(no subject)
this is a vain post.
i have gained ten pounds since starting school and wait, wait, i know that's my fault for having no self control on what i eat and not enough discipline to exercise. i have no one to apologise to except for myself, despite the fact that both of my parents have prodded me about my weight gain, and also despite that apologising in itself is a waste of breath and doesn't do anything. it won't magically give me liposuction. i know that.
sometimes i try taking a look at body positive blogs but end up going back to lookbook and seeing all the clothes i could wear ever and all i have to do is reduce the size of my middle and the diameter of my upper arms and thighs. and maybe wax my legs and pluck my eyebrows. and take something to make me whiter. something. anything. anything to make me, by some really awful worldly standard, "beautiful" or "pretty" and wait, yes, i know where this leads to. i see pictures of skinny girls in big knitted sweaters and messy buns with thighs that don't touch and flawless skin and nice eyelashes. and i feel like apologising to the world because i don't look like them or act like them, or are, in general, like them. i feel the need to glare at my bulbous midsection and hideous legs and underarms because they're not up to international beauty standards, and people all around will tell me to "fuck international beauty standards" and "not care what other people think" but it's just something that i really, really, for the life of me, cannot help but think about. "why am i not pretty /like them/?"
but it doesn't stop there.
i am aware of other girls with almost the same build as i do, yet exude the confidence which i lack. i see them and their bubbly personality and all their friends and their rather nice clothes and wonder to myself where i ever went wrong - and that, in itself, is already answerable. but it's not just their "personality" or what is seemingly a "front act" to the way they are that disheartens me. there are people who fall for this "genuine kindness" that i seem to have lost along the way. and these days, i just keep remembering how rude, vain, and full of vice i actually am - that perhaps i keep trying and i try too hard to be "nice" for the sake of feeling genuinely nice, when in fact, to some others, i can be unkind. proof of this unkindness is my treatment to my older sister - justifiable in some angle, perhaps, but "morally" wrong. i talk behind her back because she's done a lot of stupid things in her life and is still currently doing them, and that's weak, and just proves that i have been an undoubtedly jealous sibling for nearly my whole life. but i can look at her life objectively and know that it's nothing to be jealous of at all. i'm jealous because she's the epitome of the world's aesthetic standards of which i so admire yet abhor at the same time. jaws drop when she walks into a room. she's the it girl at parties with designer bags and tight dresses and pumps and jewelry typing away at her blackberry, instagramming her gym body. i'm sorry i'm not her. i've been sorry about it since day one.
since i'm on the topic of family, i'll talk about my father. who, at this very moment, has the possibility of losing his job. just so it's clear though, he didn't screw up anything. sure, he went on a two week leave, but he asked proper permission from the ultimate boss/president/whatever. he hasn't been mean to anyone, and has always shown his employees and employers and colleagues with the same respect that he demands. i learn that much from him. one of the higher ups took advantage of his vacation to europe to rearrange the staff in the company and, well i'm not sure. my mom was talking in so much corporate jargon. what else i got from her story is that the guy who screwed things up made things harder for my dad - and it's what he did before to get rid of someone in the same position in another company some other time ago. my dad went to a meeting this morning and was asking my mother and myself to pray for him, and i did. i don't want him to lose his job - it's something he's worked hard for. he's treated everyone kindly and courteously and i don't understand how some people could be that greedy for power. but that's life for you. you can't seem to trust anyone anymore.
my mom is retired and is trying to put up a business. my sister just finished her three month pastry program after dropping out of an expensive culinary program twice. my father is in a precarious work situation. i'm in college, doing average.
there are days when i'm allowed to drive and i think, what if i just don't go home. what if i just drive off into the night and out of town and off a cliff somewhere. what if i look for the gun they keep in the house. i can just ask my sister where it is and she'll tell me. maybe i'll have enough selfishness to blow my brains out. or something. to just. die, away from everything and everyone and just give it up. give everything up because, and i can't seem to use this phrase wisely, i'm tired. i can't seem to hold myself together whenever my uncles or aunts tell me that i'm going to be the breadwinner of the family, or when my parents tell me it's okay that i don't get on the dean's list as long as i graduate, or that i'm going to law school after college which means i don't directly have a job right after college, or that my parents are getting older. i can't bear the thought - any thought, actually, - pointing to any of those or anything similar. but i seem hold myself together somehow. i just keep telling myself that if i think this is shitty, what more the kids in the slums who want to go to school, etc., not to seem ungrateful or anything but it doesn't seem to help much. nothing seems to help. #1stworldwhitepeopleproblems
regardless of how much or how "little" i decide to make my problems out to be, they're there. staring me in the face. daunting responsibilities in the form of my father's wrinkles and my mother's forgetfulness. i'm sorry i can't do anything useful. that i can't get a job and work and earn money for myself and help pay the bills. that i can't even be "pretty" enough to "let the wealthy, intelligent, hard-working men" know that i would be a good investment for marriage. that i'm fickle with school work and that i sound like a ditz in my science subjects. that i always think i'm pretending because i always feel fake. that i am a horrible person, over all. that i have submitted myself to that much self-loathing. that i sink like a rock to the depths of the ocean. that i can't love myself. that i'm always, always, pathetically, sorry.
at the end of this, all of this, i was hoping to run into some common sense - and i did, but even the "right" and "acceptable" and "normal" answers seemed like such mountains to be conquered by strong-willed, kind, and beautiful adventurers - not the wheezing, ungrateful, pathetic, fat girl.