waited too long for him. If he had asked me back in fifth grade, that would have been something, but now it was practically two years later, and I had let some other guys seep into my heart. There was a different Jason from church (who was very sweet and pretty cute and with whom I played basketball) and I had also started to like Geoff.

Geoff would have been my first official bad boy. I find it quite possible to believe that he has a criminal record of some kind now, but I don’t really know. I think I started liking him first when I loaned him lunch money. I’m not sure I ever got paid back, but he started treating me a bit more nicely, and I guess I was pretty easy. The point was, now that I had Stephen, I could not stop thinking about Jason and Geoff. Plus, Stephen called me over the weekend, and I should have found that sweet, but I found it annoying instead. He was getting a tad possessive for my taste.

Now, there had been boundary changes for the school districts the year before, and I ended up in Aloha Park boundaries. A few kids transferred already, but sixth-graders had the option to finish our last year of grade school at Chehalem. Four of us chose that, but were going to go to Five Oaks while everybody else went to Mountain View for junior high. Since we knew this, I had set an expiration date on our relationship, where we would just go together until the end of the school year, and then part amicably.

I should have stuck it out. Instead, I did what may be the most embarrassing thing I will ever confess on this blog. Monday, I went to Stephen on the playground. He was lined up for Four Square or Wall Ball—one of those games I never played because I was always playing basketball, and I told him that I knew we said we would go together until the end of the school year, but oh, I was having second thoughts or something. I don’t remember the reason I gave him, but I do remember saying, “…so consider yourself dumped.”

It was just rude and unnecessarily cruel, especially after I had seen how Lora’s dumping broke him up. I should have stayed with him for that last month, or just handled it better. As it was, I was disgusted with myself, not that I shared that with Stephen. I decided that I was just way too immature to date anyone, and that I would be for a while. Honestly, observing the other playground relationships, we probably all were, but at the time I really thought that the problem was me. That’s always my first guess anyway.

In the end he seems to have recovered fine. When we met up again in high school, he did not even seem to remember that we had ever been involved, and even if that is merely a memory block due to psychological pain, I’ll take it. He went to senior prom with Jennie, and I believe he has his own business now.

For myself, I did pick up a strong fear of hurting others, and it did lead to some relationship avoidance, because if he is not the one, then we are only getting together now to break up later, and why would we do that? Now I realize that learning how to behave in a relationship usually takes a few failures, and that’s why you do it, and you should do it, including breakups.

I actually kind of started to hate Meg Ryan after seeing parts of both Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail on television, and in both cases I saw the breakup moments. They both felt exactly the same way, and it was a perfectly fine, painless breakup, and my twisted mind decided that this was a concession to Meg’s image, like…

· I can’t be a cheater or heartbreaker because I am too sweet.
· He wouldn’t cheat on me or get tired of me because I am so adorable.
· I wouldn’t just be single, because there is nothing wrong with me to keep me single.

Therefore, the only solution to the inescapable complication of plotting a romantic comedy around a sweet adorable catch like Meg Ryan is spontaneous amicable breakups. It worked on a Seinfeld episode, but they treated it differently. (Also, she cheated on the roguishly charming Dennis Quaid with Russell Crowe, who is enormously talented and fairly handsome, but seems to have some real ego and anger issues. That’s okay, I’m sure it was really just that Meg and Dennis spontaneously grew apart.)

Anyway daters, you may have to hurt someone in the course of figuring out the relationship issue. However, if you always remember both honesty (so you do not lead people on) and kindness (for obvious reasons), maybe it doesn’t end up that badly. This doesn’t mean that you date people for the sole purpose of breaking up with them, though that would be interesting. It’s just that being interested in a relationship may be enough of a reason to pursue it without certainty that it will work out.
Of course, this is largely theoretical for me, as further postings will make obvious. Stephen was my last boyfriend as well as my first. Yes, fear of hurting someone based on that experience was a lingering issue as I started junior high, but once there I acquired much worse ones.

The very beginning, and a debut – 329

First off, today was a pretty fun world premiere, for what it is worth. Although what I should really be working on is my second movie script, I took on a fun little distraction. A random conversation at work led to speculating about various members of the team taking on superpowers. As each person became either a hero or a villain, it reached this point where I really felt like I needed to write it down. I started doing that, and it was really only about four nights work because the thing practically wrote itself.

I targeted today for its debut, since I just finished giving the quarterly presentation yesterday, and Cheryl’s birthday is tomorrow, so it seemed like good timing, and it kind of turned into a party, with pizza and cake. I saved the Final Draft version as a pdf at home, sent it to my work e-mail address, and forwarded it to everyone when I got in. I had some concerns about whether it would live up to the hype, because people had really been looking forward to it, but as I kept hearing bits of laughter erupting around me, I was reassured. It was frustrating never knowing who was at which part though.

Although it was initially conceived as a comic book, I did not have the time (or the talent) to do the graphics, so it was written as a screenplay, and could easily be adapted into a television pilot. I mean, its brilliance is as an inside joke, but maybe it could stand on its own. Anyway, now I really need to get back to Line Dancing Cinderella. (I have no skill at developing titles. Even my working titles sound stupid.) I hope to make good progress this weekend. I have promised to continue the adventures of the Bigg City Heroes, but I can’t let it take over everything. Still, it is nice being in a creative period.

Regardless, I said I would explore my romantic history, and that’s what I’m going to do. I already went over most of this in my writing therapy, but I feel like I need to do it again. Maybe part of it is that there are some differences in the writing you put out there and the writing you do in private, and so being willing to publicly air this could be significant, but also there are probably some benefits to going over things a second time, after some time has passed. We’ll see how it goes.

I started out with very traditional, possibly destructive, views. I was strongly drawn to the fairy tale construct, with the prince swooping in and rescuing the princess and then living happily ever after, except that I often then had her falling into additional peril. Maybe I was a bit of a drama/adrenaline junkie. Certainly, I was always creating stories in my head as a child, just like I do now. They were just less sophisticated. At some point I started realizing that you can’t count on anyone to rescue you, ever, and maybe I started also wanting to be the hero a little do, and do the rescuing myself.

Another part of my personality was a desire to have everything planned out, and just know how everything was going to go. So, combining that with my possibly rather arbitrary ideas about how things should be, I was going to marry the boy next door when I was twenty, and we were going to have a child every two years until I was forty, thus ending up with ten kids.

I’m embarrassed because I can’t even remember for sure how to spell his name. It was either Shawn or Shaun, but definitely not Sean. Anyway, he agreed that we were an item, so really, I was engaged when I was three, and this is also when I had my first kiss. My older sister and I were over at his place, and I told her to turn around and I kissed him on the cheek. Moving at that fast a pace, it’s amazing how much I slowed down, but we will get to that.

I truly did care for him—it’s not like he was the only boy I knew. There was another contender actually. I knew Jason from church, and I did think he was good-looking, but he was born on January 18th, and I was born on January 17th, and one of the things that I believed was that the boy should be older.

Shaun’s family moved from Wilsonville to Donald, but we still visited them sometimes. Then we moved to Aloha, and we visited less. Visits generally consisted of playing with Legos or Battleship, incidentally, we really only kissed that one time.

The thing is, even though Aloha was still somewhat rural when we moved there (there was a small cow pasture next to the cul-de-sac, and you only needed to go a few blocks to find horses or sheep), it was still a lot more stimulating than Donald. I will never forget going to visit them one time and driving by a small group watching a guy get his hair cut on the porch. Talk about your wild and crazy Saturday nights! Maybe it was the different environments, or the lack of regular contact, of just different personalities in general, but we grew apart.

Shortly before my 16th birthday, his mother called my mother to have me accompany him to a basketball game and school dance. It was going to be the night before my birthday, so technically I would not quite be 16 yet (which was our dating age), but yes, I could go, and I was excited. That’s when I learned that he was a nerd.

Technically it shouldn’t have mattered. I could easily have been considered a nerd too. Maybe it was the hick aspect. I don’t know, but we no longer had any chemistry. I did kind of start hitting it off with his friend, but then the friend’s girlfriend suddenly developed a headache, and they left. I was really ready for the night to be over. After that, I knew for sure that we were never going to get married, even though my target age was still 20.

So that was my first date, and he would still have been significant anyway, because I used him as a backup all through elementary school at least, and maybe even a little into junior high. It helped knowing that there was someone somewhere who was kind of like a boyfriend, or who had been a boyfriend once, meaning that it was always still possible. Of course, maybe that’s where I picked up the pattern of liking the one who was not around. That way, you can always look to see who is cute, but you don’t need to get involved with them and maybe you shouldn’t even get involved with them.

I did actually have one other major crush during this time period, Casey. He was in my first grade class and I thought he was very cute. We played together a lot; mainly imagination games based on Star Wars and Buck Rogers. When my family threw a Halloween party that year, he came. I would say things were going very well, but then I did something stupid. I wrote down that I liked him, and I put the paper in my desk. I don’t know why Shawna ended up snooping around inside my desk, but she did, and she told people, and from then on Casey avoided me.

Now, this had happened after I got the mean girls treatment and developed my weight insecurity, so it was easy to take it as an issue with me personally, and learn that you never let a boy know that you like him, on pain of death. Now, I am not sure that it was so personal. I mean, he did like me before, and we were first graders. Maybe it would have been the same with any girl, because girls still had cooties.

