How are you today? I'm superfantastic.

Believe it for you

Almost a year ago now, I wrote this:

The best way I can describe it to you is to compare it to last winter. It snowed all the time. Except of course it wasn't all the time. Nothing is all the time, is it? But it felt that way. And I felt certain that it would never end. Of course I knew that it would eventually stop snowing. I knew that spring would come. But in the midst of all of that snow, I did not believe it was going to stop. Could not fathom it.

I know that the time will come when I will feel good again. I know this, but I don't believe it.

I was talking on the phone to a good friend of mine the other night. She is stuck in a perpetual winter of her own. Talking to her about that made me realize that, while I had written here about the depression, I hadn't ever written about getting better. I'm sure if you've been around you've realized that it's happened. If nothing else, things have gotten progressively less mopey.

I told my friend about having bought myself tickets to see Ingrid Michaelson in Austin in September, sort of an early birthday present to myself. I've also decided that my thirty-second birthday seems occasion enough to finally skydive. I've wanted to for years and have said that once I had health insurance, I'd do it. Now I do. It's a dream of mine that's within my reach, so I'm going for it.

(Mom: Of course I don't mean it! I would never do anything so dangerous and if I did, would certainly not tell you about it beforehand.)

My friend said that it sounded like things had really turned around for me. She was right. Last year, I wanted nothing more than to sleep through my birthday so I could pretend it didn't exist. (Melissa: What should I get you for your birthday? Me: Drunk.) Of course, I'm not excited about getting older this year either, but this year I have the capacity to make the best of it.

Yes, getting a job was a big part of it. I am finally free of job hunt stress and the endless stream of rejections. I can pay my bills and if I get sick, I can go to a doctor. I don't think it's possible to understand how wonderful those two things are until they haven't been true for you. And I get to do something that matters and allows me to use my skills, experience, and brain. That helped a lot with the way I had been feeling.

But that wasn't all. I read this book and did as many of the exercises as I could talk myself into. I did some counseling, which was tremendously helpful. I had felt like a burden on my friends and family, but I still had things I needed to talk through. Having someone whose role it was to listen and ask questions freed me from the guilt of laying all of it on the people in my life.

This part may sound odd to a lot of you, but I honestly feel like things started to turn around for me on election night. It was the first thing that had made me feel hopeful in a long time. It was, to borrow from Peter Pan, my happy thought. And it enabled me to go to DC for inauguration, where one day I was startled by the thought, "I'm happy." It was a revelation. I shared this with a friend of mine there who, rather than call me a nutcase, said that taking a belly dancing class was what had started her own ascent from the muck. You just never know what might constitute a turning point.

In January, I wrote this:

...if I were making an actual resolution, it would be along the lines of resolving to make things happen for myself in 2009, as opposed to what felt like a 2008 of letting things happen to me.

This is what I've tried to do. I've forced myself to be more social. I've opened up the novel I wrote almost three years ago and started the work of making it into something that might be salable. I've addressed the ADD. I bought some new clothes and got a good haircut. (Listen, they don't all have to be great big things.) I gave myself the birthday gifts of things I really want to do, things that for me are cause for celebration themselves.

And I gave myself permission to be happy. Which might sound like some touchy feely psychobabble, but it was honestly something that I had to do. It felt somehow wrong to feel happy, even to move in the direction of happiness at the time, and I had to reassure myself that it was ok. Allowing myself to feel good didn't have to constitute stagnating. I can want more, but still enjoy the good things about where and what I am now, if I let myself.

No, everything in my life isn't perfect. I don't expect it ever will be, but these days I can handle the imperfection. I'm not drowning in it anymore.

I am confident that this friend of mine will feel good again, too. She has recently taken a positive step toward what will be a better and much more fulfilling chapter of her life. I hope it starts soon.

Spring is coming, friend. I know because I've seen it. It's ok if you can't believe it now. I will believe it for you.

[Disclaimer: I want to be perfectly clear here that I'm not comparing the relatively mild and short-lived depression I went through to anybody else's, nor claiming that what worked for me is the answer for anybody else. Causes and severity differ greatly, as do people. Obviously, differing types and levels of treatment are appropriate accordingly.]

A Very Long Post Regarding My Short Attention Span

So...that last post. Thank you so much for your kind comments. Not one of you told me to get over myself already. You're a swell bunch, Internet.

It felt pretty melodramatic to me even by the next morning. I certainly don't want to sound like I'm asking you to feel sorry for me or trying to make ADD into some horrible affliction. Clearly I've lived with it for a lot of years and I've been developing coping mechanisms since well before I had any idea what I was doing. I can function. I can hold down a job and generally meet the basic demands of adult life.

It can though, as you all got to see courtesy of my late night overwrought posting, overwhelm me at times. It can be maddening to feel like I am having to work so much harder to do things that seem easy for most people just because my brain won't cooperate.

And, like I said, there's the part where I feel like I let people down. Fortunately, Holly is a very understanding roommate and seems to believe me when I say things like how I really, honestly intend to take the trash out but I forget what day it is and which day the trash goes out. I don't mean to be unhelpful. I'd like to pull my weight. I think if I could keep track of things, I could also do a better job of my job. I think the work I do is important, so I'd like to be as effective as I can for my kids.

I talked to my Twitter friend Jon Deal a while back after he started the meds and he told me how his doctor explained ADD to him. Living inside an ADD brain often feels like a TV that is constantly flipping channels. I can affirm this with the following short dramatic presentation from my own life:

Him: What are you thinking about?

Me: I don't know.

Him: How can you not know what you're thinking?

Me: There's too many.

Him: [Look that conveys his belief that I am full of it.]

Anyway, the doctor went on to explain that the ADD brain operates like a tired brain. The constant channel-flipping is the brain's attempt to wake itself up. This is why stimulants have a calming effect on people with ADD. I've heard ADHD dismissed as Naughty Boy Syndrome. Here's the thing: if you give a naughty boy amphetamines, he will become exponentially naughtier. Give the same speed to a hyperactive kid with ADHD and it calms him down because his brain is getting the stimulation it needs from inside.

I finally got my official diagnosis on Friday. The psychiatrist I saw felt like I was a pretty classic case. Obviously, I am not hyperactive, but there's a second kind called ADHD Inattentive. Boy, am I ever inattentive. And how.

Holly wrote on my Facebook wall that she was glad I was validated, and that's exactly what it was. I was afraid the doctor would say, "No, you don't have it. You're just lazy, forgetful, irresponsible, aimless, and indecisive. Personality flaws that you should have been able to correct by now. Grow up." But he didn't. He said I have a neurological disorder. There is tremendous relief in having an explanation, a course of action, and hope for some change.

