If you’re gay, I’m gonna need you to go ahead and just be gay without all the equivocation and pretending and nonsense. I know, I know, it’s easy to say “come out already” when I’m hetero and I don’t really understand what it’s like to be ashamed of my feelings, or my life and everything in the world tells me that I’m wrong for being the way that I am. Except for the fact that I know EXACTLY what you’re going through because the closet of #mentalillness is still quite large and quite full of folks sitting at work wondering if they can sneak out to that weekly therapy appointment without anyone finding out. But this isn’t really about my issues, I’m writing this week about how I want public figures to proclaim their homosexuality and stop faking the funk like folks can’t see the truth. In particular, I’m talking about one of my favorite performers of all time, Maxwell.
GASP!
Before you start sending me hate mail realize that I am a HUGE Maxwell fan. In fact, I’m listening to his oeuvre on my iPod as I write this, not just for inspiration, but because I love having his voice in my ears. The man can SANG, unlike the Drakes and the Trey Songzes of the world trying to pass off that trash as male R&B. But back to Maxwell, who I used to want to be my future baby daddy until I realized he’s probably in a relationship with a dude as gorgeous and talented as he is. I’m not trying to insult the brother by saying that I think he’s gay; I just want him and his fine self to be happy. And when I saw him this last time in concert he was not a happy man. Let me tell you how I know.
This falsetto for hire: he had me at “ooohhh…”
Long ago in a galaxy far, far away known as the 1990’s, Maxwell arrived on the scene like the second coming of Al Green and Sam Cooke in a pretty brown wrapper with a curly Afro and dimples. When you’re blessed with that kind of voice and those looks, there’s little else for you to do but croon your heart out and wait for the sisters to sop it up with a biscuit. Enter “Urban Hang Suite”, which the artist told the world described the journey of a love affair with his fantasy woman. #Swoon.
Having always loved a true male R&B singer, I saw Maxwell in concert at Radio City Music Hall and I may have drooled the entire time. Not only was he just beautiful to look at, and to listen to, but he looked supremely comfortable onstage amidst the velvet couches and slinky backup singers. He rocked the sweet falsetto and the sexy, raspy lower register with equal aplomb. He did his now-signature cover of Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work,” long a favorite, and I literally cried. He also covered Nine Inch Nails’s “Closer” (that’s right, the “fuck you like an animal” song) with a tambourine and a quasi-gospel feel and I nearly fell out of my seat. If you saw that show, and you went to the concert on a date, you definitely got some that night. Maybe you even fantasized that your man was Maxwell. Either way, you had a good time.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago when, after 3 albums, a label dispute and a long hiatus from the industry, Maxwell returned to New York City and I had a ticket in my hot-and-bothered little hand. I’d been talking about the man’s live show since 1996, the ambiance, the versatility, the quality of the performance. You should know that I’m a music snob and I’d pay good money to see in only a handful of artists in person. Not everyone can sing live, Taylor Swift, and not everyone can hold my attention for more than 2 songs in a row. But I was sure that Maxwell would deliver a great concert experience in spades. I wasn’t wrong, exactly.
Putting the “MAN” in “romance”
When Maxwell came onstage, something wasn’t quite as I expected. First, the sound was a little off in the arena and I couldn’t really hear his voice like I wanted to. If you paid attention, you could tell he wasn’t happy with something and he kept taking out his earwig and talking to the musical director. If you were too busy looking at his heiney in them sharkskin pants, you probably missed it. Eventually they fixed the levels but the high register never really came out over the speakers. When you could hear Maxwell his voice sounded good, but you couldn’t hear a lot of it. Maybe he was annoyed and that’s what I noticed as being different.
Next, he was a little flaming, not exactly prancing around, but more effete than I’d seen him before. Not quite Freddie Mercury, but noticeable to me and my gay-dar. Now, I don’t go around branding all non-thug men of a certain style as homosexual just because they’re not grabbing their crotch 24/7. I know enough gay people to know they come in all shapes, sizes and ranges of personal habits, and the stereotype of the fastidious, slightly swishy gay man is limiting and insulting to men and women alike. Still, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it’s a good chance it fucks like a duck. Look, I don’t really care who Maxwell sleeps with so long as he keeps singing and works the funky jazz ensemble into his band. But I’m not the typical fan.
Why male perfomers kinda have to be straight, or at least straight-acting
If you stood outside the Garden before the show, you would have seen hundreds of typical Maxwell fans: women who clearly expected him to spot them from the stage, and propose marriage or at least a post-show quickie. Groups of sisters with hair did, nails did, sporting new outfits complete with uncomfortable shoes. That level of preening was designed to extend some fantasy that the artist is singing romantic words and sexy phrases directly to them. I do understand that music-industry stardom is predicated on some level of physical attraction, and I can fantasize with the best of them, but I’m really gonna need some of these women to get a life, especially if they were buying the most egregious pretense of heterosexuality I witnessed from Maxwell, in which he sang an interlude to women’s private parts and referred to them as all manner of seafood. Yes, he did. No, it was not cute. I can accept wearing the cloak of heterosexuality to keep your fan base happy. Luther Vandross did it for years, though we knew exactly what he meant when he sat on Oprah’s couch and talked about “the person” he was in love with. But fun with pronouns is less egregious than totally missing the mark with a cunnilingus reference. I don’t know why Maxwell even had to go there.
Actually, I do know why – he has to be straight so women who find him attractive will buy his records and attend his concerts. And the sexuality has to be so overt as to make an arena full of sane woman scream wantonly at some man proclaiming himself a “sushi eater”. *face palms* No hetero man in the world would use those words, so I’m convinced that whole part of the concert was cooked up by record company executives to distract the audience from the gay-boy flounce. As were the pairs of panties that magically flew through the air, which Maxwell daintily put in his pocket. Then there was a woman who tried to kiss him and, even though he had to hug her to keep the fantasy alive, it was more like a pat on the back than a passionate embrace. Not that I like strangers trying to put their mouths on my face, but the look on his face during the whole interlude was all about, “um, no THANK you.”
“I feel just like a weight has lifted” – Maxwell, Fistful of Tears
Of course, throngs of women all caught up in the magic of straight smoke-and-mirrors also didn’t see what I really saw from Maxwell that night: someone who is just going through the motions but not really feeling it. Sure he hit all his marks and covered the stage like a good performer should, but the movements were highly contrived and choreographed. This was not the Maxwell from years ago, freely striking his hip with a tambourine, but rather someone wearing and saying and doing what he’s SUPPOSED to do to make the women scream like they’re supposed to so he can get his paycheck. Mission accomplished, even though he looked a little hemmed up the whole time like he was trying to break free from something and couldn’t quite get it to happen.
