Except for the "except me" part, I totally get this and love the response from "Ask Polly" columnist:
http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/03/ask-polly-how-do-i-act-normal.html?om_rid=AAAigm&om_mid=_BU922iB8-swbT7
with emphasis on:
Even though I have never been in a relationship, I know it is a
massive mistake to try to find your own happiness in someone else. The
thing is, I already know what makes me happy in life — another academic
field that is considered even more rigorous than the one I am about to
graduate from. With this field, I eagerly wake up, reading
self-purchased textbooks and studying online, and I feel like it gives
me purpose. I count the days until I can graduate from my current
college, and enroll in another master's program with the degree I want
to study for.
But that means I really have nothing to offer in terms of a
relationship for the next few years. I won't have any sort of
respectable job. I will just look like that weirdo who stayed in college
too long. It is very possible that I won't even go on a date until I am
30. On the days when I am stagnating, my mind quickly returns to
thinking about my lack of friends/relationships. Should I be looking for
a relationship at this point?
Of course...at age 25, the person who wrote "Ask Polly" is not that abnormal to not have had a relationship yet. I relate to this way more than I wish I did.
Welcome to my little corner...All over the map with thoughts, I'm just here to blog about different things: life, music, stuffed animals, restaurants, shops, dreams, film, books, magazines, short stories, food, the sometimes silly, drink, feelings, love and tons more...
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
I tried to copy and paste this article directly here since some of the pictures at the bottom of the link are a bit "sensitive," but the pasting wouldn't work. This article is way too good, though, to not re-post just because of some delicate links at the bottom of the webpage.
The below article struck such a nerve with me so much that I had to get up and walk around so I wouldn't get upset...the author is so on point about how we never tell men they need to put down their hamburgers and worry about their figures.
So much of our self-worth as women is tied into how we look (or don't look) and I suppose it depends on our own individual life experiences whether this resonates with us or not...but there's a very good chance it will.
Whether we heard it from our mothers ("you don't want to get fat, do you?" said in the same way if you took out "fat" and replaced it with "evil" or some other four letter word), boys in school or even other girls, it's familiar and men just don't get the kind of treatment the author describes. I'm still shaking at what she experienced. Being judged for how you look or don't look and "should" is one of the things that's wrong with our society.
Here's the article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laura-lifshitz/a-memo-to-the-men-who-told-me-not-to-eat_b_6771956.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592
...and then this morning I go online to read today's New York Times and I see this, also heart-breaking. I long for an era or a society where body image is not so critical to who we see ourselves:
At least, I wish that I felt about extra pounds the way I feel when my hair gets too long — no big deal, really, and maybe the excess even looks nice. I wish that I lived in a society devoid of clavicle-fetishizing, industrialized food, Calvin Klein billboards, that mysterious berry called acai. I wish that I was too smart for this. I wish that I’d aged out of this. I wish that my feminism protected me from this. But I’ll likely wind up dieting again, doing calorie math in my head, because few things make me feel as hopeful or invigorated.
The below article struck such a nerve with me so much that I had to get up and walk around so I wouldn't get upset...the author is so on point about how we never tell men they need to put down their hamburgers and worry about their figures.
So much of our self-worth as women is tied into how we look (or don't look) and I suppose it depends on our own individual life experiences whether this resonates with us or not...but there's a very good chance it will.
Whether we heard it from our mothers ("you don't want to get fat, do you?" said in the same way if you took out "fat" and replaced it with "evil" or some other four letter word), boys in school or even other girls, it's familiar and men just don't get the kind of treatment the author describes. I'm still shaking at what she experienced. Being judged for how you look or don't look and "should" is one of the things that's wrong with our society.
Here's the article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laura-lifshitz/a-memo-to-the-men-who-told-me-not-to-eat_b_6771956.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592
...and then this morning I go online to read today's New York Times and I see this, also heart-breaking. I long for an era or a society where body image is not so critical to who we see ourselves:
At least, I wish that I felt about extra pounds the way I feel when my hair gets too long — no big deal, really, and maybe the excess even looks nice. I wish that I lived in a society devoid of clavicle-fetishizing, industrialized food, Calvin Klein billboards, that mysterious berry called acai. I wish that I was too smart for this. I wish that I’d aged out of this. I wish that my feminism protected me from this. But I’ll likely wind up dieting again, doing calorie math in my head, because few things make me feel as hopeful or invigorated.
It’s embarrassing to admit that.
As a child, I heard a story about a man sentenced to life in prison who refused all of his meals, but always saved the butter packets. When he was finally thin enough, he buttered the bars and slid out. When the guards came to his cell in the morning, they found his clothes discarded on his cot. Before I understood that this story wasn’t true, I always wondered how he pulled it off, how he crept naked past the guards, out of the building, out of town, how he shuffled himself into the world unnoticed. I often think of him — a man in despair, trapped in a cage, whose only way out was to shrink.
One of my worst nightmares (literally) came true tonight. I was out with a good friend grabbing dinner at a local grocery store before we went back to work and at the store I saw someone I knew who used to be part of one of my recurring dreams. Something I had always feared (because of the nightmares) happened but still I wasn't prepared for it. The jarring that can just slam into you when you instantly know the someone in front of you is someone you haven't seen in years is so very unnerving.
