Back To The Blog

I stopped blogging for a while, for a few different reasons. First of all, had I written in my blog, as happened in some of my last entries, I would have discussed at length all my hopes and fears about a man I was trying desperately not to love. Which didn’t work, by the way. I didn’t want to share details of his life online any more than I already had, so I stopped writing here. The other reason that I stopped, though, was that I simply didn’t need this outlet for a while. I had someone with whom I could share my deepest fears and greatest triumphs as we lay arm in arm in the dark. Now, to a certain extent, I have lost that.
I still love him with all of my heart. I am still in love with him, too, and those things are different from one another. That distinction, along some serious miscommunication, lack of communication, and over-communication all at once, caused us to take a step away from one another. At the same time that this decision devastated me more than almost anything else in my life ever has, it’s probably a good thing. It’s making me take a good look at what I did right, what I did wrong, and what I thought I could do that I couldn’t do after all. Over time, if it is not fed, the “in love” part will fade. The ways that he changed my life, though, both by what he did for me and just by being the person who he is, ensure that the “love” part will always be there.
I told him that he shouldn’t blame himself. It won’t help unless he blames me too, because nothing in any kind of relationship between two people is ever one-sided. So as much as I want to blame myself, and as much as I want to blame my weight, and my lack of beauty, and my social ineptitude, I can’t. I have to move past all that, like I learned through this relationship to move past so many of my fears and hang-ups, and take an honest look at what really happened. Without divulging too many details, of course. I can’t just hide behind myself anymore.
I did a lot of things right, I think. I shared my secrets and my fears so that they were out in the open. I shared my successes, and shared credit for them with the person who gave me the courage to succeed. I didn’t let myself hide my body, even when I wanted to; I faked confidence so that I wouldn’t seem afraid, and my confidence grew. I grew as a person because I was afraid of not being worthy of him. At the same time, I maintained my sense of self and my independence. I never lost sight of my goals outside of our relationship; instead I used our relationship to strengthen them. I gave honestly, openly, and for all the right reasons, without expecting or asking for anything in return. I tried my very best not to resort to typical female mind games and to almost be my most honest self, and I believe that I succeeded. That may have been part of the problem—I’m pretty sure the mind games were interpreted even though they weren’t there—but still, I avoided petty drama to the fullest extent possible. I let myself enjoy myself, at least in his presence, without worrying too much about the future and the possibility of being hurt. For a while, anyway.
None of that makes me a saint; it merely makes me proud of myself for moving closer to being the person I want to be. I did plenty of things wrong, too. While I am proud of letting myself trust another person not to hurt me, my trust was too strong for the situation. I should have trusted the person to treat me well to the best of his ability without trusting the situation that he was in. I should have communicated more. In the beginning, there was lots of time to talk in bed at night, and long phone conversations, so that I could share my feelings and listen to his. I know that he was honest, and I always believed that he was, too. I’m not sure there is a way to be sure if that was a wise belief, but I hold it still, even if it makes me look naïve.
As our situation grew more tense and some of the communication problems began to arise, our nighttime conversations grew more terse and then disappeared completely. I missed them. That should have been a warning to me that I needed to be more open instead of less, but I am afraid to hear answers I don’t want to hear and I am afraid of confrontation. I made up a lot of excuses for the fact that I could feel him pulling away from me and I made up a lot of excuses for not asking about it. I became very good at making up excuses. I kept telling myself I would do it when the time was right, but I repeatedly convinced myself that the time wasn’t right. I was so afraid of making waves that I almost let myself drown instead of swimming toward the lifeboat of useful communication. That was my biggest mistake.
I should have not been so worried about disrupting the good times, because then the good times might have lasted longer, and I shouldn’t have been so adamant about not adding stress to his life just to ensure that he’d keep me around as a source of serenity. A little stress revolving around me may have made it easier to bring things to a head sooner, or might have made things better. I wish I’d had that little extra bit of confidence. I wish I’d been more able to talk. Some of the problem started, I am sure, when I was feeling afraid and under-confident and instead of being direct with him, I talked to several friends about it (which is normal) on Facebook (which is not ever a good idea), making it all public before he ever knew there was an issue. I shared my feelings from time to time, but it was never verbally. Not after the first couple of months. Instead, I did it through writing long and rambling letters on MySpace. An adult relationship may include, but should never, under any circumstances, rely on communication via an online social networking site. I knew this, I did it anyway, and I regret it. I should have had those conversations in person because it would have been more fair to him, and more fair to me too. My direct questions would have been more difficult to ignore and I would have had the answers I needed a lot sooner, maybe. I might have understood why he was pulling away from me instead of blaming it on all the wrong things. We might have even cleared up the differences between what other people said and what was true, what I said and what he heard, and what he said and what I heard. If that had been the case, things might be different now. Maybe not. Maybe this is just what he wanted or needed. Either way, things would have been cleared up earlier and I would not have been living in fear for so long.
He thought I was way more serious than I was. He didn’t get, and I still don’t know if he gets it, that I understood his situation very well, maybe even better than he understands it. I never wanted a promise. Okay, if I’m being honest, of course I wanted a promise, but I was never under the delusion that I could have one. And I was happy with that. All I wanted was reassurance that maybe, once he had things straightened out in his life, we could be together. Instead of a promise to be with me or to have a particular type or level of relationship, I wanted to know that he wasn’t counting me out. That’s all I wanted. I was happy visiting him once or twice a week or even every other week; it let me have my independence, keep up with my busy life, and still have something to look forward to. I don’t know if a traditional relationship would work for me even if I thought there was any possibility that I could have one; I’m busy and, while I loved nothing more than spending a lazy weekend with him, I like to be busy. I like the way that his house is always full of people, except when I’m trying to gather up the courage to have a serious conversation. I adore his daughter and love spending time with her and have no problem at all staying home rather than going out, or going to places where she is welcome. So many of the things that he perceived as reasons why things can’t work between us are the very reasons that I like him. I love his strong feelings about being a good dad. I like that he worries that he isn’t. I like that he is always there for his friends. I like that his television tastes range from Family Guy to the History Channel and don’t dawdle much in between. I like that he is touchy-feely and I like that he doesn’t have a problem talking about himself, about his thoughts and feelings. I like that he comes up with the silliest and most unique compliments. I like the way he makes me giggle, the way he touches me and makes me feel so completely woman. I wish that his friends, well-intentioned though they were, wouldn’t have made it seem like I was ready to get hitched and move in with him, convinced him that he was leading me on. All I ever wanted was a “maybe it’ll be okay someday.”
I knew that he had a history of cheating himself out of good things in life (and I hope he is being honest when he counts me as one of those good things). I knew that he had a history of being “popular” with women. I knew that he wasn’t the type to settle down. I knew that he was in a difficult situation involving another woman. And I thought that maybe I could be such a positive influence—no, not influence, I didn’t want to change him; I thought that maybe I could have a positive impact on his life—that he would choose to let me in and maybe I would be the one who lasted in the end. I was willing to wait for that, though. I didn’t expect it to come easy and I didn’t expect it to come fast.
I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have let myself believe that I was any different. It’s a mistake a million women make every day. But I have learned. If I am ever so fortunate as to find myself in a burgeoning relationship again, which I am much doubting in my current state of rejection, I will read the signs better and be more honest with myself, I will face my greatest fears more readily, I will share and ask and not shy away from conflict.
I cannot turn away from our friendship and I do not want to. I also, though, don’t want it to seem as though I am pining after a man I cannot have. I am a firm believer in the notion that nothing in life is definite, and just as surely as I didn’t require any definite answers about forever in our friendship or whatever it exactly was that we had, I will not say for sure that I wouldn’t try again. On the other hand, I am also not expecting another chance. I shall do my best to move forward through my tears. But the tears will be many.

