The Time when You Could Fantasize that Everyone Else's Life was the Same as Yours

When I was in middle school, I wanted to marry Jonathan Taylor Thomas. And by "wanted to" I mean "was going to." He liked the color blue, and his birthday was one day after my best friend Leslie's. He also liked Feta cheese and, though I had never heard of Feta cheese, I liked pizza with cheese on it. Soulmates, duh. JTT was my man. So much so it actually never occurred to me that someone my age would have a boyfriend beyond a celebrity one, especially considering none of my friends had actual boyfriends.

When I was 14 I converted to Christianity, and I was pretty obnoxious about it. Like super obnoxious. (I am now a far cry from a Christian but am pleased and honored to have some of my very best friends in the world actively involved in that belief system, and they all, every day, prove that all Christians are not bigoted d-bags, and I am so grateful for them. If any of my childhood friends are reading this, I am SO SORRY I was so obnoxious, and I no longer even believe in hell let alone am worried you are going there.) I decided it would be more Christian if I did not date (though I harbored a hearty crush on a boy in my Youth Group at church (Outside, anyone?)). This was not uncommon. There were some churchy romances here and there, but overall most of my friends were in love with Jesus.

I remember being at my High School Grad Night with my friend Steve and joking it was my first date (still the best date I've ever been on). I looked forward to college being a plethora of dating opportunities.

It was not.

At least not for me. There was some dating and some hooking up and a wedding, but overall most of my friends were in love with either their instruments (get your mind out of the gutter, I was a music major) or their own singing voices. I graduated from college still never having kissed a man, let alone dated one. But BOSTON! A big(ger) city! New people! New things to do and see! Boston would be my time.

It was not.

After grad school, I worked at my first job. I had a crush on a guy there for a while, because he was just so nice to me. Then I met another man through a friend. I fell for him pretty hard. I don't mean fell like we went on dates and had great sex. I mean I was hopelessly smitten with him, and I thought maybe he felt the same way until he made out with one of my friends. And then he and I stayed friends, and I spent years hoping he would come around and realize he loved me. 

He didn't.

I ended things not so nicely with that man this past summer. I gained (back) 50 pounds. I went on a (still on-going) miraculous journey of self-discovery. I learned to love my body and myself. And here I am . Almost 30. I've been on a few dates here and there, but I've still never been in a relationship with a man. I've never even kissed a man I really liked. I have kissed a fair number I didn't like at all.

I've spent many years coming to terms with my lack of romantic history. It's been a slow process of convincing myself that my lack of experience will not be the always story, and that I am wonderful and lovable and would make a great wife, etc. It has been a process of attempting to attain a seemingly unattainable balance between wanting something different and loving what I have, of not letting my desire turn to desperation, while still acknowledging the huge space it occupies in my heart, even though there is no guarantee it will ever come to fruition. Being a single, almost 30-year-old woman is hard f*cking work let me tell you.

And lately all I see on facebook day after day is profile pictures changing to wedding photos. I am not complaining about going to or being at weddings. Not by any means. But for some reason every time I see the profile picture of someone I haven't talked to in 10 years turn to a picture of them cutting their wedding cake, or standing on a gazebo in ambient light, or looking super happy with their now spouse, I just want to slap myself. Yes, I want to see those pictures. And yes, I want my friends to be happy. But I just miss the time when the only way I would know everyone I had met in my entire life was married would be to run into them on the street. And the likelihood of running into every person I've ever met in my entire life on the street is PUHRETTY slim.

If I look at my life here in Boston, at the people who I talk to and spend time with on a regular basis, those of us that are single still outnumber those that are married. And though I expect these numbers to change over the years, it will be gradual. My single friends will meet men, they will date them, I will meet those men, I will hang out with them as a couple, they will get engaged, I will get notified of these engagements, I will see the rings in person, I will hear about wedding planning, I will get invitations, if schedules permit I will go to these weddings, I will drink and eat and dance, and then, AND ONLY THEN will I see wedding photos. My friends love stories are stories in which I am involved, experiences of which I am aware. I see them struggling to yoke their lives to their significant others, to love those significant others more than themselves without losing themselves, to make time for all the other people and things they love while existing inside something as all-encompassing as romantic love, and I can see that it is all a struggle, comparable to if not greater than my own. 

Facebook is a love story told in montage. We are treated to all the highlights with none of the substance. And for those of us single people it is hard not to see that, not to see person after person getting married and think the oh, so dreaded thought, “What is wrong with me?” 

