Fred Phelps is coming to Washington, DC, with his cult of “God Hates Fags” followers.
I don’t know what to say. I’m appalled and terrified, infuriated and frustrated-there’s nothing I can do but watch, really. Especially as they specifically take time out of their oh-so-busy schedule of spreading the hate, so we can “know the prophets of God have been among them”. Right. Because that’s honestly going to change the minds of teenagers-look, teens are already pig-headed, straightforward and convinced they’re right. Bringing in a far-right organization to a far-left school is just asking for trouble, but hopefully things will turn out alright. From what I’ve been told, GHF (since I don’t want to keep saying their actual name…) isn’t violent, which is good, but it’s still shocking that they’re bothering to come at all, in my opinion. We’re a crazy school, sure, but it seems a little much. I don’t know how we’re going to respond to all of this-there’s a meeting tomorrow (today, technically) for all of us to figure it out.
In less exciting news, today was a fail, pardon my colloquialism. I ate. A lot. I began the day without breakfast, which usually keeps me on the right track, had a salad for lunch…then brought in Chinese candy for my Chinese class we had lying around the house. And I ate it. And I still don’t feel well from it. But that didn’t stop me from eating salmon, Tagalongs, crackers, wheat thins and honey bunches of oats when I got home, after running for a mile. Maybe I should have thought more about my name, just making it ‘pig’ or perhaps ‘piglet’, to be sensitive. No, wait, the time for sensitivity is over-I must be harsh and blunt with myself. I know a lot of the anxiety came from the fact I have a Chinese test tomorrow I’m semi-prepared for and still kinda-studying for now, and plan to return to studying that (no sleep tonight! but that’s nothing new), and a History test the next day I’m not prepared for in the least. I spent the afternoon doing props stuff then sneaked out to go run for ten minutes at the gym (not that it really helped much), and, well, that was most of it. I wasn’t home until after eight, and I’ve attempted my Chemistry homework, which we hadn’t learned in class, read a chapter of Invisible Man, eaten my brains out, and there’s still studying to do. And, of course, chatted with some people about the Fred Phelps ordeal.
The most pressing matter I have right now, perhaps literally: I cannot defecate. TMI, right? Well, you know what, it’s a problem, but if you find this stuff gross, simply skip this paragraph. For one, I understand it isn’t the best conversation, but it needs to be brought up. I can’t be the only one suffering with knotted bowels-I swear, it’s like I have eighteen feet more intestine than everyone else. I haven’t ‘gone’ since Saturday, maybe even Friday, and I’m finally starting to feel it. My weight hasn’t gone up (although it will tomorrow…so I’m not going to weigh myself, for once), but I feel bloated and crampy and I’m gonna have to take serious action. I took some Miralax, fantastic stuff, my doctor put me on it for a year and it worked nicely, except for the occasional gas. I’ve been constipated longer than I can remember-some of my most vivid childhood memories are of the dreaded Enema, since there was nothing else that could be done to help poor seven-year-old me. I guess I’ve just always been anal. Anyhow, we’ll see how that works, since the swallow-able pills generally don’t work for me anymore and I don’t want to take any glycerin sort of things are unpleasant, to say the least, and I don’t plan to go back to my seven year old days, ever. I’d rather hold it in and go to the hospital. At least I’d miss a day of school. I did miss a day of school due to constipation once-worst cramps ever, nobody’s period can compare.
Moving on. Tomorrow I will post a food diary on here, to make myself fully realize what I’m eating and share it, along with an exercise log. I will be living on coffee, since I have to “wake up” in less than five hours anyhow, so I’ll go get some sleep and wake up to more studying soon. I will not weigh myself, because I’ll just be depressed and eat more (entirely counterproductive and cyclical, hence the problem I’m having), and I will not be going on the bike in the morning, a ten-minute wake-up I did the previous week without eating in the morning and actually being happy. I will be drinking a large, stomach-moving cup of coffee and hope it works before we go to school, or at least soon enough where we can turn back, because if it comes I’m not going to school on time if I can work it, even if it means being late for Calculus (we have a sub anyway, so it doesn’t matter much). I will, however, go to kickboxing at night, even though I have a History test the next day and no sleep from tonight. I won’t fall asleep on the kitchen floor where I’m typing now, even though it’s tempting with my pillow and blanket, although I probably won’t bother changing out of my smelly gym clothes from my run.
