Man or Myth?

Men are always saying they can't figure women out. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em ... you know the old cliches. Yet, I feel the same way about men. They are truly becoming enigmas to me. Have I just been out of the dating scene too long, and things have changed so much that the old mating rituals are unrecognizable to me? I don't think so, because I've felt this way before.

A couple of things have happened to me recently involving men, and I'd like to tell you about them. If you would like to weigh in with your observations, please do ... I would appreciate an objective viewpoint. So, pull up a chair ...

I was feeling rather shitty about myself yesterday. While driving home from work in the Zen of my little VW, which is where I tend to do my most introspective thinking these days, I realized that this was directly caused by a couple of things, although it took me awhile to realize it. When I get upset these days, I tend to just try and brush it away as fast as possible, because I have so many other things on my mind, I don't need a lot of miscellaneous shit cluttering it up. So when people do something that bothers me, I tell myself it's really just inconsequential and move on. Of course, it is far from out of my mind, just kind of brushed away to a dusty corner, where it festers and eats away at me anyway.

Some guy emailed me on a dating site the other day. It had been the first email I had received there in a long time, and I was pleasantly surprised to receive one. I read it and the guy sounded totally inappropriate for me, the main reason being, this guy was a dancer, and I don't mean grooving to Gnarls Barkley or the Bee Gees. He was into serious dancing, like tango, salsa, ballroom, et al. Nobody has two left feet bigger than mine. I hate dancing. But I answered him anyway, said thanks for emailing me, maybe we can get to know each other better.

He sends me an email back saying, by the way, I happen to be a professional astrologer, I've been doing it for 30 years, would you mind sending me your birthdate and birthplace and I'll do a chart for us and see if we're compatible. This really appealed to me. I thought it was pretty cool and I love astrology and anything occult, so I gladly sent him my info and waited with curiosity to see what he would say.

He emailed me back the next day, very briefly ... can you guess where this is going? ... and said, "I did our charts, and although we have some similar interests, in the long term romantically and communication-wise, we are not compatible and it would be a waste of our time. Thanks very much, I hope you meet your "twin flame" and please wish me the same." I was totally astonished. It is the first time I have been dumped before I have even met a person! I thought, Shit, this guy really takes this crap seriously. So, I told myself, No big deal, the guy's a little weird, and kind of rude too ... I mean, not to even give the person the benefit of the doubt, to at least meet them once. So, that was that.

The bigger thing is, I've mentioned this guy I like at work before. I have a crush on him, I admit it. He's Welsh with an adorable accent to match, cute, charming, smart, sexy. We had been flirting like crazy for about the past two or three weeks. One thing I've noticed, though, is that he would flirt with me, then retreat to his office and shut the door as if he was closing himself off entirely and then he'd come back occasionally and flirt again, etc. etc. This went on for awhile. I would catch him looking at me while he thought I wasn't, we would talk about our various interests, etc. But there was always this wall he put up all of a sudden, as if he was saying, I like you, but stay away from me for awhile. So I played it cool and just let him have his distance.

This Monday, when I came in to work, he came in my office to say hello and chat a bit and I happened to ask him how his weekend was. Now, our conversations have been pretty casual, nothing really personal or anything, just chatty kind of stuff. He says, "Well, I went out for brunch with a woman I've been in love with for 15 years ..." (I'm sitting there going, what the fuck, where did this come from? at first I thought he was going to make a joke out of it and say it was his mother, because that's his sense of humour, but then he continued ...) "She just broke up with her boyfriend and I'm hoping I may have a chance, but I don't think I make enough money for her." And he smiled snidely at that, and I was just totally amazed. This woman came out of nowhere. He had made comments, jokes really, about being lonely before, and I knew he was definitely single. I assumed that meant available. Then he pulls this woman out of a hat and ever since then, he's been having as little to do with me as possible. What started out as this really warm, flirtatious thing going on has turned into a really awkward, uncomfortable situation. I really hate it when he comes into my office now (I work in it with one other guy and he comes in and talks to him all the time) because I don't know what to expect from this guy anymore. Now I'm pissed off but wondering if I have the right to be, and just feeling like I don't understand men at all and really never have and I keep seeming to find myself in these situations where I like guys who turn out to want nothing to do with me. Why else would he mention this woman all of a sudden, and in such an open way, when we really don't know each other that well? It was as if he was saying, "I can see you really like me, and I've been thinking you may have been a possibility, but I've decided no, so let me nip this in the bud right now, before it goes any further. " Well, it sure worked. I got the message loud and clear.

