(no subject)

[kittydesade]

Complete the dialogues.

Gaeilgeoir: An bhfuil mórán Gaeilge agat?
Foghlaimeoir: Tá mé ag foghlaim Gaeilge.
Gaeilgeoir: Cen fhad atá tú á foghlaim?
Foghlaimeoir: Le sé mhí anuas.
Gaeilgeoir: Conas tá ag éirí leat?
Foghlaimeoir: Is an-mhaith liom. (?)

Gaeilgeoir: Conas tá ag éirí leat?
Foghlaimeoir: Réasúnta maith, Tá beagán Gaeilge agam.
Gaeilgeoir: Cad é an rud is deacra?
Foghlaimeoir: Tá an litriú deacair, agus tá an ghluais deacair freisin.
Gaeilgeoir: Cén muinteoir atá agat?
Foghlaimeoir: Is í Nuala Ní Bhriain an múinteoir ar maidin, agus is é Séamas Ó Cathail an múinteoir ar tráthnóna.



Today's screed will be a frank discussion of Jag and the world of weight and self image. You may want to skip.

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LOU

I've come to the conclusion that I just don't fucking understand today's world, mostly women but not all, with the whole fat/skinny thing. I understand it from an anthropological, clinical perspective, the part of me that profiles and go here's this piece and that piece. But the part of me that's all common sense, okay that makes sense, empathy brain? Mostly is just going "What the fuck is WRONG with you" these days. Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels? I'm fat and that's just the way I am and the way I'm always going to be, I can't change it and fuck you for making me? Samantha Fucking Brick? What is WRONG with you? Mostly, what is wrong with you Samantha Brick. It must be hard to live in your world, I don't want to live there. God, I don't want to live on a permanent diet for the rest of my life, ew.

Here's how I live. And this is what works for me. And I am a VERY BIG BELIEVER in that what works for me may not necessarily work for you, and if that's the case here's some other stuff I've heard people have tried, and so on. That's why I've done Courtesan School for four years, we do not have "This is the path you must take" in any great quantity, our "This is the path you must take" consists of questions you have to answer: "What makes you happy? What do you want to be? How do you think you can get there? Have you tried this before? What's stopped you in the past? How do we avoid those pitfalls this time? Is it working?" Lather, rinse, repeat. Seriously, that's it. That's all Courtesan school is. Plus weekly check-ins. And it doesn't have to be weekly check-ins with Courtesan School either, just as long as you're checking in somewhere with people you feel will not only hold you accountable (people make so much of accountability but that's only half of it) but also support you, nudge you, and dialogue with you when you need it. One of our first baby Courtesans left the school early on and found her own path to be who she wanted to be. And is currently kicking ten kinds of ass, that way. And thanks to Courtesan School I've gone from bad balance and almost falling over to getting close to my level of ballet that I was in high school, grande plies and battements and whatnot. I need to work on my stamina some, but I'm close. I've gotten a lot better at cooking. I've learned two languages pretty damn well, and am studying a few more. I've written novels. I bought a freaking house through a process that was five times more difficult than it needed to be. I've learned what exercise works for me and what doesn't. I've gotten healthier. I've gotten happier, not just by achieving things but also with who I am. Oh, and I've lost ten pounds and kept it off, too.

And yes, that is incidental. I appreciate the philosophy of health at any size, I really do. I also appreciate that health isn't always easy to come by, is very expensive in this goddamn sense-forsaken country, is subject to finding a decent doctor with which to partner and, yes, that a lot of doctors are prejudiced to say "lose some weight." Doctors sometimes even hold medical procedures, necessary ones, hostage against that weight loss. You know what else they do that for? Mental illness. "Take this pill and then we'll talk." "You need to even out your moods." "Be reasonable." "Calm down." I hate Calm down. Unless you're trying to do something and your agitation is physically making that more difficult than it has to be (which has happened to me on occasion), no one should be telling you to fucking calm down. Doctors are people too, subject to a lot of prejudices. Anti-fat, anti-non-neurotypical, anti-whatever. It sucks, but that's the price of living in the world. You have to deal with the assholes in it.

And that said, you know what? If your knees and your ankles have to carry more weight than they were built to support (and that is different for everyone, because yes, shockingly, I do know that everyone's bodies are different) then, surprisingly, that is added stress on your knees and ankles. So, yes, your weight may be a contributing factor to your knee pain. It does not fucking help to say WELL I'M JUST LIKE THIS BITE ME. Whether or not you can lose the weight is another matter, the weight might be there because of illness, because of drugs you have to take or worse shit will ensue, there may be no good answer. But yes, there are in fact some health problems that are caused by you being fat. Just as there are some health problems that are caused by you being thin. Just as there are health problems that are caused by your brain chemistry. Just as there are health problems that are caused by you playing football. Just as... you see where I'm going with this? Not acknowledging that your body is carrying extra weight or extra stress because I'm fat so deal with it and find another solution is not going to fucking help. Just as not acknowledging that forced weight loss causes all kinds of nutritional, bone fragility, energy issues.

And that said, you know, there IS a difference between ... Okay, I weigh about 180 pounds. I have consistently for the past five months or so, I don't see that changing unless I change my food and habits pretty drastically. I'm going to TRY to change it down to a consistent 170. If I'm lucky I might get it down to a consistent 165-170, but I don't hold out much hope, that seems to be the weight I'm going to be at if I live the life the way I want to. I'm 5' even. And 180 pounds. I'm a size 14. I have no idea what these numbers mean to you; what they mean to me is, this is the weight I put on the forms at the doctors, this is how tall I am and influences how high I can reach, this is the size I... okay, the size part doesn't mean much of anything. I wear a size 14 Lee boot cut jean. I don't even want to think about what that is in other jeans, or what that used to be, because size numbers are arbitrary and give me a headache. I'd give you my measurements but I haven't taken them in a few months.

