You might not guess it from my sarcastic rants about pubes and my dark, broody blog colors, but deep down I'm a serious romantic. I want to be in love as much as the next girl, you see. I just want my love without any damn cliches. Whisper sweet nothings...just make 'em yours--not something you heard on TV. And sure, bring on the candy and flowers. But, y'know, make 'em Vosages's curry-powder-coconut milk-chocolate bars and black irises instead of a Whitman's sampler and a dozen red roses. (Okay, I might accept the Whitman's sampler--I have a soft spot from childhood for cheesy drugstore chocolates. But I draw the line at red roses. Cliched AND too stinky. Bleah.)
ANYWAY....
I feel much the same way about romantic films. I'm a sucker for them...but again, I want 'em without the standard cliches. I don't want clean and pretty and perfect through-and-through, where everything's just as you would expect, and you can almost say the lines before you've even heard them. I want to see love on screen like it is in real life--all weird and lovely and awkward and fierce and hot and shy and yearny and consumate-y and happy and angsty and smart and dumb and funny and tragic and lions and tigers and bears oh MY.
In short, I love love stories about misfits in love. Maladjusted souls that find each other and hang on for the ride for as long and as best as they can. What can I say? I relate.
And really, can't we all?
Thing is, they don't make a lot of good films like this. I've recently run dry of ideas--and I really need more. I need more love inspiration brought into my misfit life. So here, I'm going to give you my top five misfit love films. And then I'll ask you to help me supplement my library with your suggestions. And that way, we all get to rent and watch something cool over the holiday weekend.
For me, it was extremely painful. I feel a deep hurt--the kind of shaky anger and pain and fear and confusion that I can only equate with the feeling of betrayal. That's the closest I can come. How heartless, how without humanity. Look at the PLEASURE with which they go at it. The abject hatred for people they don't even KNOW. It...frightens me. It always has. I have grown to realize I have lived with a fear of this sad reality all my life, regardless of what my own body looked like.
I have wanted to write about body issues for a long time now, but I find each time I think of doing it, I don't know how to start, or what exactly I want to say. There is so much to say, and so much I want to avoid saying. I guess since there is no eloquent way to do this, the best way at this point is just to lay out some facts and then maybe they'll lead to something eventually.
Fact 1:
The thing that is on my mind, that I wanted to talk about today, is I'm now hovering on the line between fat and thin. I have not been on that line for a long time. More specifically, this balance is currently in the form of a number for me. Last week, I was on the brink of breaking the 200 pound mark. As in, one more pound, and the scale would have a "1" as the first figure of three, instead of a "2." It has been...at least two years (or more?) since I could say that.
Fact 2:
I was at one point while I was writing this blog, 248 lbs.
Fact 3:
I have been bothered since the start that I could not admit that when it was true. And that I knew then that if I ever did tell you that number, I would never do so until I was at a weight where I felt safe from the ridicule and scorn I assumed would come with such an admission (see photo link above). I don't know that I'm actually at that safe point now, yet, but I know I feel safer than I would have back then. I feel ashamed that I was ashamed to admit this. I think it was cowardly.
Fact 4:
It is harder for me to tell you about this than it was to talk about my sexual assault. I am more ashamed of being fat and of my body issues than I am of having been a rape victim. I think there is far more disgust and far less pity out there in the world for a fat woman than there is for a rape victim. (At the same time, I think my weight issues may be inextricably bound to my assault issues, but I am as of yet unsure of the exact connection.)
Fact 5:
I have never lied about my body type by saying I was thin, but I was never open about it either. I am certain this deliberate omission allowed people to envision an entirely different kind of woman when they read my writing. I suspect no one read my blog and imagined I was fat. I suspect they imagined an entirely different kind of woman, with an entirely different kind of body than one that was carrying around 248 pounds of weight around on it. I assumed, and continue to assume, that people do not want their image of a sexy, beautiful, mysterious blogger ruined and replaced with the harsh reality of an image of "a fat pig."
Fact 6:
This means, of course, I assume no one would assume if I were fat, that I could also be sexy, beautiful, and mysterious. That I could be anything beyond merely gross.
Fact 7:
I believe with certainty that I will lose readership because of this post. Particularly male readership.