I started on generic Adderall (straight up amphetamines - literally, the label reads "Amphetamine Tabs") on Saturday. My doctor told me that it would feel, at first, like I'd had a giant cup of coffee. He also told me that it's an appetite suppressant. ("Are you happy with your current weight?" "No." "Well then, you'll love it!")

He was correct on both counts. For perhaps the first time in my life, I had to remind myself to eat dinner. I don't feel sick or anything, just perpetually full. I'll make sure to eat on a regular schedule, but it looks like it should be no problem to eat a lot less and pretty well cut out snacking. As for the giant cup of coffee effect, I'm afraid I may have talked very fast and without stopping for a while. Holly bore the brunt of my gale-force monologue. Seems I am a menace to Holly, whether medicated or not.

The doctor did not, however, mention the side effect wherein I make an endless stream of I'm On Speed jokes that really might not be amusing to anybody but me. Seriously. I may be intolerable. I'm not sure.

It felt like a bit too much on Saturday. I'm on tablets, as opposed to the extended release capsules which have all of those tiny little beads in them. The benefit is that if I felt like I was getting too much, my doctor said I could cut them in half. Which is what I did today and it seemed good.

I don't think the focus-inducing properties have really been tested yet, it being the weekend. I mean, I feel like I'm surfing the internet with laser-like focus. I did manage just to get up and do some things that would normally require several minutes of self-cajoling and threatening in order to accomplish. Probably though, the seven hours of school-related training that I'll sit through tomorrow and four hours on Tuesday will tell me a lot more about what the pills do for my ability to focus.

I don't know yet if this is the right med or the right dosage or even what precisely it will do for me. But it's a start and I am hopeful.

Pluck them from the air, line them up in a row.

I suppose it's excellent timing. Here, on the eve of my ADD evaluation, the mental chaos is getting the better of me a little. The thoughts are swirling around me, but I can't make them land.

I don't deal well with spur-of-the-moment decisions, and far less so when there is no answer that doesn't mean letting somebody down. I can't be and do everything that everyone wants and needs me to be and do. My guilt over that doesn't do anybody any good, I realize, but that doesn't stop it.

I am easily overwhelmed. If there is more than one demand of me at a time, my instinct is to shut down. Get under the covers, open a book, and hope it all goes away. If there are too many emails in my inbox, I just stop answering them. I understand that it only compounds the problem, but it's the knee-jerk reaction that I constantly have to fight. It's the same with the mail sometimes. It piles up. I am not a good correspondent or an ideal roommate in these regards.

I lose things. I am out of contacts for my right eye because I must have lost a box somehow. I need to figure out where it will be cheapest to get a new prescription and new contacts. I have two kinds of insurance that may apply. I have to wear my glasses all of the time until I get this done. I am, thus far, unequal to the task. I can't start.

I dreamed last night that I was pregnant, but couldn't think of any names, couldn't reach the father to discuss names with him. I read that pregnancy dreams mean some idea, project, or change that you're working your way up to. I guess I can't even name mine.

I have big ideas. I have poor follow-through. I am a daydreamer and a realist. I do a lot of mental soaring and crashing because of these traits. There are no external results, except maybe the way that people point out when I look tired.

Some of you seem to think, based on reading this blog, that I am charming. You would find me awkward and aloof if we met. I require editing.

I wish I could remember things. I wish I could stop anticipating the moment when I will be, for each person in my life, less than I am supposed to be. I wish I could pick an idea, name it, and see it through. I wish I wasn't paralyzed by indecision.

I am inadequate. I'm feeling it tonight.

If You Tame Me

I have a postcard hanging in my room. It's a few lines from The Little Prince, with illustrations of the Prince and the fox.

...si tu m'apprivoises,
nous aurons besoin
l'un de l'autre.

Tu seras pour mois unique au monde.
Je serais pour toi unique au monde...

Roughly translated (and I say "roughly translated" to indicate "translated by me, a person whose French has rapidly deteriorated over twelve years of no French classes"), it means:

...if you tame me, we will need each other. You will be unique in this world to me. I will be unique in this world to you....

The fox is explaining that, as of now, the Little Prince is like a thousand other boys to him and he is like a thousand other foxes to the Prince. But once he is tamed, that will change. To each other, they will be like no one else. Even the wheat will change for the fox. A field of wheat is nothing to the fox because he does not eat bread. But if the Little Prince tames him, then the color of wheat will always remind him of the Little Prince's golden hair.

The Little Prince agrees to tame the fox, but then the time comes for the Little Prince to leave. The fox says he is going to cry. "It's your fault," the Little Prince tells him, because he begged to be tamed. Now he is crying and has gained nothing. The fox disagrees.

"The color of wheat."

I bought the postcard several years back because it struck me. I have resisted being tamed, always. What if you become important to me and then leave? Or, more likely, I move away. Then I might cry. People come into and out of our lives and the closer we allow them to get to us, the more we open ourselves up to be hurt.

I can of course keep people at arm's length, as I have so often chosen instead. I stay one in a thousand people to everyone, as they do to me. But at what cost?

Isn't it worth risking the loss of some tears if it could mean gaining the color of wheat?

Maybe I'm Just Like My Father

Ok, not just like my father. He, for instance, has athletic ability, mechanical intelligence, and is extremely outgoing. You know how people say, "he's never met a stranger"? Well, that's my dad. I, on the other hand, not only meet strangers but am capable of remaining strangers with people for quite a long time after we've met.

But there is also no maybe about whether I'm like my father. I can't tell you how many times my mom has told me that I am my father's daughter. Usually in reference to my unwillingness to worry about something or total willingness to procrastinate something. My dad and I are Winnie the Pooh. "Oh bother" is about as worked up as we can get about most things. (We also enjoy a smackerel.) My mother is Rabbit. She wants things done correctly and immediately. My dad and I will do a good enough job at things when we get around to them.

While I get my love of reading and affinity for special kids from my mom (also my eyes), I think a good deal of my intellectual curiosity comes from my dad. I remember as a kid asking a lot of questions like kids do and my dad, instead of bullshitting an answer or saying he didn't know, would go to one of the two sets of encyclopedias* in our living room and look it up. This is how he became The Answer Man and undisputed champion of Trivial Pursuit. I'm pretty good, but know exactly nil about baseball or most other sports that aren't football, so he'll always have an edge.

*Thank goodness we're no longer confined to a set of books for answers to things. I, for one, am deeply grateful to live in the age of the internet, when nobody is ever forced to wonder about anything for longer than it takes to Google it.

One specific oddity of his that I'm realizing I've inherited is related to leaving someplace. When anybody hints about leaving, my dad is ready to go right then. The time to leave has arrived and there will be no dilly dallying. He becomes increasingly impatient with stragglers. As do I.

