Just read a piece by someone I love dearly that detailed her struggles with body image. From my point of view, it's an unnecessary concern for her, although she seems to be staying on top of it rather well. Of course, my point of view is heavily biased in her favour and incorrigibly slanted towards her benefit as a whole person. There are no forthcoming apologies for that, but it will of course make it harder for me to understand how said concern affects her.
I don't worry about her; it just made me realise how infuriating this issue is to me. Can there be a more useless facet of a human's existence to wield so much power over them, to thwart them and berate them at every turn, to force them to alter and amputate pieces of themselves inside and out to chase this impossible and ever-changing mirage of perfection?
Why do I give a flying fuck what people think of how I look? Why have I ever once changed the way I did anything to appease their judgments? I'm ugly by most standards. Overweight, oddly shaped, impenetrably strange fashion sense. Deal with it. I'm done trying to impress anyone. I have a wife who's happy with what she's got here, even if no one envies her. She told all of Facebook today that she married me for my weapons. I love this woman.
She dealt with the same body-image bullshit growing up. It still bogs her down sometimes. I'm as happy with her as I'd be with any other woman on this planet, but you don't turn off three decades of taunts and derision and objectification in a blink. I don't try to turn it off; I work my ass off to prove it all wrong. Because it is.
Has anyone but me rationally considered that there had best be more going for a person than looks if they're a potential friend, let alone life partner? It is infuriating to see and hear and breathe this mania at every turn. I can't do, say, or think anything without some nattering voice trying to turn it into an obsession.
I looked up Virginia Hey recently. She played Warrior Woman in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, the movie that formed the backdrop for much of my misspent youth, and Zhaan on the Farscape series. She accepted me as a friend on her Facebook page, and I looked at the photos she had posted, not only from her films and television work, but also of her hanging out with dear friends in London, just being another pretty 50-something out and about in a nifty city with people she loves.
She happens to be a strikingly beautiful female celebrity who had a fairly major role in a film dear to my heart. Her beauty does not intoxicate me or addle me with lust. I am interested in the person that she is, not the image she projects. I refuse to be obsessed with or overawed by her. Or anyone else. If I could have any relationship at all with Ms. Hey, it would be the same kind of friendship my wife and I have with Angela or Jenn or K or Niko. Real people sharing real life and bearing each other's burdens through love and faith.
I very much doubt it'll ever happen, unless New London explodes as the new East Coast film capital, and that's okay. Because I know, no matter what anyone wants to think, that there are other ways to respond to a famous beauty besides stalking or worship. I've been on the losing side of the body-image game since birth. It holds no promise or illusions for me. I care about my own much more than I should, but that's just one of a long list of bugs that God's fixing in me a day at a time. The people who matter most to me like who they see when I show up no matter what the outside looks like.
There are those who doubt or deride what I wrote here, because they are likely so given to this sickness that they can't help but see it in others. They'd rather infect everyone else than get healthy. Stuff every one of them. Let them prove me wrong about them or keep it to themselves. I'm armed and insecure and about to hit my wall with this noise. It never has been a good idea to fuck with me, and it gets to be a worse idea every day.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
cheers
Lisa and I went to Willimantic last night for an "Anti-Valentine" party. We were invited by a schoolmate I recently reconnected with on Facebook. I saw a few other people I knew from back in the day and met some new faces. We went to two clubs I'd never been to, and honestly wouldn't have if not for the nifty folks we were with who made them bearable. Not my scene at all. I'm way too old, too skinhead, too married. For the club clientele, that is; the crowd we went to hang out with had no problem being seen with us. And I thought that was pretty swell, given that their gathering was a sort of good-natured backlash against romance. It was actually rather an honour to have a huddle of thirtysomething singles let the most revoltingly cute married couple on the planet in on their fun.
My friend is a single mom who, like me, grew up overweight and felt the wrath of our culture for her "defect". It's amazing how focused and passionate the contempt and derision can be when you don't measure up to some arbitrary standard. And when it starts early in life, from all angles, even from family, it can stay with you long after people are no longer throwing it at you. The voices still bray inside your head, the shame and self-loathing carve deep ruts in your soul and you can't see yourself any other way. You know and fear loneliness like few do. And you tend to be prone to falling into unhealthy relationships because any attention at all is so intoxicating that you panic at the thought of losing it, especially when you're programmed to believe with total conviction that you're too undesirable to get it from anyone else. You have no concept of being able to choose from a position of strength.
