Flesh Prison

Sometimes, when I've been lying around in my room for three or four hours straight, I start to get a little restless. So usually, I'll get up and come over to my computer...you know, for a change of "scenery." Instead of looking at the TV screen, I look at a computer monitor. Instead of clicking the buttons on the remote, I click the keys on the keyboard. And sometimes, like today, it doesn't really work to cure my restlessness.

It just got worse. I opened iTunes and started playing music that makes me feel melancholy. I'm now listening to Anecdote by Ambulance Ltd. This song makes me feel melancholy because it reminds me of when I lived in the dorms at Columbia College Chicago--or, as my friend Kate and I refer to our dwelling back then: "Apartment 215" or simply "215." Those were two of the best years of my life.

Not that my life isn't good now. It is--very good. It's just, on days like today, I get all restless and I start wishing for things that I may or may not ever get. Like, I hate to beat a dead horse (actually, that might be kinda fun!), but I always imagine that I'll have a better body in the future. But I've been doing that since I was like 10 years old, and I still haven't achieved that goal. When I close my eyes and picture my distant future, I sometimes imagine myself sailing on a boat, or standing atop a rocky cliff overlooking the sea, or riding a dolphin, or playing the violin on a darkened stage in an empty auditorium, or driving the PCH in a cherry-red convertible, or leading an archeological dig (and then a man flies in on a helicopter and offers to fully fund my dig for another 3 years if I agree to come see his "theme park")--but no matter where I am, I always have rock hard abs.

Will it ever happen? My dad is worried that it won't. In fact, he thinks I need professional help. I feel like a pregnant teenager in the 1960s.* He wants to send me away. We had a big fight about my "weight issues" this past Thursday. Me wanting a bite of cannoli was the catalyst. If I write it out, blow by blow, it will just make you think my dad's a jerk. He's not. He loves me. But sometimes it feels like the only thing he notices about me is that I'm fat. And he's the living embodiment of all the things I already tell myself in my head: "Fat girls don't get to ride dolphins, Liz."

I'm not ready to throw in the towel on weight-loss just yet. So I think I'll go kayaking right now. If I'm not back in a week, assume I've been shipped off to a fat farm. Don't come looking for me. We are all on our own journey.

*In this movie, Cheryl gets pregnant and is shipped off to a "home for girls." It's a good movie.