I had always envisioned having some kind of closure one day if I bumped into her, but how do you tell the first person you ever had serious affection for and that you expressed it to (unwanted to her and, really, to you) that you're sorry? You can't apologize for that, ever, even if you only confided your feelings at the time because they weren't well and had been going through a hellish time. It just would sound really really creepy, no matter how platonically you went about it back then.
That experience was the first time I ever let someone know I cared about them and how that admission was received has always haunted me in some way. I was in the wrong for saying anything and for not realize how much I misjudged the situation.
After that I never told someone I cared about them unless it was a very close friend or a family member. To this day, if I detect even the slightest uneasiness in someone else's eyes when they see me, I keep on walking, no matter how I feel about them. Even if someone told me they liked me, I would think it was a prank. So I keep to myself whenever possible.
I'm glad I was too shocked by seeing her and affected by years of guilt to say anything. I put on my poker face, pretty sure she didn't recognize me as we walked right by each other. I tried to smile like I would with a stranger and I was fine...until I wasn't.
Back at work I started shaking and I'm glad my supportive co-worker and friend was there to help me after I confided in her. I have been over my crush feelings for decades, but the guilt has always been there, even if it's settled down over the years. I think it was right to not let on that I recognized her. It was a bad time in both our lives and I imagine most people don't want to go down those dark roads again once they've left school behind.
I had always envisioned having some kind of closure one day if I bumped into her, but how do you tell the first person you ever had serious affection for and that you expressed it to (unwanted to her and, really, to you) that you're sorry? You can't apologize for that, ever, even if you only confided your feelings at the time because they weren't well and had been going through a hellish time. It just would sound really really creepy, no matter how platonically you went about it back then.
That experience was the first time I ever let someone know I cared about them and how that admission was received has always haunted me in some way. I was in the wrong for saying anything and for not realize how much I misjudged the situation.
After that I never told someone I cared about them unless it was a very close friend or a family member. To this day, if I detect even the slightest uneasiness in someone else's eyes when they see me, I keep on walking, no matter how I feel about them. Even if someone told me they liked me, I would think it was a prank. So I keep to myself whenever possible.
I'm glad I was too shocked by seeing her and affected by years of guilt to say anything. I put on my poker face, pretty sure she didn't recognize me as we walked right by each other. I tried to smile like I would with a stranger and I was fine...until I wasn't.
Back at work I started shaking and I'm glad my supportive co-worker and friend was there to help me after I confided in her. I have been over my crush feelings for decades, but the guilt has always been there, even if it's settled down over the years. I think it was right to not let on that I recognized her. It was a bad time in both our lives and I imagine most people don't want to go down those dark roads again once they've left school behind.
the heart is a messy place
A missed connection is still some kind of connection, right? Yes, if it's an actual missed connection like this one:
Vivacious Mom at Flight VA - m4w - 42 (Springfield)
age : 42 body : hwp height : 6'3" (190cm) status : married
You - mom with 2 kids. Me - dad with 2 kids. I really enjoyed the 30+ minutes we spent talking about our kids and each other. You were fun, vivacious and very sexy!
If you see this (and I doubt you will), please send me an Email. In the Subject line, put the name of the game you were telling me about.
Maybe we can set up a play date in the near future? ;-)
There, ^above^, is an actual event involved and a possible mutual interest, though hopefully each person is a single parent.
Last month, in an incredibly shameful and silly action, I posted on Craig's List out of some odd need to absolve myself and find some imaginary closure, never truly intending or wanting to be possibly recognized by the person I meant it for, telling myself (honestly, I think) I didn't want "my person" to know, but somehow (I'm not sure how to say this) hoping that if she did know she would forgive me for liking her. My posting used no names, just the generals of it all and a truthfulness I longed to use in offline life.
But need for anonymity and non-discovery doesn't explain why I was extremely sad and disappointed after hearing from someone who thought she could be the person, but wasn't. There were so many similarities and yet there couldn't have been any because...well, it was me and she was...well, how she is (out of the realm of possibility) and never shall the two of us ever really be friends, beyond how already formally know each other.
How could I be so stupid? Love and blind hope aren't good enough excuses. I'm not a teenager and I shouldn't even be thinking or feeling like one. I was ashamed I had feelings for someone I shouldn't (I still am) and now I'm ashamed that I believed it could be her. But I also learned from that experience too...realized how desperate I had become (how much I need to sucker-punch myself) if I'd gotten to the point I posted on Craig's List and thought, even at warp speed that flickered out immediately, it could be mutual.
That realization (however pathetically it arrived) really woke me up, snapped me out of a misery so deep I was almost forgetting the people in my life who possibly do care about me, the friends and co-workers I do have actual relationships with. I may always like this person, but it's time for me grow up and to push those feelings _way_ back further into my heart. All I want need is forgiveness, which I can't get from her, only me. And, so, for now at least, I forgive myself...or at least my heart.
Monday, March 2, 2015
I know this sounds incredibly corny, but if there is a Heaven (which I like to think and believe there is) I hope she's up there, happy and singing. There never has been anyone quite like her and probably never will be:
http://www.hitfix.com/news/happy-65th-birthday-karen-carpenter-10-times-she-blew-our-minds
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