I suppose I could withdraw from Facebook, but then how would I Facebook stalk my friends potential dates? Facebook stalking is very difficult without Facebook. It just means I am left to self-censor, to unsubscribe from friends who talk too much about weight loss, or weddings, or how their lives are perfect, when it feels like self-preservation to do so, and to dialogue with myself constantly about the truth of my own lovability.

I suppose I am just missing the time when the people I loved, when my close friends and family, were my whole world and that world was small and manageable, and I had a perfect, albeit small, place in it as Jonathan Taylor Thomas's future wife.

Things Deb Doesn't Love: Obsessing Over Things

I don't mean obsessing over something worth obsessing over. One might say I am obsessed with Heath at Every Size, or that I am obsessed with how awesome my friends are, or that I am obsessed with Diane and Heather's wedding and how awesome it is going to be or that I am obsessed with chunky, bearded guys. I freely and happily admit I am obsessed with these things. 

It's when I get obsessed with actual thing-things that I start to get... well... insane. And hence worried.

Recent obsession: this jacket.

Here are the reasons I am in love with this jacket: I have only owned 2 items in khaki my whole life: two pairs of ill-fitting pants I had to wear while I worked at Starbucks. Those pants, by the time my tenure at Starbucks was (thank god) finished were covered in coffee and tear stains. Coffee, from, well, the coffee, and tears from the times I would cry because my manager would tell me I needed to make the coffee drinks faster. Eventually I did. And by "made coffee drinks faster" I mean I made up coffee drinks. I had/have no clue what was supposed to go in half the drinks I made, so I just put in whatever struck my fancy. This was not a good Starbucks career move. They gave me fewer and fewer shifts until I just quit. 

But back to khaki. Whenever Soul Twin wears her khaki trench coat I think, "She looks so classy!" But every time I try on a khaki trench coat and look in a mirror I think, "Well, this isn't me." But did you notice the ruffles? It's a KHAKI TRENCHCOAT WITH RUFFLES. And you know what's all over the back of the coat (which I can't figure out how to capture an image of)? MORE. RUFFLES. When I first saw this on the interwebz I thought, "Huh. I like that." So I emailed it to myself so I could look at it the next day. And then I looked at it the next day (being today), and I have become obsessed with this coat. Literally obsessed.

Let me explain.

I am so obsessed with this coat that I feel if I do not purchase it right now it will be a significant life loss. 

Like if I don't have some sort of guaruntee that this coat will be mine I. WILL. DIE.

Ridic.

Here's the thing: I have recently bought a lot of clothes. Like a lot. I have a spent a lot of money on those clothes. I have almost bankrupted myself buying clothes. And about a week ago, with $1.50 in my bank account (shameful, I know) and my credits cards safely out of my grasp I decided I had to be done buying clothes. Because it was either clothes or food. And I might be slightly addicted to buying dresses, but I also kind of need to eat. So yes, the coat is on sale for $35. But  I could buy a lot of eggs and sprouted grain bread and lentils and veggie sausage and coffee with that. And I can live without that coat, but I can't live without my coffee.

But the point of this post isn't to discuss why I should or shouldn't buy the coat. It's to explore this seemingly manic need I have for things and the belief that these things will change the very definition of who I am. As though if I had a ruffley, khaki trench coat I would have all the classiness of Soul Twin with the all the immature, silliness of myself. As though, if I can just have and wear that coat, I will be my best and truest self. It sounds silly to write this out. But in my gut, I feel it. If I can just look the right way, I will be the right way. I will be put together. Men will want me. Women will want to be me. If I can just have that stupid, ruffley trench coat.

I keep thinking of an early episode of Mad Men when Don Draper gets high with his mistress's hippy friends. When the friends find out he is in advertising, one of them says, "You make the lie. You invent want."

So, I could try to opt out of this want-inventing system. But the (terrifying) reality of the system is that it is inside of me. It is embedded in my psyche: if I can look a certain way, I will be that way. What else would explain a sickening feeling in my stomach when I think about not obtaining a silly coat (a feeling that, even as I prove the silliness of the want, I STILL WANT)? It is overwhelming. 

I have lately been trying to pay attention to what happens in my body before I act compulsively, whether it regards food or coats or whatever. If it is something I do not, in my logical mind, need, how do I convince my huge feeling heart that I do not need it? A brownie or a coat or a new dress or new shoes or a new bike or whatever it may be. In my heart it FEELS like need. 

But it is not need.

Sometimes when I think of the things I want for my life, they are physical things: a condo in JP and children and husband and dog and all that. But sometimes, I just have to tell myself that what I want more than ANY one thing is to feel free from want. And contrary to what our culture would like us to believe, obtaining what we want does not free us from want.