As it was, it did not change much about my outer life. I still played mainly with boys, because the girls were pretty mean and cliquish, until Jennie moved here in third grade and became my first best friend. I still was always looking at who was cute, and who wasn’t, and generally got along pretty well with most people. I was even sort of willing to try at romance again, though cautiously, and not until sixth grade. Next time: The Story of Stephen!

Okay, it’s not that exciting.

Oh no, what have I done? – 329.5

The last time I was out with my friend Karen (as opposed to talking by phone), she was telling me about something NPR did with six word life stories, and since at the time I had been impulsively doing crazy things, then having horrified second thoughts, I think this would be my title.

What crazy things, you might ask? Well, admitting my weight on-line was definitely one. Having second thoughts doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a good thing to do, but it’s a bit of pressure. You know, even women who are much less overweight are unlikely to be truthful about it. How many people do you know who aren’t lying on their driver’s license?

So that was one, for sure, but there was another even bigger one, and this story culminates in that Monday night two weeks ago when I was teetering on the edge of wanting to throw up.

I have mentioned Gerard, and will mention him more in later posts, but at one point there was a job opening, and it occurred to me that I should let him know. My first thought was, That’s silly—
he’s in California, but I could not shake the thought. Okay, I have to follow up on this, how do I do it?

My first move was to email his father, as I happened to be aware of his father’s web site. He confirmed that Gerard was in Oregon, in fact, but he did not have his phone number. He then put me in touch with Gerard’s brother.

Now, this leads to a predicament, because this story is about the brother, and I need to call him something. I feel silly making up a code name for him, but since I have stuck to Gerard’s code name, it doesn’t seem right to use his real name either. I could set up a poll, but I think I will just compromise and call him E. After all, it’s how he signs his emails.

Anyway, email went back and forth, and one phone call with E, and finally I heard back from Gerard, and he actually was not a match for the job and seemed somewhat annoyed to have heard from me, so the whole thing could have been a colossal waste. However, I had really enjoyed my talk with E, and wished to talk to him more.

I started debating about this. Will we ever run into each other? No. I’m in Aloha, he’s in Lake Oswego, we are not likely to cross paths. Can I hire him for landscaping or refer someone to him? No, that’s not really a viable option either. Then it occurred to me, perhaps I could just email him and say, hey, I enjoyed talking to you. Would you like to talk some more?

It was a bold strategy unlike anything I had ever tried, so I sent that email, and then heard nothing. Oh no, what have I done? Except, people like me check their email several times a day, and not everyone is like that. Sometimes, people may go an entire four-day weekend without checking once. Monday he wrote back, “Boy would I!”

Ecstasy. I was thrilled to have a response, and an enthusiastic one at that. However, follow through was a bit of an issue because we didn’t really end up having a phone conversation until recently, and then meeting two weeks ago.

It was fun, if not a breakthrough. I am pretty sure that we are not making a real love connection because we greeted by shaking hands and we said goodbye with a handshake, and my instincts tell me that if we were really getting anywhere it would have escalated to a hug. That’s logical, right? Realistically, both of us are probably best off single right now, though for different reasons.

On the other hand, I think I may be able to help some with his band, and he says he can get Gus Van Sant to read my script, and even though I don’t think what I have is nearly artistic or meaningful enough for Gus to be interested, that is still pretty major.

I just re-read “The Sad Ballad of Cute Cafeteria Guy” (December 2007), and I wrote about romantically being about fourteen years old, but probably having aged to sixteen, and not being able to imagine myself ever not being a dork, and that is probably still true. I don’t think I have progressed beyond 16 yet (probably because that would involve actually having done something since then), and I am still not smooth. So, on the ride downtown I was alternating between feeling sick to my stomach and talking myself down from the ledge and then letting my nerves rise up again. However, I did make it there, I did talk to him, honestly, and I have opened myself up to new opportunities. On that level, I have grown a lot.

Perhaps soon I will be romantically 17 and I can get ready for prom. Of course, the problem with waiting so long for this development is that the dating pool has shrunk considerably from what it was. Still, I believe that things will work out to be great, one way or another. As so much increased development has evolved from public display, the next series of posts will be covering my romantic history, or lack thereof, from precocious three year old to present.

In the meantime I will keep acting on impulses, even though it is sometimes scary and sometimes just weird, like asking a stranger on the train if he needs money, or telling someone you hardly ever speak to about the dream you had. It’s just the only way to avoid regretting not doing it.

Procrastinator’s Lament – 331.5

I had previously mentioned that I would really be sorry about procrastinating when I got to Mitt Romney, because it just wouldn’t be timely anymore. There was going to be an interesting twist though, and now my thunder has been stolen on that as well.

Please remember, my mind is always running. If I am not plotting out stories then I am having analytical dialogues or mentally writing my blog. Obviously, not everything gets entered via the keyboard and posted. Going back in time, we shall trace the evolution of the post that never was.

It started with a presidential candidate, Mitt Romney. I first heard of him during the Salt Lake City Olympics, as he was responsible for cleaning up the mess that corruption in the IOCC had created. Those went well, and he seemed okay. Later on when he became governor of Massachusetts, he seemed to be doing well. Remember, I am not really that liberal. I am just becoming more and more of a democrat because the GOP keeps forgetting that conservative is not supposed to be an exact synonym for evil. Therefore, it is not impossible for me to vote for a republican or feel like one is doing a good job—it just doesn’t happen very often. Romney was getting good reports, especially for some plans he had for getting more people health insurance coverage, and I thought, okay, this let’s see what happens.

If Governor Romney had been the same person as Presidential Candidate Romney, I might have been tempted, but he changed, and not in a good way. He turned his back on everything that I liked about him, but it wasn’t so much the changing as that it seemed to be a race to become as conservative as possible to win votes. More to the point, it wasn’t even done in a measured, intelligent way, which is why he still stands as the only candidate to suggest doubling Guantanamo. (Seriously, it’s not even smooth.)

It did get him painted as a flip-flopper, but it’s hard to run for president without that happening anyway. I don’t completely agree with Barney Frank calling him the “most intellectually dishonest human being in the history of politics” though. First of all, that is one long history right there, but also that comment to me seems to imply some cold calculation, and I don’t think Romney is calculating. If he is, he’s really bad at it.

Instead, I think what we have is someone who is so easily influenced in pursuit of his goal that the result is no spine, and no useful integrity. This would be a concern in any candidate, but especially in a member of the true church. So I wanted to write about that, and the title was going to be, “Why I worry that Mitt Romney is the Anti-Christ”.

The problem is that if you are going to take on a topic like that it just seems to lead to all these other places that you need to go, like following up on the true church thing, and also probably the Anti-Christ topic because when people say that they really mean the Beast, generally speaking. So. I procrastinated and he started losing, and then Mike Huckabee became really scary because he believed he was ordained of God, and I was sure he wasn’t, but at some point in there I had an interesting conversation.

I was helping out at a robotics tournament and talking to an old acquaintance, and somehow the Anti-Christ came up, I guess, and I shared my concerns about Romney, but Dan was sure that it was Oprah, because the key would be popularity, and who is more popular than Oprah? Our conversation was derailed by an apparent eavesdropper who said it would actually be someone clever enough to explain what happened to all the people who suddenly disappeared, lulling people into a false sense of security. She thus revealed to us that she is waiting for the rapture, and did not do anything to dissuade Dan away from his Oprah theory.

Well, that was interesting. True, she doesn’t seem evil, but they never really do now, do they? It’s hard to believe that she could have unleashed both “Doctor” Phil and Rachel Ray on the world without some secret malevolence.
At the time it resonated a bit because a friend of Maria’s was all excited over The Secret, and was going to use her mind power to focus on flushing the fat from her body so she could just drink lots of water instead of dieting and exercising. (I will confess to not having read The Secret, so it is certainly possible that the friend took the book the wrong way, but she certainly hasn’t lost any weight.)

The book was really popular though, and I heard many people talking about how it changed their lives, and it was kind of irritating at how obvious these things should be. Really, gratitude makes you happier? Well how about that! Who knew? (/sarcasm)

Seriously, the things that you get from Oprah are things that I get from religion. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t want to attend a taping of her show given the opportunity, because I understand that she gives away things and I love free stuff. However, I don’t think she really has that much too teach.

Perhaps I am being unfair, because a lot of people don’t have religion, or religion with any depth, and some people have such twisted religion that the closest it gets them to joy is smug satisfaction at being better than everyone else, but if she is set up in such a way that having a watered down set of answers dressed up attractively halts people there, instead of proceeding on to greater truth, then it is reasonable to call her anti-Christ, even if she is not the Beast.

So I came up with a new title, “I feared Mitt Romney was the Anti-Christ, but maybe it’s Oprah”, but there were still other things to explore, and I wasn’t writing that regularly anyway, and yes, I procrastinate. Anyway, other groups have beat me to the punch, criticizing Oprah for promoting a false, watered-down spirituality. When will I learn?

Their primary complaint appears to be her belief that there is more than one way to be saved, thus she is clearly not consigning enough people to Hell. Again, this is a topic that should be explored, and it is really an age-old theological conflict. God gives commandments, which we are supposed to follow, but not everyone has knowledge of them, so people are caught between the cruelty of some people having no chance, or the contradiction that His mercy would mean you can be saved without obedience, and then they come up with weird rationalizations like predestination to make it right.

None of the above. There is a plan in place to cover for all eventualities and where every person can end up with as great a level of blessing as they are capable of receiving, and the more you know about that the more you realize how great God is, and loving, and it makes everything better, but going into that becomes several blog posts and I still want to write about Italy, and my romantic history, and what happened Monday night when most of my regular readers already share the same religious beliefs anyway (it’s not a prerequisite of any kind—that’s just how it’s worked out).

