Despertar

i no longer title entries till after they're written

After a long absence, there's always so much ground to cover that I end up not covering anything. So this time I decided to take a page out of Caroline's book and just leave the entry window open for as many hours or days as it took to fill it with something of substance.

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Around the time of Tina's birthday, which was toward the end of September, I weighed within five pounds of one-thirty (it fluctuated from day to day) and I felt like a hideous, fat blimp, which the pictures from the weekend confirmed. And I don't care how much you weigh; feeling fat sucks. So I bought the previously mentioned pants, the ones that didn't fit in the dressing room but that, when I held them up in the mirror, looked approximately like my ideal body shape, and turned into a calorie-counting gym rat. Which worked. The elliptical is like magic; you feel thinner after the first day, and then five pounds are gone, and then ten. I remember sailing past my ideal weight, thinking Hey, my ideal weight, and I remember some day in October finally feeling brave enough to try the new pants on, and their fitting without contortions, and then my aunt commented on the smallness of my thighs, and, well. It's hard not to like the feeling of continuous improvement. I wanted to weigh one-eighteenish, and yesterday I hit one-eleven.

I'm a walking stereotype. It's true what they say, about how it flares up in moments of desperation for control. I'm six months from graduating law school and, due to a combination of factors--some completely my fault (like wasting a summer on a job I couldn't have been more wrong for) and others out of my control (like the economy and the fact that the commercial profession of law is undergoing a total culture change)--I have no idea what I'll be doing after that. Barring the firm thing working out, which it didn't, I had one other sort of safety-net alternative, and that hasn't worked out either.

So the options, as of now, are: (1) take some awful unpaid internship and move back in with my parents at twenty-four, thereby sacrificing all forms of personal independence and becoming my own worst-case scenario; (2) accept an offer at some agency within the legal community, and actually make use of my degree but hate every minute of my life; or (3) get some job I could have gotten three years ago, move into a cheaper apartment and start my quarter-life crisis with nothing to turn my back on.

It's a terrible place to be, mentally. My mom has been supportive, reminding me that I've got options, people in my corner, a network of mentors who are happy to pass my resume around, et cetera, and this is nice, but it doesn't help the feelings. The, you know, inadequacy, or, insert cliche about screwing up and not deserving your subsequent rescue. Fifteen years ago, I assumed I'd be married with a child and a six-figure income by twenty-five. Somewhere along the way I realized how unrealistic that was, but I definitely continued to assume I'd matriculate fluidly from graduate school into the beginnings of some meaningful, stable career.

On the other hand, I'm thin, thank God. Never is that so important than when everything else is going badly. Everything in my closet fits, including (sort of) the skinny jeans I've only ever worn twice and was prepared to give to Purple Heart. I can look at myself at any angle in the mirror and not feel like crap. For now. Per the cycle, I'm sure soon--say, this week around Gluttonous Thursday--I'll start giving myself license to eat stuff that doesn't fit into my strict daily schema of protein and calories and find all sorts of excuses to skip the gym, and by Christmas I'll feel like a fat loser again. And then I'll notice some random article of clothing doesn't fit, and the cycle will start again.

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Also, I might just not be cut out for romantic relationships. This is probably not news to most of you.

The person I'm seeing now (and I'm being intentionally vague, because I'm not ready to start referring to him regularly, by name, until I'm sure things with him are going to work out better than my last disastrous attempt at love did) is doing okay, for the most part, for now. I've ruined myself, though, I think. Recently, I've subscribed to Aaron's theories on love and romance, where before I eschewed them for being a little too cynical. It's hard for me to imagine any relationship that isn't driven primarily by some combination of convenience, hormones and fear. One person is afraid to lose the other, and so is willing to take some degree of abuse, till the inequity becomes the baseline for the relationship, and basic functionality becomes something to be celebrated.

This attitude does not bode well for my present situation, but I still get a kick out of being liked and held and stuff. It's nice to sometimes wake up next to someone. We're watching the first season of Lost together and I can feel that I could easily let go and really, really love him if I could just figure out how to trust him. And get around our confounding communication issues. You know how the phone always fucks everything up.

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And I saw Precious, and I loved it. I was moved to twenty minutes' worth of tears, and I'll be angry if Mo'nique doesn't collect the Oscar for the unbelievable role she played.

I don't feel like getting all combative and preachy about it, but I will say I think everyone should see it. That everyone can learn something from it. I thought it was even more accessible and poignant than Crash (which I liked) in the way it dealt with the basic cause-and-effect principles underlying the titular character's condition. And I don't really get why some people are taking offense at white people salivating over it. Being black and being female and being both at the same time are definitely conditions I can't compare to anything else I've ever experienced, and obviously one black girl isn't interchangeable with another, but certain aspects of human psychology are universal. Feeling like an outsider sucks. Being institutionally indoctrinated to believe the rest of the world secretly thinks you're inferior, your whole life, will without question undermine your confidence. And even if you don't weigh three hundred pounds, when you're thirteen, or sixteen, and everyone else around you comes closer to matching the societal standard of beauty than you do, you have to suffer the hardships of being the ugliest person in the room anyway. I don't know what it feels like to be poor and unloved, I don't know what incest feels like, but I've definitely looked in the mirror and seen Precious.

A few days after I saw the movie, I was hanging out with some friends I grew up with, looking at pictures from middle school. In every single picture, I'm this crispy, badly dressed black dot in the middle of a sea of pretty girls with straight hair and shiny lips and linked arms. There's no self-awareness in my face, just this painful ugliness. Even ten years later, I can barely look. I've never been clonked over the head with a frying pan, much less by my own mother, but I could tell you about the worst pain I've ever experienced. I can't imagine what anything worse than that would feel like.

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A certain reader, who shall remain nameless, informed me that details about my rekindled sex life would be more interesting to read about than my usual journal fare. For that reader, some details:

It's generally fantastic, but I'm still working on my timing. There comes a point during intercourse when you, the female, have to start sending signals that you're ready for it to end. I tend to undershoot or overshoot. Either it ends too quickly or we end up in that arid, abrasive place where it's been going on forever and he knows it and that makes him too self-conscious to come.

Every time I think there can't possibly be any positions I haven't tried, we savant our way into a new one. Cosmo told me I should try riding him sideways, so he could "feel [my] contours in a new way," and I did, and then we accidentally toppled over, and voila, the Wind-Felled Lawn Chair was born.

Aaron doesn't like my perfume, but he does. He bit my shoulder and said he forgot I wasn't an apple. It left no marks, a nice surprise.

I think I have learned that some erections are bigger than others.

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Also, I bought new boots, and I love them more than I would love a pair of twin daughters. The heels are four inches and they make my legs look obscenely long, a big deal for me. I wore them for twelve hours yesterday and my calves feel like fireballs.