Maybe in a moment of weakness I will buy that coat. And I will forgive myself and enjoy it and move forward if I do. But in the meantime, I will continue to remind myself that the only real freedom from want is truth and joy.

The Truth is that coat will not make my life everything I want it to be.

The Joy is the hope of someday having control over my compulsive behaviors.

And that, my friends, is how you overthink things.

The. End.

Blog Marriage

Well, friends, I have decided to once again become a one-blog-woman and officially combine my two blogs. Things Deb Loves is, once again, the only blog in my life. Does this mean it will return to only being about loving ridiculous things? 

Well, no.

I started Things Deb Loves at a time in my life when the only things to love were my friends (including two co-workers who kept me from killing myself at a job for which I was truly not suited (Zoe and Maribel FTW!!!!)), and I needed the light silliness of children's lunchboxes and videos of laughing babies. Not to say I don't still need those things. I certainly do. It's just that I don't want to feel separated into two people: a serious, contemplative fat activist and a light-hearted, giggly 30-year-old child. I want to be able to be ALL those things at the same time. In addition, as Soul Twin pointed out, I LOVE emotional processing so why shouldn't I be doing it on this blog of love? 

So I'm going to. 

I apologize if that turns off any of my readers (all 37 of you), but I certainly hope you stick around. 

Today Elizabeth asked me a very simple question that could've been answered in one word. I mis-heard the question and gave a 5-minute answer. I feel this explanation is a too lengthy response to a question you didn't even ask, but I am nothing if not verbose, and I'm sure you aren't surprised.

This is Nourishment

Today I was walking to the the mini fridge on my floor to get my afternoon snack when I was struck with a feeling of normalcy.

As I mentioned before I have struggled with some very disordered eating since a very early age. Food has always been about so much other than food. It is pleasure, punishment, and distraction all at the same time. In the past, when I was feeling sad or overwhelmed, I would want to eat a pan of brownies so that I could experience the pleasure of eating something delicious, while punishing myself (my body is very sensitive to large amounts of sugar and wheat), followed by a period of obsession over how many brownies I ate, as well as a ghastly stomachache. But then the stomachache would wane, and I would be left with regret over my sometimes masochism and frequent incapability to really care for myself.

It amazes me how valuable it is to learn how to dialogue with oneself. It is not that I don't binge eat anymore, though I do it much, much less; it's just that I know how to come back from it. Years (or months) ago, a night of binge eating would lead to a week or weeks of more binge eating. And the longer it went on the harder it was to come back from. But I feel now as though I have some idea of how to talk to myself about the binge: to frame it as self-care (learned from Geneen Roth), to drink a lot of water, to journal, to combat the thoughts of "you don't know how to care for yourself" with viable proof that I most clearly do know how to care for myself.

I keep wondering how I got here from there. How I got to a point where there is an element of true nourishing when it comes to food, if even just for one snack. I suppose it has to do with the work I've done to love my body just as it is. It has to do with how I clothe and wash myself. It has to do with letting my body be, with letting her want or reject whatever she needs. It has to do with all the times I let it be okay that I ate ice cream every day for a week or had two cupcakes (or four) at a party. It has to do with the freedom to have cream in my coffee and to sometimes drink that coffee in bed, in my pajamas, even though I should be doing other things. It has to do with riding my bike, with feeling connected to the world through that little 15 pound mass of metal and rubber. In yoga, I felt connected to the earth. But when I am biking I am a part of the whole round world. On my bike, as I learn to yell at drivers about to hit me and ride in a lane clearly designed for cars, I am learning how to protect myself, how to take up space in the world. It has to do with going to my dance class and seeing my body in the mirror, back fat and stomach fat and bruised, scarred legs, and thinking, "that is MINE." And then plie-ing like I am a graceful swan. Because I am. Just a fat one.

What else have I done?

Lots of crying. And talking. Lots of eating. Lots of drinking. Lots of journaling and biking and sad dancing and happy dancing and online shopping. Lots of reading. Lots of reading the same thing over and over until I get it. Lots of hugging. Lots of anger. Lots of forgiveness and grace.

And then today I got hungry so I walked to the little mini-fridge to get my yogurt and honey, mixed together in a little tupperware this morning, and I ate it, and I licked the top of the tupperware cause it was so delicious, and I wasn't thinking about anything else, just how delicious that yogurt was. Every meal or snack is not like this. But this one was. And there have been others like it. And there will be more.

I am now going to complain about something really dumb.

