Entering adulthood single

As I re-examine my past, I am starting to see that I was more attractive than I realized.

By this, I don't mean simply that pictures from then don't look as bad to me now. That is a thing, but had been for a long time. Even in grade school I remember being puzzled by how much I hated my school pictures each year, but then when they were last year's pictures they didn't seem so bad. 

No, in addition to that, I have to acknowledge that the boys that I liked generally liked being with me. I found many reasons to explain that away.

I should do a post bragging on that. I may later. There is stuff coming up where it will fit better.

One sister has recently expressed some admiration that I hung out with various hot boys. I did, but to do that I basically neutered myself. That was what I learned from first grade: if a boy knows you like him, it's gross. Having since learned that I was starting out at "gross", liking boys had to be completely off the table if I was going to even be able to exist in the presence of half the population of the school.

I definitely was fat, though not as fat as I mentally pictured myself.

It is pretty accurate that a lot of people -- especially male people -- will write you off for being fat. 

And yet, fat people do date and get married and some get around in ways that I would not have based on my religious upbringing, but nonetheless there are a lot of options out there. I am not sure which ones were open to me.

Did I need to say something to make that happen or signal something? If there were rules, I did not know them.

I don't have as many regrets here as I could, because looking back so much of dating and crushes was stupid, and so many of my friends had bad, stressful, humiliating experiences. I am not sure I would have enjoyed that. 

However, those friends also have significant others and children. I believe I could have enjoyed that, though I also worry that I would have been too messed up inside to have not messed all of that up very badly.

I would have a very had time forgiving myself for having children as badly screwed up as I was. I am not sure that I would have been able to prevent it. 

That is as dark as I get, right there. If I had gotten what I wanted, how much pain would I have caused? How much would I have regretted it?

The more pertinent question is probably whether I could have healed faster. I don't even mean healing all the way, but could I have gotten well enough soon enough to get married and have kids and for it to be a good thing? 

Even if the answer is yes, I fought healing pretty hard.

My main frustration now is that a lot of what I lost was due to things that were not true, and truths that I did not recognize. I don't want that to ever happen again. This may be part of my bent toward over-analyzing everything, but I would rather know. I would rather get it right the first time, and not keep trying to figure it out years later. 

This may be too ambitious. 

One of the most disappointing books from the Long Reading List was Kevin Renner's In Search of Fatherhood: A Mother Lode of Wisdom from the World of Daughterhood. In the interview I read, he said that if any woman would tell him about her relationship with her father, he could predict her current relationship. 

There was nothing in the book to back that up. There were women who'd had great fathers so no one measured up, and women with bad fathers who found good husbands, plus many good and bad current relationships that seemed like reflections of their foundational relationships. 

There are lots of possibilities. 

I think it is fair to say that when you feel like your father is always dissatisfied with you, and also he does not treat your mother well, that is not great for a girl. I don't think it's great for a boy either. 

But I do not believe we have to be trapped by it.

Which is not to say that finding one's way out of the trap is easy.

My big brag is that I have never been attracted to guys who reminded me of my father. Suck on that, Freud! (Yes, I get the irony.)

However, I have found myself trying to win approval from cold and narcissistic men, thinking that if I was good enough, I could make them respect me. 

Also, I recently read something about someone who had similar problems with her father. While she was acting out in ways I never have, some of her thought processes felt a bit close for comfort. 

It's a process, and this might be the area where I have made the least tangible progress.

Still here.