Jenn and I were lying in bed the other night, reading. The window was open, the room was cool; it was a lovely spring night. I'd gotten some writing done; she'd been working diligently all week on a bunch of psych studies for her doctoral thesis.
I turned to her and said, "It's nice to be happy. I don't think I ever really knew what a normal relationship was like."
For the first time in my life, I feel like I'm dating an adult. Our biggest arguments revolve around stuff like who gets to use the 30% off coupon at Borders and whether or not we'll watch another episode of Babylon 5.
I tended to end up with guys who had mother issues. I got to fill in as Mom; if they could convince themselves that I loved them, then maybe it would make up for the absent or abusive mothers they had in their past. It's nice to be wanted and loved, but all that wanting and love starts to suffocate when you realize that you've gotten emmeshed with someone who's an emotional black hole. No matter how much you love them, no matter how often you say it, no matter how much you try and change your behavior because they find it abhorrent, you'll always be the bad guy. You'll always be the terrible mother figure. You'll never do or be enough, no matter the contortions you engage in.
So to be in a relationship with someone who's emotionally stable, has a normal family life, and doesn't try and claw you into pieces so that they feel better is a new experience. It's strange to have long weeks of total happiness without emotional freak-outs or strange, sudden emotional reversals. I spent so long in relationships where somebody screaming or crying all the time was the norm that I had no idea that it was possible to have a relationship where you could just be happy... and have the luxery of engaging in arguments about Borders coupons.
If you date a crazy person, you eventually become a crazy person too.
I'd always wanted to date someone I thought was my equal, somebody who was my buddy, and that's exactly what this relationship is. And... we're getting things done. So much work is getting done in this house. There are no screaming fights, no sobbing fits, no work-tradeoffs so we can spend three or four hours calming the other one down from some perceived slight. We can tackle each other and harrass each other and read books and quote from things and write books and stay late working on various projects as needed without worrying about what the emotional fall out will be if our actions are misinterpreted. If I'm having a bad night and want to go to bed, I can say I'm having a bad night and want to go to bed, and Jenn doesn't accuse me of hating her (and vice versa).
Since we both came out of relationships with partners where one didn't take such things for granted, it's been a revelation to realize that that's *not* how relationships have to be. The problem was, Jenn and I had done so little dating that we weren't sure how "hard" a relationship should be. How much fighting and exhaustion and depression and counseling and hysteria should you put up with before you realize you and your partner aren't compatible?
Because it's not only Jenn and I who are doing much better since our breakups (we were both the ones who did the breaking). Our respective exes are doing a hell of a lot better as well. They hate us (mine especially hates me), but they're doing way, way better than they were when they were dating us.
I'm so happy I made the right decision. If my ex has to hate me and paint me into the Big Bad Monster from his childhood in order to deal with the breakup, that's OK, because that's how he has to get through it, and he's been doing a lot better since. I hope things continue to go well for him.
As for me, I'm loving life. I'm loving springtime. The tree outside my window has put on its leaves, I just bought some tomato plants, and my backstoop garden is looking lovely (particularly the morning glories). Wiscon is coming up, my buddy Patrick and his family will be here soon, God's War is clipping along nicely once again, I cleaned out my closet so I've now only got clothes that acutally *fit* me in there, I'm reading lots of books, and have I mentioned how lovely spring is?
What a terrible thing stress and depression are.
I really don't want to box myself in like that ever again. I don't want to live in a world covered over in the gray gauze of depression, or suffer long stress-induced illnesses.
I need to figure out the life I want and live that. I can't try to live the life I think will make someone else happy, or the life I think other people think will make me happy.
Deep breath.
Springtime.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Spring is Arrived!
Thursday, May 04, 2006
So *That's* What That Thing Is
The Indianapolis Airport has one of those GE "puffer" machines. It's not neccessarily used in secondary security screenings as happened to this woman - I've been through it the last two times I headed back to Chicago. It was the shortest line, so I stepped into it.
Here's what it is:
GE Ion Track's revolutionary walk-through portal quickly screens people for contraband without physical contact. Thanks to our patented Ion Trap Mobility Spectrometer (ITMS®) technology, EntryScan3 detects a wider range of explosives and narcotics with unprecedented sensitivity. It is the ideal complement to X-ray and metal detectors.
For higher throughput, visible and audible commands streamline checkpoints by automatically directing passengers to enter or leave the portal. If traces of explosives or narcotics are detected-or a person leaves before being prompted-EntryScan3 instantly sounds an alarm to facilitate rapid containment.
"To facilitate rapid containment."
Oh, how I love techno-terror-babble.
Here's what it looks like:
The "puffs" of air are just like those puffs you have to get when they check your eyes for.. what is it? Cataracts or something. Not terribly pleasant.