For reasons like these, she hasn't done well with relationships, though by God she's tried. She loves her daughter and wants a man to share her life with who is willing to commit to them. Not much to ask, given that such is what God designed humans to do. And she is worth it. Better still, she is starting to learn that.
I am glad she reconnected with me on Facebook, and that she and Lisa get along swimmingly. When we were in the Dean's Office Cafe, surrounded by wannabe thugs and college tarts and pumping dollars into the jukebox to blow holes in the stream of Top 40 tripe with AC/DC and the Dropkick Murphys, she confessed that she was a bit afraid that we would hate what she turned into after a few drinks, which really wasn't a whole lot different from her sober self - bubbly, vivacious, friendly and pretty darned sweet. She was afraid our faith would cause us to cast a jaundiced eye on her. Apparently when God gets a hold of someone He sees to it that they don't have much stomach for someone letting their hair down.
Has it really come to that? Does my claiming the name of Christ really cause someone who doesn't know Him personally to expect the very opposite treatment from that which He exemplified in His earthly sojourn? The religious leaders of His day couldn't talk enough trash about His choice of company or the pursuits He engaged in with them. He was known for hanging out with far more notorious people than our friend could ever bring herself to be. Why should she expect His followers to turn their noses up at her when she's being nothing but herself?
That's pretty embarassing, and it's yet another reason for me to be thankful for the delightfully misshapen saints He's surrounded me and Lisa with. I can't play the church game anymore. I want to be like Christ, not like the neutered, Prozac'd mannequin that religion has held up in His place. If that means I drop some cash on a few pints and get my wife and I into cheap nightclubs to have deep conversations with hurting people whose lives aren't neat and tidy (as if ours ever were), then sign me up. I want the church to look more like a bunch of thirtysomething singles rallying around each other on barstools like a family to share each other's burdens, and less like a management seminar with tips and techniques on how to prop up the facade of Godly oblivion to real human need.
Jen, thank you for being seen with us. We love you. And so does God. I hope we can help Him to prove that to you.
My friend is a single mom who, like me, grew up overweight and felt the wrath of our culture for her "defect". It's amazing how focused and passionate the contempt and derision can be when you don't measure up to some arbitrary standard. And when it starts early in life, from all angles, even from family, it can stay with you long after people are no longer throwing it at you. The voices still bray inside your head, the shame and self-loathing carve deep ruts in your soul and you can't see yourself any other way. You know and fear loneliness like few do. And you tend to be prone to falling into unhealthy relationships because any attention at all is so intoxicating that you panic at the thought of losing it, especially when you're programmed to believe with total conviction that you're too undesirable to get it from anyone else. You have no concept of being able to choose from a position of strength.
For reasons like these, she hasn't done well with relationships, though by God she's tried. She loves her daughter and wants a man to share her life with who is willing to commit to them. Not much to ask, given that such is what God designed humans to do. And she is worth it. Better still, she is starting to learn that.
I am glad she reconnected with me on Facebook, and that she and Lisa get along swimmingly. When we were in the Dean's Office Cafe, surrounded by wannabe thugs and college tarts and pumping dollars into the jukebox to blow holes in the stream of Top 40 tripe with AC/DC and the Dropkick Murphys, she confessed that she was a bit afraid that we would hate what she turned into after a few drinks, which really wasn't a whole lot different from her sober self - bubbly, vivacious, friendly and pretty darned sweet. She was afraid our faith would cause us to cast a jaundiced eye on her. Apparently when God gets a hold of someone He sees to it that they don't have much stomach for someone letting their hair down.
Has it really come to that? Does my claiming the name of Christ really cause someone who doesn't know Him personally to expect the very opposite treatment from that which He exemplified in His earthly sojourn? The religious leaders of His day couldn't talk enough trash about His choice of company or the pursuits He engaged in with them. He was known for hanging out with far more notorious people than our friend could ever bring herself to be. Why should she expect His followers to turn their noses up at her when she's being nothing but herself?
That's pretty embarassing, and it's yet another reason for me to be thankful for the delightfully misshapen saints He's surrounded me and Lisa with. I can't play the church game anymore. I want to be like Christ, not like the neutered, Prozac'd mannequin that religion has held up in His place. If that means I drop some cash on a few pints and get my wife and I into cheap nightclubs to have deep conversations with hurting people whose lives aren't neat and tidy (as if ours ever were), then sign me up. I want the church to look more like a bunch of thirtysomething singles rallying around each other on barstools like a family to share each other's burdens, and less like a management seminar with tips and techniques on how to prop up the facade of Godly oblivion to real human need.
