25 billion reasons why I don’t like Facebook

Everyone seems to be doing that inane “25 things you don’t know about me” meme on Facebook, and the annoying thing is that they’re tagging everyone on their “Friends” list to be “Included in this note.” I’ve been tagged about a dozen times now, and I’m not really sorry to admit that I haven’t read any of them. I love my friends, my real friends, my near and dear friends who are no longer so near and probably don’t consider me very dear because I’m not very good at the whole “being a good friend” thing, and I’d love to learn new things about them. I’m not exactly sure why it’s fun and entertaining to read about those things in list format, specifically a list of 25 things, but so it goes. I haven’t jumped on the bandwagon, mainly due to the fact I assume the reason people don’t know the 25 things on I’d put on my list is because they don’t want to know them. Or I don’t want them to know them.

(To be included on my list of 25 things if I ever make such a list: Multiple pronouns in the same sentence drive me crazy, especially when it sounds better to use them, but contextually it could possibly be confusing.)

I suppose the number one thing that would go on my list of 25 things you don’t know about me (“you” being some sort of mass personal pronoun meant to make everyone reading the list feel like they’re intimately involved with the person writing it) is that I have rheumatoid arthritis. I was diagnosed when I was 24 years old, but I became symptomatic when I was around 19. That means I spent five years having no idea why my body was seemed to be giving up, and my view on life changed a lot. When you think you’re going to be in a wheelchair before you’re 30, and you’re becoming so severely limited in how well your hands work at 21 that you’re pretty sure you’ll never be able to pick up a baby if you were to ever get around to having one, looking forward to the future isn’t as simple or as exciting as it should be.

There are a lot of things that are rolled up in my RA, things that don’t really need to be discussed right now, but the main thing is that I was diagnosed with a disease. A real, live disease, one that is permanent and debilitating. One that, if you’re lucky (and I am well aware of how extremely lucky I am), can be stabilized with medicine. Expensive medicine. Expensive medicine that has to be prescribed by expensive doctors, specialists, and has to be monitored through expensive things like frequent blood work and x-rays. I am lucky, I know I’m lucky, because my medicine was able to stop the progression of the disease and even reverse some of the damage that had already been done. I’m lucky because I have wonderful parents who have gone above and beyond to support me, keeping me on their insurance long after it was legal to do so, risking ridiculously large penalties if anyone ever does their research and sees that I’m not truly dependent, that my parents are really just beating the system so I’m not stuck on some crappy insurance plan with some enormous deductible (or, worse yet, student insurance) that doesn’t cover all the things that need to be covered for me to be healthy.

The thing about this disease, and the stuff needed to take care of me so I’m not being beat up by the disease, is that it has chained me down and forced me to make choices I would never have made if I was a healthy adult.

I wouldn’t have gone into the M.A.T. program. If for some strange reason I still did, I wouldn’t have stayed when I realized it wasn’t what I wanted.

(Even though this was prediagnosis and a long time ago) I would never have spent so much time with MS, hoping for him to decide he wanted to marry me, hoping I’d get a chance to start a family before I physically couldn’t.

I would never have decided it was so damn necessary to get married and have a family RIGHT NOW, which would have made most of the relationships in my life so much easier (both for my friends and my boyfriends).

I wouldn’t have come up with the crazy “I’ll get my M.A.T.!” plan, because it wouldn’t have mattered if I was on crappy student insurance (or no insurance at all).

I wouldn’t have pushed The Terrorist to make a commitment, to get engaged, because I wouldn’t have been adding up the years in my head and worrying about the time I wanted to spend married and settled before thinking about children.

(As a side note, something else in my list of 25 things you don’t know about me, I can’t just up and decide I’m ready to have kids. I have to carefully plan out the entire thing, because I take medicine I can’t take while pregnant, medicine I’ll have to have out of my system for a good bit of time before trying to get pregnant, and this is medicine that keeps me mobile and functioning. I also need to not only plan carefully for what is going to be going on in my life when I start that process, I have to make sure there’s money if I can’t work and good insurance that will be able to provide for the entire ordeal, like the good bit of draining gross fluid out of my knees I anticipate happening constantly. I have to make sure this goes into motion before I reach an age it could be difficult to get pregnant at, and an age where not taking the medicine could do worse and lasting damage to my body. Let’s not forget the added math if I might want to have more than one child, especially if I want to do something responsible and space them out appropriately.)

