The update was:
“Exercise, exercise, exercise, avoid carbs, eat protein, build muscle, burn fat, get sleepy, pass out, load on carbs because I’ve used up all my energy, excise hard core for 6 hours, cry, weigh myself and see that I’ve gained 70lbs since yesterday, cry some more, pass out hating myself. Why do women do this to ourselves? I was 5’7 and 123lbs in high school and felt fat because my friends weighed 100lbs and wore a 0.”

Besides myself (ourselves, too, because I doubt that I’m the only person with this problem), I partially blame other women and a lot of Caucasian men.  I don’t try to look good for men; I compare myself to other women and try to look good in comparison to them.  At the same time, however, Caucasian men are the only men I can think of who, as a whole, appreciate women who are so thin that they nearly look boyish.  Sure, it is shameful to be so concerned with the perceptions of a society that still undermines the value of women, but I’m only human.

And at then end of the day, who gives a shit, who has to live with me?  Why, I do, of course!  And, you know, with as much as I’ve come to enjoy exercise because of the emotional benefits (non-crack induced joyous highs), I should be happy with my body.  No, I’m not the most physically fit person in the world, but I’m much more fit than I used to be.  Months ago I couldn’t jog 1/4 a mile without getting winded, but I’ve worked up to jogging nearly two miles without hiperventalating.  The other night, deciding to just run as fast as I could for as long as I could, I ran 1/4 a mile in a little over a minute.  At the end my knee hated me, but I was pretty proud of myself.  Small victories, I suppose.

Still though, there is this number looming over me.  Actually, there are several numbers looming over me.  We bitch and moan about “being just a number” at a college, but why should colleges treat us any different than we treat ourselves?  I am my pant size, my skirt size, dress size,  my underwear size, my bra size, my weight, my shoe size, my ring size, my height, and so on.

Fact: I will never be a zero.  I’ve tried and failed miserably.  Realistically, the least I can weigh is 130; the smallest size I can wear is a 4; my shoe size is permanently 8-9; my underwear will always be a little on the large size because I like ‘em that way; my skirt and dress sizes will always be smaller than expected because my body is proportionally confused; and my height will never exceed my current height, which I underestimate and friends overestimate (I most certainly am not 5’8 or taller.  I am, however, good enough at feigning confidence to seem taller than I really am.)

Truth: When I lost all of that weight in high school, I also had an eating disorder, though I’m not sure what to label it.  I’d exercise for hours a day, obsess over what I ate, put food in my mouth and spit it out, vomit if I ever ate anything that I thought would immediately turn to fat in my body, and weight myself multiple times a day.  When I went to the doctor for my yearly checkup, my doctor noted that I lost too much weight too quickly, my keytones were extremely high, and there was something else in either my blood or my urnine sample that made her question me about an eating disorder.  She told me to stop losing weight before I reached an unhealthy weight.  Seems to me it was good advice from my doctor. On the other hand, my mother, a nurse who works with that doctor, became enraged and later told me that I did not need to stop losing weight and that I was fianlly looking good.

Despite these imperfections, I have a desire to be loved.  I don’t need to be a “hottie,” but at some point in my life, it would be nice for someone to find me attractive for all of my traits—attractive or not.  For instance, I like to walk around the house in old t-shirts, gym shorts, and oddly patterned socks.  I have crazy skin allergies that leave me itchy, red, and puffy the majority of the year; these allergies are only made worse by my love of cats (to which I am horribly allergic).  I love nothing more than being alone outside doing anything.  Send me outside with a book or running shoes or gardening gloves and some sunscreen and I am perfectly content.  I am the most obsessively compulsive messy person known to humankind; my room is always clean, but my closet is always a wreck.  I watch people to a degree that almost makes me seem like a stalker, but there is something about people’s mannerisms that fascinates me.  Despite the fact that I study people, I’m unobservant when it’s important.  My sense of direction is awful.  My sense of humor is worse; hell, I’m not even as funny as I am awkward, yet people assume that I mean to be funny.  I’m a pretty hard worker, but I’m not particularly smart.  I’m insecure above all else, though people have told me that I seem very confident.  I can’t take compliments.  The list goes on and on.

