Yesterday’s socks and I can’t be bothered to do all the things I’ve put off all weekend. There’s a plate missing from the kitchen but only I know and I only know when the dishes are all clean and stacked and they’re never all clean and stacked. I’ll waste some more time and go to the pub – I’ve always been bad at denying the good for the sake of the dull. At the pub I won’t deny a thing or maybe everything. Today, I just don’t know.
Not only did I miss you but I was stupid for days after hearing from you. I really ought to do something about that. Don’t you think? We know I don’t.

You get let off work two hours early. You’ve nothing to do but go home. You turn on the telly and the computer. You never get round to changing the channel so you end up watching Miss Universe and googling cocksucking. It strikes you that there may just be something amiss in your life.

Stupid fat people. Why doesn’t someone kill them all?

I’m a kind of laid back lassie, one given to minor and petty outpourings of vitriol but, on the whole, pretty apathetic about just about, oh, everything. Which makes this action, yes this one, the one I’m undertaking right now, a novelty. Rarely have I been so very irritated (and please do not misunderstand – quite a lot of media rubbish irritates me but I do not find it worthwhile to attend to it) that I will comment on some piece of drivel I’ve discovered. Today I made the mistake of reading an appalling article by one Ms Rachel Cooke* who is, I am sure, an otherwise charming and probably quite attractive, though we all have our little paranoias etc, and svelte size 10/12.
It’s been a while since I exercised my critique muscles – as with so many of my other muscles – so you’ll have to forgive me when I say that I just do not know where to start with this woman’s article. Should I go for ‘as for people like me, who see only clogged arteries when they see a fat person’ or perhaps the assumptions in her commentary that to be fat is to be unhappy, automatically, always, and just because of being fat. Let me just ponder that last point… What comes first, do you think, the fat or the sad? You’re quite right, we’re intelligent adults and that query was beneath me. Too simplistic an idea and one too ridiculous for words. These are fatties we’re talking about. They are an abstract after all, well, except for those annoying militant ones who seem to think that the general objective to life is something other than being skinny. Oooops, now I sound like a fat apologist or something. You can tell at this point, can’t you, that I’m fat. Very very fat. I really ought to be more ashamed. Honestly, first thing I’ll start purging and exercising excessively and then I’ll apologise to everyone...maybe I can come to an arrangement with the government to pre-pay the medical expenses for the diseases that I do not and may never have along with my HECS debt. Given how grasping they are I’m pretty sure they’ll agree. Maybe it was a mistake to put that out there.
I’ve read this article a couple of times. Maybe I’m just being a defensive fatty, a bad and silly fatty, a not knowing my place fatty, but this woman’s prejudice and misconceptions really do frustrate me. I certainly feel that I’ve missed the point as I’ve let my words, my insecurities, and my horrible flab flop about in an orgy of self-reflection and writing. I feel that I’ve misunderstood the world as a whole. Tell me, kind folk, do people only attend the gym to not be fat? I thought that it might be because it was something that they enjoyed or because they desired something particular and positive rather than something general and reactionist – an action in the negative. Is it only fat people who fail to eat correctly at every meal (aside from those anorexics and bulimics but they’re on the path of righteousness and should be left alone)? I mean, I’ve never known anyone who can eat enormous amounts of shit all day, every day, and still be skinny as a rake because they lucked out in the genetics/metabolism game…oh no wait, I have a cousin like that…and I work with a girl…and I had a friend at school who was like that…and then there’s… Sorry, sorry, over-simplifying again. This is not about why people are fat but that there are fat people. Worse yet, people who whilst being fat go about living rather than sensibly trying to kill themselves in their shame. Poor unhappy fat people! I wonder that the suicide rate isn’t rather higher. I bet that’s the reason why there are so many suicides. There’s bound to be some kind of great correlation in the future about how the suicide rate is the fault of the obesity problem; nothing to do with the rich/poor dichotomy or the dissociative society or anything like that.
Alas, the more I read this shite, the more annoyed I am that such a poor and pointless article was published. She lacks a definite point and makes no real conclusions. She exposes her own prejudice beautifully and attempts to normalise it. She also exposes a truly pathetic level of personal vanity. She can barely leave the house in a fat-suit because she fears ridicule. I wonder why she fears ridicule. Could it be that her instinct (yes, let us absolve her of personal responsibility by reducing her status to that of an animal – well, maybe not one that hibernates, stupid fat bears) is to deride those different from herself? Could she be fearing that others will behave as she would? And, I’m quite curious now, how does she behave that she expects such cunty behaviour? Yes, yes, appalling pop-psychology… And back to the point. Why have I let someone like this exasperate me so? Because it was published at all. Because it perpetuates fat-hate without thought. Because it creates further prejudice. Because it’s supposed to do this. Because all the other birds have been shot and we need a new target. Because fat people cannot defend themselves. I could argue until I asphyxiate about why it’s so fundamentally wrong to hate for something as petty and pointless as being fat but I’ll never so much as win a point, let along the battle or the war, because I’m fat and for some obscure reason that I fail to understand this is not allowed to be just another of my personal problems. In being so visible I make it everyone’s problem and am apparently forcing the issue by daring to go out in public. Did I misinterpret that? It’s very hard to tell when someone discusses how fat-rights campaigners are trying to transfer their misery on to normal skinny people after obliquely mentioning her own issues about food via her disgust at seeing a fat person eat something unhealthy. It’s all about the food, you know.

