Fatass

Tonight, Brian asked me if I wanted to take a walk.  In the spirit of trying to make at least one healthy choice every day, I said yes.  (All I've had to eat today is bagels, and all I've done is watch romcoms on Netflix, so this literally was my one healthy choice for the day.)  As we walked, we determined that we'd try and find some kind of dinner before going home.

As we walked, something happened to me that, in all my years of being fat, has never, ever happened before: a van drove by, and some guys inside yelled "FATASS" at me.  It stung.  But, I tried to ignore it and not let it bother me and not completely ruin the nice time that Brian and I were having.  But of course, stupid is as stupid does, and the van swung back around for another go.  This time, it was a rousing "FAT WHORE".

At that point, I gave up and took a hard left towards home. I ended up crying basically the whole way home, while Brian walked along attempting the impossible task of making me feel better. (I very much appreciate his efforts.  He's a good husband.)  I took a shower after I got home, in an attempt to, I dunno, wash off the meanness?  So now I sit and try to process the feelings.

I hate that their hate got to me.  I hate that I no longer wanted to eat dinner after the incident, because I would have felt fat and ugly and disgusting doing so.  I hate that the rest of the way home, I jumped every time a car went past.  I hate that I don't want to take any more walks in my neighborhood because of one stupid idiot.  I want to find them and show them what my fat ass is capable of by beating the crap out of them.  (I have three brothers and grew up in a neighborhood with no girls. I could at least do a little damage.)

But most of all, I hate that so much of my self-esteem can be wiped out by a couple of words yelled out of a car.

In the end, I recognize that it wasn't me that caused those guys to yell out their window.  They would have yelled no matter what I looked like.  If I had been a person of color, it would have been a racial slur.  If I had been thin and pretty, it would have been a request to have sex with them, and then it would have been "slut" when I said no.  If I had been disabled, it would have been something else.  If I had been with a woman, it would have been "gay".  They wanted to yell, and I was just a target.

But it still hurts.

Becoming that which I hate

There has never been an image that more accurately describes me than this one. I am completely unable to handle someone saying or doing something stupid on the internet.  This includes advocating the Republican agenda, being racist, being sexist, being classist, or being any other kind of ist really.   

My husband is so good at rolling his eyes and not rocking the boat, and I think it frustrates him that I can't.  I have to respond to the post where someone said that Obamacare caused Bengazi to make Treyvon Martin have an abortion or whatever it is, and I'll get into real fights with people over things.  

I need to get better at it.  But my problem is that when people post things like this, other people read them, and believe them, and it propagates something that's either untrue or harmful to a group of people.  I try really really hard to only post comments when something is actually false, because I don't like it when Literally Unbelievable gets played out in real life.  Those idiotic false statements translate into votes, votes that take away rights.  I can't let that go.  

But what about the other things, the things that are someone's opinion?  If they post an opinion that abhorrent, how do I learn to scroll past it and not let them know that they are a terrible person have terrible beliefs? (Seriously, why would you post any status that includes the phrase "white panther party"?)  I can just unfriend them, but then I end up with a group of Facebook friends that just agree with me, and I like having my beliefs challenged every once in awhile.

So seriously, how do I do it?  I'm tired of being angry and sad all the time. 

On being fat but also not fat at the same time

I'm...I dunno, fat I guess? I technically weigh a lot of pounds and I wear a size that most stores don't carry, so that makes me categorically fat.  I think. 

The problem with that label is that I can't see it.  Almost ever.  I literally look in the mirror and do not see a fat person.  (The only time I can see it is when I'm sitting facing a mirror while wearing a tight shirt, or am naked looking at my profile.)  This isn't a matter of having great self-esteem or total body acceptance or anything like that - I'm usually painfully aware of the amount of space I occupy and am never comfortable with that.  It's just that my brain apparently doesn't equate "takes up a lot of space" with "fat". 

I'm really not explaining this well.  When I look in the mirror, or when I picture myself in my head, I see a normal sized person, and I'm pretty sure it's a person that wears like, a size 12.  It drives me nuts, because I want to have a proper mental picture of myself, and I can't find it. I stare at people on the street trying to find a person that's the same size as me, and I never can.

It seems like a good problem to have, to not focus on your flaws, but it's not.  It makes it easier to ignore huge (punny!) problems, and that's not good.  I'm aware that I need to weigh less pounds, for health reasons, but since I don't usually see problems when I look in the mirror, it's easier to ignore that fact and eat some more cookies.

The problem with my mental picture is - how do I fix this?  I mean, everything people say involves learning to accept yourself no matter what size you are.  My problem is that I'm too accepting of me, and I think I look completely fine even when I don't.  Maybe it's a matter of getting rid of some of my self-esteem...except I'm already painfully insecure about my size.  I just can't see that size in a mirror.