I Never Called Myself A Leader

I don't mind being a leader, but I've never decided to take on a leadership role and then made an attempt to do so. Instead, in almost every group I've ever been involved with, I've sort of just fallen into one, or been pushed into one, and it always comes as a bit of a shock to me.

In elementary school, I was certainly never a leader. I was the shy, quiet kid who never talked to anyone but my best friend and my teachers. I didn't lead any groups or cliques at all; in fact, I wasn't even allowed to be a part of any. The closest thing I ever did to being a leader was when I ordered my best friend to play Barbies with me and then told her exactly what her Barbies should "say" as we acted out the storyline I had in my mind. I'm still not sure why I was able to do that; she didn't have to listen to me.

In middle school, I managed to develop a tenuous circle of friends, but I wasn't a leader there, either. In fact, I never saw any of them outside of school, and when I hung out among their ranks in school, I barely dared to speak, much less try to lead. I figured that if no one ever noticed me, they wouldn't suddenly see that I wasn't cool enough to be standing in a circle in the school parking lot with them, waiting for the bell to ring. I stood among them and listened to every word every person had to say, wishing I could have the exciting lives they had and do the things they did and nodding in agreement with everything anyone said, whether or not I agreed. Not the behavior of a leader. On the other hand, my school counselor decided I should be a tutor and so she set me up with a couple of tutoring job during my lunch hours, and so, with those students, I was forced to be a leader. Then she got me into a reading program where a group of us read particular stories and then got together over lunchtime to talk about them. This separated me from the masses and once again put me into a leadership role. She put me in a lot of situations like that, actually, and while I was pleased that she singled me out, I never felt quite comfortable being a leader. And I still don't know what she saw in me, other than that I got good grades and made healthy decisions—say no to drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes, kids!—that made her push me.

In school, if it had been left up to me, I would have sunk quietly into oblivion and gone completely unnoticed. Various teachers got me involved in different clubs and groups, but I didn't put much effort, myself, into it. Still, somehow, I ended up being a leader. Through no effort of my own, I ended up being the secretary of the Spanish Club and a speaker at induction ceremonies in future years, a member of the National Honor Society and a speaker at their induction ceremony, the editor of the literary magazine, a columnist and section editor of the school newspaper, and a section editor for the school yearbook. I also taught Spanish to elementary school students and tutored children in the Indian Education program. I was on the High School Bowl Team. I went to journalism conferences and entered journalism contests. Somehow, even though I didn't feel like I was much of a leader or had any influence at all over anyone at all, I fulfilled several leadership roles. It was bewildering to me.

And the trend continues. I went to one meeting of the county Democratic Party and somehow ended up being the secretary. And as a result, I became the vice chair of the Young Democrats of Delta County, one of the county organizers for President Obama's campaign, and part of the county-wide leadership for Mike Lahti's campaign for State Senate and Jocelyn Benson's campaign for Secretary of State. I joined a local writers' association and ended up becoming the vice president when I was a third of the age of almost all of the other members, and then I became president, too. I could go on and on.

I wish I could see the leadership potential in me that everyone else sees. If I could, I would probably be a lot better off in practically every aspect of my life. I'd be more confident in all of my relationships, become a stronger member of any candidate's political team, have better luck in finding gainful employment, be a better activist for all of the causes I fight for. I would love to have the ability to slip into other people's heads and see how they really perceive me. I'm sure I'd learn a lot, in doing so, that would hurt me, but I might learn some things that would help me, too. And I'd learn a lot about what I need to do to improve myself.

