Love, Love Will Tear Us Apart.

Today has been a shit day.
I did have one bright spot, though. My terrific friend Julie, aka, The Beauty Whisperer, owns a great business,Beauty Ethics,that offers services such as haircuts, color and style, brows, waxing, facials, etc. Anyway, the BW is helping me get my skin in line after it has freaked out over being submerged in chlorine three times a week for 45 minutes. Hopefully things will improve with my new skin care routine.
Outside of that I have cried on the phone twice and in altogether separate incidents I have been disappointed by two people I love.
I have issues opening up to people, I'll be the first to admit that. But it doesn't help when people you care about consistently treat you as an afterthought. It also doesn't help when you ask someone to be there for you and they have their head so far up their ass they turn what you need into something all about themselves. This is not about the Bagel, btw as he is nearly a saint and a lovely person all the way around who always puts me first. Except when he drinks too much bourbon, but that's for another time.

I think I'll be glad when school starts again, as being busy prevents me from investing in other people.

Anyway, my giraffe necklaces from ETSY is shipping from Canada so it's going to be awhile. Something to look forward to.

So I've been thinking a lot about the school of Sociology that I went nuts for, Symbolic Interactionism (SI) lately, as my life has changed pretty drastically in the last three weeks, all because of what I am now defining as success and as my goals. Basically the dude who coined the term SI, Herbert Blumer, defined the basic premises as the following:

1) We act a certain way toward things or with things (including people) because of the meaning that has been assigned to them, i.e we do not brush our hair with a fork but rather eat with it because we learned that's what we do from other folks. Unlike Ariel.

2) The meaning that is ascribed those things we interact with derives from interaction in the greater world, or people in society. That is, meaning is not inherent, it is ascribed and that is not done by individuals but collectively.

3) Each of us then takes those ascribed meanings and interprets them through a process that has also been shaped by interaction in the greater world. That is, no man is an island, we depend on others to help us define the world, even when we are privately interpreting something.

All that to say, I really really really believe in this process, and I know that when I interpret the actions of others I try to use this paradigm as it seems to me that it makes what people do a little less deliberate.

So I started reading the textbook for my Gender class last night (yes that is the sound of glasses being pushed up my nose) and read a really interesting article called "Beyond Pink and Blue" in which the precedent of the medicalization of intersexuality was examined and debated. (Intersexed, btw, means those who, as the author Sharon E. Preves says, "...inhabit bodies whose very anatomy does not afford them an easy choice between the gender lines". The article's focus is on contemporary gender studies and how my man Erving Goffman and his theory of stigma or spoiled identity, wherein "Stigma is a process by which the reaction of others spoils normal identity" applies to the development of identity by the intersexed. Needless to say, I love this shit and find it endlessly fascinating. It also reminds me of how we all develop our identities and how we all manage at times with a spoiled identity and what we must do to overcome it.

I am definitely mad at some people right now, and more than that, hurt, but at least they didn't cut off my clitoris when I was a baby for no real reason or make me grow up as a girl when I was in fact a boy. Pat Conroy says "In families there are no crimes beyond forgiveness", but seriously, I am not so sure. Also, he's an alcoholic.

My scale is a piece of shit btw, and I did lose weight last week, three more pounds. From now on I'm only using the scale at the gym and the doctor's office.