Then, during “Fistful of Tears”, one of the best (an non-romantic) tracks on BLACKsummer’snight, Maxwell broke it down for the audience the way a singer sometimes does when they’re having a moment. He brought down the fourth wall and talked about being proud and overwhelmed by his success, and happy to be welcomed back to his hometown of New York City. Woo hoo! (The home crowd loves humility.) He also talked about growing up poor in Brooklyn and never imagining he’d get to perform at Madison Square Garden. More cheers! Then he made mention to having felt such despair that he wanted to end his life. Yay…um, wait, what?
*scratching record sound*
That’s the moment when I knew, REALLY knew, that I was seeing a performance not just of Maxwell‘s music, but of his life. Some artists wear their hearts on their sleeves, or in their lyrics, and if you really pay attention you can see what’s going on with them. Such is the case with Maxwell’s touring mate, Jill Scott, who talks about divorce, kids, record company bullshit in between songs. You could feel the lightness in her confessions, and the sister actually cries onstage. But you can’t be that transparent if you’re gay and watching thousands of women scream about how much they love you. Or if your new label has packaged you up like Marvin Gaye and expects you to put some sexual healing on the female record-buying public. When you’re looking at how to reconcile your public image with who you really want to be and it doesn’t make immediate sense, the struggle could send you off the deep end. And I wouldn’t want that to happen to an artist as talented, versatile and seemingly genuine as Maxwell.
So, if you’re reading this, at least know that I’d still love you if you came out. And the gay mafia would make a run on your catalog on iTunes.
The marketer in me loves social media tools and their ability to find segments of consumers ripe for the picking, er, for “targeted product messaging”. As a blogger, I use Twitter, Facebook and associated techniques to publicize the crap I write to those most likely to care or laugh (i.e. my friends and family). But all methods of technology-based communication and community-building building have repeatedly confounded me in a particular area: my personal life. Witness the social media induced debacle that was my birthday party.
There’s a regrets RSVP option for a reason
First, I’m getting on in years and also pre-menstrual, so I have a tendency to be inappropriately cranky right now. I also need to get back into therapy and cease with authoring my recovery into pithy buts of humor. Nevertheless I’m pretty sure I should be annoyed that only 3 of my friends and family showed up to my birthday party on Monday. You should know that I share a birthday with one of my oldest and dearest friends, Tanya. Since we have many of the same friends and also want to celebrate with each other we sometimes throw a joint party. This year, I sent out our invitation utilizing the first line of defense in party planning – I sent an evite. As per usual, I was pithy and witty in the invitation text, as you can see:
We’re pushing 40 but not too old to party on a school night! Come out to the rooftop bar at La Quinta Inn (we keep it classy) and buy us a few celebratory drinks – and a few for yourself – while we bask in the glow of the Empire State Building (kinda) and the neighboring water towers. Fancy digs it ain’t, but your presence and the terrace-y atmosphere will create more than enough charm to last past sundown and into the night! Happy Hour drink specials run from 5:30PM – 8:00PM, so come early if you love us but you’re thrifty with your ducats. And if you bring cute, single hetero boys for the traditional birthday smooch, both of us will be forever in your debt! Hope y’all can make it.
Cute, yes? If you know me or Tanya well, you’ll take the message in the snarky yet earnest manner it was intended. I was feeling saucy, so I set up the invitation and mailed it to my guest list, then Tanya forwarded it to hers because she was in Alaska for a week and not so much with the planning. At any rate, I was situated at the bar at 5:45PM – the first to arrive – followed by 10-15 of Tanya’s coworkers. Fortunately I know most of them, so I had something to do while waiting ANOTHER HOUR FOR MY FIRST GUEST TO ARRIVE!!!!! To those of you who contacted me directly about not coming: you’re forgiven. If you said you were coming and didn’t show (and you know who you are), you’re dead to me for the moment but we may speak again someday if you buy me gifts and ‘fess up to your mistake. But to the rest of you…there are not words to express my disappointment. Yes there are: you suck.
I thought I followed the accepted protocol: after the evite, I posted the party on Facebook. I also dispatched individual invitations to select Twitterati that actually know my real name and have met me in person. Still, radio silence coupled with collective no-show activity. Not to be a total asstard, I did get many a birthday wish on Facebook, and on Twitter, and I’m really glad to know that so many people remembered me yesterday. However I’m not exactly sure if it counts as remembrance when I create a hashtag for my birthday (#HappyBirthdayIGuess) and some social media application automatically tells everyone I know what day I was born. I did everything I could to portray myself as The Birthday Girl and, later, as Rejected and Not Drunk Enough. If I’d gone to happy hour right after work, and gotten liquored up at some sports bar, I could have partied with more people than bothered to show up for me last night. Not that I’m not grateful for what I have, I just thought I was going to get a little bit more.
Social networking: Neither social nor networking. Discuss.
In our rush to use digital means to manage our personal lives, we’ve gotten away from the whole in-person aspect to socializing. Yes, I get a certain kind of pleasure from gaining Twitter followers or from seeing the growth in my blog subscriptions. But it’s not the same as having actual contact and actual relationships with living people. Yes, behind (almost) every Twitter account is a real person, or at least there’s a human behind the ‘bot or the Google Reader service that sifts through the ether to find relevant content. Still when life is just as easily lived behind a digital wall, and its sometimes preferable to send an e-mail than (gasp!) have a phone conversation, a request for a face-to-face meeting is a rarity even when that invitation is in the form of 1′a and 0′s. So if I actually want to see you then you must mean more to me than the hundreds of people I type at every day. Remember that I work in marketing, so technically I have a one-way relationship with the entire population of New York City and Nassau and Westchester where my company advertises. Those public eyeballs don’t mean that much to me, personally, but I’m pretty invested the flesh and blood peepers swirling in the lobes of my friends and family. Still, I got more feedback and attention from people who barely know me than from folks who have been varying parts of my life for years. No amount of RTs can erase the feeling that somehow I wasn’t worth spending even a few moments with, or the time it would take to say “sorry, can’t make it, have fun.” Humph.
Just so you know, I’m never throwing another party for myself. Or if I do, it will involve engraved invitations and a paid assistant to dispatch with follow-up calls to the guest list. If you don’t find out about that future soiree, consider it a non-vitation and keep it moving.
On Monday I turn 38 and, as is wont to happen around my birthday, my penchant for self-reflection intensifies as I contemplate the next year of my life. This year, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to lose this nagging 40 pounds (okay, maybe 50 for good measure), get back into a size 8 and stay there for good. My decision has little to do with aging or healthy living, though I do feel better when I exercise regularly. Nor does the impending trip to Weight Watchers (or whatever program I’m giving myself as a gift) stem from a desire to fit into Lucky Jeans – plus anything sold at Express – again. Nope, I want to lose weight because I’m not attracted to fat men.