So, although it is a strange way to end a post, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the only true church, not meaning that no other church has any truth which would be ludicrous, but that it is led by living prophets so has continuing and updated truth, and that by the Holy Ghost anyone and everyone can know the truth. And the truth is good. I think sometimes people get scared away from knowing more, but the more you know the better it gets.

Someday it would be nice to go over my entire political philosophy, and what I would do as president, and all the aspects of my testimony, and how many Christians (even my kind) get so badly twisted, and even my theories about the timing of the Apocalypse (which are fascinating), but I’m not done being shallow yet, and it’s my blog.

That being said, I am always open for conversations, and will generally answer questions freely. Even if we do not yet know each other.

Ups and Downs – 333

I know how it looks, like I have gained back half of the weight I lost in Italy, but in reality it is much more complicated than that. I went down a little, and then back up as high as 339, and then down to 330 again, and so on. I am fluctuating.

Clearly, not everything here is fat, and I know that bloating was probably a factor on at least some of those days, so I have questioned whether weighing daily is truly helpful. My friend Karen is sure it is, and I tend to agree. For one thing, although some of the fluctuations may be mystifying, they are sometimes traceable to things I did or didn’t do, and that is good to know. It looks like I should swear off pop forever, which is hard in the summer, but it is probably for the best. Lack of sleep is a killer, but eating apples helps. Ultimately, I am still learning about what is best for my body, and my life.

There are still high points. Some clothes are actually fitting better, though there are still many others on deck. My blood sugar is doing pretty well. One symptom I had been having for several months cleared up. Those are all good things. Also, I kind of feel like I am now settling around 330 instead of 345, which is an improvement, if not my final destination.

One aspect that is hard is that I feel like I cannot give as much time to exercise as I would like. I am really trying to establish myself as a writer. It is a huge time commitment, but I feel like I need to make that my priority, so even though there are a lot of good things I could be doing, this is where I need to focus my time now. Fortunately, for women it appears that dieting is more effective for losing weight, although exercise is more effective for maintaining weight loss. Ideally I will have gotten the writing established before I am in the maintenance stage, and will have more time for other things.

For the writing itself, I finally went through and got the completed screenplay into the proper format. That was an amazingly tedious job, which, along with some other things, convinced me that I really needed to invest in screenwriting software. I was reluctant because I am cheap, and because when I had tried a trial some time ago, I hated it.

I can’t remember what that demo was, but this time I downloaded demos for both Final Draft 7 and Movie Magic Screenwriter. They turned out to be pretty similar, and neither was horrible. Maybe they have improved over time, or going through the formatting process increased my understanding, making me better able to use it. I liked the look of Final Draft a little better, and after downloading the demo they sent me a promo code for $30.00 off, so it was the obvious choice. I have now started my second script in Final Draft.

I had decided Monday that I really ought to try writing ten pages per day, and that I would start that night. Monday I wrote 0 pages, Tuesday I wrote 0 pages, and Wednesday I wrote 9. Clearly, I am still a work in progress. I think I may be able to do better tonight. Part of the problem was that I was hung up on finding the right last name for the female lead, and so I was doing searches on German last names and finally I just changed her first name too, and then it was okay. That should not be a problem tonight, but who knows what weird hang-up I will pick up on next.

Regardless of the frustrations, this is what I want to do. I feel good after I have written, and usually while I am writing too (depending on how crazy I am driving myself in a given moment). My day job just becomes more frustrating all the time, and that will probably get worse, but it isn’t even about that. It is more just about not falling into a rut.

I have been basically doing the same thing since I graduated from college. Sure, I completed that novel and sent it around, and I have completed other short stories and things, but I have never been really consistent. I am trying to act like the things that I feel are most important really are most important. Because I don’t really think watching another Law & Order episode is more important than a satisfying career, but on some nights you might not be able to tell.
It isn’t all laziness or exhaustion either. A lot of it has been a lack of faith in myself, that I even could have anything good happen to me, beyond a normal existence where I worked and survived. I had these dreams, or I probably would never have written anything at all. I certainly dreamed of romance often, but I don’t think that I believed in them enough to see where I could try harder or approach things differently.

Now, after much time, I think I know that my worst fears about myself are not true (you will notice the lack of certainty), but there is the accumulation of bad habits, and also starting to do new things that do not quite come naturally. I’m happier this way, but I am also feeling scared all the time. This is why I spent about an hour and a half Monday night vacillating between calming myself and feeling like I needed to throw up. But more on that later.

In recovery – 330

I am starting to feel a bit better. I am able to breathe through my nose again, anyway, so that is nice.

It is amazing to me how debilitating a bad cold/sinus infection can be. I just feel so lazy, and yet lazy is not exactly the right word. I have things I want to do, and I feel a strong need to get them done, but the strongly overriding urge is to just lay still with my eyes closed until the headache goes away, pretty much lending itself to sleep. Almost any food that crosses my mind sounds delicious, but half of my meals have been cold cereal because it is the least effort. When I had soup, the Italian vegetable sounded better, but I chose the chicken noodle because it had a pop-top and I could not bear the thought of having to get out and use the can opener.

This is bad because I have just come back from two weeks vacation and I had a lot of work to do, and did not get much done at all. Monday I was pretty productive, and Tuesday was starting to go downhill, but was not horrible. Wednesday it was strongly suggested that I go home and take care of this. I suppose it was the horrible sound effects, but I do work with a pregnant woman and with a woman who, if she contracts anything, will have it turn into pneumonia. I was probably already well past the contagious stage, but going home sounded good. I should have held out though, because Thursday I had a (preexisting) doctor’s appointment in the middle of the day, and it wasn’t worth going in at all. Today I went back, and got some things done, but not everything I had hoped for.
Now I have a three-day weekend to recover, which is good, but getting everything caught up in four days will be a challenge.

I should just be grateful that I don’t get sick more often, especially with my compromised immune system. I don’t remember the last time I had a cold, but I probably hated it as much then.

The funny thing is, I do better with a more serious illness. Like when I had the 104-degree fever, I was typing like lightning. I enter this sort of dream-state, where anything seems possible, like maybe if I go up one more degree, I will start to move things with my mind. Sure, I know there is some hallucination built in, but I am still very productive. So serious diseases have a certain glamour to them, and are great motivators, but it is hard to be heroic with a head cold.

On a related note, I took in doughnuts Tuesday to make up for being gone and because I had a coupon. Jill was knocking on me for that (as an evil pastry temptress) and for the illness, referencing ebola. Well let me just say, if I was spreading ebola, it would totally cancel out the doughnuts.

Poetry Corner – 330.5

I returned to the States safely, but sickly. I feel pretty gross right now, and mainly just want to lie low until it all goes away, but thought I would make a short post to immortalize my poem.

I bought my coworker Jill and sister Julie word-of-the-day calendars for Christmas, and by complete coincidence another coworker has the same one. When I visit Jill’s cubicle, we have built up a tradition of me glancing at the word of the day and using it in a sentence that somehow relates to the conversation, even if it is pretty thin.

Recently she told me there was one I was going to love, but it turned out to be one day further out than she had realized. I did use it in a sentence, but she said that did not get me off the hook because it was too early. I took that as a challenge to go all out, and that would mean using all different forms of the word, and maybe making it rhyme.

On the appropriate day, I tapped out my poem. It is not great poetry, and it is low concept enough that it is not worth improving, but it gets the job done and cleverly ties in some inside jokes about an unsatisfying job interview and Rosetta Stone. (You’ll just have to trust me.)

I actually did do a second draft that day, after realizing I had left out vituperative.

Ode to the word of the day, or Jill’s poem

Without excuse you came in late,
Then giggled, filling me with hate.
You are not hired at this date.
Be glad I don’t vituperate.

For when you sit annoying us
It makes us feel vituperous.

I can’t but think, since you are grating,
‘Tis time to start vituperating.

When our thirst for blood is sated
You will have been vituperated.

Wrath might be my language native
When I feel vituperative.
You’ll still be crying hours later
For you have crossed the Vituperator.

I really do want to edit it, but I won’t. Anyway, when I reentered my office this morning, there were old word sheets taped to everything. Vituperate was on my keyboard. I have recycled the others (sacrosanct was on my recycle bin; am I too preachy about that?), but I am keeping vituperate. It inspired me.

The 2008 Democratic Slate –336.5

Man, I have not been reaching my writing goals at all, and now I will be away from the PC for two weeks. Still, I should get something up here, so I am doing that now, and I can leave up my views on the Democratic candidates for two weeks, instead of my reasons for hating Bush.

(That’s the other bad thing about my identity being out. As against the current administration as I am, what if I end up on the no-fly list or something? I know it’s a little paranoid, but it could happen.)

Anyway, I believe I already mentioned initially supporting John Edwards, but I am throwing my support behind Hillary Clinton. My family, who is primarily supporting Obama, are surprised, but hey, as registered Republicans all they can do right now is vote for Ron Paul, so ha!

I think there are a few things that are not great about how we administer democracy, in that often you are basing decisions on how people campaign, not on how they would govern, and campaigning seems to bring out the worst in people. Hillary has been a bit polarizing all along, and it’s not uncommon for people to dislike her a lot, but ultimately, I think she will do a better job.

