Yes, another blog post about Facebook - but yet different somehow

Facebook is an essential tool for stalking.  Duh.  I'm sure this wasn't the most groundbreaking sentence since Shakespeare asked us "To be or not to be... blah blah blah some other stuff".  Which reminds me - "Hamlet 2" was hysterical.  See it.  I swear you won't burn in hell. 

Anyway, back to Facebook.  Last night, while enduring the longest night at work in ages, I decided to poke around on the the ol' book.  I joined this group called "If you lived in the Whitestone, Bayside area and grew up in the 80's, 90's..."  and managed to find all of the people I went to Jr. High with.  It was quite the event.

My personal favorite was when I discovered the boy I shared my first kiss with.  Ben.  He was a scrawny little thing with big blue eyes and a love for Green Day that I so admired.  We wrote notes in class and he would roller blade to my house and kiss me.  Then he would roller blade off into the sunset and I would walk around all dreamy-eyed for the next 6 hours and write about it in my journal.  Ben and I ended when his BFF Matt decided he liked me and sent his brother Nick to throw an egg at poor old Benny Boy.  Hit him square in the stomach.  Then Nick walked me home because Matt had baseball practice and Nick kissed me, much to Matt's dismay.  

I felt very important being the center of this dramatic love square.  I even wrote poems about it.  Sadly, it wouldn't be the last time I enjoyed the drama of friends and brothers fighting for my honor.  

Anyway, when I came across Ben's page, it turns out he's become one of those Pre-Pubescent looking Male Models.  And most likely he's gay.  I wonder if it's the bitter taste of the ill-requited love he felt for me that turned him off to women forever??  Probably not.  But I like to think I make an impact.

Facebook is like an open window into the pasts and futures of everyone you know.  If you look hard enough you could link so much together.  You could find out who they were before you knew them.  The nerds, the whores, the weird kids.  Do enough detective work and it all comes together.  Not that I have that kind of attention span.  I'm just saying - you could.

Semi-political, but mostly personal ramblings...

I was wandering around the Internet tonight (work was a slow and steady influx of drunks and stomach aches) where I came across a news story (OK it was on "Yahoo! Shine" - but still it was news) about a girl who started a controversial blog called "What to Expect When You're Aborting".  

I read the blog (all the while I was very conscientious about the fact that I was at work and the word "abortion" was splashed across the screen).  The writing was very good.  And the author seemed bright and witty as she documented the trials and tribulations she is currently undergoing until she has her surgical abortion (in 2 wks time according to the post).

I'm not sure how I feel about this.  Let me clarify.  I am very liberal in my views and I believe 100% in freedom of speech.  I have no problem with her blog and in a way I do appreciate the honest portrayal of what is happening to her.  Without any condemmings to hell or Christian propaganda.  I'm pro-choice.  I'm a nurse.  I understand how dangerous it would be if young women were denied this right.  But I wouldn't go as far as saying I'm pro-abortion.

Years ago I was terrified of those 2 pink lines on the stick tests.  I most definitely would have had an abortion if you asked a knocked up me, aged 17.  But today at 26, I surprise myself at how conservative my personal thinking has become.  I want to have a baby (not tomorrow - hopefully planned and within the context of a happy family), but in the not-so-distant future I daydream about a cute bump or an adorable mini me.  Abortion is no longer in my vocabulary,

Again, as a health care person, I appreciate this author's ability to describe her condition to the masses.  It is easy and accessible.  The part that didn't sit too well with me was the nonchalant way - the almost giddy way - she described the relief she will feel upon completing the procedure.  She likens the abortion to a "reconstruction of {her} uterus".  As though the pregnancy is an anomaly and she must "fix" it.  She describes the procedure as a few cramps and some amnesics and boom - mommy no more.

I take offense because I see so many women in the ER everyday who are pregnant with complications.  The majority of these women want these babies with all their hearts and souls.  I see a future me.  I pray that I never have difficulty in the baby making department.  I know I would be in love with that baby the second the stick says "pregnant".  