It's an odd, science-fictional little machine. You have to stand there inside the machine and wait for it to blast you with air. Then wait some more for the voice to tell you you're "allowed" to step out.
Just one more fun contrapment to run us all through so we'll feel more safe and secure under the watchful eye of Big Brother.
Perhaps it's better than drug-sniffing dogs and AK-47s.
Perhaps.
Haircut
I had a first-generation Ukrainian cut my hair yesterday (I work with a ton of first-generation Ukrainians at work - Yellow is 2nd generation Ukrainian - so I'm pretty good at pegging the accent. Sadly, I don't know any Ukrainian words however), and I think there may have been a bit of a language barrier involved in me understanding what she thought I saying I wanted, and I ended up with a haircut that makes me look like one of the original 70s Charlie's Angels, only shorter (I told Jenn, "I have Farrah hair. Dear God.")
Hopefully it'll grow out a little before Wiscon. I look so dorky.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
God's War: Excerpt
Rhys wiped the grit from the windows inside the bus with the already dirty end of his burnous. The clasp mechanism at the top of his window was broken; hot air and red dust blew in from the road and covered Rhys is a fine mist. He pulled his burnous over his nose and mouth. Red ants crawled along the floor. He kept wiping them from his boots. A man in a blue turban sat next to him, clinging to a carpet bag with arthritis-knotted hands. Rhys wanted to take the man’s hands in his and sooth them, but healing without permission got Chenjan magicians killed. Black-clad women sat three to a seat in the back of the bus, juggling luggage and children in their laps. The front was nearly empty. A few old men with wisps of gray hair and a young man just old enough to enter combat training took up a few seats.
Rhys didn’t know why the man with the turban sat next to him when there were so many empty seats, not until the man started speaking.
“I don’t see many men on the roads,” the old man said. “Not whole men, anyway. I sit alone in the opium houses. Some of them are run by widows now, did you know? Have you come from the fighting?”
“No,” Rhys said. “I keep a family in Dadfar.” He supposed Nyx and her bloody crew were something like a family.
“Is that so? How many sons do you have?”
“Just the one,” Rhys said, and thought of his father.
“Just one? Just one? A great misfortune, many men would say. You must punish your wives, or take another.”
“It is not their fault alone,” Rhys said. Most rural men still believed that women had some control over the sex of their children, and bore girls for spite. Even the men who knew better still clung to the old superstitions. It gave them someone to blame for their misfortunes. Someone besides God.
The turbaned man tapped his head and pushed up the blue turban to reveal a bald head. One half of the visible bald skull was a pale green. His head must have been blown apart at the front. Organic fixes often replaced missing or shattered skull bones.
“You see this? Too many boys in my family. I was first to the front,” the man said.
“And the rest of your brothers?”
The man readjusted the turban, crinkled his face. “Twenty brothers in all. Gone now. All gone.”
“Yes,” Rhys said. He thought of all the men at the front. Thought of the genocide of an entire gender. He waved his hands over his boots again, and the ants obediently dropped off. But they would be back. Red ants were notoriously finicky bugs to work with.
Bahreha lay in a wide river valley about thirty-five kilometers east of Dadfar. The bus wound down a low rise of mountains and looked out over the wasted river plain. Rhys’s father had shown him pictures of Bahreha before the first wave of bombings. Bahreha had been a desert oasis, one of the big trade centers along the border. What little trade from Nasheen that came down the river now consisted of shipments of red and black goods. They came in under the cover of darkness and departed in the same manner. Bahreha sold more slaves and illegal organics than it did bread and corn and lapis. The great palms that once shaded the river had been cut or burned, and the tremendous tiled fountains of the market and government districts were broken and dry. The green parks where children once played were now sandy brown lots infested with small dogs and feral cats and refugees.
The bus pulled into a busy transit station packed with informal taxis, bakkies, and rickshaws. Vendors dressed in colorful but tattered clothing swarmed the bus when it arrived and pushed fried chicken, hunks of bread, hard candies, and more useless items at the passengers as they disembarked – shampoos, bath caps, costume jewelry, fake leather belts and cheap cloth for turbans. A couple of creepers lurked at the edges of the crowds carrying their big nets and collections of bugs in little wooden cages.
Rhys pushed through the heaving tide and started walking through the center of the ruined city toward the riverfront. Ten years before, he would not have dreamed of walking through this city. His mother would have wailed at the thought. The city was full of Chenjeens, Nasheenian refugees, and Chenjan draft-dodgers, a seething mass of the unemployed and the unemployable. The few businesses still open had security guards with muzzled cats on leashes posted out front. Those businesses retired from service entirely had heavy grates over the windows and wasp swarms humming just behind the barred doors. Rhys could feel them.