Every time he goes into his office now, which is across from mine but out of sight, I hear his door click shut, and every time I hear that door click, I feel like crap. That sound is just another reminder to me that another man I thought I liked has closed himself off to me and put up the walls. And I hear that fucking door click about 30 times a day.

I've heard it said many times that there are men out there who are not superficial, who really do appreciate women for who they are, and who will love me for who I am. To me, these supposed men are nothing more than mythical creatures, like the phoenix, griffin, or Hydra. They don't exist, but people talk about them as if they do.

I can't help but feel that if I were thin, this guy would not only not have mentioned this woman, but he certainly wouldn't be closing his door on me every day.

Binger's Ball

The movie "Monster's Ball" received a lot of critical acclaim a few years ago. If you have never seen it, it was about a young, black single mother (played by Halle Berry) with an overweight son whose ex-husband was convicted of murder and executed. The other major character is a middle-aged prison guard (Billy Bob Thornton) with a son as well, with whom he has a love-hate relationship. Both characters lose their sons and suffer great emotional torment from it. The young single mother loses her son in a car accident, and the prison guard, although he loves his son, does not know how to express it because of his own coldhearted father, and drives his son to suicide with his cold hostility.

In one of the most memorable scenes, the woman and the man, who have become acquainted, are in her apartment together drinking, when the conversation drifts to her son, who she also treated cruelly, because of his weight. It's obvious she has great remorse about this, and while talking about him, she breaks down and begins sobbing. The man asks her what he can do to help, and she says, "Make me feel good, make me feel good," and starts pulling her top down to bare her breasts, and they channel their mutual grief about their sons into a passionate lovemaking session.

Why am I going to such great lengths to describe this scene to you? Well, it's because that's what I do with food. I'd love to channel my grief and bad feelings into sex instead, but for some reason, I have chosen food as my outlet. Whenever I am stressed, sad, depressed, worried, nervous ... any uncomfortable feeling, basically ... I eat to get away from it.

I want to banish this habit from my life forever. I am so tired of it. I don't know what to do. I feel like I can't escape it, like I will never be free of it, and therefore, overweight and unhappy for the rest of my life. It's obvious the diets don't work. But there are so many scams out there. I was looking on the internet this morning for some info about hypnosis ... that's one thing I haven't tried yet ... but I just don't know if it will work, or if it will just line some greedy son-of-a-bitch's pocket instead.

I'm about ready to go into a church, kneel down and pray for help with this. I fucking hate being fat. Yet I have been fat for the majority of my life. In other words, I have hated how I look (and feel, as a result) for the majority of my life.

Go figure.

Misfortune is Really Just Opportunity Disguising Itself

That's what all the self-help books say ... all the new-age talking heads. I keep saying things like this to myself as a kind of mantra to try and stop myself from going insane ... so far, it's working. I guess doing some yoga along with it would pump up the therapeutic aspect of it, so maybe tomorrow I'll start doing some of that too.

I don't want to start listing what's been happening to me over the past few days, because I feel pathetic enough chronicling my past chaos. Suffice it to say, I'm fucked. I'm going to have to try and set up an appointment with someone at my bank and try and work out a loan of some kind.

This morning, when I was driving my daughter to school, I looked up at the blue sky and thought to myself, Why me? What have I done? Have I been such a horrible person that someone up there is taking out their revenge on me and not letting me have a moment's peace? I know that sounds whiny and self-pitying, but it is no exaggeration to say that my life has been throwing calamity after calamity, particularly of a financial nature, against me with no respite for about the past month. Just when I think I have things somewhat under control, something else happens and I'm feeling like God himself is against me, or, at the very least, inflicting these things upon me in order to teach me some kind of lesson ... one I'm obviously missing, because I think I've pretty much learned every hard lesson there is to learn.

My friends, your blogger is up against it. If I come through this in one piece, I hope somebody out there will be kind enough to forge some kind of medal for me, because I have been tested. Am BEING tested, relentlessly. There has got to be some end to this.

