I Got a Rock
On the whole it's been a good couple of weeks, but today's not the best of the calendar year, for sure. In fact this whole weekend has been sort of a bummer. I worked Thursday and Friday and was going to do some extra hours Saturday for more money. Unfortunately Saturday I wasn't feeling well at all and I didn't get any hours in. Compounding that loss is the fact that after my rent check I have a little under twenty dollars to last me until payday on Friday, and even then I only get paid for two days of work. I think I can make it, but I'll probably be spending New Year's Eve/Day at my empty apartment watching balls drop and people protest Chinese floats. I don't have enough money for gas for Katie's car so I'm kind of stuck here.
On top of the money and the not feeling well yesterday, today I'm just having one of those blah days where everything seems wrong and a little pointless too. I know I'm bouncing back from being way underweight but I feel like, now that I'm back up to 170, I'm just a big gooey blob. I don't like what I see in the mirror; I mean, it's presentable, surely, at best, but I haven't yet been able to think, "Oh, I look good." I see these pictures of nineteen, twenty year old models with perfect gym bodies, and it's almost like I'm back in freshman year of college when I started coming out and entered the material, body-obsessed gay world a couple dozen pounds overweight. I often think about ways I might manage to do some exercises to tighten up certain muscles and make sure the weight gain is going to the right places, but I still don't have a full range of movement or full energy and just getting through the normal movements of a day is still sometimes a challenge. And I notice that while 22 is the year you feel like your age starts to matter less and less in minute incraments, 23 is the year you start to realize you're actually growing up, and you feel closer to 30 because that's all you see up ahead. But still, you're a bit too young to be taken completely seriously, people still ask what you're studying in college, and no one but you seems to have a problem with someone with (almost) a Master's Degree working a temp job for minimal pay!
Fortunately during the above bemoaning my mother called, which almost always cheers me up. She opined that I am not a solitary person when I told her how lonely it has gotten without a roommate or housecat here, which made me realize that I've changed a lot in some ways from the relatively socially independent guy I was in college, equally comfortable in a large group or by myself. I think one thing that has changed is that I am no longer surrounded by a group of my peers. I work with people almost all significantly older than I am, mostly black and on permanent salaries, so we don't have much in common besides work area. I love them, but it's not the same as being with people who are encountering the same obstacles as I am. The few people around my age from college who are still around are somehow otherwise separated: Aaron and Chris by our relative employment, Katie by her grad student status, Tea by distance, and...well, I guess that's about it, which is another problem. I was gone from LA for a long time, and for much of it in almost total solitude save my family, and I'm afraid I've severed some kind of ideological string that I needed to keep intact with my college friends and acquaintances in order for it to withstand my temporary absence.
And on a more personal but (to me) no less important note, I am also getting frustrated by my physical limitations not only as they affect my daily life (which has become enormously more manageable but not completely cured) but also my sex life. I don't say love life because I didn't have one before either (by choice), but it's true. Even if I'm not spending every waking moment desiring sexual contact it is still frustrating to me that it is not a possibility for me even now, and for who knows how long to come. I do need to get my new doctors and try and get some answers there, but until then and, extended, until I am finally able to function like a normal human being, it is becoming increasingly concerning that I lack the physical ability to act on this strongest of human urges.
I don't like to close a year on this note, although it does seem fitting considering the bang-up 365 days this has been for me. I look forward to the arbitrary transition of January 1, 2008, and hope perhaps, even if just subliminally, the new year brings to me a new fortune.
On top of the money and the not feeling well yesterday, today I'm just having one of those blah days where everything seems wrong and a little pointless too. I know I'm bouncing back from being way underweight but I feel like, now that I'm back up to 170, I'm just a big gooey blob. I don't like what I see in the mirror; I mean, it's presentable, surely, at best, but I haven't yet been able to think, "Oh, I look good." I see these pictures of nineteen, twenty year old models with perfect gym bodies, and it's almost like I'm back in freshman year of college when I started coming out and entered the material, body-obsessed gay world a couple dozen pounds overweight. I often think about ways I might manage to do some exercises to tighten up certain muscles and make sure the weight gain is going to the right places, but I still don't have a full range of movement or full energy and just getting through the normal movements of a day is still sometimes a challenge. And I notice that while 22 is the year you feel like your age starts to matter less and less in minute incraments, 23 is the year you start to realize you're actually growing up, and you feel closer to 30 because that's all you see up ahead. But still, you're a bit too young to be taken completely seriously, people still ask what you're studying in college, and no one but you seems to have a problem with someone with (almost) a Master's Degree working a temp job for minimal pay!
Fortunately during the above bemoaning my mother called, which almost always cheers me up. She opined that I am not a solitary person when I told her how lonely it has gotten without a roommate or housecat here, which made me realize that I've changed a lot in some ways from the relatively socially independent guy I was in college, equally comfortable in a large group or by myself. I think one thing that has changed is that I am no longer surrounded by a group of my peers. I work with people almost all significantly older than I am, mostly black and on permanent salaries, so we don't have much in common besides work area. I love them, but it's not the same as being with people who are encountering the same obstacles as I am. The few people around my age from college who are still around are somehow otherwise separated: Aaron and Chris by our relative employment, Katie by her grad student status, Tea by distance, and...well, I guess that's about it, which is another problem. I was gone from LA for a long time, and for much of it in almost total solitude save my family, and I'm afraid I've severed some kind of ideological string that I needed to keep intact with my college friends and acquaintances in order for it to withstand my temporary absence.
And on a more personal but (to me) no less important note, I am also getting frustrated by my physical limitations not only as they affect my daily life (which has become enormously more manageable but not completely cured) but also my sex life. I don't say love life because I didn't have one before either (by choice), but it's true. Even if I'm not spending every waking moment desiring sexual contact it is still frustrating to me that it is not a possibility for me even now, and for who knows how long to come. I do need to get my new doctors and try and get some answers there, but until then and, extended, until I am finally able to function like a normal human being, it is becoming increasingly concerning that I lack the physical ability to act on this strongest of human urges.
I don't like to close a year on this note, although it does seem fitting considering the bang-up 365 days this has been for me. I look forward to the arbitrary transition of January 1, 2008, and hope perhaps, even if just subliminally, the new year brings to me a new fortune.