Rhys walked the two kilometers to the riverfront high rises. Two decades before, the buildings were the most sought-after property in Bahreha. Inside their now barred courtyards, overgrown thorn bushes hid the blasted patterns of old succulent gardens.
Rhys buzzed at the gate of a wind-scoured building that needed a new coat of paint and a long visit from an exterminator. Geckos skittered in and out of crevices along the outside of the building, shielded by thorn bushes, and colonies of red ants pooled out all along the foundation.
He buzzed twice more before a tinny voice answered, “Who’s there?”
Rhys hesitated. “Am I speaking to Abdul-Nasser?”
There was a long pause.
“You an order keeper?”
“No. Kin.”
Another pause. Then, “Come in quickly.”
The gate swung open.
Rhys crossed the dead courtyard and went up a set of wooden steps. Someone had applied new paint to the center of the steps, but neglected the edges. Under the awning at the corner of the building, down a short open corridor, was door number 316. Rhys raised his hand to the buzzer, but the door cracked open before he pressed it.
Rhys saw half a face, one dark, weeping eye peering out at him. The cloying, too-sweet stink of opium wafted out into the corridor, mixed with the old, heavy smell of tobacco.
“Rakhshan,” the old man said.
Rhys felt something stir at the name. No one had called him that in nearly a decade.
“Abdul-Nasser Arjoomand?”
“Hush. Come in.” Abdul opened the door just enough for Rhys to squeeze past him. The room was dim, and Rhys paused a moment in the door to wait for his pupils to dilate. Yellow gauze covered the windows.
He heard the door close behind him, and turned to see Abdul bolting it with three heavy bars. After, Abdul swept his hands over the bars, and a stir of red beetles swarmed the edges of the doorway.
“Now we can speak privately,” Abdul said, and offered his hands to Rhys. Rhys took them.
The sockets of Abdul’s black eyes seemed to sag in his lined face, like an old dog’s. The sleeves of his threadbare tunic were pushed up, so when Rhys took his hands he saw old and new bruises on the man’s wrists and forearms.
“You’re still taking venom,” Rhys said.
Abdul shrugged, but he pulled away his hands and pushed down the sleeves of his tunic. “You know what I need for my work,” Abdul said.
“I do,” Rhys said.
The little one-room flat was a ruckus of equipment; bits of old consoles and bug-pans, piles of disintegrating boxes and papers, worm-eaten books, tangles of leaking wires and cracked bottles of organic feed and roach fluid. Bug cages and aquariums took up one entire wall. Dead locusts littered the floor. The dim lighting was in part due to the strain on the room’s internal grid – most of the power was being re-routed to the water pumps that fed the frogs, cicadas, markflies, turtles, tadpoles, waterskimmers, and multitudes of fish in various states of living and dying that clogged the aquariums.
“How have you faired? Let me get you something,” Abdul said. “Tea, something.”
“Thank you,” Rhys said.
Abdul wended his way around the cluttered room to the wall of the kitchen. Dishes overflowed in the tiny sink. Flies circled the dirty plates. When Rhys followed after Abdul to help with the tea, he saw something crawling in the sink, and saw that the damp, filthy plates bred maggots.
“Maybe we can just sit and talk,” Rhys said.
Abdul shook his head. His hair was tucked under a turban, so Rhys did not have to look at the state of it, but he did stink, as if he did not wash even for the abulation.
“No,” Abdul said. “I am still civilized. We must have tea.”
He clattered around, rinsed out a dirty tea pot, and tried to get the fire bugs in his hot plate to stir.
In the end, the tea was lukewarm, in dirty cups, set on a tea table that had once been a com counter. There were no chairs. They sat on old cushions that stank of dogs.
“So you are a magician now,” Abdul said. “Those old women took you in?”
“They did.”
“No doubt they agreed with what you did.”
Rhys sighed. “It was some time ago.”
“Yes. I have not seen your father since.”
“Have you been to Chitra?”
“A time or two.
“You’ve seen my sisters?”
“Yes, all married now.”
“To whom?”
“Best I can recall, a local magistrate. The one who mooned over them.”
“Nikou Bahman. The one my father hated.”
“Yes, that man.”
Rhys stared at the tea. He could not bring himself to drink it. He kept thinking of the maggots in the sink.
“He already had three wives,” Rhys said.
“Did you expect it would go differently? Your sisters were disgraced when you did not burn Jarerah for her crimes. She had to set herself on fire just to save the others. Your father nearly burned them all. He thought no one would take them, not even as a fourth or fifth wife.”
Rhys took a deep breath. “But they married.”
“Yes.”
