Story:I Knew That if I Didn't Get Out Now, I wouldn't Survive

NOTE TO READER: Just a story from a dream. Though it could be relatable to anybody.

 “I would love to have dinner with you tonight.”

This was the response I received after suggesting going to dinner with him after two weeks of not seeing each other. Part of me was excited, but another part of me was worried. How do I look? Have I changed much in the last two weeks?  I know I’ve been really stressed, searching for a new apartment, preparing for my upcoming trip home next month… dear god, my skin is freaking out!

But, I must push these concerns to the back of my mind because this isn’t about me and how I look, but about dinner, and catching up. He said he missed me and couldn’t wait to see me again. When we first met, he spoke softly and sweetly, and we had chemistry. He was gorgeous and a little bit weird. I thought it was cute at the time, and he got me excited. It was two weeks of attraction before he flew to his home country for a two week holiday.

We agreed to have dinner, and I would go home because I had to get ready for work the next day, and I had other plans. I told him that I would finish and go home at 10 o’clock.

We meet at lobby of his hotel, to walk to a restaurant outside to eat. We have a casual conversation about, well, nothing. All the normal: How was your flight? How was your visit home? I’m doing okay, just busy.

"Yes, so we’ll go and eat dinner, and have some drinks, and go back to my place and have sex."

Wait, what?

I look over at him to see if I really heard what I thought. He laughs, so I did, but I’m not sure if he’s joking. I give a playful response, because I’m not sure how to react.

“That’s a bit presumptuous, don’t you think?” He smiles.

He asks me about my day, and I say “Well, I worked since 8 today, so I’m a bit tired, but I had a good day. I’ve been looking for a new place to move into after I come back. I’ve also been preparing for my trip back to the country.”

He responds, commenting on my schedule, that I’m busy, maybe a bit too busy. He says that he wishes I wasn’t so busy so that we could see each other more often, more spur of the moment and by appointment. I tell him that spur-of-the-moment meetings don’t come with ease.

Then he murmurs to himself “you have too many rules.” I’m not sure if he meant for me to hear or not, but the concerns I had from before started to float to the front of my mind.

“Hey, don’t worry, I just miss you and I want you to have a good time. I just feel like you may not because you don’t seem very relaxed.”

“Oh, I’m always like this, but I just have a lot to think about”

He shrugs and nods as we continue to walk.

We reach the restaurant and are seated. He tells me what he wants and insists that we get 2 plates of chicken wings, one for me, one for him, although I tell him that I don’t need a large amount of food if I can’t eat it all. I order what he wants, soup to share (making sure it is not spicy since he doesn’t eat spicy food), and some stir fry vegetables, since I can speak enough of the language here to get what I want. He orders two Heinekens. We clink our glass mugs, and after we sip, he speaks.

“That’s the first time you’ve made eye contact with me today”

Again, I am confused, having looked at him, and conversed, and apparently I hadn’t made eye contact with him? What is he talking about?

As if he read my mind, he responds “I like looking at your eyes.” Well, I suppose that is a sweet gesture. I’m starting to get a weird feeling, though, as if a stone were in my stomach.

The chicken wings arrive and, by his recommendation, I try one. The soup I ordered to share comes, but he says he doesn’t want it. Well, then, I want chilies, and you can have the chicken, this is a lot of soup. I ask for some, and we chat.

His friend calls, and he asks if he can join us. “Of course! That’s not a problem” five minutes later his friend, and the vegetables arrive, and we are all chatting. The weight in my stomach eases up a bit as I spoon in my (now) spicy and sour soup. We talk about food, driving, work, the people here, and other monotonous yet information aspects of where we are. My dates tries to show me off, talking about how I can read and speak the local language here, and occasionally the two speak in their native tongue while I sit and watch. Occasionally, I would look over at him while his friend is talking, and he would wink at me. That could just be a weird eye twitch, though. Still, that stone in my stomach has come back.

I start to feel tired, and I know that my friends are waiting for me. I check my phone, it’s 9:30PM.  My dinner date asks me what time it is. “9:30, we should get going soon.”

He frowns “Really? Can’t you stay maybe an hour more?”

I return the frown, because didn’t we agree that I would go at 10? So I repeat what I had said before, but his expression doesn’t change.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I want to go at 10”

“Ok.”

His friend calmly sits, and says “I’m ready to go home.” At that, we get the bill, and they get a driver to take me home, us sharing the SUV. We pass by his hotel as the driver takes me home, my dinner date and I sharing the back seat.

He looks at me deeply and asks me “Are you sure you want to go home now?” I nod. He takes my hand, caressing it, and then leans in to whisper something in my ear.

“You destroyed my evening.”

That was when I felt the stone, no longer a slight pressure, but a heavy pull, as it doubled my weight.

I can’t do this. The concerns I had weren’t about me, but about us, and why it wouldn’t work. The weight of the stone was growing each time some fault of mine was brought up. Even as he tried to reason to make what he said better, I knew that everything else was going to be about what I did wrong to him.

“I had a surprise for you.” It doesn’t matter, we agreed on a time that I would go, and you made your expectations without my acknowledgement.

“I wanted to just spend time being with you” You have been spending time.

“I never get to see you” I have a work schedule that often goes into the late evening, I told you.

“It’s not about sex” No, it’s not. It’s about control.