Fact 8:
I can not talk to people about my weight without making a concerted effort to make them understand that "I was not always this way." That I was, at one time, and for a very long time, very thin. I suspect I do this because I think if they know this, it will somehow make them think not quite so little of me as they would if they assumed I have always embodied The Fat Person.
Fact 9:
There is a huge amount of shame I have about having become fat. About being fat. I don't want this to be true, that I feel shame about it, but it is true. I think people look at fat people and make assumptions about them, based solely on their bodies. Loser, sad, lazy, pathetic, slovenly, ugly, subhuman, animalistic (think of the nicknames: fat pig, fat cow, fat fucking bitch, ugly sow, fat ass--all animals).
Fact 10:
It fills me with anger that this is true. That people--and particularly men, but women, too--treat you differently when you are thin than when you are fat. And I know this to be true first-hand. It fills me with anger when I look at personal ads and see men--and I mean even FAT men---saying they only will consider someone "petite or 'fit.'" It also annoys the hell out of me that "fit" is the new euphemism for thin. If you're fat, you don't "fit." It fills me with anger when I hear someone say, "She has such a pretty face, what a shame..." about a woman who is overweight. It fills me with anger when EVERY SINGLE DAY I have to hear fat jokes in the media, and just out in the world--or just commentary on how one shouldn't be fat, how it's preferable to be thin. If you are not fat, you probably don't realize the constant barrage of it. Take a day to notice it carefully. Count it up. It's overwhelming. Some of these comments--if they were said about a race or a religion, people would be up in arms. Fat people are the one group no one even feels a begrudging need (even if only by fear or societal pressure) to show any respect to.
Fact 11:
Even as all this makes me angry, and even as there are many fat people who I love and respect, I often find myself deep down adopting these attitudes, in a once-removed kind of way. As in, I feel sorry for them that I know the world won't look at them as well as they should, because I assume that's the case. That I know many people might not find them attractive. And, much as I'm ashamed to say it, in the past I have sometimes wondered if when I am with a fat person in a social situation, if people think that says something about ME. As if the attitude about fat "rubs off" on the other people around the fat person. As a result, of course, I assume no one would want to be around me while I'm fat, because they wouldn't want my "fat vibes" ruining their mojo.
Fact 12:
I can't tell you how hard it is to have just written that. I can't imagine how pathetic and fucked up I must be coming off.
Fact 13:
Bringing us back to fact 1: I am now hovering. I have lost almost 50 lbs. I am just about to cross the line from plus-size clothing into regular clothing. Just about to cross the line from two-hundred-and-something to one-hundred-and something. And for some reason, I am fucking terrified. I had one pound to go last Thursday, and it was done. This week, I binge ate, so now I am five pounds heaver than I was last week. I just lied to you. I am seven pounds heavier. I actually thought lying by that two pounds would seem different somehow. This is how fucked up I am over this issue. Anyway, I have successfully moved myself away from the brink for one more week, it seems. Sabotaged myself. Whatever.
Fact 14:
Again, I am fucking terrified. I am terrified to be fat, and I am terrified to be thin again. When you are fat, no one sees you. When you are thin, everyone looks at you. But not at you. That's not what they're looking at.
Fact 15:
I feel like no one has ever really seen me in my entire life.
Fact 16:
People congratulate you on getting thin. This enrages me. People feel they have free reign to comment on your body as you lose weight, and especially when you're thin. Many days, I feel I never want to hear I'm beautiful again, unless it has nothing to do with my body. And yet, I crave knowing someone finds me physically beautiful. Because I suspect if they don't see me as beautiful outside, they won't even consider what's inside. I don't want to CARE if people think I'm beautiful. I don't want to CARE. I don't want to CARE. But I do.
Fact 17:
I often see myself as two separate women: fat girl and thin girl. Like they are different people. I guess because I get treated differently, I assume people see me differently, and it's somehow created this split in my own mind. Fat girl is all the things I'm not supposed to be, and all the negative things I am, and all the positive things that go unnoticed when I'm stereotypically beautiful. She's sad, and isolated, but authentic. Thin girl is perfect girl, the girl everyone wants, who can play the surface game really well. She's what the world wants. I'm afraid to lose fat girl. She's part of me. I don't want people to assume she's not there. I don't want people to know she's there somewhere and so not to want me, because she might show up again. Fat girl, while being painful to be her, doesn't have anything to prove anymore. She doesn't have to care what people think, because she already knows what they think--not much. Thin girl--she's the good girl, whose looks please everyone else. I don't want to be pretty to please everyone else. I don't want to be thin to please everyone else. And even if I get thin for me, people will do that--they will express their pleasure at the fact I am thin. I AM NOT GETTING THIN TO "FIT" IN. Or am I?