And now, I’ve stayed up far too late writing and must get some sleep. I’d should save this and finish it later but, for some reason – probably to do with my being fat and therefore lazy – I never do go back to finishing the things I’ve started writing. Shit, there are birds chirping. I’ll leave you with some other bit-lets from tonight that otherwise would not see the light of day. For some reason I felt that they were pertinent if not succinct.
1) This may surprise you but I’m not an ill looking person – always presuming that I’m not on some mad ego trip and that people haven’t been lying to me my entire life. I’ve inherited some pretty good genetic goods, along with some quite shit ones, and, alas, a lot of them are physiological. I’m sorry but I got the good skin (yes, that’s where it went), attractive though myopic eyes, thick, (allegedly) attractive hair, fairly nice even features – no obvious deformities other than the fatness, oh except for the slightly mangled legs and feet but who looks at those? Sometimes people even compliment me on my looks, sometimes they even mean it. Before you yawn over my irrelevance I’ll share a little secret with you. I have more issues with being considered pretty or attractive, no matter how big my arse gets or how small, than I do with being fat. I am not one of those women who makes much of an effort though I have stopped actively trying to uglify myself. You made the connection there, didn’t you? It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? The fat could be considered a self protective coating. An extremely ironic Teflon, if you will. Only, I don’t think it’s the whole story. Sure, I concede, it is a part of it – it’s all part of my deep psychological need to be unhappy, blah, blah, woe…and all I have to do is become skinny because that will solve the problems…uh huh. No. There is a lot more to this story and so much of it is bound up in my damaged psyche but somehow I suspect that most of it has very little to do with my pant size. Let’s blame poverty and my parents instead! Or perhaps my obvious low intelligence.
2) Have I ever told you about the trips to doctors I’ve had. Trips where I’ve been so upset, so stressed that I thought I was losing my mind (which is, in fact, a real fear of mine – like the marionette thing only much worse) and yet was rational enough to think that there might be a physical reason and so have had semi-thorough checkups. Visits where doctors are actually disappointed that my blood pressure is normal, that my glucose is normal, that my cholesterol is normal. They aren’t disappointed because my problems are quite obviously psychological (and generally quite temporary in nature, though I am a recurrent stress-head); they’re disappointed because fat people are all supposed to have all of these things all the time. Not having so much as one is very frustrating for them because all they can say is ‘you ought to lose weight’ rather than ‘you have to lose weight because you’re all sick and diseased and diet and exercise with fix this’. These problems in skinny people are, apparently, always purely genetic and therefore out of their hands. Sorry, bitterness crept in – I must go eat sweet things to ease my pain or something.
3) It’s funny, but I seem to have failed to develop some of the body issues that one is expected to have. Unless I’m being utterly paranoid (it does happen sometimes) I do not fear appropriate nudity at all. I dislike being judged though and being disliked for such a petty reason as that I am too fat. (Oh the creeping horrors of childhood! Those utterly cunty teachers who taught us to dislike our bodies – I do love it when adults enact their own insecurities in front of children. What kind of arsehole goes out of their way to make a child feel bad, btw? I mean really, I ought to sue some of those arseholes for psychological damages.) I am not so afraid of my own body, though some of its little quirks and unattractivenesses irritate me, that I cannot bear to be naked, that I am horrified to see my flabby self in a mirror. I’m not the least disturbed by the nakedness of others – we’re adults, aren’t we? We all have bits and there are only two main kinds so who gives a fuck? It’s all variations on a theme. Could’ve been a better theme, sure, but a theme nonetheless. I have a detached sort of fondness for my old body, even if no-one else has, it does its job in ferrying about my persona and my brain quite adequately

