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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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The Demon With PMS
What's On Your Mind, Sublingua? Mayflower The Brain has been chewing and chewing on Mayflower's actions a few nights ago. What actions? There was her move in the bar when she reached across me and picked up my phone to try to find the Aisho�s number (which is not saved in my contacts list as A) I did not acquire it in an above-board manner, but took it off my caller ID the day he called to cancel on Fu�s behalf, and B) is easy enough to have commited to memory). She tried calling the two listings for Max (Max is the Aisho�s non-Japanese nickname), but got two other people named Max instead, both of whom she called. There were the conversations in the bathrooms of each place we went. (�You look really good, Sublingua. You really do.� �said in the bar bathroom. �You�re so beautiful now, Sublingua. I�d do you.� �said in the Village Inn bathroom. �You know this guy is not good enough for you, don�t you?� �said in the restaurant bathroom where we had dinner�though later, she ran up and gave this �not good enough" guy a big hug outside the bar.) She made some comment about my manipulating seating arrangements so that I could sit next to someone else, saying, seriously (but trying to make it sound like it was a joke), �Oh? What, you don�t want to sit next to me? Why don�t you want to sit next to me? You want me to have to sit next to Max (the gay ex-husband Max)?� She chided me for not drinking (even though The Enforcer�s getting paged left me to drive her drunk ass around), saying, �Every time we�re supposed to go out drinking, you never drink with me.� And, when I relented and agreed to have a shot with her, said, �You don�t have to. You don�t have to drink with me.� And then there was the endless monologue, which she rudely interrupted other conversations or any sort of replies (even to her) to continue. She never stopped talking about herself, not even for a single minute. When her manicure and pedicure failed to attract everyone�s undivided attention, she brought up the problems she�s been having with her boss and her thesis advisor. She brought up the guys she used to date pre-Enforcer�one of whom was violent towards her. She antagonized The Enforcer indirectly (usually she does it directly), most notably when I complimented his mother, who, in an odd coincidence, used to be a dental assistant for Randy, the sadistic dentist I went to as a child. I said, �I really liked your mom, Enforcer. She was the only reason anyone could stand Randy. I thought she was really cool.� And Mayflower inserted herself into the conversation, saying, �You met his mother, right? You met her and you still liked her?� And then, every time she thought she had gone too far, she would prompt me, saying, �I�m sorry. I should shut up, shouldn�t I?� (And what could I say to that? Yes?) Or she would say, �You still love me, don�t you?� Or she would start to cry at the table. I talked to Max some more about it yesterday, asked him about his saying that she was jealous. When I asked what made him think that she was jealous, he said, �I don�t know why that popped out. I didn�t even have to think about it.� And The Brain chews and chews on these things and tried to find possible interpretations or explanations for her actions. I try to do it with compassion, try to make excuses for the crap that she kept doing, try to tell myself that she�s my friend and I love her, but I keep getting derailed. DrugCo. Did I make a mistake? Did I make a mistake? Did I make a mistake? and I�m a rat. I�m a rat. I�m a rat. Food, As Always My wedding meal blowup at The Demon Who Always Does The Right Thing has stayed in my mind. The poor Demon, because of our long-standing bantering habit, suddenly found herself on the receiving end of a lot of shit that I normally hold back. She and I spoke the next day and worked it out, but I have just continued to chew on my end of things. When we spoke, I told her about how it�s hard for me to take the comments about food/eating/exercise partly because it�s not just from her that I get it. I hear it ten times a day if I hear it once. I hear it from people who know me well and people who have maybe laid eyes on me once before. I hear it from my mother, from random grocery store clerks, from friends, from Max�s co-workers. I hear, �Is that all you�re going to eat?� and �Why don�t you have some of this?� and �You�re being so good, just eating that� and �You should try this. Oh, why not? A little bit won�t hurt.� I hear every comment that you can possibly imagine. And in them all, I hear a lot of jealousy about my having changed in a way that they want to change. I hear a lot of discomfort because I have changed because they were used to something else. I hear a lot of judgment and a lot of paternalistic �I�m looking out for you by trying to get you to eat this,� in those comments. Mostly it�s not teasing though. I find that, having dropped the kind of poundage that a lot of people only dream about dropping, I became a lightning rod for people�s attitudes about themselves and about fat and about food. I know I�ve written about it before, but I�ve never been at the receiving end of so much of others� self-loathing, and it�s hard. It�s hard to sit and listen to people day in and day out tell me how bad they feel about themselves, how they want to lose weight, how they want to get fit, how they can�t find the time or the energy or the motivation to do it, how they �admire� or �respect� me. (And I think, Why now?! Now you fucking respect me? What? Did you think I was a total fucking waste of space before this?) And as weird as it sounds, it�s also hard to hear compliments. Compliments sometimes insult me in ways that I never thought they might. For example, one of Max�s co-workers came into his office one day and said to me, �Hey, Skinny!� And I said, �Would you ever have come in here before and said, �Hey, Fatty� ?� And she said, �Well, no.� And I said, �It�s kind of inappropriate either way, don�t you think?� Compliments are�however well-meant, however well-delivered�reminders that I am still battling a food addiction. I am still battling an addiction that threatened to swallow my life, that ate up every bit of energy I had, that was the demon that I couldn�t shake for years. Every day I face the addiction, and every day I do my best to conquer it, and every day there is the chance that it will conquer me. And every comment, every compliment reminds me. I can be at the wedding of a friend, having a great time, feeling wonderful to be spending time with friends, and hear, as I did from the bride and groom, �You look great! You�re like a whole new person!� and that one compliment will remind me. I can be sitting at dinner, doing my best to not touch the bread basket and keep my end of the conversation light and hear, �Oh, you�re not going to have bread?� and that will remind me (as if the bread that I can�t touch without triggering a binge hasn�t already done that). I told The Demon, whose Grrlfriend used to be an alcoholic and has been sober for nine years, that it was similar to an addiction to alcohol, and I think it got through to her this way. The Grrlfriend, when the champagne came around to the table at the wedding, said, �No alcohol at this table.� Though I would never have said, when the bread baskets were delivered, �No bread at this table,� I would never say to a recovering alcoholic, �What do you mean, no alcohol at this table? What about the rest of us who aren�t recovering alcoholics? I want my champagne.� But I didn�t. I didn�t keep up some �banter� all night of, �Well, aren�t you going to have a drink, Grrlfriend? C�mon, it�s good for you. Haven�t you heard that a little bit of red wine a day is good for you? Here, have just a little bit. A little bit can�t hurt. Don�t you want to toast the happy couple?� I would never say these things because I understand that a little bit can hurt. A little bit can trigger a binge that will conquer someone who is battling an addiction. A little bit is not just a little bit (a little bit of alcohol, a little bit of food, a little bit of what seems like harmless fun), but is a symbol of a life that was miserable, was so miserable that it is preferable to walk away from friends, from family, from all things comforting and familiar rather than return to it. PMS, Or, Pretty Much the Same Yeah, it is probably PMS. So?
More lies:
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