Hey all. Last time I said that Episode 10 would be a progress post called "Ambuh, you lookin' skinnier erry time I see you!" (which is something a student of mine said to me recently, beeteedubs). So that, it turns out, was a lie. I didn't expect that I would have the time, energy, and desire to post again for another week, which is when it will make sense to make a progress post (a year out from an important weigh-in). So...sorry, I guess? I didn't think I would be so prolific. I'll knock it off.
This morning I was late for work. I was also late for work the day before. And I will tell you why. My pants don't fit. I have at least three dozen pairs of pants ranging from slacks to jeans and they don't fit. The pairs that used to fit right in the hips and thighs are now so loose in the waist that I can't even belt them properly. The ones that were already a little loose are total lost causes. The ones that were good in the waist and too tight in the thighs are either almost good, or too loose in the waist and still not great in the thighs. I haven't tried on every single pair yet, but I have found exactly two pairs that fit something like normally. They are both, however, short in the inseam and should only be worn with flats...so rainy/snowy weather isn't ideal for them. So perhaps those will be spring pants. Or I'll just not be able to wear those ones, ever. I'll lose weight right past them.
This pant crisis is kind of a surprise for me. Of course, I know I'm losing weight, because I weigh myself obsessively and count calories every single day and work out 3-5 days a week. So, herp-a-durr, I'm going to lose weight and thusly go down in size. The surprising part was that the pants thing kind of happened all at once. I was fitting into pants last week that are now humorously large. Even now, I'm wearing a pair of 16 jeans from The Gap (a store I almost never visit, but they had a great online sale and I was already buying Old Navy stuff anyway...you get the idea). These jeans fit me almost perfectly back when I got them last August; maybe I would wear a belt, but my waist is always too small for the pants that fit my hips/thighs, so that's standard. I loved these pants and even wore them when it was still too hot to wear pants. They were my go-to pants, especially because they looked more like blue trousers than jeans, so I didn't feel too scrubby wearing them to work.
Now I'm wearing them and they are belted so severely that the top is crinkled like bacon. The back looks the most impressive. The belt is trying to follow the curve of my waist while the pants are trying to go as low as possible. The belt is above the pants on either side of the center back beltloop, only being tamed by that single loop. It looks like my pants and belt are fighting. No, that's not strong enough. It looks like there is a decades-old gang war between the Parkway Pantz and the Belt Boyz. It's actually pretty uncomfortable, and I'll be happy to get into my comfy-but-rather-revealing compression pants at the gym.
This is pretty lame, even by First World Problem standards. Not fitting into my dozens of pairs of pants because I am intentionally denying myself food in order to change my body size...well, there's not much to wail about there. In fact, as I was frantically trying to find a pair I could wear today, I couldn't help but laugh (like, actually aloud) at my predicament. What an awesome problem to have.
Tomorrow? CLEAN ALL THE THINGS! I mean...TRY ON ALL THE PANTS! If none of them really fit, I can just wear skirts, dresses, and leggings until my two new Old Navy jeans arrive next week. I'm going to enjoy being a 14. That is, until I'm a 12. Suck it, plus sizes.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Diary of a Fat Girl - Episode 9: Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop
One of the benefits of a generally negative and pessimistic perspective is that you're right most of the time. Hopes and dreams are wonderful things, but being cynical usually just means that you're practical. Sometimes the world proves you wrong, and amazing things happen, but the day-to-day reality tends to confirm negative assumptions. It also helps if you ignore all the positive, beautiful things around you, and focus on the things that support the way you already think.
Since this has always been a cornerstone to my modus operandi, I am rather familiar with this world view. I am not always negative or pessimistic; although I can be jaded at times, I would find it hard to care about teaching or getting married if I felt that neither pursuit was worthy of my time. Overall I think I'm a fairly positive person, but I planted cynicism in my heart during adolescence and it has blossomed like a wonderful, sad little flower. A lot of that cynicism and negativity is tied to my self-esteem.
I hate that phrase - self-esteem - given that I grew up in the beginning of Everyone Gets a Trophy fever. In my fifth grade class, we had something called Project C.H.A.R.L.I.E. (I have no idea what that acronym stands for, but I know it stands for something). Outside speakers would come in and talk to us in giant group therapy session. We learned about warm fuzzies (things that make you feel good) and cold pricklies (things that make you feel bad). In retrospect, it seems to be some strange combination of self-esteem awareness, bullying prevention, and getting abused kids to talk to adults about their fucked up home lives. Since at least middle school, I have felt the same way about the phrase "self-esteem" as I do about "personhole cover" and other ridiculous PC things. "Self-image" I'm okay with. "Self-respect" is fine. But "self-esteem" was hammered so hard into my skull that I will never respect it as a phrase. I think that should be even worse coming from an English teacher.
