When you start losing all your hair…

Men.  This one’s for you.

So you’re balding.  That sucks.  I’m sorry you have to go through this.  I’m sure you had luscious hair when you were younger, and having it fall out must be a terrible shock.

But there is hope!  First, consult Esquire’s fantastic and funny “How To Be Bald” for some advice and perspective about what to do about your particular brand of hair loss.  And then come back and listen to what I have to say.

The Esquire piece starts off with a gorgeous baldy, Jude Law.  Our man Jude had a hard time adjusting to his hair loss.  In the late 1990s and early oughts, he was a specimen of metrosexual male perfection.  He was stunning.  But for the last several years, Jude’s been going bald. He’s tried to hide it with hats.  He’s braved the outside world with his wisps of hair carefully arranged.  But recently, Jude gave up the ruse.

Smouldering and stuff

And he looks amazing, as always.  Sure, he’s older.  He doesn’t have as much of that heart-stopping quality he had when he was in his tweties, but who does? He’s balding and he’s rocking it, and I for one still harbor a huge actor-crush on him.

Moving on, I want to tell you about my friend Todd.

I had a crush on Todd from the first moment I saw him.  He was freakin’ adorable.  We dated briefly when we were 17, and then reconnected at 29.  He’s one of my favorite people in the world.  And he’s bald. Really, really bald.

You have to understand, Todd had excellent hair.  For the 90s, anyway.  It was long and honey-colored and thick and… well, the kind of hair girls envy.  Here’s what Todd looked like in his late teens:

Ok, not the greatest example…

How’s this? Cute, right?

These pictures don’t do him justice, but I think you can see from this that my massive crush was justified.  He looked vaguely like James Van Der Beek, but without the massive forehead.  He was hot.

Todd and I didn’t see each other for about 11 years, and in the meantime he got married, had a kid, got divorced, moved to Oklahoma, moved back from Oklahoma, got cancer and lost a testicle, and… lost all his hair.

This is Todd now:

Ok, so he does wear hats a lot…

…but here he is, in all his hairless glory… and I still have a massive crush on him.

Now, I have some friends, and I’m not gonna name names, who are super insecure about their hair loss.  And these are guys who are still gorgeous and masculine and virile and everything, just… y’know… balding.

And I’m here to tell you, boys, that you can still be totally hittable if you’re losing your hair.  What’s most attractive to sane and discerning women is confidence.  If you’re insecure, it doesn’t matter how perfect or imperfect your hair is, you’re gonna rate low on the dateability scale. But if you own it and rock it and show the world that you’ve still got it, we’ll believe you.

Don’t be like my Douchey Ex and wear hats all the time.  We all know you’re balding, honey.  You’re not fooling anyone. Be self-assured and work with the hair (or lack of hair) that nature has seen fit to bless you with.  You’re getting older, wiser, and better– and all it has cost you is a little hair.  Seems like a good deal to me.

a still life, gone cinema veritè

I have been home in Carmel for over a month.  I got my old job back and am working full time.  My life is fairly good.

I have gotten fat.

For awhile today I was thinking I might be pregnant, but I took a test and it turns out I’m not.  I’d have to be about four months along if I were, and I think I might have noticed sooner.  I thought maybe the weight gain and some of the weird symptoms I’ve been having could be attributed to being knocked up, but the discount pregnancy test from Save Mart tells me that I am not.

I’m just fat.

I was in the bathroom trying to tame my unruly mane of hair, and I started noticing all the features of myself that I don’t like.  I have acne.  I’m chubby.  My glorious D-cup boobs are back, but so is my gut.  I hate my jawline.  I have fat, stumpy legs.  My hair seldom behaves.  I’m not very graceful.  I don’t have much tact.  I tend to alienate people.  I can be highly abrasive.  I am often too quick to take offense.  I often don’t notice when I’ve offended people.  I tend to burn bridges.  I judge people harshly.  I’m too forgiving sometimes.  I can be passive-aggressive.  I don’t follow things through.  I’m too sensitive to noise and environment.  I can be a bit of a spoiled princess.