“Good. Children?”
“All boys. You have four nephews.” Abdul picked up his tea, but did not drink it. His hands trembled. “But you did not come to me for that. Not after ten years.”
“No,” Rhys said. He pulled the transmission canisters from his tunic pocket and set them on the table. “I need to read these. Our com man may have died for them.”
Abdul set down his tea and took one of the rectangles into his hand. He rubbed it between thumb and forefinger, pressed it to his ear and shook it.
“Ah,” he said. “This is expensive.” He bit it. “This is government. Nasheenian.”
“Can you read it?”
“Yes.” Abdul stood and went to a tangle of equipment at the far end of the aquarium wall. He unpacked some material, uncovered a com console, and inserted the rectangle into the panel. He tapped out a signal to the chittering bugs in the console.
Rhys got up and stood next to him.
A strong female voice bled out from the speakers.
“Don’t tell anyone,” she said, “what I’m about to tell you…”
They listened to both canisters.
“Can you get me a transcription of this?” Rhys asked with a growing sense of dread as Nyx’s dead sister spun out her plan.
Abdul pressed a button on the console. “Put your hand here,” he told Rhys, and Rhys put his hand on the faceplate next to the printer button. He felt a soft prickling on his hand.
Blank organic paper began to roll out of the console.
“It will respond only to your touch,” Abdul said. “I’ve locked it as well, for forty-eight hours. It won’t open until then. Keep it close until you need it. I hope you have a trustworthy employer.”
Rhys stared at the paper as it came out of the machine, even as Kine’s voice continued to speak to him about how she would destroy his country.
“What sort of trouble have you gotten yourself into?” Abdul muttered, staring at the speakers as if the voice would take on human form and step from the machine so he could throttle her.
“More than I know,” Rhys said. “You’ll destroy these transmissions?”
“Oh yes. The moment it’s done transcribing. You best not stay long.”
“I’m sorry, uncle,” Rhys said.
“You were bound for trouble. Born under an inauspicious star, your mother said.”
“Have you seen my mother?”
“No.”
“But she’s all right?”
“Why did you come back here now, after ten years, to ask such questions?”
The printer stopped. Abdul tucked the papers into a leather case and handed them to Rhys.
“This is important,” Rhys said. “You heard what this woman said. I need to get this back to my employer and decide what we’re going to do with it.”
“Your employer is Nasheenian,” Abdul said.
“Think what you will,” Rhys said. He tucked the leather case into his satchel. “I should go. I said I wouldn’t be long.”
“Said that to a woman? How old are you, Rakhshan?”
“You sound like my father.”
Abdul grunted. He rubbed at his arms. “Eh,” he said.
Rhys moved to the door. He waved the red roaches away and unbolted the doors.
Abdul stayed close behind. Rhys could smell him. Rhys turned, looked into his uncle’s weeping eyes.
“I did the right thing,” Rhys said.
Abdul said, “That is between you and God.”
Rhys gripped the old man’s arms. “Stay away from the venom,” he said.
“Be careful among the women,” Abdul said.
Rhys made to pull away, but Abdul held him.
“And know this,” Abdul said. “You are our last boy, the only one with our name. Whatever you do, whatever you need, you come to me. Ten hours or ten years from now.”
“I know, uncle,” Rhys said.
“Good.” Abdul released him and quickly shut the door.
Rhys pressed his hand to his satchel and the transcription, reassuring himself it was still there. He started back down the corridor and down the open stair.
He walked back to the taxi ranks. The call sounded for afternoon prayer, and he found the mosque nearest the ranks and knelt. He unrolled the prayer rug from his back. After, he went for lunch at a Mhorian restaurant that served kosher food. The afternoon heat kept the crowds away from the taxi ranks, and after lunch he sat out under the shade of the weather stalls at the ranks and waited.
He read from The Good Book. A bus pulled up ahead of him. When he looked at the sign in the window, he saw that it was headed for Chitra.
Rhys stared at the bus. He thought of what his mother would say if she saw him. Would she merely ignore him? Shriek? Turn away? He wanted to think that she would open her arms to him and invite him to her table. She would cook a heavy meal - eight dishes - and his father would come home and laugh and smoke and tell him how proud he was to have a magician for a son.
He enjoyed the fantasy.
“Rhys Dax?”
He stirred from his dream, then jerked himself awake. It was dangerous to fall asleep in public, even while sitting on your purse.
Rhys squinted up at the big figure in front of him. He did not recognize him. Two more dark figures stood off to the man’s right. Rhys saw very little. The sun was directly behind them.
“What do you want?” Rhys asked, raising his hand to his brow. “I think you have me mixed up with someone else.”
“No, I don’t think so,” the big man said.