This entry is extremely babbly and doesn't make any sense and doesn't have a point.  I'm trying to remember what I was thinking about when I started it...oh, it had to do with the fact that the more I wear dresses, the more comfortable I am with shorter ones, and then I went off into body acceptance and then I started thinking about how I'm too accepting and then this happened.

But really what I was going for is: Look at my thighs, guys.  I don't care.

Cutting some slack

I suppose this should be Creativity, Part Two.

I haven't given up yet on making things, apparently.  I am currently in the process of attaching my quilt blocks together.  It looks pretty ridiculous.  My blocks are all different sizes, with crazy patterned fabric that maybe sort of coordinates if you squint a bit, and the seams are all wonky and all over the place, and clearly I didn't cut right to begin with because everything is so lopsided.

But I'm okay with all that.  I'm definitely not worried about perfection with this.  I tried to learn how to quilt once before just out of high school, and I gave up because no matter how hard I tried, I always cut something crooked, or made a wobbly seam, or otherwise horked it up.  Everyone always says how quilting is a math-based precision hobby, and they're right, it totally is.  So I gave up.

With this quilt that I'm apparently making though,  I'm not worried about any of that.  I'm making it, flaws and all, and it'll probably never lie flat because of all the weird angles.  When I see something hanging crooked, I leave it.  When I know I cut a weird angle, I leave it.  It's not that I'm not trying to cut and sew straight, it's that I'm not putting a ton of pressure on myself to get it perfect.

Brian doesn't get that - his philosophy is to do your absolute best and take pride in your work, which seems to say that you can't take pride in something that didn't take everything out of you.  The thing is, the pride I'll get from this quilt will come from the fact that I actually pushed through it and finished.  That's enough for me.  I don't even know if I like quilting - why beat myself up over it the first time through?

With knitting though, I can't seem to let perfection go.  I've completely ripped apart everything I've attempted to knit so far.  I haven't even gotten past a fifth row because I'll find some flaw (like the fact that I've randomly picked up 6 extra stitches) and start completely over. (Part of this is due to the fact that I haven't yet learned how to fix mistakes any other way.)  I just can't let myself make a lopsided, full of holes, weirdly-tensioned, clearly-first-time scarf or whatever.  It's ridiculous, because like quilting, I don't even know if I like knitting.  I'm certainly starting to hate it.

So what's the deal here?  Why am I totally cool with a terrible quilt but not a terrible scarf?  This is my second time picking up knitting, same as quilting, so it's not a need for first-time-perfection.

Fuck it, maybe I'll just switch to crochet.

Creativity

Recently apparently I decided to try and become more creative or something.  I was looking through my mother-in-law's student artwork, and I was so impressed by her ability to create something beautiful that lasts a long time.  (Seriously, look at these.)  Then my friend Alex wrote a play that's being performed, and I look at the video game controllers and consoles(!) that Brian has built, and I watch my father and my sister cook and bake these amazing things, and I look at Brian's afghan that his grandmother made for him, and I realize that I have nothing like that of my own.  I feel like I'm not creative at all.

So I decided to try and change that.  I told Brian I wanted a sewing machine for my birthday, a request which he obliged, and I have since made one small May Day pocket that I loved, two messenger bags that I like, a small purse which I absolutely do not like, and 23 quilt blocks that are poorly cut, badly sewn, and just generally look kind of weird.  But I still made them!   I also got a knitting set to learn how to knit (again), and I am very much going to attempt to not give it up again (again.)

So that's what I'm doing.  And maybe learning to do this will spark some kind of passion for creation in me, and I'll get better at it and then start to like it more and then I can say that I made lovely things too, and I'll feel like I contributed somehow to the world, even if it was just with a lopsided quilt.

Babies

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the act of child-rearing.  I'm starting to come to accept that if I have a child, it will be intentionally.  I'm just not going to be able to fall into it by accident.  I'm going to have to make the decision to take medicine and then be in close proximity to my husband, or I'm going to have to fill out paperwork to procure an existing child from somewhere in the world.

I've never been the girl who wants children, which I think makes this realization hard to accept.  I always thought, "Well, if it happens I'll do it but if it doesn't, I guess I just won't."  There have been years where I've been all "I should get my tubes tied.  There is no way."  There are still days when I feel that way.  Those days really only started to come less frequently when my nephew was born and my ovaries were all "LOOK AT THE BAAAAABYYYYYYY!!!"

So basically, I'm still on the fence, and I know that I'm going to actually have to hop off of it - I can't be pushed off by a sudden unexpected invasion of my uterus.  (Thanks a lot for not working, ovaries.)  This is terrifying. 

So I've been trying to mentally prepare myself for that leap, should I decide to make it.  And in that, I've been thinking about the various parts of having a child.  I spent a week or two thinking about bodily fluids, and how I totally puke when other people (or my cats) do, and how the smell of poo makes me gag horribly, and remembered that one time when the cat sharted on my chest while he was sleeping.  I spent another week pondering the concept of being pregnant, and how that would completely break my brain because I'm such a huge hypochondriac.