8.2.2557(2014): The Skinny

Hello my internet readers!
So, I have been thinking about a topic that never stops receiving attention: body image. Well, not only is it body image that receive ample discourse, but also body size, especially that of celebrities.
The recent uproar about Ke$ha checking into rehab for an eating disorder is what sparked my desire to delve into the topic.
Yes, I noticed that the singer seemed to have thinned down in the recent Pitbull music video "Timber," but the wasn't really any subjective thoughts I had about it, like "Oh, she looks so much better" or "what happened?!"
And then there is Jennifer Lawrence and her commentary on how Hollywood and the media supposedly portrays her, where she says that in the world of the celebrities, she is considered "obese" and yadda ya. I am not going to deny that the media does this, but I haven't actually seen any magazines comment on Jennifer Lawrence's waistline. I'm sure that many people agree that she is by no means overweight.
Now, I'm not trying to say trash on either celebrity, because this isn't the purpose of this post. In fact, I would prefer to focus on the media and how they determine what is "too fat" and what is "too skinny." Think about it; how often do you see commentary about some celebrity's size in the magazines or other media forms? Really. I'm sure that a majority of the population would agree that what the media describes as beautiful is only a distortion of reality. It is frustrating, really, because of how much focus is towards the size of a person, and how that is related to their beauty. Everybody is made differently, is that not correct? Some people are made to be more curvy, and some are made to be stick thin. Look at their bone structure.
I've received compliments on my size, about how skinny I am. To be honest, sometimes it is flattering, because of how I have been influenced by the standards of media. Other times, I feel insulted. Even when I inform a person of what my pants size is, I receive a response of disbelief. The reality is that I need to wear at least a 6 or 8 (US) in pants. In Asia, I'm a size XL or XXL. Sure, that can be a blow to my confidence, but there are standards for different cultures; women in Asia are typically petite, so their concept of size is also different. But, back to my size. I explain why I need to wear this size, which is because my hips are a little bit more wide-set than other people. This actually is true. When I stand, my hip bones at the widest part, not necessarily "padded with extra cushioning" and my butt, well... That actually is a bit bigger, too. The reality is that my genetics coded for me to have curves in my lower half. I will have to say, though, that I received one of the biggest insults from a man who had no idea what he was talking about.
I exercise, and I love to exercise; running, weight lifting, playing sports, yoga, and so on; you name it and I am typically a fan of being an active participant. I don't do it for any other reasons than enjoyment, stress relief, and health. Now that you have been given the abridged explanation, let's go into this insult business. As I have mentioned before, sometimes I receive "Wow! You are skinny!" as a compliment, and other times, I am quite offended. This is a moment in which I was disgusted. A man decided that it was his duty to inform me that my exercise was too extreme, that running one and a half miles (about 2.4 kilometers) and then performing dynamic exercises, some involving "explosive" movements (i.e. power exercises like squat jumps or power squats) following the run was "too much" and that I don't need to do these exercises because I am thin enough. This concept the poor fellow had, that all women exercise to remain skinny and his apparent need to express it through suggestions to limit my exercise habits made me lose respect for him. The type of exercises I perform are not to be thin, but to maintain muscle tone and build strength and power. As a self-proclaimed athlete, he should know better and should have been able to recognize the purposes of the exercises I was performing. In addition, he should have understood that you should never publicly underestimate someone's athletic ability based on their size.
So, back to the media, where did they come up with the standards of how skinny a certain person should be or how curvy? Have the people of media considered how strong their influence is over not only the "basic civilian" but also the people they comment upon?
Another thought I have is how ads make their contributions. When an ad is on Facebook, it often isn't focusing on the healthiness of a person's body, but rather: "Get skinny fast!" or "Lose pounds!" Both of these ideas talk solely about weight loss. Weight loss isn't necessarily healthy. For the obese person, yes, it is, because the primary contribution to that person's weight is actually body fat. But when we are talking about a person who exercises regularly, their weight isn't due to fat but, more often, to muscle. Remember the saying "muscle weighs more than fat"? It's true, muscle is more dense than fat is. Here's a look at a microscopic view:

                                                                Muscle Tissue                                                         Adipose Tissue

Just look at both of these pictures: see how dense the muscle tissue is? And look at that of the adipose tissue, You can see how much space one of those cells is taking. 

And at a larger scale, 5 pounds of fat versus 5 pounds of muscle:

       

This isn't an exaggeration, because both replicas are meant to be to scale. 

So let's go back to size, weight, and the over-attention given to it by the media. Not only is there that, but also, there is this backlash from other people about size, with statements like "big is beautiful!" and so on. Again, my commentary is that everybody has their own size. I don't side with either team, because then that means I'm against the other. Skinny is not beautiful, and neither is big. BEAUTIFUL is beautiful, it should never be stereotyped by size, or any other physical attribute like hair or skin color.

I think I thoroughly distracted myself. Honestly, I do try to limit the amount of public media that I happen upon, but in this day and age we all know that is impossible. Our generation (mostly) is completely connected to others via that (what we think is) simple internet. Smart phones, tablets, chromebooks, etc are everywhere, and so is our accessibility to the world wide web. 

So, I would once again like to reflect on how our access to the media affects our perception of what is beautiful, and what is considered a "healthy" size. Because frankly, that image keeps changing, and I don't mean that in a positive manner.

Check these out:

Ke$ha

Thin celebrities

big celebrities

Celebrity Weight loss

Until next time, (and my apologies for the incoherency)

K.