Say, for instance, you're at a restaurant. You've eaten and paid and you're sitting around chatting. Someone mentions that they best be going. If you're with multiple people, somebody else will invariably start the conversation again and nobody will make a move for the door. This makes me crazy. No matter how nice a time I'd been having up until that point, once leaving is mentioned, I've mentally checked out of the situation and being dragged back into it causes me to become increasingly crabby.

I know it's ridiculous. If I'm out with people, it's because I enjoy their company. Why should one "well, I suppose..." cause me to suddenly despise being forced to sit with them any longer? I don't know.

In one group of friends, I was branded a Bad Leaver for my tendency to leave parties by just slipping out without saying goodbye to everyone. Not only do I not enjoy a lot of attention, but I was also, the moment I decided to leave, quite simply done. Walking around to say goodbye to everyone meant talking to a bunch of people, which meant not actually leaving for an indeterminate amount of time, which was not ok with me.

Nature or nurture, I don't know. But my dad and I will be in the car, so finish saying your goodbyes and wrap it up. We've been ready to leave for ages and we're not standing around by the door any longer.

Fine, get yourselves home.

Navel Gazing Begins at Home

Have you seen this explosion in "What __________ are you?" quizzes on Facebook? We love to be told about ourselves, don't we? Explain me to me, please, and do not charge me any money for it. Surely I'll have a whole new sense of self-awareness if I know which Friends or Golden Girls character I am. (My answers would be Chandler and Dorothy, respectively, although I was able to figure those out all on my own without the aid of a quiz. I don't know if that proves that I'm extra self-aware or extra self-involved.)

The only one of the Facebook quizzes I've done was Which Shakespeare Character Are You? which told me that I am Viola from Twelfth Night, which was a perfectly nice answer, except completely wrong. (Though I do like the answer in that Viola, when I saw Twelfth Night at Shakespeare in the Park, was played by Julia Stiles. I would not mind being labeled Julia Stiles-esque.) I like to think that anybody who knows both me and Shakespeare's works knows that I am Beatrice of Much Ado About Nothing. Beatrice "mocks all wooers out of suit." She is fiercely loyal to the people she loves. Most importantly, she has a mouth on her.

Then again, maybe I just say that out of vanity because she's my favorite character from Shakespeare. Ditto Elizabeth Bennet of the Jane Austen women. (A totally unoriginal choice, I know.) I do think there's a fair bit of Eliza in me, although it's tempered with some of Sense and Sensibility's Elinor. Have you seen the Emma Thompson version? There's a scene wherein Marianne, Mrs. Dashwood, and Margaret all flee to bedrooms in tears and hysterics while Elinor calmly sits on the stairs, drinking tea. There you have the Elinor in me.

We've already talked about what color I think I'd be, so there's no need to do that quiz either, as far as I'm concerned. Or which President I'd be. I'm convinced I'd be a horribly ineffective president, but my heart would be in the right place. So, yeah, Jimmy Carter. And since I'm aware that I can be an insufferable know-it-all, my Harry Potter character seems obviously to be Hermione. Although she's much more of an over-achiever than I am.

I've seen friends take the Disney Princess quiz, but I'm not sure any apply to me. They all seem a little too doe-eyed. I guess Belle was pretty heavy into books, so there's that. And Jasmine had a little more chutzpah than the rest of the gals. I do believe that if I found a good-looking man with a magic carpet, I'd be his forever. On the other hand, I make it a practice to never wear midriff-baring outfits, to the benefit of all society.

As I sit here in bed, typing drivel on my Mac, it is awfully tempting to call myself Carrie out of the Sex and the City girls. Then again, she's really the only fully-realized character on the show, with the other three representing, I've read, parts of the female psyche (sex kitten, sweetheart, cynical bitch) so I guess the best you can do is pick which is most dominant in you. Cynical bitch it is.

I've been told both that the me of The Office is very clearly Pam and that, of the West Wing women, I'd be Amy Gardner, with overtones of Donna. I take these as compliments, so I'll just agree that they're accurate.

If I were a season, I'd be autumn and if I were fruit, Granny Smith apple. Sour. Very, very sour. Which probably constitutes far more self-indulgence than I should allow myself, even here on my own website. I hope you'll play along so I don't come off quite so poorly here. You can pick from the above categories or any of your own choosing. Goodness knows there are more than enough Facebook quizzes to give you ideas.

Indulge me, won't you? I certainly have.

The Funny, Examined

Jon Deal wrote two great posts recently about what he has come to realize is a compulsive need to be funny. In the first, he referenced a couple of his tweets on the topic:

Therapist says I'm funny because of some deep and lingering psychological damage and a rapacious need to be loved. "Yay! I'm funny!"

and this response to a thread about why people tell jokes:

then there are those of us who tell jokes to get people to like us while also keeping them emotionally distant #therapy_baby!

Yeah, I favorited both of those. You could say that they hit close to home.

I always knew that I used humor as a defense mechanism/coping mechanism/way to get people to like me. I just don't think I realized the extent of it until Alan began to call me out on it. It turns out that the extent of it is, well, extensive.

I'm not sure it's deep and lingering psychological damage in my case though. It seems in large part to just come down to a case of middle child syndrome. Whenever I've read about birth order characteristics, I've seen middle children described as peacemakers. I don't know though if I could be considered a peacemaker so much as just a conflict avoider. I don't like to get into conflict and I also don't like to witness it. So if it looks like there's going to be conflict, I default to cutting the tension with humor. This is usually in the form of a joke at my own expense since I'm an easy target and making fun of myself isn't likely to upset anybody else.

Middle children are also described as attention-seekers. Well. I could dispute that on the basis of my total aversion to having people look at me, except for all of the attention-seeking that I do via the internet. Twitter is sort of the ultimate example and it is a double-edged sword in that regard. I get a lot of positive feedback from Twitter. It's the kind of people-think-I'm-funny ego-stroking that you can't usually get in real life. Except when it isn't. Because it also reinforces every "if I'm not funny, people will leave me" insecurity that I have. Have an unfunny day, lose multiple followers.

But it also comes from a feeling that funny is what I have to offer. I was never the pretty girl, never good at sports, never socially adept. I have smart and funny. Smart doesn't always win you friends, I find, but funny will help you out almost everywhere. Plus if that's all people see, then if they don't like me, it's not personal. They just don't have a very good sense of humor.

I don't want to insinuate though that I think the funny is all an act. Sure, it's armor to some extent, but that doesn't make it not part of me. I have no plans to abandon humor. The trick is to know when to turn it off. Sometimes conflict needs to happen and making a joke doesn't do anybody any favors. Sometimes I need to trust people enough to let them see what's behind the funny. Terrifying though both of those things may be.

Occasionally, I can even end a blog post without a joke. Look at that.

