enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Analysis and skating.

Good morning!

Well, I'm still quite sad -ego bruised actually - that the guy was more attracted to the other girl.

But here comes analytical me...

In addition to being a bit obnoxious I also looked really crappy yesterday. The cycling studio has no shower, so I had just brought a jogging suit to jog there and back. Everyone else had brought clothes. We were going for breakfast at a pub around the corner, and I knew that we'd all be sweaty, so I didn't worry too much.

Super guy had brought nice jeans, a nice sweater, and a nice pea coat.

Girl had brought good jeans and a nice shirt and coat.

I was wearing loose black tights and a purple hooded running top. My hair was up in bobby pins. I looked pretty crappy. To be honest, one of the things that helps a lot in terms of people finding me attractive -at work, say - is that I am a good dresser. I'm good at wearing clothes that are elegant and that really flatter me. People always compliment me on my taste.

The guy has never seen me in actual proper clothes, so he might think that I am a bit of a grot, not sophisticated at all. I've seen people tranform in their opinion of me before. I'll never forget running with a new guy in my club in Vancouver for an hour and a half, with my hair in a ponytail. After the workout I washed my hair and put it down, put on a new outfit, as on THursdays we used to eat at the Rowing Cl_b after workouts. And when I walked in I heard the guy with whom i had been running ask the other two guys he was standing with, "Who is that?" (And he really didn't know.)

So I imagine that my appearance couple with my attitude made it a done deal.

It still makes me feel horrible and unattractive. I had always thought that it was more attractive to just be natural and unconcerned with looks after a workout. But what can you do? Men are men.

IN any event, I DON't know why I am obsessing over this guy. It's not as though I was particularly enamoured of him once I heard him speak. He was nice and interesting, but I didn't feel attracted to his laugh, and he seemed rather serious. He doesn't seem to be a funny guy at all, actually.
So perhaps he's not a guy who would interest me at all, anyhow. I didn't get the impression that he is creative at all, and when I was talking with another girl about her job (she is an editor with a medical journal), he piped up that he can't write at all.

Not that I'm a great writer or anything, but I am attracted to guys who have a way with words. :)

OK. I've talked myself out of caring about whether or not he finds me attractive anymore. It just doesn't matter. Another red herring.

So today: I'm going skating with Claire.

I really like Claire. When I got up this morning my instinct was to cancel skating as my mood was dark. But when I got on the phone with her we started giggling like crazy. It will be so much fun to go out with her. I will tell her about the guy yesterday and she will make me laugh. She's a delight. She's actually a really beautiful girl and 35 and unmarried and not looking. She feels as though she has work to do on herself before she'll be ready for a relationship. She's had issues with her dad, for example. And she's been on a bit of a path to search for some kind of self-confidence of self-awareness that she feels she is lacking.

TO be honest, it always seems to me that it is the REST of the people, not people like Claire who are missing the self-awareness. But anyhow. She's fun to be arond. We match well in our personalities. We can talk about anything, which I like.

This morning we were sharing a laugh about how awful the racism was in the Toronto of the 70s in which we grew up. Well, the racism in teh 70s wasn't per se that severe. It was the racism that we observed with our grandparents in particular. They simply didn't understand the flood of immigrants of different colours. TO us as kids, there was no difference. I remember being completely oblivious to skin colour. It made absolutely no sense. My first best friend was Japanese, my later best friend was Jamaican, and then my later best friend group was composed of a guy from India and girls from Korea and China.

It honestly was university before I started to understand the whole racism thing based on skin colour, in the sense that I started to see people segregating. This was because in university there were many students who came from places that were primarily white. I was an exception to have grown up in enclaves that were mixed. And to tell you the truth, the fact that I went to a silly "gifted" school helped. They bussed in kids who made the cutoff from all over, and many of those kids were from the Middle east and Asia. A few were from the Caribbean and a few others were from Africa. Many of them were the smartest kids, so if anything I saw them as the standard to rise to, not to rise from. That's pretty cool, if you ask me. I feel lucky for this.

Anyhow, so Claire was telling me about how she at one time introduced her friend from Kenya to her grandmother. And her grandmother had asked the woman, "I know someone who looks like you. Her name is....Do you know her?"

Poor Claire was mortified. But the woman was gracious about it and said, "She's 96! What can you do? :)"

My grandmother was awful in that way. She used to make disparaging remarks about Jewish people, which I always thought was a defense, anyhow. To be honest, I really think that her father was Jewish but they tried to hide it. I think it was a big family secret. I guess I'll never know the truth. It seems likely though.

So I was telling Claire about the fact that in the 60s my mother was in love with a Chinese man who went to university at the university at which my grandfather taught. My mother told me that she had broken up with the man because her grandmother had not approved of a mixed race marriage. My mother had been raised my her grandmother, partially, and she was very close to her, so I guess that makes sense. I was telling Claire that my mother always used to tell me that she should have married the Chinese man, because in the end he was very successful and I would have been cute.

Claire and I laughed about it. I can laugh about it now. But so many things about my mother, of course, do not make me laugh.

Anyhow. Claire is special. I look forward to skating with her. Having friends does not quite replace the sadness that I have that maybe men don't find me attractive anymore and that no one will want to date me again, but it is nice just the same to have an engaging friend.

So we are going to go to the end of my street and skate away, today.

And, in further breaking news, I think I am going to start training again to run the marathon in May. In part I think this will be good for me - to take the stress of work away of an evening, by forcing myself to go out for training and to eat well - but in part it is bad. It is bad because on some level I probably want to get my old body back and "show them" that I am fit and attractive. My body in comparison to the other girl's yesterday looks more "normal" now than athletic. I simply don't work out enough these days. I guess I'm conflicted about that.

It's all not so good. :( But it is good to be truly honest about my feelings. That is what a diary is for.

10:18 a.m. - 2008-01-27

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

previous - next

other diaries:

stepfordtart
ohell
awittykitty
annanotbob
manfromvenus
smartypants
fifidellabon
hungryghost
hissandtell