Damn the double standard, I like what I like
Now you’re thinking that I was a little hasty back there in my dismissal of the zaftig among men as undateable. After all, you men may say, who am I to be picky if I need to lose 50 lbs? Some of you might opine that men of all sizes like large women, or that I should learn to love myself no matter how much I weigh and I can still be sexy in a size 18. First off, picky is in the eye of the beholder and if I want a nice piece of salmon, don’t try to give me flounder and say it’s the same thing. I know what pleases me in dinner and in people and I know how to get it. Furthermore, trust me when I say that I love my curves and work them to their fullest advantage on the regular; I don’t have any self-hate with regard to my size. Why, then, do I think that dropping some poundage will land me the date of my dreams? Two words: buffet dinner.
The couple that eats together…
Have you ever been to Las Vegas, or any city that boasts cheap food in abundance? My Dad lives in Nevada and like all senior citizens, he likes a good deal. Buffet meals fit my father’s financial obligations because the portions are unlimited and he can always sneak out a chicken leg to eat later. If you go to Vegas and size up the patrons at the nearest food trough, you’ll always find a bunch of oldsters with stacks of food that may or may not leave the building before consumption. If I was on a fixed income, I’d bring plastic baggies and insulated totes to dinner. In addition to the geriatric set, you’ll also find many, er, robust couples parked in front of the all-you-can-eat sign. Apparently stuffing your gullet full of crappy foodstuffs constitutes a bonding as well as eating occasion. I’m not a fan of the entrée called “look, its fried” with “greasy” as an appetizer. And if I’m gonna eat a heart attack on a plate, I’ll have it made-to-order portion rather than sitting under a heat lamp where its cholesterol molecules gain strength hourly.
Unlike my brethren of the buffet, I have not maintained my pleasing plumpness by eating fast food, fried food, or empty calories. My waistline has been cultivated by large quantities of gourmet cheese, European chocolate, well-prepared meats, and expensive alcohol. Of course I inhale the occasional bag of puffed Cheetos, but I’ve never met a vegetable I didn’t like, and I bake my own bread. My fat has a pedigree, just like the rest of me, and it does discriminate against those whose sole culinary criterion is quantity. I’ve seen Mr. and Ms. Rotund waddle up to the buffet line, drool on the sneeze guards and put away piles of chow I wouldn’t even glance at. I’ve also seen them repeat the process in the same sitting, trying to pass of some sad piece of iceberg lettuce covered in Thousand Island dressing as a vegetable. Just who are they trying to fool?
Fat, not nasty
The food snob in me will never become one of those “shovel it in” people; I eat for taste and necessity, not just to fill my belly, so I prefer to savor what I consume rather than wallow it and swallow it. Watch an overweight person eat: they’ll either appreciate the vast array of what they eat, or just choke as much of it down as quickly as possible to make room for the next mouthful. Lack of chewing at the dinner table and messy eating habits were contributing factors to a few breakups in my past. There were other reasons those men were not long for my world, but they were also the two heaviest men I ever dated and had the worst taste in food. We couldn’t really agree on eating out because they wanted White Castle when I wanted to eat at Four Seasons. I exaggerate slightly, but not by much. And if I’m planning to sit across a table from someone for any period of time I’m expecting them to have table manners, talk to me during the meal, and agree that Olive Garden is not haute cuisine OR real Italian food in spite of the bottomless breadsticks.
What I’m saying here is that there are fat folks who are fairly oblivious to food and their various food-related habits portray that engagement. In my experience, these are the overweight people who wear lots of t-shirts, buy shoes at the supermarket and have bad haircuts, the “Fat Nasties”. On the other hand, there are people who consume more high-quality calories than our bodies need, and may consume those calories as foie gras and snifters of aged whiskey. They may be overweight, but wear good shoes and ironed clothes because they have respect for themselves and their appearance. Now I may be fat, but I’m no Fat Nasty in that being big doesn’t determine what I wear, where I go, or my social circles. I go to the beach and ride bicycles in spite of what my ass must look like in the seat. I choose friends because I like them, not because they make me feel skinny/pretty/less insecure about myself. And I’m incredibly well fed because my parents introduced me to escargot, the maitre d’hôtel and white tablecloths at an early age. I have some taste, y’all, and you better have some too if you want to hang with me.
The moral of this story is, I’m going to head to the gym after work today. I plan to make my outsides match my insides in hopes that nobody invites me to the all-you-can-eat rib joint because they think I need a truckload of dinner make me happy. I’d rather eat pretty food with a fancy-pants hipster who wants to make me happy in spite of the fact that we’re having dinner.
There, I said it, but I probably don’t mean what you think I mean.
I never want to see another talk show cover the “single woman epidemic”… EVER!
During the “Black women ain’t got no man” public lamentation tour earlier this spring, I refrained from writing a blog on the so-called man shortage, or on my alleged inability to find a suitable mate because I’m educated and particular. Honestly, besides registering my shock at the likes of Steve Harvey and Sherri Shepherd telling me why I suck because I’m not married, I just didn’t feel that I had anything to add to the discourse. Twitter had already allowed me to register the usual “what?”, “Oh, HELL no”, “bitch, please” and “that big gummed Negro?” reactions to the 2010 single-black-woman minstrel show; all the other sister-bloggers covered quite adequately my outrage at being told there’s something wrong with me and my subsequent wonder at why there weren’t similar conversations about why White men were still single.
Today, however, I want to bring up the Single Black Female meme yet again, but I’d rather look at what we’re looking for in a marriage rather than the (erroneous) fact that we’re not getting married. A Twitter friend called my attention to a January 2010 New York Times article dispelling the myth of the educated married woman over 40. Notably, the article pointed to shifts in economic dependence as the reason for women marrying later. To put a fine point on it, we don’t need your money, so we’re not looking for your companionship, no matter what Slim Thugg or whatever his name is says about it. Which got me thinking about the real reason the successful, educated, attractive, otherwise eligible Black women I know are still single: our view of marriage has not kept pace with our image of ourselves, or with our lifestyles.
My Grandmother Wouldn’t Even Recognize Me
As a woman, I look along my maternal line for signs of successful marriage and find both my mother and grandmother. Granny was born in 1908, the daughter of a Black woman and a White man. I don’t really know if my great-grandmother was married when she bore massa’s child. I will, however, hazard a guess that she’d jumped the broom with the Black father of her other children, and imagine my Granny’s birth was. . .interesting at the very least.