Another rather bleak post, I'm afraid.

Kristy recently got engaged. She wasn't sure it was ever going to happen and she thus titled her post Hope 1, Experience 0.

This is the sort of thing that should give me hope. But I'm afraid hope is facing an uphill battle around here these days. There's just too much experience to go around.

Experience tells me that I can't get a job that's not a crappy temp job.

Experience tells me that any man I become interested in will, sooner or even painfully later, come to the conclusion that I am friend material and nothing more.

Experience is a bitch.

Experience tells me it's pointless to try.

Experience keeps me up nights.

Experience is due to lose a round, one would think.

I keep waiting and it keeps not happening.

I don't need a pep talk.

I don't need booze or ice cream.

I need a job.

I need something good to happen.

I need experience, just once, to be wrong.

Or at the very least, to shut up long enough to let me get some sleep.

Being and Becoming

There's this commercial with Diane Von Furstenberg, where she says something along the lines of "I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I knew the woman I wanted to become."

I always did know what I wanted to be: a teacher and a writer. Well, once I got over wanting to be a cowboy, that is. It's just, I grew up and suddenly there were all of these options and they all seemed so intriguing and to pick just one and really pursue it meant giving up on everything else. So I picked none of them, really.

I fell into my first teaching job when I got to DC and wasn't getting a job on Capitol Hill like I thought I wanted. I got into reading remediation because I had a friend who worked summers teaching reading and I had to have a summer job while we were off from teaching civics. The two-year college in New York was desperate when I applied; the semester had already started and I was hired after the most cursory of interviews, to start class the next morning. After I was laid off in DC, my sister knew someone here who needed someone with my particular reading teaching skills, so I moved here and did that. That led to a job doing similar work in Madison, which I found by googling the name of the reading program I'd used and then cold calling the place I found that said they offered it. We talked reading for a while while I sat in my cubicle at my temp job in Austin, and before I got off the phone, I was hired.

I guess the point of all of that is to say that I see myself having repeatedly fallen into this work rather than having ever made a conscious decision that I wanted to do it. Doing the teacher certification amounted to taking that intentional step. I will be a teacher. That will be my career.

It seems odd that it should be such a big deal since it's what I'd been doing anyway and is by now so tied up with my identity. Here on this blog, in introducing myself I tell you my first name, followed by "I write. I teach." These are clearly a big part of who I consider myself to be.

But there is the sense that by choosing this deliberately, I am giving up those other phantom possibilities. Still, when I watch a really well-written speech, I think I could do that. I should go back to DC and do whatever it is that I need to do to make that my job. It's a similar thought I have when I watch something like the Daily Show. Why am I not there, writing that? Why didn't I ever try? Is it too late?

If I am honest with myself, I know that given the choice what I'd want to do is write full-time and volunteer teach. When I came to do this, I told myself that I wasn't giving up. I would teach full-time and volunteer write. Hey, at least this way I don't have an editor telling me what to write and how to write it. No matter how much some of you may wish there was such a person around here sometimes.

This post has gotten away from me. It started out to be about the question of the woman I want to become and has instead become about what I want to do. Maybe that's my problem. Maybe I've been going about it all wrong and ignoring the second question entirely.

Or maybe I know the woman I want to become. Maybe I am just too afraid that I don't have the talent or courage to become her. Maybe I have set the bar unreasonably high, but what should I do? Expect less of myself? That hardly seems like the answer.

There is more to say about this. At least the notes I have here that I've entirely ignored would seem to indicate so. Maybe they will become another post, later.

For now, I'm afraid I don't have much of a conclusion for you. Or for me. But I'm working on it.

Breakable

I've been listening to a lot of Ingrid Michaelson lately. This is partly just by default. It's about the only thing I've repurchased from iTunes and I haven't gotten too many of my CDs uploaded. So my iTunes is disproportionately Ingrid Michaelson-y. But it's also a choice I often make because much of her music feels like a soundtrack for what's going on with me these days.

And we are so fragile,
And our cracking bones make noise,
And we are just
Breakable, breakable, breakable girls and boys

Even me.

So, there was admitting that. There was admitting that this all had become too much for me. There was admitting that while these problems may not compare to what so many people go through, they are my problems and they are not easy for me right now. There was admitting that I was lacking the ability to cope that I had always had before. There was, after all of this, no denying that this was not normal for me, that I was not only not great or not good, but not ok.

That this was, in a word - a big, scary, unexpected for me word - depression.

And then there was asking for help.

That was not at all easy for me.

I wanted to believe that I would get a job and that would fix it. But if the past two years have taught me anything, it's that there is no guarantee of getting a job.

If this were you and I were the me of the past, I would have told you that of course something would come along. Things would work out. They always do. "I'll never get a job" is an irrational statement. I see that. Except it is difficult to really convince myself of that, based on my experience.

And there is the guilt, the feeling that I haven't tried hard enough, haven't done every last thing I could have done to get a job, any job teaching. And the feeling that everyone else is judging me for that. And judging me for spending any money at all. And judging me for not being what or who I should. That is irrational too. Except I judge me for these things. It is hard to believe that you don't, too.

But all that I know is I'm breathing.
All I can do is keep breathing.

Part of getting better, I'm told, is writing down these thoughts and seeing them for what they are, then writing things that are true. Except I can't make myself do that. I can't make myself do a lot. I do the things that I can to try to get a job. I read blogs and Twitter. I read my email but rarely write any. I watch TV. I sleep. Rather, I spend time in bed. Because while I have all the time in the world to sleep right now, I also have dark circles under my eyes. I lay in bed and think and those thoughts become a spiral, a riptide, pulling me under.

Doing is overwhelming. Too hard. Too much effort. I'd rather not, thanks. Except I'm told that the getting better is in the doing, not the thinking. Thinking has always been the thing for me, far more than doing. But my thoughts have turned against me. They can't be trusted like I was once so confident that they could.

The best way I can describe it to you is to compare it to last winter. It snowed all the time. Except of course it wasn't all the time. Nothing is all the time, is it? But it felt that way. And I felt certain that it would never end. Of course I knew that it would eventually stop snowing. I knew that spring would come. But in the midst of all of that snow, I did not believe it was going to stop. Could not fathom it.

I know that the time will come when I will feel good again. I know this, but I don't believe it.

Open me up and you will see
I'm a gallery of broken hearts
I'm beyond repair, let me be
And give me back my broken parts

I just want to know today, know today, know today
I just want to know something today
I just want to know today, know today, know today
Know that maybe I will be ok

In which I whine. Feel free to skip this one.

I seem (temporarily, I hope) to have lost my funny.

Things aren't great right now. I guess, more accurately, I'm not great right now.