I wouldn’t worry that I’m moving too fast with the Goat. I probably wouldn’t be moving so fast, and therefore there’d be no worry. I wouldn’t keep thinking, “Oh my God, if he isn’t the one, I’m screwed.”

I would have up and quit when I realized nothing, absolutely nothing, about this student teaching experience is making me want to be a teacher.

I’d have submitted Ph.D. applications to try and get started in a program this coming fall.

I wouldn’t feel so guilty about saying all this or being upset by it, because I feel guilty about it all the time. There are so many people so much more worse off than I am, and they’re not as unhappy with their lives as I am. They aren’t letting their problems stop them.

I’d heal faster.

This is why I haven’t created a list of 25 things. They’d all be like this. And let’s be honest with each other: no one wants to know this.

Remember when I didn’t think I’d ever cut it as a teacher? I miss those days.

I probably haven’t mentioned it here, but this whole student teaching/becoming a real, live, grown-up high school English teacher isn’t turning out to be my cup of tea. Part of it stems from the fact that I’ve spent the past four, no, five years not knowing what the heck I was doing, making it up as I went, and doing my very own thing in my very own classroom. Sure, at the beginning I was scared out of my mind and wished upon every single star in the sky someone would tell me what I should (or, in my case, shouldn’t) be doing. I complained about the system and about the emphasis placed on college writing teachers to “change the world, one freshman at a time,” and I swore up and down freshmen composition courses that are left to the whims and whiles of the instructors aren’t really doing what freshmen composition courses are supposed to be doing: preparing students for four years of writing on the college level. I wanted to teach writing, to invite my students into discussions that challenged them by reading things that challenged them, and to get them to put themselves on paper, whether it was in a research paper about the use of steroids in baseball or in a personal essay about the experience of coming out. Sometimes what I wanted to happen in the classroom, what I planned and prepared and dreamed about, failed miserably. Sometimes the thing I figured out thirty seconds before I left the office (usually thanks to My Person™ telling me what she had done in her class, until she moved away and I had to ask Mitch, which wasn’t nearly as helpful or successful or even useful) went brilliantly. I often referred to myself as The Worst Teacher Ever™, but I didn’t often hate it. Rarely did I wish for different students (though I did spend a good part of my first year in the M.A. program wishing for a different book to teach from), and as much as grading papers sucks, there was something immensely satisfying about it.

Those days are gone.

I’m under the instruction and supervision of a mentor teacher and university supervisor. My university supervisor doesn’t really have any doubts about my teaching ability, and except for coming to Jesus every once in a while, she’s rather enjoyable. My mentor teacher isn’t the mentor teacher I feared. She hasn’t asked for formal, eight part lesson plans with stated objectives and the corresponding state standards done up in triplicate and submitted a week in advance, although that sort of behavior might have me just expire on the spot. She hasn’t told me I need to lose fifty pounds (I know that was an unreasonable fear, but I do need to lose fifty pounds, and I have this secret wish I’ll finally find someone to actually acknowledge this to my face) or dress better. Instead she’s scattered (I can’t find her desk for all the papers and folders and books and whatnot on top of it) and non-committal. She can’t provide me with reading schedules or lesson plans from her previous experiences teaching this course, and most of my “What have you done in the past with [insert piece of literature here]?” is met with “Um. Well, What would you do?” Whether it’s just her face or her demeanor or the fact she’s really too scattered to follow my line of thinking, those pop quizzes rarely end well for me. Instead my ideas, thrown out off the top of my head, are questioned further, critiqued, and handed back to me sliced, diced, and over salted. I know better than to walk into a classroom full of high school seniors completely unprepared, and I know that no matter how clear something is or how specific the requirements, there will be kids who need their hand held. Despite my experience, or, rather, because of it, I don’t have a bag of tricks to whip out when I come to a some new material. I believe that on some level, you just have to sit them down and make them talk about it, and sometimes you need to sit them down and make them write about it. There isn’t a reading guide for every book/story/poem/novel/play. There probably won’t be any at all in college. Not every single assignment has a rubric or a right answer. I can’t tell a student what to do if they don’t have ideas of their own. Teaching students to ask homogeneous questions, like the ones on study guides or graciously tucked in the margins of their text book in blue ink so they stand out, isn’t teaching them to think. It’s teaching them that there are right ways and wrong ways to look at a text or a movie or life, and that there are answers.

