Tell me why, I don't like Sundays

I hate Sundays. Something about this day makes me feel so useless. I think it's because all week I file things away in my mind to be dealt with on Sunday, and then when it gets here, I rarely feel like hauling my lazy ass out of bed, let alone cleaning, doing laundry, organizing my mess of a life, grocery shopping, preparing for the coming week, doing three times the exercise I would normally do in one day to make up for whatever fuckups I've committed during the week on the diet/exercise front, etc. So somehow I just feel all the worse for resting. Guilt rest! My very favorite kind.

Today wasn't a total waste, because my friend Laura, who I met over the summer while interning at a publisher, came up to visit from the DC area. She and I and Michelle, our other partner in internship shenanigans, met up for brunch and it was lovely, as every brunch is pretty much required by law to be. I fucking love brunch. It allows Sundays to occasionally redeem themselves. We went to Cafe Brama in the East Village, and reminisced about all the people we passed our summer making fun of. And talked about how much whatever we're doing now sucks, except for Laura who's luckily enjoying the job she went to DC for. Michelle is exhausted from school (though I'm missing some aspects of school this semester, being expected to accomplish superhuman amounts of work and activity is not among them) and I'm working sporadically, giving myself an ulcer worrying over getting enough freelance modeling work. Being grown up is such a nasty double edged sword. I can't even get into this right now. Seeing them was like getting a gift I didn't realize that I very much needed.

Halloween was a bucket of yuck this year, unfortunately. I worked just over 50 hours this week, which was tiring but welcome because I only have 15 hours scheduled as of now for the coming week. That feels apocalyptic to me. But I digress...this week was a cavalcade of Bizarre Occurrences. Odd, unreal things kept happening, one after another, and each time I was thinking that had to be the end of it, this thread of weirdness couldn't possibly get any longer. But it was just unending. Among these, I was left an unintentional voicemail from my mother that was a 5 minute long screaming match between her and my stepdad, and I inexplicably listened to the ENTIRE THING although it was clear that it was a mistake and I should have hung up and deleted it right away. Instead I listened, shaking internally and probably externally too, because it was just so scary and surreal to hear that. It took me back to living at home. The language is terrifying. It's ingrained in me, it's what I've been hearing for as long as I can remember. Hearing the fight disembodied on the phone is so strange. I did not handle it well.

Another day, I was followed. I don't want to go into detail on this. Someone followed me from one location to another, waited hours for me to leave that second location, and followed me into the subway. It is frightening and I'm not sure how this is going to get dealt with at the moment. It's too unreal for me to think about too much, I keep pushing it out of my mind. It's the healthy way!

On Halloween evening I came home from work tired, watched the repeat of Wednesday's America's Next Top Model (to which I have to say O SHEENA MY SHEENA! She permanently hooched her way into my heart and TyTy's banishing her back to Harlem was a travesty of proportions that that tenhead bitch can't even begin to fathom. I eagerly anticipate her sure to be upcoming Maxim spread). Also, I had been despising McKey before this week, what with her semi-retarded facial features (that fucking mouth! Is it supposed to look like that?!), boxing obsession/obnoxious exercises (squat-hops) and because she's one of those people who whines as annoyingly as she can, "Don't huuuuurrt it" whenever someone kills a bug, then she takes the insect and lays it by the pool and dabs water all around it. And tells us that serial killers start small. Loathe. Her. But this week, she ALMOST completely redeemed herself (still can't get over that severed muscle look of her mouth and the handicapped look in her eyes) when she voiced her irritation at three of the girls having a "vajayjay shaving party". I'll be striving to incorporate that phrase into as many conversations as possible for the rest of my life.

Anyway, I started getting ready for parties, among them one thrown by one of my very favorite people that I previously had been looking forward to but for some reason got a really bad feeling about that day, one that Laura was attending, and several other goings-on that sounded worthwhile. There's always so much happening in the city for Halloween, it's amazing to see. But while I was getting dressed (no costume, dressing up for work has forever ruined the allure of costumes for me) and makeupping, I felt less and less like I wanted to do anything at all. It wasn't my normal weekend exhaustion and laziness kicking in, it was that creepy feeling I often get and also too often choose to ignore, that something Not Right is very close to happening and I could avoid if I just paid attention to the psychic intuitive beyond the grave spookiness that's telling me to duck and cover. But no, I love my friend who's throwing the party, I can't wait to see Laura, and it's Halloween and I have to go. Still, I kept delaying, and it was almost like something was physically holding me back. I would sit down while doing something and pretend I wasn't in the middle of getting ready. Then force myself back up. Then distract myself some other way. It sounds bizarre and it fucking was. Being a dumbass, I eventually got out the door...

