So, I'm just about to cry right now, which I'll explain at the end of the post. I knew I should have waited until after I wrote this piss and vinegar post before I opened this box.
I was fucking pissed off today. Fucking, fucking pissed off. Fucking internet psychos drive me fucking nuts. I was also harrassed on the train platform last week, after six months of fending off fucking train psychos. I was exhausted, run down, and wasn't holding myself in my butch I'll-fucking-kick-your-ass-you-psycho mode, and he came up past me and dragged his hand against me and said something leering-like, and I yelled a big "fuck you" after him and turned to face him - I fucking wanted to fight all 300 fucking pounds of him - but he kept moving, and honestly, it's better that way, cause I quite like the shape of my face. But he fucking touched me, that fucking fucker!
So I've been pissed off. Pissed off femi-nazi pissed off. And you know, every once in a while, going back to your MA class when you're really fucking pissed off is really fucking good.
I grabbed one of the heavier weighted bags, the one that's 200 lbs and Sifu Kat likes to keep for "the big guys" and I beat the fucking shit out of that bag. We rotated out boxing and kicking rounds with squats on the balance balls, and the squats are getting easier, which is cool.
If all I have to do once in a while, is take some time off and eat properly to have ass-kicking workouts like these, I need to get my shit together and do that more often. I was bouncing off the goddamn walls. I should have stayed for the second class.
Instead, I went home and put the same five Everclear songs on repeat and went jogging. Yea. Ok, it was only a couple miles, but I went jogging. I went jogging not cause I *had* to, cause you know, I'd already fucking exercised, I went because I wanted to, and yes, I nearly fell on my ass like three times and did some fancy sliding routines around the stoplights, but I went, and it was great, and I burned off all the pissed off fucking energy I've been building up.
And it occurred to me that what I've been doing with all that freak-out, angsty energy is turn it into negative, loopy self-hate talk, bitching to myself about what I'm supposed to be doing, what I'm supposed to be eating, what size I'm supposed to be, the way people are supposed to look at me, and I was letting it eat me up. I was so mentally exhausted at the end of the day, after spending dull hours at work with little more to do than beat myself up about what I *wasn't* doing that I was too tired to do more than slump home and get to bed.
Stupid.
And there was one more thing I wouldn't owe up to, a big one, the biggest freak-out of all, and I pressed it back and shrugged it off and pressed it back. And tonight I stepped off the bus and headed to MA class, and thought back - what's been so different about *this* month? Why is it *this* month that I'm so unsettled? What's freaking me out? What's bugging me? Start with the first of January. Hell, start with New Year's Eve!
Oh.
Oh, well, there's that. Shit. Shit. Shit. Owe the fuck up to it. C'mon. Yea, there's that. Goddammit, son of a bitch, I fucking know better, I'm so fucking stupid, goddammit.
Cut that shit out. Get your fucking shit together. What the fuck are you thinking?
I'm an all or nothing person. I'm down for four days, down for the count, and then I get pissed off, and bang through the morning weights, the MA class, and I go jogging.
They're having a big "welcome back" workout session/party tomorrow at the MA school, so I'm going into class tomorrow, too, cause it sounds cool. We've got a bunch of new students, and it's fun to watch them. I suppose I'm not yet one of the amazons or anything, but my arm muscles are looking way cooler.
I was lying in bed last night, thinking too much, as I'm bound to do, and prepping, again, for the dating odyssey. If you want to know why I'm getting pissed off more than usual, and why I'm talking about guys more than usual, it's because I need 6-8 months to prep myself for actually sitting down and going on dates, which I'm planning to do this summer, and let me tell you, that takes all the fucking courage I have, and it means long nights of running through scenerios, of figuring out what's a make or break deal, of viewing me and the poor boy as two warriors sitting down to table and sizing each other up, me inevitably going:
"OK, so, what are you going to cost me, emotionally?"
And him going, "Huh?"
And I was thinking last night, running through another rehearsal, how I'd handle X or Z sort of guy, how I'd handle it if he pushed me a certain way, if he used threats of violence or coercion, "poor me, you selfish bitch," to get what he wanted, and there was that moment, that moment when I opened my eyes and said out loud, "I'm stronger than you. "
"I have been through the shit. I know exactly how far you can push. I know exactly how much I'll push back. I have a one-up on you. I know myself. I know exactly what I'm capable of. I know exactly what I've done, and what I will do. I'm stronger than you."
It was like I was a stand-in for Jennifer Connelly, staring down David Bowie, going, "You have no power over me," and everything broke apart.
And it was the first time I realized I could do it. I could sit at the table. I could pull up a chair. I could be me.
I am incredibly strong. I have done incredible things. I am fucking amazing.
When I got home, I found a package waiting in front of my door, which I did not open until after my run, because I had a feeling it would take away some of my piss and vinegar.
Jeff Vandermeer, cool writer extraordinare (I've gushed oodles of times about his Dradin, In Love here), wrote to me when I said I was taking time off, and said he was sending over a galley copy of his new book, Shriek, and some "goodies."