Being a mulatto “love child” influenced Granny’s marital choice, and she stated outright that she married my granddaddy because he was the darkest man she could find, lest she be accused of trying to pass. I’ll assume that she at least liked him enough to bear him 14 chilluns. Then again, I don’t really know anything about my grandparents’ relationship other than the fact that by the time I came along, they were sleeping in separate bedrooms. As was the case for poor Black folks in the south at the time, my grandfather was a sharecropper and my granny picked, washed and cleaned whatever she needed to in order to keep the kids clothed, fed and under a roof. Marriage was probably as simple as this: you did it for survival.
Many times in the last few months I’ve marveled at how different my life is from the one my grandma lived. I have no husband and no children at an age when she was already well into both. I went to college, even graduate school when she may not have finished high school. I’ve traveled outside the U.S. while she inhabited the same few square miles for her entire life. Granny might be astounded that her progeny could even have a life like mine, and perhaps proud that her work with her own children lead to such interesting leaps forward. Then again, she might feel sorry for me because I don’t have my own family, even though I hardly need a baseball team’s worth of kids to work the farm these days.
In spite of the myriad differences between my life and my grandmother’s life, I still expect to meet and marry a man, have some kids, and live with him ’til death do us part like she did. And I pretty much expect him to work as hard as my granddaddy did to make a life for me and our children. Perhaps I won’t want my husband to be as strict a disciplinarian as my grandfather was, but he had 6 daughters and knew where the Klan lived, so strict is in the eye of the beholder. I don’t fault my grandparents for choosing each other and turning out the kind of children they did: poor Black folks in South Carolina did what they had to do with limited resources. On the other hand, how can I look at my grandparents’ relationship as “successful” just because it lasted until they both knocked off for the big plantation in the sky? Longevity may be a goal in marriage, but it isn’t the only barometer of success.
Good Role Models Screw You up Just as Good as Bad Ones
I’ve often that my parents gave me a great model for marriage, and that they ruined my life in the process. Well, they didn’t ruin my life exactly, but they gave me very high expectations for partnership and, thus, no man I meet is ever good enough because he’s not like my Daddy. Before you start talking Oedipus and nonsense, let me break it down for you.
My mom got married at 32, which was late for her generation and was the last of her siblings to do so. Apparently, Mommy always wanted to be a stewardess and would definitely have looked cute in the air hostess outfits. However, she fell deathly ill shortly after meeting my father, so health concerns put the kibosh on her plans to see the world from 40,000 feet. As fate would have it, she married an over-protective type of man who wouldn’t have wanted her to work anyway, so it all worked out financially. My dad was the UR-husband, Provider Extraordinaire. He always worked 2 jobs to keep both wife and daughter protected and decked out in Lord & Taylor finery. Good times and big closets were had by all.
“Traditional” marriage means something different for Blacks than Whites. Chew on that.
In the context of the Ward and June Cleavers of the world, my parents had a traditional marriage, one where the man made the money and the woman made the beds. However, my parents’ marriage was certainly an anomaly in my extended family – and among many other Black families that I know – because we had a single-earner (not single-income) household. Mommy was the only one of her sisters that didn’t work outside the home, and the only one with a single child. While my parents’ situation presented me with a stay-at-home mom role model, it still showed me that Black folks need two incomes to make it happen in the world.
Even though my mom made none of the money, she made all of the decisions about finances and everything else. For someone who calls himself “simple”, my Dad always had a lot of vision but lacked self-confidence. He needed my somewhat overbearing Mom to goad him into action with a combination of pep talks and ass-kicking. She was the proverbial woman behind the man, the not-so-silent partner. My Dad, bless his heart, still generally needs to be told what to do and when to do it because my Mom was the perfect person to tell him what to do. Which might explain the heart attack she had in her 40’s, but I digress. Before my mother died, she told me that I’d be lucky to find a man like my dad. After she died, Daddy told me that she was his soul mate and he’d never marry again. Since nobody else was in the room when each of them professed their love, I’m gonna say it was legit. Occasionally I find myself longing for a husband like my Dad, someone who’d try his hardest to take care of me under any circumstance. Then I wake up and realize that I don’t really want a man to take care of me. Furthermore, I don’t see men lined up around the block clamoring for the chance to relieve me of my financial obligations. Yet, I want a man to want to take care of me in ways that have nothing to do with money or shelter or basic necessities but I don’t really have an appropriate role model for that kind of relationship.
If you’re gonna talk about relationships, either help a sister out, or shut the f@$& up!
I’d like for the love pundits, the armchair relationship gurus and the rest of the talking heads that tell me I’m wrong for being single and picky and almost 40 to take a look at what marriage has meant in American society. Then I’d like for them to take a look at the institution in the Black community and how we’ve managed and made do with each other for 400 years. After all that inquiry, I then expect those so-called “experts” to tell me how the hell the species has managed to stay afloat. I won’t hold my breath, but I’m definitely expecting some answers.
There’s some new TV show on ABC Family called “Huge” or “Big Fat Girl” or “Wide Load” or something like that. It looks to be about a weight loss camp in which the overweight star doesn’t want to lose weight. My size 16 self , and my thinking female brain are not happy about this.
Apparently if you’re overweight in Hollywood, you can’t just play some random character that doesn’t talk about their weight – like in real life. You have to represent for the zaftig and ostracized (think Mercedes on Glee), or spend entire episodes dealing with your problematic size (Kirstie Alley, anyone on those reality shows). Let’s not forget the pudgy girl who gets the guy and shows us that fatties are cool and need love too. Uh, really?
Oddly enough, I’m overweight and manage to have skinny friends and family without engaging in moral dilemmas and eating disorders. I date men of all shapes and sizes, and only rarely discuss my girth or feel self-conscious. Yes, I’m an anomaly in this looks- and size- obsessed culture, but does promoting size acceptance have to mean a TV show where everyone is large?
Focusing a dramatic series (or reality show, for that matter) on the size of it’s participants does the opposite of what I think it should do: showing the world that size usually doesn’t matter, or it shouldn’t. This new “Huge” show, or whatever it’s called, is creating a fat “ghetto” where characters exist outside of the real world because the rest of us can’t stand to look at them without being uncomfortable. It’s like “Good Times” with body fat calipers instead of the projects.
Just make it stop. Now, I take my leave of you to eat a donut.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gwen/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
This time, it’s personal (#NameThatMovie)!
Today I realized that I still have some work to do, but I’m learning a lot about myself. And, as a result, this is THE LAST POST I will write on the Friend Boy saga because I’m going to take my own advice. One of my Twitter followers said that she read my blog because I wrote something that really resonated with her, and I write it a lot: I cannot change other people, or their behavior; I can only change my reactions to what they do. So today, dear friends, I’m listening to myself and I’m changing myself. On November 14, 2005, I had a relationship breakthrough; I know the date because I put it in a Word document that I have saved on my computer. Fortunately, it weathered the untimely demise of my iBook so that I can look at it when I feel myself doing something stupid. My breakthrough went a little something like this:
I am going to be myself regardless of what other people think, or what other people want me to be.