Rhys’s fingers twitched. He prepared to call a swarm of wasps.
“Let’s not be hasty,” one of the other figures said, and something rolled toward him, blew smoke.
Rhys coughed and raised his hands.
The big man grabbed him by the burnous and dragged him to his feet. Rhys reached for his pistols, but the man twisted both Rhys's arm neatly behind him.
“So you’re her beautiful boy,” the big man said. “I don’t see you much at the Cage. Thought you were just a rumor.”
“You’re mistaken –“ Rhys began.
“No, I think not,” Raine said. “Let us see if she cares any more for you than she does her little half-breed boy.”
The Writing Life
Logged a couple of rejections this week, both for stories that are very good but hard to find a home for. I may need to start throwing one of them toward horror markets. May be a better fit there.
On the other side, I received my check and my contract from Strange Horizons (Oh, how I love SH, sending a check *with* the contract, and stamping the SAE! Near and dear to my heart). At least half of all my writing money from now on goes into savings, so there's another $70 toward the moving fund.
Working on God's War today while I format CDs for the day job.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Back @ Work
Written a chapter of God's War today, so far.
Looks like I might finish this book someday.
Oh yay.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Salary.com
According to Salary.com, I'm getting paid about $10,000 a year less than the national average for the job position I hold.
Oh, gee, yay.
Why does this not surprise me?
Clawing Up From Depression, Or: Getting it All Together
Jenn and I lolled around in bed yesterday talking until nearly 2:30 in the afternoon - she's been busy running psych studies and analyzing data until 10pm, and I spend two days a week in Indianapolis, so we needed the catch-up time.
Today, I reorganized my room so it's more work-condusive - put a bunch of bins full of old novels and stories into K's old room, which we're using for storage (that's where my 30 years of National Geographics ended up). I love my new room set-up. I have the smallest room in the house, which meant that for nearly a year I've had a desk where I can't pull out the chair all the way because it kept hitting the bed.
Cleaned up my balcony garden today as well, putting all the lemon balm with the lemon balm and the basil with the basil. I'm proudest of my pot of morning glories, which look like they're boiling over the pot and getting ready to burst. I love gardening. It's incredibly relaxing watching little seeds grow up into these lush, vibrant garden that takes over the entire outdoor table.
I was walking up and down the stairs today, doing laundry (the washer and dryer are in the basement), and thinking about how much easier it was to get up the stairs, to think about doing this mundane task, and I realized again how depressed I'd been for so long, how stressed, and subsequently, how sick. After much thought, pain, irritation, and many PP visits, I've also finally decided to get my IUD removed.
I hate this idea, and put off the decision to remove it for nearly a year - but the infections and irritation aren't going away, and I only have about 7 days a month where I can have sex comfortably. When I only saw my partner once a month, I could work around this. I could justify all the pain and the stress from walking around in a constant state of discomfort. I just can't justify it anymore. I'm not looking forward to another painful, bloody visit, but once it's done, it's done. How I'll negotiate contraception in the future, I don't know, but for now, I'll take a normally functioning vagina that I don't want to claw out two weeks in every four. I can't do pain and itching anymore. It's not worth it. Jenn and I plan to part when she graduates and I get a job elsewhere next year (it's not likely we'll find good jobs in the same cities), so what I'll do after that, well, that's a time away yet.
For now, I'm just tired of hurting and bleeding all the time.
In the meantime, things are looking up. The IUD is out in 18 days, tDW is out to readers, and I'm contemplating what's going wrong in the last 40 pages of God's War that's keeping me from pushing through. As my buddy Patrick's pointed out, it's also time to start getting my application materials ready for Gaming Company, so I'm looking through short stories and getting back into video game playing (ah, research).
I'm also starting to make notes for Over Burning Cities, the next book in the fantasy saga, and going over several of the early chapters and cleaning them up.
My buddies Stephanie and Ian should be heading down here around the 4th of July, and Patrick and his family are coming down the week before Wiscon; it's going to be great to have people in the house. I'm looking forward to it.
In the meantime, Jenn and I are going to finish up another episode of Babylon 5, eat some macoroni, and then I'm packing things up for another couple work days in Indy...
Send Somebody to Clarion
When I got accepted to Clarion, I wrote letters to every single friend and relative I had and begged for money.
Yes. I did. I begged for money.
I do not regret it.
I got to Clarion, and had plenty of pocket money besides. Clarion is the SF/F workshop. You get about 2 years of writing experience in 6 weeks. You beg, borrow, and steal to get there. It can change your life. You meet amazing people, amazing writers.
And it'd be a shame to miss out on the experience for purely financial reasons.
Be a dear and help get somebody else there. All he needs is $20 from 125 people.