Sematics diatribe aside, I know that I have always had a kind of mixed bag of feelings about myself. In some ways, I'm very egotistical or overly proud. My presence on Yahoo! Answers, various message boards on weight loss/fitness sites, even this blog...these demonstrate how important and awesome I think my voice is. I have a lot of shit to say and it is all valuable goddammit. That being said, I also have plenty of not-so-amazing characteristics, real/imagined/exaggerated. In the interest of getting out of here before 2013 and not crushing my soul today, I will not attempt to list all the things I dislike about myself; I'm pretty sure that would not be a useful exercise.
I can tell you, however, that one of the biggest things on that list would be the combination of my body image and my ability to control my body (fitness-wise). I have disliked my weight since about the same time I started getting all pissy about the phrase "self-esteem"...so it's been a long time. I didn't really try to do anything about it until college, when I was making my own food choices 100% of the time and had a shitload of free time. It wasn't until later, of course, that I realized I had this much free time because I wasn't doing any of the assigned reading. But that's another story.
When I tried and failed to lose weight the first couple of times, I inadvertently began a cycle that went something like this:
Somewhere around starting grad school, I had slowly and without much ado come to the conclusion that I would never be happy and thin, so I might as well be happy and fat. Stop counting calories or feeling guilty or whatever...just do what I want and just be. This is known as Sweatpants All The Time Disorder (SATTD). I had convinced myself so thoroughly that the effort and dedication required to get truly healthy was beyond my ability...or, at the very least, beyond what I was ever going to be willing and able to maintain in the long-term. I finally stopped kidding myself, bought the size 16 jeans, and went on with my life.
...And continued to be unhappy, feel unhealthy, and miss plenty of trains and buses because I refused to run to catch them. I still had issues with my body and my self-image. I looked in the mirror and I knew that I was doing this to myself - in the most literal sense, I was in control of my body - but it didn't make me feel any better about where I was at. Over the course of a couple of years, I went from maintaining in the 170s to maintaining in the 180s and finally maintaining in the 190s. When I hit 197, I muttered, out loud to no one in particular, "Oh, fuck this." I didn't have an incredible breakthrough where I just started dieting and exercising like a crazy person, but I did recognize that my "healthy decision" to accept my weight and lifestyle was, as they say, some buuulllllshit.
It has taken me a year to lose half of the weight I plan to lose (look for Episode 10: "Ambuh, you lookin' skinnier erry time I see you!" for charts, graphs, and maybe a progress picture if I'm feeling self-important enough). It has not been the fastest weight loss, nor has it been a uniformly successful road filled with high-fives and grins. Basically, some cool stuff happened and some bad stuff happened. It has been both an excellent adventure and a bogus journey. Not much distinguishes the past 12 months from all the years prior.
Except that I'm actually, like, proud of myself. And happy about my progress. And I like looking in the mirror. And I'm having to give away all those size 16s that I bought and dig out the "skinny" 14s. I don't really give a shit that it has taken me this long. I know that this is how things will have to be from now on, and I'm really at peace with that. I have dealt with some heavy emotional shit over the course of the year and I am working through a lot of the reasons why I am compelled to do shit like eat when I'm not hungry or glare at twiggy girls on the T whose little chicken legs don't fill out even the skinniest of skinny jeans. I'm not yet on the other side of it - I still glare, believe me - but I'm also constructing and practicing healthy habits that will only make me happier.
And this is where the cynicism and pessimism come in. Now I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Despite all the positive feelings and great progress I have made (physically and emotionally), I can't shake this feeling like there's something bad waiting for me along this journey. Pretty soon I'm going to hit a plateau. I'm going to seriously hurt my knee or my back and the down time will be fatal to my healthy routines. I'll never actually hit the maintenance period and I'll always be trying to lose that last 5 pounds. When summer comes and I'm not in the teaching routine, I'm not going to be able to maintain the habits that have gotten me this much success. In the end, I will lose enough weight in such a way that I will have weird lose skin that only plastic surgery can fix. I will get to my goal weight and realize that I still don't like the way I look. My round face will look weird when I lose more weight. Instead of big, saggy tits I'm going to have little saggy tits, which is WAY worse. Dan is going to get sick of me working out all the time, or get mad that we don't go out to eat as much anymore, or [the list goes on].
If this sounds familiar, it's because it's the same kind of shit that went through my head as I was starting this blog series. I had a hundred doubts and fears that all seemed like great reasons not to bother, at least at the time. It's taken a lot of work to get to the point where I can recognize patterns like that instead of just feeling shitty and letting it ruin my day. If I'm going to toot my own horn, and I am, it might as well be about that. I can see how my own mind tricks me into believing that there are lots of good reasons to quit, none of which are my fault, but all of which make me feel guilty and shitty. Thanks a lot, me.
