The Land of Squee

So.  Saturday was the one year anniversary of my move to NYC.  I feel like I should make a big dramatic post about it, but I can't really think of much I haven't already said.

I'm happy.

I haven't recaptured the feeling of having a huge group of best friends from college, and I'm not obsessed with or enchanted by my city the way I was in Paris, but I'm fine.

My room is fantastic and I love being in it.  My roommates aren't around very much, and since they're already great friends with each other they leave me alone most of the time.  I have a desktop that runs XP so I can play the original Rollercoaster Tycoon and Zoo Tycoon games, and once I get my external hard drive repaired I'll be able to run The Sims 2 on it as well.  I have two cute little gerbils who think my hands exist to feed them sunflower seeds.

I know how to get tickets to a lot of Broadway shows for under $40.

I have an office job with a cubicle, just like I always wanted, and I really like my colleagues and my supervisors.  I like the work, and there's always something new to learn without feeling overwhelmed or lost.  I have pictures of the Troupe and my family all over my cubicle, and my boss likes me.  I end up getting saddled with extra responsibilities here and there, but I see that as a good thing.  I got an extra paycheck as a Christmas bonus, there are three paydays in January and August, and I'm getting nearly $3000 in tax refunds next month.  I'm not rich, but I'm managing to pay the bare minimum on my student loans and still save up a tiny bit.

I had pink hair for a few months and no one at work minded--they actually thought it was pretty cool.  I shaved my head just to say I'd done it.

I know how to buy two months' worth of groceries--mostly healthy food!--for under thirty dollars.

I don't see myself has having a future here, but I'm settled for now.  In a few years I'm probably going to get myself back to NC so I can be closer to my family, and I would certainly like to transition into working in translation.

It was a hard year.  It was a horrible year until I got my full-time job and moved to a better living situation.  In the past twelve months I've learned the actual difference between mouse and rat infestations and the best, most efficient ways to deal with either one; I've learned that the store brand is ALWAYS significantly cheaper (if not better), and I've learned to wait for bargains and jump on them when you see them.  I've learned that I should stand up for myself more often, and that swallowing your anger is going to make things worse than confronting it.  I've learned the best cleaner for bathroom floors, and how to smuggle toilet paper from the office to save money.  I filed my own taxes.

Most importantly, I'm figuring me out.  I'm an activist--a social justice warrior.  I'm demisexual and lithromantic and gayer than I ever realized.  I probably won't be able to get married, because I find flaws in everyone and am only able to overlook them half the time.  I like my own company, and anyone else feels like a crowd after a while.  I like talking to myself and dressing however I want around the house and calling my pets silly names in silly voices.  I like talking to my tv shows and laughing at jokes that no one else hears me crack.

Now that I'm not worried about having a roof over my head or enough money to buy food, I want to focus on getting my knitting business running and, in the long-term, getting that translation class under my belt so I can eventually slip over into a profession that actually makes use of my passion for French.

But yeah, happy one-year-in-NYC anniversary, self!

HELLO I HAVE GOOD NEWS

I just signed onto the lease for the apartment I subletted over the summer!  I have a small room in a fifth-floor walkup, but my new roommate is a spunky little blond ball of energy who wears workout clothes all day long and LOVES THE CLEAN THE SHIT OUT OF THINGS so though we are different souls I think it's all gonna be okay.  Idk if you're aware but hot pink has become an all-consuming obsession for me, and my room is a hot pink PARADISE.

I've decided to switch from beds to hammocks for economical and back-pain reasons, and also because it's cool and takes up less space and blah blah, and my hammock isn't coming in until tomorrow, so once I've installed it and put up my posters and stuff I'm gonna post pictures of the room.  And you will freak out because my room is AWESOME.

I'm gonna be in this room for at least a year!  More if the landlord doesn't jack up the rent again.  I'm SO happy.  I haven't had a room that was actually MINE since high school!  In the dorms and with my host families I was acutely aware of living on borrowed furniture and having to move out over the summer, but this room is MY actual room!

Unfortunately, rent is more than twice what I was paying sharing a room with the Connecticut Princess and the MRA, but they've been cleanly and beautifully out of my life for so long that my sanity is recovering from their influence and honestly... ugh I'm so happy.

I do think NYC is stupid, though.  If it wasn't for my awesome job I would have left for less expensive shores this past month.  I'll stick around until MORUSA happens (or I've hit the 2-3 year mark on this job for resume purposes) and then I gotta peace out to someplace a lot less ridiculous.  I want to live in a place with more than one room, air conditioning, a little balcony, and maybe even carpeting that's alllll mine.

But for now I'm good.