Fact 18:
I AM NOT GETTING THIN TO "FIT" IN. Or am I?
That is the scariest part. If I'm fat, I know I'm not doing it to fit in. If I'm thin...well...
I am getting thinner because I am getting healthier, finally treating my body nicely after a lot of abuse, and my body is responding. I am also getting thinner because when I look at photographs of me, I don't even know who that woman is. I don't recognize her. I want to know myself. That is my goal. But I know in so doing, it will also gain me certain other things. Acceptance, attraction, desire...love.
I wish someone had ended up loving me while I was fat. It would have proved to me the world isn't as full of fucking assholes as I now think it is. But no one did.
I look at those hundreds and hundreds of personal ads of men--even fat men--saying they'll only date a thin woman. And I know in a matter of months, I'll be able to write to them and they'll want to date me. And all I can think is, FUCK YOU.
Today all I wish is that I could take my entire life to date and just crumple it up and toss away over my shoulder like a piece of paper.
I'm angry at everything. I'm angry at the influences that fucked with my brain and bent it into its current shape. I'm angry that I let my brain be fucked with. I'm angry that because of it all I now have no. fucking. clue. about. anything. Including my own self.
I'm angry that I gave up myself that fucking easily and let it disappear so completely that I don't even remember what it is anymore.
And I'm angry that I'm thinking all of this. That I'm back here for another visit. I'm angry that I can't think positive all the time.
This is post #1 in a series about the concept and reality of happiness--and how both are changing for me. I found I had more to say than I expected, so I'm breaking it up. The main question for this post is: Do you--or have you ever--seen some of yourself in any parts of this, too? What thoughts does it jog in your mind about happiness and what makes us happy at different times in life? Ever been happy in unhappiness?
There's a very famous opening line from Tolstoy's Anna Karenina that goes, "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
The line is quoted a lot, to the point that I'd say it's assumed aphoristic status. People continue to quote it because they feel it reflects a basic life truth.
I was one of these people for a very long time. Even before I'd technically read it, I'd fallen for this line, sinker and hook, the way one does for a bad, yet irresistible, lover. I met it, swallowed it, believed its story implicitly, and adjusted my life to accommodate it.
Now I think it's bunk. Now I think I sold myself a bill of (very discounted, defective) goods.
Tolstoy's line is the precursor to a lengthy story about a number of extremely unhappy and dysfunctional families. It's basically a sales pitch for the book--and, one might project, for much of Tolstoy's writing and world view. "I can't write about happy families, because their stories are always the same. Happy families are boring. But misery--misery is interesting. There are a million ways to be miserable, each an intriguing story of its own. Whereas, there is only one way to be happy, and it's not worth talking about."
How dismissive that is. And, I'm learning, how entirely untrue.
But it has taken a long, long while for me to realize that.
For years, I did believe that the only interesting stories were stories of struggle. Of depression and doomed efforts and addiction and dysfunction and darkness. Of confirmation of the world's general fucked state, the mainstream populace's drone-like acceptance of and complicity in maintaining said state, and of the small efforts of isolated freaks to fight back against the oppressive norm, doomed as those efforts might ultimately be.
I believed this not only of fictional stories, but of real life stories. Normal, happy people were dull. They hadn't LIVED. They had no stories.
And I wanted stories.
I began to surround myself with others who believed this, too, and who wanted stories. People who were devastatingly interesting in their unique unhappinesses. Who held up their dysfunctions like flags of victory. Who loved and were proud of their pain, and who loved others for their pain. And who, though they'd not admit it, were always comparing each other's pain and deriving a sense of superiority from it, both as a group, against the outside, and individually, against each other.
Who hurts the most? Whose pain is most exquisite? Who is the most beautifully fucked up? Whose drama is the most evident? ¿Quien es mas forastero? (Who's the most "outsider"?)