For the time being, I'm going to keep on truckin'. I'm happy with how things are going. Such a simple statement, but it's not something I say often, especially not about my body and health. In September, I had my annual physical and my doctor (as usual) advised me to lose weight. I told her that I had recently starting doing xyz things to make it happen and that I was down several pounds from my heaviest (of course, I was still up a few pounds from my last check-up, so she DGAF). She was skeptical, but told me that I should aim to get down to 170 or so by next September. I laughed and assured her that I would be significantly less than that, and sooner than September. She raised an eyebrow, cautioned me against making huge goals that were not reasonable for me to achieve, but told me that she would be happy if I proved her wrong. Today I'm at 167. Suck it, doc.
Since this has always been a cornerstone to my modus operandi, I am rather familiar with this world view. I am not always negative or pessimistic; although I can be jaded at times, I would find it hard to care about teaching or getting married if I felt that neither pursuit was worthy of my time. Overall I think I'm a fairly positive person, but I planted cynicism in my heart during adolescence and it has blossomed like a wonderful, sad little flower. A lot of that cynicism and negativity is tied to my self-esteem.
I hate that phrase - self-esteem - given that I grew up in the beginning of Everyone Gets a Trophy fever. In my fifth grade class, we had something called Project C.H.A.R.L.I.E. (I have no idea what that acronym stands for, but I know it stands for something). Outside speakers would come in and talk to us in giant group therapy session. We learned about warm fuzzies (things that make you feel good) and cold pricklies (things that make you feel bad). In retrospect, it seems to be some strange combination of self-esteem awareness, bullying prevention, and getting abused kids to talk to adults about their fucked up home lives. Since at least middle school, I have felt the same way about the phrase "self-esteem" as I do about "personhole cover" and other ridiculous PC things. "Self-image" I'm okay with. "Self-respect" is fine. But "self-esteem" was hammered so hard into my skull that I will never respect it as a phrase. I think that should be even worse coming from an English teacher.
Sematics diatribe aside, I know that I have always had a kind of mixed bag of feelings about myself. In some ways, I'm very egotistical or overly proud. My presence on Yahoo! Answers, various message boards on weight loss/fitness sites, even this blog...these demonstrate how important and awesome I think my voice is. I have a lot of shit to say and it is all valuable goddammit. That being said, I also have plenty of not-so-amazing characteristics, real/imagined/exaggerated. In the interest of getting out of here before 2013 and not crushing my soul today, I will not attempt to list all the things I dislike about myself; I'm pretty sure that would not be a useful exercise.
I can tell you, however, that one of the biggest things on that list would be the combination of my body image and my ability to control my body (fitness-wise). I have disliked my weight since about the same time I started getting all pissy about the phrase "self-esteem"...so it's been a long time. I didn't really try to do anything about it until college, when I was making my own food choices 100% of the time and had a shitload of free time. It wasn't until later, of course, that I realized I had this much free time because I wasn't doing any of the assigned reading. But that's another story.
When I tried and failed to lose weight the first couple of times, I inadvertently began a cycle that went something like this:
- "I'm going to try to lose weight, though I probably can't do it."
- Eats a little less and goes to the gym a couple of times, but doesn't really try
- Doesn't lose much, if any, weight
- "See?!?!? I told you I couldn't do it. Well, I'm going to go eat some terrible-tasting pasta at the dining hall and drink 15 glasses of chocolate milk, 'cause they got that shit on tap."
Somewhere around starting grad school, I had slowly and without much ado come to the conclusion that I would never be happy and thin, so I might as well be happy and fat. Stop counting calories or feeling guilty or whatever...just do what I want and just be. This is known as Sweatpants All The Time Disorder (SATTD). I had convinced myself so thoroughly that the effort and dedication required to get truly healthy was beyond my ability...or, at the very least, beyond what I was ever going to be willing and able to maintain in the long-term. I finally stopped kidding myself, bought the size 16 jeans, and went on with my life.
...And continued to be unhappy, feel unhealthy, and miss plenty of trains and buses because I refused to run to catch them. I still had issues with my body and my self-image. I looked in the mirror and I knew that I was doing this to myself - in the most literal sense, I was in control of my body - but it didn't make me feel any better about where I was at. Over the course of a couple of years, I went from maintaining in the 170s to maintaining in the 180s and finally maintaining in the 190s. When I hit 197, I muttered, out loud to no one in particular, "Oh, fuck this." I didn't have an incredible breakthrough where I just started dieting and exercising like a crazy person, but I did recognize that my "healthy decision" to accept my weight and lifestyle was, as they say, some buuulllllshit.