Pictures by the end of the week!  You will be ~*dazzled*~ by my badass room.

(Also I buried the hatchet with one Mr Dick Ponte, for those of you who remember that.  It took me almost a year and a half to stop being actively mad at him for dumbass behavior.  He was really excited about it, and not in a gross way.  I don't respect him anymore, but we're cool.  He helped me realize the full extent of my demisexuality, in any case!)

Just came from my first "real" shift at Target. It's honestly the most positive, cheerful, stress-free job I've ever had outside the tiny two-screen independent cinemas. Customers are nice, other employees are nice, managers are nice... they were super complimentary and I left feeling like I had kicked ASS at register training. I actually worked the express lane alone most of the day. MUCH nicer and more carefree than the job I had at Lowes Foods. Plus I know I did a great job.

Plus free donuts and cookies in the breakroom at all times.

LOVING this job. Next I'm going on to start my training on the clothes floor, which will be my official job from now on. I just need to know how to work a register in case things get super busy or whatever.

As for the whole moving-to-New-York thing, my parents came home finally and heard the story. My dad is intent on trying to convince me to move to a "normal" city, but excuse me sir Emilia Clarke will be in a Broadway show soon and I MUST meet her at least long enough to take a photo. And other things. SNL, Jon Stewart... no way I'm going to a town where things don't happen. New York Comic Con, those Dr Who premiers, that Dr Who themed bar I've seen on tumblr... yeah, no, it's NYC.

My parents, my grandmom, and even my uncle weren't as surprised as I was about my plans falling through. Well, my mom seemed to be a little bit, but I guess she's kind of an idealist like I can be. We'll see how it'll work out.


Anyway long story short, Target = most positive corporate work environment ever.

Well, I guess my mom was right when she told me I was too caught up in getting back to the dorm atmosphere. Part two, the universe has taught me the hard way over and over not to depend on other people, and now I guess I know I can't expect there to be exceptions to that. I thought my time in France was a lesson in not isolating myself, but now I'm kinda confused because I guess I'll have to? Or idk, maybe it'll be easier to make new friends in a place like New York... Ugh. I don't know why the concept of making new friends intimidates me, when all my old friends obviously have nooo problem with it.

I think the worst thing is that after feeling like a nomad for so long my ability to get a pet and a venus flytrap and a cactus and finally put those goddamn blue suitcases AWAY has been postponed indefinitely... again. But oh well, at least I have access to a piano as long as I stay in my old high school room.

Being home is really nice, as I mentioned before. I'm getting the chance to regroup, to go through all my old stuff from before France and all the stuff I still have after France and get it all together. I took care of the insurance stuff for my hospital stay and now my dad is turning all the paperwork for the student loan payments and deferments over to me too. If I was still in France trying to figure everything out that would be stressful, but here I have the chance to take it slow and stay organized.

But at the same time, I feel like I'm watching myself sink into irrelevance. The MOR fandom is now just a bunch of people on tumblr with a shared interest in the occasional gifset of Flo wandering around a studio. There was a mild interest in 1789, but not really in my recap or stagedoor stories of it. The Florum is just long strings of me sharing news and nobody commenting. Not to mention the fact that none of my friends, the people I was so desperate to get back to, seem to care that I'm home. Zero of the people located in and around my hometown have offered to hang out sometime. There's talk of us all getting together to go laugh through the next Twilight movie over Thanksgiving, but I know that if I don't plan it it won't happen. None of them are ever on skype anymore when I need someone to talk to, which is weird because we're in the same time zone now.

When I went to my first study abroad meeting, they said not to worry about your friends moving on while you're gone, because when you return you'll inevitably find that you're the one who has changed. That was true when I came home for a month after my first semester in Paris. Now, almost two years later... it's the opposite. I have stronger stances on some issues, but I feel like I'm still sitting here putting on silly costumes, dancing to ABBA, and raving about MOR while everyone else goes off and does their own thing without looking back. Things will probably get better once I'm able to leave this town again, but I needed this break so badly and I'm not ready to start making those plans yet. My mom tried to send me on a blind-friend-date with a girl from her work, because as an extrovert she assumes that, like her, I wish I had a bunch of near-strangers to suddenly start hanging out with. It was awkward. I'm reluctant to make new friends for the two months I'll be here, because once I move on they'll just be more facebook status updates and more of me squinting and going "Do I actually know this person?". But now I've just gone and isolated myself again just like in France. I need a few close friends, not a ton of casual ones, and sometimes I feel like I've invested myself in people who don't need me back. People who have other plans with other people whenever I ask if they want to hang out. I feel like that old paranoia from the bad times in the dorms is coming back, when I knew it was just that no one actually wanted to be around me.