I can say all these things and not feel bad.  That might be because I’m totally wacked out on Vicoprofen. We’ll get to that in a moment.  But while I was doing this honest appraisal of myself, examining the things I don’t like about myself, and I felt fine.  At peace.  I love myself anyway, fat and tactless though I may be.

So, about the painkillers: I’ve been getting terrible headaches for the last month or so, and it seems I might have something called Post-Concussion Syndrome.  Confusion, headaches, mood changes.  You can see how, coupled with the recent weight gain, I might think I’m preggers.  But nope, not that, just a lingering head injury!  You should try it, it’s awesome.

So I’m seeing a doctor about that in two weeks, and she’ll probably send me to a neurologist, which I can’t afford, so I’ll have to call Daddy.  Again.  And they’ll say, yep, sounds like Post-Concussion Syndrome, nothing we can do, drink water and get enough rest.  And then they’ll charge $1200.

DESPITE ALL THIS: I’m fairly happy.  I love being back at work.  I’ve been sleeping well.  I’m getting along with my family.  I feel fulfilled, I’m thinking about and planning for the future, I have hopes and dreams again!!!!!

And I am resolutely single for the first time in my life.  For the FIRST TIME in my LIFE I am not chasing after, pining for, trying to satisfy, attempting to appease, or trying to coerce anyone into loving me.  There has never been a time in my life that I haven’t been trying to chase one boy or another.  Now I’m at over three months of being absolutely, gleefully free.

I’ll love again, I’m sure.  But I’ll be smarter when I do.

And hopefully I won’t have a headache anymore.

I ain’t lost, just wandering

I moved back to Carmel last night.  I came to the conclusion sometime around 5pm that I was tired of living in a city where I’d been having a string of bad luck, living with a crazy passive-aggressive roommate, and fearing that I’d run into my douchenozzle ex around every corner.  So I called my mom, and I called my brother, and I was home around 11:30 last night.  Packed my shit, waited for my brother to come get me, and now I’m home.

The San Francisco experiment failed, and I’m bloody relieved to be home.  Three months ago, I had a boyfriend, a perfectly tolerable job, a car, and a home with people who love me.  I moved away from the job and the home, the boyfriend broke up with me (because he’s a douchenozzle) and my car got hit by a truck, which meant that I got to be rushed to the hospital on a backboard!  I can check that one off the bucket list now!  Also, in the fight between big goddamned truck and tiny car made of plastic, the truck was the victor.

No job, no car, no boyfriend, and a roommate who seemed to hate me more and more as time went on, but refused to tell me why.  Until yesterday when she said “You’re really messy.”  Which, actually, wait a minute, isn’t fucking true.  And the other two roommates confirmed this: I made fewer messes than anyone else in the house, and I did most of the cleaning.  OOPS.  Maybe if she’d talked to me about it, we could have resolved that without two months of her trying to drive me insane.  Anyhow, the damage was done.  Now she can be the one to clean up everyone’s messes!

As soon as I decided to leave, I felt much less stressed-out.  And now that I’m home I feel happy, actually happy, for the first time since the douchenozzle broke my heart!

I’m back home, bitches!

another stone placed in my wall

[This isn't pretty, elegant, concise or calm.  It's kinda stream-of-consciousness and get-it-all-out-at-once. It hasn't been edited. I've been trying to write about this for awhile, but the words wouldn't come.  Until now.  So here they are.]

On October 2nd, I gave Emery a ride back to his truck from a bar where we’d met for drinks.  And in the 15 minutes it took to drive from point A to point B, we kept the conversation light and cheerful.  I had decided a couple of days before that I was going to move to San Francisco, a move Emery had been pushing me to make almost as long as we’d been together, which was over a year at that point.

I pulled up to the curb behind his truck, and idled.  He suggested I find a place to park, so I did.

