Myspace is getting kind of relentless about the ad "Overweight at 19???? Try the diet specifically for 19 yr old women! As seen on CNN, ABC and more!" Someone once told me about search-specific ads. I don't think they are very effective. I don't make so many self-referential searches I guess. Don't get me wrong, like every goddamn girl on the planet, there is at least one week out of the month where I think I weigh a hundred pounds more. But I never make the effort to look up the best diet plans or workout routines, knowing in advance I will be sick of the novel idea, in maybe a few days.
I think the difference is I've genuinely ceased to care. It's like being a little dishonest, a thought which has been nestling and burrowing in my mind a lot lately. Now, I'm not a compulsive liar. But every now and then, I won't say compelled, but it just occurs naturally to me, that I should alter One detail in the retelling of an incident, that I should add something, or leave out some specifics. The leaving out I can attribute to for convenience's sake, the adding, i don't know what's gotten to my head. I sometimes get so used to telling a story so far apart from the way it happened, I have to remind myself what really happened.
Occasionally it's absolutely necessary. Creepy guy from school invites you somewhere and not your boyfriend, what would you have done? Sometimes it just saves the pains of narration, when your parents ask you how you spent your week, and it really doesn't make any sense to go into every detail, you end up going into none and just saying something like 'fine' when in fact it wasn't quite fine at all, at least at one time you might have not thought so. Sometimes it's just something inexplicable that leads you to believe things will change based on the way it was altered in the retelling, and you can't wait to erase some embarrassment, or hurt, from the way it actually was. Sometimes it's just plain old fun, until you sit down, just a few weeks before you birthday, and reflect on being dishonest. But this is very much a tangent, ironically revealing, but a tangent nonetheless.
What really struck me about the ad I guess, is that I've just a few weeks left at being 19. Without fail, every time I see the ad, I wonder if it will be a diet just for 20 yr olds when I turn 20. Then I reflect on an incident from a past life. I once had an acquaintance tell me the thing that made him feel oldest was turning 20, (I say acquaintance, he still calls me, though not for the sake of catching up), at the time he was 22 and had been through rehab, an extended stay at a mental facility and was diagnosed as having dementia, bipolar disorder, and clinical depression. You would think just waking up made him feel so old.
I have been through some things in my life. I had a stint with drug abuse, and was expelled from my old high school. I was always grateful that that was what got me started in JC. I've met and hung around some questionable characters. One summer, I damn near slept with everything that moved. At one point my mom told me I was adopted, but now it seems she might have been kidding, or so wholly besides herself with anger, that she couldn't think of anything that could sting like a denial of biological relations. I wonder if turning 20 the thing that will make me feel burdened with old age. Or if it's the numerous lies (big and small!) I've told. Or the realization that I am becoming my mother in spite of some, let's say biological ambiguity.
Monday, November 24, 2008
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