Eat the Damn Cake

This post is for Cate, who commented here. 

I am a dreamer.

I want big things. I want gorgeous settings. I am idealistic. I am impractical.

I am old enough to know better, so I don’t think I will ever know better.

I am fragile. I want to be famous. God, that’s embarrassing. At least there’s this: I don’t want to be famous and get invited to all the best penthouse parties and know all the names of the owners of the sexiest clubs. I don’t want fame to follow me outside, into the street. I want to be a famous writer. I want people to read my words and disappear briefly inside them. That’s what happened to me, as a kid, reading fantasy novels. I slipped inside another world. I want to do that for people.

I am a failure. I tried being practical. I tried growing up right. At fifteen, I got my first serious job. I worked through college. For a while, I was making more money than all of my friends. I was a little smug about it, when a guy who liked me bragged about how much he made at his job, repairing computers, and I made more. Don’t say anything, I thought. Don’t you dare say anything. I really wanted to say something. I only let myself get A’s, and I only considered Ivy League grad schools-- I got into the one my professors wanted for me. There was this straight, groomed path, and I was on it, and I was going to take my degrees out into the world and knock on a bunch of impressive doors with them (they make a more important sound than just my bare hand), and things would fall into place.

And then I couldn’t.

(that’s my backpack. And my chocolate milk. This is where I was writing yesterday)

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We go around the room, introducing ourselves and sharing how long we have “practiced.”

“Nine years.”

“Five years.”

“Twenty.”

“Four days.”

That’s me.

And that is one of the reasons I am not good at yoga. Also, I am not flexible (does this make me less sexy? I’m pretty sure it does). Also, I have scoliosis. Not in a serious way. Just in a “Your spine is a little too curved” way. It makes my lower back look especially cute, the doctor said I looked like a dancer (a dancer! I must be pretty!). It makes my upper back and shoulders look not cute at all– more like a turtle (a dancing turtle!). It’s hard for me to put my shoulders back. Which means it’s hard for me to look like a queen. Which is a major disappointment.

So the hardest pose for me is the one where you sit with your legs straight in front of you and then bend over them, from the waist. My back won’t let me bend. I’m sitting straight up, and everyone is touching their toes. Even the pregnant woman in the back. How is that even possible? Even the seventy-year-old dude in the very tight pants.

I am also bad at downward facing dog, which feels shameful. Downward facing dog is clearly the most important pose. They keep coming back to it. Everything ends in it. No matter what you do, you end up in downward facing dog, contemplating the fickle, meandering course of your life.

(have you noticed that the mats are always in soothing colors? source)

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I did it! I did it! I asked for more money!

Remember when I wrote this post about how women almost never ask for more money? Apparently we don’t. Apparently we often keep quiet instead. And I understand why. I mentioned that the thought of asking for a raise is really scary for me. That usually when someone pays me for work I’ve done, I am thinking, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you so much!” as opposed to “Seriously? I am worth more than that!” Even if I’m worth more than that. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, how much I’m worth in money. I mean, maybe I think I’m worth a million dollars, but I’m a writer. No one is going to give me a million dollars. No one is going to give me very much at all. So it’s more a “every little bit counts” type thing than a “I can’t believe they don’t value me more” type thing.

That is no excuse not to ask for more money.

But even after I wrote that post, I didn’t notice that I had an opportunity to ask for a raise, in my own life, right then. I was thinking more abstractly– like, women, out there in the world– other people– you guys should think about this…I should probably think about it too, later…

And then something funny happened. I found out that someone I know who does work for one of the same companies I do was being paid more than me. She mentioned it casually, and suddenly I was furious. And embarrassed. Here I was, writing about raises instead of asking for them. I felt like I was falling behind. I felt like I’d been sleeping and oblivious and possibly still wearing suspenders that had gone out of style five years ago (what? Are people not wearing suspenders these days? No one?).

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Feeling bad the way I do sometimes– the bad egg kind of bad- it doesn’t go away completely. It just lies dormant under the surface for a while. And then suddenly, it’s back. It can come back ferocious, hungry, clawing, like it just broke out of prison, where it had plenty of time to think about how to destroy me.

And then I feel sorry for Bear.

I feel apologetic. I feel sorry about marriage not solving all of my problems, as though if only I could just calm down and let it, it would. I feel like I’ve let marriage down.

Sometimes I think that marriage actually makes it worse. I mean, being safe and secure and loved and sexed and having my man dream come true makes it clearer that this is not all there is. Before I had Bear, when I was in a relationship with a guy who was being tormented by what seemed like an army of his own personal demons, I could feel bad about that. It was obvious what I was supposed to feel bad about. I also felt like I really needed to get good grades in college or my life might be terrible, but that feeling was secondary to the emotional trauma of my romantic relationship.

In a way, that’s what relationships were for. To distract me from the things I was really worried about. To distract me from the fact that I might feel bad, anyway, even if they were gone or great.

After being tormented by the tormented guy, I was in a relationship with a guy I wasn’t in love with, and I felt conflicted and anxious and stubborn and frustrated and helpless about that.

And later, whenever I felt bad during the time I was single, I felt scared and tiny and hopeless, because there was a chance I would never find someone.

There was always such an easy reason. Such a plain target.