I put in $20.
I don't think you'll regret it.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
This Is So My Internal Writing Mantra
I love writing fantasy epics. Really, I do.
(via Elizabeth Bear)
Let's Talk About Sex
After all, it's the theme of the latest Big Fat Carnival.
I take a perverse delight in watching all those reality plastic surgery shows where (mostly) women mutilate their bodies in the hopes of attaining beauty and "self confidence." These shows are set in places like Miami where "looking good naked" and having breasts that stand at attention without the aid of a bra are considered the holy grail of bodily perfection. Because we live in a Christian-based society where the outward appearance of the body is supposed to mirror our moral purity (EDIT: I have been schooled. This is not [duh] a Christian belief. It's actually very Greek. I think I was in Christian-rant mode after reading that ridiculous "frozen orange juice makes you a whore" post. My apologies to my Christian readers who, like me, have taken art history classes and know better. I would argue, however, that denying the body food is historically a Christian practice illustrating one's devotion and sacrifice to God, as documented in Holy Feast, Holy Fast.), it makes sense that so many people would seek perfection of body and soul at the edge of a knife.
Oh how I love these shows. One of the more popular surgeries, now that gastric bypass has become so popular, is the excising of loose skin. You get women who've been anywhere from 250 to 500 lbs going into surgery and getting great slabs of themselves removed. The doctor will hold up this massive peice of belly flesh and jiggle it in front of the camera, then lay it out on a tray so you can look it over. When you get a hunk of your midsection taken out, they have to re-sew you a new "cute" belly button. While he's at it, one Miami surgeon also likes to take out some of the vaginal "fat" just above the vagina because "so many women hate it."
You know, I've noticed a lot of fat on my body, but never have I paused to think about whether or not my vagina is too fat.
Losing weight also means losing breast tissue. I know this well. I was a full C for some time, and now I'm very near a B. This leaves your breasts a bit droopy - you know, like you might be, say 26 or 36 and not 15. To "fix" this "problem" many women also go in for breast lifts and implants at the same time they excise their "extra" skin.
They come out looking pretty damn good, depending on the surgeon. In a year or two, most of their scars are supposed to fade, and it'll be like they were never fat or droopy at all. They'll be perfect plastic people. This "fixing" of the body's "imperfections" is supposed to give them tons of self confidence and alter the way they walk into a room, the way they think of themselves, their SAT scores... Oh, sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself.
Here's the secret that every fat girl should understand right now:
You're the same person at a size 2, 12, or 22. Losing the weight doesn't mean you automatically have more self confidence or a better swagger. These are things you have to work on every bit as hard as anything else in your life. Getting lipo or a breast lift doesn't make you any more interesting at cocktail parties, though we sure wish it would.
I ditched 20 lbs between 8th and 9th grade because my hormones were raging and I was tired of not having a boyfriend. Nobody looked at me. The guys who were interested in me were too terrified to be more than friends. That was their loss, not mine. But at the time, I didn't know that. I acted like a fat girl. I acted ashamed of the way I looked. I believed I wasn't attractive.
So that's the way the world looks at you.
Ditching 20 lbs, I thought, was what made more people look. However, it may just have been high school. Cause lots of people a lot heavier than me were getting laid too.
I was a little terrified about sex not so much because of the pain or the emotional crap (I'm not terribly emotional on the surface) but because I'd grown up believing I was too fat to be attractive. I watched tv. I knew what "beautiful" women looked like. I believed that wasn't me, and because that wasn't me, I had no value.
This was probably when I first started becoming a little obsessed about weight. Me, my brother and my sister had always had weight "problems." Several asshat relatives pointed out these "weight problems" to us and our parents all the time. One Aunt and Uncle went so far, I believe, to say that raising us the way my parents had was tantamout to child abuse, and they would *never* raise *their* children that way.
I started getting weird about food. I'd eat once or twice a day that first year of highschool, and not very much. It was typical highschool fare - a slimfast for breakfast, nothing for lunch, a cheeseburger or nachos for dinner while we worked at the theater. Sometimes dinner went out all together and I ate lunch instead. I never really stopped eating - I've tried being anorexic, and it just never worked for me.
It did, however, work for my sister. She stopped eating, blacked out in someone's kitchen one time, and dropped 100 lbs. She put most of it back on when she got pregnant, lost a little after she had the baby, and has been fighting with her weight every day since. She was so happy to get male attention when she dropped weight that she went a little crazy, and some crazy things occured.
Hence, I have a nephew.
heh heh
Which is the other big problem when you raise somebody in a society that tells them they have no worth until they lose weight - when they lose the weight, they believe all the hype, and start looking for their self worth and validation in the penis (or, in the case of one guy I know - the pussy). Dropping weight and increasing one's pool of sexual partners in a rather irresponsible way can often coincide. The problem is, you use the sexual partners to bolster your sense of worth, and that never works.