It has taken me a year to lose half of the weight I plan to lose (look for Episode 10: "Ambuh, you lookin' skinnier erry time I see you!" for charts, graphs, and maybe a progress picture if I'm feeling self-important enough). It has not been the fastest weight loss, nor has it been a uniformly successful road filled with high-fives and grins. Basically, some cool stuff happened and some bad stuff happened. It has been both an excellent adventure and a bogus journey. Not much distinguishes the past 12 months from all the years prior.
Except that I'm actually, like, proud of myself. And happy about my progress. And I like looking in the mirror. And I'm having to give away all those size 16s that I bought and dig out the "skinny" 14s. I don't really give a shit that it has taken me this long. I know that this is how things will have to be from now on, and I'm really at peace with that. I have dealt with some heavy emotional shit over the course of the year and I am working through a lot of the reasons why I am compelled to do shit like eat when I'm not hungry or glare at twiggy girls on the T whose little chicken legs don't fill out even the skinniest of skinny jeans. I'm not yet on the other side of it - I still glare, believe me - but I'm also constructing and practicing healthy habits that will only make me happier.
And this is where the cynicism and pessimism come in. Now I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Despite all the positive feelings and great progress I have made (physically and emotionally), I can't shake this feeling like there's something bad waiting for me along this journey. Pretty soon I'm going to hit a plateau. I'm going to seriously hurt my knee or my back and the down time will be fatal to my healthy routines. I'll never actually hit the maintenance period and I'll always be trying to lose that last 5 pounds. When summer comes and I'm not in the teaching routine, I'm not going to be able to maintain the habits that have gotten me this much success. In the end, I will lose enough weight in such a way that I will have weird lose skin that only plastic surgery can fix. I will get to my goal weight and realize that I still don't like the way I look. My round face will look weird when I lose more weight. Instead of big, saggy tits I'm going to have little saggy tits, which is WAY worse. Dan is going to get sick of me working out all the time, or get mad that we don't go out to eat as much anymore, or [the list goes on].
If this sounds familiar, it's because it's the same kind of shit that went through my head as I was starting this blog series. I had a hundred doubts and fears that all seemed like great reasons not to bother, at least at the time. It's taken a lot of work to get to the point where I can recognize patterns like that instead of just feeling shitty and letting it ruin my day. If I'm going to toot my own horn, and I am, it might as well be about that. I can see how my own mind tricks me into believing that there are lots of good reasons to quit, none of which are my fault, but all of which make me feel guilty and shitty. Thanks a lot, me.
For the time being, I'm going to keep on truckin'. I'm happy with how things are going. Such a simple statement, but it's not something I say often, especially not about my body and health. In September, I had my annual physical and my doctor (as usual) advised me to lose weight. I told her that I had recently starting doing xyz things to make it happen and that I was down several pounds from my heaviest (of course, I was still up a few pounds from my last check-up, so she DGAF). She was skeptical, but told me that I should aim to get down to 170 or so by next September. I laughed and assured her that I would be significantly less than that, and sooner than September. She raised an eyebrow, cautioned me against making huge goals that were not reasonable for me to achieve, but told me that she would be happy if I proved her wrong. Today I'm at 167. Suck it, doc.
Monday, January 09, 2012
How can we be lovers if we can't be friends?
When I was in high school and my then-boyfriend and I communicated
primarily through AOL Instant Messenger, we spent a great deal of time
and energy having epic, amazing fights. Looking back, I don't know that
I was truly satisfied at any given point in that relationship unless we
were having a huge argument, what Cesar Millan would call a "red zone"
fight. Fortunately for me, I guess, that was like 40% of our
communication.
Let me give you an example. We'd be chatting on AIM and I'd have one or two other chat windows open (in my IMing heyday, it would have been 4-8 windows, something I haven't the interest nor energy to revive in my online repertoire). He'd say something that required a response and I would delay in getting to it for, say, 20 seconds. Cue explosion sound FX. He'd get impatient and make some comment about me being too busy to talk to my boyfriend. I'd apologize, taking the bait because I was 16 and didn't have the awareness to think to myself, wow, isn't it kind of psychotic to get mad about a very brief response delay? Maybe I should break up with this person before he murder-suicides me. I'd try to explain that I was just typing in another window and that I was not, in fact, too busy. He'd accuse me of putting him on the "back burner" (this was a go-to for him, and a rather solid one, I must say). I'd come back with some snarky comment about something that I was still mad about from a week ago, and we'd be off for an hour. Eventually one of us would sign off in anger, only to return moments later with a really good fuck-you one-liner and then sign off before the other could respond. We had these fights choreographed like Swan fucking Lake.
My tactics were childish. My responses were over-dramatic. My reactions were intense. But goddammit, I was fucking AWESOME at fighting, if the goal is self-expression. I had no hesitation when it came to expressing my displeasure or bringing up an issue. I didn't always start the fights, but I had no qualms about doing so, and I made sure that my cards were all out on the table regardless of what the actual argument was about. I was the most malevolently amazing wordsmith of anger, and despite knowing that I was causing pain by saying what I was saying, I reveled in the construction, phrasing, and timing of those jabs and stings. The longer it took me to finish typing my comeback, the better it would be. That shit was crafted.