And now, I have checked so many boxes. I have things I never thought I would get a chance at. I stare at my own reality in dumbstruck wonderment. I pinch myself. I stare some more.

But then, when I feel bad, it isn’t as easy to find a place to put it. So the badness rushes to my career. You’re failing! You haven’t accomplished anything in the past year! Everyone in the world is more successful than you! And they have better hair! And your teeth look a little yellow! And you’re not making enough money because you are a failure!

I feel sorry for Bear because I want to be happy for him. I feel like that was part of the arrangement. We were going to make each other happy ALL THE TIME. That was going to be marriage. When I’m unhappy, it makes him unhappy, and sometimes this feels like pressure to be happy.

(we should always look like this. especially the red hat)

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I keep reading stuff about how women don’t negotiate for more money. Apparently, we don’t ask for raises. We definitely don’t ask for signing bonuses. At first, I thought it was just a myth. There are plenty of women who do these things! Tons! Right? Who’s with me? Strong women who demand more money? Are you there?

I’m beginning to wonder if I’m wrong.

I have a friend who recently, after a long, miserable year of searching and prepping and sneaking out early to interviews, got a job making double what she did before. She left a work environment that at times sounded downright abusive for one where she’s comfortable and her ideas are valued. She asked for a certain salary, and was granted it. Hell yeah.

But that is, um, the only case like that I can think of.

And she is also a girl with hair that is so lustrous it might actually be emitting light, who is slender and gorgeous and also, magically, has really full breasts. So maybe she’s the exception?

I’m getting worried. Because I know I’m not the exception. When someone offers to pay me, I get all sweaty and excited and nervous and I’m crossing my fingers and praying that they don’t change their mind and I’m nodding and grinning and thanking them a lot. The last thing I want to do is mess it up. Recently, I was asked to name a price for an essay that someone wanted to publish, and I went through about forty-five minutes of agonizing deliberations that sounded (in my head) a little like this:

So do I start high? Then we can negotiate down, but I’ll look like an idiot if it’s too high. Worse, I’ll look really cocky. I’ll look totally obnoxious. She’ll hate me. And then she’ll change her mind. But I shouldn’t start too low, because that would be wimpy. And women are supposed to ask for more money. And I’m a strong woman. OK, I’m not a strong woman. Shit. I should go for the middle. What’s the middle? Does anyone know what the middle is?

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(source)

So the truth is, about a month ago, I was pretty depressed. I hated most things about myself, including my toes and other things I usually like. I was almost positive it was only a matter of weeks before all of my friends stopped talking to me. Everything felt overwhelming, including loading the dishwasher. I had a panic attack that lasted for HOURS. For two days, I lay on the couch watching Hulu, and feeling like if I moved, my fragile life might shatter into tiny fragments that would then embed themselves in the soles of my feet and cause infections. I didn’t really write about it, then, because I was embarrassed. And also because I was willing to bet that I’d never feel like writing again.

I am writing about it now in order to send an important message to myself and other people: you shouldn’t be embarrassed.

I don’t know what caused the depression (lots and lots of little things building up?). It fell on me, like a heavy piece of old furniture that’s been looming there in the corner for way too long, but no one wants to try to move it. It became immediately clear that I was terrible. That I had failed at everything. That I would continue to fail at everything, forever. There was all this math involved. And for the first time in my life, I understood it perfectly.

Let’s see…

Everything in the world=nothing. It sucks.

My goals+ my age + the chubbiness of my arms – irrelevant things I’m good at like cooking gumbo (the impressive accomplishments of everyone else)= I suck

My pathetic, scrabbling efforts to make something of my life X my utter lack of valuable skills/knowledge= yeah, the same thing. Sucking.

The things I should do before I think about having a baby+ the things I really want to do before I have a baby+the things I’m afraid I won’t be able to do after I have a baby(my total naivete about what it’s like to have a baby and what one is able to do and not do at that point)- the amount of time I have before I am no longer able to have a baby(the number of babies I might want to have if greater than 1)= sucking now and then sucking later, at being a mom, because I failed to get my stuff together before I had kids.

A pattern emerged through the fog of complicated equations. A simple, elegant pattern, that to the mathematical mind might have even been considered beautiful, for all its terribleness.

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I just read a book by Diana Joseph called I’m Sorry You Feel That Way. It made me feel better about myself. There was a chapter about being slutty, and that was my favorite one. I read it aloud to Bear. Then I tried not to cry. It would’ve been really embarrassing if I cried. The thing is, I feel guilty about boys. I wish I hadn’t been the way I was. I feel like I shouldn’t talk about the way I was. It’s a dark, slimy secret.

I have always liked boys. Once, I had a pretty serious crush on another girl, but mostly it’s been boys. Even though the first time I kissed a boy, and excitedly shared the secret with my mom, she panicked and told me he was going to try to get me to take my clothes off, probably, I still thought there was nothing wrong with kissing. Or with taking my clothes off, even though at that point I was twelve, and I couldn’t see why I would want to take any clothes off, and I was pretty sure the boy I’d kissed didn’t want me to.

He didn’t. He was scared of me. I was the one who’d made us kiss. I had cleverly tricked him into it.

In fact, I cleverly tricked several boys into similar situations. Kissing was thrilling. I had all the power.

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