You know, the galley copy would have been enough to leave me hopping around my apartment. I can't even list everything else he sent me, but it includes a copy of Secret Life, which I was supposed to fucking buy three months ago, and his non-fiction collection, and a friendly plastic squid (long story), and.. and... it's just fucking amazing. It's the best present I've ever gotten, and he signed all of the books he sent that are his, and they are fucking beautiful, and I want to wander around the apartment just carrying them, it's so damned wonderful.
And you know, it's so funny, with these blogs, with public writing, with just bitching into space, because most of the time, you just feel like you're talking to yourself, and it doesn't mean a damn thing to anybody, and nobody but you could give a shit, and then the good people - not the fucking psychos, but the good people, and there are a lot of you - e-mail you and think about you, and you worry about them, and you think for just this one starry, pretty moment, "Wow, not everybody in the world is a fucktard."
And, of course, you get up in the morning and start over again, but you know, right then, right now, it's like people and life are the best things... well, the best things in the whole world. Seeings as they, you know, make it what it is.
I just love everybody tonight.
Well, maybe not the psychos. But the rest of you all are damn fucking cool.
Monday, January 31, 2005
It is a Fantastic Night For Piss and Vinegar, My Starry Chiklits!
Why Is it That I Attract Psychos?
I seem to attract a certain type of psycho, like moth to flame.
It goes something like this: boys crawling toward me, prostrate, talking about how they're not worthy of my glorious time and attention. They scream and cry and reach for me and go, "Strong, smart woman! Fix me! Nurture me! Tell me what to do! FIX ME! LOVE ME! I worship you! WHAT? You don't LIKE me? You can't FIX me? I HATE you! I'm going to FUCKING KILL YOU!!"
I so know this script.
Do they believe that I have some sort of Life Secret that they don't?
Do they believe I will act as some sort of big-hipped earth mother and pet away their woes (far, far, too many men with an interest in me are looking for absent mothers)?
Do they believe they can latch onto me and steal some of my spit and fire and hoard it for themselves?
Do they believe I'm a "fixer"?
Here's the deal, boys: I don't fix people. If you open up a conversation by trying to rip something out of me to bolster your own ego, your own fragile sense of self at the expense of mine, it's not gonna go well. Been there, done that. I don't take boys under my wing and baby them and raise them like fledgling chicks. I don't believe you attach yourself to somebody and then figure out all of the things you're going to "fix" about them. You've got the strength to get your shit together, or you don't. And you work at it every damn day. And you don't use people as crutches. You don't steal other people's souls cause you don't have one. Period. The end. You're a fucking adult. Figure out your damn life. Don't try and steal mine.
I am not a self-help guru. I don't know any more about life than you do.
So please, all you wonderful boys and borderline psychos out there, don't grovel toward me like I'm the Female Jesus Christ. I know exactly what tomorrow's flip side will be. Do not lay hold and scream, "FIX ME!" because the blood and guts on the floor when you're done aren't going to be mine.
Get your own shit together.
Feminism isn't a fucking dating service.
Writing Today
Been a while since I did any of that, huh? I'm pretty backlogged, and I miss writing. I miss my people.
If I go two or three months without writing anything substantial, I get a little weird... and I've been weird the last couple weeks.
Oddly, writing fantasy novels helps keeps me level. I think I've just been doing it for so long that I can't imagine life without it.
Blame it All on my Buddy Julian, for Sending the Link
Check out, "The Drugs Song."
It's one of those "useless bullshit" mornings here in Chicago...
Ha. Ha. Those Pesky Girls
Fascinating article.
A couple of things: yea, at some point, encouraging people to have one kid and having a premium on having boys, you're eventually going to get into trouble. I was wondering when they'd have to start addressing it:
There is such a glut of boys here - roughly 134 are born for every 100 girls - that the imbalance has forced an unlikely response from the Chinese government. To persuade more families to have girls, it has decided in some cases to pay families that already have daughters.
And, check out this bit at the end of the quoted text, especially, for something very familiar:
On a recent afternoon here in southeastern China, hundreds of students in the dirt courtyard of Lanxi Middle School held a parade rehearsal. The school goes through 12th grade, and about 60 percent of students in the higher grades are male. The marchers, mostly boys, waved flags and kicked dust in the air beside a billboard promoting the latest propaganda campaign: Respect Girls...
Mr. Hu said the exhibition room was supposed to build the self-esteem of girls, though it also seemed intended to impress visiting officials. Still, he said that young women were now eligible for college scholarships and that the number of recent female graduates attending college jumped to 271 in 2004 from 149 in 2003.
Lin Lingling, 18, a plucky senior who has hopes for college, is one of the stars of the program. "They say boys are good at logical things, so when they enter into high school, they say some of them are a lot better," said Ms. Lin, a top student. "But we are the same."
I'm concerned that "encouraging" people to have girls means not only stuff like the above, which is... cool, though worrisome because they feel they need to do it (and they're right), but also by giving families money for having girls. This feels a lot like equating women with property, how many cows are you worth?
Ah, memories, party in South Africa, guy turning to me, "How many cows do you think you're worth?"
Oh, man. Joking or not. Oh, man.