But since that isn't possible, I think the best route is to focus on believing people when they compliment me, stop making up other people's perceptions of me, and figure out, concretely, what I can do to improve my perception of myself. If only it wasn't so much easier to say that than it is to do that.

I have to be better prepared for this whole leadership curse; no matter what I do, I end up in some position of power. I have an eerie feeling that if I'm not careful, I'm going to find myself elected President someday, without even running a campaign!

Chosen

This happens too often, lately. It is 8 am and I am awake, not by choice but by virtue of a flood of insecurities and yearnings. Today, I am pondering my feelings upon leaving the M&M Crew—my cousin, her fiancé, and The Other (lame as that is, I can't come up with a suitable description because I'm not exactly sure yet what our exact relationship is, and I try to avoid using people's names), along with the rest of the people I have met that are in their social circle.

I unexpectedly had a chance to steal a night away from my life the other day, and I'm having trouble figuring out why that was such a relief to me. Why it felt so good. Why I'm so disoriented by my return. I am very close to my Usual Crew, so attached to them that until recently, a week or even a night away from them was cause for great distress. They know me, they accept me, I feel welcome among their ranks. I am—or was, anyway—comfortable being myself only among them. So why, when I get a chance to run away to Marinette (half of M&M), do I seize it so immediately and with so little regard to the Usual Crew? And why do I feel so sad to be coming home when I am coming home to them?

The answer to those questions can neither be found nor explained in a simple thought, but I think it has to do with feeling chosen.

Whether or not it's true, among my Usual Crew, I feel sort of like I am a part of the group because I started out there and it takes less energy to keep me around than it would to get rid of me. I know that that's probably not true, that it's probably just my insecurities and fear speaking, but I can't seem to shake the notion. I feel like I am a habit more than an essential part of the equation. With the M&M Crew, I feel much more secure. I feel appreciated. I feel important. I feel chosen.

I've never felt chosen before. Most of my Usual Crew, I met at the coffeehouse we all hang out at. I don't necessarily as if they chose my friendship; instead, it seems like maybe they each, in turn, started hanging out at the coffeehouse and, because I was already there, a part of the scenery, I was incorporated into their lives. My skewed sense of self worth—I'm pretty sure it's skewed, anyway—is probably partly to blame for that.

But I've never felt chosen by any of the men in my life, either. There are only three who have ever been an ongoing part of my life. The first of them was from very far away. When we met, he was in town visiting a friend. And by friend, I mean a female that he was pursuing a relationship with. I couldn't believe, at first, that he was in town visiting another woman and he ended up falling for me. I felt almost chose for a little while. Then, as we got to know each other better, I discovered that the woman he had been visiting had grown distant during his stay. It wasn't until he came to stay with me that I figured out why. In the process of getting to know him before that happened, though, he spent hours of the phone with me talking about all the other women who had rejected or withheld attention and affection from him. In the end, I learned that he only really liked me because I was fat—my face, my mind, the things that make me me didn't matter—and the only reason we had any kind of relationship at all was that I was the woman who did not immediately reject him. I wasn't chosen; I was the default option.

The second of these men was someone I knew as a child. Our parents worked together and we were never close friends, but we hung out together at company picnics and parties. For years, we didn't see each other at all, really, and then suddenly, he found me on MySpace and asked me out. Again, I felt chosen—maybe he'd had a crush on me when we were kids, had just been waiting to find me again or work up the courage to talk to me. That didn't turn out to be the case. See, he has mental impairments and physical handicaps because of injuries he received as a baby. And he never missed a chance to tell me, while we were dating, that he was only dating me because I was so fat and ugly that no one else would ever want me and he figured that meant I'd be happy to have anyone at all, even if it was him. He also never missed a chance to tell me that every other girl he'd ever met wanted him, giving me the idea that he might cheat on me at any second. I believed that he could if he wanted to and was just keeping me around until he made his move. It became clear to me pretty quickly that, once again, I had not been chosen.

And the third of the men I have been involved with in the past is one I met online. He, like the first, lived a good distance away from me, but I was able to visit him a few times. When we first started corresponding, I was hopeful. Then, before we met when we were e-mailing back and forth, he asked me if I would ever consider having relations without having a relationship. The answer, at least in such a planned capacity, was a resounding no, but I didn't give him that answer. Instead, I said sure, I'd think about it; I figured that it was better than nothing, and I thought if I was the cool chick that didn't push for any kind of commitment, maybe that would make up for the fact that he most likely had hundreds of thinner, more beautiful women to choose from. I hoped that, eventually, he would choose me. I fantasized about having him come visit me, introducing him to my friends, dating, and, for once, feeling normal and good enough to be chosen. Then he started accidentally bringing up other women he had been with and, eventually, he explained to me that he'd decided never to be in a relationship again unless it was an open relationship and he could sleep with whoever he wished. And I, due to the distance between us and the difference in our ages and perhaps other things he didn't mention but I imagined anyway, was not even in consideration for being the partner in his open relationship. I didn't want to, but it still hurt that I couldn't, that I was just one of the masses of women he wanted to be with on the side. I wasn't chosen, I was merely available and desperate and fat enough to fulfill his fetish.

And other than with those three men, I have never had a chance to feel chosen. One or two meetings, maybe three if I was lucky, and every other man I've ever met has moved on to greener pastures. Not that any of them made me feel like a pasture anyway—none of them were willing to go out in public with me, or to introduce me to their friends or be introduced to mine. Instead, in every case, I met a guy online, chatted for a few weeks or months, and then met him in person only to discover that instead of a pasture I was a dead, dry field, merely a stop on the way to somewhere better.

