Posts tagged with "self-consciousness"

frame of mine

I’ve made peace with this body. It has­n’t been an easy peace to come by, as I seem to get con­stant reminders about the diminu­tive size of my stature. Most recent­ly, I met an old­er Chinese woman who admit­ted that she thought I looked sick and weak only after she dis­cov­ered I had col­i­tis. It was as if she thought col­i­tis caused some kind of mal­nu­tri­tion that stunt­ed my growth, and she did­n’t want to bring up the fact that I was this size because it would have been too embar­rass­ing unless it was caused by a med­ical con­di­tion.

Asian male self portrait

 

I’ve been deal­ing with all kinds of sim­i­lar com­ments since I was a kid, so when a girl­friend would say that she liked a par­tic­u­lar part or por­tion of my body, I always thought they were just blind­ed by love. Eventually I real­ized that if they could come to love this body, then I could too. It will nev­er look right in any­thing but slim-fit extra smalls from Mexx. It will nev­er be good enough for my par­ents. But it will always be who I am, and I’ve learned to accept that.

I made too much about you now to lie

Sometimes, I write these entries in my head over sev­er­al days, but when it comes to get­ting them on the screen, I can’t. Not because I don’t feel like it, but because the words come out with such dif­fi­cul­ty.

So I sit in my room with the lights off, hop­ing for some­thing to give me courage, some­thing to move my mute fin­gers.

Instead, I pro­cras­ti­nate. I buy myself time by play­ing a game on my iPhone, or surf­ing the net. It’s like I’m stalling, I’m build­ing up for a moment that’s no more impor­tant than any oth­er, like a ner­vous school­boy try­ing to ask his crush to the prom; pick­ing up the phone, dial­ing a num­ber, and hang­ing up again.

Maybe if I bury it after a bunch of incon­se­quen­tial thoughts — like how it’s hard for me to write about some­thing — then peo­ple will get bored and won’t both­er read­ing the rest. I try to con­vince myself that every­thing will be for­got­ten much quick­er than it took for me to write this. Nothing works, when all I’m try­ing to say is that every time I lis­ten to Letter Read by Rachael Yamagata, I imag­ine she’s lis­ten­ing to the same thing at the same time.

So some­times, you just have to say fuck it and write it any­way, even if you’re afraid and you can’t breathe, and put it out of your head that you’re left vul­ner­a­ble, that any­one could read it, that peo­ple know some­thing that you prob­a­bly should­n’t share, that you’re still think­ing about her when every­one is telling you not to, because none of it mat­ters when it’s the truth, and telling the truth is what makes you you.

The Weight Issue

With a tone of gen­uine con­cern, as if I was being con­sumed by some dis­ease, Abdallah told me he noticed I was get­ting thin­ner. Perhaps this is true. I was recov­er­ing from an episode of IBS, and con­trol­ling my food intake. Maybe its my sets of nar­row, flared pants I’ve been wear­ing late­ly on Julie’s sug­ges­tion1.

Louise tells peo­ple I don’t eat a lot, which is true only when we’re out 2, and is also the only time she’s seen me eat. It makes me even more ill at ease when I’m already feel­ing unat­trac­tive, as if it was my fault and I was­n’t doing enough about it. Others will com­ment about the size of my waist, or make a pass­ing remark about how they wish they had my metab­o­lism.

I try to take it all in stride, but it’s not easy when the sub­ject is con­stant­ly brought up.

According to my doc­tor, I’m aver­age weight — the aver­age being a range, with me being near the bot­tom. I know this, but it does­n’t make it eas­i­er. Bronwen once told me that I have a weight issue, and after think­ing about it for a while, I real­ized that it was true. Even though it’s some­thing I can joke about, it’s still a source of self-con­scious­ness, lead­ing back to mem­o­ries of my par­ents telling me that no one will love me if I’m this size for­ev­er.

Sometimes I won­der if I’ll ever get over it.

  1. Her the­o­ry is that bag­gy pants do noth­ing to hide thin limbs and make skin­ny peo­ple look even skin­nier. [↩]
  2. Usually because I don’t like to be too full when I’m out. [↩]

Getting Dressed

Ever since Nick moved in, I’ve been try­ing the whole “get dressed” thing, where I actu­al­ly change out of my PJs for the day. When I was liv­ing with Pita, we would just lounge around in our most relax­ing clothes all the time; I had been liv­ing with him since first year, so we were com­fort­able with each oth­er. Being dressed cer­tain­ly makes me feel more pro­duc­tive, and I’m a lit­tle less self-con­scious when I open my blinds to let the fresh, cool air cir­cu­late in my room.