My previous posting should have made clear how I feel about misguided feelings of entitlement. Although I definitely find Obama’s political philosophies more palatable than those of George W. Bush, and I in no way think Obama is evil, I think it is really presumptuous of him to be running for president now.

What is his past experience? Six years in the state legislature is not a bad start, but I don’t like the way he got in there (which was by getting the other candidates’ petitions ruled out legally so he basically ran unopposed). It is perfectly legal, but feels wrong. He hasn’t completed a full Senate term—not even close really. Basically, he made a speech that got a lot of press, largely due to Oprah. Okay, making compelling speeches is a good presidential quality, but there needs to be more.

True, Hillary has not spent a lot of time in the Senate either, but it has been more, and she did win a real election. Also, being First Lady is decent preparation for the presidency, because you are very involved in the diplomatic side of things. In addition, she was more involved in things than traditional first ladies. I know some people have derided that her only accomplishment from that was a health plan that did not get approved, but I think that had more to do with the political environment at the time than deficiencies in the plan. People seem to be coming around more to realize that the current health system is not working, and that should make us more willing to consider alternatives.

I don’t agree with her on everything, but that never happens anyway. Like the gas tax holiday, for example, I think will do more harm than good. I understand the appeal, but I think the tax part is $.18 per gallon, and to really feel relief the price has to go down much further than that, but the highway department will feel it. Nonetheless, I think she can do a good job.
Obama could probably be okay too, and if he wins the nomination I will vote for him. And if he could end up being her running mate, then I would also consider serving as vice president to be a reasonably good training ground for a future president. I don’t know if he can see himself in that role, but really, he should be paying more dues, and it’s not like he has one foot in the grave and needs to be rushing.

One thing that I believe has also been unfortunate in this election is the role of the media. I feel like the early coverage was skewed, and I don’t think it was even a deliberate attempt to control the public, but more that their predictions would be way off base, and then they would be confounded and try and explain why things were going a certain way, and stayed off base. Maybe it was that they were trying too hard to simplify things, but I think tagging John Edwards as angry hurt his chances, and I don’t think angry is accurate. It creates an image of someone really hot under the collar, ready to foam at the mouth, as opposed to just caring about social injustice.

Honestly, I think the issue has corrected itself a bit, if for no other reason than that they got tired of continually being wrong, but there are a few flaps that I would like to address.

Reverend Wright: He is not a reason to not vote for Obama. A lot of different factors can go into people’s decisions of where to go to church, and a socially involved dynamic organization where the preacher would sometimes get fiery is not an unreasonable choice. I believe the way Obama handled the initial controversy was fair and respectful, and also that distancing himself more as the Reverend flames out in a spiral of ever more embarrassing narcissism is correct.

Bittergate: I think when the news media was making it sound like Obama could not lose, it was easy for him to be mellow and gracious, and Hillary, perpetually cast as the underdog, was a bit more desperate and appeared worse. As a clear victory continues to elude him, he starts making mistakes too, and this was a big one.

He started out okay, “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising, then, they get bitter,” and if he had just made a little change here, and said something like that it makes sense that they will vote for whoever seems most likely to help, but I know that I can do the job. We can grow the economy, we can come through the hard times, and we can have a working class who knows prosperity again, he would have been fine.

Instead he said, “they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Unfortunately, this translates as, “Well you now uneducated rednecks won’t vote for a black man,” and it is insulting.

Honestly, I don’t think any good can come from telling people why they didn’t vote for you. If you are right, you reinforced their thinking, and if you are wrong, you’ve offended them. With luck, you can probably do both. Let the media do that.

Geraldine Ferraro: I’m not a big fan, but I think her comments were accurate. Even with a great speech, I don’t believe Obama could have captured the public’s imagination the same way if he were white. I equally believe that if she was a man she would not have been the running mate in her year. Was she really that distinguished otherwise?

It is nonetheless incredible that we do have a black man and a woman as viable candidates, and very few people are having a problem with that. That is huge growth from the 80’s. So many times when voting I feel like I am choosing the lesser of two evils, and this was nice in that not only do I feel okay about either one in November (but more so Hillary), but also between Novick/Merkeley and Kroger/McPherson, I will be comfortable supporting either candidate in November. It’s kind of cool.

Sure, there are still plenty of problems out there. Diebold can still muck up everything, and McCain could throw a wrench into it all by selecting Condi as his running mate, but we will just have to wait and see.

Actually, I would kind of love it if Hillary won the primary, and then chose Jesse Jackson Jr. as her running mate, though I believe at this time he is supporting Obama. However, even as a way of sidelining him, I could not support anyone who brought Ralph Nader onto his or her ticket.

Left from Center – 336.5

Although I gave my reasons for becoming a Democrat, I had always considered myself to be moderate, and I would look at both parties for candidates. As time progressed, I found that I was pretty much always voting for the Democrat though, and feeling more and more contempt for the GOP.

Was I becoming more Liberal? I don’t think so. I was just reacting to a trend away from those things that might be positive about conservative politics. I can see the value of reducing government spending, even if I think it is often more practical to have some programs run by the government than leaving everyone to work out education or retirement on their own. Really, how many improvements has deregulation brought?

That is not my point, though. My point was that there seemed to be a strong trend away from the proposed platform of moral values and fiscal conservancy and small government, primarily towards nothing being more important than favoring the rich—not so much in the speeches and campaigns, but in actions. This has been most obvious with George W. Bush, whom I despise.

It started out with a “What?” when he first ran. Conventional wisdom always indicated that the next Bush to run for the presidency would be Jeb. As it was, all I really knew about him was that he ran a pretty slimy campaign against Ann Richards for governor, and that is was effective. It wasn’t promising, but slimy campaigns are pretty common.

As more things came out, my image of him worsened. No, it was not so much the National Guard or alcohol issues. It was more the decline of the environment in Texas during his governorship, and the increase in the death penalty, even for the mentally handicapped. He was not a good governor. Granted, he was not much of a businessman, or much of a student, and that never stopped him, but it seemed pretty presumptuous of him to be running for president based on his qualifications.

That was my big concern right there—his sense of entitlement. I couldn’t see what he felt he had to offer to the people, and he didn’t care about that anyway. He just wanted the prestige and power and why shouldn’t he have it? His father had been president, he was rich, and his desires had been gratified over and over again with no other merit.

Really, he has been exactly the president that you would expect from that beginning. If the impropriety of having the person in charge of the election in a key state as your campaign manager does not throw you, than why would you be concerned about putting cronies and yes men into important offices, handing big contracts over to Halliburton without bids, or allowing energy companies to set the energy policy? Why not invade two countries, and why shouldn’t you lie and falsify data to get the second one justified?

There’s really so much that could be covered here, and it’s all been covered before. There is probably some wonderful site with it all in one place, but that’s a lot of data. Rape the environment, trample the Bill of Rights, and cut taxes for the rich. Don’t get me wrong—I think the party trend was to head in this direction anyway—but he just took everything and amplified it to the Nth degree.

I keep feeling like nothing will surprise me anymore, and it really shouldn’t, but I do still get appalled on a regular basis. Some of us were joking the other day about how much he can do in the time between now and the next inauguration (invade Iran and North Korea?), and one person suggested that he will probably declare martial law and prevent the switch. It’s a joke, but dang, you almost wonder.

Perhaps he will not need to do so if he feels comfortable handing the reins over to John McCain. This is where I hurt a little. I used to really like him. Once upon a time I seriously considered voting for him. That was in 2000, and he seemed promising, what with his Straight Talk Express and work on McCain-Feingold, not just because it was anti-corruption but it was also a bipartisan effort. However, someone with a history of slimy campaigning went after him, using his time as a POW to question his mental health. I’ve got to admit, it is kind of impressive to turn being a war hero into a drawback.

(Funny how most of his W’s achievements are so dubious. I think his greatest accomplishment may be making his father look like a better president in retrospect.)

This is the part that hurts me. Bush has the lowest presidential approval rating of all time and it keeps dropping. He has a personal history of wronging McCain. He is not truly fiscally conservative, but in other ways does not really depart from party lines regardless of world opinion, scientific data, or common decency. So…

WHY IS MR. MAVERICK REPUBLICAN SETTING HIMSELF UP AS MCBUSH, SYCOPHANT EXTRAORDINAIRE?

It makes me question his mental health.

I don’t really even want to get into that. Suffice it to say, I will not be voting Republican this year. I will go over the Democratic candidates in my next post, but I will close on this note.

A documentary that I really appreciated was “The Fog of War”, which is basically just an interview of Robert McNamara, US Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson. It focuses quite a bit on the Vietnam War. Johnson and McNamara disagreed on what to do, but I really feel that they were both trying to do the right thing. (Maybe there wasn’t a right thing at the point that it became their problem, because troop buildup there started under Eisenhower.)

We can’t expect our leaders to be infallible, but they should at least feel answerable to the greater good. This has been sadly lacking in the current administration. They may present themselves as religious, but their actions contradict it over and over again.

Will she ever get to the current election? – 332.5

Well, I’ve been outed at work. One of my coworkers made a comment about my hiding the blog from them, and so I sent him the link, and he returned a minute later saying he had forwarded it to everyone. In retrospect, I should have seen it coming.

It’s not truly a big deal, as I never really dished any workplace dirt here, but now I feel like the option is off the table. There’s always in person though. Next time you see me, ask me about Jim’s dead father. It is horrible, but not the way it sounds.