First of all, allow me to admit that it's Crazy Week, meaning that Inner Crazy Girl has the reins and everything is amplified many times over.

Second, we have an Approaching Birthday Situation.

Third, I am looking for a job YET AGAIN. This follows a year of looking for a job in Austin and a year of looking for a job in Madison.

It wasn't supposed to be this hard this time.

You always hear about how they need special ed teachers everywhere, and nowhere more than here in San Antonio, where they are constantly building schools. And I was going to have my alternative certification program to help me get a job. If I moved here and did this, I could get a job that was challenging and rewarding and came with insurance and a real paycheck so I could finally not have to worry about money all of the time.

This was supposed to be a sure thing. It has turned out to be anything but.

The district that partners with my program has no openings. I've applied now with eight districts. I have emailed over 60 schools and every response I've gotten has been about how there are no openings. Even more maddening is that getting a job seems to be much more about luck and timing than qualification. Most districts don't list their specific openings, so unless you contact every individual school, you have no way of knowing where the openings are, should there even be any. One girl from my program happened to walk into a high school when they had an opening and was hired on the spot. As far as I know, she's the only one of the sixteen of us to have gotten a job.

The fourth thing is a bit tricky to bring up. It's just, I'm still trying to adjust being back here in a family that looks very different from the one I left a year ago June. I'm happy for everyone and in case it wasn't perfectly obvious, I adore my niece and nephew. But being the token single and childless one takes some getting used to. The single part is for the best right now and I definitely have no desire to change the childless status, so it's just the way things are.

But all of this, added together, has inspired a bit of a meltdown. I'm about to be 31. I am single, childless, and unemployed. I don't own a home. I don't even have any savings. I don't see what I've done with all of these years and all of that supposed potential. This isn't the way things were supposed to turn out.

Obviously, there's no deadline here. Things don't have to have turned out by 31. It just feels pretty old to be this far from having anything figured out. It feels like there should be so much more to show for it.

Crazy Week will come to an end, and with any luck, there will be an I got a job! post coming soon. But in the meantime, there are no longer comical children in my day to transcribe for your entertainment, so you're stuck with me and my consuming ennui, my pervasive malaise, my relentless compulsive chewing away at the inside of my mouth. I apologize. I don't want to be this for you or for the people stuck dealing with me in real life. But I also don't feel like faking it anymore.

Things aren't good right now. I'm not good right now. And I can't seem to find my funny anywhere.

You see my true colors, and that's why you love me

I read someone not too long ago writing about her inner cynical bitch.  Except she said it like it was a bad thing.

The thing about my inner cynical bitch is the extent to which she tends to take people by surprise when they first meet her.  Get the slightest glimpse of her, even.  Because, as I have already mentioned, when people first meet me, they tend to think I'm sweet.

I'm usually pretty quiet around new people, especially in new work situations.  It's a common misconception, assuming that quiet and sort of non-threatening-looking equals sweet.  I think we all know what happens when one assumes, don't we?

Apparently I also have one of those honest faces.  Which, frankly, can come in rather handy in certain "I would have been here on time, boss, but there was this train..." situations.  But it does make my first use of sarcasm in front of a new person perhaps overly convincing.  Like when I told my co-practice teacher (another wanna-be teacher from my program) that I thought the best way to teach the spirituals in our lesson would be for her to sing them.  She took me seriously, as proven by the look of horror on her face.

Then in class the other day, when told to work with some other people in a group, I answered my advisor very dryly that no, I didn't really care to work with those people.  And she was SHOCKED that I would say such a mean thing.  See, because she had thought I was sweet.  Can you even imagine what it is doing to me, keeping all of that stabbiness contained for three hours every day to the extent that anyone could doubt my capacity for meanness?  If I don't rupture something (or alternately, stab somebody in the eye) by the end of this thing, it will be a small miracle.

So I'm going to have to let the cynical bitch seep out a little, here and there, which is totally going to ruin my nice girl rep.  But who ever wanted a nice girl rep anyway?  Currently I believe I am becoming known as the girl who doesn't want to make a poster about this if we're allowed to just summarize it aloud.  There are three of us now.  We sit together in the back.  Then we smoke cigarettes in the bathroom at lunch and shove weaklings into lockers.  Not really.

The Space Between

There's always a strange sort of limbo feeling that comes in the weeks before a long-distance move.  I'm not gone yet but I start to sort of mentally check out of where I am.  There is the excitement about where I'm going but also sadness, knowing what I'll miss about the place I'm leaving.

The deciding to leave is usually a much longer process than it has been this time.  I knew without a doubt that I wanted to leave Wisconsin after graduating from college and knew it would be DC over a year before I left.  With every move since, there has been a feeling that a place was done for me, at least for a while.  Generally, I've had a strong sense that it was time to go.  I've had time to plan where to go and who, if anyone, would be moving with me.  Time to listen to everyone's opinions and then make my own decision, whether that involved taking anyone else's advice or not.

The whole Madison thing has been a bit of a different situation.  It did make perfect sense for me to leave Austin when I did.  Amy was leaving, my job was ending, and there was no real reason for me to stay.  But unlike previous moves, there was the matter of someone else having input into whether I moved here. 

It makes perfect sense for me to leave Madison now.  Unlike previous moves, the reason to leave is not of my choosing, but the result is that again there is no real reason for me to stay.

Three weeks from now, I'll be on my way to Texas.  In the meantime, I have twelve days of work left, friends to see, all of my worldly possessions to pack, and a mindset shift to undergo.  There are moving plans to finalize, a teaching exam to study for, and a massive book that arrived today and needs to be completely read before I start my program a few days after arriving in Texas. 

So I'll live another three weeks with one foot in life here and the other in what's to come.  The space between loss and anticipation, memories and possibilities, past and future, here and there.

Collection

It's like you collect broken people.

A book I was just reading said something about how everyone collects something.  Not me, I thought.  I'm sort of opposed to collecting, as a matter of fact.  I move a lot.  Accumulating a bunch of stuff doesn't make much sense.  I don't even have that many books, and I love books.  A lot.

Then I remembered being told that I collect broken people.  It seems apt.

When you get to know someone new, you wind up having to preface your stories with some idea of who the characters are.  I find that a lot of my descriptions start with something about how the person I'm talking about has nothing at all in common with me.  We couldn't be more different, I say more often than I had previously realized.

Looking back, it does seem that I've amassed a collection of incredibly varied people over the years.  Some of them are still in my life, some not.  But they have all been fascinating in their own ways and I have learned so much from them.  Here I am, a girl from small-town Wisconsin, having had friends from all over the country and the world.  People who have lived through things I can't begin to fathom, whose opinions and beliefs and personalities differ wildly from my own.