I know I changed so much in France and I'm proud of everything I learned, but sometimes I wonder if I'd have been happier if I'd just stayed here in ignorance so they didn't have a chance to replace me.

So it's REALLY hard to erase an entire lifetime of believing fat-shaming and such, but I'm starting to learn.

An important first step was for me to realize that I'm not doing everything all wrong. I always treated myself like I was and still struggle with shame when buying and eating food. I keep realizing that things that never upset me before are totally not okay. I remember my parents being pleased when my naturally thin brother asked for seconds, but my father consistently saying "Don't you think you've had enough?" or "You don't need that." if *I* was the one enjoying my meal. I remember in middle school how proud my parents were when I decided to only ever eat half of the food on my plate in an attempt to teach myself--MY TWELVE YEAR OLD SELF--portion control. I remember my mother and I competing to see who could lose the most weight over Lent when I was eight years old.

I want to also say that I am NO LONGER flattered when people compliment me for losing weight. I know my dad used to jokingly say, "You're wasting away" but would quickly follow that up with "You seem happier like this; you should keep it up." It struck me the most during my month of no income, which I'll talk about more in a second, where I was barely eating at all in an effort to save what money I had and everyone was constantly complimenting me. I WAS EATING A BOWL OF CEREAL A DAY OR LESS. But it didn't matter WHY I was losing weight: losing weight at all is seen as a triumph when you're fat. No one realizes that something serious could be going on.

I follow a lot of blogs on tumblr that are helping me along the way, and every day I see stories about girls (and guys) who were bullied and teased and called names for their weight. The thing that boggles my mind still is that, other than living under the shadow of my mom's insecurities and my dad's enablement of them, no one ever told me I was fat. I never got bullied in school because I radiated a giant I-don't-give-a-shit attitude. It's interesting, because on the surface I don't seem much different now, but in fact I'm totally renovating my thought processes. The difference is that back then I just ignored what my body looked like, pretended not to notice, and constantly wished I could develop an eating disorder and constantly felt bad if reality ever broke through my little shell of denial. I never looked at photos of myself and rarely looked in the mirror, especially getting in and out of the shower. Now I'm trying to come to terms with what I really do look like and to unlearn that I am supposed to change it. I am not a thin person who did something wrong. If I was ever going to be thin, I have given my body plenty of chances to get there and it chose to remain at this lumpy weight.

This is a much harder thing to learn, because most of the world disagrees. Most of the world believes that being fat means I'm going to develop diabetes, or I'm going to die young. (I have seen studies that disproved BOTH of these, and in fact being "overweight" LOWERS your risk of Alzheimer's.) It's even harder since I just went through the whole pulmonary embolism thing. I was reading the doctor's report and it said right on there that it happened because I'm overweight. Over WHAT weight??? When they weighed me in the hospital I was seven kilos less than when I went to my OFII appointment in May!! I'd spent a month eating nothing but one bowl of grain-based cereal and an apple a day OR LESS. I'd been exercising (only a little bit, but still way more than the first 22 years of my life). Should I have eaten LESS food somehow? I was miserable during those weeks. I had headaches and low energy. And guess what? I'm STILL not a skinny person. SHOCKER.

IT HAPPENED because I was on birth control and I spent looooong amounts of time sitting with my legs crossed, knitting and watching shows online. I didn't know pulmonary embolisms existed.

I will not be told that I am unhealthy until I change my body weight. I only went running a few times, but now that I understand how to breathe normally and maintain a steady pace I don't get winded running for métros. (Well, I would if I tried it NOW because I'm still sort of recovering from being forced to do nothing but lie in bed and eat three huge meals a day for a week IN THE HOSPITAL. BY DOCTORS.) This is the first time IN MY LIFE that I have ever been to a hospital. I don't smoke, I barely drink, and I've never even SEEN drugs. Just because I don't think sports are a reasonable use of my time doesn't mean I'm unhealthy, and fuck society for propogating that I am. I DON'T EVEN LIKE SODA. I LITERALLY, HONESTLY ONLY DRINK WATER, AND I DRINK A LOT OF IT EVERY DAY.

On the other hand, I have noticed that when left to my own devices, I am incapable of entering a grocery store and leaving with "grown-up" foods. Maybe once I have a regular paycheck and a decent-sized kitchen that isn't laced with cat hair this will change, but for the moment I am incapable of passing up a €1 bag of chips in a wacky flavor for a €3 salad. BUT I can also say that after a day of only eating potato chips for breakfast and then having mashed potatoes for lunch (what can I say, I'm broke as hell) I had the presence of mind to go get myself a big container of carrot coleslaw the next day to sort of balance things out. I also ate a tomato like it was an apple today.