One downside of being a habitual procrastinator is that often I want to write about things, but when I get to them they aren’t really relevant anymore. I am really going to feel bad about this when I get to my section on Romney, but first I want to divert a little and talk about Robobrawl.

www.robobrawl.com

The site is really designed to convince you that you need Xeon processors in your servers, which is true, but they way they get there, and I don’t blame you if you don’t see the correlation, is robot brawls. Six robots enter, but by the end of the match five are just scorch marks and some springs and cogs.

I love it so much, and I am surprisingly good at it. When you are having a rough day, just taking a break to go and kill some robots feels really great. Even if you don’t win, but can still get a few kills in, it feels good, but also I won a lot. As Deathspork, I finished 117 out of 16704. With more effort I probably could have cracked the top 100, but there was always this nagging voice saying, completely accurately, that this is not the best use of my time.

I wanted to direct people to it, but then I was not writing or writing about other things, and the deadline was coming close. Now the contest has ended, but it is still up. I am sure it won’t last forever, but you do still have a chance to brawl if you want. There is an option to invite friends also, so try it, and if you like it, give me a nudge. I will destroy you.

Anyway, now that I am done focusing on improving my ranking, I think it is time to put a more focused effort into my writing, so I think the trick is to do it every other day for the next two weeks. Covering the election would be at least four posts, and I have been meaning to write about the end of my book club and different sites I like for ages. Oh, and maybe I should write about my adventures in impulsiveness, but if I do it will probably be on a whim.

Unlucky in politics – 334

Before I comment too much on the current race, I’ll just point out that I have a long history of backing losers. It goes as far back as 1980, when I was only eight years old. I don’t think I was even that political, but for some reason I really wanted Anderson to win. Looking back at his credentials, I can see some things that were good about him and some that give me pause, but the point is that I was totally out of step with the Reagan-mania that swept the country.

I had still not warmed up to Reagan in 1984, but Mondale never really captured my imagination either, so I didn’t really have a stake in that one. Naturally I favored Dukakis in 1988, but of course all of this occurred before I was of age. In 1990 I turned 18, and was able to register for the vote.

I registered as a Democrat—at the time I was the only one in the family. Most of my family has since moved left, but they have kept their original party registrations, so on the books I am still the only Democrat, unless my father changed.

It was primarily about two issues for me. One was that I do favor gun regulation. I don’t favor a complete ban, but I would not be against licensing and registration, similar to cars. I was briefly a member of the NRA, when my older sister was selling memberships so she could get this ring, and the magazine subscription that came with that revealed a lot of paranoia (in my opinion). Based on current events, it just seemed to me that people were too quick to fire a gun if they had one, and so I don’t think their ownership should be taken lightly.

The other issue was economics. At the time, I could not in any way see how supply-side economics could work. I understand the philosophy better now, so I can see where some people might expect it to work, but I still do not believe it works, and I think most of the people who promote it don’t really believe in it either, they just want the tax cuts.

Anyway, it was ultimately the party that would line up more with my personal beliefs, and personality, because I have a sympathetic, if not bleeding, heart, and am liberal in the sense of being generous, and I am really not about greed or condemning other people in any way. I suppose I could be called a hippie, but I’m really too square for that. I would say I am a populist, but that’s usually just something people call themselves as a ploy to win votes, and I’m not that cynical (though my sense of humor is).

I guess what I am trying to explain is that the first candidate I supported was Jerry Brown. I even saw him speak. He came to U of O, and Ken Kesey introduced him.

I know a lot of people considered him to be a bit of a space cadet (literally), but at the time I was looking for intelligence and integrity, and I believed he had those. Naturally, by the time the primary came around he was not even on the Oregon ballot, but I did end up voting for Clinton and feeling like he did a good job. I wasn’t happy about the whole Lewinsky thing, but I really don’t think we needed a special investigator for it. I was glad to see the deficit going down, and to feel like my family was making ground economically again, because things had really started to go downhill for us during the second term of Reaganomics, followed by Bush’s voodoo economics.

I did support Gore, though honestly I like him better now than I did then, but I really hated Bush. I remember going to bed on election night just unable to believe that I was going to wake up under a Bush presidency. As it was, hope was kept alive for a little bit longer, but you know how that came out.

Sadly, at this point I don’t even remember whom I initially wanted in 2004. It wasn’t Kerry, but I could live with him. I did not vote for him in the primary, though. I voted for Kucinich to remind Kerry that he did not have a strong mandate, and he should consider being a little more radical. It was Sean Penn’s idea, actually. He left me a phone message. Obviously, I still wish Kerry had won.

Finally, I started off 2008 wishing for Edwards. He had some good moments, but this has not been a typical campaign, and I don’t see how he could have been able to generate enough excitement.

In summary, politics is an area of perpetual disappointment for me, but I am not able to quit caring. So with mingled passion and dread, I will be taking on the 2008 election in my next few posts.

Feelings. Whoa! – 338.5

Last time I wrote, I mentioned that I had been busy, and that was true. What I hadn’t admitted was that I was starting to enter a real down period, and I could have at least partially predicted it. I wrote on the 18th, and the day before we had just put Forrest to sleep.

Forrest was one of our greyhounds, and we had him for about ten years. They are all sweet and wonderful and special, so if I try and write about that, I will keep thinking about other dogs, and feel like I am short-changing them, but nonetheless, he was sweet and wonderful and special. He was prone to loving you so hard it was like he was trying to burrow into your side, and if he did occasionally goose guests, they were usually pretty good-natured about it.

Saturday morning he had some swelling around his left back hock that looked like a sprain, and the vet agreed. There definitely wasn’t a break, or a fever, or any reason to suspect anything else, until the swelling kept spreading. An abdominal x-ray revealed a tumor the size of a grapefruit that was still growing, and it was impeding his blood flow from the leg, which is where the swelling came from, and it was also growing into his bladder and lower intestine.

It turns out you can’t really cut things out of the bladder and sew it back up. Even if you could, cutting open a senior dog is not really recommended, and we hadn’t put him under anesthesia since he nearly didn’t wake up from a dental cleaning nine years ago. Really, it was a pretty clear decision, and the vet was able to do it at our house Monday evening so everyone had a chance to say goodbye, including the other dogs.

Losing a dog is sad, and even though I believe in the immortality of animals just as much as I believe in the immortality of people, goodbyes are still sad. Also, when you have had a dog for such a long time, there are habits and the adjustment period is longer. Coming home the first time and seeing Jack in the window, and not Forrest, caused a pang. Opening up the leash drawer every morning stops you, because it doesn’t look right and then you realize that the green one is missing, but seeing the green one there would be worse.

So there is that sadness, but also I noticed how much I was picking up on all the sad emotions around me. Mom was particularly stressed, which is to be expected, but I just felt it weighing down on me. Then, after about a week of that, we got news that a friend of my sisters who had been struggling with cancer for about two years, suddenly took a turn for the worse, and although it is not as immediate as the dog that I lived with, the impact will be bigger, and there is nothing to do except wait.

I have just been really down, and on edge. Really, almost everyone at work who has even been a thorn in my side is gone, but the replacement for one is a lot like the old one, and there are a lot of stupid questions. Every time I received one of these, I just wanted to scream, and that is not like me. There was just this black cloud over my head, and I was always really close to anger, and I was not able to shake it off.

I suppose maybe that is why I went with the pet peeves entry, because it is a little bit angry but still fairly light, and so maybe that felt more comfortable. Still, I don’t like being so gloomy, and touchy, and also, I kept flashing back to losing other dogs and going through all of those memories, and I was frustrated with myself for not being able to shake it off, like I had before.

That, I think, was the key right there. I did always shake things off in the past, probably prematurely, and feelings were safely locked up. I don’t function that way anymore, but I am still not at all used to the new way. Apparently, you sometimes have to feel bad for a while, and it lasts.

There was a kid from grade school, Jonathan, who would always call me Spock because I was so logical. I took it kind of as an insult, because I felt like emotions were important, but maybe it did end up being a little bit accurate. Anyway, I am practical, and sensible, but I am no Vulcan.

There was one moment that was kind of revealing to me. Maria helped pay part of Forrest’s adoption fee, so she tended to call him her dog, and felt pretty close to him. When she was saying goodbye to him, it was so sad, and she was so devastated and I just ached for her. My first instinct was to wish that I could take it away from her, and this has been my bad habit as a longtime overfunctioner—I always want to fix things for people. However, in that moment I realized that no, that would be wrong. It is going through sadness that makes you tender, and that would be a loss. The lesson is two-fold. One part is that just fixing things for everybody would not be good, even if it were possible (and believe me, it isn’t). The other is that I need to let myself feel these things, even if I am never going to enjoy it.

One of my problems with Buddhism is that it teaches that you need to rise above these sufferings by ceasing to care for them (oversimplification acknowledged), but if you give up the aching you also give up the euphoria when something goes right. Honestly, as much as I care about things in general, I’m not sure how I was able to successfully suppress so much for so long, but I am choosing passion.

I am not suggesting that you shouldn’t mitigate sorrow. So things that I have found are important are taking good care of myself with adequate sleep and good nutrition, and other needs. Sometimes I am just starved for music. Also, I am not happy with myself if I am not accomplishing things, so writing and getting things done at work is very important.

I probably do need to go through and feel more things, so my journal assignment will be to go through and write about all of the pets we have lost. I won’t post that, as the gallery of dead dogs will be a little too depressing. Well, thirteen dogs, five cats, four hamsters, and a lizard. If I do all of that in one sitting I am going to need some sort of pills.