I'm not sure how I've been lucky enough to befriend so many people who, on paper, make no sense as the type of people who would want to hang out with me.  But that ability has always been something I've liked about myself.  I've never been the most popular person in any group, but for whatever reason, I've always managed to hang around the edges and wind up talking with the really interesting people. 

Which is all the more extraordinary, when you consider that I tend to be intimidated by a lot of people at first, so the process of even getting into that first conversation can take quite some time and a lot of effort.  Even more so when the other person is also the quiet type.  I'm also not what you might call an open book, so becoming real, actual friends with me tends to be a lengthy process.  It took months of knowing some of the people I'm thinking of to get there, but each and every time, it was worth it.

I don't mean to suggest here that "unlike me" equals "broken".  Far from it.  But in a lot of cases, broken does equal fascinating.  I love hearing people's stories and it seems that when people get that sense from you, the sense that you really, honestly want to know, they'll tell you.  Broken people usually have good stories.  And they will listen to yours and maybe even say "really?" and "wow" at the right times.  And maybe you'll become friends and then you'll have good stories to tell new friends later about that crazy road-trip or masterful prank or really amazing conversation.

It has occurred to me while writing this that you, Internet, are most likely part of my collection, aren't you?  Well, then.  Welcome.  You're in very good company.

Every Now and Then I Fall Apart

Just not in front of anybody.

I've written here before about how I'm a repressed WASPy Midwesterner and don't generally acknowledge that I have feelings at all around very many people, much less what those feelings might be.  I come from a stoic people.  I've been told that I am "hard to read", "inscrutable", and "dead inside".

Plus, when you're pretty even-tempered most of the time, it's all the more shocking to people when you display strong emotion.  As a person who doesn't like to draw attention to herself, I learned early on that emotional outbursts were not in my best interest.

I'm also really neurotic about whether people are doing things for me because they want to or because they feel obligated.  One way of making sure that no one is feeling emotionally manipulated into anything is just to keep emotion out of it as much as possible.

But perhaps most significantly, there's my early religious education.  Wasn't Away in a Manger one the first Christmas carols that you Christian-type folks learned in Sunday school?  Let's consider these lyrics:

The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus no crying he makes.

The message here?  "Yeah, the cows woke the baby Jesus up, but did he cry about it?  He did not.  And you, preschool Sunday schooler, are not even a baby.  What's all the blubbering about?  How about taking a cue from the little Lord Jesus and turning off the waterworks?  You're almost four now.  Get it together."

It's entirely possible that I wouldn't be emotionally stunted at all if not for the Christmas children's program.  Maybe I wouldn't have had to define effusive for my boss last summer after having told her that I'M NOT IT so she'd stop asking me wasn't I excited about whatever it was.  I might even have been able to cry in front of one of my closest friends last month without the benefit of an Irish car bomb and an indeterminate number of Lynchburg lemonades.

Yep, it's definitely all due to early Christmas carol exposure.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Life Lessons: Not for Sissies

I think with all experiences in life, and especially the bad or hard ones, you have a responsibility to do two things with them: learn something and (if you're me) find some blog material.  So I thought I'd go ahead and share what I've learned in the past week.  Well, you know, the more superficial things that I'm willing to share with the internet anyway.  Here we go.

Crying, if you do it regularly (and I mean if you really go to it - none of this pansy-ass softly weeping business) will:

• Provide a good ab workout.  Really saves time on doing sit-ups.  (See what I did there, making it sound like I normally do sit-ups?)
• Dehydrate you.  Although this could have something to do with reduced food intake too.  Food has a lot of water in it, doesn't it?  Some kinds of food?
• Clear your sinuses, for a little while.
• Dry the hell out of your face.  You've got to rinse, which frankly is not always convenient.  Like when you're at work and think you're going to throw up and instead immediately burst into tears upon entering a stall.  And you're not friends with your co-workers but if they see you washing your face in the bathroom or running around without make up they might ask what's going on and you do not need that.
• In the case of an anticipated or unanticipated work restroom cry, bring you closer to your co-workers, by proximity only.  Because it makes absolutely no difference which stall you choose, even if the whole place is empty, the very next person to come in will without fail choose the stall directly next to you.  WTF, ladies?

When they don't know what to say, everybody seems to default to suggesting that you eat a lot of ice cream.  While this is certainly better than any mention of looking on the bright side, it is not so helpful to me.  I can't speak for anyone else, but a week later I am still not even finding food appealing, much less comforting.  I was unable as my entire dinner one night last week to finish an order of Culver's fries.  And we all know how I normally feel about those.

You shouldn't let the dishes pile up.  Let's say they've been stacking up all week and you think to yourself "I'll do them on Sunday."  Then your Saturday night goes horribly awry.  You don't really feel like eating all week, so you don't go near the sink full of dishes.  When you finally do them a week later, you may find some mold at the bottom of the pile.  And then you may tell the internet about your disgusting lack of basic housekeeping standards.

A week of not sleeping well + Woodchuck Cider + 2 Benadryl = one hell of a night's sleep.

My inner toddler is not so far from the surface as I might like to think.  Because not only is there the whole break up thing, but also the thing about whether to stay here or move somewhere and if I move where to move and when I get there/stay here, what do I want to do?  Which has caused me at times to all but throw myself on the floor and shout I DON'T WANT TO! and then hold my breath until I turned blue.  I don't want things to change.  I'd like everything to go back to how it was a little over a week ago, please, when all I had to think about was what I wanted to do.  That question alone was enough for me.  This is too much.  NO FAIR.  DO NOT WANT.

The random internet boys who stopped the "where do u live?" emails when you announced that you were dating someone do not, upon your announcement that you're no longer in a relationship, start up again immediately.  Thanks, boys.  Keep it up.

I even learned a couple of non-break-up-related things this week:

The Zune does exist.  Really, I saw one!  Now I fully expect to run into a unicorn or leprechaun at any moment.

You can get to my blog by googling this: i put liquid laxative in the milk today, if you want the cure go to the rock show next weekend.

One thing I'll tell you of actual importance that I learned is that having a really good friendship with the person I date is very important to me.  But when you have that and you lose it, suddenly you've lost your boyfriend and one of your best friends all at once and that, in a word, sucks.

I already knew that I had some incredibly supportive people in my life and thank God, because most of all I've learned that this is so much harder than I could ever have imagined.

Confessional

Some people are going to judge me harshly for what I'm about to write.  I understand this because time was I would have done the same.

Some of you are probably going to feel sad for me or concerned.  I appreciate that, I really do, and I'm sorry that I'm going to make you sad or worried.  I'm sorry too if this makes any of you feel like I'm not who you thought I was.  But I can't not write things because of how people might react.  Especially this.

I think it's time to talk about why I don't go to church anymore.

