I am pretty tall, 6 foot, which I think registers me as "pretty damn tall" as far as women go. My whole life people, usually much shorter than me, would tell me I should appreciate my height, and that I was really lucky to be so tall. Notice it was always shorter people who said this to me, and they said it as though they had gained some sort of wisdom being short that I had missed out on. I think if the tables had been turned and I took them aside and said "Look- appreciate being short! You're very lucky" they probably would have been a little miffed at me. Yeah I know- we want what we can't have, the grass is always greener, yadda yadda.
Which reminds me of a time at church when I was about 13 or 14 and spent my Sunday mornings singing with the youth choir in front of the whole church. After the service an older lady, who I believe was the mom of a girl a few years older than me, took me aside and said "Sweetie you're so beautiful... but you should wear makeup. Then you wouldn't look so tired and dead up there!" She smiled at me kind of expectantly, like I was supposed to thank her for pointing out how pale and tired I looked. I stared at her for a good 15 seconds, and then I turned around and walked away. My mom was horrified and chastised me for being rude, but truly I thought this was a lecture this woman should have received instead. I pointed this out and my mom insisted she was just trying to be kind and didn't realize how fracking RUDE she was being. Especially to a teenage girl. Especially to a teenage girl who didn't identify with the other teenage girls her age, especially to a teenage girl who found all that "girl" stuff kind of pointless and stupid. Especially a teenage girl who already felt pretty alienated from her peers, for a myriad of reasons, one of them being her height.
Anyways, height. People have things they dislike about themselves, things they long to change. One of mine has always been my height, although I'm fresh out of options for changing that. For a long time I never really noticed it, but as I grew older people felt compelled to point it out. Especially when I gained a fondness for heels, especially very high heels. I began to truly tower over everyone, leading people to ask me my least favorite question: "Why are you wearing those? You're already tall." Nevermind that I just liked the way they looked, that I was aesthetically drawn to them. I don't really wear heels anymore, or if I do they have very small heels. I have a pair of platform heels that have 4 inches on them and I LOVE the way they look- but not so much the way I look on me. With them on I am 6 foot 4, an unacceptable height for someone in the real world. I'm sure things would be much different if I was an actress or a model but unfortunately I am neither.
I brought up this discussion on facebook, trying to detail how I've struggled with this fact of my being for many years, and I got a lot of "well you don't have it so bad" comments. And I know that, I know other people struggle with things much worse than this, that they struggle much harder and longer than I ever have and ever will. But for christ's sake this is MY struggle, and just because it's not as bad as being under 5 foot or being born with no arms or legs doesn't mean it's meaningless. So in case any of you are reading this and feel that argument bubbling up inside of you, I'll say this- I have a wonderful life, I have been so lucky, and so blessed in so many aspects of my life. I am well educated, I am privileged, I am well adjusted. But I struggle with this, and no amount of "quit whining, you have it good" will ever take that away.
Some days I wake up and life goes on like usual, I dress for work and slip my flats on and go about my business. But some days, today being one of those days, I wake up and I feel the full effects of being so tall. Today i got up and was looking at a trinket on my wall, which my head is level with. I considered that if I was a "normal" height, this trinket would be above me. I stoop down and try to imagine what it would be like to go through life at a normal height. When I was younger I dreamed of having some sort of surgery where they would cut the bones of my legs to make me shorter. Now I know that even if some sort of wacky surgeon was offering that surgery today I would not take him up on his offer. My height is what it is and one day I'll get old and start to shrink and I think that will be the one thing I enjoy about aging.
And one day I'll have a child or children and if it's a girl I hope she does not inherit my extreme height. I hope she is 5 foot 8, making her tall for a girl but still completely accepted among her peers. She won't feel, as I read on a blog once, "out of scale among groups of women friends, clumsily photoshopped into the scene." But if she is as tall as me, or taller, I hope I can tuck away my own insecurities and show her, daily, breezily, effortlessly, that it's no big deal. That being tall is a fine thing, that she is still a normal person even if she is 8 inches taller than her best friends, even if she gets stuck in the back row with the boys in elementary school pictures.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
sense memory
Smells, sights, sounds, textures that take you to another place. This happens to me a lot, probably because I have an extremely over active imagination. That always sounds like a good thing when you're in kindergarten and your teacher is complimenting your mom about your "vivid sense of imagination" but it turns out not to be a good thing when you live alone and imagine just all the ways a person could break in and kill you, or when you're in the woods and start thinking about bear attack scenarios. But like it or not I'm all imaginative and shit, and I have a pretty good memory. And great hearing- but that's another story.