There aren’t always answers. Everything isn’t black and white. Reading and writing is about a whole hell of a lot more than comprehension.

I feel trapped. All the things I believe about writing and critical thinking, pedagogical things if you want to be all higher education about it, don’t seem to have a place in high school English language arts. I want to know what’s important to my students, what moves them, what they want to know about. I want to peak their interest, not by showing Batman Begins, but by getting them to think and feel and discuss texts that, even if they don’t realize it initially, are important to them. I want them to write, pages and pages and pages of writing, about themselves and the weather and their family and that asshole who won’t return their calls and what they’re reading and what they saw on TV last night and how they feel about what’s going on in the world and everything else. I want them to run out of letters they’ve written so much. I want ah-ha moments and complaints they’re being forced to do to much and failing grades and papers that have been revised ten times and finally get an “A.” I want them to know they can feel, that what they think and say is important, just as important as the Hebrews who wrote the Old Testament or whoever wrote the screenplay for Batman Begins.

The Goat suggested, if I decide to not be a teacher, that I could get a job at Ikea. Some people might say that I have a passion, and chucking it in the nearest recycle bin and going to work selling Swedish modular furniture would be a waste. I’m not sure that’s true, not only because Swedish modular funiture is amazing, but because it’s more than a little bit difficult to see what you want to do but not be able to do it because it’s just beyond the scope of what you’re supposed to do. This is why I stopped writing. I couldn’t stand working and feeling like I was supposed to say something, reach someone, when the opportunity to do that had passed me by, gotten just beyond my reach.

What would you do if you were me?

Clearly it’s just one of those days.

You may be thinking that my earlier post from today was just venting, and that’d once I got home, away from the crazy College of Ed faculty, and relaxed I’d realize I hadn’t made the worst decision in the world getting my M.A.T.

Have you met me?

I did accomplish almost everything on my to-do list, including (but not limited to) depositing the magic check I’m not sure I know why I got, mailing my mother the pants she accidentally sent to my address, dropping off the recycling, and wrapping My Person™’s Christmas present (to be mailed tomorrow, fingers crossed). Scratching things off my to-do list always makes me feel better, which is why I frequently add things to my list I’ve done but didn’t originally include, like washing the dishes. According to my Super New Year Cleaning Project™, I’m scheduled to vacuum today. We’ll see. I only have a little bit longer before I’d be going against my personal rules against nighttime vacuuming (which I only have until I get a house of my very own). I’d like to think I’m going to be more on the ball about things like my to-do list and my Super New Year Cleaning Project™, but the semester has yet to really start, and we all know my general apathy prevents me from doing things after they start to pile up. Hopelessly in over my head is a state of Zen in my tiny world.

To-do list aside, I’m still in a slight state of WHY THE HELL DID I DO THIS TO MYSELF? It seems to be a lingering malady. I’m trying to convince myself (at least I was while I was doing the dishes and folding my sheets) that if I hadn’t come to the institution of my choosing and taken on my M.A.T., I’d have never met the Goat. This should be comforting. I should look at all this nonsense and go, “Well, if I hadn’t gotten into the shit, I’d never have met the person I’m going to spend the rest of my life with.” Perhaps it’s my hesitation to say, cross my heart and hope to die, that the Goat is It, and perhaps it’s my hesitation to say he’s the love of my life. My hesitation doesn’t mean those things aren’t true, because I believe they are, but I’m hesitant nonetheless. I’m hesitant especially when every day I see more clearly that I made a choice which wasn’t necessarily in my best interest. Perhaps it was physically (Yea! health insurance…if I get a job), and perhaps it was financially (Yea! money…if I get a job), but emotionally it’s been pretty hellacious. It’s hard to continue to live within a plan you set up for someone else. When I’m fed up and scream, fist shaking toward the sky, “Why did I do this?” I can’t look around and go, “Oh, I did this for me, so let’s see if we can find the good in it.” Instead I scream and shake my fist and curse myself for ever trying to make a life for anyone other than myself.