You've got to get that somewhere else.
That's why I spent five years single.
My brother lost weight about the same time - moving into highschool. He dropped 30 lbs just switching from Pepsi to Diet Pepsi. He dropped another 20 or so by running 3-6 miles every day. He continues running 3-6 miles every day, and is now quite lean. Growing into his 6'0 height helped a lot, too.
We were fat kids.
All three of us. The last time I was at my current weight, I told myself that I would be happy as soon as I lost 20 more pounds. I just had to lose that last 20 pounds.
This is a great way to make sure you're never happy with your body.
My weight obsessions meant my weight has spiked to as high as nearly 270 lbs when I was 18 (depression, bad relationship, being on the pill). Spiked again in South Africa at 230-240 (binge eating, stress). And it comes back down to my set point of 175-180 when I stop obsessing about food (like now).
And still, I have to work a little to stay here. I have to maintain my weight routine, eat enough protein, and pay attention.
Cause I'm a fat girl. And you know what? There's nothing wrong with that. I can beat the crap out of a punching bag a lot better than Paris Hilton can.
So, what happens when you rocket up and down this weight rollercoaster for most of your life?
The same thing that happens to those gastric bypass patients -
You carry your history on your body.
Loose skin, stretch marks. If you get it together when you're young, you may be able to tighten some of this up by weight lifting, but the stretch marks don't go away. Believe me. Rub whatever you want on them. You carry them around. They look like they hurt. They're physical scars. When you lean over, the skin bunches and sags, and everything droops.
My sister, after she'd lost her 100 lbs said, "I feel like I've ruined my body."
My brother has watched my father have a heartattack because of his lack of exercise and bad eating habits. That's not the life my brother wants. It gives him a lot of energy to run those 6 miles every day.
I'm not too keen on dying young either, or falling and breaking my hip, which is what my maternal grandmother did several years ago. Hence my obsession with weight lifting. It's one of the best ways to build and preserve bone mass.
The asthetics are a nice bonus.
But losing weight doesn't mean that I look like Paris Hilton. I won't be putting out a sex tape.
But I don't avoid sex either.
High weight, I realized, didn't mean I had less of a sex drive. Sure, I felt worse about myself - but a lot of that was media talking. The same people who were attracted to me at a 12 were attracted to me at a 22. The only one who had a problem with the weight was me.
I'm still considered a fat girl by current standards, and a rather ruined fat girl at that. I have a lot of body history. I've got lots of odd bumps and scars. My flesh is not smooth and unblemished. Everything I've been through, you can see it on my body.
And when I look at those surgery shows, I wonder if that's what's really going on: we're trying to escape our history, who we are, what we've been through, as if erasing that from our bodies will make us as smooth and unblemished as our skin.
We can pretend the times we believed were "bad" never happened. We can pretend we were somebody else. We can believe that no one loved us until we excised our history from our bodies.
It's such a wonderful fantasy.
It's wonderful because it gives us the illusion of starting over. It gives us the illusion of youth and confidence without going through the personal journey that most of us need in order to achieve that. It doesn't make us smarter or teach us new skills. You get the Christian-martyr pain out of it, and the fake baptizmal rebirth; rebirth through pain.
But you don't learn how to kickbox. You don't learn French. You don't become an expert pianist.
Maybe getting this "new" body will inspire you to be better. Maybe so. And if so, that's great.
But what inspires me to be better is looking at all that history, knowing where I've come from, seeing how far I've gone and how much further I have to go.
Because I have other scars, too. I have scars on my fingers from sword fighting in high school theater. I have a scar from when my cousin threw glass at me when I was eight. I have scars from when I tried to throw my cat into my wading pool. I've still got that goddamn scar from the first time I tried to shave my legs.
And I don't find those scars any more or less attractive than my stretch marks, my slightly droopy breasts, the extra skin I can pull away from my arms.
For all my imperfections, I haven't lacked for partners. The trick is, I only wanted the partners when I felt confident in myself.
I don't believe that excising my history would make me any more confident. Perhaps it would strip something away, but all of the stripping away would be external.
If you want to start over, start again, that starts from somewhere else, somewhere deep - a place you can't reach with a knife.
tDW Final Counts:
I'll do some more trimming for the final version, I'm sure, but I was doing counts last night, and here's where it stands:
Initial version completed May 2003: 202,183 words
Next version completed 2004: 183,000 words
Version that went out to agents: 141,465 words
Current version: 118,872 words
120K is a decent count for an epic fantasy. 140K was pushing it.
