A rant.

 You know, I've spent the last couple of years trying my damnedest to believe that most people are basically good, and every time I turn around, there's some bitch knocking me down.

Maybe I'm being overly emotional because I'm hormonal and my period started today (FINALLY, I've only been anticipating it for three weeks now!), maybe I'm projecting my own body issues on it, but an article by Maura Kelly of Marie Claire made me so angry I couldn't see straight.

 Basically, the rundown is that she thinks that fat people are disgusting and they shouldn't be shown as happy and in love on TV (the whole thing got started when she was directed to an article on Mike and Molly, a new show about an overweight couple who met at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting) because it may show people that fatties are humans, too. And then when her article started being met with a little vitriol, she pasted on some sorry-ass apology saying that she didn't intend to hurt anyone's feelings and that she was anorexic once, so she knows how it feels.

 No. You don't know how it feels, you judgmental cunt. You CHOSE anorexia. You CHOSE to become a 70-pound stick woman. Sure, you may have lost control towards the end, but that was a lifestyle choice that you made.

 Am I going to sit here and tell you that I don't think being overweight is my fault? No. I'm overweight because I don't exercise. I'm not gonna lie, sometimes I wonder why I'm so lazy when I don't even LIKE feeling lazy. But the fact that major publications are putting this shit out into the world and not just the little Internet Trolls that you'd expect it from? That makes me ill.

 This is the comment I posted after creating an account, so that I could post it:

Well, I guess I'm just a horrible, disgusting person because I'm overweight and I come from a predominantly horrible, disgusting family. People like Maura Kelly ought to be a little less judgmental and a little more open-minded, especially when they write for MAJOR MAGAZINES. How did BS like this slip past an editor? It's hearing/seeing/reading things like this that gradually made me hate myself more and more until I felt like, hey, there's no point in trying anymore, nobody's ever going to love me anyway. Why should I bother trying to get healthy? I'm not worth it inside or out, because as Ms. Kelly here has so eloquently written (note the sarcasm dripping from every word), no overweight person can possibly have anything good about them because they're all fatties and fatties are gross. How can anyone be so cruel as to think that people of all shapes and sizes don't deserve to be publicly loved and appreciated? And that flip little comment about her "plump" friends didn't help her case, cos I'm sure that her definition of "plump" is probably anything over a size 2. I will admit that I can change things about myself, but I'm high-risk for ovarian cysts and that could cause me to gain weight in the future. Will I still be a bad person then, Maura? I'm sorry. I guess I'll just go die in a ditch somewhere and spare the rest of the world the sight of me. Because, hey, 225 lbs is terrible, even though I'm 5'11" and my normal weight range is 165-170 lbs. I'll probably never get below a size 10, lest I become a little emaciated stick woman like you, at which point I hope one of my friends loves me enough to give me an intervention because that isn't something I want for myself.

 I mean it, too. One of my friends better shove the biggest, greasiest, cheesiest cheeseburger down my fucking throat if I ever become an anorexic. That's what a true friend would do. Not lie and tell me I look great when all my Goddamned hair is falling out and my skin turns yellow. I certainly would do it for them.

Of course, maybe I shouldn't be surprised, especially when this bitch also wrote an article a while back about how awful gray hair is. She went gray by the time she was thirty so OF COURSE she had to color it! She looked so OLD! And she also wrote another short piece about chubby actors like Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and Seth Rogen titled something like, "Huggable? Yes. But hot? Not so much." I don't know about you, but I think Seth Rogen is adorable and I'd much rather be with a sweet chubby guy that treated me right than some well-built dickhead that treated me like dog shit.

But this is the sort of thing that's really made me hate myself over the years. Not just because I weigh more than I should, I've made my peace with that and I'm working on it. It's because this bias, this hatred gets indoctrinated into younger people, and then they start treating anyone that doesn't in this little box, one that represents such a small number of people, like they're less. Like they don't deserve respect, just as a human being. I certainly don't agree with excusing unhealthy lifestyles when people start to complain about the consequences (pot, meet kettle, right?) but some people can be overweight AND perfectly healthy. So really, when you say that simply watching a fat person walk across a room disgusts you, you may be tearing down someone who's more healthy than you are.