I think this in large part because I feel like I should help the people in my life understand it and I haven't done a very good job with that.  In order to do that, I need to get a better understanding of it myself and writing about things has always helped me work out what I think about them.

I've gone to church all my life.  Always.  I grew up in church.  I went in college.  Every place I moved I did the church shopping bit until I found one to go to every week.  When I was working seven days a week in DC, I went to church.  Tired and sick and even occasionally hung over, I went.

And not just church either.  I did youth group.  Small groups.  Singles group.  InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in college, where I was on the worship team, led Bible studies, and was the administrator.  I was a youth leader in Virginia and Texas.  At times my life has revolved around whatever church or religious group I was involved in.  It wasn't just my religious life, but my social life too.  It was my free time and my community service.

I won't say that I regret it.  For one thing, I try my very best not to let regret seep in.  I am where and who I am today because of the experiences I've had and I wouldn't change it.  Also, I have met some of the very best people I know through church and religious groups.  They have been and are dear friends of mine, people I respect and love.

But none of that explains why I left. 

It wasn't an abrupt decision.  It happened over time.  I just had a hard time listening to it after a while.  It all started to sound more and more ridiculous to me.  Unbelievable, preposterous nonsense.

So there was this faith that I had, that I had almost always had, and now I couldn't listen to anyone talk about it.   They weren't saying anything that I hadn't been hearing for years, but now something was different.  Something in me.  And I felt like if I didn't get away from the voices, I'd lose it all together.  What faith I had, I mean.  I didn't really know how or when it started, but I knew some things were going to have to change.

I realized that I had spent so many years trying to live up to something impossible and beating myself up for not ever being good enough.  I don't think that's a good thing.  I don't think anything positive ever came out of living that way.  There's being aware of your shortcomings so you can improve yourself and then there is berating yourself and allowing yourself to be berated by others about the extent of your own inadequacy.  It's not constructive and it's no way to live.

I don't think it's the intent of faith or church, but it has been what I let it become.  I have listened to good people explaining how they, how all of us are human scum and I have nodded along with everyone else in the room.  I have written very earnestly about my endless failings as a Christian.  Never patient enough, trusting enough, content enough.  On and on it goes in those spiral notebooks full of my handwriting.

I don't want to do it anymore.  I want to live my life.  To try my best to be a good person, love my neighbor, give as I am able to help those in need, make responsible choices in how I live and who I choose to run my community, state, and nation.  To be a good daughter, sister, aunt, friend, and girlfriend.  To work hard at something that matters.   I want to do what I can do, be the most loving and generous person I can, and let myself off the hook for the rest of it.

And I want and need some time to figure out what I believe.  I can't do that by throwing myself back into an environment of being told what is and isn't true.  I want to take a break from all of it to catch my breath and clear my mind.  Then I want to do some thinking and studying for myself.  What happens from there, I'm not sure.  But I know I can't go back to some of where I have been.  I won't let myself.

Because it wasn't easy to get here.  It would be easy to say that getting to this point is something that happened to me, but it wasn't.  It was a choice that I made.  A series of choices, really.  And each time I chose to let go of some certainty that I had held, I was giving up a part of who I had become.  None of it was done lightly.

It's far easier, I find, to give yourself over to absolutes and stick your fingers in your ears and shout LA LA LA than to acknowledge the questions and shades of gray.  But I started to see the gray and there's no unseeing it now.  It seems to me that if God had wanted faith to be in terms of black and white, we wouldn't have scripture in poetry and parables.  We can't remove the mystery from it by declaring that we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what each bit and piece means.  Why would we want to?

I'm not saying that I won't ever go back to church.  Just that right now and for the immediate future, this is what I need.  Some quiet.  Some time away from all of the voices to just spend alone with the questions and the possibilities.

I don't think I can explain it any better than that.  That's about as far as I understand it myself.  It's a strange place to be, after a whole lifetime of being so certain that I had all of the answers.  But as disorienting as it can be, it also feels right.  For now, anyway.  Where it leads, we'll have to wait and see.

Miss Congeniality

I was in the colorguard for seven years in high school and college.  Colorguard is one of the cattiest environments you can imagine.  Don't get me wrong, I met some great people that way and made some good friends.  But the thing about colorguards is, in my experience, there is always one girl who is singled out each year to be universally despised.  And if you don't know who it is, then it's you.

I always knew who it was.  Sometimes she had it coming and sometimes I didn't understand how she got picked, but always I was just glad it wasn't me.  Not that I was popular or anything, but the people who I cared about hanging around with always liked me and no one really disliked me as far as I knew. 

That was really important to me, not being disliked.  It still is.  I honestly don't know why I care so much.

A woman at my temp job today was giving off some serious dislike vibes as she explained to me, first thing in the morning, what I had done wrong and why it was so very bad.  And it really bothered me.  Not the part about me having screwed up, because given my roughly one hour of training in this area, obviously I was going to make some mistakes.  It was the feeling that she didn't like me. 

This despite having been told by my predecessor to ask one of this woman's colleagues for any help I needed because "she's the nice one".  Which pretty clearly communicated her opinion on the other two.  So a not nice person doesn't like me.  I don't particularly care for people who snippily correct me early in the morning.  We should be even.

It's just, I've never been particularly polarizing. 

Of course I am not saying here that there aren't people with strong feelings about me.  But in general, people don't love me or hate me.  They like me ok or they don't have much of an opinion on me.  And given the choice between that and being popular with most people yet reviled by a few, I think I'd still stick with just being tolerated.  Why is that?

And is this why I try so hard to blend in a lot of the time?  Because I'd rather have people just not think about me than take the chance that they would think something negative?

If you were expecting me to draw some conclusions here, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed.  It's just something I've been wondering about.  I wish other people's opinions didn't matter so much to me, but they do.  I don't know if there's any getting past that or if it's an innate personality flaw and I'm doomed to be like this forever.

Some of you don't seem to care if people like you.  How do you do that?  No really, how?  Because if I could even get to the point where it didn't matter if mean people didn't like me, that would at least be something.  Help a blogger out.  Unless you don't want to, and then that's ok too.  (Please like me.)

About the twin thing

I have a twin sister.  I know I've mentioned that here before, but I don't generally make a big deal of it.  This is because a lot of people will make a VERY BIG DEAL about it if you tell them, and I'm not into that.

They think it's so neat.  They wish they had a twin.  They hope they have twins.  Do I like being a twin?  Are we identical?  Are we superclose?  Are we exactly alike in every way?  Do we play tricks on people?  Did we have a secret language?  Do we read each other's thoughts/feel each other's pain?  So my sister could come in to work for me some day and no one would even know?

