Scheherazade in Blue Jeans

Two quotes, with commentary, that sum up a part of me neatly.

"I'm the best there is at what I do - and what I do isn't very nice."
-- Wolverine

"I am not a gun."
-- The Iron Giant

I feel that the character of Wolverine is well summed up in Ultimate X-Men #41. (Stick with me!) In that issue, a young mutant kid comes into his powers. Unfortunately, instead of getting nifty cool powers, this kid's power is that he exudes something that kills everyone within a certain radius. When he figures out what he's done, he runs away to a cave in the mountains to isolate himself.

Enter Wolvie - due to his healing factor, he's able to be around the kid. And they talk. They talk about life. They talk about the raw deal the kid got. And as they talk... the kid finally looks up at Wolvie and says "I... can never leave this cave, can I?"

Wolvie passes the kid a beer.

And a little while later, he exits the cave alone.

And you know none of the other X-Men know about this mission. Wolverine is the one you send to do the work that would break anyone else. Wolverine is the weapon, the berserker. Yes, Weapon X. But seriously. Wolvie is the person who does things like this, things no one else can.

Of all the X-Men, I identify most - due to my childhood, my adolescence, the training I had - with Wolverine.

The Iron Giant is one of only three movies I've ever cried at. It's retro-'50s, about a kid who finds and befriends a giant robot in the woods.

The problem is that the robot, gentle as he is with the kid, was designed as an alien weapon. And when he thinks the military, attacking him, has killed the kid... he goes on a rampage. The kid regains consciousness just in time to stop the Iron Giant... and the Iron Giant, realizing what he's done in spite of the kid telling him he didn't have to be what he was designed to be - that he could be what he wanted to be -

- tells himself, quietly, as if trying to convince himself: "I am not a gun."

I wear four silver cuff bracelets on my left arm. Three of them have exterior decoration. One doesn't. On the inside of the plain bracelet, the words "One Day at a Time" are engraved.

This is not just a recovering-addict thing.

This is because every day I stand, and I metaphorically look at myself in the mirror. And with everything that I could beat the crap out of - with all the situations I could alter in my favor if I abuse what power I have -

I tell myself: "I am not a gun."

I do not have to be what I was raised to be, trained to be. The people who instilled those reflexes in me are long gone. I choose.

I am not a gun.

museumfreak: "How long is long enough to wait, when you've gotten a girl's number? So's not to seem desperate?"
yendi: "When did you get it?"
museumfreak: "Saturday."
yendi: "Today's Wednesday - today's good. It's not like you're calling on Sunday or anything."
shadesong: "Calling on Sunday would have been bad?"
yendi: "Generally."
shadesong: "Oh." *pause* "I would have called on Sunday."
yendi, indulgently: "I know, sweetie."

I get new-person fascination, I get little-r NrE (speaking of which, 10 months with docorion and I'm still in big-R NRE!); I have to actively fight that in order to not be what sibylla would call "a big weirdie". Except that I would be a little weirdie, for lo, I am wee. When I meet someone shiny, I just want to sit down with them and get their entire life story and give them mine and oh, no, sleep over tonight so we can talk more tomorrow, 'k? 'K. It is very like "Whee!"

And... other people aren't like that. So a lot of my interpersonal communication involves me sort of sitting on my hands as tiiime craaaawls as we operate on a normal-person schedule. And I get all fidgety.

So if I'm out for coffee with you and I get all infodump-y, it's just that you're verra shiny.

And I'll probably e-mail you the next day.

You know a good way to find out what's really going on in your head? Talk to someone who hasn't read LJ in months. Whatever comes out first and most. That's what's going on.

You're welcome.

So I started talking to kires about baby stuff, which deserves and will get its own post. And then I slid into body stuff. Weight stuff, to be exact. Body image stuff.

Stuff that I will do anything to avoid calling eating-disorder stuff, it seems.

When I was in middle school, I didn't eat lunch. I rarely ate breakfast, didn't eat much dinner. I wasn't a classic anorexic, because I never thought I was fat. I was just going through a lot of traumatic stuff that was completely beyond my control. And the only thing that it seemed I could control was my food intake. So I did.