And he told me that he was feeling “itchy.”  When I asked him what that meant, he said he didn’t know.  But he wasn’t sure whether this, us, was what he wanted.  He thought we were as close as we were ever going to get and would never get this close again.  He wanted to pull back a bit.  He wasn’t sure what he wanted.  Honestly, he didn’t say an awful lot.  He was vague.  I had to dig and dig to get as much out of him as I did.  When I suggested that we take some time off, he agreed.  When I asked if he wanted to break up, he cried unabashedly.  So I said, okay, why don’t we take a few steps back.  I’ll move to the city as planned, and we’ll take it easy and see where it goes.  He calmed down a bit.  He asked how I managed to stay so calm.  We kissed and held each other and he got out of my car and into his truck and drove away, and I sat there in that parking lot, chain smoking and repeating the word “awful.”  This is awful.  I feel awful.  This feels awful.  Awful.

A week later, I moved to San Francisco as planned.  And eleven days after that, Emery broke up with me.

He still couldn’t really say why.  We didn’t do a whole lot of talking about it, to be honest.  I mean, I talked.  I begged.  I asked questions.  I cried, I yelled, I got drunk and hysterical and catatonic and hysterical again.  But, honestly, for the most part, I remained calm.  And he couldn’t explain, or wouldn’t.  It was just over.  There was nothing I could say or do.  He offered me no hope, no grievances that I could try to amend. After a year of telling me that I should give in and trust, of assuring me that my doubts were silly and unfounded, he did exactly the thing he’d promised he wouldn’t.  He left me, suddenly and without explanation.  The thing I’d most feared.

And it was, and it is, awful.

People have tried to console me, telling me that it probably just wasn’t meant to be.  Well, obviously.  It’s over.  That means it’s meant to be over.  I’m pragmatic, tautological in my reasoning.  It’s over because it’s over because it’s over.  And if it wasn’t meant to be over, it wouldn’t be, but it is.

Others have said that I’m too good for him.  And I normally poo-poo this sort of mindless platitude, but in this case, yes.  It’s true.  I am too good for him.  And I’ll tell you why.

I have the capacity for great love, great passion, heartbreaking sadness and ecstatic joy.  I am intelligent, funny, generous and warm.  I am brave and daring and strong and I deserve someone who appreciates those things, who understands those things, who also has the capacity for great depth and intensity.

So fuck you and your ambivalence.  Fuck you and your numb indifference.  Fuck you and your “I hate having to do this to people.  I hate breaking hearts.  I hate breakups.”  I am not some interchangable girlfriend-figure.  I am not someone that you are doing this to.  I am the girl who loved you fiercely and wholly, even when I was scared, even when I had doubts, because you told me it was safe.

And you lied.

People have the right to break off relationships at any time and for any reason.  And the end of this one is not the end of my world.  Emery has the right to do whatever the hell he wants.  It’s fine.

But the manner in which he did it, and after all the promises that he wouldn’t leave me without a damned good reason, this callow indifference to the suffering of someone he claimed to love– it shakes me to my core.  Because I believed that I could trust him.  I believed that I was right to trust him.  And if I can’t believe in my own intuition about these things, that means that I can’t trust myself.

Which I already suspected.  And that’s so much worse than not being able to trust some boy.

So, yes.  I am angry.  And oh, I feel awful.  I have dreams about him leaving me, sometimes more than one in a night.  It’s not a replay of what actually happened, but a different setup each time.  In one, he loves someone else.  In another, he simply doesn’t love me anymore.  And I think that, in a way, it’s my mind trying to come up with an explanation, since he never really gave one.  There has to be some reason.  All this pain can’t be for no reason.  Right?

It’ll be two months tomorrow since he left me.  I don’t know why he did.  I suspect I’m better off.  I know that I deserve more than what he could give me.  I believe it’s for the best.  But that doesn’t cut down the rage I feel.  It doesn’t make my heart whole again.  I think it might be a long time before I trust anyone again, and I suspect that that, too, is for the best.  In the meantime, I am sitting in my bedroom in San Francisco, trying to wring what wisdom I can out of this whole mess.  And I am nursing a despair and a bitterness that colors everything I see, do, touch, taste, feel, imagine or dream.

It’ll pass.  I’ll be better off.  In time.