Don’t worry though. I am recovered quite a bit, and feeling better. I am also gratified that with a few Google searches that there are many others who hate the Family Circus (only a small minority joins me on the fluffy towel issue, but I still know that I am right). I still don’t want Amy to die so young, and while her daughter is so young, but that will heal too, even knowing that it will be accompanied by pain. It is just life.

I do feel pretty comfortable hating tumors.

Spork’s pet peeves – 337.5

I have had a really chaotic past two weeks, and have not really been following my plan. I kept going up and down one pound from 338, and it was irritating, but I was mainly grateful that I was not going all the way back up. The main stressors have been resolved now, so it is time to really capitalize on that and get past this plateau. I challenged my sisters to a contest, so whoever posts the most weight loss this week gets to impose her methods on the other two. I think I have it in the bag.

(Of course for weight loss to be healthy and lasting, aiming for fast results is kind of bad, and can be dangerous, and making it a contest is certainly immature, so don’t try this at home. My methods are essentially healthy though, it is just being consistent with them. I will write about that some time, but I just feel like I need to have actually made some progress before I take the contract for the diet book. Losing the same five pounds eight times does not a nutrition expert make.)

Anyway, one thing that I have noticed is that when I am not taking good care of myself, regardless of the reason, I get much more easily irritated, and so it seemed like a good time to make a record of the things I find most annoying, despite them being fairly trivial. Nothing angers me more than racism or animal cruelty, for example, but these are things that are actually important, therefore they are not pet peeves. I am kind of on the fence about stupidity, because my level of annoyance with stupid people may be unreasonable, but stupidity certainly isn’t doing society any favors. I have come up with three things that I would abolish if I could, and maybe doing would make the world a better place, but probably non-profit organizations and picketing are not called for.

Soft, fluffy towels:
I hate these things. I feel like instead of drying me they are leaving the water on me while depositing lint. Obviously they are picking up some water, because I can tell the towel is becoming colder and wetter, but I remain unsatisfied with the level of dryness. The worst thing is that is how everyone is making them these days. We had to buy new ones, and could not find anything good and coarse. Maybe we need to try Wal-Mart or Dollar Tree or something, but then there will probably be lead in the dye. I’m primarily using beach towels now. They are still a little soft, but not as bad as modern bathroom towels.

The Family Circus:
I don’t suppose I really hate this—it is too innocuous to hate. It’s just that it isn’t funny and it is way too self-satisfied with how cute it thinks it is. It shouldn’t even matter. I should just be able to ignore it. The problem is that I really like comics, and I read as many as I can. One thing I love about the Oregonian is that when they merged with the Oregon Journal they took both sections, so we have two full pages of comics. So every day there I am, reading away, and I get to one that is stupid and irritating before I even think of avoiding it, and it is too late. I suppose I could train myself to skip that spot, but it hasn’t happened yet. There are others that tend to be unfunny, but none that smug about it, and none as long-lasting with the mediocrity.

The F-bomb:
I do hate the word itself, along with all profanity, but that in itself is something that is kind of important, because the proliferation of crude speech makes us less civil, less eloquent and specific (thus, poorer communicators), and it probably does kill brain cells. No, the pet peeve part is that expression for the one word. Bomb? Ha! Maybe it was explosive one hundred years ago, but now it is as overused as it is crass. It is a word. It is a stupid, ugly, dirty word about something that should be beautiful, but we have done far more degrading things with the act than with the word, so no, it is not a bomb, and calling it that sounds idiotic.

Rant over! At least, this particular rant is over. I am feeling a need to comment on the presidential race, and perhaps politics in general, so it is not impossible that a rant would emerge somewhere there. I mean, it is me.

The last heartbreak – 338

I now realize that in the process of defending my mother I may have slandered my brother. He did go through a wild period, but that’s behind him. Now he is just kind of gruff and overly influenced by talk radio.

It is time for my final traumatic even. I liked a boy once and he did not like me back. It made me very sad. Wow. That was easier than I expected.

Yeah, I can be a bit gorier than that. I have mentioned before that usually I just fall in love at first sight, and when I have to talk myself into it, it does not go well. With this guy, whom we shall call Bill, it was neither. I knew he existed, but he really was not on my radar at all until I went to talk to someone next to him, so sat down by him. It occurred to me that I was about to be really rude, so I chatted with him for a bit, and this led to me later inviting him to an opera.

In my previous dating history, things usually got awkward at some point either during the date or after the date, but everything was fine. There was nothing earth shattering, but there was also nothing bad. Later on we were out with a group of people and he mentioned that we had gone out. That was probably the turning point for me, because him mentioning it meant that he was not ashamed to have gone out with me. Remember, I had this core belief that no one could ever like me. I started to have hope that maybe he could like me, and I could be with someone, and it was exhilarating.

I did take leave of my senses. We both had the same monthly meeting and I remember gazing at him and thinking, “He’s so cute.” And then I would tell myself, “No, he’s not. He’s a skinny balding accountant.” But I kept gazing, and he had become cute to me.

Alas, I was not cute to him. Well, I don’t think that’s fair actually. I don’t think cuteness had anything to do with it, but he did not reciprocate, and I took too long to see it because once hopes had gotten up it was too hard to let go, and this is where we get to the heart of the problem. My liking of him was not really him so much, though he was a great person, but it was really about feeling like I had a chance at all. Not being desperate and with a twisted self-esteem, he had no need to fall for me.

I guess my liking of him was symbolic and his rejection was horribly symbolic. I was still at the not trying to think about things too much stage, but what it felt like it meant was that I had been right all along. It was a joke to think that anyone could ever love me, and the pain of knowing I was right was unbearable. I was so angry with myself for ever believing otherwise, even momentarily, because it had robbed me of all of my ability to cope.

I had gotten used to periodically have a few days of anger and depression, but this lasted at least six months. I am not sure of the exact length of time. I know it was long enough for him to date one other girl, then break up with her, then date someone else and get engaged and married. It was long enough to do a comedy routine about it, and get his compliments on how funny it was. (I am usually better adjusted than I was then, but it is not unusual for stand-up comics to be basket cases.) It was a long time.

I have never been less functional. I still went to work, but I would be sitting at my desk with tears running down my face, and wondering if an allergies excuse would work if anyone caught me. I was fighting with my family a lot too, because they had no idea what to do with me. The thing I had feared most, and tried to hold at bay for as long as I could remember, had come true. That could almost have been a relief for some fears, but this one meant that the rest of my life was going to be like this, barren of love, and hope, and I did not feel like I had the courage for a future that bleak.

Obviously, in a situation like that, death has a certain appeal. I never really considered suicide, because that is wrong (simplistic reasoning, but it works for me), and also I am too responsible. It’s a rotten thing to do to the people around you. I was just sort of hoping that maybe if I worked really hard for a year, and got things squared away financially so that no one really needed me anymore, then maybe I could just sort of die somehow—like maybe I could get hit by a car or something.

The funny thing was that a year or so earlier I had been thinking that my life was meaningful, and that even if I died without getting married or having children, it would have been a good life based on the things I had already done. I had believed that once, but I couldn’t feel it anymore. I couldn’t seem to feel anything that didn’t hurt. People tried to help me, but they couldn’t reach me. I even lied to the therapist. She was trying to get me to see that I could be loved, and I said I saw it, but I really didn’t. I just said it because I knew she would keep at it unless I conceded her point. Really, nothing worked.

And then, I realized that nothing worked. I was walking down Cornell, going from the gym to Safeway, and I realized that I was not getting over this on my own. If I was capable of healing from this on my own, I would have done it already, and it occurred to me that maybe I needed to pray for help.

I did it that night, and just poured my whole heart out about everything, and begged. I did not feel anything then, but the next day I realized that I didn’t hurt anymore. I had in fact been healed.

It was the first time that I had really knowingly drawn on the Atonement. As an independent, capable, take-charge kind of person, I don’t ask for help a lot, and I don’t really repent that much. There were times when I had come kind of close, but there was never such an obvious and instant healing, and I will be forever grateful for it.

It’s not that everything has been a cakewalk since then. For one thing, just because you finally learn that a false belief is false, you don’t necessarily know what is true. I could get that it had not been impossible for anyone to love me my entire life, but I still had doubts about how likely it was that someone was going to love me now. I hadn’t exactly been beating boys off with a stick, and waiting to get your head on straight until you are in your early thirties (now mid-thirties) doesn’t exactly improve your prospects. Even if you have gotten a completely accurate worldview, there are still all these bad habits accumulated from when you weren’t seeing clearly. It’s tricky, is the point I am trying to make. I am still learning as I go.

I had thought I had defined myself by my intelligence (and my weight), and others have defined me by my kindness, but I had not realized until going through this how crucial my cheerful nature was. I had always been pretty sunny, and when that was gone I did not even recognize myself. Having lost that for a while, it is more mine now. Yes, I was resilient before, but I would lose it every six months or so, and there was this dark story underneath it all that I didn’t want to see. Now that is gone, my happiness is more real. I had heard it said that you can’t love others until you love yourself, and I did not believe it because I did love others without really loving myself. Now I love others much better—there’s less to get in the way. I do still feel my mood slipping when I am not taking care of myself in terms of sleep or nutrition, or when I am not being true to my dreams, but that is part of loving myself too.

I have no idea whether I will get married or not. I like to think it will happen, but it may not, and if it doesn’t my life will still be plenty meaningful, and it will not be a statement on my worth as an individual. Perhaps it will merely prove that boys are dumb. No, I don’t think bitterness and male bashing are the keys to happy single-hood. I have worried about the time I have wasted, but I have gotten other answers that make me feel okay about where I am and where I will end up, and so what happens in the middle should be okay as well.

