Last week five different people commented on all the weight I have lost in the past month. \”All the weight\” being ten pounds. Thirty-five pounds since May. Down a full fifty since the last time I had previously weighed myself, which was last July. Eran mentioned losing weight and disappearing in one of his entries; I am starting to feel that way.
The thing is, the more weight I lose, the more people comment on how great I look and on how much weight I have lost. Suddenly my weight is okay to talk about. It was taboo when I was obese, but now that the pounds are slipping off, it is utterly okay to say how fantastic it is that it is coming off and how good it looks. I find that to be disturbing.
I am starting to feel reduced to the way I look. I have a friend who just about every time I see him manages to take my face in his hand and say how pretty it is. Last weekend my friend Orin for some reason found it necessary to tell me that I \’look better every time\’ he sees me, and his grandmother told me point blank out of nowhere that I was beautiful.
Add to the above the usual \’hey momma\’ bullshit I get whenever I am in Mt. Pleasant, which is a lot these days, the difference in the way I am treated on the days I \’get dressed\’ versus am still wearing my exercise clothes when I am out in public, the amount of guys who try to pick me up when I go out at night, my conversation with Mike (see below), and my frustrations with school, and I am starting to feel like I should just pack it all in and strip for a living, as all I seem to have going for me are my looks. What talent? What intellect? Legs, face, tits, ass, shoulders, lips, hips, shake it.
Mike does not think I would cut it in social work. Nobody seems to think that I would. No one thinks I would be happy. Mike thinks what I would be happy doing is planning parties, organizing shows, being an event promoter. All these years and I still cannot shake Cassandra-the-airhead, Cassandra-the-party-kid from people\’s minds. Nobody fucking takes me seriously, and with good reason. I have never given them any reason to.
I thought about Mike\’s points. What I want to do, with organizing, with social work, with the space. I would be dirt poor and it would obliterate absolutely all my personal free time. The stress and responsibility would be unbelievable. People would be coming to me with their problems constantly and I have never been able to not be empathetic, to not live it right along with them. I knew all this. I knew it. Why did I want to be a martyr? Why did it just hit me this week that I do not want to be a martyr, that as much as the space is what I want to do, I am not willing to sacrifice myself for it?
So what else is there for me? I guess I am going to be a stripper.
I feel like such a waste of space.
I dropped a class on Wednesday and my hair is falling out from the stress. I am having panic attacks left and right, I started binge eating again — three days in a row — first time in ages, one physical therapy session left. One. ONE. And I am not going to the wedding. Oh yeah, and five people were shot and killed in my backyard yesterday, did I mention that? That was fun. I have never seen Wheaton so deserted.
MW says I am one of three of the most interesting people he knows right now. I cannot figure it out, I just do not see why. I was afraid to ask. I am afraid to dissapoint him. Thanks, Mark, I appreciate that… (but what I am really thinking is that you must know some really boring people or you have a really distorted view of me and once you get to know me better you are going to be drastically let down.) I am just like everyone else, and that is the sad truth.
Apparently, though, I should be throwing parties. But with a face like mine? Nah… why waste it behind the scenes? Got to work the catwalk myself. And I miss modelling, but I am too short to really get anywhere with it. God fucking damn it. Stripping it is.