This changed. I've had body image issues since, but nothing having to do with eating or not-eating. Believe me when I say that this is not stuff that has troubled me; this is stuff that was classified under "control issues" and mostly forgotten.

I gained weight when I had Miss Kid, but not too much. Still okay with my weight. Then I gained weight when I moved to Atlanta, and I wasn't so happy with that - too much! I didn't feel like me. Major depression. I felt very out of control.

Then I got put on Lamictal, and I dropped 30 pounds in three months, and kept dropping, for a total of 45 pounds over the past almost-two years.

My entire body has gone haywire. I am in control of absolutely nothing.

Except.

I could be in control of the one thing that I was in control of when I was 12, 13.

I can lose more weight.

This is the battle I have every day now.

I look at myself and I KNOW that my body is not healthy at this weight. But I see the little roll of a belly and think "If I skip lunches this week..."

"If you skip lunches this week, you'll be what, 87?"

"But I won't have any fat anymore."

"You're supposed to have fat."

"I can make it go away."

"You shouldn't."

"But I can, and there's so little that I CAN DO..."

I eat my three meals a day, and dessert whenever I'm not too nauseous. docorion sends chocolates, and I eat them. And I don't have this battle every day, but when I do, it's horrible. When I do, I panic, I want to cry, I'm desperate to not have to choke down that burger - every bite an act of unwilling surrender, another wave of nausea.

I have not succumbed to this. I am a tough chick.

It's hard. I have to hold these two things in my head at the same time all day every day. The knowledge that I am unhealthily thin - and the image in the mirror that tells me that I have that fat still on me. The voice that tells me that my body is crashing, and the voice that tells me that a few more pounds won't make a damn bit of difference.

It. Is. Hard.

Okay?

It is.

And there you have it. I am done writing about it for now.

A man tells his stories so many times that he becomes the stories. They live on after him.

And in that way, he becomes immortal.

(That's likely a paraphrase.)

That's from Big Fish, which I made my parents watch last night. Dad was amused off and on; it reminded him a bit of his father, who Elayna is named for.

Mom got it, I think. That this movie is me in the way that some books, some songs, are me.

I am a storyteller. Sometimes, as with my Elayna stories, I'm telling the truth in a theatrical way. Because that is what comes naturally to me. And then there's my fiction...

When I first saw this movie. I was speechless. Because it was me.

Because it's not just my immortality - regarding Walking on Water, it's Layne's, it's Hal's. People that would pass unremembered. "Just another overdose", the Everclear song says.

With Shayara... there is this world in my head, and there are these people in it. And if I manage to get it out into our world, who knows? Fifty years from now, a new reader could find a familiarity, a kinship, with a character, with an arc of the story, a corner of the world. I am creating a home here. I am putting this here so that people will know, not that I was here, but that Julia was, that Capri and Halloran were.

If I am anything, I am story. And at least a little of that will live beyond me.

I think my mom actually got that.

This is who I am.

Me: "So okay, call me at work when you get here so I know you've arrived safely. Do you remember my legal name?"
Kires: "Yeah. [Legal name]."
Me: "Okay, good, because a student worker will probably answer, so you'll have to ask for me....wait. Um. Say my name again?"
Kires: "[Legal name]."
Me: "...you said my name right."

He actually pronounced my name correctly. No one pronounces my name correctly. Yendi doesn't pronounce my name correctly.

And no, don't anyone even ask, because it'll just lead to you attempting it, me correcting you, you attempting it, me correcting you, you attempting it, and me saying "Please just call me 'song." And please please do, because the most common mispronounciation is really horrid. charleseb calls me Shade, kires calls me Shady, everyone else calls me Shadesong or 'song.

I am so changing my name.

But anyway.

Maybe 5 people in my life, excluding my immediate family, have pronounced my name correctly. So it's just really startling.

(sekrit message to today's lunch partners - yes, we are a go.)