Jen, thank you for being seen with us. We love you. And so does God. I hope we can help Him to prove that to you.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
steel cocoon
My job schedule is four 10-hour days so that leaves me with three-day weekends. For the last few of these I've been fairly steeped in various little survival projects, and the depth with which I can become absorbed by them is by turns comforting, wondrous and disturbing.
I've modified an aircrew survival knife and four different machetes. Nothing major, just little tweaks with a rotary tool and some sanding and filework to improve different functions. I took the knife and one of the machetes and made a survival package with some odds and ends and a few ideas of mine and others I found online. It's cheaper than drinking and there's no hangover, just a lot of little metal shavings everywhere.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist or zombie apocalypse enthusiast. I haven't been camping in any way that requires more than a pocketknife in nearly two decades. I just like this stuff.
I have to take my ideas when and where I can get them. If they involve things I already have, that's even better. Give me the time to work on them and it's better still. To take something good and improve it, adorn it, weave it with other good things to make a system, leads to a rare and elusive euphoria. Trial and error doesn't enrage me here like it usually does as long as the errors can be corrected. Here like almost nowhere else, I grasp the meaning of learning from mistakes.
Mistakes are illegal in my world. They are to be prevented, avoided, and failing that, punished. The main thing to be learned from mistakes is not to make them. There is no dodging or evading responsibility. I own my mistakes. They define me. This is not what I believe because I want to; this is what I have learned. This is what I was taught. This is the signal I picked up five-by-five from people and life almost from the start.
In the bubble I've locked myself in for the last few weekends I receive a different signal. I still own the mistakes, but I also own what I learn from them. Oddly enough , the absence of pressure to perform improves my performance. I excel by not obsessing over excellence, by focusing on what's good enough.
It's a tiny island of competence in an ocean of haze and uncertainty and failure. Here I'm the boss, and I'm a pretty decent guy to work for. The job gets done and enjoyed in the process.
People use the term "cocooning" to describe a deep, tunnel-visioned retreat into any activity as an escape from life and reality. When I get this deep into a hobby I feel pangs of guilt as though that's what I'm doing. Wouldn't it be a right kick to learn that it really is a cocoon, not a coward's refuge but a place to transform into something better?
It could be argued that I have more important concerns than convex grinds and paracord wrap patterns. I do, in fact. It often feels like fiddling while Rome burns. My only defence is that this, like it or not, is part of who and what I am, and it has not a thing to do with how long it's been since I hacked out a campsite. I still don't know like others claim to that I matter much at all, but I know that many people and other forces have expended tremendous passion, energy and resources to nullify and erase me. If there are things I need to address, than I matter at least as much as those things. If there is none of me left to bring to them, they are lost to me.
I don't think God made me for that. Any step I can take towards what He made me for, however trivial, however mundane, is closer to where I belong, if such a place exists. I wish these tiny things didn't loom so hugely on my pathetic little screen, but it is still better to have them than not.
Friday, January 22, 2010
dance fever
come on already, just write it down. you hate it so bad you wish you could step outside it long enough to kick it down the stairs. every swing of a boot into its ribs would be an orgasm. rage and loathing spewing all over the concrete and never spent.
tread the same ground over and over, learning nothing, losing every good thing it's entrusted with, and yet it's still trusted. no one suspects because it's too much of a coward to speak up.
weak, impotent, defective little thing, swollen with delusions of significance.
I want to scream the hate until my throat bleeds. I want to feel the electric rush of flesh impacting flesh, perp and victim reveling in their dance within the same misshapen body. belt across the face and neck, head against the wall, fists on the skull, round and round and back and forth. no one around to have any clue or try to stop it.
it's a drug, it's a crutch, it's a corner to be pushed into and hide in, it's within reach, unlike life.
I'll stop when it gets better, when the weakness and stupidity of it don't drop to the ground and unroll like the stench of a corpse and precede it into a room or a relationship or a job and wring inane words and lame excuses from its lips and lock it behind a glass wall where the Bright Ones are close enough to watch and hear but just out of reach.
I tried to break the glass but I bled all over them, they said they didn't mind but come on.
still hurts, still needs, and bears all the blame for that.
tread the same ground over and over, learning nothing, losing every good thing it's entrusted with, and yet it's still trusted. no one suspects because it's too much of a coward to speak up.
weak, impotent, defective little thing, swollen with delusions of significance.
I want to scream the hate until my throat bleeds. I want to feel the electric rush of flesh impacting flesh, perp and victim reveling in their dance within the same misshapen body. belt across the face and neck, head against the wall, fists on the skull, round and round and back and forth. no one around to have any clue or try to stop it.
it's a drug, it's a crutch, it's a corner to be pushed into and hide in, it's within reach, unlike life.
