Seriously

I called my ex today just to update him on some good news. He was snide and dismissive. I really have no idea as to why I keep in touch with the guy. Is it delusional to think one can be friends with an ex? Obviously we each have moved on - he with his girlfriend, I with my boyfriend. And it's literally been six years since our relationship ended.

I suppose a part of my visceral reaction stems from his ability to get under my skin. He is very sarcastic and snide. Beyond David Spade.

Well, I always say we should cut out people from our lives who add nothing positive to our lives. I've done it before, and I'm more than happy to do it again.

Ok so maybe it was PMS

Because I don't feel obese anymore. Yay.

Not PMS

I feel fat. I know, I know, every girl no matter her weight or waist size will think/say those same words, except maybe Olympic athletes and the starving kids in Africa my mom always talks about.

But yeah. I feel fat. I look down at my thighs and each of them are enormous. Gargantuan. I can literally feel the fat bulging against the inside of my skin. It is a palpable pressure of mass, pressing against my skin, threatening to burst from my body. Sometimes I imagine poking my thigh with a needle, thinking a stream of fat will explode from my thigh.

If only it were that easy.

I feel disgusting and fat. I look in the mirror and see fat. Thighs that curve outward, thighs that touch each other, thighs that humiliate me on a daily basis. Every time I walk in front of someone or stand in an elevator with someone or walk up the stairs, I feel like my thighs and butt and thickness are just huge big signs that say "Fat Girl Walking." I feel like they're looking at me and thinking, "She can't pull off those pants. Chunk."

And there's my belly. Oh, Belly. Muffin Top. Flabby. It is an entity of its own, yet forming an alliance with my thighs to make me feel and look fat.

I run my 3-mile workouts, and it seems futile. I fantasize about taking a scalpel and carving out all the fat, jiggle and wiggle from my body, and leaving nothing but Angela Basset-esque toned athletic slender.

I feel the fat everywhere. On my arms. On my legs. Clinging to my neck, hanging onto my back, pressing against clothes that are threatening to tear at the seams.

ARGH. I feel fat.

Last night's dream

Last night, I dreamt that my father was alive, and my mother had died.

I was in the house I grew up in, and I was looking in all the rooms for my dad. I knew he was somewhere. I looked in the master bedroom, and someone was sleeping there, but it wasn't my dad. It was a relative, I think. I went downstairs to the living room, and saw someone sleeping on the sofa. But again, it wasn't my dad, but another relative. Then I heard my mom's voice calling to me, muffled and distant, but from somewhere in the house. I followed her voice, walked upstairs, and discovered it was coming from my bedroom.

I opened my bedroom door, and there was my mother (presumably her ghost), sitting on the carpet, next to my bed, telling me casually there was my dad. On my bed, my dad was sleeping. I remember looking at his face, and saw that he had this pink plastic-like stubble on his face. They looked like tiny pink transparent flowers.

Then I started freaking out to my mom's ghost. I started bawling and saying how I had so many regrets and how I wished I said and did so many things before she died of her sickness. I was hysterically crying and couldn't get everything out fast enough.

And then...I woke up. After a moment, I realized, it was a dream, and it is my father who has passed; and my mother is still alive.

I'm not sure what it means. Now that I think about it, I wonder if those who were sleeping yet "alive" in my dream represented the dead. My dad's older brother did pass away, as well as my dad's parents and his nephew. I wonder if those sleeping relatives represented those passed relatives.

Very strange.

The perpetual issues of Love and Marriage

I read a haunting article, aptly entitled "Why it’s OK to settle for Mr. Good Enough," written by Lori Gottlieb. It was forwarded to me by my recently single (and thus newly cynical) friend. Basically, the article advises single women to avoid holding out for Mr. Perfect/Prince Charming/Love of All Earth-Shattering Loves. Because that man does not exist. And fine, if a woman wants to spend her twenties and thirties looking for that, she's going to find out the hard way that he doesn't exist.

The author identified herself as one of those women who learned the hard way.

She waited for the perfect guy, and met a few great guys who never lived up to the Mr. Perfect/Prince Charming/Love of All Earth-Shattering Loves-standard. And now at age 40 with a kid (via sperm donor), she is beginning to realize that her chances of marrying Mr. "Okay" have dwindled, for various reasons including her age:

What I and many women who hold out for true love forget is that we won’t always have the same appeal that we may have had in our 20s and early 30s. Having turned 40, I now have wrinkles, bags under my eyes, and hair in places I didn’t know hair could grow on women.

Really, these are things that single women do not want to hear. Single women want to hear that everyone waits for and eventually finds their True Love and it all works out in The End because that's how the universe works.

Ms. Gottlieb pretty much says this is b.s.

Talk about a cautionary tale. I'm not sure if I 100% agree with this article. It is somewhat inapt in my case given that I am in a long-term relationship; but I know from my past experience and my friends' experiences that Ms. Gottleib articulates some of the fears that single women today harbor, and really hones in on them. Kind of like the elephant in the room. Ms. Gottlieb pretty much takes the elephant out of the corner, shines one or two hundred spotlights on it, and yells through a megaphone, "Here is the elephant. Acknowledge it or die alone."

Not a book review

I just re-read The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The first time I read it was probably fifteen years ago, in high school, undoubtedly assigned to a class in an attempt to edify us about great American literature.

I could only remember two things about the book. First, it was boring. Incredibly, mind-bogglingly boring. And second, it had to do with rich people.

About a year ago, I attended an alumni event with a friend, and there they distributed complimentary copies of the novel. It was lying around one day and so I decided to re-read it for fun. This time around, I totally enjoyed it.

I could see why as a high schooler, I wouldn't be intrigued by or fully understand the book. I think when you're a middle-class to upper middle-class kid in the burbs, you have little idea what it means to be rich in the city, other than that you can wear nice clothes, drive a nice car, and live in a big house. But I think once you grow up and walk among the educated elite in a large city, you really meet people who are rich and who have formed their own ideas on the world and life by virtue of being rich.

There are various scenes in the book where the narrator, Nick, is hanging out with people who talk a lot without really saying anything. These people are rich (obviously) and well-educated. But the things they say are painfully vacuous and ignorant. Their lives are filled with nice homes and nice clothes, but are otherwise empty. I guess not much has changed since 1922.

I admit it is easy for people like me who are not rich to vilify the rich. I think F. Scott had a certain admiration and awe for the wealthy and their materialism; but at the same time a distaste for the vulgarity and ignorance. There was something romantic and yet very sad about the entire story. It really resonated with me.

In sum, I liked it.