Entries Tagged 'nonfact' ↓

It’s a funny thing, leading day after day, drawn forward and backward by panic.

Will I get A, B, C and X done? Will I fail as a mom today? Will my daughter go to bed with a sweaty neck and sticky hands, and her teeth brushed as minimally as possible? Will I have spoken to everyone I treasure, and those I don’t, yet? Will I sleep enough? Did I eat too much? Did I gorge myself? How bloated and saggy-eyed will I be in the morning?

This is my everyday.

Waking up is equated with a master to do list that stems from remembering to brush Isobel’s teeth and feed her breakfast – even though she’s rarely for eating upon waking and her breath is nearly always bad – to the more humbling: be kind but firm both when denying the third song of the bedtime routine and the handout to the bum on the corner. Wish everyone a happy day with a smile on my face, even if it isn’t one.

Every morning I struggle from slumber, aware that I’m not good enough for the monumental list of things I feel I need to get better at, and every night I return to bed, feeling no larger a person, and often times smaller.

Then came the self-imposed exile from all things Internet.

That wasn’t a good control. Why? Because I had constant stress – as a result of my work load and overdue assignments – coursing through my veins at a volume way too high to get a buzz from. It was stifling, at the least.

This weekend, I didn’t have that. This weekend was a control in this study of Zoeyjane 101. On Friday, I blogged about removing myself from the Internet for the evening and then Saturday came, and then today, and I just continued.

I’ll be completely honest. I felt free.

I’ve never stopped much to consider before how much I’ve chained myself to this laptop, finding a way between and during each task to talk to people, check emails, read blog posts, examine who was being witty on Twitter and trying to jump in on the party. Putting work and Isobel’s nonsensical conversations, chores and personal time on the back-burner, so that I could sit in one position for what has been, at times, eight hours straight.

It was another measure of success, maybe, if I could cook dinner and carry out conversations with people who seemed to like hearing from me in some medium. The problem of course comes when you’re actively participating in something (kind of) rooted in narcissism and you’re getting a high off of it.

Yes, I get a high off of people. From you.

Like any substance or behaviour that addictive personalities like myself race toward, it becomes compulsive. It becomes a priority, even. It soon becomes a beast that you need to feed.

Soon, I was tweeting not to get high, but to feel normal.

This weekend, I stepped away. I still read some blog posts, but I didn’t speak much, if at all, online. There weren’t three IM conversations taking place while four different Twitter threads were being updated. I didn’t make sure to blog because if I didn’t, what? You might forget I existed?

Maybe you will have. Maybe I will have gotten that much more boring, when I’m not hyped up on social media.

Maybe, just maybe, the friends and contacts and peers I’ve made, will still find me interesting, even though I’ve not attempted to constantly remind them of my existence this weekend.

At this very moment – and I wonder how long this might last – I’m okay, either way. Because this weekend?

I cleaned when I needed to, I cooked delicious meals for my family, I started to read a book that I can’t put down, took two baths, I have shining hair, and I went outside without makeup on without feeling as if I were a leper. This weekend, I danced and hopped and thrashed to bad music with Isobel while her dad watched from his vantage point on the floor and laughed at our glee.

These past two days?

I could kind of get to like, in the every day sense.

Even with the constant chattering from Isobel, the silence has been awesomely peaceful. And I find myself content and actually, for once, a little recharged.

I have a confession. I’m nervous about going to BlogHer.

Not for the usual networking aspects that people get nervous about. I’m generally kind of comfie watching for a couple of minutes and then joining in at a loud volume. A little booze helps. I’m sure there might be a bit of that, there.

I’m nervous because I kind of have this weird thing of people always telling me to eat a cheeseburger. It drives me fucking mental.

Imagine, if you can, what it’s like to be on a diet for, honestly, 75% of your life. Spending entire days not eat at all, or subsisting on a single bagel, apple or 23 cheerios. Then, you know, you turn 28 and magically, you start to get healthier. But your body doesn’t change that much, you’re still this big-headed, thin everything elsed chick with tits.

There’s me.

I have these kind of awesome (though small) biceps, which are overshadowed by the hollows of my clavicles; solid quad and calf muscles get negated by the fact that my thighs don’t touch. I feel, sometimes, as if I look just wrong, for lack of a better word. Ribcage and hips bones jutting, flat stomach covered in stretch marks, no ass at all with kind of the perfect amount of sag.

I’m a walking contradiction. So?

After years of subsisting on 23 cheerios, a single bagel or apple and warming up between meals with a cup of fat-free hot chocolate or tea (because when you’re skinny, you’re always cold), I’ve become oddly accepting of my body. I know what its potential is, what fuels it, what drags it down – how to be more and get more out of it.

Sometimes, I can even see myself in the mirror and think, in a small voice {that’s only in my head [that I immediately quiet, because I've never learned the difference between self-appreciation and conceit]} ‘damn.’ I can know logically that I have big blue eyes and red hair and I’m taller for a chick (but not actually tall) and have 34-23.5-36 measurements and that all of those points are pluses.

All of those points have never gotten me thrown out of bed. Some of them might actually help to raise some money at a fundraising event on Monday, where a date with me will be auctioned off. Who knows.

But I can’t stop myself from seeing all of those other things too.

So?

It’s my pet peeve, when someone I care about hugs me and jokes that I’m tiny. I can’t stand it when someone tells me to eat more because I’m too thin. Worse yet, when someone says something like, “I wish I had your problems” when I’ve dared to complain about the hassle of inexpensively shopping for clothes in size 0 and lower.

It makes me feel on display, as if there’s a poster above my head written in four different colours of highlighter ‘come see the freaky booble-head. She needs to eat a cheeseburger.’ It makes me feel dirty. It makes me feel like an attention-seeker. It makes me wrong.

And I know that it will happen. Someone. Someone I’ve been looking forward to meeting, someone I’ve dared to let down the guard with and I’ve hugged, will draw back and say something like ‘wow. You’re tiny. I’m like, two of you.’

The shame will begin. The guilt. The thoughts that in a sea of mommies, I might be an aberration. I’ll get anxious and draw into myself and become shy – and I’m not shy, for the most part. I will become a fraction of the me that I can be.

But I have a way to combat this feeling:

When I arrive in Chicago, I’ll get off the plane and get a drink. And on the way to the hotel, I’ll stop with my girl friends and get a drink. And when I’m at the Room 704 party, there will be drinks.

So, if you walk up to me at BlogHer and think I’m going to hug you nervously, if at all? Don’t worry about it – I’ll be half-cut.