Faking It in the Good Way
<<2003-04-04 - 4:26 a.m.>>

I’m sitting on Fury’s floor, settling into an all-nighter with her. She suggested the togetherness of the work-overload. Said, “You can sleep in my bed with me if you want.” Eep. How much would Kara kill me? So much. Very much indeed.

It’s funny that now we’re friends—because we do indeed seem to be friends. (Zibby’s pragmatic friend-tests: do you ask someone you don’t like into your room for the entire night? No, you do not. Do you invite someone you don’t like to live with you? No, not so much. Hmm.) It’s funny because I never really felt uncomfortable around her. It’s funny because Kara gets so very nervous around her, and it’s funny because it feels like we just sort of settled into a routine of spending an awful lot of time together.

We are, though, just friends. My moral high ground requires it.

Speaking of. I’ve been snarking at Rowen. Snark snark snark. Rowen says she had flings last semester. I snark, “Just last semester, huh?”

We sat in Commons this morning and I hated her furiously, something in my gut screaming repetitively, “I hate you I hate you I hate you.” Good, I suppose, that I stayed with that, lived in it. Whatever. It’s been consuming today. Hardly coincidental, then, that I’ve been discussing anger and clamping down and repressing with Zibby. It never is coincidental, is it?

I wrote Max a letter during Gender & History today, or some of a letter, anyway. Began “I’m not sure if this is something that I’m supposed to tell you or not, but I miss you.” Which I do. And I have picked up, somewhere over the course of the last week, a new sense of freedom. A sense, perhaps, of “I-survived-this-and-that-means-I-can-survive-anything.” Battered but unbowed.

And it’s late and we are wandering campus wondering how we wasted all that time, and Fureigh asks if I want a ride up to Steele on the back of her bike, and it’s a little awkward, but you weigh under two hundred pounds, right? I nod. Dammit. It’s that instinct-to-lie thing again. Wait. No. I don’t correct myself. I awkward my way around this situation by discussing worries about weight limits. Swingsets when I was seven. Interestingly, not something I’m accustomed to being comfortable discussing. Fury tells me the story of how she met her girlfriend as we head up to her room. When we get inside she proudly shows me her copy of Nervy Girl with the gorgeous full-color FatGirlSpeaks! ad on the back cover.

I’m playing the faking-it game, but in the good way. Pretend I’m comfortable and the comfort will come. So they say.

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