...only to encounter my neighbor and former classmate chainsmoking on the stoop of our building. Boyfriend fight. We talked, whined, comforted, reassured each other on various things, I invited her to come, she was understandably too upset, etc. The whole time I was talking to her, I was thinking that I should just stay right there. Sit down on the stoop, take off my heels, and drink with her for the rest of the night. It felt overwhelmingly right. And I didn't do it. I went to the train station.

Where I was drunkenly groped by some idiot and laughed at by his friends AND an MTA worker when I slapped his hand off my ass and told him to get the fuck off me. Something I have never, ever understood is the mentality among men that makes it hilarious to them whenever women are harassed and become visibly scared and aggressive. It's like prodding at a dog through a fence to get it to bite, then laughing when all it can do is snap without connecting to the target. Similar situations have happened to me so many times, and every time feels like the first. It's so disgusting. I hate so much that there are men like this. That there are so many of them. How would they feel if someone chased their sister down a train platform and grabbed her like that, and scared her, and chipped away a little bit more at her faith in humanity to understand and practice respect? Does it not occur to them that I'm someone's sister too? And then to laugh about it...I have to just stop.

There was more fuckery of this sort on the train, from another round of drunk idiots, but at least this time there was no groping. Just laughter when one of them got sick of my poker facing and ignoring in response to his come-ons, and swaggered over and stood with his crotch thrust towards my face and I jerked away and told him to leave me alone. He and his friends laughed pretty hard at that. I missed the joke.

I got to my friend's party, every step feeling like it should be back in the direction of the train to take me home, and as soon as I walked through the door, I knew I had to get out. I really don't know what the hell was up with my stupid self refusing to listen to my intuition which was screaming itself hoarse at this point and pretty much had been all night, but I actually sat down and tried to mentally talk myself out of crazy and into staying. It lasted a few minutes; in a moment of clarity I jumped up and went for the door, then dealt with the long walk + 3 motherfucking trains to get back home, which was not very far away at all, because there was an N train fuckup after midnight. Aside from that, no further incident, and I went home and forgot about anything else I had planned, because seriously, you can only ignore that weird gut feeling for so long before you start to feel crazy. It was just a strange week. I'm glad it's over and I hope the weirdosity doesn't spill over into this week, because I have enough to worry about with the lack of booked jobs. I'm hoping I'll get last-minute calls, which have been coming every week, some for jobs I've been able to take and some I can't. To borrow Sarah Palin's whacked out witch doctor chant prayer: Lord, make a way. Then again, every week for the past 2 1/2 years I've been getting a call for work at a certain job, and this week for the first time in those going-on-three-years, no call came. I'm so, so deeply worried about this and trying to keep my imagination from indulging in the horror scenarios that losing this outlet of work would bring on, and why it might have come about in the first place, which I've yet to successfully puzzle out.

Enough of that. This blog is not off to a cheerful start. Eventually I'll get around to happier things. And I'm actually far happier than I've made myself sound. Sometimes I just have to work through the nasty stuff.

You could hurt me using the sharp edge of what you say

A topic that I've been writing about lately, and that I hoped I could devote some portion of this blog to, though done carefully so as not to come across as a whiny feminazi, is eating disorders. Specifically anorexia. It's something that I've unfortunately had a recent, difficult struggle with, and something that I feel I'll probably be struggling with, albeit in a less threatening capacity, for the rest of my life. It sure has taken up a big enough portion of it already, and rather than wasting even more time than I already have getting tangled up in it again, I think that expressing what I'm able to at times about what I've done, why I did it, and what I've learned in the interim can only be positive. Both selfishly for me, and on the off chance that someone else who might be in a similar situation can gain something from it.

I hadn't planned on talking about the issue until much later, when I've managed to gather my thoughts on the ordeal a little better. It's only within the last couple of weeks that I've even started collecting some pieces in my own journal, and I've been a healthy weight since about May, following the therapies that I began in February. What I'm getting at is that although I realize the importance of talking about it, at times the situation overwhelms me and it's hard to compartmentalize what happened into logical writing, so I wanted a little bit more time and personal writing before I made anything about my experience even slightly more public through this.

But I had to start today after what I just read. This afternoon I posed for a class at one of the art schools where I work as a model. I was working for an amazing teacher (aside: he happens to be one of the first teachers I ever worked for, over two and a half years ago, and his kindness and wonderful personality were highly influential in making me as comfortable as I quickly became with this school and what I do there) and I hadn't worked for one of his classes in almost a year, I think. Last summer I did some private work for him, posing for a book he was illustrating as well as for his series of drawing tutorials. I had so much fun working with him on these projects, and I think everything we worked on turned out fantastic. 