So this week, I'm on teaching, and its scarier even than sharting.  I've been trying in the past year or so to really open up my mind and expand my horizons and just generally be a better person to those around me and those I don't know. I feel like it's working?  I feel a lot more compassion and love than I used to.  But it's really bringing out the terror of trying to pass this openness on to someone else. 

How do you teach a child that they own their own person and no one can touch it without their permission, but then justify the kinds of touching that parents must do whether the child likes it or not (like bathing)?  How do you teach a girl to own her sexuality and express that in a way that she is comfortable with, but limit it in an age-appropriate way that doesn't teach her to be ashamed of herself and that boys can do what they want but she can't? How do you neutralize gendered toys in a way that doesn't accidentally push your kid too far the other direction?  How do you teach a child to be open and accepting of all religions and cultures without accidentally appropriating a culture that you're not a part of? And further, how do you teach a young person to be open and accepting of all people, regardless of what they look like, how they believe, and what they do, while still teaching them to stand up against people who believe in limiting the rights of others? Especially when some of those people are in their own extended family?

These are the ridiculous things that go through my head when I think about this.  I almost envy the people who can get unexpectedly pregnant.  It's hard to choose to have a child when there's so much that could go wrong, that will go wrong.  So much responsibility.  How do I decide to do that? 

You are not the center of the universe.

Normally I'm not telling anyone anything of any real importance, but when I actually am saying something that you'll need to know, pay attention for cripe's sake.

I'm complaining about my job here.  Now, don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Human Resources, and I really like where I work. (Although, would it kill someone to give me a real desk and not a small temporary one? It's been a year and a half.)  But I'm starting to feel the frustration and annoyance that comes with people not paying attention when I'm giving them information that's relevant to them.

There are two new hires that I did orientation for a while back.   Now, our orientations are no big thing.  Literally it's me sitting at a desk going over some packets with them, having them fill out some paperwork, set up their email address, and send them on their way.  But for my employees at the farther away stores, I'm sometimes driving almost an hour to do this little spiel for them on their first day, not to mention the fifteen minutes I spend standing in front of the copier making ONE of these stupid packets for them. (Fifteen minutes isn't a long time, but when you're making 20 packets at a time...)

So both of these guys, they were in sales.  Automotive sales, if that gives you any indication of how lovely they are to be around.  (Side note: I genuinely love a lot of my sales guys, but seriously, you have to have a certain personality to be in car sales, and there are extremes to every personality.  These guys are that extreme.)  I did these two orientations months apart, but I'm conflating them for ease of story.  The one spends most of the orientation leaning back in his chair, staring at the ceiling.  His chair isn't even facing the desk, it's parallel to it.  I wanted to freaking reach over and knock him over.  I told him to type something as part of an account I was setting up for him, and he reached over and punched some keys without looking at the screen.  "Nope, try again, YOU DIDN'T EVEN TYPE ANYTHING."

The other guy spent the entire time either staring at me like I was a moron or looking behind him at the sales floor like a dragon was going to fly out of a Cruze and start destroying things.  I seriously sometimes still wonder if he was on drugs or something.  As soon as I said I was done, he bolted out of the chair and disappeared.  I mean seriously, right?

Anyway, the point is that these two represent one of the Things I Hate Most About HR.  I was telling these guys when their checks would start being direct deposited, when they'd be eligible for insurance, HOW MUCH MONEY THEY'D BE MAKING, etc.  Shit that directly affects them.  (I mean, how can you not pay attention to how much your paycheck is and whether or not it's going to be live?)  They weren't even listening.  I know this because one shredded his first check because he's fucking stupid and didn't listen when I said he would get a live check for two pay cycles, causing me to have to cut him another one.  The other one missed two mandatory insurance meetings and took a month to get his paperwork back to me.

So they're dumb, and they cause me a lot of extra work.  Whatever, I'll get over it.  What I seem to be having trouble getting over (and what was originally the point of this) is that THEY DON'T CARE.  It drives me absolutely bonkers when people aren't cognizant of the problems they create for those around them.

- You start a new job, then leave a week later for a different one?  You just wasted over an hour of my time.  You decide to come back a week later because that dealership sucks?  FUCK YOU Oh wait here I'll set you back up ANOTHER HOUR GONE.

- You're trying to find a particular coupon while at the grocery store, and you're not really paying attention and you stop in the middle of an aisle?  I'M RIGHT BEHIND YOU TRYING TO GET SOME DAMN PEANUT BUTTER THESE AISLES ARE NARROW THANKS.

- You realize you need to turn left and not right?  Oh sure just stop your car while you wait for someone to let you cut across four lanes of traffic. No one behind you needs to go anywhere anyway.

It's just...I don't even know any more.  This became some long weird rant and I've lost the point, except that people piss me off and it pisses me off that they don't know I'm pissed off and I can't tell them I'm pissed off because damn it I try to be polite.