In all seriousness, though, thanks, Maura. Thank you for confirming what I've always imagined was true, that whenever I go in public, there's some skinny cunt somewhere that's grossed out by my very existence and who's making fun of me, regardless of the fact I've done nothing to deserve it. Thanks for reminding me that most people think I, and other fat people, don't deserve love because we aren't like you. That nobody will ever accept me as I am and that I have to change everything because I'm not "normal".

Fuck off.

Okay... End angry bitch rant. I'm gonna go eat some fucking ice cream because I'm hungry and I don't fucking care anymore. I like ice cream. Deal with it.

UPDATE: I'm sure nobody cares but I removed the link to the post. Mostly so I wouldn't go back, get angry, and feed the trolls.

Gaahhh...

Stress. It fucking BLOWS.

Today, I spent my day out of the house (our AC is out AGAIN, damn it!) and followed up on a few applications. It went alright- I got leads from Victoria's Secret and Fusion, the salon I interviewed at a week and a half ago. But I'm a bit confused about Toys R Us. I went in to ask to speak with someone about an interview, and I left my name and number. The customer service girl made a note that I had come in rather than just call.

The confusing part? When I checked my email a few hours later, I had gotten a message from the website basically telling me my application had been rejected. So I don't know what's up with that. I don't really want to work in a damn toy store with a bunch of screaming kids running around all day, but I'm tired of being yelled at for being unemployed even though I AM trying.

Anyway...

In other news, I got Sin City in the mail from Netflix today, but since it's hotter than the seventh circle of Hell in my room, I couldn't sit there long enough to watch it. Hopefully the repair guy will show up tomorrow and I can enjoy myself properly, later, though, because it's obviously a late night sort of movie. Besides, I can't watch a gory movie like that when I feel all puky and gross. I might actually throw up.

So instead, while my mom and my stepdad were out with friends, I ate pizza and watched Kick-Ass in the living room. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. But then I got to thinking, and I remembered that Aaron Johnson, the angel-faced 20-year-old that played Kick-Ass, is engaged to a woman 23 years older than he is and they're expecting a baby. I feel kinda bad for him in a way, because as happy as he thinks he is now, he's not going to enjoy his life the way someone his age should. He's only two weeks shy of being EXACTLY one year younger than me. Sometimes I feel a million years old, and sometimes I feel so stupid and inexperienced that I can't imagine having kids anytime soon.

And yet three of my friends have either married or had kids or both since graduating high school. Greenie was the first. She found out she was pregnant about two months after I moved away in 2007. Her son is just over two years old now. And then another friend of ours decided, after only about six months of dating, she and her boyfriend were ready to have a baby together. Her daughter is almost two. And now Pinkie is going to have a baby in a few short months. With a convicted felon.

The only one I'm worried about at this point in Pinkie. I hate, HATE her boyfriend. I tried to get along with him, tried to be nice, and all he did was treat her like shit so now I don't care. I hope the cops catch up with him and he gets murdered in prison, or better yet, becomes some lifer's permanent bitch. He thinks that all we do when we talk is bitch about him. Conceited. And this asshole thinks that I am the immature one.

I can't even get my best friend on the phone to talk to her. To see how she's doing, to talk about the fact that I'm having a hard time right now too. But nobody fucking cares. I've spent my life listening to everyone else's problems and being the best friend that I could, but as soon as I need somebody everyone fucking disappears. It's tiring because when I'm sitting in my room alone feeling like I need to have a good screaming fit but I can't because everyone else is home, all I can think about is the fact that if I were to try and tell someone about it, no matter who it was, I would see one of three things happen:

1. I would be told I was being dramatic and I needed to get over it
2. my problems would be laughed off because for some reason my thoughts and feelings mean nothing
3. my calls would be ignored completely

I don't understand it. Why doesn't my life matter? I care what happens to other people, why don't they care what happens to me? I know I don't have much going on right now, but I've got a lot of psychological stuff I'm trying to deal with and I could use some help.