Cut to 2011 (well, 2012 now). Having matured more than a decade since those brutally delicious arguments, I find myself in a stable, loving relationship that has even reached cohabitation. Despite all uncertainly, we have yet to kill each other, and it's been well over a year. We are getting more and more used to each other, in the best possible sense, and rarely butt heads. But that doesn't mean there's zero conflict. Any two people living together, I don't care how in love and/or in sync, will have some sort of disagreement every once in a while. Someone neglects a chore for a little too long, or has some idiosyncratic habit regarding toiletries that bothers another person, or whatever. It happens.
But I find myself getting more and more frustrated at, like, everything. Dan waits until there is more than 1 dishwasher of dishes to do, and shockingly enough, the tupperware that only I use is the stuff that "doesn't fit"...for the third load of dishes in a row. RAGE. Dan suggests we watch some of our backlogged episodes of Wilfred, and I say I'm not in the mood*, so he gives me a look like I just pooped in his mouth. RAGE. After cooking our joint meals for three days in a row, I say I don't feel like cooking tonight, so Dan prepares dinner. For one. RAGE. I could go on.
[*Wilfred is an amazing show. But in my defense, it's dark as hell and is not exactly a mood booster. Same thing with Louie, which I love.]
It's getting harder for me to discern which frustrations are valid and which are silly. Or, perhaps more accurately, how frustrated I should be about which things. For as long as I can remember, I have always been a little too analytical about my own emotions. I have always, always been terrified of being the crazy girl. You know which one I mean...she loves you so much that she keys your car. Or she breaks all your shit because you looked at her funny. Or throws your sneakers in the bathtub and lights them on fire, accidentally setting your entire mansion ablaze (thanks for the idea, Left Eye. RIP.). I hate those girls, not even because of who they are and what they do, but because they make men assume that women are all naturally like that, at some level. A lot of dudes assume that, if you push a chick far enough, she'll snap and start beating your windshield with a baseball bat. Or hit you in the face, knowing that you will either a) hit her back, setting yourself up to go to jail or b) refuse to press charges because you'll look like a pussy. Whether it's direct experience, stories from friends, or just shit they've seen in the movies, men think women (especially young women) are inherently emotionally unstable.
So to counter this assumption, I have always considered it my personal quest to be/appear as emotionally stable as possible. There are aspects of this that are very easy for me; I am not at all prone to jealousy and have no issues with a boyfriend checking out girls, going to a strip club, or whatever. As long as I "win", in that I retain his love and emotional loyalty, I don't really give a shit what he does with his eyes, money, or genitals. I don't know why I don't care, but I find it rather convenient that I don't.
In other aspects, though, I do struggle against the crazy girl shit. I can be pretty sensitive to both words and tone of voice in a conversation. I don't mean that I can't take a joke - in fact, I consider my sense of humor with even the meanest and dirtiest jokes to be another bonus - but rather, I mean that things said in earnest can often throw me for a loop if they are hurtful, dismissive, or cold. Often things said without any ill will intended will bother me deeply because of the words chosen or the tone used. Is that something I'm allowed to be mad about? Or hurt by? If I believe that Dan meant, "I know you're not feeling well, but if you cleaned up the clothes in the living room before people came over, it would make me very happy," but he actually said, "no, I'd rather you didn't come to Best Buy because I want you to clean up your clutter in the living room," do I listen to his words or do I insert the tact for him? Both interpretations are flawed: I'm either intentionally ignoring implied meaning by making it an issue of surface semantics or putting words in Dan's mouth and making excuses for his rude and/or callous affect.
So what I do instead, as best I can tell, is I get mad about the words and tone, but knowing what he probably meant to say, I tell myself that I shouldn't be mad, so I shove my emotional reaction to the back, assuring myself that this irrationality will pass. Somewhere in there, too, is the fear of how Dan would react if I respond negatively to anything he says. The few times I've done so, he either has walked away/stopped talking to me or gotten mad because I'm mad. We've never had an exchange where I express a negative emotion about something he has done/said and his immediate response has been supportive, apologetic, or even just neutral curiosity/questioning. His responses fall into a few categories: I have my facts wrong, I am crazy/overreacting, or I fail to see the larger picture in which I am the real asshole. It's hard to truly blame him for getting defensive when my own impulses are so jumbled and dramatic, but I can also see a direct correlation between my previous experiences in trying to address issues with Dan and my current reluctance to do so again.