Addenda – 339

I realized after the last post that I might have left the impression that my mother was not a good parent. I can’t leave that, because I don’t think that, and although she is not internet-savvy, so her stumbling upon this is not an issue, that is one of her sensitive points. I suppose she worries that she was not a good enough parent, but I think she did okay. If you have the impression that my father was not a good parent, I probably can’t contradict that one, but I can share something kind of good about him that has stayed with me.

We were talking once about when he was growing up, and they moved a lot, looking for better situations. I think he attended something like thirteen different schools. He said he didn’t like it, and he knew it wasn’t going to be like that for his kids.

It wasn’t. We moved once, when my younger sisters were born and we needed a bigger place. That was right before I started first grade. At times he would talk about the fantastic financial opportunities if he went to work in Alaska or Saudi Arabia, but ultimately we stayed here, and all five of us graduated from the same high school, with only two of us ever even having been in a different school district.

I hate moving, and I love having roots, so this worked well for me. You could argue that even the move from Wilsonville was one move too many, as my older sister and our brother had a rough time with the change, but she had a rough time with everything, and he already had one possibly bad friend there, so he might have gotten a bit rough there too. You don’t really ever know.

I am glad we came here. I know Wilsonville has grown a lot now, but at the time I doubt there would have been gifted programs and AP classes, and there certainly weren’t shopping malls (not so much for the shopping as for the hanging out). I know for many people the suburbs are a symbol of all that is wrong with the world, but I like the mix of city and country, and this is just home for me.

Regardless of my opinion on the move, the point is that my father did successfully identify something about his upbringing that he did not like, made a conscious decision not to emulate it, and was successful in its implementation. You could argue he focused on the wrong thing (like the fact that he was not speaking to his parents when he died might have been a good reason to never disown anyone, ever), but it was something.

I know that besides my always feeling vaguely ashamed of something, I also never felt understood. Any time I was punished or in trouble, they did not understand where I was coming from, and that was so frustrating. With Dad, it did not matter how carefully you phrased it—he always settled on the worst possible meaning. Therefore, the thing I would try to do differently is be really understanding, and let my children have a voice.

That’s all well and good, but I expect that I would neglect something else, and that would end up being the thing most important to them. That’s how it works right? First of all, if I am doing something right, that won’t be their point of devastation, so the whole viewpoint will be different. Also, things just go wrong, and there are obstacles and hardships, and that is life. My sisters talk about not letting their kids get fat, but trying to keep them healthy, while good, if coming from your hang-ups could end up leading to a different hang-up. Perhaps it is just as well that none of us are reproducing so far.

One book that has influenced me is “The Five Love Languages” by Gary Chapman. I would want to try and make sure that I am expressing love in a manner that is felt by the individual child. One thing that I think has been hard for me is that I am very physical, and no one else in the family is. It’s not just that it is unnatural for them to hug—it’s distasteful to them. (I believe that is why food has been a natural substitute, because it is very physical and tangible.)

Of course, looking for the individual love language is really just a part of looking at the individual, which I think is really important. Mom will tell you that she raised us all the same, but she got vastly different results. It has a lot to do with the starting material. I just want to be in tune, able to recognize and respond to needs. I am trying to follow my intuition a lot more lately, which has its own challenges, but I do believe in inspiration, and in prayer. That and I have a mental note to re-read Food Fight (Brownell and Horgen) before I have children start school, and Reviving Ophelia (Pipher) before having teenage daughters.

The other thing I wanted to revisit is that after writing about my particularly formative experiences, I think part of the reason that they cut so deep is that I did not stand up for myself. In both cases I acted like I was ignoring what was happening, but I wasn’t. In junior high, a girl did start picking on me once the way Suzy had. I don’t remember exactly what she said, but I know I said something like, “I wouldn’t talk with that face”, and I think I said something about her looking stupid. She was getting ready to hit me, and I was going to hammer her, but her friend dragged her off because after all, she had started it, and the friend was getting kind of embarrassed.

So again, we have a completely unprovoked attack on my attractiveness by a girl who is considered attractive, but instead of taking her insults to heart, I’m kind of proud of myself. I probably shouldn’t be, because I wasn’t really being very Christian, but I’m not sure that I am really evolved enough for turning the other cheek at this point.

I did have to turn the other cheek once. Well, maybe it has happened more than once, but this time it was with a mission companion. She was new in the field, and going through a rough time. I said something to her that my trainer had said to me (about interrupting), and it hurt her confidence more than I knew, and then it just kind of spiraled out of control where she kept getting offended by everything I did and started really trying to offend me. I did not take the bait, and it was the first time I felt like I really understood what being meek meant.

I did make her talk it out (it took threatening to go to the mission president), and when I realized what I had been doing I apologized, and tried to work on it, and we ended up becoming really close and doing good work together. However, for the next while I would find myself periodically feeling a little angry, and upset that I had been cast as this villain, even though we were past it.

Perhaps I needed to mention it at that point. I did kind of make one remark once after we were dogged by an appointment. I attributed it to that particular disappointment, but I think she was a little suspicious. I felt it was really important not to lash out at her though, because I needed to prove to her that I was not her enemy. Maybe it would have been possible to acknowledge my hurt without hurting her more. After the next transfer I was much worse off and entered a horrible depression anyway, and then we ended up back together and she was really supportive, so I guess it all worked out. Unless it was suppressing that hurt that left me vulnerable to the depression, but I still think it largely came from the new companion looking askance at me any time I did anything differently than her trainer had. Personally, I had always found her trainer very annoying, and had no desire to emulate her, but everyone else loved her.

The point is, it may not be right, but unless there is a really good reason, where my forbearance can help you, do not cross me or I will cut you. Probably just with words, but no promises.

Personal Narrative – 344.5

Back where I started. I am on a new medication, which led to dropping one and changing the dose on another, and I think my body is kind of adjusting now. I will say that the best advice I can give is to not get diabetes. If you have any kind of risk factor for it, do your best to eliminate all of the other risk factors. Anyway, that’s not what we are talking about now. We are talking about Weltanschauung.

I think for me the most impressive part about that word is that it is in the Microsoft Word dictionary. I have a bad tendency to stick in an extra “g”, and it lets me know I am wrong.

I am not sure that it is the best word for what I want to describe. Paradigm might also work, but as far as I can tell both of those words are really more for groups. It is not improper to use it for a person, though, so we’ll stick with it.

The point is that we all have a way of viewing the world and sorting out information about it. I feel like it is more a story than a picture, so that is why I am sticking with personal narrative for the title. I am sure that some type of frame of reference is necessary, but it can become of a set of blinders. Sometimes we filter out things that contradict our beliefs, when possibly the correct lesson is that our beliefs are wrong.

I was thinking about this after the Virginia Tech shootings. Based on writings from the shooter, he really believed that all of his fellow students were spoiled rich kids wallowing in utter depravity, and my mind was just screaming that they weren’t. It’s actually the wrong question, because even if his analysis were correct, becoming consumed by hate and killing would still be wrong. I guess that was the part that struck me because he was clearly miserable, and it was based on this fiction out of his own head.

It was also relevant because we were going through another eruption with my older sister. Her worldview is that everyone is against her, although she is not homicidal, for which we are all grateful. Still, you cannot convince her that she has some responsibility for the way her life is. Twice when we were having discussions on this topic she has been told that she is not a victim, and contradicted it. Clinging to her victim-hood seems to give her a sense of importance, and it certainly saves her from having to do a lot of work, but it does not make her happy, and again it is completely unnecessary.

So, I am and have consistently been better adjusted than those two examples, but I have also had blinders on. Because of the two events covered in previous posts I saw myself as unlovable because of my weight, and really believed that it was all anyone could see. When I did not get asked out on dates or have boyfriends, I believed it was because I was fat, but now I wonder whether it was also at least partially because I believed they would not ask me out, and that such an idea would never occur to them unless it was as a joke.

If someone had seemed interested, and I could have gotten past the suspicion that I was being set up for fate like Carrie’s (minus the psychokinetic payback), my next step would have been to wonder what was wrong with him. Then I would have probably killed things with my inferiority complex, totally overcompensating and being subservient. Without my religious beliefs, I probably would have gotten into masochism so I could at least pretend I was controlling my pain. I am really grateful that those were instilled early.
Instead, I just became this nurturing friend type. I got my gratification from lending money and giving thoughtful gifts and sometimes baking. I was actually pretty popular in terms of being well liked. It probably helped that my elementary school fed into Mountain View, but they changed the boundaries so my junior high was Five Oaks, meaning that I knew a lot of people. I did a lot of activities, though I never held any leadership positions in them (bad idea if you want scholarships), and when I worked at McDonald’s fellow students would come in all the time, so I could talk to pretty much anyone. I just didn’t get invited to parties, or on dates, or any of those social things. I was voted most intellectual for ninth grade graduation, and I was glad of it, but I really would have liked prettiest eyes.

Honestly, with some of the stories I heard later, it was probably safer not being more socially involved. Drugs and alcohol and sex never even came up. Still, it was kind of sad, and it was hard to escape. I wanted to lose weight, but when you are doing it because you are trying to fix yourself so people can love you it’s a horrible amount of pressure. Once you factor in that eating was my only coping skill, you can see how it accumulates. My conflict was that I was always feeling that this scenario was true, and always desperately hoping that it wasn’t, and really pretty set against thinking about it too much anyway. It was easier to have a cookie.