When I am true to myself, I am happy.
Exactly who I am and exactly who I want to be is absolutely fine, and people will like me for who I am.
No matter what happens, and no matter what other people think of me, I will always know how lovable and deserving of love I am.
I will not hide behind narratives that I have created for myself to keep me from getting close to people.
I do not need to hide behind a mask of who I think I should be or how I think I’m supposed to act.
It is worth the work and the discomfort to get rid of my “racket” and be free to experience real feelings.
Now that I have this realization, my perspective, my relationships, my happiness will be forever changed – for the better.
That sounds all healthy and shit, huh? Now it’s time to add another statement to my list of relationship healthreminders, just so I can look at it again and again:
I will not spend time and energy on people that do not appreciate me for who I am.
It’s hard to be self-aware and check yourself when you’re about to go down an unhealthy path, but I’m going to do it in public this time, so I’ll be shamed into treating myself correctly.
Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and I wrote what I believed was a really great post on how I’d been feeling now that my mother has been dead for nearly half my life. It was really difficult, and really cathartic, but I wrote it because when something is on my mind – and on my heart – I have to commit it to words. Also, many of you have lost loved ones and I’d like to think that in some way I’m helping other people with my blog topics. Or I’m making you laugh, which is helpful to me all the time. I don’t write for recognition, or sympathy, or empathy, but its nice when I get it. Judging by Twitter retweets, and comments here, on Facebook, and in person, I struck a nerve with a lot of people and I’m grateful for your reaction. I was most…surprised is the best word, I guess, that people who have never met me could be so caring about my feelings. Whether you honestly meant it or not, you said it, and I’m deeply touched.
My family and friends also reached out to me, knowing that Mother’s Day is usually hard for me, and gave the kind words that they always do. Conspicuously absent from any kind of comment was Friend Boy, who I know follows me on Twitter AND Facebook, but may not read the blog. For you eternal optimists and hopeless romantics out there, I know he saw my updates because he was on the grid. The best (and worst) thing about social media is that you can tell where people are, what they do, and when they do it. Sure, I might have been guilty of a little cyber-stalking, but who hasn’t? Friend Boy has been all over the internets, talking about whatever to whomever. Not a peep to me. No “saw your blog”, or “I know you were upset yesterday, how’s it going?” Only a Twitter request to do something for him. Humph! So basically, people who don’t know me from a can of paint went out of their way to comment on my blog, send it to other people, give me feedback, send me e-mail, cry while reading my words. But someone who actually knows me could not be bothered. Very telling, indeed. And I’m interested in a relationship with this person? Somebody check me back into the hospital because I clearly need to have my head examined…again!
You may be asking yourselves why I’ve devoted so much brain power to someone who ignores me and what’s going on in my life. Or wondering what difference it makes whether Friend Boy reads my stuff or says “hey dog, good work.” Because, ladies and gentlemen, I am The Queen of One-Sided Relationships. I date emotionally withholding men. I get all wrapped up in self-absorbed dudes and then try to change them into the caring mates that I want. I make excuses for why they don’t pay attention to me and I hang on far longer than is good for my psyche. I ignore signs that I should cut bait and hope that, when they’re finished whatever other thing they’re doing, they’ll be more into me. Know what? They probably won’t be more into me. Not because I’m doing something wrong, but because everything ain’t for everybody we’re not for each other. And my “racket,” for all of you Landmark Education folks in the audience, is that I’m somehow undeserving of male attention and will be alone forever, therefore choosing emotionally unavailable objects makes my worthlessness a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’ve blogged about this before, and when I put it in writing again, it makes NO SENSE to me. But it doesn’t have to make sense for it to be true.
I’m not mad at Friend Boy, or the Parade of Assholes that I’ve actually dated in the past. I’m angry with myself for being insane. You know, repeating the same pattern over and over, hoping for different results? People only do what they can get away with, and if they can get away with ignoring me most of the time and still get sex/dinner/attention/free web design services they’ll go ahead as planned. If, however, I stop myself from committing the energy to giving these men what they want and shift the focus to what I want and need, the universe will send me someone who appreciates me and the wishy-washy guys will just float away. I’m exaggerating the ease with which I’ll be able to change my thought and behavior patterns, but I hope you understand what I’m trying to say.
My mom used to say “the way you start off is the way you’ll end up” and “a leopard doesn’t change its spots.” Basically, if someone is kinda self-involved when you first meet them, they’re pretty much always going to be that way no matter what you do. So I’m writing off my interest in Friend Boy as destined to end up with me doing all the giving and none of the taking, and I’m nipping this “crush” or whatever you wanna call it in the bud. In the interest of filling my blog with aphorisms, I know that “the heart wants what it wants” and I can’t really turn off my feelings. I can, however, question why I even had them in the first place. Somewhere back in time, Friend Boy did show a passing interest in me. If you want to know the truth, he talked to me first, but that can only get him so far. The fact that this mishegas has turned into what I’ll call My First Mistake of the Decade is nobody’s fault. It will, however, be my fault if I sink emotional capital into this man when my investment doesn’t look like it will pay dividends. (I put my MBA to good use with that metaphor!)
So if you see me on Twitter talking about Friend Boy, will you please put me on blast? Remind me of this blog post, tell me you agree with me, or that I’m full of shit for not practicing what I preach. If public humiliation works for weight loss, then why not for the loss of my foolish ways? However, when you throw this post back in my face, don’t throw it that hard: you might break my ego.
I never thought I’d want to get married until I lost my mother. Be patient, readers, because I’m taking the long way around on this one.
My Mom was Better Than Your Mom
As the saying goes, you don’t know what you’ve got ’til its gone, but I definitely knew what I had with my mother. Her name was Dorothy and she was pretty amazing. I’m not saying that just because we shared a body and genetic material, since other non-biological connections agreed with me on her overall coolness. If I had an electronic photo of her I’d post it, but she died in 1994 – before digital photography, Flickr and Facebook – so you’ll have to settle for a few less than 1,000 words instead of a picture: Mommy was 5’8″, willowy, and looked like a cross between Diahann Carroll and Michelle Obama. Apparently when my Dad saw her, he forgot all about the other woman he was supposed to meet and asked for the digits. #TrueStory. Not only was she beautiful, but she was really generous and funny with a little bit of an edge. That personality, and my smile, are what I inherited from her; I got my father’s nose and – thankfully – his feet. “Dot” was a gossip (my cousins used to call her “Rona Barrett”; you young folks might want to Google that), a mean cook, and the smallest bit naughty, like when she announced “you have to have sex before you get married to make sure you like what he can do.” Okay, she didn’t know my 13-year-old self was in the room at the time, but I’m gonna have to agree with her on that bit of advice! Nobody could fry a chicken like my mother, and I’d kill right about now for one of her over-beaten, slightly-overcooked chocolate cakes. Baking was not her strong suit, but she had many, many others for which to compensate for that one culinary shortcoming.
