I'm sitting here at my desk and, like I have been the last few days, I'm feeling horrible about myself. I've honestly been thinking I hate myself and want to die - because of my weight. It's awful, awful, awful. I think if I try to write too much, I'll never stop crying, and it would be hard to do my job with perma-tears and giant, wracking sobs.

I just missed a call from the accessibility center at school. I got in touch because the teeny desks with attached chairs in the classrooms are too small for me to fit into without discomfort. Yes, I'm too fat for a chair. I spend my time worrying about whether the restaurant's booths are going to be too small for me to fit into, or whether that person on the street is going to call me fat, or if my coworker is looking at my shirt because it's cute or because my belly makes it stick out like I'm pregnant. Almost every moment of every day is filled with this consciousness of my weight. Someone is walking by, suck your stomach in. Don't make that facial expression, it shows your millionth chin too much. Breathe quietly, even if you are out of breath, so you don't sound like the asthmatic fat person people make fun of in movies. You can't do cartwheels, run through the sprinklers, make it to the top of that hill. You can't be successful or beautiful. You can't wear that. You can't feel that. Your friends are disgusted by you. Your family is embarrassed of you. Nobody would ever want you. And on and on and on.

Every day I try to change and every day I fail at it.

This hurts too much to even talk about. I'll try later, maybe.

[Note: This is not a "cry for help," and nobody needs to worry about me being suicidal or doing anything like that. I'm just ranting / freewriting. It pisses me off that I have to put a disclaimer on my own thoughts, but better safe than sorry.]

Ok, I know I've really sucked with posting here over the last 1-2 years. (I can't believe I just typed YEARS.) Anyway, I'm not ever planning on getting rid of my blog here on Xanga, but I do have a new blog I would love you to check out. It's called Soldiers in Petticoats, and it's my first foray into feminist blogging.

It began with a project for school. The director of the women's studies unit wanted to help me move toward my goal of working with feminism, writing, and social media as a career (it's also what my Women, Writing, & Society degree is all about). He (yes, he!) offered to have me write a blog on my college's women's studies website, which I was thrilled about. Unfortunately they are just moving way too slow for me, so I went out and did it on my own. They may link to my posts later, if they ever get their act together. In the meantime, I feel like I'm actually doing the stuff I want to be doing. I'm even going to go self-hosted with the site so I can have control over all the features. This will give me a lot of great experience in building *real* blogs, not just using templates.

In Soldiers in Petticoats, I mainly write about feminist issues that I see going on (and am learning about in school), and relate them with pop culture. Please check it out and help me get it going! Feel free to invite others to read it if you think they will like it. You can subscribe via RSS, or you can just sign up to be emailed when I post new entries.

I also have a page for my blog on Facebook, so if you "Like" the page, you can get updates on new posts that way too.