But recently, I became close to my cousin for the first time in years (see previous blog post). She is the cornerstone of the M&M Crew. Even though she is my cousin, family, she makes me feel chosen. For a long time, for my own stupid reasons, I held her at a distance, avoided friendship with her. Luckily, she kept at it when I didn't. That effort makes me feel more worthwhile than I have in a very long time, and the fact that I was finally able to open up and let her in, the fact that I chose her, too, makes our relationship feel equal. There is give and take. I feel like she is not better than me, so I do not have to continually fight for acceptance, and I am not better than her, so I feel like she spends time with me because she wants to and not just because she has something to gain from me.

Her fiancé seems to enjoy having me around, too. My cousin and I complement each other well—we bring out the best in one another—and so the times that we all spend together are good times. For that reason, I think, he seems to like it when I'm around, and he brings out the best in my cousin, too. It is when I am with the two of them that I can best see how my cousin has grown and changed over the years and how much stronger she seems for having him in her life. Seeing that, somehow, makes me feel good; maybe her happiness with him alleviates some of the guilt I've felt over being so closed to her in the past. Besides all that, he's just a good guy—fun, funny, intelligent, the kind of person I wouldn't necessarily expect to like me. It feels good when he tries to convince me to stick around with the M&M Crew instead of returning to my other life.

And then there is The Other (I still laugh when I write that. I know exactly how much it sounds like I'm a twelve-year-old writing in my journal, but I'm just not sure how else to name him without naming him). Ever since I met him, through my cousin, of course, I have felt a chosen not only by my cousin and her fiancé, but by him, too. Whether or not I am chosen, I feel like I am, and even though I can't quite trust that it's true yet, that feeling makes all the difference. Before he and I ever met, my cousin mentioned him a few times. She told me she had a friend I'd probably like because it seemed like we had a lot in common. She said she wished we could meet and that he'd even expressed an interest in meeting me (at that moment, the tiny little part of me that believed her felt a tiny little bit chosen), but she was afraid that maybe he just wasn't the type of guy I'd be into. I, of course, was thrilled when she told me all of this, but I was still having a hard time letting her in, then. A hard time trusting her. I thought that maybe she was lying just to make me feel less depressed and isolated over the fact that she'd found a man who loved her and I probably never would. Even if I had believed her, I never would have been able to find the courage to ask her to introduce us. I was so beaten down by then at never feeling chosen that I thought I was too unattractive, too uninteresting, too unimportant, too fat for any man to want anything to do with me unless he was merely using me to fulfill a fetish.

Finally, one night, I got a message on MySpace from someone who said he was a friend of my cousin's and he'd been wanting to meet me so he decided to take a risk and contact me just to see what happened. I recognized immediately that he was the person she'd mentioned and I was instantly happier than I'd been in months. Finally, a guy who didn't just have a fat fetish or think I might be desperate enough to like him wanted to meet me! The only reason I trusted that he really wanted to know me was that my cousin had told me about him and what a great guy he was, and the fact that he actually contacted me made me trust my cousin again almost instantly. A small voice inside of me piped up to ask if he only wanted to meet me to make my cousin happy—that voice still hasn't shut up completely, but I'm working on it—but mostly I was just more excited about life than I'd been in a long time.

This all happened at a time when really needed to feel good, too. I'd just been cut loose by the latest in my chain of men who saw me once or twice and then disappeared. I'd seen this other guy a couple of times—he'd actually gone out with me, which was a shock to my system even though we'd just gone to the movies once, where it was too dark for anyone to see us together and to a bar once where he'd barely talked to me. On Valentine's Day, I was feeling more lonely and desperate and hopeless than I'd probably ever felt before, and so I did what women have a habit of doing: I asked a question that I shold have known could only make me feel worse. When I asked him if I had done something wrong, if there was a reason that he hadn't asked to see me lately even though we talked online all the time, he told me that he'd sort of been seeing someone since before he'd met me, and he just hadn't been sure if they were really in a relationship or not. When she pushed the issue, he chose her instead of me. And so, a couple days later, when I was in the midst of a nasty depression and feeling absolutely useless and undesirable, a simple message on MySpace brought me back to life. I went from sobbing uncontrollably, which I'd been doing for a couple of days, to actually smiling as he and I first IMed for a while and then ended up talking on the phone for six hours. I found out that we had lots in common and that I actually liked him, not just because he liked me first but because I was genuinely attracted to the tone of his voice, the way that his mind worked, the things that he told me.

My cousin was right—he wasn't necessarily my type, but somehow that made it better. That's what told me I actually liked this guy and wasn't just interested because he'd said he was interested in me.

The first time that we met, I felt like I was watching myself from outside of my body. My cousin and her fiancé and I and he all got together and went out for dinner, and I couldn't believe how me I was. for every other guy I'd ever met, I'd turned myself into a fake version myself in an effort to impress, but with my cousin there, I couldn't do that. There was someone there who would have known. I was nervous—that's an understatement. I was actually pretty sure I was going to throw up roughly every five minutes all night long—but that just made me a slightly more guarded version of myself. I didn't feel the urge to be fake. And over dinner, I relaxed. Everyone seemed to like me. They laughed at my jokes, included me in their conversations, didn't roll their eyes at me when I did or said something stupid. We went back to his house to hang out and watch a movie, and I somehow just felt like I fit there. I ended up staying the night because I just didn't want to leave. I felt completely light-hearted and at ease for the first time in a very long time.