I know I'm getting upset about something that happens to a lot of people. I can't help it.

This is what I get for doing someone a favor.

Ugh. Today was exhausting.

A lady my mom works with asked if I could help her get some professional hair color, because her stylist moved away and the last person that did her hair did it wrong. I was all too happy to meet up with her and help her pick something out, which I had done with my mother before at this very shop and it hadn't been a problem.

The manager of this store, ever since I've moved back, has been rude to me whenever I've been in there. She apparently has a problem with me because I'm not really a regular. She always asks me, in a nasty tone, if I'm a stylist. So this lady and I were picking out hair color, and the manager comes up and starts getting all pissy with me because she doesn't recognise me. After we paid for the stuff, I was on my way out, and she stopped me outside the store and told me that I was "cheating the stylists" by doing this lady's color for her.

What. The. Fuck.

I AM a stylist! And this woman I was doing the favor for? She knows people. This shit may help me get a job. So why should I feel bad about doing something nice for someone who can help me and who is friends with my mom?

Needless to say, I'm not going back to that place. I'll get the color somewhere else.

I honestly think that most of the issues stem from the fact that I don't look "normal". Not that I looked that weird- I was wearing a black and platinum blonde wig, mostly-black clothes but I was covered-up, my glasses, and coal-black eyeshadow with red sparkles in it. Nothing too out-there, really. But I guess I'm a circus freak that deserves nothing but contempt. And people are usually nicer to me when I wear my glasses, too. I don't know what it is, but they are. But her and her frumpy old lady clothes are obviously superior.

I've had trouble for years with people treating me badly because of my appearance, but it still kinda fucks with me sometimes. Especially when I was pretty tame-looking today and got all that bullshit thrown at me. I hate people like her. I hate living in this small-minded community. There's nothing wrong with me. It's all to do with them.

UPDATE: I went to go get some more haircolor last week, and the manager was strangely nice to me. I think she recognised me and she'd afraid I'll go to corporate. I actually feel kind of bad for her, she has to know that none of her customers like her.

I Want a Friend With Benefits. Badly.

I wish I wasn't borderline agoraphobic. I might have an easier time meeting new people. It's just so hard... I feel like I'm constantly being judged (isn't everybody, though?) and going out in public and interacting with other people just seems like a bad idea once you've seen women pull their children away from you because you're nearly six feet tall and have purple hair. I've never actually given strangers a reason to think I'm going to murder their children, so why do they act like I'm just about to snap and start taking out all my rage on a four-year-old?

Mostly, I just want to be in a long-term relationship. I do want to get married one day- it's the traditional, hardcore romantic in me- but I want to experience things a bit before I settle down. I'm twenty-one, I have some years. Love is the thing I want most in the world, because I feel like outside of my family, nobody I've ever known gives a shit about me. Not really. I always try my hardest to give my friends everything I can, until I've got nothing left to give. If I care about you, you'll know. You'll never be lacking a sympathetic ear, a shoulder to cry on, company when you want it... But the problem with that is, I always end up as the Agony Aunt and I'm fucking sick of it. I have only known of two men in the world that saw me as a sexual being; one was Mister Gumby, Pinkie's drug-addled, semi-retarded uncle, and the other, G.I. Joe, was the boyfriend of an ex-roomate that was still dating the girl I used to live with when he asked me to have sex with him.

The worst part?

I almost did it. I came this fucking close because I figured, hey, I'll probably be a virgin until I'm thirty otherwise. But I managed to get back to reality and the fact that I would hate myself forever, even if this girl never found out about it; I didn't enjoy living with her and I was happy when she moved out, but I didn't hate her and I certainly didn't hate her enough to fuck her boyfriend. I mean, I'm not even attracted to the guy. At all. He might as well be smooth as an actual G.I. Joe down there. I'm really not into Southern guys- either they're dickless little church boys or they're good ol' boys that hunt and fish and do other things I'd rather peel my eyelids off with a rusty can opener than do. This one was the latter.

