Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Real

We've been reading The Velveteen Rabbit again.



"What is Real?"
“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you."
Can I try to articulate why this book gets me so misty? I don't know if I can. But I'll try. 
It's a lie. You're real because you exist. You're real because you're REAL. Duh. This is not the matrix. Is it? No, Right? No. It's not.

You are real.

The Velveteen Rabbit is not real. But it feels real.

It feels like you're only real, you only exist, if someone else cares about you enough to validate you. 
"When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'

Being a parent does not make you real. Being childless does not make you real. But the horse (made of SKIN?!) is right in that having children, and parenting them, and getting punched in the face because it's bedtime and "I no wan to!" HURTS. But you let them. Well, you tell them not to, but you let them in that you don't break up with them. You don't leave them because they tell you they don't love you (I'm having two-year-old troubles).

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”

My children love me when I'm in a dress, when I'm in yoga pants, when I'm trying to take a shower. And, to be honest, lately, I have been feeling a bit shabby. And my eye sight is quite bad now. And my joints were VERY LOOSE because of hormones.

But these things don't matter at all?

I'm not trying to be annoyingly literal. It's just that REAL sometimes feels like...it's only happening now, when I'm alone. When they are otherwise occupied. When I dressed myself in "real clothes" and went to a "real job."

This post isn't very funny, is it? It doesn't have many answers.

I guess, I'm trying to say, it's still hard, nearly five years in, to feel like this is all real. A weekday sometimes still feels wrong, in September, when I don't work ten-hour days for pennies thrown at a student loan. The wonder of a human I cooked up myself (with a helper!) let alone TWO humans, still feels uncanny.

When will it feel real?

The book is about love. Love makes you real. It's a flawed message. It should be that loving, not being loved, makes you real. Loving SOMETHING, a bunny, a person, being alone with a cup of coffee, makes you real, I guess.

Unless I'm just a glitch in the matrix.

Excerpts from― Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Sisyphean Spinning

Because my work situation is...in flux...at the moment (weeping, brain exploding, shrugging emoticon), I had an unexpected day off and decided, yet again, to attempt to better myself through fitness.

Don't worry, the laundry is going now. I will not neglect the laundry on this, the day I have off.

My super cool new surgeon who told me I no longer need to run if I want to keep my shins suggested cycling as a good cardio option. So I strapped on the rented shoes and snapped myself in.

A brief history of me and bicycles. I never learned to ride one as a child ("I lived on a hill!") and then, as an adult, my then BF now DH (LEARN YOUR ACRONYMS) taught me. There was drama. BUT I LEARNED.

Then I went biking with our family friend in California and attempted to adjust my sunglasses and fell off into some gravel and got a scar EXACTLY like a stigmata and gave up from there.

SO here we are.

In case you are unfamiliar, the new kind of cycling cultImeanCLASS is that you go in a room with a very fit and adorably approachable lady at the front of the room on a bike and that bike is on a pedestal. We underlings strap ourselves into our machines on the ground and then they turn on loud music and turn off the lights an then the smiling lady yells at you to pedal while she cackles but actually she's really very pretty and nice and smiling and helpful so it's like a hearty laugh. It's not HER fault I'm unfit.

Now, the darkness and the loudness struck me as very weird but I actually really, really loved it.

Because in the dark, no one can see my tears.

And the music drowns out my whimpers.

Seriously though. I cried a lot. Because I felt frustrated. My feet fell asleep during the warm up. Then they just spasmed until the ride was over. Maybe it's because of my stupid hip problem or it could be perhaps, my rented shoes were too tight. It could be perhaps, my head's not screwed on just right. Well, whatever the reason, my hip or my shoes, I sat there on my bike starting to bruise.



Bruise? You ask? Well yes. Of course. On my...what I'm going to call....undercarriage because it is simultaneously a euphemism and also a non-romantic one. BIKING HURTS!

So I chose undercarriage or foot pain for the duration.

And I feel totally awesome right now. Seriously. ENDORPHINS UP THE WAZOO.

But the pain hasn't set in. And I haven't tried to stand up in a few minutes.

I fitnessed!

Now back to our regularly scheduled laundry.