I didn't necessarily feel chosen yet, then. Or at least, I didn't trust the feeling. I'm still not sure I trust it completely. The situation between us is complicated in some ways, at least for me. He was honest enough to tell me the first or second time we talked that a woman was going to be having his baby, and that his sense of responsibility ensured that she spent time with him fairly often. That isn't a good situation for the most insecure person in the world to be in and I have a hard time believing, sometimes, that it is a sense of responsibility instead of more intimate feelings that has created that situation. I would be lying if I said I hadn't spent hours comparing myself with her and coming up short. It doesn't matter that I've made her up in my mind, that I really know nothing about her other than what he has told me and what she looks like—I'm still scared to death that as soon as I let down my guard, he'll tell me that he has feelings for her still or again and that he has chosen her. I am equally afraid that he will tell me the same thing about any one of his female friends. I knew from the beginning that a lot of his friends were female, and that he is close to them. I found out as I started getting to know him better, and getting to know them, that he has either been involved with or wanted to be involved with several of them. Knowing that is comforting—I figure he must be an okay guy, because so many of the women he has been involved with are still in his life—but it's also disconcerting. I find myself wondering, in my insecure moments, if I'm just a game to play for a while, if he's suddenly going to just give up on me because he has so many other possible sources of the things I have to offer him.

But I want to trust that I have been chosen, at least in some small capacity, to be a part of his life, at least for a while. I try to observe the little things that make me feel that way. We go out in public together, for one; he doesn't seem to be ashamed to be seen with me. He's introduced me to a lot of his friends and let me get to know him. He touches me and kisses me in front of them. I've met his mother and his daughter. I don't feel, for once, like I'm a secret, hidden part of someone's life. He chose not to keep me a secret. He could have. I would have let him. I've done it before.

It's empowering to feel like there are people who have chosen me to be a part of their lives. It's even more empowering to realize that I've chosen them, because so many times in the past, I've developed friendships or whatever with people simply because I thought I couldn't make any other friends. Most of those people have drifted out of my life. Luckily, no matter how taken-for-granted and under-appreciated I feel at times, I know that my friendships with my Usual Crew run deep. I don't need any more friends than that. That's exactly why I've developed a bond with the M&M Crew: because I want to. I don't feel like I need them, or I didn't in the beginning, anyway, which makes our bond all the stronger.

The only trouble I'm having is reconciling the two parts of my life. I feel like my everyday life—here, at home, with my Usual Crew—doesn't really acknowledge me but merely exists around me. It doesn't make an effort to involve me and I've run out of the confidence and energy to try to involve myself. I think to recharge myself, I need to mesh that part of my life with the new part, the part that's been helping me grow as a person by making me feel strong, so that I can feel even stronger.

Maybe the Usual Crew will see something new in me, whatever it is that has attracted my new friendships, because part of me feels like they think I am lying whenever I talk about the M&M Crew. I'm not sure they believe that anyone would actually choose me to be a part of his or her life, and so I want to show off a little. And maybe the M&M Crew can see the way I am with my Usual Crew and understand me better. I am not as bold but slightly more sure of myself with my Usual Crew, and less afraid that I will do or say something wrong. Maybe each separate piece of my life can feel more chosen, understand that I like them enough to make an actual choice to have them in my life, through getting to know the other piece and seeing that I have other friends too. (This notion that no one can believe someone like me can actually have friends is part of my insecurity, too.)

Maybe if I can somehow bring these two parts of myself together and arrange them all into one more comfortable version of myself, then I can be the silly, articulate, outgoing person who embraces my uniqueness and allows myself to feel attractive and a little bit sexy that I am with the M&M Crew when I am with my Usual Crew, and maybe I will start to feel less like I am auditioning and more confident in making decisions with the M&M Crew, the way I do with my Usual Crew. Maybe I can start to feel like I have the right to fit in wherever I am instead of constantly relegating myself to outsider status.

 

If not, at least it's good to feel chosen for a while.

Reconnecting

I only know two people in the entire world besides myself who are related to my mother by blood: my uncle, who is her cousin, and my cousin, who is her second cousin.  And no, there was no incest involved.  Adoption, actually; my mom and my uncle were cousins who were adopted by the same family.

 
 

When I was little, my cousin and I were close.  We lived an hour apart, so it wasn't a matter of riding our bikes to each other's houses on summer afternoons or anything, but most weekends, my parents and I visited my grandparents, and my cousin was often there too. We were, besides being cousins, very good friends at that point in our lives.

 

As we got older, we drifted apart a little. This was due in part to things going on in our respective and shared families and in part to the simple fact that we were growing up and getting involved in different things in life. Every so often, we managed a visit or a weekend together or even a week over Christmas break or something, but we didn't see each other on a regular basis. We sent letters to one another at times, and later emailed, but we weren't as close as when we were little. Still, she was the closest thing I had to a sister. It's funny, because I often felt like I knew her better than anyone else did, but it never occurred to me until recently that she knew me that way too.

 

Toward the beginning of her high school career and the end of mine, our lives were pushed closer together than they'd ever been before. She moved in with my parents and me. I was excited beyond words that I was finally going to have a "sister." I was tired of being an only child. Our relationship blossomed into sisterhood almost immediately. We were the closest of friends with the ability to hate each other instantly at any second. We buoyed each other up during the bad times and, occasionally, we knocked each other down during the good ones. As the "older sister," I defended/protected my cousin from my parents and exposed her faults and wrongdoing to them, depending on my mood. We did just about everything together, and although there were times when I wished I could be with just my friends and not my cousin, mostly I was always glad she was there. I didn't have to pretend when she was around, didn't have to try to be cool. She knew me and accepted me, the real me, the way I was, and her presence gave me the confidence to express that side of me even in front of people I didn't trust as fully. She was a built-in companion, conspirator, and source of moral support. I hope I was the same for her.

