Straight No Chaser

Guilty Pleasure

i thought about this for a few days and had even come up with a couple legitimate answers. i don't really have any of the usual vices, so my guilty pleasures would have been cheesy and lightweight, things like disney movies and gossip. in other words, i'd basically be purporting to be without any at all.

then i had a shitty day, and thought about it some more, and remembered that i do have one. it's ugly and perverse and it really doesn't provide much pleasure at all, but satisfies me by necessity, because the alternative is probably even uglier.

self-deprecation.

on days like today i shed buckets of tears in single sittings, beat my head against the proverbial wall and struggle, really seriously struggle with the unfairness of having been born the way i was, totally not in control of my physical appearance or personality or basic circumstances so that now, twenty years later, i have to keep cycling through phases of self-loathing and self-prescribed self-bolstering.

blah blah blah. i don't want to hear how fortunate i am to have this or that, to have been born in a clean hospital to affluent parents and have had every opportunity, academic or otherwise, extended to me. all these things i know, and i'm eternally grateful to everyone who's had a hand in the shaping of my cushy sterling life. they aren't the problem; i am. some days i'm intelligent and maybe even motivated but i've never been able to call myself "unique"; i look down on my contemporaries for their superficiality and then exude obscene quantities of my own; my forehead is huge. in some order, those are representative of my three biggest obstacles in life.

i KNOW i can be a success if i want to be. i think it's probably ninety-nine percent likely that i'll graduate on time, eighty percent likely i'll make it into some appropriately prestigious post-grad program, sixty-five percent likely that in thirty years i'll be financially comfortable and won't have wasted an education. all well and good, but not enough. also not good enough that i have friends who care about me, if marginally, and pastimes that at least supply the occasional distraction. those are just the basics.

there are so many things that are more important than the basics. for instance, i'd love to look in the mirror just once and not want to gag at my reflection. i've convinced myself that i'm passable but i'd love even just an instant of feeling gorgeous. i'll never have the flowing hair, the beautiful complexion, the giant rack, the whatever. my mom is gorgeous. at forty-nine people still whistle at her on the street, even as her barely-legal daughter strides beside her in hooded silence. completely superficial, clearly. but i live among adolescents; big teeth and jutting collarbones are going to haunt me for at least the next two years.

i'd love to feel lovable, too. marcus loves me. but that's hard to reconcile with his default laissez faire behavior. he's not the needing type, which is no great tragedy because really no one should be, but when you pair a gorgeous objective man with a clingy hypersensitive girl, guess who feels shat on ninety percent of the time?

urgh. let's leave him out of this.

i just feel worthless and like i could live my whole life, however many endless decades may comprise it, and be totally successful (or not) and really be the only one who cares.

look at that. i thought this was going to be a detailed exploration and it turned out to be completely (a) superficial, (b) hypocritical and (c) poorly written. i guess i'm just not ready to be back in atlanta.