I'll stop when it gets better, when the weakness and stupidity of it don't drop to the ground and unroll like the stench of a corpse and precede it into a room or a relationship or a job and wring inane words and lame excuses from its lips and lock it behind a glass wall where the Bright Ones are close enough to watch and hear but just out of reach.
I tried to break the glass but I bled all over them, they said they didn't mind but come on.
still hurts, still needs, and bears all the blame for that.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
finish
great at starting, not so much at finishing.
got a million foundations laid and no clue which one to build on.
ghost surrounded by real beings, want to join the party and no one believes me whan I tell them I don't speak the language.
whatever this is supposed to be is locked away and don't know how to open the door.
the kid never learns, does he?
"I went to Georgia, to convert the Indians, but O! who shall convert me?" - John Wesley
got a million foundations laid and no clue which one to build on.
ghost surrounded by real beings, want to join the party and no one believes me whan I tell them I don't speak the language.
whatever this is supposed to be is locked away and don't know how to open the door.
the kid never learns, does he?
"I went to Georgia, to convert the Indians, but O! who shall convert me?" - John Wesley
Friday, January 15, 2010
stretch
(from a Facebook app.)
"On this day of your life, Doug, we believe God wants you to know ... that God sees you as you truly are - a holy child of light:
'I see you strong and whole. I see you blessed and prospered. I see you courageous and confident. I see you capable and successful. I see you free from all limitations or bondage of any kind. I see you as the spiritually perfect being you truly are.' "
not going to lie - that's a bit much.
whatever God says is true. were "we" hearing Him or just being Hallmarkish?
if it were anyone but God I would tell them to lay off the peyote.
I'm not given to relying on Facebook apps. for spiritual insight, but a body can't help but wonder if there is any way this could actually be true.
and if it is, why can't I see things the same way? any idea how much of my thoughts and actions have to be ignored or denied to make this stick? do you not know what a showcase of depravity we have here? everything God hates about fallen man in one convenient location.
I exist too much. I need to cut back.
God if this is true then how do I see it?
if it ain't I'd very much like it to be, but it won't unless You do it. didn't say I wouldn't, said I can't. think You know that.
this hurts.
"On this day of your life, Doug, we believe God wants you to know ... that God sees you as you truly are - a holy child of light:
'I see you strong and whole. I see you blessed and prospered. I see you courageous and confident. I see you capable and successful. I see you free from all limitations or bondage of any kind. I see you as the spiritually perfect being you truly are.' "
not going to lie - that's a bit much.
whatever God says is true. were "we" hearing Him or just being Hallmarkish?
if it were anyone but God I would tell them to lay off the peyote.
I'm not given to relying on Facebook apps. for spiritual insight, but a body can't help but wonder if there is any way this could actually be true.
and if it is, why can't I see things the same way? any idea how much of my thoughts and actions have to be ignored or denied to make this stick? do you not know what a showcase of depravity we have here? everything God hates about fallen man in one convenient location.
I exist too much. I need to cut back.
God if this is true then how do I see it?
if it ain't I'd very much like it to be, but it won't unless You do it. didn't say I wouldn't, said I can't. think You know that.
this hurts.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
it's about...
...time to come back.
Christmas was awesome, but I let too many other things crowd out too much of it.
just another day, but it ain't. it's supposed to change things. it's supposed to change me.
it always does. I want it to, more than ever.
I glimpse a self I don't hate, ever so briefly.
I see things in others that I let slip away all too easily. good things that will overpower the rest if I let them.
I need to be changed, a lot.
God, thank You. I love You, and I love them. wife, family, friends, this life is less than nothing without them. You are enough, but I'm glad you choose to reach me through them.
I reeeeeally wish I'd milked this year for more of You, wish I knew more of my life made You happy.
sorry.
like to try again, 'kay?
Christmas was awesome, but I let too many other things crowd out too much of it.
just another day, but it ain't. it's supposed to change things. it's supposed to change me.
it always does. I want it to, more than ever.
I glimpse a self I don't hate, ever so briefly.
I see things in others that I let slip away all too easily. good things that will overpower the rest if I let them.
I need to be changed, a lot.
God, thank You. I love You, and I love them. wife, family, friends, this life is less than nothing without them. You are enough, but I'm glad you choose to reach me through them.
I reeeeeally wish I'd milked this year for more of You, wish I knew more of my life made You happy.
sorry.
like to try again, 'kay?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
