"If you're such a great designer, then why aren't you doing anything?"

I went back to the doctor today and had the same horrible nurse-practitioner as last time.  Of course, this time she looked at my chart and said, "Oh good, you lost six pounds!  That's great!"  Which was almost as condescending as having my weight gain at the previous appointment questioned.  (Interesting side note, when I flew back home in August I went to see my real doctor and I asked her to pull up my weight records for the past year.  I never had a thirteen pound weight gain over the course of those three months - so who knows how they figured out that number the first time.)

I've been feeling...I don't know.  Low, I guess.  I love work but I sometimes have terrible days.  Lately I am very vividly reminded that, in many ways, theater tech and design is still a boy's club.  I often feel like when I raise my voice with a question, suggestion, or comment, I get the "shut up while the men are talking" vibe in response.  It can be frustrating when, on a ten person call, I'm one of two females in the room - if there's another female at all.

It's also frustrating, trying to balance being a girl and being a technician.  I look around and while other females in the industry exist - I mean, I wear eyeliner and mascara to work.  My work boots have a two-inch stacked heel.  I keep my tools in a huge Clinique bag and one of my flashlights is neon pink.  I sometimes feel very separate from the other people I work with, but I'm not going to be any less "me" because I don't think I fit into the mold of a typical female technician.

I think what I'm feeling most of all is loneliness.  I live in a big, beautiful apartment in a great neighborhood in Manhattan; I'm employed at a job that will, with luck, take me to greater places in my desired career field.  I should be really happy and satisfied but then I realize I have no one to talk to or laugh with.  I don't have any real girl friends, and I can't talk with my guy friends about the sticky stuff in my life; mostly because not only would they have no idea how to handle it, I expect most of them wouldn't really care (not just because they're assholes, but because, you know.  They're guys).

This is coming to a head because it's almost my birthday and I remember how miserable my birthday last year was, when I was alone in the city and wished fervently it was any other day of the year except my birthday, because who wants to be alone on their birthday?

Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down, tells you she's hurting before she keels.

I'm not really one for self-doubt.  I make decisions; I deal with them and don't often second-guess.  Things happen the way they happen.  Maybe I believe in fate, or destiny, or even the hand of God (not so much the last one, actually).  I make mistakes.  That's okay too.

I'm a nervous person.  I do worry about things - mostly things that I don't have as much control over as I want.  Money.  Work.  When I was younger, the things other people said and did.  I worry about the state of the world and how I'm supposed to fit in it.  I worry that I'm going to plateau and die out, a lost breed.

One month from today I turn 25.  And I'm slowly carving out a place for myself, eking out an existence that is, for now, difficult.  Yes, I'm a freelancer.  Yes, I'm broke.  Yes, I rely on other people.  No, I am not self-sufficient.  I don't know many people my age who are, particularly those of us who are artists.  I never thought this was something I had to apologize for. 

I am not one for self-doubt but maybe now I am.  Am I okay?  I always thought that I was, for the large part.  I'm moving forwards, aren't I?  Is that not enough?  I thought it was.  Aren't I okay?  Everyone has bumps and bruises and scars.  Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by mine but surely I'm not alone in that.  Am I okay?

In two months I will have been in the city for a year.  I am trying to build a life.  I am very scared but I am still an optimist. 


I suppose I am flabbergasted, then, by people, people who I care about and who care about me, who do not want to be part of this process - of my process.  How hurtful, how diminishing, to be told they want no part in it, to try them again in a few years when I've stabilized.  They want the end result and are not strong enough to be part of the journey.  How sad.  For them.


Love, I always believed, is supposed to endure such things, to fortify us against the doubt and the fear.  Love makes us go out and slay the dragons.  Love does not make cowards.   

HURRICANE!

So, apparently there's a hurricane coming, or some shit.  The MTA is entirely shut down, which severely cramps my style.  I'm spending the weekend with Noam because my apartment has big scary windows.

Let's see.  Two days ago, I went through the stunningly difficult and stressful process of procuring an apartment in Manhattan.  Seriously, to anyone who wants to move to the island, ask yourself: how badly do you really want to move?  Because if you're wishy washy on it, or you think your cool quotient would go up if you had a Manhattan address, just stay in Queens.  I'm surprised I didn't have to give the landlord my first born child.