But it's far more than just a sense of "he might say mean things" that keeps me from communicating my negative emotions to Dan. There's something solely within me that seems to be malfunctioning, at least that's how it feels. My immediate responses to upsetting things are NEVER reflective of my truest feelings. It's not that I intend to deceive, or even that I'm aware of any agency/purpose in my reacting. But whatever I blurt out is a surface reaction, one that is often neutral or flippant, not representative of what I feel is the real issue. When Dan told me to clean up my shit in the living room, I wryly responded, "you mean, like, four sweaters on a chair?" But the issue I had was not that he was nitpicking about the clutter in the living room; he hates clutter, and I am less sensitive to it, but I don't mind his sensitivity and the subsequent requests for cleaning that accompany it. My real problem was that it was not, in fact, a request at all. It was a directive. Not only that, it was a directive that made no reference to the fact that I had come home early from work two days in a row because I wasn't feeling well. I can get over Dan not offering to walk the dogs in the freezing rain when I'm sick. It kind of makes him an asshole, especially since I would offer the same to him without hesitation, but it's beside the point. If I'm still expecting open-handed generosity with physical exertion from Dan, I'm a fool, plain and simple.
But the exchange about the living room clutter felt different than my short-lived grumpy acknowledgement of Dan's unwillingness to do my chores while I'm under the weather. I was offended, and kind of hurt. The moment was so minor, though, so fleeting that it seems silly to spend any time/energy being upset about it. And this is where I get back into don't-be-crazy mode. Once I acknowledge that it's possible that someone might view this issue as unimportant, I assume that assigning value to it makes me crazy. Even typing that sentence makes me want to sign up for as much therapy as my health insurance will cover.
The problem that I face at this exact juncture is the time/scope issue. Because these feelings have been left to simmer for so long (for this specific issue, the clutter conversation took place in late October and I'm continuing this entry in January), the statute of limitations has surely expired. Even if it hasn't, the scope of the issue has now grown so large in the back-end analysis that it would be incredibly overwhelming for Dan if I brought all of this up. What started as a potentially-painful but ultimately small conversation has now become a massive, relationship-defining issue. My friend Ben calls these types of things State of the Union addresses. Dan has gotten them from me before, and it is clear that he has NO idea how to handle them; it would not be fair to expect him to.
I don't know how else to do it, though. I suppose that's my real issue. I know how to fight like a psychotic 16-year-old (rusty as those skills may be) and I know how to suppress my emotions until they come spilling out all at once in the most disjointed, convoluted way possible. I don't know how to have short, limited, specific conversations about single issues that can be resolved completely. Maybe this is how my mind works - everything is so interconnected for me that there are no isolated incidents/issues. Maybe it's just how I have taught myself to process my emotions: situation B makes me feel like situation A did, so I need to talk to Dan about both of those and the larger ramifications of those situations. I don't know.
Between the time I started this post and am now finishing it, Dan and I have gotten engaged. Considering I wouldn't have agreed to his proposal without knowing that I'd be happy with him, I can say confidently that the shit I get worked up about on here is not the whole story. There's a good amount of sampling bias here, considering how boring (and unproductive) this would be if I wrote about how nice it was to cuddle before we fell asleep, or what a great time we had at the movies the other day, and so on. We really are happy in general. I worry, though, that when we do bump into disagreements or struggles, we don't have a great grasp of how to communicate effectively and avoid major blow-ups (or bruised feelings, etc.).
Some of the wedding sites I've been reading suggest that most/all couples go to couples counseling in advance of a wedding. I think it would actually be an awesome idea, but I don't know that Dan would go for it. He's not much of a talker, and certainly not to a stranger. I worry that he has some biases/preconceived notions about counseling that would make him think I was having doubts or wasn't happy with him or something. I guess it's all in how you present it. Maybe that'll be my goal for the next month - float the idea to Dan in such a way as to make him think it's just another part of planning the wedding, and doesn't need to be a weighty, traumatic experience. Hell, he had never heard of engagement photos, so it wouldn't be a stretch to just throw this in there to see what happens. Heh. Anyway, I don't know how well we can do for another five (or ten, or thirty) years without figuring out how to talk to each other properly, so it should be a priority before we become even more legally entangled!
Let me give you an example. We'd be chatting on AIM and I'd have one or two other chat windows open (in my IMing heyday, it would have been 4-8 windows, something I haven't the interest nor energy to revive in my online repertoire). He'd say something that required a response and I would delay in getting to it for, say, 20 seconds. Cue explosion sound FX. He'd get impatient and make some comment about me being too busy to talk to my boyfriend. I'd apologize, taking the bait because I was 16 and didn't have the awareness to think to myself, wow, isn't it kind of psychotic to get mad about a very brief response delay? Maybe I should break up with this person before he murder-suicides me. I'd try to explain that I was just typing in another window and that I was not, in fact, too busy. He'd accuse me of putting him on the "back burner" (this was a go-to for him, and a rather solid one, I must say). I'd come back with some snarky comment about something that I was still mad about from a week ago, and we'd be off for an hour. Eventually one of us would sign off in anger, only to return moments later with a really good fuck-you one-liner and then sign off before the other could respond. We had these fights choreographed like Swan fucking Lake.
