Trivial Pursuit

So the funny thing is, right before I'm about to hit the official "middle-age" mark, I've sort of become a little more conventionally attractive. Not a lot. I'll never be a "10"--but let's say I'm somewhere around the 7.5 mark, so so.

All my life, I've been treated poorly because of being fat. Sometimes from just being ignored, sometimes malicious, sometimes abusive.

And now I'm still 'plump'--but I'm thinner and the rest of me is attractive enough that it makes a difference.

And now there are men who are nice to me only because they think I'm cute. I despise them. It is this visceral response that I can't believe this is so important to them, and why did the world treat me like shit for so long.

Not exactly a good start for a relationship.

It doesn't help that I figure I have maybe 5 years before the world starts to view me as middle aged. I think I'll be lucky and get 8, but I won't have 10. I know that. Although in five years I may very well try to cheat the number with Restalyne.

Do you remember in the 80s when Trivial Pursuit became the thing to do? Everywhere, people were playing this game. And I sucked at it. It was no fun because I was so bad--I tried to get it and just couldn't care. So I got left out while other people played this and I'd watch them, trying to figure out why it was fun for them--but it was like watching my dog chase her tail--I just don't get it.

That's sort of how I've always felt about beauty--why does this matter? Why should this one thing be so important? To me, it felt like it should be like being double-jointed, but it felt like it is the only way worth is defined.

Lately, I've felt like beauty is a trick--you have to be pretty enough so the guy will get to know you and not mind that you're not a vacuous pin-up, because I feel like that's what men want. Stupid, giggly, incompetent girls. But if you're beautiful, he might not mind if I'm opinionated and intellectually focused and relatively independent and all that. I don't need a man to kill a spider or change a light bulb--I crave a man to explore the world, support me when I'm scared, push me to take risks and always have my back. And I'd support him, push him to take risks and always have his back. And he'd know there were areas I was as smart (or smarter) than him, and I'd know there were areas he was smarter than me, and we'd respect those elements. And at the end of the day, he'd give me that look, and I'd fall to my knees, and he'd have his way with me.

But if you're not pretty--nothing else I ever do will make up for that. The world will disdain you. And now that I'm almost 40, I know it will only get worse from here.

And I hate that that is how the world is made.

Twenty years ago, I thought I could change the world. And I tried. And tried and tried. And I failed. (What a shock, no?)

And now I've been trying to change me enough to get what I want. Not to judge what I feel and think, but just to take it as it is.

I wish I could take a pill and become a lesbian, but I'm just not attracted to women. Or most men.

And it seems SO unfair to me. John's most recent ex--I think I'm move conventionally attractive that she was, and yet she clearly had something that I don't. I think it was that she needed to be rescued.

And that's the kicker. I don't know why John ended up not wanting me. But it wasn't my looks. Being rejected for my looks, it hurts so badly. It isn't fair. But it is easy. It is a clear little narrative that explains away the pain and leaves me relatively blameless. John clearly thought I was attractive (and he took lots of pictures of me that proved that). And yet he didn't love me. Couldn't love me. Couldn't even be attracted to me. I can't let the looks thing become a narrative that prevents me from figuring out what else is going on.

And I can't allow myself to be bitter or angry. I have to look at the issue, without judging men for how they are, or me, and let it just sort of be and try to find the best I can out of how it is, not how I wish it could be.