But, my new place is GORGEOUS.  My current apartment in BK is very lovely and modern; this new place is very lovely and homey.  It's bigger than my place in BK (if I pretended the third bedroom in the BK apartment didn't exist) and it's in Hell's Kitchen.  Is the monthly rent impossible?  Yeah, but I'll have to figure that out.  (Money-making options I'm entertaining: bartending, barbacking, nude art modeling, plasma donations, organ donation, egg donation.)

That's sort of all that's interesting that's been happening.  I flew back to NC for two weeks after I wrapped up work on Rent and was homesick the whole time.  Then I got back to New York and felt a lot better.  Hooray!

You can look right through me, walk right by me, and never even know I'm there.

"So...13 pounds since May?"

I leaned my head to one side slightly, as if I'd misheard the nurse-practitioner.  "I'm sorry?"

"Can you explain why you've gained 13 pounds in...8 weeks or so?"

She was tall, thin, perky.  I rearranged my face to conceal my horror at the question, and tried to appear nonchalant, if flabbergasted. 

"I mean, I think you look great!" she said, a bit too perkily.  "But that's...you weighed 120 when you came in in May, and you just weighed in at 133.  That's...that's a pretty significant increase.  Can you think of any reason why you've gained so much weight?"

So much weight.  I laid my hand over my stomach protectively, as if trying to hide it from view.  I mean, I'd just come from lunch.  All I had was a salad wrap, and some chickpeas with edamame, and tea.  How much could that weigh?  What about breakfast?  And my clothes?  Did she have to phrase it like that?

"Um, well...I started a new job in May," I said vaguely.  "It's pretty physical.  Maybe it's all muscle?"

"Hm.  Maybe," she replied.  "But you ought to keep it in check.  You're not very tall.  Your BMI is still within limits, though."

She then cheerfully sent me off with free emergency contraception and an appointment card for October, and with approximately 85% less confidence in myself.  When I returned to my apartment I stood in front of the mirror and felt exceedingly, impossibly depressed.  I poked at my skin and pulled at all my problem areas and examined all the cellulite and stretch marks and remembered all the snide comments people had thrown my way over the months and years as I felt my body go from its lowest point - about 105 pounds, about two years ago - to now, almost thirty pounds later.  And I missed my old body the way you miss someone who has died, who is gone forever.

**


Last night was a similar disaster.  I went out with Anika to the Meatpacking District.  There needs to be some rule about having tall, thin, blond supermodel-esque friends when you yourself are short, "voluptuous" (as Anika delicately put it as I was trying to squeeze myself into one of her extra small bebe dresses), and brunette.  As in, going out with them when you feel bad about how you look is generally a mistake.

So there we were, at the Standard (eugh), milling about the crowd.  She wore one of the dresses I could not sausage my way into, along with a pair of D&G heels with a matching purse.  I stood next to her, approximately eight inches shorter despite my platformed stilettos (purchased at TJ Maxx, maybe).  My ruched tube dress was sized medium, and I think it might've set me back $30.  I looked sadly down at my clutch, which was falling apart, I noticed, as a short guy in a plaid shirt approached us.

"Look out, stage right," I warned playfully into her ear.  Nothing like good old-fashioned male attention to perk you up.  She and I exchanged smiles.  We had been about to leave, but maybe this guy would buy us drinks, or something.

"Hi," he said.  He was drinking a beer the approximate color of apple juice and I judged him for it.  His plaid shirt screamed "desperate hipster." He extended his hand to Anika and introduced himself.  He glanced at me, then refocused his attention on Anika.  I didn't catch his name as it became apparent that he was not talking to me.  I stood there, momentarily stunned, as he struck up a conversation with Anika and made no effort to acknowledge my presence.

It went on like this for a few lines of conversation, dominated by new friend Douchebag explaining that his "buddy over there" - he helpfully pointed to a guy cowering nearby in a corner - had a "broken heart," or some other such nonsense that no one cares about.  He went on to extol the virtues of his friend, who must've suffered from social anxiety, or perhaps explosive flatulence in the presence of women, because he was definitely not approaching us anytime soon.

Anika interrupted, "This is my friend, Kate."

He turned and said, "Oh, hi," as he briefly lifted his beer glass in acknowledgement, or maybe his arm was cramping from the strain of carrying the weight of Williamsburg-bred douchebaggery on his shoulders and he thus needed to shift the weight of his horse-piss beer.  Either way, I looked at him icily and said with sweetness so saccharin I could hear the Junior League cheering me all the way from below the Mason-Dixon line, "We were just leaving."  I promptly turned on my cheap stiletto heel and stomped off (although for anyone playing the home game, the Standard on a Saturday night is just packed full of people enough to prevent a genuinely satisfying flounce, but no matter).