I'm confused by my own thoughts sometimes.  I feel that if we were to go back to the times before women could make their own choices, the times of back alley abortions and hemorrhaging in the homes, the fatalities would be devastating.  Or babies would be had and abused and unwanted.  But, here I am, a woman, and I'm offended at the way this girl chooses to discuss her choice.  I feel her lack of remorse, her sarcasm and her analogies are almost irresponsible.  No one should be led to believe the choice is as simple as a mole removal or a cavity filling.

It's as though the second I turned 26, I started thinking this way.  I realized that to have an abortion at my age just didn't make sense any more.  I have a decent job, insurance, etc.  The option just disappeared one day.  It was replaced with a sense of wanting and hoping to have the privilege of being some one's mom (some time in the FUTURE).  Now, when I try to put myself in the shoes of other's, the shoes don't fit.  I'm not there any more.  

I thank God quite often that I never did have to make that choice.  I've had so many close encounters.  I have so many memories of being 17 and stupid and ending up in the bathroom of Barnes and Noble peeing on a stick and days of praying for my period, thrilled with cramps and the first sign of blood - I would never want to go back there.  Ever.  However, it is scary to think that the next step will be days in my bathroom, peeing on a stick, disappointed by the sight of my own blood.  At what age, exactly, does the transition occur?

Being an adult is so funny.

A Book Review and How I Was a Fatty

The weather is beautiful, the pool is huge.  A perfect setting for doing absolutely nothing except what you want to do.  This is what Montauk is.  I'm awake by 8am every morning, but it's ok because there is plenty of time in the day for napping.  I could live in this small town by the water for ever.  I could leave the city - with it's sirens and it's crowds.  I could get used to nothing to do but read and write and have bonfires on the beach at night.

I'm sure this is what was needed.

With little to do but relax, I just started reading Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp, by Stephanie Klein.  It reminds me of my childhood.  Of the days in gym class where I was petrified of health day in gym - where they weighed you in front of your classmates.  I'm taken back to the days of peanut butter and Fluff for lunch, of jogging suits and over sized t-shirts.  Pool parties I was scared to go to, nicknames and having to develop a personality because I wasn't the pretty one. It all comes back.

If you were a fat kid, you had to develop something special - a talent or a persona.  Because that's all you had.  For me - I was a tomboy.  I wore Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sneakers and read comic books.  If boys didn't want to date me, they sure wanted to hang out with me.  My vast knowledge of early 90's action heroes and killer taste in music was my saving grace.  Plus I was an insider.  I knew all the pretty girls in the class.  I was friends with them.  I could be a matchmaker.

I was certain I was doomed to live my life as "the friend" forever.  Then high school came.  Baby fat melted away.  We moved out of my grandma's house and no longer was I forced to be a member of "the clean plate club".  I chose my meals and my drinks.  Boys noticed me.  

I was boy crazy since pre-school.  My first boyfriend was Santiago.  I liked the exotic men.  We would cuddle together at nap time.  True love in the sandbox.  Being the fat tomboy, though, I didn't get to explore my true potential until I was 14.  From then on it was boys, boys, boys.

If they were cute and wore flannel - I was in love.  Armed with keen music taste and an interest in comics (leftover from my fat days) I became the pretty girl who liked boy things.

This book makes me nostalgic for my childhood.  I want to go back to the days of no worries, no need for a plan.  I want to go back with the knowledge I have now.  I want to tell the pudgy little me that this passes.  That boys who call you a cow are the same boys who want to date models and trust me your future has a much sweeter boy in store for you.  You'll be pretty one day - but you won't own it.  Just like you don't own fat.  All you have to be responsible for is the way you treat others.  And never forget what it feels like to be judged.  

I want to tell future me that if I ever have a daughter - please don't let her in on the weight obsession.  Don't fill her childhood with the words "diet" and "muffin top".  Keep those trashy magazines of thin celebs away from her and maybe she'll have the chance to grow up with a positive view of what healthy is.  Maybe she'll have a donut one day for breakfast.  Don't make her have spinach for dinner to make up for it.  

Yes, this is what the book makes me think about.  I think it's a true bestseller when it has people relating it's contents to their own life.  Good job Stephanie Klein. 

Fuck the Fair Weather - What Happened to Rainy Day Friends?

