and I didn't even get the laundry caught up before it was time to go back to school.
hahahaI enrolled for 14 hours, biting the bullet and enrolling for those awful obligatory computer courses. Tell me why I must earn a piece of paper to prove to the government that I know what I've been doing for 35 years? THEN my disability insurance company let me know they had decided that they wouldn't pay for my college after all; I was considered too old to be a marketable commodity by the time I obtain a degree.
well...
So I dropped the freakin' computer classes. Why bother with that career path? I am so burned out on computers AND the hordes of fresh-faced babes/dudes being regurgitated from college computer courses who will work 18 hours a day for one-third what I make. So I guess I am not marketable after all. I'll just live to be 100 to show 'em; I may be huddled on the wharf with a begging bowl, but I can tell myself proudly that I did not allow the Establishment to manipulate me.
Anyway I am not getting any younger or richer.
Here's my treatise on body image:
wait
wait
weight...I am thinking about weight. as if that is any surprise. I was born to think about weight. I was raised to regard my body as my enemy. I was conditioned to regard sexuality and self-love as anathema. The screaming contradictions that were crammed into my head are mind-boggling now that I pull them out, one-by-one:
I must be feminine
but neutral – as in neutered, asexual --
but every inch a lady
in the Mrs. Beaver Cleaver’s mom sense of the concept.
I must eat every morsel on my plate because
somewhere ragamuffins
(with whom my mother would not even consider allowing me to play)
were starving:
little yellow, brown and black ragamuffins who – it goes without saying –
were not as good as me and were certainly not going to heaven –
but who were starving nonetheless and deserved our pity.
I must never draw attention to myself,
but I must learn to speak up in a confidently audible tone.
I must never spend time in front of a mirror,
preening and primping,
but I must always comport myself with pride.
wait
wait
Weight does seem to be the perfect answer:
the way to flee without going away.
wait
It was the perfect answer, but it blotted out the sun, in a way.
weight
but now I have perfected this body armor; it is an impenetrable fortress.
It guards me; it holds me prisoner.
It is a habit that holds a gun on me and at any moment, that gun may fire.
It has outlived its usefulness, but how to dismiss it?
like a boarder who had worn out his welcome,
like a tiresome lover,
like the old friend who has remained
absolutely the same since high school
Once someone told me how beastly it was for me to be fat,
that I was taking food from the mouths of starving millions.
That was a body blow; the catechism of my childhood,
“clean your plate because children are starving in China”
shattered into shards of disbelief.
wait
weight
On one of the few actual dates I had before my marriage,
a young man looked at me and asked “why are you fat?”
I remember being flabbergasted –
as if it was a choice, I thought.
But now I see it was a choice, made long before I could articulate
or reason my way through the contradictions and mysteries.
I do not remember how I answered;
I do remember wondering if he asked me out
just to ask me that question.
weight
wait
Now i am slippin’ and slidin’ off the slope of 55.
I have never in my life felt attractive or
comfortable in my own skin unless I am alone.
I have, in spite of all odds, experienced success and happiness.
I am considered rather brave and pretty damned smart.
But this – this weight – is my dragon.
I want to vanquish this dragon while I am still strong and able,
before the demons that the weight can unleash on me rush in
to exact their toll – as they (and the demons of cigarette addiction)
have done to my sister. I want to tell the demons
WAIT
I was obedient and the least you can do is wait
weight