* Cooke, Rachel, ‘Is weight the new race?’ The Sydney Morning Herald: 22-23/07/2006 - Hmmmm, I'd be pissed at the SMH's edit job too, if I were her. Still, I think I'll maintain my rage - just for a little.

There has been a certain unreality to this day that I am unsure of and that makes me uncomfortable.

Oh, and I know you’re not reading but I am thinking of you. For once not stalking, just thinking.

Doncha hate it when your blogger crushes turn sour?

I know not what.

Sorry it's so long.

I’ve just spent the last week in what could be called my home town if I ascribed to that particular parochial bullshit or even slightly liked the shithole. It wasn’t a bad trip except for the utter uselessness of Virgin Blue and the whole being in an oversized small town thing. Oh preserve me from small town mentality – especially when there are a couple of hundred thousand people in the town!
I probably should start with the flight. The first one – the one that didn’t actually happen, the fight that I was supposed to take ought to have left Sydney at six-thirty in the morning but was cancelled. It would have been rather nice to have known this before I turned up at the airport at five. It would’ve also been good if I’d been rebooked for a flight that didn’t entail a five hour wait. Still, such is life and I’ll never get those long, boring, sleepless hours of my life back again so there isn’t much point in whinging too much. Oh, in case you were wondering, the sole reason I arrived so early for my original flight was that I wanted, really very badly, a window seat. I loathe flying if I can’t look out the window. As a consequence of this I loathed both my flights and have a slightly bruised left arm. How I love flight whatever-the-fuck-they-call-themselves.
But I’m not really posting about that or anything much else that happened on the trip – I mean really, my life, big yawn. I’m writing because of something someone told me that has stuck in my mind ever since. This was something told to me that made me feel, though unintentionally – it certainly was not her plan, like a complete louse who does not deserve the wonderful friends that she has. I’ve been so solitary and closed off for such long time now that I wonder that anyone speaks to me at all. They do though and this shall probably remain one of the great mysteries of my life. Please do not think that I’m joking.
My friend has not had the easiest of lives. I know that it’s very easy to say that and that it often has no real meaning. I also know that I have led a very privileged life. I’ve always been very much loved and people, in loving me, have always looked after me. Really looked after me – even now most of my family and friends will baby me. She hasn’t had that – not the babying which is just a bit weird but she’s never had much security in the love of her parents. They do love her, I know they do, she knows they do but their relationship was quite brief and her mother has a stunning array of personal problems. It ma seem awful but I don’t know all that much about my friend’s childhood and I am probably her oldest friend and one of her closest. We were teenagers when we met and we mostly didn’t discuss those things. She told me a little and none of it was much fun. Well, it wouldn’t have been, would it? This isn’t really her story either, my friend’s that is, it’s really a story about her mother – it involves her a lot but it’s not her. My friend’s mother is manic depressive or whatever that is in present parlance. She’s also an alcoholic – a real one. She’s a real manic depressive too. What do I mean by real? Diagnosed, committed, shocked, wrecked, broken, tentatively okay but never ever cured and so often let down. Her problems have been apparent the whole of my friend’s life – before that I don’t know, before that she was very young, before that she hadn’t been through so very much. She has good times and bad times. The bad times, I think, have become less common as she’s gotten older. I think the grandchildren have helped plus her very stable daughter and her fantastic family.
This is a family I’ve known for quite some time. One way or another I usually know how my friend’s mother is. My friend’s son and my nephew attend the same daycare and she’s practically part of the family. She both sees and speaks to my family more than to me – not a surprise as I am so very slack.