Allow me to address these in order:

The Beaver called - he wants his word back. 
How would you know? 
I believe you'd have to be insane to want to have two infants at once. 
I've never not been a twin, so I have no basis for comparison. 
We look alike, but we haven't had any DNA testing done, so I can't say for sure.   (Allow me to clear up here that boy-girl twins are never identical.  One would think this would be really obvious, but I had a co-worker who got asked about her and her twin brother.  I never met Leslie's brother, but I feel confident assuming that there are some major anatomical differences between them.)
Not freaky twin close, but we like each other ok. 
Ha! 
Just once in second grade. 
No. 
You are an idiot.
Seeing as how I don't live in a sitcom, no.

I'd like to quote an eight year-old here who gave an excellent response to a teacher who was going into full on THAT'S SO NEAT mode about him being a twin.  "I'm not a twin, I'm a brother."  Preach it, eight year-old.

Why bring this up now?  Well, I learned courtesy of Holly and her Secret Bachelor Tuesday Lite that this season's Bachelor has a twin brother, who (completely predictably) impersonated him at a party with the bachelorettes to see if any of them were bright enough to notice.  Which was enough to elicit my ire on the subject.  Because another inane twin question I have repeatedly gotten concerned my ability to send my sister out with a guy I was dating.  I have never understood why anyone would think that a person would ever do that.  If I like a guy, I want to go out with him myself.  If I don't like him, why would I foist him on my sister?  It makes no sense.  Except now The Bachelor has given people a reason to believe that someone would do such a thing.  So allow me to clarify for the Internet that no person who would not pimp himself out on ABC would ever do such a thing.

Have we gotten that cleared up?  Let us continue on to more pet peeves, as long as I've got you here.

#1. Announcing to me that you have no intention of attempting to learn my name and/or tell me apart from my sister.  This takes many forms.  Guessing a name and then telling me "hey, I had a 50/50 chance!"  Using some combination of our names.  Saying "hey, twin!"  Etcetera, etcetera.  You have no idea how insulting that is.  I have yet to meet the twins who can't be told apart given a little bit of mental effort.  If you're not willing to expend that small amount of effort, please keep your mouth shut.

#2. Assuming that I have no identity of my own, separate from my sister and being a twin.  I'll grant you, some twins are like that.  Some twins dress alike all their lives and live next door to each other and marry other freaky twins.  For the record, we are not like that.  I am a person.  She is a totally separate person.  We're crazy like that.  You might think that would be obvious, but you haven't been asked, in reference to your sister, where your other half is.  You didn't have to explain to people in high school that no, you didn't play soccer even though your sister did, because you were uncoordinated and not capable of running and kicking a ball at the same time.  Plus you don't like soccer.  Mindblowing, I know.

#3. Thinking that I find twin jokes funny.  I don't.  They piss me off.  I'm serious.

I think it has something to do with my lifelong aversion to cuteness.  People think that being a twin is just so damn cute.  God forbid my sister and I do anything alike such as, I don't know, breathe oxygen, someone will say "Awwww...that's so cute!  They both like air!"  And then I will punch that person in the throat.

I could go on and on, but I'll stop here.  Except to say that I know, despite everything that I have written here, that some of you are formulating cutesy twin jokes for the comments section (I'm looking at you, Gary.)  Please know that if you're not within throat-punching distance, deleting you is a close second.

This is the post I was telling you about last week, which I cannot quite believe I have just posted.

What you are seeing here is my first bikini.  Ever.

It has been worn one time, in my backyard.  It is not likely to make its public debut anytime soon.  I did also buy the matching tankini top and I feel pretty good about how I look in that.  Which may be the first time since I was too young to think about such things that I've been able to say that I felt good about how I looked in any sort of swimwear.  So perhaps the bikini's time has not yet come, but progress has happened.

I weigh, right now, about what I weighed when I was fifteen.  I only know this because, for some reason, I remember how much I weighed when applying for my first driver's license and how much I lied about my weight to make it less since they used to actually print this information on your license.  The funny thing is that my current goal is the weight that was on that first license.  It's my goal because I think I have about that much fat left to lose, not because it is what my fifteen year-old self wanted to weigh.  But there would be some satisfaction in that as well, since it feels like, in a lot of ways, I still carry that fifteen year-old self around with me.

It's about ten pounds that I'd like to still lose to feel bikini-ready.  If these ten pounds were just equally distributed, that would not be a big prohibitive thing.  But they are all clinging tightly together in one spot right around my middle.  These are the Spartan Warriors of fat cells.  They are Indigo Montoya.  They will not be moved.

On the other hand, I weigh, right now, about twenty pounds less than I have weighed for most of my adult life.  Probably about thirty pounds less than I have weighed at a couple of points.  I don't know exactly since I used to think that it would be really bad for me to own a scale.  This was a mistake on my part.  Yes, it is bad to be all about numbers and I would be perfectly happy to weigh more if more of my weight were in muscle.  But it has been deeply satisfying in the past year to see that number go down.  And I have to think that I would never have hit that thirty over point if I had realized at the time that I was gaining that much.  It was always later, seeing pictures of myself that I realized it had happened.  Since most of my clothes come from Old Navy, it always seemed perfectly valid to think that they were probably just shrinking.

I don't think my mental picture of how I look has caught up with reality yet.  In fact, it was not that long ago that I saw something on MSN about how to dress for a plus size figure and I almost clicked on it.  I have never worn a plus size, but my thinking was that I'd get some tips on how to hide things.  What a former co-worker called "pockets of nastiness".  I had to remind myself that I don't have to think that way anymore.  But I really believe that no matter how much weight I lose or how long I keep it off, there will always be a part of me that thinks of myself as a fat girl.  You live with it long enough, it becomes a part of your identity.  Which is really sad, I think.

I wonder whether, on some level, staying a little bit overweight wasn't subconsciously part of what has been, at times, my all-consuming need to just blend.  After all, the average American woman is either a size 12 or 14, depending on your source.  I'm not average anymore.  When a table of guys at Chipotle stops eating to watch me walk by, I know I should be flattered but I still don't really know what to do with that.  Maybe people looked at me before and I didn't notice.  Maybe I didn't want to notice because I assumed that they were thinking bad things.  I honestly don't know.

I watched The Holiday this weekend, and I know you're not supposed to take profound things away from romantic comedies, but there was one part that really struck me.  Kate Winslet is having dinner with an elderly former screenwriter who tells her, "in the movies, we have leading ladies and we have the best friend.  You, I can tell, are a leading lady, but for some reason you are behaving like the best friend."  And Kate Winslet replies, "You are so right!  You're supposed to be the leading lady in your own life, for God's sake!"

I think I'd like to try that.  I'd like to stop letting my insecurities rule me and stop playing the best friend and be ok with people looking directly at me.  I have no idea how I will do this.  But I think I owe it to myself - fifteen year-old self included - to try.