In short, the next two days are going to suck because of tests, food, and the normal amount of work I have to do. Mother promises college will be easier, especially if I’m thin. Well, one way or another, we’ll see.
Stheno
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Infinity.1
I hate how it’s never enough anymore. I know I’m using a vague pronoun (who says I haven’t paid attention in English?), but I hate explaining ‘it’. It’s like asking someone who are ‘they’ when you give out a statistic-“They said you should eat three meals a day…They say standing on your head for twenty minutes a day prevents cancer…etc.” No one cares who ‘they’ are, no one’s paying attention to the details. The same goes for ‘it’. I don’t have to explain it because everyone knows what ‘it’ is. It’s those four hour study sessions before a Physics exam and getting a C. It’s spending weeks in rehab only to fall again. It’s knowing that you’re not enough, a harsh reality that I’m beginning to believe comes with adulthood, regardless of my optimistic, liberal schooling.
I might be crazy, but from where I stand, nothing’s ‘enough’ anymore. It’s not enough to simply be towards the top of your class, when you’re competing against juniors who get into MIT and sophomores taking Linear Algebra. It’s not enough to be top seat (if not captain) of the wrestling team, you have to star in the school musical as well. I’m not bitter, not against these people, I’m not mad at them in any way, shape or form, but I am frustrated that they perpetuate the belief that simply overachieving isn’t enough.
Maybe it’s just the area I live in. Washington, DC is a mecca of education, politics (obviously) and people stressed out of their minds. It might not be as lively as New York (but I haven’t been to the big apple in the longest time), but it’s certainly as stressful to everyone in the inside. By ‘inside’ I don’t mean the brother-in-law of the President or girlfriend to some senator’s son, I mean everyone who remotely interacts with these sorts of people, or, in my case, children of people who interact with these sort of people. I understand I’m talking about a very specific circle-upper middle class to flat-out upper class for the most part, but the thing about DC (or America in general, I’d like to say) is that anyone can move their way up, with enough hard work. Personally, I find the thought optimistic, but for the most part true if you work hard enough…even if my liberal-minded classmates think no one should have to work that hard.
I’ve grown up watching my mother work from seven am to ten pm, not constantly, but certainly not a rare occurrence. I’ve watched her go into the office on a weekend to get her work done. I’m not angry with her-I’m proud of her, and I’m not naïve enough to think she loves me any less or some other juvenile thought of the same brand. But I know it wasn’t only because she worked hard, it wasn’t only because she was determined (although I will bet that was a lot of it). She’s a very smart woman, with a kind heart, out to do the best job she can and help people who deserve it-not something that always happened in her line at work. At school, we’re told it never happens. There’s one thing she’s recently, meaning in the past year or so, openly admitted that was never said before: she was helped along the way because she was thin and pretty.
And now it starts again. Never being enough. So even if you’re heading the Crew team and acing AP bio while being the lead dancer in the school play, if you’re not pretty and/or thin…you’re still at a disadvantage. It’s the ugly truth both my parents have instilled in me, because, frankly, I’m not thin, and I don’t think I’m all that pretty.
“Being fat will close a lot of doors for you,” my mother tells me. “I just want you to have every possible door open, not closed because you can’t stop eating everything in sight!”
Maybe not an exact quote, but it’s pretty darn close. So I begin the Endless Quest again of Being Thin, Pretty and Happy. Oh yes, she mentions being happy-apparently, when you’re perfectly thin, you’re by default happy and everything falls into place, or so she claims…with the high-stress, overworked, overbooked lifestyle of DC, can you blame me for being skeptical?