I just happened to be suffering severely with my eating disorder at the time, although I still had about 10-15 pounds to lose that would put me into the dangerous place that I somehow managed to maintain for quite awhile. Anyway, some of these videos are online, and he mentioned that he's had to delete some comments from them. I assumed this was because I'm in a black lace bra and boyshorts in the photo/drawing he used for the main tutorial. I was curious though, so I looked the videos up when I got home. He had given me copies of the DVDs so I could see what he'd done, and I'd never thought to check out what was going on with them online. And I kind of wish I hadn't.

The comments that viewers wrote were heartbreaking for me to read. Lately I've been trying to spend more time getting into shape without going overboard, and I've been feeling negatively about my weight and appearance, what with cold weather coming on and not being able to fit into my last year's jeans and other silly but somehow devastating daily occurrences. But I've stayed clear of starvation and the patterns that I used to cling to while working towards being thinner, toned and in shape like I was last summer, particularly around the time that these photos were taken. Even though I still felt like I was disgustingly fat then, I can appreciate now how thin I actually was. I've felt sure that attaining this weight and look would be possible through sticking to the healthy patterns that I adopt at the beginning of a diet, before things slide out of control. 

I guess I've been fixating on what I looked like at that point somewhat, which I know isn't healthy, but no recovery is ever flawless. But I think this fixation is why reading these anonymous peoples' reactions struck me so harshly, because the wanting I've been feeling for that time is so intense it's almost painful.

Some comments include:

• nice, for some reason the girl you drew looks prettier
  
• AWESOME btw he changes the shape of her face alot
• i think he just changed her lips, on his picture they are fuller and smaller than the ref picture.
• I agree with some comments, your girl looks much better than the actual girl.
• wow the drawing is hotter than the actual girl
• It's the mouth. The mouth in the sketch is sexier. The eyes are a bit better too. Great work.
• she looks prettier in ur sketch
• yeah she does
• the girl on the drawn picture looks better than the girl at the real picture - her face at your girl looks way more attractive
  
• i concur.
• Yea, drawing is hotter

And so on in this vein. There were obviously a lot of comments about the strength of his artistic skill and whatnot, but there were many of these. But all of them combined weren't as disturbing as this one, which made me freeze up in that way usually just reserved for getting caught in headlights or stealing something:

"His drawing looks better than the girl because when you look at the girl your subconscious knows something is wrong with her. She has some sort of eating disorder. He correct[s] this and makes her look healthy in the drawing."

I know it sounds vain and ridiculous, but this got me extremely upset. It's one thing to just accept the way you look for what it is, it's quite another to have people comparing your photo to a drawing and exclaiming over how much better the drawing is, how your entire overall appearance can actually be improved on, and even mentioning specific tweakings like eyes and lips. I've been art modeling for a couple of years and I never hear anyone compare a drawing to me like this. Comparisons are made, obviously, but I guess they're toned down if I'm in the room. Or maybe the mind just doesn't operate as critically when the object of criticism is within earshot. Not actually knowing me, only making these comparisons based on the photo they see in the video is safe and anonymous and viewers surely aren't considering the connection to a real person. Rationally I know this. Irrationally, I still feel like someone slapped me.

And what really stopped me cold is that someone identified the fact that I was suffering a disorder in the photo. Up until this point, a few people who had known me all along when I was curvy (as I am again) and saw the weight loss had expressed a little concern, but nothing like what was to come when I became skeletal. The majority of what I heard about my appearance however was highly complimentary, both from new acquaintances and those who knew I had been losing. It's certainly difficult to reconcile so many conflicting messages, particularly when the brain is at a much lower level of mental processing and functionality when it's been deprived for so long.

I'm going to end this now, but I might come back to it. I realize that I've said a lot without really saying much of anything at all. It was too much for me at the moment to just leave it.

Many happy returns, or at least one

I used to blog way back in the day, for a couple of years, and I loved it. It's an awesome way to do some of my favorite things: write, provide commentary on social and pop culture issues (on which I've deemed my opinion to be of value) and talk about myself. The problem with the old blog is that I always end up mixing personal issues in with my commentaries on everything else, and it became really difficult to decide where to draw the line with anonymity, and how to respectfully relate stories about my everyday situations without offending anyone, and who of my personal acquaintances to tell that I had a blog, etc. And it turns out I wasn't paranoid either, because I did get stalked, on at least one unpleasant occasion.

But I really miss writing casually and letting people read it, and I've seen other bloggers who've also straddled the icky line between anonymity and honesty and who have sometimes been outed, SOMETIMES even after talking about their STDs (sorry, no such itchy excitement to be found here) but I think I'll just have to do my best.

It all comes down to Gossip Girl, honestly. My love for that show and my need to analyze and talk about it daily is basically to blame for this. But at least in this case, the trashily scandalous Upper East Side ends justify the at-least-I'm-trying-to-write-regularly means.