These were "my people." Our glory and validation came from being unglorious. From being unhappy, and beaten down, and isolated, and freakish ("By whose standard?" the voice in my head wants to ask now). We took great joy in things like that first Radiohead single. You know, the one where the singer screams about wanting to be with a special, beautiful person, but no, he can't because (cue the anthemic swell of power chords) he's a creep, he's a weirdo...he doesn't belong here. It was our anthem, sung back to us. We loved it. We believed it. And more than that, we WANTED it. We wanted the weirdo, outsider status. We wanted the power chords when we walked in the room.
We chose to live in that song's push-pull, yearn-repel dichotomy. Because that, we felt, was interesting.
Oh sure, we, like the singer, told ourselves and others that we wished we could happily "float like a feather in a beautiful world." We wanted a perfect body. We wanted a perfect soul. But then again, we didn't. We didn't dare. Because happy, perfect people were all alike. Happy, perfect people didn't write songs like "Creep." Happy, perfect people didn't write great novels like Anna Karenina. Happy, perfect people didn't pen poems like Bukowski. Happy, perfect people didn't make art, didn't change the world, didn't inspire anything. Happy people were just...happy. Nonentities. And that...that ain't "so fucking special" after all, is it?
No, it was our want of the happy and perfect, and the ultimate disappointment of not having it, of knowing we would never measure up, that kept us interesting. If we actually got to happy, we disappeared.
I can never be happy because I won't be SPECIAL if I'm happy.
Everywhere you turn in that sentence, a trap door, leading you right back into the cell you just left.
As I said, I walked into the trap and stayed there for a long time.
I didn't want to be dismissed, devalued, and disappeared; to have my story waved off as "alike" and not worth notice. I didn't want to be lumped in with the great mass of bourgeois, boring, average humanity. I wanted to be special, and different, and interesting.
I became ashamed to be normal. And I became afraid to be happy. Because happiness meant extinction. And expulsion from my chosen "family" of outsiders. You got happy, you ceased to matter.
So I clung to the most miserable, dysfunctional parts of me. I held them close, always nursing them first, so they became strong enough to push and hold any more hopeful aspects of myself away from the bottle till they became puny and weak. I let these unhappy parts grow out of all balance and control, until they had become so powerful, they could quickly and brutally devour any small happinesses I managed to produce, like Saturn devouring his children. I let it take me over, until I was seemingly incapable of even allowing myself to announce to myself or others any level of happiness, pride, or self-satisfaction without tagging on some kind of devaluing statement at the end to allow people--and myself--to discount it and demolish it. And I became very careful to never let the feeling grow too strongly. If I felt it rising up, I pushed it down so it could be controlled--so that I wouldn't "curse" myself by feeling good. Because I did believe that if I openly had positive expectations, or if I openly proclaimed happiness, I would be set upon by twofold the karmic misery to slap me down, punish me for my hubris, and keep me in my place.
Natural happiness in myself and others was considered unnatural and suspect; by both myself and my friends. We developed the angry "just you wait" attitude about anyone who seemed to self-satisfied, including ourselves. And the only "legitimate" way to feel "acceptably" happy became through temporary, artificial means. Drugs, alcohol, food, sex, live music...anything that created a fast, temporary happiness spike that was absolutely guaranteed to shortly afterward bring on a crash and transform itself into some kind of negative, self-sabotaging consequence that ensured we wouldn't stay happy for too long.
And, because that simply wasn't enough to guarantee my safe haven from happiness, I also befriended and made lovers of others who were doing the same thing I was--because, you see, then their miseries and unhappinesses and dysfunctions would impact me, and provide me with MORE pain and unhappiness and drama to nourish the beast, their intersections with and insinuations into my life making my own exponentially more fucked up and "interesting."
How incredibly crazy it looks to me now, from the outside--this nourishing of pain we gave to each other, which at the time looked so much like the tenderest love.
And you know, as strange as it sounds, at the time I did think I was happy. I felt I was living an interesting and authentic--if sometimes painful--life. But the authentically painful life was cool, because after all, as the movie once said, "Life IS pain...anyone who says differently is selling something." Right? And because, as the song reiterated long after Tolstoy's time, "I focus on the pain, the only thing that's real." Right?
I felt I was happy because I felt I hadn't bought the bill of goods. I hadn't allowed myself to disappear into smug, apathetic complacency. Pain was the price you paid for being real, for being brave and creative enough to stand out; for facing life and saying, "Fuck you, I can take it." Pain was the price you paid to be free of the bullshit.
It never occurred to me at the time that perhaps this, too, was bullshit.
