My inner princess

I've never been accused of being a 'girly-girl.' I make a decent living. I know how to change a tire. I'm not afraid of spiders. I don't wear shoes that hurt my feet. I think bubblegum pink and animal prints should be reserved for little girls and animals. I hate the way I look with long hair. I've never expected a man to take care of me.

Still, I never thought I'd make it to 40 without having a long-term romantic relationship. That has so many downsides that I'm not even going to try to address them all. The one that's bothering me today is my inner princess. She doesn't require tiaras and ball gowns, but she is looking for Prince Charming under every rock, tree and shrub in the kingdom. She is the holder of my hope that I'm going through a dry-spell rather than living in a dessert. I hate her.

She is the last vestige of bright-eyed optimism and open-hearted naivete in my person. She is also a crazy bitch. If there is a single man in my life who I find even remotely attractive, she goes into detective mode, whispering perceived signs of love into my ear like a giddy hallucination. No matter how much my rational mind knows better, she will not be silenced. 

When she's wrong (and she always is), she is devastated and betrayed. She is the woman scorned. I know, as it says in Avenue Q, that 'when someone doesn't love you back, it isn't such a crime," but she wants to eat all the Haagen Dazs and then slash his tires.(kind of like my BFF). My lack of criminal record will attest to the fact that I don't go along with her on this. Which just pisses her off more. She spends most of her time being mad at me.

She is the voice chanting that I wasn't thin enough, or pretty enough, or charming enough. I aimed too high. I looked too slutty or not slutty enough. I should have known better than to use such long words. I should just shut up and bat my eyelashes, dammit. In fact, I should have taken a cue from Janeane Garafalo and Uma Thurman in that cats and dogs movie and just sent someone else entirely to reel 'em in for me. I tend to agree that that would up my success rate, but I'm sick of being responsible for her happily every after. I'm sorry she hitched her wagon to a twinkle light instead of a star. I just wish she'd shut up about it.

If having my hopeless romantic removed was an option, I would sign up for the surgery in a heartbeat. Afterall, my life is pretty good except for that. I have great friends and a job and a dog. I'm surprisingly healthy for a woman of my girth and age. I'd have some pretty cool guy-friends, too, if I hadn't scared them off with the notion of dating me. If I could just disassociate from love and sex and all that I would be SO MUCH HAPPIER.Instead, I'm shackled to Cinderella, and she's going to make me pay for missing that ball.

A New Sensation

I'm having an interesting side effect from my new anti-depressant. For the first time in my memory, I feel full. Not the, "I've eaten so much my stomach may explode," full, but the, "I know there's still half of a sandwich on my plate, but I'm just not hungry anymore," full. I'm not claiming to have that genetic disease that causes little kids to become morbidly obese, but honestly, I don't ever remember looking down at my first helpings before and NOT feeling like cleaning the plate unless I was sick or newly in love.

It doesn't take much time on Google to discover that that is a pretty common story (though, to be fair, you have to be exceptionally weird before you can feel alone on Google). Several websites quoted people arguing that "I'm full" is just a polite lie that people tell you so you won't feel bad about having desert when they know they shouldn't. They seem to think that fullness is on par with the Loch Ness monster. Two months ago, I might have argued with them, because I keep hearing about fullness, but I wouldn't have been able to offer any personal testimony. I stopped eating when I thought I should, when the portion was gone or when it became uncomfortable.

As you might imagine, the lack of full gives you two options, obesity or very careful eating. If only I were a bit more 'type A'. Instead, I weigh almost 300 pounds. That's almost exactly twice what I should weigh. Despite being a relatively thin child (a state which I can only attribute to the fact that my mother did not cook and my dad worked nights), I have been at my ideal 'buck-fifty' for all of two or three months since puberty, and that was in high school. Ever since, food and I have been at war! I have had winning streaks as long as two years (which resulted in a post-college low of 240) and losing streaks. I have been assumed to be dirty, lazy and greedy by strangers with better figures. And I know that some of them have struggled as much as, or more than, I have. But a lot of them have simply known a sensation that I'm not sure I really believed in until recently. Full.

I'm incredibly grateful that my stomach, body and brain have finally started communicating, especially since I lost 6 pounds last month without trying, and I pray this side effect doesn't go the way of dry mouth and disappear after a while. I also hope that all of you out there who think that full is a myth get to someday experience the joy of feeling satisfied before feeling bloated. Mostly, though, I wish that all the people out there who take their full for granted would show a little more kindness to all the people out there who can't.