 

There were things about my cousin that drove me crazy, and I'm sure she had her issues with me, too. The things about her, good and bad, that upset me the most, though, were the things that made me feel the most insecure, made me question my own motives and self worth the most. I suppose that's how it is with siblings, who grow up side by side and compare themselves to one another constantly. Overall, though, having her live with us was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me. It was good to have someone to connect with, someone who wasn't my parents but who knew me just as well. Someone who "got" me.

 

Eventually, she moved out. The events leading up to that, and her actual move, were fairly traumatic sudden. A lot of that had to do with my mom's declining physical health and stress level. And a lot of it probably had to do with the fact that my mom and my cousin were dealing with very similar mental health patterns, which made it hard for them to live under the same roof. I didn't understand that at the time, because I had mostly escaped, up to that point, the mental anguish they experienced. Now that that part of my genetic code and life experiences have caught up with me, I understand a little better. I might have seen it back then, a little bit, but I think I tried to hide from it. It hurt that my cousin shared something with my mom that I could not share, even if it was mental chaos.

 

After she moved out, I was grateful for the time I had alone with my mom, because her health was getting worse and worse, and I dealt with that best by being almost her sole means of support and assistance. It made me feel like I was doing something to help, I suppose, and I think I would have resented intrusion on our relationship just then.

 

But even more, I missed my cousin. As mom got sicker, I wished she was there to offer me support, to help me escape from time to time, to take some of the responsibility off my shoulders, to laugh with. We'd always made a good team that way. I wanted to reach out to her during that time, but because of the circumstances under which she'd left my house, I felt like somehow I might betraying my mom if I did. Instead, I waited anxiously for news of her, and for the few moments when our paths crossed naturally. I feel a little guilty, even now, that I didn't try harder, but there are times during life when you can only do what you need to do to survive and everything else just takes too much energy. That was one of those times.

 

My cousin talked to my mother on the day that my mother died. My mom told me that, when it happened, but I didn't believe her because her mind was slipping away, made foggy by the toxins left in her blood by dialysis treatments that didn't work. We hadn't been to my grandma's house much around that time because my mom was too sick to travel much other than for her thrice-weekly dialysis treatments. And my grandma's mind was foggy by then, too. As a result, we didn't know, or at least I didn't, that my cousin was living with my grandma and my uncle.

 

I've never talked to my cousin about this, and I don't know if she's ever made the connection, but the night that my mom died, she—my mom, not my cousin—called my grandma. She and my grandma had a very confusing—to me, anyway—conversation, because both of their minds were in another dimension. When my mom got off the phone, she told me, "_____ gave me hugs." (I'm leaving my cousin's name out of this out of respect for her privacy—I don't like to identify others in my writing without their permission.) Not knowing that my cousin was at my grandma's house, I simply smiled and nodded. Later, once I found out that my cousin had answered the phone that night, I would come to see my mom's simple sentence—"_____ gave me hugs"—as assurance that, no matter what words had passed between my mom and my cousin, they had forgiven one another for anything that begged forgiveness between them.

 

The day after my mom died, my father and I drove to my grandmother's house to deliver the news in person. My cousin was there. After my dad told my grandmother that her only daughter had passed away, my cousin and I snuck away and went for a walk. In my mind, anyway, we snuck away. I'm not sure anymore if it was her idea or my idea or someone else's suggestion entirely, but in any case, we went for a walk around the block, the same trek we had made on foot, tricycle, bicycle, and roller skates so many times as kids. It was the first moment in which we were adults together, she barely eighteen years old and I barely twenty. It was also the first moment in the twelve or so hours since my mother had died that father was out of my sight for more than a minute or two, but old, familiar comforts got me through: the grass growing up through the cracks in the sidewalk. The way my feet somehow remembered, from my childhood, where the sidewalk had crumbled and left a hole or been lifted by roots, and avoided those spots. The black-topped parking lot, half the block long, next to my grandma's house. The church across the street. The day care center around the corner. The overgrown hedges. My grandma's overgrown garden. Most of all, my cousin walking beside me, not talking, just being there. I felt like maybe, just maybe, I could survive.

 

That was twelve years ago now. Afterwards, my cousin and I lost touch again. We e-mailed back and forth occasionally, found each other on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, texted or talked on our cell phones once we had them. Every so often, I might pick up my cousin and have her over for a night or two. But since she had moved out of our house, she had moved a few times to a few different places before she moved back home, and life just kept us from being as close as we had been. We mainly drifted in and out of people's lives.

 

It seems like maybe we are back in each other's lives to stay now. At least, we are closer than we have been in a long time and it has lasted longer than it has in a long time. I hope it is a permanent change, because I enjoy my adult relationship with her. I am learning a lot of things about her, and about me, that I never knew before.

 

I am learning that we have a lot more in common than I would ever have thought, and that many of the things we have in common are things we both have in common with my mother, from our habits to our insecurities to our sense of humor. I don't know how much of that has to do with our genes and how much of it has to do with our experiences living with my mom, but I am sure we are both influenced by each.

 

I feel like I am getting to know my mom better, even though she has been dead for twelve years, because I see so many of her behaviors in my cousin, and recognize them in myself, and because my cousin and I can talk about them, I feel as if I understand my mother's perspective more deeply. I understand her struggles. I feel closer to her. And even more than the deeper connection I feel with my mother, I feel a deeper connection with my cousin. Family used to be important to me, but as I grew up and developed my own life, I found that I don't have very much in common with my father's family. There is no family strife or fighting; we get along fine. We just don't have much in common. On the other hand, I have worlds of things in common with my cousin. It feels good to spend time with someone who knows me.

