So I've just come home from a buffet dinner at Hotel Nikko with a bunch of friends from class. It's 11:30 pm and I'm wondering: should I be content with the fact that I had a really good time with people I like, eating great food, while having wonderfully frivolous conversations? I suppose so. But two things have been putting a damper on my evening. And much as I try, I can't seem to get a grip and let them go. They're DEFINITELY not earth-shattering tragedies. In fact they are almost shamefully shallow. But they bug me all the same.
One: I was trying on dresses to decide what to wear for the event, and I discovered to my utter horror that the slimmer cut, non-stretchy ones were a touch tight around the hips and thighs. It appears that since I stopped uni and came back home (where going to the gym almost daily is inconvenient, and where my family does not appreciate my liking for lighter, one-dish meals ["Where's the rest of the food?!"]), the weight has been creeping back in. Nefariously, cloaked in Denial: Oh I must be bloated, it's that time of the month! Oh it's because these jeans just came out of the wash, they haven't stretched back out yet. Damn I HATE my washing machine, it shrunk all my clothes!
Despite my efforts (working out without a gym instructor who drives me and the rest of the class to the brink of puke-dom, eating via Portion Control), my thighs and hips seem to have sensed that The Boss (me) is not going to have as much control over them as She used to. So they rejoice, they cackle and rub their fat cellulite-y little hands together in glee, and they come back in all their disproportionate glory, they grow and grow and grow insidiously, like tumours that just won't quit. Give me back my remission period, goddammit.
Two: My classmates, who are all married women, found out over the course of dinner that I am single. Basically they did not believe me, accusing me instead of having some significant other hidden away (uh, like, for WHAT?). Then when they realised that no, I am dead serious, I am in fact enjoying my single status right now, well. They reacted with confusion ("Oh but you are so pretty, and you have such a wonderful personality! Why??"), confusion which seemed to me to be ringed with sympathy. Oh Lord. Sympathy. From women 10, 20 years older than me. Me, with my whole entire life waiting to be lived, with my bright future, with all those possibilities and different paths to take. Me, with no boring set-in-stone life yet. ME, with my pre-birth, pre-pregnancy body--no drooping breasts! no drastically loosened birth canal (if you get my drift)! no scars from Caeserians! (no offense, mothers out there)
I suppose I could take their gasps of shock as total compliments (Huzzah, I am so amazing I should have men panting all over me!) or I could just feel a touch offended and get sort of depressed. Hah. And me being me, I am leaning towards the latter. There must be something wrong if middle-aged women are clucking down at me like that! Oh my GOD am I going to end up alone with no one of my very own to love? (But that smacks of paranoid!) Should I have just not been so choosy about that last guy I dated? (But he was a crazy jerkhole!) Did I miss the final call for a partner because I was too busy playing the field and having fun? (But doesn't every young person have the right to date around and see what's in the market?) Thoughts that give me heart palpitations of the non-"Ooh Muscles In Sight" kind. Thoughts that make me want to hide underneath my blanket and wait for spinsterhood and the inevitable prune-ing up of my lady parts.
Yet when I sit myself down and think about it properly... I don't really care that I'm getting patronised by housewives. They have what they think is The Whole Point of Life. So you can't really blame them for patting the back of my hand and feeling sorry for me. I just happen to have a slightly different set of values to theirs. And if I do say so myself, it's not a bad one. I'm not going to launch into a whole tirade of the wonders of singledom, plentiful though they are (so says the cast of Sex and the City). However, I have to say this: I like where I am in life right now, and I'm content.
Maybe my negative reactions tonight are just because of my frame of mind this evening--my body and soul are weak from a supremely gratifying pig-out session. Tomorrow I'll probably wake up and laugh it off. I might find it funny instead of mildly panic-inducing. For God's sake I'm only 23!! (So she yells at herself). So goodnight, y'all.