Days like this, I don’t know what to do with myself

On July 13^th, 1996, when I was 15, I was raped by an acquaintance.  I at first consented to sex while fully clothed, but by the time (maybe an hour or two later) that he wanted to get down to it, I had changed my mind.   He kept making advances after I’d voiced my objections.  When he was rubbing my back and trying to slip my clothes off, I said “I don’t want to do this,”, and he said—I still think this is amazingly stupid—“give yourself over to pleasure.”  And when he was trying to put himself inside me, I had to tell him to stop three times before he let me go.  I threatened to kill him if he didn’t get off of me, and he finally listened.

It wasn’t violent, in that there wasn’t a knife to my throat or anything.  But he did have knives, birthday gifts he’d received the week before and had brought along to show me.  And I wasn’t injured, unless you count my innocence.  That it ended quickly, before I was even sure I could call it rape, that he didn’t ejaculate, did nothing to comfort me.  It clouded things. I wasn’t sure whether I was still a virgin or not.  For fifteen years, I doubted my own version of the story.

The same summer I was raped, I was dating someone four years my senior.  And after what happened, I wanted to settle the lingering question of my virginity by having sex.  But my boyfriend wouldn’t do it.  I was only 15, and we weren’t in love.  He didn’t think it would be right.

I have always been grateful to him for that.  I decided I still was a virgin, because what happened hardly counted and I hadn’t wanted it anyway.  I did my best to minimize the experience in my own mind.  I was reluctant to tell people about it.  My parents, when I told them, said things that were less than ideal.  They didn’t know how torn-up I was about what had happened.  I didn’t let on.

*****

A few years ago, I went looking for information about the boyfriend I’d had the summer I was 15, the one who wouldn’t sleep with me because I was so young and we weren’t in love.  I found out that he was convicted of rape in 2008, for forcing himself on a 13-year-old and plying some 14-and-15-year-olds into sex with alcohol at parties that he and his roommate held.  He was 30 or 31 when he was sent to prison, and isn’t eligible for release until 2026.

I have no doubt that he is guilty. He was always a troubled person, the sort of guy you’d have no problem believing could do something criminal.  I’d hoped he’d done something better with his life, and in fact had heard from his brother that he was doing well.  So I was saddened to read about what he’d done, because he’d been decent to me.

I wrote him a letter in prison.  This is what it said:

It’s been years since we saw one another—ten years, maybe?  I was still in high school, and you were working at the candy store.  I wrote to your brother some time ago to find out how you were doing, and he said that you were doing well.  It saddens me greatly to hear what a downturn your life has taken.

If it were someone I didn’t know who committed the crimes you’re in prison for, I’d say hang him by the balls and leave him to die.  But ever since I heard about the charges against you, I’ve wished I knew of some way to reach out.  I wrote about you on my blog, and that’s how I found out that you’d been sentenced.  There are people in the world who want to defend you, and plenty of people who feel, as I do, that what you’ve done is reprehensible.  Still, I knew you once.  I can’t shake that thought.

What I remember about the time we were going out is how very respectful you were of my youth and virginity.  You had an odd habit that endeared you to me; you wouldn’t touch any part of my body that was covered by clothing, and you never removed any of my clothing yourself.  I don’t know what changed in you.  Your girlfriends didn’t get any older, that’s for sure.

I found out about your crimes by doing a Google search for your name sometime last year.  I was shocked, and wrote about you on my blog.  One of the posts has become sort of a mini discussion group for people who knew you.  Someone, who I assume is your former roommate, wrote to say that you’d been sentenced.  So I went on [a crime website], paid ten dollars, and found out where you are.  This morning I called the [State] Department of Corrections to find out how long your sentence is (Oh My God) and how to reach you.

So that’s how I know where you are.  I don’t know why I felt the need to get in touch with you, but I did, and so here I am.  You can write back if you want to; in fact, I’d like it if you did.

I hope that, even in prison, you can manage to make a decent life for yourself.  You are in my thoughts.  Let me know if there’s anything I can do, within reason, to help out.