So I love skirts/dresses/tights. I also love being hydrated. But the combination of the two is just not conducive to ease when it comes to peeing. For example, today I am wearing my new bird dress which I love. But it requires that I wear tights (as it's cold and rainy out today) as well as a slip so that the dress doesn't stick to the tights. Also my dress is made up of a long camisole dress type thing and then the chiffon-y dress part with the actual bird print (there are probably technical terms for all this crap that I don't know). In addition the actual dress part ties in the back which means there are strings dangling by my butt. All of this combined makes for a very difficult bathroom experience.

1) Lift slip and skirt

2) Get the tights down just enough so I don't pee on myself but not so much that I have to work hard to pull them up.

3) Pull the back of both skirts over my head so that the ties in the back don't fall in the toilet.

4) Do business without letting the skirts pulled over head also fall into toilet with ties.

5) Pull up underpants.

6) Work hard to pull up tights (even though you hardly pulled them down to avoid this).

7) Pull down and adjust slip.

8) Adjust long camisole thing.

9) Adjust actual bird dress.

And then do this every hour.

It is a choice I make, but is it obnoxious as hell.

The End.

Being Told I'm Beautiful By Strangers

Last night my glorious roommate and I had our first official roommate date. My friend Zoe had given us her BSO tickets to see YoYo Ma since Zoe was sick at home with a sinus infection, so Steph and I decided to make the most of it. We both came home from work, changed into some cute outfits, put on makeup. We even decided to drive into town and pay for parking so we could wear high heels (well worth it!!!). As we left the house I was thinking to myself, "We are the most attractive people in the world right now," a thought I haven't had in a while but a thought PenPen, Soul Twin and my Biscuit will remember well.

While walking down the stairs in the parking garage we ran into a woman who exclaimed, "You look so nice!" It took me a second to realize I didn't know her. She just wanted to shout about our beauty. Duh.

Now I've written about fat shaming, about cruel things that have been said to me by people I've never met. Another incident happened just the other night as I was riding my bike to my bike maintenance class. But for all the negative stranger experiences I've had many complimentary ones as well. 

It's picture story time!!

On my way to my darling Heidi's wedding a very handsome man kept smiling in my direction on the bus. As we exited the bus he caught up with me, just to say, "You are very pretty." And though I was already quite confident I looked amazing, it was nice of him to notice.

I was walking around a mall once when a woman stopped me to tell me I had beautiful eyes.

I was walking through Harvard Square when a woman stopped to ask me where I got my hair cut.

And then there was my magical JP day when a woman stopped me to comment on how great my new headband looked.

So yeah, sometimes dudes in cars/trucks can be super douches. But sometimes strangers can be/think I am lovely.

And today, well, I kind of agree with them.

How Mr. Bates Made Me Cry or Why Downton Abbey is Awesome

I was at a small get together at a friend’s house on Sunday and overheard a conversation between two women. One woman, explaining what she did for work, said, “I deal with research on different diseases. You know, cancer, obesity... things like that.” I responded to this by saying very loudly, “OBESITY IS NOT A DISEASE,” which was, of course, followed by an awkward silence.

My grandmother died of cancer in 2004. She was first diagnosed with Breast Cancer years before. She went through Chemo, and her cancer went into remission. Then it moved down into her intestines, and it never stopped spreading. My grandmother was a lifetime member of Overeaters Anonymous, and I remember, when she was still lucid, she would joke that it took chemotherapy to get her to her goal weight (it makes me sad to think that my grandmother was struggling her entire life to attain a weight that she could only get to by dying). 

As far as I know (and to be honest I could be totally wrong as I know not a thing about science) it is unknown what causes cancer. Yes, there are correlations, but it is very unclear why some people get cancer and others do not. 

Fatness is similar. Some bodies are fat and some are not. It is not known why some bodies are fat and some are not because, contrary to what most people would believe to be true, not all fat people eat more and exercise less than thin people. There are so many different components of fatness: genetics, environment, stress, lifestyle. 

This is the only way in which fatness is similar to cancer. 

To call Obesity a disease is, if you ask me, kind of insulting to other diseases. My fatness is not the same as my grandmother’s cancer. Or a brain tumor. Or this child’s disease. And though I have more body fat, my fat is not slowly killing me (whatever the media would want you to believe). I do not feel weak. I do not feel sick. My body is able to digest food, to move, to function properly in every way. My body is not, in anyway in fact, diseased and to call it such is insulting.

I am going to let you in on a secret: everybody dies. From the minute our bodies are fully formed they are deteriorating, some faster than others. We want to think that if we can make our bodies a certain way that somehow we will have some control over our own demise, and though that is true to a certain extent, whether I or anyone else wants to extend or shorten their life is just none of your goddamn business. Maybe I will die from a heart attack in the next 10 years. Maybe I will get hit by a bus on my bicycle. Maybe I will live to be a fat 82-year-old just like my dad. Or maybe I will get an actual disease. I just don’t know. No one does. 