I understand the fact that life is moving on and people are engaged and have boyfriends, new jobs and school is hard for you.  I, too miss the days where we would all get drunk on a Sunday and do cartwheels in the snow.  I miss the butterflies and the what-if's when we would discuss our futures.  I'm sorry he treats you like crap and I'm even sorrier that you take it.  But I am finished feeling guilty for having a life beyond you.  And quite honestly, the needier you become, the more assuming and angry - the less I want to even try.

It's sad that this has to happen.  I still believe you have a good heart.  But I think the years of second guessing and being negative has buried your true self deep down.  I know he doesn't give you what you want.  You know it too.  But you're lulled back in by his weak words and when you blanket yourself with the comfort of being one half of an "us" you forget that you need friends.

So, though I'll always be here - in the event of a life altering situation or even if you want to borrow some milk - I really can't try anymore.  And when he doesn't respond to emails or calls or can't handle 7am therapy sessions anymore - of course I'll still listen.  But I realize you'll never be a rainy day friend.

No More Skinny Mini - Hello "Adult Weight"

"You look skinny - but I don't know why I bother to say it - you don't believe me anyway".  That's the first thing Diana said to me yesterday after not seeing her for a week.

She means well.

She's right.  About the not believing her part.

I'm one of those short girls (5ft) blessed with "curves" that are cute at 17 and then fast foward almost a decade and suddenly curves become muffin top.  

I know it's an obsession.  When I was in grade school I was one of the biggest girls in the class. Eric Flores told me he liked me for my personality but the fact that I resembled a baby elephant was apparently his deal breaker - that didn't leave me.  I hear that Eric Flores dropped out of high school and was part of an Asian Mafia in Queens.  Karma.  A bitch.

I'm working on this.  I haven't been a baby elephant for years.  I think I actually settled into my "adult weight" recently.  The weight that means - I don't drink in place of meals, I stopped the diet pills that were pretty much legalized speed and maybe one day my adult body has enough adipose tissue to get pregnant and have a baby.  Adult weight means that no matter how often I like to fool myself into thinking I will ever be a size 2 again - it ain't gonna happen.

I think I might be ok with it.  I have a sick obsession with Celebrity Gossip mags and I see all the thin celebs and all the supposed pics of cellulite and I know that is what to blame.  Lucky for me I have a boy who is genuine and he swears he loves my body - curves and all.  He's the same boy who thinks Jennifer Aniston looked better in the early episodes of Friends before she lost the weight.

I'll keep him.

Past musings

I think back now to that day he moved out.  "I just need to get away for now.  I don't want this to be for good"; I didn't believe him then.  I knew it had to happen.  Hell, I moved out myself just a week before.  But I was only bluffing.  He, the well seasoned gambler he had grown to be, called my bluff.  He left with most of his stuff (the stuff I hadn't thrown out or given away to the local homeless in a fit of anger just weeks before).  He left his ties - I held on to them as a tiny smidgon of hope.  Months later I would use those ties as fashionable belts.  Break ups make me lose weight.  I was a size 2.

That day, he forced me to grow up.  Before that I lived in a world where I payed $400 a month for rent on the Upper East Side of Manhattan (unheard of), I shopped online like a fiend looking for her next fix.  I was living like a kept woman.  Those sad cases you see on the reality shows where you wonder "how the hell can they live like that??"  I was fixated on a diamond ring but terrified the day I found the Zales bag in his nightstand.  I knew deep down that I didn't want to live like that.  I just didn't know any other way.  

Today, almost four years later, I want to thank him.  For being an online pervert, for the cheating and the lying.  For the life experience he gave me.  I would thank him if we were speaking.  But that would involve me giving his ceramic Buddha back - and I destroyed that months ago when I moved into my new apartment.  I wanted no mementos.  NYC studios do not accommodate tangible memories.

I look at the woman I've become - I found my funny side, my artistic side and yes - my rent has increased significantly but I pay it.  So, maybe one day, when you're searching the Internet for some cheap porn/hookers (like you did in old times) you'll come across this post and know I just really want to thank you.  For making me the best grown-up I can be.