But sense memory... I have a lip gloss that I never used but kept around because when I smelled it I remembered being 6 and playing with "my little ponies." I guess it was this kind of plastic-y girly powdery smell. I drive home and the sun is setting, casting a glow on the trees and I'm remembering walking home from the bus in high school in fall. It's October so it's getting darker out and I'm excited about Halloween. It's warm in the day but cold when the sun goes down and I hate that, because when it's so cold and dark I can hear this weird roaring sound that I think comes from the airport but it makes me nervous, like when you see a storm coming from a long way away.
I don't know if this counts as sense memory but every time I'm reading a news article about a court case and see the words "not guilty" I think of my dad. When I was 9 or so I was asking him about something and asked why they weren't found "innocent." He looked at me and said "Emma no one is ever found innocent, they can only be found not guilty. No court will ever declare someone innocent." He looked at me and all the sudden my childish notions about justice evaporated. I realized that once you are accused you can never again be innocent. Once that happens it doesn't matter if you really are innocent or not, a line is drawn and now the best you can do is convince someone you're not guilty. Today I was reading an article about "the Iceman" and it said "he was found innocent in connection with the death" and immediately I thought "you can't be found innocent, TIME magazine, you can only be found not guilty."
And this song reminds me of something that I can't quite put my finger on. You'd think it's Russia but it's not. And ignore the weird video, the song's title is "City of the green color" so take that how you will
But sense memory... I have a lip gloss that I never used but kept around because when I smelled it I remembered being 6 and playing with "my little ponies." I guess it was this kind of plastic-y girly powdery smell. I drive home and the sun is setting, casting a glow on the trees and I'm remembering walking home from the bus in high school in fall. It's October so it's getting darker out and I'm excited about Halloween. It's warm in the day but cold when the sun goes down and I hate that, because when it's so cold and dark I can hear this weird roaring sound that I think comes from the airport but it makes me nervous, like when you see a storm coming from a long way away.
I don't know if this counts as sense memory but every time I'm reading a news article about a court case and see the words "not guilty" I think of my dad. When I was 9 or so I was asking him about something and asked why they weren't found "innocent." He looked at me and said "Emma no one is ever found innocent, they can only be found not guilty. No court will ever declare someone innocent." He looked at me and all the sudden my childish notions about justice evaporated. I realized that once you are accused you can never again be innocent. Once that happens it doesn't matter if you really are innocent or not, a line is drawn and now the best you can do is convince someone you're not guilty. Today I was reading an article about "the Iceman" and it said "he was found innocent in connection with the death" and immediately I thought "you can't be found innocent, TIME magazine, you can only be found not guilty."
And this song reminds me of something that I can't quite put my finger on. You'd think it's Russia but it's not. And ignore the weird video, the song's title is "City of the green color" so take that how you will
Thursday, June 9, 2011
feeling old and young
I've been feeling really weird lately about something extremely typical and, dare I say, cliché.
I feel old.
I've been thinking about this for a few weeks now. It all started when I saw a young couple walking along the side of the road. They looked like they were maybe 16 or 17 and were obviously in some sort of very new and sparklingly wonderful relationship. Cue my next cliché statement "ah, young love." Anyways they were so young and so happy, kind of tentatively touching each other in a careless but still very calculated way. All this young, happy love predictably depressed me- because it feels like just yesterday that I was 16, shiny and new.
Not to say that I'm unhappy- I'm not really. I'm about as moderately happy as a person who lives a solitary life can be. And it's not going to be solitary forever so I can deal with that. But just seven years ago I was 16, and in another 7 years I'll be 30.
I can remember my whole life feeling like I was going down a path that was directly in front of me, and for so long my goal was to get to high school. And then I got to high school and my goal was to do well and set myself up for a good college, and I was so wrapped up in this goal that I didn't notice my life progress, I didn't notice my body grow and change, I didn't notice my mind shift inside my own head. And then one day I was graduating high school and at that point me and my friends all exclaimed how old we were getting- but we didn't really believe it. We exclaimed about our age but at the same time we knew we were still very young.