The other best part about my mom is that she was MY MOM. And I’m an only child, so I selfishly didn’t have to share her with brother- and sister-types. The thing about mothers, though, is that even when you have to share them with other people you still only get one, and the singularity of that relationship defines you in ways you may never really know. Mommy may have been sister, friend, neighbor to some, and I have tons of cousins, classmates and business associates, but I’ll only ever have one mother. Sure, I live with my aunt now, and all she’s like a mother to me but not my mother. For example: if I leave clothes, dishes around the apartment, my aunt tells me off; when her daughter does it, the lecture comes with clean dishes and a load of laundry. Not that I expect anyone to pick up after my grown ass, but I just miss having someone who would do it, with or without lip service. (Actually, Dorothy Mae would give much lip; its hereditary.) I think about that sometimes and remember Mommy‘s words to me after her own mother died; I’ll never forget riding in the car with Mommy and noticing that she’d been crying. When I asked her why she was so sad, she said “I miss my mother.” It didn’t seem possible to my 8-year-old brain that my own mother actually needed mothering. After all, she was in her 40′s with a husband and a daughter; she was all grown up and had lived for a few years since my Granny’s passing, so what was with the tears? Of course, as I sit here crying over the loss of my Mom over 16 years ago, I totally understand that you can never replace a mother.
This Mom For Hire: A Great Service for Motherless Daughters
Think, if you will, of the most important moments of your life, and how they warrant a mother. My friend Sarah lost her mother a year prior to getting engaged, and had to deal with snotty wedding gown saleswomen who didn’t think she could buy a dress without her mother present. “Don’t you want to bring your mother in to see you in the dress?”, they’d ask. “Uh, no, my mom is…well, she can’t….she died,” was probably close to what Sarah said to the folks at Kleinfeld before she returned to the fitting room and had a good cry. I imagine myself doing the very same thing should I ever find myself trying on frothy bridal creations, though I’ll likely be bawling the entire time. Also, daughters need a mother at the annual gyno visit when they don’t know when Mom started menstruating, or stopped, or how the whole process was. I don’t know when she lost her virginity (presumably before marriage, but I prefer not to think about that) or any sexual/reproductive history other than the fact that I was born and I’m biological because I look like both my parents. All the details I’d need about that part of Mommy‘s life are things that a husband or a sister wouldn’t necessarily know or even remember, so I have nobody to fill in those blanks. True, adopted children don’t have them either, but they know from jump that it’s gonna be that way; someone pulled the mother rug out from under me when I was 22 – old enough to know that I’d need her, but still too young to really comprehend just how much.
Can you replace a Mother with a Husband? Maybe…
On her deathbed (which I didn’t know was such, but she probably did), Mommy gave me a few sage pieces of advice. The last words she ever said to me were, “Be good.” I don’t know what she meant by that, but I’m trying anyway. And the other advice she gave me was to find a man like my Dad. Her exact words were, “If you’re lucky enough to marry a man like your father, you’ll be very happy.” At the time, I laughed and said “I’m too young to get married.” Then she died and my Dad pretty much gave me the exact same advice, using words like “soulmate” and “I’ll never remarry.” Over time, I’ve given some thought to the other, singular relationship you have in a spouse. Yeah, people get divorced and cheat and the like, but not my folks. Witnessing my father’s grief, I also saw that his loss was as unique, as inconsolable as mine: husband and wife is not a replicable bond, at least when you do it right. And even if you do it wrong, or multiple times, nobody is that spouse at that time, and nobody means the same thing to you as someone with whom you’ve chosen to live until death (or you realize what a horrible mistake you’ve made, give or take a few years).
For years, I’ve held onto the belief that finding a soulmate would somehow fill the void left in my life – and my heart – by my mother’s death. Not that I’m looking for a man to take care of me like a mother, but more so I’m looking for that singular, unique relationship. I believe that in the same way that you only get one mother, you only get one “spouse-as-soulmate“; the purely selfish relationship in which the two people in it can’t get from anyone else what they get from each other. Clearly I don’t know what it is that these soulmates are getting from each other because I haven’t found mine yet. Or maybe I’m wrong in believing that my man should be as irreplaceable as my mom, that both warrant an unapproachable place in my life, my heart, my world. Still, I yearn for someone in my life that loves me more, in a different way, than they love everybody else, and vice versa.
My Mother’s Day Advice
Fortunately, I have no regrets in my relationship with my mom. I told her I loved her, and I treated her that way even when she annoyed me. I sat by her bedside for months when she was sick, because there was nowhere else I would have been. And, for the most part, I think I’ve made her proud. She didn’t regret the sacrifices she made for me, and told me as much, which is what I think a mother is supposed to do. I do wish that she’d gotten to live more of her life taking care of herself the way she took care of me and of everyone else. I also wish that I got to know her more as an adult, as a friend, as a woman, than the Uber-Madre as I sometimes see her. Sometimes I think that I’m a bad daughter because I don’t go out to the cemetery to put flowers on her grave, or that I don’t really know where said grave is. Then I remember that she always said “give me my flowers while I’m living,” so I write about her instead. So, Dorothy Mae, if you’re sitting up in Heaven, drinking a cup of coffee, trying to bum a cigarette from St. Peter without getting caught, know that I’m always thinking of you.
Excuse my French, but I’m a grown-ass woman so why do I have a “crush” on a man? And why the hell am I using that word?
I said that I wasn’t going to write another post about Friend Boy, but this one is a special request. The other day, one of my Twitter followers mentioned that she liked my relationship blogging and we started talking about a crush she has on a friend. It struck me then that the word “crush” is pretty juvenile. Remember when you got those indescribable tingly feelings in junior high if the cute boy walked in the room? Or how you felt when you got that poster of Michael Jackson in the yellow sweater-vest? You were experiencing burgeoning physical desires, the beginnings of puberty, and decidedly one-sided relationships with people you didn’t know. You described those feelings for a boy or a girl as a “crush” because you weren’t mature enough for love, and perhaps not informed enough to want sex, but you knew you felt different. Your parents – and Donny Osmond – might have called it “puppy love”, which is to say it was a little obedient, a little obsequious, and it would disappear as soon as you saw another cute, fuzzy doggy. Depth of feeling aside, another key to those middle-school crushes was your unwillingness to tell the object of your affections about your awkward feelings, choosing to share them with your friends at the lunch table in hushed giggles and secretive tones. You wouldn’t have even thought to make your feelings known for fear of rejection, embarrassment, anxiety, public humiliation and so-forth. Then again, you didn’t really know what your feelings meant at 12 or 13, so what was going to happen anyway?