I can’t say the Goat isn’t supportive, because he’s wonderful and supportive and sweet and someone I love very much, but he doesn’t need me to do this. That might be frustrating, because if I could transfer this plan for a life to him and I, if I could just drop him down into the hole the Terrorist left, it’d all be easier. But he and I have to make different plans, new plans, plans for us. We have to figure out how to send me to get my Ph.D and where can we go that he’d still be able to have a job and where can we go to advance his career and does he want to go back to school and should we convert to Catholicism and no, I’m not going to live in some highrise apartment in some bustling metropolis somewhere even though he’d love it. I sit in hour upon hour of lectures in the “Internship Institute,” and I just want to scream that all of this is a culmination of the things I hated working on this degree. I want to come home and call the Terrorist up and go, “This sucks so much, and you better appreciate it because I’m doing it for you.” I want to say, “Oh, thank all that is good and holy this is almost over, and then we’ll be together and we can move forward, away from this time in our lives.” It’s not because I miss him or I want him back; it’s because this was a plan for us. A plan that is almost completed. A plan that now means nothing, because by itself this degree doesn’t make me happy, by itself teaching high school English isn’t my calling, by itself it’s something I concocted for a life that seems a million years ago.

I am glad it’s almost over, because I want to move on. I don’t want to be surrounded by memories, not just of the Terrorist and his presence down here, but of the bad times I went through, struggling to keep up with and make sense of something that I don’t feel is right for me. I don’t know if I can get back what I lost by doing this. That scares me, that I may have nailed my coffin shut trying to do the right thing. We all know how overwhelming my fear of death is. The status quo, living the rest of my life exactly the way my life is right now, at least career-wise, is almost as panic attack inducing as a few moments of introspection on what happens after the lights go out.

This is one of those times where people who haven’t lost their faith pray. Instead I feel pressure behind my eyes, and if I had the energy I’d shake my fist.

And I wonder why I’m always irritated.

Today is day two of the three day “Internship Institute” here at my good ‘ole college of choice, and it is turning out to be even worse than I imagined. I know, from my past classroom experiences here, that the faculty’s m.o. is fearmongering and preaching about the benefits of overpreparedness. They also like to regal us lowly students with tales from their days in front of the chalkboard, tales that all relate to the lesson at hand–no matter what the lesson at hand, there’s a humorous and personal tale to go along with it, which somehow improves our retention as well as reminding us once again that they are The Best Teachers Who Ever Taught™, and we are just beginning our journey toward becoming Teachers Who Were Taught By They Who Are The Best Teachers Who Ever Taught™. I personally believe all of this is bullshit, and I’d much rather return to the sink or swim method of learning to teach that was utilized in my M.A. program. A week of orientation, then BAM! Go have fun trying to figure it out and fucking up the lives of college freshmen in the process.

I realized today that all we’re really doing during this “Internship Institute” is getting one last cram session of everything we spent two (or in the case of the undergrads, four) years learning. It isn’t even a refresher sort of thing, a reminder of what we may have tucked away back in our brain and not looked at for a while. This is really just another class. We’re being lectured to, we’re squirming through call outs, and we’re being subjected to PowerPoints that we’ve been given the hand-outs to seconds before. It’s a joke, and more annoying is the fact it’s a joke wrapped in the fake smiles of the faculty who are SO excited for us as we’re about to embark on this journey toward becoming teachers–no, wait, Professional Educators. (Sorry. I forgot myself for a moment.) In between “I wish I could go back and be sitting where you are again” and crazy games of “Name the What If So I Can Solve It For You Using A Personal Anecdote From My Vast Experience As One Of The Best Teachers Ever™,” we sit and pretend to be paying attention, dressed to the nines in our professional attire, wishing we had been wiser in choosing a profession. Or maybe that’s just me.

I don’t see myself staying a teacher, because I think a lot of this is a crock. Most importantly, I think anyone who preaches how great it is to teach and how much they loved teaching and how they miss it every day is full of shit. Why would you leave the classroom and become a college professor if your heart and soul was with your eighth grade social studies students? I hate hearing about the higher calling, The Best Teachers Ever™’s excuse that they left the profession in order to train future teachers, because in my mind that’s just The Best Teachers Ever™ excuse to tell everyone else what they did that made them so great. I know that some of this is just me, and that I’m disillusioned by the crazy faculty in the College of Education since I don’t consider becoming a teacher to be my calling. I do regret some choices I’ve made, primarily that I gave up pursuing my M.F.A. because I was expecting a life with The Terrorist™, because in that one fell swoop I gave up writing period. Now that I’m being forced to become a Professional Educator, since there really are no more options now that I’m turning 30 in eight months and I need need need health insurance in order to be a functioning member of society, I look at the life I’m going to be leading with real dread. It isn’t that I don’t like teaching; I like being in the composition classroom, and if it’s possible for me to get my Ph.D. (something that looks less likely as the days go by), I’ll get it in composition and rhetoric and spend the rest of my days berating freshmen for their inability to create cohesive paragraphs.