Paris Hilton for a Day

I want to be Paris Hilton for a day. Just one day to know what it's like ... to be blonde, skinny, a super-rich bitch, a brainless twit, shagging anything with testosterone that moves and anything with testosterone lining up to shag you, as good ol' Austin Powers would say.

I really need a vacation from my life. I'm willing to leave my brains, morals, and good sense behind and be a blonde rich-bitch airhead for just one day. I don't plan on staying Paris forever. One day, I think, would be more than enough for me to experience enough sloth, emptiness of brain and morals, the total incomprehension and unfamiliarity of having to work for a living and having to pay bills, rent, and have no social life whatsoever because I have to look after my child who has only me to look after her most of the time. I want to have an iPod and cell phone in every colour, a string bikini in every discernible colour and pattern, a closet full of designer clothes in a size zero, and a little Chanel bag full of daddy's money. I think I would have a really good time. A stable full of hot hunks would be only a Text Message away. I might not be proud of myself afterwards, but there's no denying it would be fun. Fuck the paparazzi, evil boyfriends with hidden video cameras, and those liars from the tabloids. It would be awesome.

I'm having a party on daddy's yacht! And you're all invited!

100 Things About Me

I've seen this little feature on a lot of other people's blogs, so I figure it's time I did it. And I can't figure out how to link it to the sidebar, so I'll do it here.

