Faster, Longer, and Uncut

I am a perfectionist. People at job interviews and such always act like this is such a good quality, a great quality, something you should brag about to everyone. I’m such a perfectionist, yea me. But really it means that life is nothing more than one big competition with yourself and everyone else, all the time, and that nothing you do is ever good enough. Sometimes I look at all the things I try so hard at and I wonder who on earth I’m competing with. I beat myself up because so many people ran faster than me in my 10K, when I ran forty five seconds a mile faster than I did in October. But it’s just not good enough for me. I’ve never had a run where I’ve finished and then haven’t beat myself up afterwards for hours, or sometimes even days. Isn’t that weird? Most people aren’t like that. Mr. E thinks it’s terrible, he just shakes his head and looks at me with a sad expression on his face.

I am stressed about the upcoming half marathon, and right now I also don’t feel too awesome. I have endometriosis and so every month when I get my period it just fucking sucks. Sucks to the tune of throwing up or passing out because it hurts so much. And honestly when this happens to you over and over again every month and no one can fix it you get really fed up and tired and angry. So right now I don’t feel good, again, just like I will next month, and this is one of those months when I get angry at how much this has taken from me. I do have medicine I can take but it knocks me out to the point that if I try to work I’ll end up throwing up in my trashcan and going home anyway. Add that to the fact that I’m so unbelievably bloated I can’t stand it, I can’t even look at my ass in the mirror because Jesus Christ, why is my ass so large all of sudden? Of course it’s not even as simple as that, because maybe my ass is the same size that it was a week ago, when I loved it, maybe it’s me that’s crazy now. I wouldn’t know, because I have no perspective whatsoever on the relative size of my ass. All I know is that when I think it seems small, I feel better, and now is not one of those times.

Because I am a perfectionist and I want everyone to think I am the number one winner of all time, I try to control the future all the time. I am a controlling, anal, perfectionist, and I am sure I sound like a barrel of laughs, don’t I? My in laws are celebrating their 35th anniversary this summer and having a huge family week long gathering and somehow that leads to me, the Thursday right after payday, contemplating which J Crew t shirt I should buy to perfectly carry off the non desperate super cute look of preppy casual that I’d like everyone to remember when they think of me and the summer of 2006. Which is ridiculous because no one will even care. I’ll compile the worlds largest and most ridiculous collection of prep and everyone there will be wearing cut off sweat pants and old high school t shirts which I don’t even have because I didn’t go to their high school, and I’ll think “oh, we’re doing THAT look this year. I’m wrong again”.

Even after losing all this weight, I feel undue amounts of stress every morning over what the fuck to wear. I am not ashamed to admit that when you start to lose weight you think it will be the magic answer to everything and that in the morning when you leap out of bed 60 pounds lighter a whole outfit will just snap onto your body, crisp, clean, professional, young, hip, whatever. In reality you are still telling yourself that you don’t need to iron those Target pants that sort of almost fit, at the same time as you wonder – fuck, how did all my t shirts get so fucking short? This is a MEDIUM! I’m 5’ 1”, so who DOES this fit? Seriously. Make the t shirts longer, people.