I'm just your average, everyday, divorced 38 year old girl -- overweight, tragically unhip,
and trying to make a life for myself. I live with two furry beasts, Dave and Abby, whose
feline mission in life is to choke me with their fur. Nothing special.
Here is, as promised, a story for Dazed, based on the first sentence she provided for me. It's a little longer than I'd planned - 1,000 words, rather than 500 - and a little jagged, but it's done.
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Today, I was buying gas, and an older man (dragging his oxygen tank behind him) pointed a gun at the cashier behind the bulletproof glass and demanded money. As I surreptitiously tried to finish up my transaction at the pump without attracting attention, I wondered, again, about the strange series of events that had gotten me to this place at this particular time.
It was a quiet morning in the library when I met him. He was tall, dark, and cool – just like an iced coffee – and he walked with such an air of confidence that, to a person, everyone in the library stopped to stare as he walked up to my counter. I put down the copy of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” I’d been reading and looked up as he approached.
It was his eyes – cornflower blue – that fired the first salvo in the war for my heart. I caught my breath as he smiled a languorous smile and said, “Can you help me?” He was looking for a book to read on the plane ride out to visit his infirm grandfather, but his plea for help caught at my heart. “What are you looking for,” I managed to squeak out, to which he replied, “How long do you have?”
We talked for an hour – my entire lunch break – and, by the time I had to go back to work, he had a list of book recommendations and I had agreed to fly across the country with him less than 24 hours later.
In the course of our initial conversation, he told me that he was going to fly to Florida to visit his retired grandfather at the Nueva Coco Loco retirement community the very next day. He was concerned because his grandfather (he called him Gramps) had been getting very forgetful of late and hadn’t remembered his own late wife’s name during their last conversation.
He told me the touching story of how his grandparents had met in Sicily as children, how his grandfather came to America first, and worked hard in a meat packing plant in Brooklyn to earn enough money to bring his beloved Estella over from the old country. They were blessed with 50 years of happiness before her untimely death the year before, from which Gramps had never fully recovered. At the end of the story, moved to tears by the tale of Gramps and Estella, I asked him if he’d like company on his trip. His reply was to dial the number for his travel agent.
We landed at the airport, picked up the car, and were soon on our way to Nueva Coco Loco, where we’d already arranged to have Gramps ready to travel so that we could all go out to lunch together. When we pulled up to the front of the main residential tower, I could see croquet games, a group of gardeners, what looked like lawn bowling, and small groups of older people walking – some with the aid of a walker or wheelchair, some under their own power. Before we could even come to a complete stop, Gramps was opening the car door and getting in. “Who’s the dame,” Gramps asked. “She’s a good girl, Gramps. You’ll like her,” was the reply. “OK, then, let’s blow this joint, kids,” he said, and we did.
As the rental car sped along the Florida highway, all was silent in the car except the rhythmic whirring of Gramps’ oxygen tank and the sound of the tires on the pavement. My friend would occasionally break the silence with a question – “This one?” and “How about this one?” Gramps’ only reply was a terse shake of his head in the horizontal direction until we approached a small, slightly run down gas station. “Stop here,” he said.
Relieved to be stopping (I’d unwisely had several cups of coffee on the plane, thinking I’d be able to use the bathroom at the retirement residence), I started to get out of the car when my friend asked if I could fill the tank up while he and Gramps went inside. I agreed, reminding myself that there was no reason I should get to go first, and humming a Cole Porter tune as I began the gassing up process. It wasn’t until the tank was nearly full that I saw, out of the corner of my eye, Gramps – oxygen tank in tow – heading for the counter with a gun. Wave after wave of panic swept over me like an avalanche and my mind tried to reconcile what I was seeing in front of me with some kind of logical thought. The only thing that came through clearly was that I needed to finish up and get as far away from that place as possible. It was at that point that I heard the first sirens and I knew that things would never be the same.
Much later, after hours and hours of questioning at the police station, several calls to my frantic parents, and a brief stint in a holding cell with a large woman named Madge, I was released. I blinked my eyes against the bright Florida sun, amazed to think that an entire night had passed since my adventure at the gas station. Suddenly, from every direction, there were reporters' voices raised with questions for me, microphones pointed at me, and lights shining in my face. Bewildered, I tried to push my way through the horde, but they were having none of it. The urgent questions came fast and furious and I was unable to distinguish what was being said until I heard one woman’s voice ask, “So, how do you feel after all of this?” I thought for a moment and said the only word that came to mind.
Wednesday afternoon. I have blatantly ripped this off from Marla, so don't think I'm clever or anything of the kind.
Basically, what you do is type "yourname is" (where yourname should be replaced with, well, your own name) into Google and see what pops up.
Here are my results:
Denise is right (well, duh)
Denise is on TV (probably one of those Telenovelas on Spanish language TV)
Denise is looking for Deborah (yikes, I hope Deborah's not stranded somewhere because I'm not doing a very good job of looking)
Denise is not hunting and pecking but is bringing a bit of color to her office in October (um, actually, I did just change offices, but it's May, not October - as usual, I'm behind schedule)
Denise is currently the Chair for the American Indian Studies Program at UW-Green Bay and was awarded tenure and promoted to Associate Professor in 1998 (I knew my Liberal Arts degree would come in handy one day)
Denise is a hot phone sex slut (I hope my mother is not reading this!)