My tactics were childish. My responses were over-dramatic. My reactions were intense. But goddammit, I was fucking AWESOME at fighting, if the goal is self-expression. I had no hesitation when it came to expressing my displeasure or bringing up an issue. I didn't always start the fights, but I had no qualms about doing so, and I made sure that my cards were all out on the table regardless of what the actual argument was about. I was the most malevolently amazing wordsmith of anger, and despite knowing that I was causing pain by saying what I was saying, I reveled in the construction, phrasing, and timing of those jabs and stings. The longer it took me to finish typing my comeback, the better it would be. That shit was crafted.
Cut to 2011 (well, 2012 now). Having matured more than a decade since those brutally delicious arguments, I find myself in a stable, loving relationship that has even reached cohabitation. Despite all uncertainly, we have yet to kill each other, and it's been well over a year. We are getting more and more used to each other, in the best possible sense, and rarely butt heads. But that doesn't mean there's zero conflict. Any two people living together, I don't care how in love and/or in sync, will have some sort of disagreement every once in a while. Someone neglects a chore for a little too long, or has some idiosyncratic habit regarding toiletries that bothers another person, or whatever. It happens.
But I find myself getting more and more frustrated at, like, everything. Dan waits until there is more than 1 dishwasher of dishes to do, and shockingly enough, the tupperware that only I use is the stuff that "doesn't fit"...for the third load of dishes in a row. RAGE. Dan suggests we watch some of our backlogged episodes of Wilfred, and I say I'm not in the mood*, so he gives me a look like I just pooped in his mouth. RAGE. After cooking our joint meals for three days in a row, I say I don't feel like cooking tonight, so Dan prepares dinner. For one. RAGE. I could go on.
[*Wilfred is an amazing show. But in my defense, it's dark as hell and is not exactly a mood booster. Same thing with Louie, which I love.]
It's getting harder for me to discern which frustrations are valid and which are silly. Or, perhaps more accurately, how frustrated I should be about which things. For as long as I can remember, I have always been a little too analytical about my own emotions. I have always, always been terrified of being the crazy girl. You know which one I mean...she loves you so much that she keys your car. Or she breaks all your shit because you looked at her funny. Or throws your sneakers in the bathtub and lights them on fire, accidentally setting your entire mansion ablaze (thanks for the idea, Left Eye. RIP.). I hate those girls, not even because of who they are and what they do, but because they make men assume that women are all naturally like that, at some level. A lot of dudes assume that, if you push a chick far enough, she'll snap and start beating your windshield with a baseball bat. Or hit you in the face, knowing that you will either a) hit her back, setting yourself up to go to jail or b) refuse to press charges because you'll look like a pussy. Whether it's direct experience, stories from friends, or just shit they've seen in the movies, men think women (especially young women) are inherently emotionally unstable.
So to counter this assumption, I have always considered it my personal quest to be/appear as emotionally stable as possible. There are aspects of this that are very easy for me; I am not at all prone to jealousy and have no issues with a boyfriend checking out girls, going to a strip club, or whatever. As long as I "win", in that I retain his love and emotional loyalty, I don't really give a shit what he does with his eyes, money, or genitals. I don't know why I don't care, but I find it rather convenient that I don't.
In other aspects, though, I do struggle against the crazy girl shit. I can be pretty sensitive to both words and tone of voice in a conversation. I don't mean that I can't take a joke - in fact, I consider my sense of humor with even the meanest and dirtiest jokes to be another bonus - but rather, I mean that things said in earnest can often throw me for a loop if they are hurtful, dismissive, or cold. Often things said without any ill will intended will bother me deeply because of the words chosen or the tone used. Is that something I'm allowed to be mad about? Or hurt by? If I believe that Dan meant, "I know you're not feeling well, but if you cleaned up the clothes in the living room before people came over, it would make me very happy," but he actually said, "no, I'd rather you didn't come to Best Buy because I want you to clean up your clutter in the living room," do I listen to his words or do I insert the tact for him? Both interpretations are flawed: I'm either intentionally ignoring implied meaning by making it an issue of surface semantics or putting words in Dan's mouth and making excuses for his rude and/or callous affect.