The Proxy™ is here to cheer me up. I shall listen to her and worry about The Fatness™, which I’m assuming isn’t pregnancy.

Surveys are for winners.

A survey. Because I said I was going to write at least one blog entry a week and I’m sort of too tired to think of anything good right now.

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before? Went on real, honest-to-goodness “Getting to know you” dates.

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I don’t really remember my resolutions from last year, but I did make more impossible to accomplish ones for this year.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? I pretend I’m still close to Jana, so Jana. But just under the wire for 2008.

4. Did anyone close to you die? No one close to me, but the Goat’s dad passed away at the end of December.

5. What places did you visit? There was a little bit of the beginning of year that I was in Ohio, then a little bit of time at the end of the year I was back in Ohio. Other than that, I visited nothing and went nowhere. Boo.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008? 40 less pounds of fat. And some things written down that are either academically or creatively pleasing.

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? The end of spring semester, since I was changing pillz and sort of went a little nuts. Meeting the Goat in person for the first time in June, then reconnecting with him in late August. Other Goat-related dates from the fall. Meeting The Proxy™ and becoming friends because she wasn’t afraid to kick the shit out of our copier.

8. What was your biggest achievement(s) of the year? Doing super-well during my field experience. Meeting and beginning to date someone new (although it seems weird that I should consider that an achievement). Data entry for the surveys for the grant my boss and another professor are working on (this also seems weird to be considered an achievement, but if you had stared at the spreadsheet full of zeros and ones for as long as I did, you’d consider it a major achievement, too).

9. What was your biggest failure? My general apathy and disillusionment toward my current educational pursuits. I guess I didn’t fail at apathy and disillusionment, but I failed at working to my potential due to my apathy and disillusionment.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Sick in the head. The Crazy. The usual.

11. What was the best thing you bought? New tap shoes and ballet shoes.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? The Goat’s, because he is so very strong and came through some pretty tough stuff without too many scratches and dents. I’m terribly proud of him for being a good brother and a good son at a time where it might have been easier to handle things less gracefully. The Proxy’s, because we pulled together an entire dance recital in less than seventy-two hours, no thanks to K or J.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? Mine. My mom’s at times. Coach’s, just because he made certain aspects of fall semester a living hell. K’s, because she really did The Proxy™ and I dirt, as well as her other instructors.

14. Where did most of your money go? Food. Crappy, crappy food.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Teaching dance. Can’t say that really worked out all that well, but I tried.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008? I can’t really think of one. Weird.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? Happier. b) thinner or fatter? Ridiculously fatter. Damn you, generic Seasonale. Damn you.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? School work.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? I wish I had been less depressed and more in tune to what was going on around me.

20. How did you spend Christmas last year? At home with mom and dad.

21. Did you fall in love in 2008? Yes.

22. What was your favorite TV program? House and How I Met Your Mother. Lost didn’t really do it for me, whether or not I can blame that on the writer’s strike I don’t know. Hopefully it’ll pick up this year.

23. What did you do for your birthday in 2008? Went to work where no one knew it was my birthday.

24. What was the best book you read? V.

25. Who was the best new person you met? The Proxy™, hands down. And the Goat’s pretty cool, too, I guess.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery? Sufjan Stevens.

27. What did you want and get? A good friend who has the same general outlook on life as I do, since Kansas is so far away and I can’t get to My Person™.

28. What did you want and not get? The Terrorist, but I’m over that.

29. What was your favorite film of this year? Tough. I’m not sure I had one. I did love Persepolis, though.

30. Did you make some new friends this year? Yes, wonderful new friends.

31.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Having been more productive and less angry about what I needed to be doing for school.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008? I don’t really have one, except I try to wear close that hide The Fatness™.

33. What kept you sane? Living vicariously through other people’s blogs on the internets, making fun of Sarah Palin, and The Proxy™.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Sarah Palin. Hands down.

35. What political issue stirred you the most? It was an election year, so I was involved in wanting a good president who wouldn’t suck. But Prop 8 sort of hurt my soul a little, especially after grading some terrifiying papers against gay marriage (and homosexuality in general).