The real Denise is a juggler (If they're talking about priorities and demanding people, that's absolutely correct)
Denise is proud to announce that she has joined the PA Blasi team (if it pays lots of money, I'll be doubly proud)
Denise is so f***ing hot (well, thank you, I think)
Denise is an attorney specializing in appellate and intellectual property litigation (yes, but don't tell the California Bar Association or they'll be asking for money)
Wednesday morning. Well, I'm not sure who the big "winner" is. Argyro (#10,001) admits that she might not have followed the rules to the letter (LOL!) and Dazed is #10,006, so I'm not sure what happened to #10,000 and 10,002-10,005. If you were any of those numbers, you have until the end of the day today to let me know, otherwise, Dazed, I'll be asking you for the first sentence of the story I'll be writing. (And to Jenniy who just missed it with #9,999, thanks for the super email - you were the first to tell me the good news!)
UPDATE: Whoever the big winner is, I think they have Internet service through either t-dialin.net or aol.com. If I'm reading my Sitemeter properly, I think 10,000 is AOL, 10,002 is using mindspring.com (thought they were gone!), 10,003 comes to us via chello.nl, 10,004 looks like a very specific IP address that I won't publish here, and 10,005 is listed as charter.com. If you can prove that you're either a Mindspring user or a Chello.nl user, you don't even have to show me a screen shot, just send me an email from one of those domains and I'll declare you the "winner".
Tuesday morning. I think something exciting is about to happen, possibly even today. I just looked at my sitemeter and it's at 9,910, which means that, either today or tomorrow, my little piece of the 'Net is going to turn over 10,000 visits. I truly can't believe that 10,000 people have read things that I have written - it just boggles my mind.
In celebration of this rite of passage, I'm making an offer: if you are visitor #10,000 and you send me a screen shot to verify that fact, I will write a story for you and post it here. Your email should contain the screen shot, your name (or pen name), and the first sentence for a 500 word story that I will write for you. To be safe, how about numbers 10,000 through 10,005 send me emails, in case someone is too shy (or uninterested) to let me know that they were the lucky(?) winner? Sounds like a deal to me.
And now, we send you back to your regularly scheduled programming.
(Started on ) Sunday morning. Just a few moments ago, as I was washing my hands, I was suddenly struck by the strangest thought: what would happen if I stopped trying to lose weight and instead simply tried to be healthy at the weight I'm at? What I mean, I think, is, if I stopped obsessing over what I eat, stopped hating myself for the way that I look, and stopped feeling so self conscious of the way my body looks while I'm exercising at my current weight...what would my life be like?
This probably sounds pretty simplistic to all of you, but this truly is the first time I've ever allowed myself to seriously entertain these thoughts. I've spent my life since the age of 13 hating the way that I look and the shape and size of my body. I've internalized and memorized every cutting thing anyone has ever said to me - "You'd be so pretty if you just lost weight" and things along those lines. Not surprisingly, there is very little positive associated with my looks for me, and this has had a devastating effect on my entire life.
Things I won't do because I'm too self-conscious: * Regular exercise. Sounds odd, I know, but my obsession with how all of my bulges and my tummy will look when I'm moving has created a huge amount of resistance within me to getting out and moving while I'm heavy. Of course, the Catch 22 of this is that I won't get smaller until I start to move.
* Kayaking. I loved kayaking while I was at a resort spa in Texas a couple of years ago, but I won't get out there and rent one at the Aquatic Center near my house because I'm too self conscious about how heavy I am and what it will look like with me weighing down the boat. A perfect opportunity to get out, get fresh air, and exercise, and I'm passing it up because of my weight.
* Socialize with people I don't know. At church, at OA meetings, wherever I go by myself, I bolt for the "safety" of my car once the event is over, because I'm not comfortable being in large groups of people that I don't know. I feel as though I'm being judged and laughed at because of how I look, and I simply can't stand the (real or perceived) censure. Some of this is real (I do live in San Diego, land of the perfect body), some is just my imagination, especially at the OA meetings because they are very accepting - it's me that is unable to accept me, not them.
* Make friends. I have always had a tough time making friends in real life. Funny thing is that I don't seem to have the same problem online. I chat all the time with people from different countries and cultures, and I'm not self conscious at all. Why? Because they can't see me!
The most important thing that I won't do at my current weight is feel good about myself. When I don't feel good about myself, I don't take the time to do the little things that are so critical to building and validating self esteem. Things like putting on makeup, putting together an outfit before going to bed so that I can choose accessories and such accordingly (instead of just throwing it together at the last minute), making sure that I take time to style my hair becomingly, and, last but not least, looking at myself in the mirror and feeling good about what I see. I know that it's not my weight that keeps me from doing that last item, because I can remember being 120 pounds (at 5'3") and still not wanting to look in the mirror because of how fat I felt.
I've read lots of articles about being fat and fit at the same time, and I believe them to be true. I know that, when I went to the doctor last year, my blood work was excellent in every category, and I was 225 at the time. My diabetes was under excellent control and my cholesterol, triglycerides, and all that good stuff was all well within desireable limits. I was watching what I ate and sticking to a low calorie diet, but I really think that the regular exercise I was getting was doing more for me than the diet. My thought now is, if I stopped obsessing over my food, if I allowed myself to eat anything that I wanted as long as I didn't binge, and exercised six days a week, moderately, for an hour, could I be happy and healthy? I think the answer to the healthy part is, clearly, yes. Happiness, however, is so much more elusive.
