summer flew by...

and I didn't even get the laundry caught up before it was time to go back to school.

hahaha

I 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