I do, however, love the idea that I basically cut 60K from the first version: I took out the equivalent of an entire book.
Revision fascinates me.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Wow, the IRS Cashes Checks Faster Than My Bank Does
And yet, this doesn't surprise me.
In any case, finally sat down and opened up a savings account. Also paid my bills today: $400 in credit card payments and $300 in student loans.
And I wonder where the money's going?
I'll be putting aside $50 per paycheck to start, which is $100 a month, which isn't huge, but hey, gotta start somewhere.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Out
tDW is now out to my second round of readers.
I shall go collapse now.
Tomorrow....
God's War.
And, likely, some more outlining for Over Burning Cities, fantasy saga book 2, which is already in progress.
The New Pink Album
Buy it. Now.
It's good.
Trust me.
"Leave Me Alone (I'm Lonely)"
Go away
Give me a chance to miss you
Say goodbye
It'll make me want to kiss you
I love you so
Much more when you're not here
Watchin all the bad shows
Drinking all of my beer
I don't believe Adam and Eve
Spent every goddamn day together
If you give me some room there will be room enough for two
Tonight
Leave me alone I'm lonely
Alone I'm lonely
I'm tired
Leave me alone I'm lonely
Alone I'm lonely tonight
I don't wanna wake up with another
But I don't wanna always wake up with you either
No you can't hop into my shower
All I ask for is one ***kin' hour
You taste so sweet
But I can't eat the same thing every day
Cuttin off the phone
Leave me the ***k alone
Tomorrow I'll be beggin' you to come home
Tonight
Leave me alone I'm lonely
Alone I'm lonely
I'm tired
Leave me alone I'm lonely
Alone I'm lonely tonight
Go away
Come back
Go away
Come back
Why can't I just have it both ways
Go away
Come back
Go away
Come back
I wish you knew the difference
Go away
Come back
Go away
Give me a chance to miss you
Say goodbye
It'll make me want to kiss you
Go away
Give me a chance to miss you
Say goodbye
It'll make me want to kiss you
Go away
Give me a chance to miss you
Say goodbye
It'll make me want to kiss you
Tonight
Leave me alone I'm lonely
Alone I'm lonely
I'm tired
Leave me alone I'm lonely
Alone I'm lonely tonight
Tonight
Leave me alone I'm lonely
Alone I'm lonely
I'm tired
Leave me alone I'm lonely
Alone I'm lonely tonight
Tonight
Go away
Give me a chance to miss you
Leave me alone I'm lonely
Alone I'm lonely
Say goodbye
It'll make me want to kiss you
I'm tired
Go away
Give me a chance to miss you
Leave me alone I'm lonely
Alone I'm lonely
Say goodbye
It'll make me want to kiss you
Tonight
Go away
Give me a chance to miss you
Say goodbye
It'll make me want to kiss you
Getting My Money Together
I have $25 left in my account.
I do this every month.
I've been reading a book about mistakes women make about money (yea, yea, but honestly, read up on it. I do believe women have been trained to view money differently than a lot of men, if only in the way so many women are taught that either men automatically know more about money than they do or that they should just sit around and wait for a guy to take care of them. Not many guys do that), and I found myself perusing the magazine stacks at the airport yesterday looking for more magazines about weight training and nutrition. About halfway through my survey, I realized just how much time and money I've put into figuring out how to eat right and exercise.
And how little time I've put into figuring out how to
1) save money
2) make my money grow (that means investing, etc)
Now that I've got my nutrition and health stuff together, I figure it's time to switch gears and put all that energy I was using for the pursuit of a balanced diet and healthy attitude toward exercise and focus it into money matters. So it's time to read up about money, investing, get my fucking savings account fucking opened this week and set up the paperwork to get money automatically deducted into it, and then to start deciding how I'll invest bits of that once I have loose bits to invest.
Sure, I have a company 401(K) that I put 3% of my income into every month automatically, but that's chump change. I don't want to be one of those writers who has to beg people for money when she gets sick. I want to be financially independent.
I want to be able to take care of myself.
And money is a big part of that.
Surviving Indy
The goal is to leave the office no later than 6pm
Headed to the gym, took a nice long walk to dinner at a mediocre-to-bad cafe of the Bennigan's type called Max & Erma's. Stopped by the grocery store on the way back to buy lunch for today, lots of bottled water, and some rice pudding.
Watched some tv and sank into the best sleep I've had thus far in Indy. Which isn't to say it was great, but I actually *slept,* drug-free.
Have our Tuesday morning meeting at our client's office. Oh, yay. Can you just feel the excitement oozing off the page?
Line edits for tDW are all in. Just need to go through the notes I made, then it's off to readers.
YES.