 

I have to admit that I have probably been part of the reason we did not reconnect earlier in our lives. In following her over the years, it because clear to me that she was developing relationships in life and experiencing things in life that seemed unobtainable to me. She was involved in relationships with men when I was never so lucky. She moved away and lived in other places, whereas I was afraid to leave my friends and family, afraid that I would be alone and unable to forge relationships. I avoided her at times because to spend time with her would have been to rub my face in all the things I wanted and could not have. I assumed, even though I knew her and should have known better, that she would be eager to rub those things in my face.

 

I'm glad that she had the strength and the willingness to keep forging our relationship when I did not. I'm not good at being weak, and that was a major weakness I faced. Now, we are a more steady presence in each other's lives, and it feels good. It feels good because once again, there is someone in my life that I can be my whole, real self with. She introduced me to her fiancé, and to a friend of his who has become a very good friend of mine, and when I am with the three of them, I am happier than I have been in a very, very long time. I feel connected to myself again, and I feel connected to my mom again, and I owe it all to my cousin because she fought to reconnect with me when I was fighting so hard against it.

 

It's good to be back.

The Moody Blues

As in, I'm moody and I kind of have the blues.

I'm doing better. I haven't cried today, so things aren't as bad as they've been, I guess. I was even in a pretty good mood for most of the day. Now, stupid little things have set me back and so I'm sad again. But that's not what I want to write about. I want, instead, to write about writing.

In order to become a better writer, a writer has to recognize his or her weaknesses and learn to overcome them, and today, I discovered a major weakness of mine. It isn't something I would have noticed while writing poetry or non fiction. It is a problem I have, almost exclusively, with writing large works of fiction.

I sat down to write tonight and found myself writing my character, who should have been, by all rights, overflowing with excitement, as if she were slightly depressed and borderline angry. Another character, a friend of my main character, was even more depressed and far beyond borderline angry. My characters ended up taking on my mood, in other words, and having the fight that I would like to have to clean the air.

I am wildly jealous at the moment, jealous of someone who has what I want. That's not news. I'm jealous of just about everyone, because it seems like just about everyone can have what is out of reach to me. The trouble is that the person who can have what I want is the person I want to have what I want with. I know, I know. That wasn't very clear. So here, my situation is this.

There is a person I like. A lot. And while the only person available to me is that person, he has many, many choices. Therefore, our relationship will always be unequal and he will always have power over me. He will always be able to hurt me by deciding not to see my anymore and I will never be able to hurt him.

And in my story, I have a character (Jany) who firmly believes that she does not have the ability to attract a decent man. (Can't imagine who that might be based on.) She is wildly insecure and has settled for many men who are not good for her, none of them for more than one date or outing because they never want her attention enough to strive for it. The other character, Selena's, role is to sort of balance her out. Selena is more confident and bolder and much more positive than Jany is. However, Selena seems to be in a bit of a slump. She is currently in a very Jany-esque mood. That might work, a sort of role reversal, except that Jany is not any more positive than Selena is, even though she has just been kissed by a wonderful man who very much seems to want to see her again. And even though Selena wants her. Like WANT wants her, which is part of Selena's problem.

Jany is jealous of Selena, because Selena has never had a problem attracting men, or women either, for that matter. Selena is jealous of Jany because this one man has been kissing Jany when Selena wishes it was her. And the only reason either of these ficttitional characters cares is that I am filled with jealousy in real life. I guess a fiction writer's job is to channel all his or her emotions through his or her characters without letting those emotions control his or her characters. And at the moment, I am a failure.

I have a few options here. I can resolve my issues, which will be difficult if not impossible. Someday soon, I will have to, but at the moment, I can't, and at the moment, I have to write. So, I can either write my jealous rage into my characters and make it make sense or I can get over it and move on. It would take far more revising than I have time for to make this overly jealous mood make sense, so all that's left is to get over it.

Which leaves me exactly where I started. Sigh.

But that's okay. The first step toward solving a problem is recognizing it, so far as I figure, I'm on the right track. Now find the rest of the solution.

Poor Jany

Jany is the main character in my ongoing writing project (I'm afraid to call it my novel; it is more of a developing novel fetus that will, hopefully, not miscarry), The Adventures Of Phatgurl. The story starts with a phat-er, fat-girl who is feeling very down on her luck and insecure and unlovable creating a personal ad. The ad basically says, "I'm desperate. Pick me!" in less harsh words. As a result, she has a lot of really crappy dates, but they doni't come across as crappy to her right away because she is so impressed that she has any dates at all. But she learns as she goes.

At some point, she decides to rewrite her ad and make it sound a little more positive. This leads to increassingly viable dates that are intermingled, of course, with crappy ones, because she is meeting these guys on a personals website, after all. Some of them are just looking for sex, which she does not exaclty shy away from, because it makes her feel somewhat normal, and some of them are just plain nuts, but there are a few that are actually just generally nice guys (oh, and one girl) who are interested in dating. However, her lack of self esteem will not let her believe any of them.

Finally, she decides to stop answering ads and start contacting the guys she's already been out with to see them again; she hasn't seen any of them more than once and realizes that she might need to bite the bullet and ask them out if she wants to really get to know anyone. The basic idea is that in the course of the story, the bad guys help her as much as the good ones in discovering her own sense of self as she grows as a woman. It starts with a quiet, shy, insecure girl and ends with a "woman of the world;" the story turns into a sort of fat girl version of Sex and the City.