That's pretty soul-crushing when you realise that you had to stop and think about it before you nearly, while completely sober, gave your virginity to someone you're not even halfway close to being attracted to in any way. It shouldn't have even crossed my mind, but since I'm so lonely and horny and confidence-less I almost took him up on it. And it wasn't even, "I want you, I've always wanted you", it was, "You wanna fuck?" Just tossed out like a small comment on the weather. I'd thought he was joking in the beginning but after he asked a second time I realised he was serious. My friends almost didn't believe me when I told them about it the next day, until I showed them a note he'd left me on my windshield apologising for his behaviour, he was being a jerk, blah blah blah... I still have it somewhere because I know it's all bullshit and I'm still not entirely sure, after more than a month, how it makes me feel.

Something always pissed me off about a couple of other girls I lived with. We'll call them Blonde Skank and Anorexia. Both of them were so slutty and yet they seemed to have such high standards as far as physicality goes. The most I ask for is someone who's not a toad. Neither of them was any better-looking than me, but because they aren't shy and insecure, men were all over them, and if I went out with them I'd just end up receding into the shadows. I recall a particularly offensive conversation with Anorexia (who, by the way, wasn't skinny but she never ate) when, after a date with a drop-dead gorgeous guy (6'7", long blonde hair, incredible body, ice-blue eyes, showed up in a Punisher T-shirt), she told me she wouldn't go out with him again. Why? Because he had a big scar on his arm from a motorcycle crash. She was also pissed that he'd made her wear a leather jacket (during the summer, granted) so, in the event they crashed, she wouldn't end up with a chunk taken out of her arm, too. That made me ill. If I'd thought I would've had a snowball's chance in Hell of getting him, I would've stolen his number off her phone when I realised that she'd left it on the counter. Instead, this picky bitch was saying shit like, "I'll never date a man that has gray hair" or "Uncircumcised penises are gross".

Blonde Skank was no better. She was dumb as a post and kept going back to a guy that:

1. was a White Supremacist
2. beat her
3. got her addicted to meth
4. used to date her mother
5. beat her

I had to change my number because they thought it would be funny to start harassing me. I got a phone call at 7 AM, just before I normally woke up to go to school, that was this dude jacking off and telling me he wanted to come in my eyeballs. I also got voicemails that were loud slurping noises, and many, many others, to the point I was scared to answer my phone. All this from a private number. I had never even given Blonde Skank my number in the first place- she took it off Anorexia's phone. I went to the one shop in town for my cell phone carrier and asked if there was any way they could pull this private number up and block it for me, or if they could give me some information so I could press harassment charges, but they just looked at me as if I were singing Hare Krishna and spitting nickels.

So I would sit there and get made fun of on a daily basis because I'm still a virgin. I probably knew a lot more about my own sexuality than they did about theirs, even more so now, but somehow it's not okay to be a virgin until you meet someone you at least trust enough to share your body with. Yeah, it's fucking hilarious that I don't know what cum smells like, laugh it up, bitches. I won't be the one with every STD known to man by the time I hit twenty-five.

These two would also make fun of me for not fucking any of my male friends. I've had a lot of dicks around, it's true, but I never touched or even saw any of them. All of them were either gay, taken, or uninterested. I got the impression the straight ones would probably rather have sex with another dude than me. Oh, but I was respected. Great. That's fucking awesome. I can totally masturbate to the memory of my getting all respected. One of them, I'll call him the Lizard King (Lizard for short), was telling me about one of his fuck buddies that he didn't like very much and I actually said, "Oh, so you'll do stuff like that with her, someone you barely can even stand, but not with me?"
"Well, I have a lot of respect for you."
"Uh... Okay..." Not the answer I was looking for. And it's not like Lizard didn't have an open at any point. He had me alone in his room on several occasions, and clearly I was interested because what kind of moron just keeps talking to you after you give them every fucking reason not to and giving you shit all the time (I lent him books and movies, and made him CDs a lot because I didn't have any other friends that shared those interests) without any sort of ulterior motive? I fucking loved him and either he's the dumbest motherfucker on the planet and didn't know, or he did and chose not to address it until our friendship imploded just before I moved away. Probably the latter, he was a smart guy. He certainly made me feel stupid.