I still have a mentality that I need to "get away with" eating the "fun" stuff that I want to eat while no one's looking. I constantly want to snack on something even when I'm not hungry, and I think it's backlash against being pressured into denying myself everything my whole life. Now I'm trying to work out a way to normalize my headspace enough to be able to eat what I want to eat without shame, but to also not go crazy and finish off a whole bar of chocolate in one sitting Just Because I Can.

I'm sure there's something really interesting happening in my head that causes the snacking and the obsession with potato chips and other "bad" foods, and if I keep reading up on blogs like The Fat Nutritionist maybe I can work out what it is and learn to change my thinking in a way that lets me eat normally and also be unapologetic if/when that doesn't lead to me suddenly morphing into a runway model.

Part two, I would really love to lose the secret desire to lose weight that STILL won't leave me alone. When the hospital brought me three meals a day I was inwardly cursing them for ruining the "progress" I had made after all but starving myself (for financial reasons, I promise) over the preceding month.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD THAT I EVEN HAVE TO MAKE ENTRIES LIKE THIS???

I feel good again.

Well, physically I'm absolutely suffering because it's been about 100 degrees Fahrenheit for the past several days and air conditioning barely exists here. Thank the sweet Lord I have a fan in my room, but right now I'm in a chair with the fan blowing straight at me on high and there's still so much sweat rolling down my legs it makes me wonder if I peed myself. It seems so dumb to me that people here don't have air conditioning in their homes. I spend the whole day feeling light-handed and chugging water.

The problem with my life is, I'm more socially lazy than anyone I know, because to be more socially lazy than me you're probably a hermit and NOBODY knows you. Given the smallest opportunity, I will spend any day in pyjamas. It's Sunday and I haven't left this house since Wednesday and that was only because I'd completely run out of food. I'm kind of proud of that, actually.

HOWEVER, that's not a good way to be when you want to start a new life for yourself and make new friends and stuff. I could have made new friends here if I'd been more outgoing and pushy or whatever, but I'm not wired that way. For me, there's "best friends for LIIIFE" and "acquaintances", and I feel weirdly abandoned by anyone in an in-between category.

When I was a little kid, my parents pressured me into joining a local soccer team. I thought the sport was okay, but obviously I wasn't athletic so I seem to recall I spent most of my time wandering around on the field, more interested in the CapriSuns we were going to get at half time than who was winning the game. The other kids were cruel to me, constantly telling me how much they wanted me to quit and how I was the most useless person on the team. I left practices and games alike in tears, and at the end of every season my concerned mother would pull me aside and ask if I was sure I still wanted to play. I would always say yes, just because I didn't want those girls to have their way and get to play without me. One year I finally realized that I was making myself miserable and changed my mind. I never regretted leaving that team, but it was hard for me to admit that, deep down, I did want to. I wasn't as strong as I wanted to be.

That's what's happening here in Paris, in a way. The world acted like I wouldn't be able to do it and I should give up, and in my determination to prove them wrong I stopped thinking about what I wanted.

The last time I left Paris, I didn't want to. I came back to muggy, humid North Carolina and found myself in a living situation I couldn't afford with no idea what my next move should be and no desire to move forward when, as far as I knew, my glamorous groupie life was on the other side of the ocean. So I fought and I dragged myself back over here, only to find that my groupie life wasn't in Paris, it was in the past. Not only did I find that out, but I learned that as a foreigner my rights to employment were limited, and as a product of the American education system I was considered borderline talentless. According to my host family, kids start figuring out what career they want in high school and they study the same subject straight through to their masters or higher, then funnel directly into the job and stay there for life. According to them, my being a college graduate with a broad area of study and no clue what I wanted my life to be was abnormal. It wasn't until recently that I remembered that that mindset was pretty much specific to what I've seen since coming here, and in the US people in their 20's are still considered young and are told they have time to make mistakes and figure things out. I'm 23, and my host family was nagging me about how I needed to find a career and start planning to have a family! (We won't get into how I've never wanted a family and always been skeptical of the idea of marriage right now.)

So yeah. Maybe I'll perk up working for a new family this year, but it won't change the fact that I'm lonely, unwilling to invest in making new friends, and blocked from the locals by both differences communication and background. Here I'm already expected to have marketable skills at my age, so unless I want to get into many years of schooling surrounded by younger people, I'm only slightly qualified for a couple of jobs, and even in those situations I will immediately be passed over in the event that a French person or EU citizen could do it instead.

Worse, I've never been a great student, and here I would have to work twice as hard as everyone else to get a masters because the classes and coursework would be in French. My knowledge of French is an amazing advantage in the US and a crippling disability here.

