pop quiz

Question 1: Which of the following responses was I hoping to hear from my partner after my last post?

•  “Oh love, I see that you’re stressing about your body image. You are absolutely gorgeous, and even more so when you are happy. Seeing you happy makes me want you even more. I’m sorry that your feet hurt, but they would hurt no matter what. I love you.”
• “You could lose 100 pounds if you wanted to. I’m not saying you need to, but if you wanted to, you could.”

Question 2: Which of the above responses might cause me to stop eating unless my partner is watching because I don’t want him to know?

Question 3: Who now feels totally shitty about her body and is obsessing about food and trying to decide if bariatric surgery might be a good option after all?

i don’t even have a pretend title for this post because it’s basically a lot of rambling at 3 a.m.

Oh hey blog. Been a while. I’ve been tumblin’ and stuff. It’s cool over there. I don’t use caps. You should come by sometime.

So I’m new to fat acceptance/health at any size (henceforth to be referred to as FA/HAES). Many many people have written many things about these concepts, so google it if you haven’t heard of them. Basically, being fat is no more or less worthy of comment than being tall, and my fatness doesn’t give you the right to police my behavior or otherwise treat me as less than human. And I’m 300% on board with that, for sure. Since realizing that I have always been and will always be fat, no matter what I do, I have stopped obsessing about food and judging myself for my food choices, which means a whole lot of stress that just doesn’t exist anymore. In the past year I have hated myself like a fraction of the amount that I hated myself since I turned 11, so that’s pretty good.

I lean more toward the FA side of things since I’m certainly not healthy, regardless of my size. For one thing, I hate exercising. I just do. It is the most boring thing ever. I would rather sit and stare at the wall than get on a treadmill. (Well, not if I could read a book or watch TV or something, but you know what I mean.) But also, I have pain. Joint pain, back pain, ankle pain, whatever. Sure, some of it would go away if I exercised regularly and my muscles started to get used to holding my body up properly, but that’s boring. I’m not terribly concerned because my blood pressure, blood sugar, and all those other numbers are well within normal ranges and my doctor isn’t concerned. She’d like me to lose a bit because I probably shouldn’t have gained 20 lbs over the last year, but that’s definitely due to poor eating habits and I prefer the stress of not thinking about it to dropping a dress size.

Overall I’m still pretty comfortable in my body, most of the time. But there are still some things that inspire self loathing.

1. My partner. He loves me, he loves having sex with me, and he doesn’t need me to change anything about myself. And yet, I can’t help but feel like I’m cheating him out of the hot, skinny partner he would rather have. Usually this sort of thought is inspired by the times we don’t have sex, which I always assume is because I’m not hot enough for him. In this I’m also a victim of the myth that men are always ready to go and that hot women can always get sex when they want it. It’s several layers of insidious thinking but the end result is me feeling ugly and feeling stupid for feeling ugly and feeling uglier for being stupid. Usually this doesn’t last long, thankfully,

2. Remember that pain I mentioned earlier? About two years ago I started getting terrible pain in my heels every time I walked, along with aches in my big toe joints when I stood on my tiptoes or twisted the wrong way. I assumed it was a function of getting older and/or fatter, but when I finally went to the doctor I was diagnosed with plantar fasciitis in my heels and arthritis in my toes. She told me to do some calf stretches and got me some custom shoe inserts with incredibly high arch supports, and the pain went away for a while. Then I changed jobs to one where I stand around all day on a concrete floor, and now my heels hurt all the time. Also due to changing jobs, I don’t have good insurance and can’t go back and beg for more help.

I am fully aware that this is an actual condition unrelated to my body size. My mother, who is very healthy and walks several miles a day, also had plantar fasciitis and does stretches to stay pain-free. However, I can’t help but think that if I weighed less, my feet wouldn’t hurt so bad. Logically I know that it would probably only make a measurable difference if I lost ALL of the 100 lbs I would need to be in the “normal” BMI range, but I still hate my fat a little bit every time I take a step,

I have no conclusion to this. Neither of these things is going to inspire me to actually eat the bag of salad in the fridge before it goes bad, nor will I suddenly start a Wii Fit regimen and stick to it like a Christian counting down to the Rapture. I’m having a hard time doing things like brushing my teeth without multiple reminders. Sometimes you just have to acknowledge what’s in your head and move on.

if the choice is fic or employment, fic wins every time

This story is currently incomplete at 400,000+ words (72 chapters) long. I’ve read 6 chapters and it is possibly the funniest and awesomest most interesting HP fic I have ever read, and considering that I was a big fan of Maya before she went pro, that’s saying something.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality on FanFiction.net.

