Archive for the ‘the history of me’ Category

There is nothing in the world weirder than revisiting your past in great and glorious Technicolor surround-sound. I am working on a project about my weight loss surgery, about what came before and what came after, and I am spending a lot of time sitting down and looking through things I want to call relics–my old blog, my body of work posts on elastic waist, the countess emails I wrote when I was thinking about it.

Pictures, lists of measurements, a Word document I found on my computer that listed all the ways my life would change and all the things I would do that spoke more of the great bone-deep unhappiness I was filled up with than any determination or hope or ambition.

I was such a different person, two hundred pounds ago, three years ago. I am also exactly the same.

It has been, officially and by the numbers, exactly one year since I finished packing up the U-Haul truck that was sitting in the driveway in front of my San Francisco apartment, slammed down the back door, and got on the road to Utah. Packing frantically, hauling all your crap down a long hallway and down a steep driveway and around back of the truck and throwing it up onto the bed and running back inside for more and having arguments about what fits where and how, and why the other person is crazy go-nuts and should just be quiet, that doesn’t leave much time for introspection, for the I am leaving beautiful San Francisco and my beautiful apartment and my friends and my job and everything I know to move to Utah? freakout.

God, when you put it that way it sounds completely insane. Exchanging California for Utah? For Utah? Really, for Utah?

The jeans in my drawers, all three pairs, all come from Old Navy. I have three pairs of jeans that are no longer my size set aside to give away, and they are all Old Navy jeans too. There is nothing wrong with Old Navy jeans, really–they are very inexpensive and come in an exciting variety of washes and shapes and styles and colors enough to turn your pretty head. But besides the fact that they aren’t quite right–for instance, the boot-cut pair are embarrassingly just a smidge too short, and too-short pants on a woman is one of my pet peeves–it somehow feels like Old Navy jeans are not enough.

There is premium denim out there, people. Premium! For a premium, admittedly. But in the world exists brands of luxury denim that are not only luxuriously made of hammered gold and pressed diamonds and sheets of fabric that have been woven by fairies in a land of dreams where wishes always come true and McDonald’s breakfast is served 24 hours a day, but they also have magical properties.

I like to pretend that I am “totally cool” and also “with it,” as the kids say, but that is a lie. And one small piece of proof that I offer you is this: I am not kidding when I say that my recent purchase of the Twilight soundtrack and my inability to stop listening to it, over and over in the car as if I have lost my mind and all sense of irony totally and completely, is the greatest exposure I’ve had to new music in a very long time. I am moved to maybe consider thinking about looking up further musical experiments from the likes of Muse and those adorable little Black Ghost fellows.

The idea kind of terrifies me, though. Experimenting! With music!  But what if I don’t like it? What if it is weird and does not speak to me and I am not thoroughly charmed and delighted?