So all this being ignored by the male (and, let's face it, with the exception of one, female) population, it's made me feel like I'm really unattractive. I already had ten million pounds of Insecure I was hauling around, I didn't need anyone else to make it worse. And, like I mentioned before, I get looked at like an escaped circus freak. That's mostly why my hair is platinum now, so I don't even have to deal with the baggage that comes with having black hair. I got so many nasty stares when my hair was green (God, I loved that color though, it was dark, oceanic blue-green when I put it on and it faded to an incredible emerald shade), more than when my hair was rainbow-colored. And, sorry, I like, no, I love my funky eyeshadow. My favorite color is green, of course I'm gonna have about twenty different shades. I like every color but brown. And I like matching my eye makeup to whatever I'm wearing. I figure, if I'm gonna bother putting makeup on every fucking day, I'm gonna have fun with it. My sense of style is Goth-punk-steampunk-casual, and I can't go anywhere in my stompy boots without mothers pulling their children away as if they're afraid I'd go on a Godzilla-like rampage and smash them underneath my enormous (women's size 10) feet. I would love to know why it is that people can't look like individuals, rather than carbon-copies of each other.

And the things that people look at in a positive light, I can't even handle- I can't take a fucking compliment to save my life. I've gotten so used to derogatory comments and nasty looks and generally feeling like shit about myself, that I can't stand for anyone to say anything nice. Immediately, I just wonder what the Hell they want from me. What their motives are. So I'd probably still freak out if someone I was actually interested in were to, dare I say it, flirt with me.

Almost every day, I think of something Blonde Skank once said to me. "God will give you somebody when you're ready for it." Now, my first thought was, big talk from someone dating a guy that beats her. And now? I feel like I'm ready. I'm no less ready than she was, for sure. I don't understand why, when I've always tried to better myself in some way, even just small ways, and there's no way that someone I was with would ever want for love and affection... Why do I get passed over in favor of someone who's simply got a better body than I do? I know that men are men and all that, but there has to be somebody in the world who'd rather have someone like me than some skinny girl that has nothing else going for her.

Oh, and P.S. on that whole "You wanna fuck?" business... The only way I would've said yes (emphatically!) would be if it was someone who looked like this:

The only words out of my mouth would've been, "You got a condom? Cos I'm totally into safe sex."

I mean... could you resist this smile?

UPDATE: I just realised I never explained something I referred to up there. Just after my junior year of high school, I was still dressing all shlumpy and still had my long, boring, dishwater-blonde hair. I went to the mall before my guitar lesson one Saturday, and while I was in Hot Topic looking at the T-shirts (I have like a million T-shirts. When I lose weight I'm gonna make some other kinds of shirts out of them because DAMN I can't wear them all.) I was approached by what I thought was a twelve-year-old boy and soon realised was a very boyish-looking girl.

Now, I hadn't even really sexually awakened yet, but I knew that butch wasn't my thing, so I kind of freaked out. All she said was, "Hey, do you think I'm cute?"

As the guy working in the store that day recalled (in front of one of my friends I hadn't told about this incident yet) I turned white, tossed out some weird combination of "I'm straight" and "I have a boyfriend" and then I tore ass out of there.

Needless to say, it wasn't really a step up from the Human Blob I'd been stalked by freshman year. And that wouldn't have been so bad had he not been a total creepazoid about liking me.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the one and only time I've ever been hit on by a woman. Before I'd even turned seventeen.