H’okay!

With the end of the semester and all its time-consuming activities, I’ve been stressed out and unable to find time/energy to exercise. I feel pretty blah, and for the past week have been trying to combat the issue by eating healthier options. I’ve concluded that this is not the solution for me. Instead of having what I really want– a big honking bar of chocolate– I’ll end up having (over the course of a couple hours) a salad, a banana, a pot pie, crackers, and coffee. Ridiculous! Along with not getting what I really want, that’s approximately 2x the calories. I’m not a calorie-counter or anything, but there’s a vague awareness of such things that looms over me when I’m not getting regular exercise.

The way I worked my sweet teeth in high school was to walk to the nearest grocery store. If I felt ambitious or the weather was nice, I’d go to the second or third-nearest. This worked excellently, and perhaps on a Pavlovian level paired exercise with tasty items.

So as soon as this crunch is over, I’m getting back to that system. It made me feel healthy and I got to eat whatever I craved without guilt. Because I’m that indoctrinated in the thin culture, it’s true.

initial convolutions

Last night I came back to a thought first introduced by a teacher last year. Under him we didn’t just learn about proportions of shading– he also amateurishly psycho-analyzed every one of us. At mid-term reviews, more than a year ago, he told me we used to be the same. He, too, pared down his personality, restrained his urges, and tamed his tongue, until all that was left met his parents’ high standards and gleaned their approval. I cried, because that was a cruel truth. The paring-down process was an unhealthy pattern, and I’d continued it in other close relationships.

Well. I’m out on my own, now. I am my own woman, and the form of who I want that woman to be is more clear every day. I don’t know if my parents would like her, but they’ll have to love her.

I still seek approval. Actually, it’s not difficult for me to obtain. I’m kind, supposedly intelligent, don’t yammer on for hours. I have an interesting life and can tell entertaining anecdotes from the art-school lifestyle. I don’t go out of my way to seek approval because right now there seems to be an over-flowing bounty of it– rather, I seek not to disappoint. I follow through on things. So when he asked if I felt romantic possibilities, I said yes. When he said he thought we could have fun together, I agreed. When he told me I was making a decision too early, that I didn’t even know him well enough to judge his intensity, I said perhaps. And then I gained disapproval and shucked something away that I full well know could have been fantastic.

I don’t like the feeling.

But the other fellow seems so right, so good, I don’t even question it right now. I can’t already sense how it would end. I don’t think I’ll get unhealthily wrapped up in him and he seems to have excellent boundaries. There’s a lack of the risk-taking danger that I think people often confuse with eroticism or passion. I don’t feel like I’ll need to pare anything away to always meet his approval, and that’s the way it should be.