Clearly, the kids aren’t exempted from the lifestyle, either. School take up eight hours, homework can take up to four, take out an hour for ‘commuting’ (a very rough estimation, considering most people don’t live in DC), two hours for sports, an hour for other extracurriculars, an hour for taking a break and not killing the nearest thing in reach-that’s a sixteen hour day. Now, listing it out, it seems simple, but these are the basics of DC private school-meaning, if you are the slowest person in the school, taking the bare minimum, this is your schedule. For the average overachiever…it gets ridiculous. There is no sleep, Monday through Friday. You live on coffee, junk food and anything else with caffeine. You’re cranky and tired and hungry…or at least I am. I never got hooked on caffeine (I’ll save that trick for college), instead on food, thinking eating extra would boost my mind, instead of my waist.
So yesterday went like this (and I started out the day trying to do good, no less): Nine peanut butter chunk cookies. One bag of artificial cheese and artificial crackers. A salad, because, somehow, eating a salad always fixes things. I’m fantastic at this, aren’t I? And this wasn’t even my first try into this attempt of dieting, I’m going on my second week! It wasn’t a final meal, either, nothing close, or some ‘final sweet’ for the week. I never had a final meal-not this time, because I can’t imagine ‘never’ eating certain things again. I’m seventeen, I still have the urge to type ‘sixteen’, I’m too young for that. I should be able to eat whatever the hell I want and enjoy playing sports to work it off. Instead, I’m thirty pounds heavier than I should be, the weight creeping up from when I was in elementary school, and only now, at least six years later, have I gotten serious.
The cookies came from Megara (note: I’m not gonna use real names. Sorry). We have open campus at school, and less than a two minute walk across the street is a Safeway. We went, and she brought up the idea of cookies and I agreed before setting in any resolve. We got back and…well, story short, I ate. Then I got hungry, so I ate some more. And some more. And more. Going to the point of the ‘healthy choice’ section of the vending machine (there’s a silly little strip of green tape indicating the healthy items…right) and getting the cheese-things. Then I got home and did something halfway decent with the salad before manipulating my dad to take me to the gym at 7:45pm. He’s been nagging about my weight (even though he’s no slender fellow, at least my mother isn’t a hypocrite) so I simply told him to be productive and help me get to the gym rather than just nag about it, and voila, it worked!
So now that you’ve seen I’m a self-obsessed, overweight, stressed, manipulate teenage girl, I think this sort of ‘introduction’ is done, since it’s nearly 6:30am and I should’ve left the house earlier anyhow.
Stheno
I might be crazy, but from where I stand, nothing’s ‘enough’ anymore. It’s not enough to simply be towards the top of your class, when you’re competing against juniors who get into MIT and sophomores taking Linear Algebra. It’s not enough to be top seat (if not captain) of the wrestling team, you have to star in the school musical as well. I’m not bitter, not against these people, I’m not mad at them in any way, shape or form, but I am frustrated that they perpetuate the belief that simply overachieving isn’t enough.
Maybe it’s just the area I live in. Washington, DC is a mecca of education, politics (obviously) and people stressed out of their minds. It might not be as lively as New York (but I haven’t been to the big apple in the longest time), but it’s certainly as stressful to everyone in the inside. By ‘inside’ I don’t mean the brother-in-law of the President or girlfriend to some senator’s son, I mean everyone who remotely interacts with these sorts of people, or, in my case, children of people who interact with these sort of people. I understand I’m talking about a very specific circle-upper middle class to flat-out upper class for the most part, but the thing about DC (or America in general, I’d like to say) is that anyone can move their way up, with enough hard work. Personally, I find the thought optimistic, but for the most part true if you work hard enough…even if my liberal-minded classmates think no one should have to work that hard.