And so I feel old but still very young. My path that was laid out for me has come to an end and now I'm the one that has to figure out where the hell I'm going. In this way I feel old- I don't particularly like the responsibility of figuring this out alone. At the same time I recognize I can do pretty much whatever I want (except maybe firefighting. Not that I want to do that... but seriously that's not ever happening) and I am still young enough to really shake things up if I want. Like I could move to Sri Lanka and fight child marriage if I wanted. I could get a PhD in Soviet film if I wanted. I could get married, move to a farm and have 15 kids if I wanted.
But everytime I think about going back to school I can't help but frame it with my age. "By the time I finished that program I'd be 27... By the time I finished and started my residency I'd be 28...."
I guess at the heart of it I want to really live up my 20's and am scared to lose track of my own life and my own aging. I don't want to wake up one day and realize I'm 30 and not know what I was doing.
Well that turned out more ramble-y than I intended.
For the video of the day: my true future self
Monday, May 30, 2011
Leonard Cohen poem
I heard of a man
who says words so beautifully
that if he only speaks their name
women give themselves to him.
that if he only speaks their name
women give themselves to him.
If I am dumb beside your body
while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips
it is because I hear a man climb the stairs and clear his throat outside our door.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
sorry blog
Hey blog, I got a job! So I guess this is goodbye...
Just kidding. But I do have considerably less free time now, which is a completely excellent thing. When you're working and you're bored or frustrated sometimes you fantasize about what it would be like to not have a job and do whatever you want all day long. But unfortunately it's not as fun as it seems, mostly because you can't enjoy doing anything without having a nagging worry about spending money and spiraling into debt and ending up on the street.
So yes, job is good. I'm a receptionist for a construction firm and they pay me well so all in all it's very nice and the job is easy. I mostly answer phones and transfer the caller to the correct extension. And the callers don't yell at me, so that's good. Once someone called and was kind of grumbling at me about a superintendent on a job site and was like "HE GOT THE WRONG TIME ZONE!" and I was just like "oh sorry about that, I'll let him know" and then he hung up. One of my jobs the other day was sorting through resumes, categorizing and filing them. This involved me reading the resumes and I realized I don't know if I could be in HR or any capacity where it was my job to hire someone. It wasn't that the resumes were tedious or annoying, although some of them desperately needed reformatting, but you could see the desperation written all over the page. Everyone was unemployed, most everyone had been laid off, and most everyone was willing to do absolutely anything as long as it was a job. So yeah, I count myself lucky.
Besides that my life is still pretty dull. I went to the theatre and saw Bridesmaids last weekend and while it was funny and sweet and endearing, I still can't believe it has been heralded as the movie to set the "path" for truly funny women. While it was "raunchy" it still had tameness about it. It was advertised as the anti "rom com," but it was still so formulaic! All in all I was a little disappointed. I was entertained and I laughed and I loved Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph but it seemed reined in somehow. Also I felt like Melissa McCarthy's character was trying way WAAAAAYYY too hard.
Well that's it for now. I'm doing some thrift store shopping today, still looking for wooden outdoor chairs that I can refinish. Also getting a sandwich at the best damn sandwich place in the world. I kind of wish this wasn't a three day weekend and I could just go to work tomorrow. That's how pathetic I am.
Just kidding. But I do have considerably less free time now, which is a completely excellent thing. When you're working and you're bored or frustrated sometimes you fantasize about what it would be like to not have a job and do whatever you want all day long. But unfortunately it's not as fun as it seems, mostly because you can't enjoy doing anything without having a nagging worry about spending money and spiraling into debt and ending up on the street.
So yes, job is good. I'm a receptionist for a construction firm and they pay me well so all in all it's very nice and the job is easy. I mostly answer phones and transfer the caller to the correct extension. And the callers don't yell at me, so that's good. Once someone called and was kind of grumbling at me about a superintendent on a job site and was like "HE GOT THE WRONG TIME ZONE!" and I was just like "oh sorry about that, I'll let him know" and then he hung up. One of my jobs the other day was sorting through resumes, categorizing and filing them. This involved me reading the resumes and I realized I don't know if I could be in HR or any capacity where it was my job to hire someone. It wasn't that the resumes were tedious or annoying, although some of them desperately needed reformatting, but you could see the desperation written all over the page. Everyone was unemployed, most everyone had been laid off, and most everyone was willing to do absolutely anything as long as it was a job. So yeah, I count myself lucky.