So what I do instead, as best I can tell, is I get mad about the words and tone, but knowing what he probably meant to say, I tell myself that I shouldn't be mad, so I shove my emotional reaction to the back, assuring myself that this irrationality will pass. Somewhere in there, too, is the fear of how Dan would react if I respond negatively to anything he says. The few times I've done so, he either has walked away/stopped talking to me or gotten mad because I'm mad. We've never had an exchange where I express a negative emotion about something he has done/said and his immediate response has been supportive, apologetic, or even just neutral curiosity/questioning. His responses fall into a few categories: I have my facts wrong, I am crazy/overreacting, or I fail to see the larger picture in which I am the real asshole. It's hard to truly blame him for getting defensive when my own impulses are so jumbled and dramatic, but I can also see a direct correlation between my previous experiences in trying to address issues with Dan and my current reluctance to do so again.
But it's far more than just a sense of "he might say mean things" that keeps me from communicating my negative emotions to Dan. There's something solely within me that seems to be malfunctioning, at least that's how it feels. My immediate responses to upsetting things are NEVER reflective of my truest feelings. It's not that I intend to deceive, or even that I'm aware of any agency/purpose in my reacting. But whatever I blurt out is a surface reaction, one that is often neutral or flippant, not representative of what I feel is the real issue. When Dan told me to clean up my shit in the living room, I wryly responded, "you mean, like, four sweaters on a chair?" But the issue I had was not that he was nitpicking about the clutter in the living room; he hates clutter, and I am less sensitive to it, but I don't mind his sensitivity and the subsequent requests for cleaning that accompany it. My real problem was that it was not, in fact, a request at all. It was a directive. Not only that, it was a directive that made no reference to the fact that I had come home early from work two days in a row because I wasn't feeling well. I can get over Dan not offering to walk the dogs in the freezing rain when I'm sick. It kind of makes him an asshole, especially since I would offer the same to him without hesitation, but it's beside the point. If I'm still expecting open-handed generosity with physical exertion from Dan, I'm a fool, plain and simple.
But the exchange about the living room clutter felt different than my short-lived grumpy acknowledgement of Dan's unwillingness to do my chores while I'm under the weather. I was offended, and kind of hurt. The moment was so minor, though, so fleeting that it seems silly to spend any time/energy being upset about it. And this is where I get back into don't-be-crazy mode. Once I acknowledge that it's possible that someone might view this issue as unimportant, I assume that assigning value to it makes me crazy. Even typing that sentence makes me want to sign up for as much therapy as my health insurance will cover.
The problem that I face at this exact juncture is the time/scope issue. Because these feelings have been left to simmer for so long (for this specific issue, the clutter conversation took place in late October and I'm continuing this entry in January), the statute of limitations has surely expired. Even if it hasn't, the scope of the issue has now grown so large in the back-end analysis that it would be incredibly overwhelming for Dan if I brought all of this up. What started as a potentially-painful but ultimately small conversation has now become a massive, relationship-defining issue. My friend Ben calls these types of things State of the Union addresses. Dan has gotten them from me before, and it is clear that he has NO idea how to handle them; it would not be fair to expect him to.
I don't know how else to do it, though. I suppose that's my real issue. I know how to fight like a psychotic 16-year-old (rusty as those skills may be) and I know how to suppress my emotions until they come spilling out all at once in the most disjointed, convoluted way possible. I don't know how to have short, limited, specific conversations about single issues that can be resolved completely. Maybe this is how my mind works - everything is so interconnected for me that there are no isolated incidents/issues. Maybe it's just how I have taught myself to process my emotions: situation B makes me feel like situation A did, so I need to talk to Dan about both of those and the larger ramifications of those situations. I don't know.
Between the time I started this post and am now finishing it, Dan and I have gotten engaged. Considering I wouldn't have agreed to his proposal without knowing that I'd be happy with him, I can say confidently that the shit I get worked up about on here is not the whole story. There's a good amount of sampling bias here, considering how boring (and unproductive) this would be if I wrote about how nice it was to cuddle before we fell asleep, or what a great time we had at the movies the other day, and so on. We really are happy in general. I worry, though, that when we do bump into disagreements or struggles, we don't have a great grasp of how to communicate effectively and avoid major blow-ups (or bruised feelings, etc.).
Some of the wedding sites I've been reading suggest that most/all couples go to couples counseling in advance of a wedding. I think it would actually be an awesome idea, but I don't know that Dan would go for it. He's not much of a talker, and certainly not to a stranger. I worry that he has some biases/preconceived notions about counseling that would make him think I was having doubts or wasn't happy with him or something. I guess it's all in how you present it. Maybe that'll be my goal for the next month - float the idea to Dan in such a way as to make him think it's just another part of planning the wedding, and doesn't need to be a weighty, traumatic experience. Hell, he had never heard of engagement photos, so it wouldn't be a stretch to just throw this in there to see what happens. Heh. Anyway, I don't know how well we can do for another five (or ten, or thirty) years without figuring out how to talk to each other properly, so it should be a priority before we become even more legally entangled!
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