1. My real name is Gabriela.
2. My regular readers know this anyway.
3. I was born on (if you've read this, you know already).
4. In Oldham, England. (close to Manchester)
5. My family left England to move to Canada when I was 6 months old.
6. Family legend is that they brought me on the plane in a basket.
7. I nearly drowned once.
8. At a family picnic, when I was 4 or 5 years old.
9. I was dangling a piece of grass into a river, and what must have been a pretty big fish pulled me in.
10. I fell into a river and the rapids were quite strong.
11. I remember looking up at the surface of the water, feeling my heart pound with fear, seeing bright sunlight, and hearing a voice say, "It's going to be alright. Just keep thrashing."
12. Finally, someone pulled me out.
13. I have struggled with weight for most of my life, but until I was about 7 or 8 years old, I was quite slender and "normal", weight-wise.
14. My relationship with my mother is terrible.
15. We have never gotten along, and I find it all I can do sometimes just to be civil to her.
16. But I have to, because I need her to watch my daughter for me.
17. So I have to swallow all her shit.
18. Occasionally I get so pissed off at her bullshit that I speak up about it, and then I suffer for it.
19. She knows how to make me feel completely miserable and disgusted with myself.
20. I have two older brothers.
21. My younger older-brother nearly died when he was about 16 years old.
22. He was riding his bike on a drizzly day down a hill and plowed head-first into a tree.
23. Incredibly lucky for him, an off-duty policeman was jogging in the park that day and saw him lying there.
24. He did CPR and called 911.
25. His finding him saved his life, because if he hadn't, he definitely would have died.
26. He had to have major brain surgery.
27. They flew in the best neurosurgeon in the country from his holiday in Hawaii.
28. When we got the call that my brother was gravely injured and may not make it, I felt a chill up my spine.
29. I had had a premonition about it shortly before it happened.
30. I was just sitting around the house one day, and all of a sudden, "What if something happens to Mark? (my brother)" popped into my head. I never had thoughts like that, but at the time I just brushed it off.
31. The only time I ever saw my dad cry was when my brother was in the hospital.
32. It scared the shit out of me, because my dad was a big, tough guy. If he cried, I knew it was serious.
33. My brother made it, but he hasn't been the same since, in my opinion.
34. He is physically okay, but his personality changed. He became a much more black-and-white type person, and thinks he knows it all.
35. My other older brother, Glenn, is an incredibly wonderful, kind person.
36. He took the place of my emotionally unavailable parents when I was growing up.
37. He paid my way through college and does not want to be paid back.
38. Because of him, I got a chance to do the kind of work I like to do.
39. I have always been a book- and music-oriented person, largely because of the influence of my brothers.
40. I have an obsession with Henry VIII and his six wives because of my brother.
41. He had an album by Rick Wakeman, the former keyboardist for Yes, called "The Six Wives of Henry VIII".
42. The cover had a picture of Rick in Madame Tussaud's surrounded by wax figures of Henry and his six wives.
43. He wrote a piece of music for each queen.
44. There were little bios of each queen on the back of the album. I read them and became obsessed.
45. Since then, I read everything I can about them.
46. My favourite queen is Anne Boleyn, although if I had known her personally, I would probably have despised her.
47. I grew up listening to Yes, Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper, Styx, Supertramp, Zeppelin, and Rush.
48. When my brothers graduated to punk, I followed soon after. Then I started listening to The Sex Pistols, The Clash, and The Ramones.
49. I like all types of music except country, but the types that speak to my soul are really loud rock 'n roll/metal and alternative.
50. I lost my virginity when I was 18.
51. It was with an older man.
52. For some reason, I was crazy about him, but he was a total asshole.
53. He was in his 40s, had been to jail, and was verbally abusive to me.
54. He always used to call me fat and tell me I needed to lose weight.
55. He was initially attracted to my girlfriend, when we first him (in a bar, of course), but this didn't stop me. I had to have him.
56. I turned him on a lot sexually, and that's the only reason he had anything to do with me.
57. This should tell you quite a bit about my self-esteem at the time.
58. Back in my teens, I considered any kind of sexual conquest, e.g. making out, petting, a trophy of sorts. I used to keep track of encounters as if they were proof of how desirable I was.
59. But I always wanted just one boyfriend.
60. I met my only long-term boyfriend, who became my husband, through a mutual friend. She set us up.
61. We met in May, 1987, and until I left our home in early 2006, we have never been apart for very long.
62. Although we have broken up many times.
63. He is a wonderful man, for the most part, and I love him ... but there is no passion between us.
64. When I got pregnant, I was glad but terrified of the actual birth ... so much so that I asked my obstetrician (when I was about a month pregnant) if I could just book a Caesarian.
65. Shortly before I got pregnant, I had cut out a picture of a cute baby and taped it in my "wish" notebook.
66. I felt very awkward about being pregnant.
67. I was the exact opposite of Demi Moore posing proudly nude on the cover of Vanity Fair.
68. I hid my belly, although I was so large at the time, it was actually hard to tell I was pregnant.
69. I thought I would be in labour for many hours.
70. In reality, it took 3 hours max.
71. My doctor induced my labour by giving me Pitocin. I kept telling the nurses I needed a shot of something, but they didn't believe me. Finally, one of them checked me and said, "Oh, you're ready to push."
72. Giving birth to my daughter was the most amazing experience of my life.
73. It did not feel like I expected it to feel.
74. Yes, it hurt.
75. But it was also invigorating.
76. I felt more alive after I had given birth to my daughter than ever before in my entire life.
77. When I got off the birthing bed, there was a huge splotch of blood underneath me.
78. I found that strangely satisfying.
79. I couldn't breastfeed, which is really ironic. I'm famous for my tits.
80. Yet when it came to breastfeeding, forget it. I felt guilty for awhile. Then I finally said, "Fuck it. I tried my ass off."
81. I had the same weird type of precognition that I had with my brother, before my father died.
82. I was sitting in my parents' basement rec room, watching Letterman, I believe, when all of a sudden, I thought, "What if something happened to dad?" That something, I knew, was cancer. A couple months later (as far as I remember) he was diagnosed.
83. He ended up dying of it after a hellish year or so.
84. I believe he came to see me before he officially "left", and I had a dream before it happened.
85. I dreamt that I was in an office, typing at a typewriter. There was paper in the machine with numbers on it.
86. The morning he died, I was working in an office typing numbers on a piece of paper. I was alone in the room, which was right in the main office. There was a big staircase leading up to it, and a glass door coming in.
87. I was sitting there typing, then all of a sudden got this weird feeling like I could sense something floating up the stairs toward the door. Then I felt a "whoosh" which was the glass door to the office. This unbelievable feeling of peace and happiness enveloped me. I "felt" my dad smiling, and saying, "Goodbye, don't worry about me", then he was gone.
88. That morning my mother had gotten a call from the hospital that we needed to come down, he wasn't doing too well. My mother told me no, go to work. When I got home that afternoon, she told me what I already knew.
89. I have been writing since I was a teenager.
90. I have always had a high sex drive, and when I was a teenager and not getting much, I would draw pornographic pictures to get some kind of vicarious thrill from it. One night, I left them out, my mother found them and all hell broke loose.
91. I used to love snooping in my mother's and brothers' rooms.
92. I found my mother's diaphragm, a huge collection of marijuana seeds in a jar in my brother's bookcase, and his diary, which I opened and read. He was always in love, but it was always unrequited. (It runs in our family.)
93. I used to smoke marijuana and drink beer very heavily, in my teens and early 20s.
94. I've done acid numerous times and coke a couple.
95. I don't regret one moment of my drug experiences; it was great fun, for the most part.
96. One time after smoking some really good pot, I got totally freaked out though. It scared the hell out of me. I blacked out and woke up going, "Wha' happened?"
97. I'm glad those days are over, though. I did a lot of stupid things.
98. But it helped me to discover myself.
99. I learned a lot about myself.
100. And I'm still learning, to this day.