36. Who did you miss? My Person™, the Terrorist, my OU friends.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008. If you feel what you’re pursuing isn’t right or isn’t going to make you happy, get out. Don’t stick it out because you feel like it’s what you’re supposed to do. You’ll only disappoint yourself by what you don’t accomplish due to your disillusionment and anger.

New Year’s resolutions for the incredibly unhip.

(So when did it become kosher to use NYE as an abbreviation for New Year’s Eve? Every time I see it in someone’s blog, I immediately think, “Did so-and-so go to New York City for the holiday?” then a beat passes and I’m all, “Oh, New Year’s Eve. I’m an idiot.” I will not be using that abbreviation here.)

In 2009 I will:

1. Wash my face and brush my teeth every night before I go to bed. (We’ll see how long this lasts. Last year I made it to February. I didn’t realize it, but I’m not a fan of dental hygiene or good skin care.)

2. Write in this blog at least once a week, make more video blogs with Kimberly, and keep some sort of record of the horrible experience that will be my internship. (And by “internship” I mean “student teaching,” for those of you who aren’t attending/didn’t attend institutions that feel teaching is “the profession that makes all other professions possible” and should be referred to in the same terms one would refer to a surgeon.)

3. Lose 40 pounds.

4. Find birth control that does not: (A) cause me to gain a million pounds, (B) make my skin turn against me, (C) turn me into a slightly more crazy version of my already legally certifiable self, or (D) have random periods that make me think I have some sort of unidentifiable disease of the uterus like a character on House. Said birth control should also stop the making of babies, but at this point that’s really the least of my birth control worries.

5. Maybe write something creative. Maybe.

6. Direct my relationship anxiety in a positive direction, or at least in a direction that will result in the smallest number of casualties.

7. Stop eating fast food. Eat Chick-fil-a only once a month. Drink sweet tea only once a week.

8. Keep the puppy brushed.

9. Finish growing my hair out so I can donate it to Locks of Love.

10. Buy a MacBook.

Merely for my amusement.

I don’t quite understand what I did to the News Goat, but I apparently fell so far out of his good graces he de-Facebooked me. “How do you de-Facebook someone?” you may ask. Well, you de-friend them, and then you lock your profile down so it’s like you don’t even exist, except it’s obvious you still do because when you’re stalked by said person you de-Facebooked, you turn up in the friend lists of other people. My Arch Nemesis and I went over the reasons he could have had for the de-Facebooking, and not content to keep my bitterness over the matter to myself, I am going  to share our top three reasons I was de-Facebooked, among other, less hurtful disses (such as not getting to go see Lewis Black).

#3 My blog.

It’s possible, since I have my blog tucked somewhere into my Facebook profile, that he found it and decided to become an avid reader. My ramblings and musings as to his disappearance and my resulting anger at him for canceling without canceling might have pissed him off. No great loss, because if you can’t handle being made fun of by me, you really aren’t good enough for me.

#2 Bringing AnorSEXYa Back

According to the South Carolina Department of Mental Health, 1 in every 200 women suffers from Anorexia, and 2 to 3 in every 100 women suffers from Bulimia. With odds like that, it’s hard to not know someone with an eating disorder. Some people are touchy about their eating disorders, or their friends and family with eating disorders, and it’s possible Mr. News Goat falls into one or two of those categories. Should I apologize for Bringing AnorSEXYa Back? Nah. I like to follow the comedian’s rule of thumb in situations like these: You can only make jokes about black people if you’re black. If you rock (or have rocked) an eating disorder, you may make fun of it. The joke works on other levels, too, because it could be said that many a Hollywood celebrity is Bringing AnorSEXYa Back. Have you seen some of those kids lately? Definitely not enough meat on their bones to help you survive if you’re on a plane with them and crash in the Andes, and you know that someone with such low body weight is definitely going to die first.

#1 Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt threatened him.

This is the clear winner. There really isn’t a more accurate representation of what probably happened. See, Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt still loves me and wants me back, but he’s biding his time. Obviously this means he’s stalking me on-line, and has found my blog. His plans of winning me back will be foiled if I’m with another man, so he cleverly did a little internet research/stalking until he found the News Goat’s Facebook profile. A simple threatening e-mail or two and BAM!. The News Goat gives me the slip and locks down his Facebook existence so as not to be harassed or threatened in the future. I may be sad and angry about the situation now, but I’ll clearly forgive Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt once we are back together and in love. Sometimes you have to slaughter a goat in order to feed the family.

