Oh Allyson! Everyone else has already said it better than I could. And all of your friends, we'll always be here for you when you need reassurance and support--I hope you never hesistate to ask. You are loved.

I found a picture of me from my senior prom when I was cleaning out stuff at Mom's the other day.

sj, I gotta ask: did you make a deal with the devil, because you don't appear to have aged AT ALL since then. (Also, you are so stunning, and pictures do NOT do you justice, because as pretty as that picture is, you are, like, 100 times more stunning in person.)

Before I met TCG, I was very much resigned to the fact that I was going to be single for the rest of my life. I also thought I deserved to be.

This is me. I still don't think I "deserve" The Boy, but he feels the same way about me, so it's a case of our fucked-upped-ness meshing fairly well.

Tom, do you want to be single? Or are you resigned to it? (...or did you murder your last girlfriend? Is this some kind of karma for past misdeeds?) Because, you know, you're awesome. And sufficiently cute that I was far too shy to say more than 'hello' at the F2F.

Scola is so sexy when he looked at me in SF, I giggled like a teenager.

(I don't know if I can say this properly without sounding creepy and weird[er], so I'll just say it.) While I am so totally happy with The Boy, in a way that I truly never thought I would ever get to experience, I'm fairly certain that if, in a different life, I lived in NYC, I'd be outside Scola's window barking like a dog. Or, you know, maybe singing the Spider-Man theme song. I'm not kidding, and I hope that isn't creepy.

I have grown tired of singleness.

The drying-up-of-eggs is certainly intensifying the effect.

I'm going to be 37 (BY THE WAY, IN 16 DAYS), and I'm fair certain that I don't have a biological clock. I don't feel tick or tock. I never expected to not want kids, but I don't. It's strange, and I'm still trying to re-frame that part of my narrative.

Fo shizzle my nizzle.

Seanie, I love you, man, but NEVER SAY THAT AGAIN. You can't pull it off, white boy.

I heard over the years that she couldn't stand the sound of my laugh, or the sight of my body. My mom was a broken teenaged mother who got pregnant at 16 and ran from horribly abusive alcoholic parents who said the same sort of things to her.

She doesn't remember this, but I gently asked about it, and she cried. She apologized. She took responsibility for it and feels horrible. I wasn't accusatory, I just wanted to know why, because it's just made it impossible for me to look in a mirror, to not constantly second guess whether my presence in a room is bothering people. I'm always feeling I need to apologize for taking up space, wherever I happen to be.

Sometimes it's louder than other times. It gets particularly bad when I feel attracted to someone, because it makes me hyper-aware of my own ugliness, how unacceptable and disgusting I am. My obnoxious laugh.

And it's hurting really bad right now because it's so front and center.

Allyson, my heart is breaking for you, and I'm crying really hard right now, because that's very much how I feel. I *know* now, as an adult, that my mom was FUCKED UP when she was raising me. I get that. But it didn't change the fact that she said and did horrible things to me, and installed a lot of tapes that I can't uninstall. I try and I try, and some days work better than others, but I feel like I will never be able to stop being the worthless soul-sucking weight dragging her (and, by extension, EVERYONE in my life) down and ruining her life. And that's a goddamn direct quote.

Allyson, everything you said about you and your mother could apply to me and my father. (Except that I'm not talking to my father right now). And I have trouble getting close to anyone, because I expect that anyone who is close to me is going to criticize me and berate me. I even welcome it, because that's what I think it means for someone to love me.

Scola, man, I'm still crying, because that's me all over. I expect the people I'm closest to to treat me like utter shit. The Boy is literally the first healthy relationship I've ever had. He's literally the first person who didn't make me feel like everything about (continued...)

( continues...) me was WRONG, on the deepest level possible. He's the first person who didn't make me feel like *maybe* I'd be barely acceptable IF I changed everything about me (including my goddamn hair) to match what he thought I should be.

And you know what? There are a LOT of days when I still don't know how to deal with someone who treats me well, who treats me like I -- like we ALL -- deserve to be treated. Part of me is always vigilant, waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the nasty comments to start, for the treat-me-nice-one-day-then-like-shit-the-next-day to start.

Being treated like shit? Feels like home to me. It's really fucking hard to be with someone who doesn't treat me badly, and I realize how FUCKED UP it is to say that.

Being with his extended family throws me into a tailspin for DAYS, because I get to see how his brothers are raising their kids, and there's so much goddamned love and ACCEPTANCE of exactly who the kids are, that it hits me in the solar plexus every. single. time.

I never had that, and I'll never get to. (In terms of my childhood, that is.) And I hate that. And therapy helped me deal with it, and helped me learn to cope with it when it rears its ugly head -- and that's been invaluable -- but it didn't make it go away. I suspect it will never go away.

And it sounds like you're doing a better job of dealing with it in therapy than I am. I've been going several times a week for many years now, and I still have lots of trouble talking about my father. It's just too painful for me.

You, however, are dealing with it, in spite of the pain. And we're all fucking proud of you for doing it.

Scola, I call bullshit on you not dealing well with it. There's no timeline for this. Absolutely not. So what you said to Allyson is what I'm saying to you -- you ARE dealing with it, in spite of the pain. And I am So. Fucking. Proud. of you for doing it. It's hard and it sucks and there doesn't seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel, or maybe the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train, right? And yet you're still doing it. And you've made progress, damn it, so don't discount that.

ION, I just had my first ripe nectarine this year. BRING ON THE STONE FRUIT SEASON! Holy hell, it was tasty.

I concur! Er, I haven't had a stone fruit yet, but I'm ready for them!

Oh, also? Fay should ask Bloke for coffee or the Thai equivalent. He'd realize pretty damned quickly how fucking lucky he would be to be with a woman like you.

No, not "a women LIKE you" -- with YOU.

Dooooooo eeeeeeeeet!

t hearts on Steph

Say, don't you have a birthday coming up?

This discussion on BIDs and image problems has been hard to read--good to read, but hard--because it hits so many sore spots that are far more sore than I thought they were even after all this time.

Allyson, thanks for posting what you did with your history with your mom. I'm glad she owned up to the fact that she was wrong, and regretted what she did.

Preach it, Teppy!

Say, don't you have a birthday coming up?

t whistles innocently, shuffles feet

Coffee: Fay, I forgot to tell you, but that is a FABULOUS haircut. And yes, you should definitely make the first move with Bloke.

Preach it, Teppy!

I preach straight from the pit of muck, you know? I'm barely any mentally healthier than I used to be, back when we were on Table Talk. I've learned how to cope when the ugly shit trips me up (and sometimes I don't cope *well*), but I doubt that I'll ever be able to make the ugly shit go away.

And maybe that's the secret: you can't make it go away, but you can learn how to, more or less, deal with it when it gets in your face.