Besides that my life is still pretty dull. I went to the theatre and saw Bridesmaids last weekend and while it was funny and sweet and endearing, I still can't believe it has been heralded as the movie to set the "path" for truly funny women. While it was "raunchy" it still had tameness about it. It was advertised as the anti "rom com," but it was still so formulaic! All in all I was a little disappointed. I was entertained and I laughed and I loved Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph but it seemed reined in somehow. Also I felt like Melissa McCarthy's character was trying way WAAAAAYYY too hard.
Well that's it for now. I'm doing some thrift store shopping today, still looking for wooden outdoor chairs that I can refinish. Also getting a sandwich at the best damn sandwich place in the world. I kind of wish this wasn't a three day weekend and I could just go to work tomorrow. That's how pathetic I am.
Friday, May 13, 2011
sun safety propaganda
With summer fast approaching it's really, truly beginning. I mentioned this earlier. THE SUN. It thirsts for your blood.
I saw this video recently and by the end of it I was crying:
Besides the obvious, I'm not sure why it upset me so much. And I don't mean to diminish the cause by joking about it, because I fear skin cancer and believe in preventing it. I was the one in college tsk-tsking my friends trips to the tanning beds, bringing extra sun screen and reciting cancer statistics. Of course they ignored me. But I haven't always been so conscientious, unfortunately. As a child I resisted the sunscreen, and although my mother did her damndest to hold me down and slather me up I've had a few bad burns in my lifetime. Back then (ohhh sooo many years ago. Not.) sunscreen wasn't as convenient as it is now, and was usually gloppy and white and cold, and your skin never absorbed it very well so you were sure to be streaked in white even 30 minutes after applying it. Now a days there are gels, sprays, SPF in moisturizer and makeup, SPF even in sunless tanner.
I guess my concern and fear comes from the fact that I feel no matter what I do I'll still get sick. I'm fair skinned with blonde hair and blue eyes, up there on the chart of most likely to get skin cancer. And despite all my knowledge about protecting my skin, there were times in my life where I just didn't care, as a child hating the process, and as a teenager just wanting to fit in and enjoy the sun like everyone else. All I can do now is just hope for the best and keep an eye out for weird moles.
Wellll that was depressing. So protect your skin! Watch the video! Wear a hat and sunscreen but still go outside and enjoy yourself. Doooo it.
In conclusion, enjoy this article about chihuahua derby racing.
I saw this video recently and by the end of it I was crying:
Besides the obvious, I'm not sure why it upset me so much. And I don't mean to diminish the cause by joking about it, because I fear skin cancer and believe in preventing it. I was the one in college tsk-tsking my friends trips to the tanning beds, bringing extra sun screen and reciting cancer statistics. Of course they ignored me. But I haven't always been so conscientious, unfortunately. As a child I resisted the sunscreen, and although my mother did her damndest to hold me down and slather me up I've had a few bad burns in my lifetime. Back then (ohhh sooo many years ago. Not.) sunscreen wasn't as convenient as it is now, and was usually gloppy and white and cold, and your skin never absorbed it very well so you were sure to be streaked in white even 30 minutes after applying it. Now a days there are gels, sprays, SPF in moisturizer and makeup, SPF even in sunless tanner.
I guess my concern and fear comes from the fact that I feel no matter what I do I'll still get sick. I'm fair skinned with blonde hair and blue eyes, up there on the chart of most likely to get skin cancer. And despite all my knowledge about protecting my skin, there were times in my life where I just didn't care, as a child hating the process, and as a teenager just wanting to fit in and enjoy the sun like everyone else. All I can do now is just hope for the best and keep an eye out for weird moles.
Wellll that was depressing. So protect your skin! Watch the video! Wear a hat and sunscreen but still go outside and enjoy yourself. Doooo it.
In conclusion, enjoy this article about chihuahua derby racing.
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