And I'm pretty well okay with this. Would I like to be a little thinner? Maybe an inch or two. But what I'd really like to do is cut out the candy stress eating I've been doing in the past couple of days, because I know how that makes me feel. Tired thirty minutes to an hour later, cranky, and it doesn't help. Will I be able to cut out the stress eating? I'm pretty sure I will, it's only been two days, and my normal eating habits are a lot healthier. Would I like to lose another 10 pounds? Well, I already said I did, but you know what I'd really like to do? Be able to hold a proper arabesque like I used to. And I'm working on that! I give it another two, four months. Would I like my upper arms not to jiggle? God, yes. But you know what I'd really like to do? 50 push-ups. Because I have a thing about push-ups okay, they make me feel awesome. It's silly, but they make me feel like an ex-Army Ranger spyssassin badass. You see the point I'm trying to make here?

Maybe not, maybe that wasn't clear. What I've realized over the last four years is that I need to have a clear vision of myself both in terms of what I want to be, what makes me happy to be and do, and what's realistic, and balance out the hope with the reality. I want to be able to run like Lola, but the reality is that my lungs are congenitally shit and unless I spend a LOT of time training, that's not going to happen in the next year. Or two, even. Or maybe at all. And that time training is time I could be spending writing, dancing, or studying languages, all of which I enjoy better and which fulfill me more short- and long-term. So I made that choice. What I've realized over the last four or five months is that as far as numbers are concerned, if I live my life the way I want to live it, the way that makes me happy, this is what I can realistically expect my numbers to end up at, and stay at. Eating fucktons of pasta will gain back the ten pounds, yes, but that's a far secondary to the fact that I've finally noticed over the last whatever (closer to two, three years, realistically) that eating pasta makes me lethargic, subtly unhappy, and doesn't gain me any longer term benefits than the next ten minutes. So I don't do it anymore. What I've realized over the last four years, the last four months, and most of my life, is that the real goal is in the venn diagram overlap between things that make me happy and things I do in order to be who and what I want to be. When I went to the doctor three years ago or so, maybe a little less, with the goal of losing weight, I told him my activity level. He gave me a goal weight that was twenty pounds over what I had originally guessed I should aim for. Because according to his professional opinion, that is the appropriate number that should be on the scale when I am the person I want to be. True, I have a doctor who also listens when I say "I do X exercises every morning and I want to be able to do Y", and who calculates, okay, she's probably got a fair bit of muscle mass, here's a good weight.

I didn't know muscle packed THAT much more densely than fat, you know? Conventional wisdom I think says that I should want to be 125lbs at 5'. ... No, I just looked it up, according to Ladies' Home Journal that's right. And you know what? FUCK THAT. If I were 120 pounds I wouldn't be able to do 50 push-ups, dance for an hour-hour-and-a-half, run however many miles (well, it's likely I wouldn't be able to anyway, because lungs, but then I really wouldn't be able to.) I'd have no freaking muscle mass! I want muscle mass. I like my muscles. Fuck that, I'm going to be at LEAST 30 pounds over that if not more. So, yes, fuck all that self-hating number crunching bullshit. But you know what? Let's take it a step further. Fuck the hate.

I am who I am. I make no apologies for being a 5' 180 pound person. I also make no apologies for wanting to weigh less. I make no apologies for anything that I am, a dancer, a person who can do 30 push-ups and is looking to increase that to 50, a writer, a person who enjoys a good bowl of creamy gooey mac and cheese, a person who only eats yogurt and pretzel sticks for lunch (admittedly, on the days she doesn't have leftovers) because she has other things she wants to do with her time. A person who cooks dinners with real butter and real beef and real cheese and rice and bread and all those other things that are "bad for you" because I like flavor. I like eating. I love food. I don't want to have to worry about my breakfast (cereal, toast, water, milk) or my lunch (leftovers, yogurt, pretzels, fruit, water) because I've got MANY other things I could be thinking on. I also don't eat yogurt and pretzels and cereal and fruit and drink water because OMG WEIGHT. It's tasty. It's easy. I don't have to think about it. I don't crash later. I drink skim milk (yes, I know, I'm a heathen) because sometimes I want the smoothness and flavor of milk, if that makes sense, but my honest to dog first choice of drinks is water, I never got into the flavored drinks soda pop thing. I dance because I love dancing, because I love moving and being graceful and stretching and bending and having the energy to do it, I don't dance to "dance my ass off." I like my ass where it is, thank you. I watch movies like Strictly Ballroom and Center Stage and think, man, I'd love to do that. And, you know, maybe someday I will be able to, ish, but not for years because still so out of practice. And that's okay, too. And if dancing and eating things that make me feel good all day instead of for the next fifteen minutes, and running and doing push-ups and drinking lots of water means I end up around this number on the scale for the rest of however long, till my body changes again due to age or accident or what have you? Well... sure. Why not. I can dance. I can run. (Ish.) I can eat tasty foods and not feel like crap later. I can think, I have the energy to write and dream and learn and work and move. And the numbers are what they are.

So I guess what I'm saying, if I'm saying anything, is if (as my friend says) you've picked OMG FAT IS FOREVER AND BEAUTIFUL TOO YOU FUCKERS, OMG SKINNY IS AWESOME AND IF YOU SAY OTHERWISE YOU'RE LYING AND HATE YOURSELF, or any other form of that as your hill to die on? ... I really hope that makes you happy, because I don't see how it could make me or most of the people I know happy. For me, the happy place was at the midpoint of these things I like to do, and these things I do to be the person I want to be, looks and mind both. Label it what you want. I don't plan on dying on this hill. I've got a whole range of other hills to climb first.