If you’ve ever wondered what Harry Potter would be like if he was Rodney McKay, or even if you haven’t, read it.

Edit: WHOA. Read the warnings PLEASE. Took a little turn in chapter 7 that I was not expecting, but I do hope it gets better.

it’s okay, i get them confused too. they all suck.

“Green Hornet has to be the worst comic book movie I’ve ever seen. I kept waiting but it didn’t get better. They never even had the ring!” – My dad. I rofl’ed.

i’m with mr. monster; zombies are so over

In my next office, I will have a pen cup full of biscotti.

 

no real point to this post.

So obviously I did not post my Planned Parenthood entry yesterday, mostly because I was busy watching Downton Abbey, getting sunburned at the local water park, finishing the third of Jim C. Hines’ princess novels (highly recommended!), and infrequently crying about being unemployed. I’ve been trying to focus on possibilities and projects, but today I pretty much lost it. My mom came over, which was good, and my dad has offered to come over, but I’m not sure how much it’s fair to rely on my parents when they’re still waiting to hear back from the lawyers about their divorce papers and Dad is moving out in a week. It also doesn’t help that my brother’s having issues, so basically the whole family is a big stressball.

I’d like to say I have a conclusion, but I don’t. Maybe later.

past sad, now angry

I can only hope.

Someecard reading "Your name still comes up at work whenever something goes horribly wrong and we don't want to take the blame."

shaken

This morning, I tendered my resignation from work effective August 5. I wanted enough time to clean up my files and hand over my programs. Instead I was called in to talk to the boss and told that my resignation was effective today. So that sucked.

I’ve got student loans (massively irresponsible of me, I know) and I’ll find something soon. I’m young and able-bodied and have lots of resources. It remains to be seen what effect this will have on my depression/anxiety and sense of self-esteem. I think it may depend on whether I can motivate myself to clean and do shit around the house and edit the book and really for serious look for a job or if I just collapse in on myself. Right now it’s looking like 70/30 against, but we’ll see.

it’s almost like she’s human or something

The big story in the news today is the release on Dominique Strauss-Kahn as the sexual assault case against him teeters. The New York Times features a breathtakingly victim-blamey article about the accuser’s credibility, detailing the ways in which she is not a perfect human being… There’s no indication that she actually lied about being raped; instead, it turns out that she has lied about other things in the course of her adult life (shocking stuff, I know).

This is the post on the NYT coverage of the DSK case that I wanted to write today* but didn’t know how. I’m so glad that people like Jill do.

The reason it’s nearly impossible for the prosecution to pursue these charges, even though there’s no evidence that she lied about anything related to the actual events surrounding the alleged crime, is because we live in a culture where rape victims need to be flawless in order to be believed. We live in a culture where it’s damn near impossible for any woman, when her life is held up to the light, to be considered innocent. We live in a culture where we think it’s even reasonable to question a rape victim’s “innocence” in the first place.

The title of the post is “There Are No Perfect Accusers,” and I would say that the statement should be, “there are no perfect accusers of rape.” Because of course anyone who accuses a rape victim of lying is unimpeachable.

*I wrote this on Friday. No clue why it didn’t post.

one side of a phone conversation heard in my office today

Hello?

I’m not quite sure what you’re asking. Do you have a student on our program?

So your daughter is here  in the U.S.?

Oh, okay. Well, what we do is send U.S. students over to Australia. It sounds like your daughter is hosting exchange students from Australia.

Ma’am, there is no University of Brisbane; do you mean Griffith University or the University of Queensland?

Does your daughter know where they are from? You could probably ask her.

Oh, I see. Well, I’m not sure the university would know where your daughter and the students have gone if they are in the U.S.

Certainly I can help you find the phone numbers for the universities. Do you have acess to the internet? *

Okay, I will find the numbers for you. [Reads off phone numbers for international offices at both universities]

Yes, those are the numbers listed on the website, I’m not just making them up.

Well, I don’t know where your daughter is, so I’m not sure how else to help you. Good luck. [hangs up]

*After she hung up, my co-worker explained that the woman’s response was, “Yes, but my computer is being forensically searched right now.”