We left the Standard, and walked down to our old standby - a dance club called Cielo.  I was sure that we'd have better luck there, in terms of finding guys we both could talk to/dance with/cajole drinks out of.  Upon arriving at the line, the guy checking IDs bumped us up to the front, and gave us reduced admission tickets.  We were wooshed in almost immediately.  This was more like it!  I could almost ignore that the handle had just broken off my clutch.

As we entered, we immediately noticed the huge amount of men present.  Yes, this would surely be a successful evening.  We went to the bar and, as per usual, bought ourselves one round of drinks to get started.

Now generally, in all the times I've been to Cielo, the same thing plays out each time.  Anika and I each drink half of our respective beverages before being whisked away to the dance floor.  Or, we procure our drinks and take them to the dance floor, where within a few minutes we have guys dancing with us.  It's a very simple and straightforward process that has yet to not happen in some way, shape, or form.

Ten minutes later, we were under the massive disco balls, and the music felt pretty good.  The place was appropriately hazy and smelled peculiarly of chlorine.  (Fun side note, I now associate the smell of chlorine with Cielo.  Not, say, a swimming pool.  Like a normal person.)  I'd already sucked down my Ketel and cranberry, which I immediately decided had neither alcohol nor cranberry juice in it, just pink water and ice and an anemic lime.  Whatever.  The next one would be stronger.

A guy came up to us and started dancing.  He showed off a few skillful moves, and then extended his hand to Anika and they started to dance.  Okay, cool - my guy would show up soon then.  Anika oddly pushed her handbag into my arms.  Okay, whatever, sure - although now I had two clutches in my hands (please someone, insert a joke here about having clutches in my clutches, or something.  All the components are there but I'm far too lazy to put them together).

I kept dancing by myself.  Several minutes passed.  It became increasingly apparent, though, that here I was, standing in the middle of a dance floor that vibrated with the motion of all the bodies gyrating on it, and that I was dancing alone, in a cheap dress and cheap shoes, holding both my cheap, busted-down purse and my friend's designer purse while she was happily paired off with someone else.  And I looked around - perhaps in a vain attempt to catch someone's eye and smile - and saw nothing but empty, anonymous faces.  Suddenly I felt unsure.  My constant fear of being lost in the shuffle was coming true, in an entirely literal sense.

Perhaps that's what I look for, when I go out - to connect somewhere, to anchor somewhere, even if that connection is barely larger than a pin point.  To prove to myself that I can throw myself into the ocean and still find a way to float.  In that moment, I was struck by the impression that I was drowning.

I was, as I often like to put it, being suffocated by my own unimportance.

I looked around again.  Between being in the shadow of my more glamorous friend, and then being largely ignored the entire evening - I mentally noted that the bartender and the bouncer had both addressed Anika, not me - my self-doubt attacked my (already precarious) sense of self-worth.  I thought of my heavy thighs and bruised legs, of my broken-out skin and the perpetually prickly heat rash on the squashy areas of my body that my clothes rubbed unfavorably against.  I sat down at the edge of a couch, still awkwardly cradling two purses in my hands, trying not to appear as rejected and forgotten as I felt.


**

I've never been so acutely unhappy with my appearance as I have been of late.  Similarly, I have not been as sick as I am now in a long time.  I feel very much alone.  And I want to believe it when people tell me I'm okay.  I do not feel okay.

all my resistance will never be distance enough.

The only good answer to what I am feeling is to face it head-on and deal with it, and hope that it hurts less with each time I'm confronted with it.

I could run away - bury my head in the sand.  That would be easier but I've never been the sort to run away from things.  And it wouldn't work anyway; I'd not only still be troubled by it, but I'd have lost something important to me in the process.

I am quite ready to not feel this way anymore, though, and I can't seem to shake it off like I normally do.  Eventually I simply tire of the aches and pains and summarily reject them.  However, this time they've settled in comfortably, like an elephant sitting on my chest, patient, immobile, and mildly suffocating.



In other news.  I went to the Jersey shore the other day and got sunburned.  I went to the street fair in Park Slope yesterday and got more sunburned.  Between the two events I ate my weight in hot dogs and ice cream, which is only appropriate.

I want the clouds to clear out so I can go on a walk in the sun (while wearing sunscreen and a very large hat).

A life lived in fear is a life half-lived.