I’ve grown up watching my mother work from seven am to ten pm, not constantly, but certainly not a rare occurrence. I’ve watched her go into the office on a weekend to get her work done. I’m not angry with her-I’m proud of her, and I’m not naïve enough to think she loves me any less or some other juvenile thought of the same brand. But I know it wasn’t only because she worked hard, it wasn’t only because she was determined (although I will bet that was a lot of it). She’s a very smart woman, with a kind heart, out to do the best job she can and help people who deserve it-not something that always happened in her line at work. At school, we’re told it never happens. There’s one thing she’s recently, meaning in the past year or so, openly admitted that was never said before: she was helped along the way because she was thin and pretty.
And now it starts again. Never being enough. So even if you’re heading the Crew team and acing AP bio while being the lead dancer in the school play, if you’re not pretty and/or thin…you’re still at a disadvantage. It’s the ugly truth both my parents have instilled in me, because, frankly, I’m not thin, and I don’t think I’m all that pretty.
“Being fat will close a lot of doors for you,” my mother tells me. “I just want you to have every possible door open, not closed because you can’t stop eating everything in sight!”
Maybe not an exact quote, but it’s pretty darn close. So I begin the Endless Quest again of Being Thin, Pretty and Happy. Oh yes, she mentions being happy-apparently, when you’re perfectly thin, you’re by default happy and everything falls into place, or so she claims…with the high-stress, overworked, overbooked lifestyle of DC, can you blame me for being skeptical?
Clearly, the kids aren’t exempted from the lifestyle, either. School take up eight hours, homework can take up to four, take out an hour for ‘commuting’ (a very rough estimation, considering most people don’t live in DC), two hours for sports, an hour for other extracurriculars, an hour for taking a break and not killing the nearest thing in reach-that’s a sixteen hour day. Now, listing it out, it seems simple, but these are the basics of DC private school-meaning, if you are the slowest person in the school, taking the bare minimum, this is your schedule. For the average overachiever…it gets ridiculous. There is no sleep, Monday through Friday. You live on coffee, junk food and anything else with caffeine. You’re cranky and tired and hungry…or at least I am. I never got hooked on caffeine (I’ll save that trick for college), instead on food, thinking eating extra would boost my mind, instead of my waist.
So yesterday went like this (and I started out the day trying to do good, no less): Nine peanut butter chunk cookies. One bag of artificial cheese and artificial crackers. A salad, because, somehow, eating a salad always fixes things. I’m fantastic at this, aren’t I? And this wasn’t even my first try into this attempt of dieting, I’m going on my second week! It wasn’t a final meal, either, nothing close, or some ‘final sweet’ for the week. I never had a final meal-not this time, because I can’t imagine ‘never’ eating certain things again. I’m seventeen, I still have the urge to type ‘sixteen’, I’m too young for that. I should be able to eat whatever the hell I want and enjoy playing sports to work it off. Instead, I’m thirty pounds heavier than I should be, the weight creeping up from when I was in elementary school, and only now, at least six years later, have I gotten serious.
The cookies came from Megara (note: I’m not gonna use real names. Sorry). We have open campus at school, and less than a two minute walk across the street is a Safeway. We went, and she brought up the idea of cookies and I agreed before setting in any resolve. We got back and…well, story short, I ate. Then I got hungry, so I ate some more. And some more. And more. Going to the point of the ‘healthy choice’ section of the vending machine (there’s a silly little strip of green tape indicating the healthy items…right) and getting the cheese-things. Then I got home and did something halfway decent with the salad before manipulating my dad to take me to the gym at 7:45pm. He’s been nagging about my weight (even though he’s no slender fellow, at least my mother isn’t a hypocrite) so I simply told him to be productive and help me get to the gym rather than just nag about it, and voila, it worked!
So now that you’ve seen I’m a self-obsessed, overweight, stressed, manipulate teenage girl, I think this sort of ‘introduction’ is done, since it’s nearly 6:30am and I should’ve left the house earlier anyhow.
Stheno
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