Many Musings

[zana16]

Today I had fudge for breakfast, pasta and ice cream (not together) for lunch, and churros con chocolate for dinner. Expect my thyroid to go kerplunk one of these days. Have gained way too much weight, is now a major health issue instead of a major bodyimage issue. But I'm so afraid of trying to diet and starting the bulimia cycle again.... Compulsive eating is just as dangerous, but at least it doesn´t rot my teeth with stomach acid.

Bought six packages of turron de chocolate and really really hope four of them will make it back to France with me. Bought membrillo and two bottles of liquor 43 so Beth and I can have our eggnog next winter. Also bought two wonderful CDs (Ska-P!!!), and some lingere. Cause my brand of bras only is made in Spain. Fortunately they last forever. Unfortunately I have grown five or six sizes since the last time I bought bras here. Used to be that me and all my friends were size 36C, so bras kinda migrated when we slept over at each others´ houses, etc. It was funny, cause we were all different sizes, from four foot nine up to me at five nine, but we all wore the same bra size. Not one of us has ever been able to a 36C at Victoria's Secret, btw. Now I am no longer a size 36C and cannot trade bras with anyone. *sniff*

The rest of this is just musing, and it's really long, so don't feel like you have to read it. It's more of a diary entry than anything else.

Mused today on the fact that I have only ever shoplifted twice. Feel guilty about the second time, not about the first. Statistics say that I am well below the norm, but it still bugs me that I don't feel guilty. I'm the social/political theorist, dammit. There's a social contract, and even if I don't like it I have to live in it, and live with it. But when someone rips me off I don't feel guilty ripping them off. Which is vengeance and I don't believe in vengeance. How is it that I can fight to get people off death row and still shoplift from the Smith bookstore? But the fact remains that while I feel guilty about not feeling guilty, I do not feel guilty about the actual act.

Such is life.

Spain does something to a Romantic´s soul. It did it the first time I was here, and I felt it again today. You know the expression "tugging at your heartstrings"? I felt it again tonight as I was listening to the Incan musicians playing on the Puerta del Sol. I don´t know whether to feel proud or heartbroken, but I managed not to approach a random guy and ask him to come home with me. Memories of Sarah are so long ago.... I haven't even made out with anyone since her. A year and a half. My body needs someone, but I know myself. One step back into the selfdestructive behavior and it'll be the Patrick months all over again.

Did I love Patrick? In a way. The way I love everyone. My soul ached for him when he turned his back on life, when he lied to me about the drugs, when the end came and I should have seen it coming and I DID see it coming but I didn't want it to end that way.

One day of happiness back in summer after junior year of highschool, and I wonder if I'll ever be able to recapture the shy flirtation and certainty that this is right, this is okay, there are butterflies in my stomach but they´re good butterflies. Longing ever since then.

Really, I am getting rather angsty these days, aren´t I?

Feel selfish for not quite being totally happy that Julia's going to be a mother. Cause she was always all mine before--well, I had to share her with my brother but I had to share everything else with him, too, so that's different, and besides she liked me better even if she loved us both the same--and now she won't be. Funny, I didn't feel this way when she got married. Maybe cause she shared Carter with me, and Carter is the coolest old guy I know. Well, not old. Forty-five, maybe? I was nothing but happy when my dad walked her down the aisle and I saw the smile in Carter's eyes when he said "I do" and I knew that this marriage was going to be alright. But a child is different. Well, I shall just have to accept this and grow up, be mature and stuff. I'm the age Julia was when she first started babysitting us. I couldn't stay the child/little sister forever. Things will change, but maybe I will have a role in Kiki´s life? I can be the cool older sister/auntie for Kiki that Julia was for me. Julia really saved our lives back then. I know she loves us cause otherwise she wouldn't have put up with all the shit we gave her. My mother had just died and we were just kids and of course we acted out and were horrible to her, and my dad wanted to have a peaceful household when he came home at night so he became the "nice" parent and she became the "strict/mean" parent. And she put up with us and loved us. I'm not sure I could do that. Finally I grew up and I could thank her, but she stuck with us through the good and the bad and she is amazing for that.

Finished the Prado today and when across the street to the other museum, the Thyssen-M-something one. Very well done. Of course I only got through twenty of the fifty rooms in the two hours I was there. I have to remember that what is a two-hour tour of pretty paintings for anyone else is a five-hour lesson in art history for me. I dread going to art museums because of it, but once I'm there I can't stop; it´s a sort of an obsession. Yeah, I like art, but that doesn't explain it so much. Like Faust, I am in an eternal quest for Knowledge. Would like the physical/Biblical knowledge since I haven't made love in a year and a half; but other types of knowledge turn me on in a different way. Social and political theory can turn me on like nothing else. I have never been so aroused as that one day I read Nicolas Van Der Weer´s essay on neopatrimonialism. Well, yes I have, but that involved Sarah's tongue along the shell of my ear and absolutely nothing in the world can make me horny like my ears. Yes. I am weird. Social theory and ears are erotic to me. Oh well. At least my kinks are harmless, do not hurt anyone.

Spain does this to me. It inspires me to find that caged freedom I remember so well, the edge of alcoholism and sweaty bodies moving in danceclubs and drugs and meaningless sex with strangers. I was sixteen, not ready. I know I can't go back, but sometimes I feel that tug again.... I need to build up my walls of friends and community and loved ones to help keep me on track. Someday maybe I will be able to trust my heart to someone.... After Patrick, I knew I could only have relationships with people I actually cared about, cared deeply. After Sarah, I realized that these relationships were too painful. With both of them, sex was difficult because I did care about them. I can only have relationships with people I really care deeply about, but I can only have sex with people I don't give a damn about. This is a problem.

Angst, angst, angst. Maybe Spain just brings out the angsty side of me.

He was so beautiful. I wanted him to look at me, but of course he didn't. I imagined going up to him, saying "Do you speak English" and "Venga conmigo, vamos a mi hostal." I didn't let myself ask him to do come home with me. Dark brown skin and long long hair, native american probably, so gorgeous. I wanted him so badly. It's been a long time since I wanted someone that badly. I didn't let myself ask him, and I know I should feel proud but it was more shyness and fear that held me back than anything else.

I box myself in, create these rules for myself, try to live by them and realize they bang up against other rules I've created to live by. If only I could get religion. Many people find comfort in the rituals of religion, it helps give them the structure they need. I wish I could believe. For awhile I went so far as to read Dr. Billy Graham every morning, to see if maybe he could tell me how to believe. But for all my wanting, I can't "give myself to Christ". Or Allah, or the Goddess, or anyone. I try so hard to believe and sometimes I do, but never anything definite enough to have rituals to go with it. I can't make myself believe, and I don't know why. Life would be so much simpler if someone--a preacher, the Bible, the Koran, anyone--could tell me how to live it right, and I would just believe them. This is why fundamentalism is predominant among disaffected youth; they need something to believe in, to fight for, to structure otherwise meaningless lives. I am a disaffected youth, I guess. I'm just too stubborn to take anybody's word for anything, except maybe about science and math, and then only if I trust the source. It makes it difficult to separate the facts from the opinions. I should talk to Kirstin about how she figured it out.

Would begin my musing on the nature of the American Female Adult as Experienced by Me, but I should go to bed. They believe in siesta here, so the day starts early and everything stops from one to four. Which would be great if I were on a schedule, but so far I have been sleeping till noon every day.