At times there were things that gave me pause. For one thing, I always was against having people fix me up, because I just knew it would always be a fat guy, and I didn’t want that. However, Karen once told me she had thought about fixing me up with a coworker that I had found really attractive. The reason she didn’t was because he was fond of alcohol and cigars, which is a turnoff for me, not because of my heft. Jennie once invited me to dinner with a friend of her husband’s, and the situation did kind of scream “set-up”, and he was also perfectly eligible. My friends thought better of me than I did, but it was still easy for me to think that they were delusional.

Another moment I remember was when another friend was getting married, and I bought her some lingerie, which my sisters made me exchange because it was too small. They swore we needed a 3X, which was my size. I couldn’t believe she was that big. She didn’t seem to be my size. I didn’t think anyone was my size, but there it was.

Probably the moment that was most fun was when my sisters and I were discussing a friend of theirs that was also very considerate, always doing thoughtful things and bringing little things, and I was saying how she was doing it to compensate for her own insecurity, and it was nice but it would be better for her if it was coming from a place of strength instead of weakness, and then I got this funny feeling, like I was a hypocrite, but I really was nice from a place of strength, and I was totally not overcompensating. It all came back to haunt me later.

So I was wrong about myself, and it made me wrong about others too. My mother did nag about my weight at times, but probably not as much as it seemed. My friends did not find me physically repulsive. I don’t know if there were boys who liked me, but it I can believe that it was possible. I hated going on job interviews because new people see you, but I almost always got the jobs I really wanted (of course, none of them were modeling jobs). I just did not allow myself to see these things, and kept my field of vision tightly controlled.

My point with this is that it is vitally important to be able to open your mind to other possibilities. I don’t know that it would have been possible for me to not get messed up in the specific way that I did. Dad could never be wrong, and somehow I think that led me to believe that people hate you and are mean to you when you mess up or are weak. I did not realize this until I was 21 and out in the mission field, and my companion began to really despise herself because I was always right and it made her feel inferior, and we had to work that out, and I came to learn that sharing weaknesses can be really helpful to others.

Mom was raised that you correct faults in children, and you brag about them to others, but complimenting them to their faces and confirming your love for them isn’t really necessary. It is not child abuse, and I love her a lot, but I feel like that was not ideal for me. Then, the first time Dad cheated on her, when I was nine, I felt a real need to protect her and take care of her, and I was probably too young for that. I don’t think I really went through normal teenage rebellion with her, though I may have covered that in my mid-twenties.

Of my siblings, my brother kind of ignored me (he was seven years older, and the only boy with four girls, which was not easy for him), my older sister resented me from birth for displacing her as the youngest and as the only girl, and although I am close to my younger sisters now, it took us a while to get there. They are five years younger, and as twins were pretty self-sufficient. I was lonely, and the first few girls of my age that were potential playmates were fairly bratty. I didn’t have a best friend until third grade. I’m just really lucky Jennie’s family moved here, or it probably would have been a lot longer. From first through fourth grade the queen of the girls was Suzy, and then Michael displaced her, but neither of them liked me. We did shop at K-mart, and sometimes Goodwill too, and there are always things that other kids can criticize you for.

This is not supposed to be a pity party, but it is just a list of ingredients that made it fairly easy for me to be susceptible the way that I was. I have mentioned before that under the 9 personality types model, I am a people pleaser. What I did not specify was that the underlying emotional wound for that is shame, and yes, I always had this sense that I was not good enough, and that I was bad.

So, I don’t necessarily think that I could have avoided getting to where I was at fourteen. It does seem that it should have been possible to snap out of it sooner. If I had been willing to shine a light into the dark corners, and find the truth of things, well, the truth does actually set you free.

This is why the open mind is important. You need to be able to see when you are wrong, especially when it is hurting you, and leaving you open to hurting others. We need to pay attention to what is going on, and take times for quiet contemplation, and we need to be brave because some things seem like they will really hurt, even if in the end dealing with them hurts a lot less than not dealing with them.

It was probably easy for me to avoid this showdown because I really was very functional. I would just get these dark periods about twice a year when a little thing would set me off and I would be angry at everything, but really just about not feeling loved, and I would fight with my mother and in about three days it would pass and I would be okay again, and I would not seem like a doormat because I cracked a lot of jokes and I did have some spirit, but I was not taking care of the most important things.

Really, what I was doing was building up pain until it could not be contained anymore, having some slip out, and then regaining control, putting the cover back over the hole. Next time will be about when I lost the cover.

Sporkphelia -- ?

Why no number? Did I encounter a weight that was so horrible I could not bear to display it? Did I chicken out of the whole thing? Or did the battery on the digital scale die? Yeah, it was the battery. It’s not exactly convenient, but it’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m actually not sure what the worst thing is, but today’s topic is a key contender. Yes, we are going to review that thing that happened when I was fourteen.

So, to start off, I will say that I have always been very boy-aware, and that was especially true in junior high. The big thing from about fifth grade on was going steady, but I had crashed and burned so spectacularly the time I tried it that I disgustedly swore off having a boyfriend until high school.

(Basically, I had liked Stephen since fifth grade when he was new. Part of being his friend was that I was there for him when Lora dumped him. By the time he got around to asking me out the next year, I was initially thrilled, but suddenly felt trapped and realized that I was more interested in both Geoff and Jason, and so I dumped him abruptly and cruelly the next Monday, even though I had suggested that we just go till summer, since we would be going to different schools, and I felt like I was more evil than Lora, and fickle, and not ready for this at all.)

Anyway, so I was interested in boys, and thought about them a lot, but I was not planning on going steady with anyone or thinking in those terms. One day at lunch, the kids at the table next to us were goofing off, and Jason (a different one, whom I have never mentioned before) asked me to go steady (we called it going with someone). I ignored the question. Then, another guy there, Matt, started asking, and yet another kid, Steve, started egging him on, and they just wouldn’t let it go. They kept it up all through the lunch period and even followed me to my next class until I finally shouted “yes” at the door to get rid of them.

Junior high school age boys being stupid is nothing new, nor is horsing around at lunch, so it shouldn’t be so such a big deal. There were probably two factors that made it worse. One is something that even the few times I have shared this story, I have not shared, but I am going for it now, is that after school as I was heading for the bus, they were out there and Steve came up and started ripping my shirt open. It was a snap up shirt so that was pretty easy to do. I instinctively brought my knee up to his groin, and just kept walking, snapping back up. It just added that extra level of shame to everything that had already happened.

The real problem is just that I was a joke. Even when I kicked Steve, he just laughed it off. One of them said, “Her daddy taught her how to kick.” Everything about me was a joke for them. Because there were parts of them asking me out earlier that were a little exhilarating. It was attention from a boy—that’s good right? Even though these were not the boys I wanted, they were paying attention to me. Except it was ugly, and demeaning.

The real message that I ended up carrying away was that a boy liking me would be a joke. And since my other core belief was that I was fat, I figured that was why it was a joke, so no one would ever love me until I lost weight, and as long as I was fat I just wasn’t good enough. It should have been extremely motivating, but it was hard to take healthy actions with that much emotional baggage, especially when it is largely unacknowledged. I mean, yes, I consciously did not expect boys to like me, because of my weight, but really taking a hard look at why I felt that way, or how deeply I felt it, was just off the table.

From then on I just always kept myself in friend mode, with the hope that someday I would be able to fix myself, and then someone would love me. My happiness was always going to be deferred until I lost weight.

So, one problem with developing the core belief at six that I was fat was that it really became a self-fulfilling prophesy when it should have been very possible to grow up healthy with a normal body weight, when I never even knew that was an option. Likewise, I may have missed out on some key things by believing myself not capable of love. Looking back now, I can see some cases where people might have had crushes on me. They would not necessarily have amounted to anything, but I sometimes wonder now if it was really that boys were never interested in me because I was fat, or maybe that boys were never interested in me because I never seemed remotely available. As it is, my prom dates were a friend who would later turn out to be gay in tenth grade, stag and really shouldn’t have gone but felt like I needed to because I was in charge of the chaperones in eleventh grade, and a blind date set up for me by someone else my senior year.

When I was doing my writing therapy, there were a lot of regrets, most of them having to do with boys, and I thought they were related to fear. That may be partly true, but on a lot of them I can look back and see that it wasn’t even fear, it was me not even believing I was worthy to take the chance, and that is even more depressing.

The other part that frustrates me, with both cases, is that I didn’t even like these people. Suzy was not nice, and she had a pinched walnut kind of face. Adam thought she was really cute, but I’m the one he kissed when opportunity struck, so even if he was a freak, on the scale where she is adorable I am still desirable. As for Matt and Jason and Steve, they were so far off my register that I didn’t even have code names for them, and that was a list of about forty boys who had code names. They weren’t good looking or smart or interesting, and yet they have had the biggest discernible influence on my life. Why couldn’t I have listened to someone with some merit?

I doubt they were trying to emotionally handicap me and tarnish the next thirty to twenty years of my life—not because they were truly nice or anything, but I doubt they were that ambitious. But right now all I can do is focus on what I am going to do with the next thirty.

The good news is, there is only one major tragic recounting left, and it is actually the most positive one, because it was the turning point. It was just hard getting there. However next time I will be waxing philosophic about Weltanschauung.

For now, I have included pictures of me at seven and fourteen. They look a lot different now.