You know, that wasn’t nearly as funny as it seemed when I went over it with my Arch Nemesis. But things rarely are. Sigh.

Goodnight, August first.

After I had broken up with Ex-Boyfriend-Mike, I was convinced he had wrecked me. I thought that all the baggage I was carrying from our relationship had really ruined my chances at a successful relationship with someone new. I went through a hiccup with a guy (a hiccup being a connection that could potentially go somewhere but never does), and that added to my belief Ex-Boyfriend-Mike has wrecked me. No guy would ever want me, blah blah blah. Enter massive self-deprecation and pretty continual pity parties. Even after things with Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt has started and were looking up, I still had this fear it’d all blow up in my face. If I could give almost everything I had to a guy I loved and have it be a huge failure, why would anyone who didn’t have any sort of investment in me and who hadn’t been shown how awesome I could be as a girlfriend give me a chance?

I suppose I’ve been going through the same thing since he break-up with Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt, although that break-up being more sudden and sharp, the path of recovery has been much more difficult. I wouldn’t say Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt wrecked me, not in the way that I’m now tainted goods for future guys (he certainly wrecked me emotionally), but I make no bones about blaming myself for the demise of our relationship. This relationship hasn’t left me thinking all guys are going to be horrible jerks, but rather that I’m not really good enough for anyone. If I look at it logically, this thing with the News Goat is a hiccup, just like the one I had last time, and perhaps for me a hiccup is part of the moving on process (like normal people have rebound relationships).

But but but but but.

I’m blaming myself for doing something (I’m not sure what, as the News Goat isn’t blind in one eye) that has made him not be interested in even a pithy on-line friendship. I’m angry that as much as I want to be pissed at him (and rightly so, as everyone I’ve bitched about this has agreed he’s the jerk here), I can’t help but think it’s me. Just like Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt left because of me and my insecurities/fragile psyche/Crazy, the News Goat may have gotten a whiff of those things and decided the best way to get out is to never get in in the first place. As the day wore on and it got closer and closer to the point of no return (i.e. the absolute last minute I could feasibly leave and make it to Charlotte in time for the show), I turned over every little thing I had ever said to him and every little thing he had ever said to me, trying to see the glaringly obvious warning signal. Was I too pushy in trying to invite him to hang out? Was he being polite in saying he enjoyed talking to me? What the heck happened?

Of course this comes at a time when I’m sinking deep into missing Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt territory, and as I revealed to An the other day, I’m back to planning to lie behind his car so he can’t back out of his parking space and go anywhere, forcing him to either run me over and cause serious bodily harm or love me. Even a long conversation with Harvard Guy didn’t help me feel better about myself (probably because the conversation didn’t involve him proposing to me or suggesting we run away together and spend our days reading books and having ridiculously smart conversations about said books). I’m not really approaching the big 2-9 with my clinical depression membership card in hand, but I am missing the guy I was expecting to be around to celebrate it with me. I mean, let’s face it, Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt made a huge impression on me, helped me survive something I probably wouldn’t have survived on my own, and seriously epitomizes everything I want in a man I marry and have kids with.  I would give almost anything to have him back. Sure, I say that WAY too much, but I’m not being dishonest and saying I’ve dealt with the break-up, moved on, and am a better person for it. I admit the break-up is still kicking my butt, and the thought that it’s been almost a year and Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt has moved on, doesn’t think of me, is never coming back, etc…. It’s enough to make a girl throw up. Or not eat. Or cry. Or all three.

The fact I’ve been pseudo-rejected by the News Goat is weighing heavily on me because of all that, and even though I know I’ve been here before and survived to find bigger and better things, my heart is still heavy. I do wish Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt knew how much he meant to me, and I wish wish wish he’ll wake up and think, ‘Gee, I need Leigh back. I should go lie down behind her car so she can’t back out  of her parking space and refuse to get up until she loves me again.’ A girl can dream. It keeps her from thinking she’ll be alone forever.

And now I’m done being depressed on-line. I’ll go be depressed in bed.

Whatever, News Goat.

(A short rant to be followed by a much longer and more heated rant later.)