And by God, does Jany get beat up.

Not in the story itself; I haven't allowed any of the other characters to physically harm her. But in my writers group, she gets beat up.

My story doesn't get beat up, just my character. Mostly over sex. She is not supposed to have sex with guys she doesn't know. That's a reasonable warning, I guess. But the thing is, it's what my character does. It's what drives her. And part of me, the insecure part that's a lot like Jany, believes that the real reason some members of my writers' group have such a problem with her sex life is that she is fat. In popular culture, after all, fat women are not supposed to be desirable sexual beings.

But I think that's probably just my own prejudice speaking. I think that maybe the problem really is just generational, and probably involves some gender bias as well.

The women (the men in my writers' group don't seem to have a problem with Jany's sexuality) are of different generations than mine. The issue has come up several times. They think the fact that Jany finds herself in sexual situations is deplorable, because they often arise (so to speak) on first dates. I don't find it so deplorable.

In some of the situations, Jany carefully extracts herself and in others, she does not. Sometimes when she allows herself to be "taken advantage of," it is because she is unsure of herself. She wants attention, wants to feel normal. She just doesn't know what to do or say to get herself out of the situation, or she's too shy to try, so she just lets things happen as they will. In those cases, she is perhaps taken advantage of. I'm not convinced of that; I think she knows she is being taken advantage of and allows it to happen, so it really is her own choice.

In other cases, though, it is blatantly her choice. She sometimes chooses to sleep with a man because she is attracted to him, or because she wants to feel powerful, or because she wants to feel close to him. It's just the way the world works.

I tried to explain that I am not writing the next Dickensian novel, or Lolita, or Pride and Prejudice. In other words, I am not trying to write grand literature. I am writing a pop culture chick lit novel where my character starts out being a shy, mousy fat girl and turns into a beautifully confident woman who makes her own decisions about life. She gains confidence in herself as a human being as she gains confidence in herself sexually. The sex part is important because that is how she finds herself. That is how a lot of women find themselves. Right or wrong, bad or good, sexuality is a symbol of womanhood (or manhood, but I'm focusing on women here), and until Jany is the sexual equal of other women she considers more sexually desirable than herself, she can not feel like a real woman. That's my story. Partly because I am telling the story of several women that I know or know of, including myself, all wrapped up into one character, and partly because sex sells. A chick novel without sex would be--well, it wouldn't be a bestseller, let's just say that.

I don't know how to defend myself. I'm not sure if I'm defending myself as an author, myself as a fat woman, myself as a member of my generation, or myself as something else completely that I just can't see yet. And all this without even believing that I need to defend myself, really. Deep down, I know that my character has to defend herself, because I first "met" her (made her up) two years ago or more and since then she has come to life and started writing her own story. I'm just not sure what part of that defense belongs in the story, because the story needs to be authentic but it also needs to jive with what my readers are looking for. It needs to be real.

Back to the drawing board.

I Submitted

Okay, that title may be misleading. Let me finish the sentence.

I submitted a piece of writing to a contest yesterday. It was a rather large contest-one of Writer's Digest's annual contests-so the chance of actually winning is rather minute, but on the other hand, I can then comfort myself with the knowledge that there was lots of competition. In other words, it is relatively safe.

My attitude about writing is actually a perfect example of what my attitude about life in general should be. Whenever I go through my funks of self doubt and depleted self esteem, I always get the same advice from multiple sources: stop worrying about what everyone else thinks. Like yourself. If you are happy with yourself, it doesn't matter what everyone else thinks. If you have confidence, people will like you, and you won't care nearly as much if they don't. Etc, etc, etc.

When it comes to writing, I can do that. I have written things that I like (that should go without saying, I guess, otherwise, why would I have written them, right?) before and then shared them only to receive massive amounts of criticism. If that happened in some other area of my life, I would be devastated and probably go into a serious depression. In fact, that has happened. For instance, if I was walking across the street and some jackass (sorry, still a little bitter-true story) stuck his head out a car window and yelled, "Lay off the Twinkies, fat ass!" that would bother me. A lot. To the point of tears, probably for the next week or so. I wouldn't be able to rationalize or separate his opinion of me from my own. If I were to share a piece of writing, though, and someone said, for example, "Quickly lay off the adverbs, bad writer!" it wouldn't bother me at all. I would take a look at what I had written, revise if I felt my accuser's comment was valid, and then move on. And if I felt my accuser's comment was not valid, I would simply ignore it because I know very well that different people like different kinds of writing, and no matter what anyone says, if I really, really like a piece I have written, I will not change it for anyone.

Why should I feel any different about myself?

If I like myself the way I am, and I am pretty sure that in the absence of those who criticize me I would, then what does it matter what other people think? There are more than likely almost as many people in the world who like me as there are who don't; I just need to find my audience. Maybe that's what we all need to silence our self doubt.

As people, it would probably be a good thing for all of us to take a good look at our own inner critics and sift through what he or she has to say. We should set aside the criticisms that have honestly come from within ourselves and carefully inspect what's left. Anything that might have some validity to it, anything that we are interested in changing, can be added to the pile of self-criticism, but the rest needs to be thrown away, ignored. Outside opinions are just that, opinions. Not every opinion is "accurate."

Where one person sees fat, another sees soft and beautiful. Where one person sees lazy, another person sees whimsical and at ease. Where one person sees obnoxious, another person sees jolly and entertaining. I could go on forever. But instead, I think I am going to focus on seeing myself as the Great American Novel. I can get my ideas from all over the place-my own experience, other people's stories, made up notions-but I am the author and I can accept or reject outside ideas at will. I must write myself and it is up to me to make up the story.