Monday, January 26, 2009

blech

I came home sick from school. I had to lecture sitting down during first period because if I stood up for too long I felt dizzy and faint, and my tongue felt all fuzzy when I talked. For a quick second I freaked out and thought I might be having a stroke. So I told the kids I needed them to give me a break today because I didn't feel good, and they behaved themselves without me having to use my cold-blooded psychopathic killer voice. I probably didn't have an episode, but if I could get away with telling people I had some kind of nineteenth-century brain fever, I totally would, so I'd have an excuse to drink claret in the daytime and be treated in my dressing gown by a handsome young doctor who makes house calls. What's more likely is that I ate something a little off. Glamorous and classy.
At home sick, I realize how much I don't like my surroundings - enough that I want to crawl down to the corner coffee shop with my Alice Waters cookbook just to get away from it all. Every remaining piece of clean laundry I own is dumped on the floor, because I couldn't get into the bed and recuperate with No Reservations clips if my entire wardrobe was strewn over the covers. Lots of bins of dirty laundry hunker in the corners. Kitchen sink inspires nausea, as does the bathroom, where I have been much of the day trying to combat that very sensation. EWW.
Last night at one of my four local Starbucks (curse you, caffeinated siren of world domination), I kinda lost it. My study buddy asked me what was wrong. "There's a bunch of dirt on the floor, these people put too many chairs at this table and then left sticky stuff all over it, this other table's too close to me, it's too loud in here, that weird guy is here and he is looking at me, those obnoxious hottie girls we see everywhere are getting on my nerves and I'm just really irritated with everything." I'm such a treat, right?
In truth, several of my self-image issues all collided at the same time, and I couldn't react with temperance. Yes, I've made progress in how I view myself, and even my study buddy agrees that I'm not such a hater towards myself or towards other women anymore. But it upsets me when all the safeguards I have against a self-image meltdown don't keep me from descending into bitchiness when a crowd of women all in sexy little outfits converge on my It's Better To Be Smart Than Pretty parade. (Real talk: No, it's not.) Yes, hot girls, I am that jealous slag. More explanation later, if I deem it interesting. This is the point at which I would usually scrawl 'WHORES' and then scuttle off to my lair of hate, but instead I think I'm going to take the Fug Girls' advice and put on some lipstick, then stagger down to the corner coffee shop for something restorative, of course with my Alice Waters homage-to-butter-cookbook in tow. Hey, don't hate me because I can sizzle in the kitchen and on the street.

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