You know, I don’t ask for much. I’m pretty easy going, and if you pay even the slightest bit of attention to me, I’ll probably be so happy I’ll shower the love back on you ten fold. I also don’t get out much, so the mere hint an outing may occur leaves me practically squirming in my seat. Unfortunately, probably because I don’t often get the attention (I deserve) or get out of the house, I get even more bitter, angry, and vengeful when there are cancellations. Or, better than a cancellation, just being out and out ignored so that any plans are clearly null and void without anyone ever having to say it isn’t going to happen.

Perhaps I’m wrong to be upset. Perhaps, when the News Goat changes his Facebook status in June to ask for someone to go with him to see Lewis Black, and I told him I’d go if he was interested in my company for the show, I should have thought it was just banter. Perhaps when he told me he bought the tickets he didn’t mean a ticket for him and a ticket for me, he just meant he bought tickets. Perhaps when we went to see Wall*E and had good times and made plans for hanging out before the Lewis Black show, he was just faking his enthusiasm and enjoyment of my company. Perhaps, even though his excuse for not getting together with me or having time to get in touch with me for almost a month seemed pretty genuine, it was also a great excuse for not having to get together with me or get in touch with me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have hoped he would reply to my e-mail, an e-mail where I specifically asked if we were still on for Lewis Black, as it is silly and ridiculous to think anyone would want to spend time with me, even if it is time where we don’t really have to acknowledge each other’s presence, except for the little bit of time before the show (where we’d talk about why were excited to see the show) and the little bit of time after the show (where we’d talk about the best parts of the show).

Am I really that much of a drag/repulsive/annoying/odious?

This is the last time I do something ridiculous, like go through a radio show, to meet a guy. 

Is it really Thursday?

I’m having one of those days where I’d much rather sit and stare into space than do anything remotely productive. In fact, I’d rather sit and stare into space than do anything unproductive or procrastination-y. I’m not too positive today, either. Sometimes I feel like I’m missing out on something, or perhaps that I’m wasting time I should be spending doing something better. I’m worried about turning the big 2-9 next month, not because I really think 29 is old, but because I had expectations for myself that I haven’t met. True, some of those expectations are social/cultural things that my mom has instilled in me, things like getting married and having children before I’m old (i.e. 30), and I might not be as worried about those things if she wasn’t worried about them (and talking about them constantly). Still, what’s spinning around in my head is still going to be spinning around in my head regardless of who put it there, and I can’t afford the expensive therapy that will force me to love and accept myself unconditionally.

I enjoy the self-deprecation way too much for unconditional love and acceptance.

My mom is arriving tomorrow night for a visit of indeterminate length, and part of me is dreading what will happen when she begins the “discussion” of how she’s worried about my future. I know I have no prospects in the husband arena; I don’t need to be reminded of how that upsets and worries her. I don’t need to hear how she’s worried I’ll be too old to have children when I finally get around to it, as if my ovaries are in danger of drying up right this second. Over the past few years I have begun to grow apart from my mom, because I no longer feel I can turn to her over general life worries. They upset her. I may be disappointed in what I haven’t accomplished in my almost 30 years on this planet, but she’s downright disraught over it. I stil have never spoken to her about my break-up with Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt, and I don’t plan on it. I sometimes wish I had a mom I could be emotional to, who I could have called after the break-up and cried to over how I was worried I’d never find anyone or would always be the wrong girl for the guys I did find. She just doesn’t handle my disappointments or minor tragedies well, and I hate how upset she gets so much I just pretend my life is fine. Better than fine. Good. Great. Wonderful. Perfect.

No one’s life is perfect, but I most certainly can’t go to pieces if that will cause her to go to pieces, because if your mom doesn’t have hope and believe in you doing the right thing in your future, well, then there really isn’t any hope. Moms are supposed to worry, but also supposed to be eternal optimists as far as their children’s success in life are concerned. And moms are also supposed to make you believe you’re going to get everything you could possibly want, even if they have their private moments of doubt, because that’s their job. When I feel alone, or supportless, it’s because I really want the mom I can go to when I feel the weight of the world pressing down on my shoulders, instead of a mom who adds to it.

I frequently doubt my current career choice, just like I often bemoan my lack of inspiration to write (and write constantly and write well), and while I know I don’t need a husband or children to be complete, I want someone to share my life with. Some days, for whatever reason, those things become hot, scratchy blankets, piles and piles of them, and I’m suffering from insomnia while lying underneath them. Today is one of those days, and the impending arrival of my mom reminds me that I can’t depend on her to pull me through.