NOT TO MENTION AIR CONDITIONING EXISTS IN THE UNITED STATES. JESUS CHRIST I'M MELTING.

I've been crying over missing my friends since... late May, I think?

I don't know when I decided New York City was my dream... it must have been about the time I first saw Les Mis on Broadway, when I was... 14? Then when I was 18 I spent a week there with just my friend--my first big trip without my parents, planned and financed entirely by me!--and after that I was obsessed. Everyone told me it was hard to "make it" in New York but, stubborn me, I was going to prove them all wrong as soon as I graduated.

Except then I accidently a France. France and MOR and Flo and a D-list celebrity who wanted to bang me! Obviously I wanted to keep all that attention and positive feedback and admiration and stuff. But then I found out the hard way that that stuff wasn't coming from France, it was coming from the Troupe and MOR fans. And that's done. Now I'm just another immigrant, literally a second-class citizen.

Ever since I decided to consider going back to the US and taking on NYC with my girls, my whole mood has changed. I keep thinking of things I would be able to do there: Halloween, for instance, and AIR CONDITIONING UGHH THIS IS INHUMANE and buying groceries I recognize and shopping at stores that carry my size and just everything, oh gosh. Spending Christmas with my family.

Do I hate Paris now? Absolutely not! How could I? Will I miss it? Almost definitely.

Is going back the right choice for me right now? I feel pretty sure that it is.

Then I found out that NYU is the number one ranked school for getting a masters in translation... so I made up my mind. I can't stop thinking about how great it will be to be in my own country again, surrounded by people I love and capable of hugging my mom and petting her stupid dog Flossie till she pees all over the driveway.

My mom is trying to pretend to be very level-headed about this decision, but I can tell she's absolutely freaking out with excitement and relief at the idea of having one of her kids back (my brother has gone to Chile to teach English, and he's currently got one week to find new housing or he'll end up on the street, plus he already spent all his money on concert tickets or something and can't afford food, also did I mention he doesn't speak Spanish?).

I'll miss this city. I'll miss the métro. I'll miss muesli crostillant cereal and cheap fancy cheeses and weird animals being served up as acceptable dinner meat. I'll miss Flo constantly. But it's not worth it. I've frankly been unhappy for months now, and this decision is what's turning my mood around at last. So I guess I was right when I figured everything happens for a reason, and there was a HUGE reason for me not to get into a masters program this year: not only was I unprepared for housing and financial aid and part-time job things, but I also didn't have it in me to set up a future so far away from my people. I never would have imagined that it was the idea of making a life for myself in Paris that was making me cry myself to sleep all the time, but that's what happens to us stubborn kids. We don't want people to think we're giving in.

Did I tell you, I'm in the process of dumping the first host family I agreed to after having been contacted by one with two kids instead of four that will give me my own apartment that's so far away from their home that they're going to give me a meal plan as well? So I'll get that apartment in Paris after all. Just... maybe not the venus flytrap and cactus, unless someone wants to adopt them from me when I move out. Or I could go illegally plant them in a park somewhere... haha.

Anyway, now I'm getting together a Europe bucket list, and London and Vienna are definitely on there. I hope I can get that stuff done without blowing all my savings on travel!

I am going to get a little apartment in Paris someday.

I don't want it to be big: I have no use for more than two rooms. I want a bed with a firm mattress that doesn't give me back pain, a bathroom, and a little kitchen. Maybe a table and chair for sewing or writing. I don't need anything else.

I will have heavy curtains to block out all sunlight so I can sleep as late as I want on days I don't go to the job I will have. I will have a sewing machine, and maybe even one of those dress forms in my size. I will have a venus flytrap and a hot pink cactus on my windowsill. Maybe a jug plant. I will have my own wifi with a funny name and password and it will work really well. One day I even want a desktop computer with a ton of memory space for my Sims 2 AND 3 games, instead of having them on my laptop which gets hot and runs out of space quickly. The walls will be covered with my MOR posters.

I will have a normal job, maybe in a publishing company. I will have manuscripts to send to various publishing houses in the States. I will have a few really close friends.

Fuck everybody who keeps trying to shit on this dream.

PSA time with Loony!

Okay, so I basically get ALL the information I have in my life from googling it, and oftentimes I wonder how the hell anybody got anything done before the internet.

( Cut for potential tmi )

I guess I wanted to share this on lj just because there obviously was a lack of information out there when I started on this itchy adventure, so maybe some poor soul will benefit from my discomfort in the future. USING YOUR BIRTH CONTROL TO SKIP PERIODS CAN LEAD TO A YEAST INFECTION.