Oh, the heat today!  You know, I remember shivering while walking to the train during the bitterly cold winter months, feeling the tips of my fingers freeze off, and dreaming of the hot summer months.  Of not having to bundle up in a million layers to go outside, or wear big clonky waterproofed boots - of flowy sundresses and espadrilles and drinking iced tea under a tree in the park.

Of course, now, the flowy sundresses stick to me as I sweat my ass off walking to the train, I don't actually own espadrilles, and my iced tea is warm by the time I get to Prospect Park.  Although I much prefer the heat to the cold, 100 degrees is really pushing the limits of what I can tolerate.

At least now it's storming, and things have cooled off, if temporarily.

Today was, as I described it to my mother on the phone, a lonely day.  Going outside - at least until late afternoon - was entirely out of the question, so I wandered around the apartment, completely at a loss as to what to do with myself.  I cleaned a little, organized a little, and watched a lot of TV (I've totally overdosed on Doctor Who) until I simply could not stand it anymore.  I packed up a book, my tea, and some sunglasses and braved the thick and oppressive miasma that was today's weather so I could go sit in the park.

And really, once I got to the park and sat down on a bench in the shade, it was all right.  Nevermind that there were butterflies everywhere, and they were attacking me (by which I mean, alighting on my brightly patterned dress, flying away, coming back, and doing the same thing).  I felt like an accidental Snow White.

At least tomorrow and Saturday I have plans.  Feeling isolated always gets me down like this.  I do so hate being lonely.

Can't even deal with coherent thoughts today.

8:00am: wake up.  Thermostat reads 86 degrees. This is inauspicious. 

10:00am: Why did I think hot oatmeal was a good thing to eat?

2:30pm: go to market.  It's closed!  Everything on my block is.  For a minute I think it's because it's actually too hot for anyone to go shopping.  (It's actually a Jewish holiday, so all the shops are closed.)

4:00pm: have returned from shopping, where I sat in front of an open freezer case pretending to find peas.  All my frozen stuff has thawed in the ten minutes it's spent outside.

5:45pm: decide it's too hot to do anything important.  Watch Doctor Who and drink iced tea.

I really like Matt Smith's hair.

I made the wall of shadow draw back, beyond desire and act, I walked on.

^^Why, oh why, did I decide yesterday to re-read Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair?  Neruda, guys.  He knows angst.  I was intermittently crying and laughing - laughing because I was reading my original copy from 11th grade, the one that's marked up and highlighted beyond comprehension, and there are all these hilarious notes written in the corners.  (The one that most frequently showed up: "NOT ABOUT SEX.")

Last night Anika and I went down into the Meatpacking District (or, as we call it, the Nexus of Evil) since neither of us has partied in weeks and we both felt like we've lost our mojo.  We started at the Standard, which is just the douchiest place since douchey came to Douchetown.  Seriously.  The guys are never really all that interesting or cute - but they, of course, think they are - and the girls are all bitchy.  (Anika and I both separately noticed a table of girls glaring at us angrily every time we wandered in their direction.)  Very bridge-and-tunnel, that crowd.  We bounced around to a few places, eventually ending up at Cielo where I met two cute neurosurgeons from Colorado.  (Or so they said.  Who knows.)  Unfortunately I couldn't party all night; I found out at 10pm that I had work at 8am.

So after about two hours or so of sleep, I dragged myself out of bed today and spent 10 hours doing the weirdest smattering of work notes - changing gel scrolls, moving some lights around on the balc rail (oh, my stomach hurt after that), wiring birdies, adding connectors to live cables (I really loved it when I was stripping the wires and the metal of my Leatherman made contact with the copper wire, eliciting a huge spark and zap, thus blowing the breaker but allowing me to continue stripping wires without electricity coming through them).  My favorite moment was when I was asked to go find four gobos that were supposed to kind-of-but-not-exactly look like this other gobo.  Hot damn!  I love these kinds of adventures.  And the one I picked out was perfect, of course, because I had an idea of what the look was trying to achieve.  (It was like when designers would ask me to pick color for them.  "Kate, find me a really nice yellow for like...a hazy early morning sunrise."  "Kate, find me a blue that doesn't wash too grey but isn't, you know, too blue without any grey at all."  Today's was, "Kate, find me a gobo that's like 'Dappled' but not really.")  Spot on.

I really like working.  Not just because of the money, but because being in the theater does something for me.  Especially working on these big shows.  I feel like I'm part of something, and that makes me feel less alone, I think.