I never had the least notion.That I could fall with so much emotion. – George and Ira Gershwin, I’ve Got A Crush On You
Flash forward to adulthood and some of us (and by “us” I mean women, mostly) still approach our feelings as though we’re teenagers. For example, when I casually refer to Friend Boy, I call him “this guy I kinda have a crush on,” at least when I don’t feel like going into details. My Twitter timeline is replete with all manner of crush conversations at any given time, and I wanted to get to the bottom of what it all meant. A number of women between 25 and 40 professed to having crushes on people they don’t know: the striking female basketball star, the gorgeous politically-conscious actor who blogs about socialism. Other women use “crush” to describe someone they don’t know well: the casual acquaintance or person they met once and now follow on Twitter. Other crushes are friends, ex’s, coworkers that women know well enough to care for yet refrain from calling the relationship anything but a crush. None of the women I talked to have sex or intimate relationships relationships with their crushes, but have varying levels of interest in getting something started, if you know what I mean.
For all the childhood meanings attributed to our crushes, they tend to take over our collective minds and at least some part of our hearts and bodies. One of my girlfriends professes to “need” a crush on someone to keep her occupied. Said “occupation” doesn’t include spending her time with the guy she likes, just the occupation of countless braincells in the plotting of where to see the crush, what to say to the crush, what the last conversation with the crush actually meant. Yeah, it sounds just like fifth grade. I don’t think of Friend Boy as a crush, yet I do spend some amount of brain power pondering our non-relationship, whether I want to actually have one with him, and why he never makes any plans to hang out with me. Even though I’m not passing him any notes in study hall, I still feel a little giddy when he calls/texts/Tweets/Facebooks me and calls me “babe.” (Don’t judge me!) Yeah, I think I’m a little pathetic, and my friends are pathetic too. You’d think we could see our way to act like we’ve been dating and having sex for a good number of years instead of hiding away our real feelings and reverting to junior-high shorthand to describe romantic potential. Or are we just hiding from relationships in general?
I’m not a player, I just crush a lot. – Big Punisher, Still Not a Player
Men, it seems, break down the crush nomenclature a little differently. A male Twitter follower described it like this: “if you day dream about sex with her its simple attraction if you day dream [sic] about GFE then its a crush“. Apparently “GFE” means “girlfriend experience“. I’ve never heard that before, which likely explains why I’m still single. Anyway, this male crushing behavior is about having a relationship, wanting a girlfriend, seeing something happen. I know I’m looking at a sample-size of one, but take the rap lyrics I quoted above and note that the word “crush” was actually a substitute for “fuck” in the radio edit of Big Pun’s hit song. So, he’s not a player but he gets a lot of tail. In this context, crushing is all about the physical relationship vs. the GFE, but it still connotes action, closure, and disclosure. After all, Pun isn’t going around fucking a bunch of women who don’t know he’s at least interested in them for something. Which brings me back to why the women I know – myself included – are carrying a torch for any number of people and keeping it a secret?
One of my favorite “where are they now?” groups, Zhane, hits the nail on the head with the lyrics of their aptly-named Crush: “Will he turn around, walk away/Will he leave or will he stay if I tell him?” Okay, ladies, we’re afraid of what will happen if we fess up to ol’ boy (or ol’ girl) that we have some romantic feelings for them. We’re some punk-ass bitches, and I use the term with the utmost love and sisterhood. Rejection feels bad, but so does stewing in your own juices. I’ve given a lot of lip service to thinking about my feelings and proceeding cautiously into romance, but sometimes I’m just kidding myself and hiding behind the positive self-talk. If you like a guy, or a girl, or a few of each, who not tell them? If this crush you’re talking about is really about the significant-other experience (like the dudes say), then get off your ass and do something to make it happen. If your crush is, as my friend Tanya says, something you need to entertain yourself, figure out why you MUST occupy your mind with fantasies that you don’t want to turn into reality. I’m serious about this. Decide if someone is worth your mental energy, then pursue them or let it drop and start thinking about something useful like where to put your 401(k) savings or how SB1070 will impact national immigration policy. Just stop acting like a teenager, WOMAN-UP already, and go for yours.
Now I’m gonna take my own advice and spend the rest of the day getting my FTP site to work. My tech issues might be less appealing than thinking about how Friend Boy’s hands would feel on my body, but I’ll definitely have something to show for it when I’m finished.
Uh, in what world is THIS not sexy? (image courtesy of LaneBryant.com)
Imagine a beautiful, voluptuous woman going to meet a lunch date wearing nothing but sexy red lingerie under her trenchcoat. If you’re the woman, you feel empowered, strong and just a little naughty. If you’re the guy she’s going to meet, you’re probably going to thank some deity when she walks in the door and drops her jacket. Apparently, this scenario is just too much for Kathie Lee Gifford to bear.
Last week, plus-sized clothing manufacturer Lane Bryant launched a TV ad for it’s Cacique lingerie brand. I’ve been known to shop at Lane Bryant, though I’m not quite plus enough to fit into most of their clothes. However, they do make jewelry that doesn’t disappear against my size 16 frame, and I like the fact that the clothes are made for young, professional women and not your great aunt. My biggest complaint with clothes over size 12 is that manufacturers assume that I need elasticized waists, shapeless jackets, and tons of room for back fat just because I’m bigger than average. Just make the size 16 and 18 in the exact same clothing and the exact same proportions as a size 10 and I’ll be straight. But I digress… Lane Bryant makes strapless dresses and fly-away baby dolls and tank tops and shorts, because every woman deserves to feel cute and comfortable and appealing no matter her size. I like them for that. And for this ad, that highlights the company’s focus on making women “of size” feel sexy.
Apparently, Lane Bryant wanted the commercial to air during “American Idol” and “Dancing with the Stars,” but both Fox and ABC relegated the ad to the after-9PM time slot for being too “racy”. If that’s true, whatevs. There is nothing in that Cacique ad that you can’t see on “Gossip Girl”. Except, of course, for real body parts and women who eat. Which brings me to Kathy Lee Gifford, who spoke out against the TV spot saying something to the tune of (and I paraphrase): the woman in the ad is going for a sexy lunch and I don’t want my daughter being exposed to that kind of thing. *face palms* Again, I bring up the Gossip Girl example in which alleged high school students are sexing each other – and drinking illegally, I might add – all over the Upper East Side. I believe that show airs during the 8 o’clock hour as well. Where’s the outrage there, Kathie Lee? I guess Kathie Lee is cooler with seeing young girls making foolish sexual choices on TV when they’re under 18 than she is with a woman deciding to turn her lunch date into a quickie.
