i'm no good with titles
wednesday, may 23, 2001
at least i've gotten better dealing with embarrassement. i feel a lot of it, lots of moments where chills shoot through my body and tingle my cheeks, this intense sense of doom, and often on behalf of other people, real or fiction. i'm trying to reduce the amount of doom-times i have nowadays because, well, it's useless, isn't it? so not necessary.
i mean, there are scenes in Welcome to the Dollhouse where i have to mute the sound and close my eyes or i'll feel too intensely embarrassed on behalf of Dawn when she says and does really stupid things. this is my latest project - to learn how to separate myself and my moments of embarrassement from others. it's working pretty well.
i treat it like i would a dentist visit - as soon as the person on the screen is about to say something to prove herself an idiot, i clench my teeth and force myself to keep watching. i keep my eyes open as if i had an invisible harness on like alex in A Clockwork's Orange forcing me not to look away. it's working. i'm pleased. i'm a good lab rat. :)
so, on my flights home i made myself proud by ignoring the embarrassement and asked for seatbelt extensions immediately from the flight attendants. it's really pretty frustrating - all the smaller airplanes have shorter seatbelts than the large planes going across the atlantic, just as the seats are even more squished together. on those small planes, the seatbelts are always about an inch too short. i used to suck myself in as much as possible and str-r-r-ruggle to get the belt to lock, squirming in my seat, anything not to have to ask for that humiliating extra piece, hoping my seat mate wouldn't show up before i managed to force the belt shut..
well. sometime between flying to america in early january and flying back the other week, i've apparently decided that i don't really care. it feels pretty neat. see, i couldn't figure out what i was trying to prove. that i'm not over-weight if i could only get the seat belt to fit? nobody would notice as long as i didn't get that extra clunky belt piece? i mean, what IS that? so silly. i am overweight, the seatbelt doesn't fit comfortable - bring it over, baby. bright orange seatbelt? all the merrier!
oops, library closing - some weird holiday tomorrow. well. cin cin!