**



Between the lips and the voice something goes dying.
Something with the wings of a bird, something of anguish and oblivion.
The way nets cannot hold water.
My toy doll, only a few drops are left trembling.
Even so, something sings in these fugitive words.
Something sings, something climbs to my ravenous mouth.
Oh to be able to celebrate you with all the words of joy.


Sing, burn, flee, like belfry at the hands of a madman.
My sad tenderness, what comes over you all at once?
When I have reached the most awesome and the coldest summit
my heart closes like a nocturnal flower.


See?  ANGST.

Life's too short, babe, time is flying - I'm looking for baggage that goes with mine.

Why am I watching Rent?  I hate this movie.  Although I have a real soft spot for "I Should Tell You." And "Take Me or Leave Me," of course.

Everything about today was an adventure.  I met Jeremy for lunch at this Panamanian place near Prospect Heights.  Neither of us had been to this restaurant before and ordering from the menu was something of a trial in and of itself.  Like, a menu item was just listed as "shrimps."  And "curry chicken" was listed twice, and no discernible difference appeared to exist between the two.  And when I tried to order tamales, the waitress informed me that they were "still frozen."  (To which I wanted to reply, "...couldn't you...heat them?")

Despite this, the food was delicious.  I had the "shrimps."  (It was shrimp with curry sauce and veggies and rice.)

After lunch I took the train into Manhattan, and met up with Megs at the U-Haul place way over on the west side.  Now, I haven't seen him in ages either (I mean, I haven't seen him since...Christmas 2009?) and this weekend/next week we're working on his show together.  Today we drove into Jersey with our rental van to pick up his shop order and load it into the theater.  More notably, after the load-in we went to this RIDICULOUS doughnut shop.  I had a huge square doughnut filled with coconut cream.  RIDICULOUS.

 For SERIOUS.

(the top one was the doughnut Megs had - jelly filled with peanut butter on top!)

**

Why do I feel so restless?  Why am I nervous?  I'll admit, the mornings and nights are the worst.  Whenever I'm being actively tortured by a particular feeling, I find that I wake up nervous in the morning and go to bed nervous at night.  I suppose I fear the things that transpire at night, and I'm going to wake up broken-hearted.  It's the part that still makes my heart sink into my stomach at the thought, that makes me want to lay my head into the crook of my arm and cry bitterly.

I-AM-DARK-HEART!

I'M WATCHING THE CARE BEARS MOVIES RIGHT NOW, DON'T JUDGE ME.  /endcapslock

Brooklyn is under a tornado watch?  What the fuck, guys.  And now it's all overcast-looking.  I took a walk earlier but I only like to walk when it's beautiful and sunny; walking when it's cloudy is just depressing to me.

Why are the Care Bears in a boat?  Why is there a giant talking star?  Why are fireworks coming of of their bellies? This movie made way more sense when I was 5. 

Yesterday I walked all the way to the Botanic Garden.  On my way back I ran into Jeremy, which was just too funny - he and I have been trying to coordinate schedules and find time to hang out for awhile now, to no avail.  And then by chance we run into each other (in the middle of an intersection, to boot).  We walked through Prospect Park, catching up on life (I feel like I've been doing a lot of that lately.  But it's a good thing).

Something was up with the male population of my neighborhood today.  On my walk some firefighters whistled at me from their truck as it was stopped at an intersection and I was crossing.  One guy passed me on his bike and turned to look at me and stared for a good five or six seconds before nearly running someone down.  And at another intersection, the cars were backed up (because there was a stoplight at the following intersection and there was simply not enough room for all the cars...as is typical around here) and this guy in an SUV tried to spark up a conversation with me.  Like this...

Him: "Hey, sweetie."
Me: *fidgets, ignores him, wishes I could cross the street already*
Him: "I hope you're having a nice afternoon."
Me: *continues to pretend like I can't hear him.  Scratches neck, pulls scab off a scratch, ow that kind of hurt, I hope I'm not bleeding*
Meanwhile, traffic begins to move.  He doesn't.
Him: "You sure do make the color green look beautiful!"
Me: *oh, I'm wearing a green dress today.*
Other cars honk loudly, he drives away, I cross the street to the grocery store where the guys stocking the shelves stare at me and watch me shop.  Seriously, what the fuck, this is the worst.  This dress isn't even that short. 

I think it's something in the air, or the water, or it's the tornado watch.  Usually maybe one of these things happens to me in a day...not all of them.  Although I was totally cool with the firefighters whistling at me.