And that’s what I think the real problem is. Full-figured women are sexy. Not all of them, but definitely Ashley Graham, the woman who stars in the Cacique ad. She’s incredibly aspirational for plus sized women, and appealing to men: beautiful face, shiny hair, full breasts, smooth skin…and that’s the problem. Ashley Graham‘s appearance in the TV ad is unapologetic about her size (which is probably 10 or 12), her sex appeal, and the empowering stance she’ll take when she meets her man for lunch sanscullottes. Ashley’s body parts are certainly bigger than those of the average Victoria’s Secret model, but the real difference is the tone in which her sexuality is delivered. A straightforward female voice narrates the Lane Bryant commercial, reminding us that we’re pretty, we’re sexy, we’re not wearing our mother’s lingerie. And because we feel beautiful on the outside as well as on the inside, we can take charge of our bodies and meet our guy for a “hot lunch” because we’re of legal age and we can make our own choices. Victoria’s Secret commercials are cloaked in, well, secrecy: they have the look of a Peeping Tom, spying on women in their skivvies so that he can see what Victoria really wears under her clothes. Vicky’s Secret models look as though they’re preening for the men who’ll be looking at them instead of deciding to wear those miracle undies for their own empowerment. And the voiceover artist lends an air of faux British classiness to the commercials, just so we won’t think that the women actually enjoy being filmed in their underpants. Heaven forbid!
Another problem with seeing plus sized women in lingerie? Big boobs! You know how immature men are, they see a breast and they lose their ever-loving minds. Remember Janet Jackson and Nipplegate? It was the titty heard ’round the world, and we didn’t really get that much of it. Fast forward to real, live D-cups spilling over a lacy bra for a full 30 seconds and stupid dudes will lose their shit! After all, they won’t be able to concentrate for the thought of heaving bosoms, causing the collapse of the financial industry and. . . Right, ta-tas didn’t cause the downfall of Goldman Sachs, but tell us big-boned gals that we can love our breasts and our curves and dress them up in pretty colors and you’ll never be able to tell us anything. Not only will men everywhere be mesmerized, but we will refuse to shrink quietly behind some skinny bitch we think is prettier than us. We’ll speak up in high school, or in the board room, or in the bedroom. We’ll get rid of the men who don’t treat us good because we’ll realize that our size has nothing to do with our self-esteem. Next thing you know, comedians will stop making jokes about Oprah’s weight and she’ll REALLY be the most powerful woman in the world.
Controversial title, huh? Before you go off on me for suggesting that it is not possible for people suffering from bipolar disorder to maintain healthy relationships, read what I have to say here about myself and then feel free to judge me as you see fit.
Remember how I said that I was ready for love, talking all big about thinking clearly and prepared to make grown-up decisions like regular people? Well, I may have jumped the gun on that one and here’s how I know. Last week was a bad week. Not “check myself back into the hospital” bad; more like “I feel bad and I just want to stay in bed all the time.” For the most part, I did just that with the exception of a few showers, a job interview, and some talking on the phone. At some point this week, I realized that for the last few months I’d been riding high on a combination of endorphins, caffeine, serotonin (both natural and chemically-induced) and whatever other brain chemicals trigger bipolar mania. In case you care about my moods, this is everyday life for me, the stuff of 140 characters, not blog posts. My highs aren’t high enough to make me think I can fly or run with the bulls in Pamplona. They’re just high enough to make me feel slightly antsy, lose my appetite, and be really, REALLY productive. So, garden-variety Type A stuff with a little “I’m falling in love” sprinkled on top for flavor. For the record I am NOT falling in love, though I find it very telling that the “falling in love” feeling is a little bit like a manic attack. Blame it on the do-do-do-do-do-dopamine. And that infernal serotonin, which is the brain chemical my medications are responsible for altering. So…I guess I’m not really interested in Friend Boy, maybe I just need a new prescription.
In all honesty, last week was the big let-down, the big drop-down, and I went into my bipolar-depression cocoon which looks a little like this: staying in the house, avoiding people and commitments coated with an undefinable feeling of “blah”. Not bad enough to cry my eyes out (unless it was at the end of the last book I read – totally warranted, by the way) but bad enough to put my head under the covers and ignore the world. In the process of said ignorance, I grossly mistreated a classmate for whom I was supposed to do an internet project. Perhaps I over-committed myself when volunteering to help my friend promote his book, and one could identify my over-confidence in my own abilities as a by-product of a manic state. However, last week, in the midst of my depression-induced fog, I couldn’t quite focus long enough to work on said project, nor could I stomach the idea of talking to my classmate about my shortcomings. So instead, I didn’t return his phone calls. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do the work, but I couldn’t get myself together enough to do it, or to talk about not doing it without resulting anxiety, hyperventilation and feelings of worthlessness. I’d worked myself up into a classic “I feel crappy and I feel guilty” moment when I had a huge realization: I was treating someone else the way Friend Boy – and several other men in my life – have treated me.
Stay with me, readers, while I break it down for you. My romantic life has been plagued by all manner of men who’ve virtually ignored me. I often asked, what did I do to deserve this? Nobody deserves to be ignored unless they’ve wronged you in some manner. Yet I continually give plenty of people the cold shoulder: recruiters, sometimes my Dad and my friends, my classmate last week, and my job once right before I went into the hospital. I’ve been making excuses for myself, believing that my behavior was justified because I felt “sick”, or because facing up to people would cause me too much anxiety. No matter the reasons, though, I was still in the wrong just like the dates that didn’t call me back, or the guys that broke up with me via silence instead of a direct form of communication. I’m not necessarily saying that I can’t get some man to call me back due to karmic retribution. Actually, maybe I am saying that very thing, that I’m putting into the world the same behaviors that I dislike so much in others and they’re coming right back at me. So until I can figure out how to manage my ownself in relation to other people, I probably shouldn’t be trying to date anyone. And that means, kids, that Friend Boy is a no-go until I can get my shit together. This is one of those “everything happens for a reason” moments, and why this “bipolar” should be single for just a bit longer.
For the record, I did contact my classmate and beg out of the project. He was probably disappointed, and I can live with people being disappointed in me for a while. What I can’t live with is people thinking that I’m a jerk, so I’m going to try very hard not to act like one from now on. Call me on that if you see me.