Okay, so it’s true that I could stand to be more confident, but I don’t think that you have to believe that you are “gorgeous” in the traditional sense to be confident.  I am happy with myself and with the fact that I am not a centerfold.  My problem is with people who assume that just because I have accepted being average I am somehow less confident than people who think that they are the be-all and end-all.  My expectation is that someday, I will run into someone who finds the qualities that most people would consider quirky at best attractive.  Why change my realistic, though perhaps somewhat skewed, perception of myself when I wouldn’t want to be with any man who would love any other version of me?  The answer is, of course, that there is no reason for me to change.  Self-deprecation is part of the appeal, and someday, someone will get that and the two of us will live moderately happy for as long as we both live or until he cheats on me with a man, and, as a result, I stuff rocks in my pockets and jump into a river.

Life Imitating Art Imitating Life

I guess what this really comes down to is that I’m a bad friend.  For some reason, I’ve been put in the position of having two friends (of the same name, oddly enough) who have the habit of making the same bad decisions over and over and OVER again.  Sure, those decisions are theirs to make, but the idea that those decisions do not involve the people who care about them makes no sense to me.  When you care about someone, it is terrible to watch that person screw up her life.  So, I’m a bad friend because I care and cannot keep my nose out of my friends’ problems.  There are so many things that you don’t let your friends do.  If a friend wanted to murder someone, I wouldn’t let her, so why should I let a friend screw around with a married man (for the nth time)?  But, damn, good friends just let their friends fuck up their lives and don’t do anything to stop them.  So, that’s it; I’m not going to do it anymore.  I refuse to be friends with a person who makes me feel like a bad friend.  If you don’t value me, then you don’t deserve me.  After all, if I wanted to deal with relationship drama, then I’d get a boyfriend and fight with him.

So, I’m giving up.  It’s over.  Off to friendship divorce court.  She can keep all of the memories; I don’t want them.  I can say that there has never been a point after I gave up on my friendship with my high school friend that I regretted my decision.  I just felt relieved.  I’ll probably regret not being friends with this other friend, but it has to be done.  Her life is no longer my problem because I’m not invested in it or part of it.  And you know, I feel better already.

Such thoughts have led to a literary or anthropological interest in mothering.  I read some of a book called Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, and I found the chapters that discussed various forms of mothering particularly interesting.  It’s probably obvious that there are many types of mothers, but I don’t think that I had really ever considered how every woman is in the position of being a mother and daughter to so many other women.  Thinking about this topic, I’m saying, “Well, duh, ya’ dummy.”  Of course we all have several mothers.  Literature is overflowing with examples of mothering.  Good mothers, bad mothers, bad mothers with good intentions: they are everywhere.

Though these mothers are often family members, I have found that most of my own “mothers” are not related to me.  Yes, my aunts and grandmothers are strong mothering figures, but I’ve always been attached to female mentors.  My desperate need to gain their approval has caused more frustration and insecurity than the outcome was worth, but, generally, such relationships have been more beneficial than anything else.  No one mother can ever be perfect, for we are just enough like and unlike our biological mothers to make it impossible for our relationships to be entirely stable all of the time.  Other than that, mothering is so difficult.  There is a reason that the old saying “It takes a village to raise a child” is still relevant: it’s true.  No, I would not trade my own dysfunctional mother for anything, but that’s only because I’ve had such strong mentors.  My mother and I are so unalike in our views and interests, that the only reason I have not self-destructed over the years is that I can share my interests with those mothering mentors.  Mom doesn’t really enjoy reading or understand my politics, but by God, there are people who do (perhaps it would be better to say “Thank God!”).   My mother is my source of unconditional love, and my mentors are there to understand and nurture me in the ways in which my mother cannot.

It has taken a village of strong, intelligent, opinionated women to raise me, but in the Suuuuthern parlance, “They done good,” at least I think so.  I’m greatly imbalanced, but God only knows how off kilter I would have been without my mothers.  So, I live my life in dedication to those mothers.  They are my conscience, my will, my sanity, my motivation, and my soul.