He wrote back seven hand-written pages, and it was creepy as hell. He denied what he’d done, and I never wrote him another letter.

*****

On Tuesday night, I did a Google search for the name of my rapist.  I don’t know what I was expecting to find.  I was curious.  What I found was his name on a sex offender registry.  He was convicted of rape in military court in 2007.  It seems that he served two years in prison, something I deduced by the fact that he didn’t register as a sex offender until 2009.  And like the other instance, I don’t doubt that he’s guilty.  Perhaps of a lot more than he was convicted of.

The day after I found out that I was not his only victim, I walked around in a daze.  I didn’t know what to think or how to feel.  I wasn’t sad or distressed, exactly, just very full of thoughts.  Troubled.  Confused.  And I was baffled by this feeling I didn’t know how to process: relief.

I didn’t make it up.  I am not wrong to say that I was raped.  I’m not a bad person for maligning the reputation of someone who maybe just made an honest mistake.  He’s not a good person.  He’s a bad person.  I am so, so sorry for whomever else he’s hurt.  I am lucky to have gotten away so easily from him, even though the memory of that day still makes me sick to my stomach.  Apparently someone else wasn’t so lucky—he’s classified as a violent offender.  And I hear it’s hard to get rape prosecuted in the military, so I don’t think it’s an incredible stretch to say that what he did must have been pretty bad.

I have felt guilty and ashamed about being raped for half of my life.  As twisted as it is, I feel better knowing that he is the bad one, and that it wasn’t my fault.  I’m sorry he raped someone else. I hope he never hurts anyone ever again.  But there’s a sick solace in knowing I’m not the only one, it wasn’t my imagination, I’m not overreacting, he is a rapist, and it wasn’t and isn’t my fault.

*****

How did my life intertwine with that of two rapists in that summer?  How did I meet two such damaged, damaging people?  I was a fairly sheltered teenager, I grew up in a small, safe town, I didn’t get into much trouble, do drugs, hang out with the wrong crowd.  I am incredibly lucky am I that things didn’t end up so much worse for me, and I am incredibly sorry for the later victims of those two terrible men.  My mind reels.  My heart sinks.  There is absolutely nothing I can do except try to purge all these feelings, and try to find some peace.

BOOYAH, BITCHES

I said I was growing it out, didn't I?

And it only took eight months…

this is what it looked like on august 1st 2010

that’s it, I quit

Got paid today.  Went to the store, bought nicotine patches.  Discovered that nicotine patches turn me into a dizzy, shaky, pukey wreck.

Cold turkey it is.

I’m not too sure, and I’m not too proud to say…

About a year ago, I was chatting with Austin, the boyfriend I had through most of high school, and I asked him if he had fond memories of me.  This is what he said:

We had some great times, some crazy times, and I think you’re a good person. And yeah, I focus on the good memories. Life’s better that way, I think. Those people that always say they have no regrets, bunch of people that lie to themselves, but damn they’re probably the happiest too.

I found this chat log yesterday, and it made me really happy.  So I thought I’d share.

What am I afraid of?

I fell asleep around 6:30 last evening , so of course I woke up at 3:30 a.m. And the anxiety and bad thoughts I’m usually good at keeping at bay all pounced on me and I remembered: this is why it’s bad to be awake at this time.  This is where the bad thoughts live.

But it’s been a couple hours now, and I’m feeling mostly better.  I’ve found it’s helpful to ask myself “What am I afraid of?” and go from there.  Because it’s never really as bad as I think it is.  I get so caught up in feeling awful that I fail to see the trees for the forest, if I can twist a metaphor.  I’m so busy freaking out over everything that I don’t see that every component of my anxiety is something I can do something about.

So I think I’m going in to work early today so that I can finish early, and then I’ll come home and try to sort out my life. I’m tired of keeping my fears and anxieties at bay.  I need to face them head-on, and that’s a lot easier in daylight than it is at 4am.

Frailty

I’ve spent a lot of my life being really, really hard on myself.

I don’t think most people know that about me, even people who know me well.  I’m just starting to figure it out about myself.

Strange to think about.