I remember in high school, I’m not sure if it was the start of year eleven or year twelve, the first day of school she came to see me as we were starting class late –I wasn’t nearly ready so instead of talking then we met up later at school. Those holidays must have been awful for her. She’d been away staying with her grandparents in another town; I think her mother must have been with her for a while because when her mother returned to their house she found that her partner had committed suicide. Actually managed it this time – he did a revoltingly thorough job too. The mother, unsurprisingly, ended up in hospital – the same hospital that she’d been in fuck knows how many times before, that she’d been treated in, probably mistreated in, shocked and what-not. I may make too much of this place but their mental health unit had a shocking [no pun] reputation. Worse than most. My friend’s mother must have been in hospital for months at that point, my friend had to stay with her aunt for the duration. I think that was one of her worse times. Up and down, of course, since then but not so bad that I remember. I think she’s had other stays since then but mostly she’s been able to get the help she needs or, more probably, just enough help to get her by.
It’s a fairly small town and in the depths of Queensland so you really don’t expect much. This is Australia after all and it is no longer the fashion to care about or give care to people. We’re all aspirational, you know, we’re doing it for ourselves; we don’t need help and if we did we’d certainly pretend that we didn’t. If we do need help and admit to it we’ve started to reach the point where we don’t expect much. If, for example, you’ve a mental illness and have a clinical history the size of several books of yellow pages you shouldn’t really expect to be able to see a psychiatrist when you can no longer cope. You make an appointment for some time down the track. What’s a couple of months after all? How bad can it really be? You try to put yourself in the hospital because it really is that bad. Oh but there isn’t a bed. Too bad. Isn’t that an awfully rational act anyway?
You can feel a certain amount of desperation. That rational-irrationality, a handful, a bottleful, another bottleful or two of pills, and a call to the ambulance. That just screams of really wanting to die, doesn’t it? When you live alone and call your own ambulance?
The ambulance arrived as my friend was on the phone to her mother. I guess she sounded okay at that point. Certainly, there was little my friend could do for her mother – alone in her house with two little children whose father was off fighting terror on foreign soil. I do wonder if she appreciated the irony of that? My friend is one of the calmest people I know and she knew, from experience, that once the ambulance reached her mother that the situation was under control. Later on she phoned the hospital – the psych ward specifically - to ask about her mother. They had no records and suggested she try emergency – hospitals can take such a long time to process people. When she spoke with emergency she was told that her mother wasn’t there, she’d been moved to ICU. It seems that this time she’d very nearly succeeded at death whatever her intention had been. She was in ICU and an induced coma for some time. Her family was told that she was likely brain-dead and that they didn’t hold hope even if she came out of the coma.
This story has, inasmuch as can be, a happy ending. My friend’s mother came out of her coma and she was okay – hell, she’s even getting the psychiatric help she needs. She’s taken up smoking again though despite an absence of nearly a year. Can’t say I fault her though, I suspect she needs it. This story doesn’t have a moral, it doesn’t have all the facts, it’s biased by the writer, and suffers from any number of faults but it is the most depressing thing I’ve heard all year. What I find even more depressing is that my father doesn’t, wouldn’t have these problems. He sees his psychiatrist every however-long-it-is regular as clockwork - free. The problems he has aren’t necessarily ones he was born with and they weren’t formed by his environment – not his regular environment anyway. But for that stupid war he may never have had any but the slightest of problems yet help is thrown at him. My friend’s mother’s problems are manifest and manifold and stem mostly, as I understand, from genetics and her own imperfect self but she cannot always get the help she needs. It seems a little cruel.

Virgin Blue suck copious amounts of cock. Yes, I am blogging from an airport