Fear

So ... what does fear feel like? I believe that I have been afraid for at least half of my life. When I was a child, I was practically always afraid ... of my dad's temper, my mother's incomprehensible moodiness, my brother's occasional torments of me ... then, when I started school, I remember always feeling on edge, like I didn't fit in, like there was something wrong with me and nobody would like me and want to be my friend. For this reason, when I was in grade school, I overcompensated for that by being the friendly, outgoing, sweet little student that all the teachers and kids loved. That was fine for grade school, but when all us kids started growing up and getting hormones and I was the fat girl, I learned to feel a new kind of fear ... the fear of being excluded, ridiculed, humiliated, hurt, alone ... I felt all of these things, nearly every single day, when I was very young. It has stuck with me, to the point of when people look at me, I almost always assume they are thinking something bad, and if they lean over and say something quietly to the person they are with, I definitely assume they are talking about me, saying something horrible and uncomplimentary. It's paranoia, of a kind, developed and mastered over years of feeling inadequate, unloved, and isolated.

You would think that ruminating on these things means I'm feeling rather depressed and down today. But I'm not. Thankfully, I have learned to detach myself from these feelings and see them for what they are, rather than just taking it at face value that I am excluded, unloved, and alone. I realize that a big part of the reason I feel these things is because of me, from years of conditioning myself to believe that things are a certain way. It's a big part of the reason I stayed in my long-term relationship, then marriage, for so long. I honestly did not believe I could get any better. I figured something was better than nothing. And when I detach myself from it, and look at it objectively, I can see how wrong and unhealthy it is.

I have been struggling for so long with my weight and my body. But even more difficult than that has been my struggle with my mind and my emotions. Changing your body is relatively easy compared to changing the way you think. And we all know that unless you really get in there, metaphorically, with a scalpel and cut all that shit out of your head that's been polluting your life for so long, you will never have the life you need, and want.

I am beginning to accept the fact that life is hard work. Nothing worthwhile ever comes easy. And sometimes you just have to dig in there, up to your elbows if you have to, and cut those fucking tumours out.

Being in the Bug

I love my little car. I don't know how I lived without it for so long. Ever since I got it, I've felt like I've opened up a little, begun to crawl out of my little pupa where I've been hidden away for so long. There is nothing that gives me greater peace or joy these days (that's excepting when I'm in traffic, of course) than booting along in my little VW listening to some great music. I turn it up loud, I go down memory lane, and I feel ALIVE ... the way I never seem to feel when I'm sitting around at home being bored, at my desk doing some incredibly boring task, picking up my daughter's clothes, toys and food wrappers off the floor. In my car, I'm ME -- undeniably, indisputably, indubitably ME -- and I am fabulous. I am not mommy, or employee, or estranged wife, or difficult daughter ... I'm the girl I always dreamed of being ... sexy, glamorous, raunchy, fun, exciting, sensual, hip, rock and roll ... in my car when I'm driving, listening to my favourite music, it is so easy to daydream, to see myself living the life I have tried so hard to lay the path for all these years ... baby steps ... but when I'm barreling down the highway, it feels like the journey is picking up steam and I am almost there.