I’ve been watching Downton Abbey with my glorious roommate. There is a character named Mr. Bates who has a pronounced limp from a war injury and walks with a cane. Mr. Bates is handsome and kind, but many of the staff look down on him for his limp. They assume he can’t do certain things even though he can. He decides he will attempt to fix it. He goes to a store where he purchases a terrible metal contraption that, if tightened a certain amount everyday, claims to correct limps. Mr. Bates wears it. Throughout the episode we see him in terrible pain. Finally he shows his leg to the housekeeper, Mrs. Hughes. His leg is bloodied and raw. We then see Mrs. Hughes marching Mr. Bates out to the lake carrying his limp corrector. She hands it to him to throw into the water and as he goes to throw it, stops him, saying, “No. Say your speech.”

Mr. Bates says, “I promise I will never again try to cure myself.”

You say obesity is a disease?

My response is: what Mr. Bates said.

My Gray Hairs

I have the equivalent of a curly bob, but, since my hair is, as I said, curly, it pretty much just does whatever it wants.

This morning, distracted by an early phone call from my mom and subsequently finding a $200 round trip plane ticket to fly home for Christmas, I forgot that this morning I was supposed to wash my hair. Needless to say I figured this out way too late to truly remedy it.

NOT TO FEAR. Curly hair is great when it's dirty. AND Curly hair can look messy and put together at the same time. It's awesome. So I pinned my hair back using about 50 bobby pins and set off to work.

Two hours ago I decided the bobby pins were hurting my head, so I removed them all. This is what it looked like.

Hells to the yes.

Let me tell you why I love this picture.

1)  My hair is ridiculous

2) You can clearly see that one of my eyes is bigger than the other.

3) You can clearly see the scab from a pimple that was above the right (my left) eyebrow.

4) You can CLEARLY see my gray hairs.

AREN'T. THEY. GLORIOUS.

I went through about a two week phase where I hated my gray hairs. You know, about to turn 30, getting old blah blah blah. But no lie, I love them now. And it is for no reason other than that they just look so cool.

And I love this photo.

This is an Angry Post

I have been or felt fat my entire life. I developed a binge eating disorder when I was 10 (that is at least the first time I remember looking forward to everyone being gone from the house so I could eat whatever I wanted) and by the time I was 16 I was a size 20 and weighed 250 pounds. I thought I was a big, fat piece of sh*t. I am being candid here. I fantasized about what it would be like to be thin. About the person I would be, the things I would do, the people who would be inextricably drawn to me. Whenever anything in my life would go wrong it was clearly my body’s fault. Clearly.

Three years ago, I started Weight Watchers. I lost 60 lbs. and all of the sudden I was available to the world. Every one told me how great I looked. I could shop in normal stores. I tried running. I did Yoga 6 days a week. Did I mention everybody kept telling me how good I looked? Cause they did. Over and over again. My weight loss was even a rather common topic of conversation. I am not saying this judgmentally towards those with whom I had the conversations but factually. I and everyone else talked about it. A lot.

But here’s the thing I want everyone to know. Even when I was thin I wanted to be thinner. It wasn’t enough. Even when I was thin I would binge eat. Even when I was thin I was worried no one would ever be attracted to me. Even when I was thin boys didn’t ask me on dates. I went to Yoga, and yes, I did/still do love doing Yoga, but I would freak out when I would miss a class because I was worried I had somehow lost that all the important muscle mass that would keep me from getting fat again. I was obsessed with not getting fat again. OBSESSED. I read Health at Every Size for the first time when I was at my thinnest and the book made me terrified that my set point weight was above my current weight. Anxiety-attack terrified. Couldn’t-sleep-at-night terrified.

And then I hurt myself. I fell up an escalator and dislocated my shoulder, an injury I still deal with today. I couldn’t do Yoga, at least not how I wanted anymore. So then I started gaining weight. It was slow. But over the course of the past two years I have gained back every pound I lost. This is while trying different dietary eliminations to keep the weight off, and trying Weight Watchers again. And then I read Health at Every Size for the second time, once again a 250 pound woman wearing a size 20, and I actually got it.

This is what I got:

My weight has no bearing on my health, IF (and only if) my habits are healthy. 

If I am eating the foods my body wants in the amounts she wants them, if I am moving consistently, if I am dancing and riding my bike and experiencing love and joy and good things then my weight has no bearing on my health.

Being thin will not get me the things I want. 

And this is contrary to everything you will probably ever hear from the media. To be honest I have more of the things I want now that I am fat again because I don’t have to wait for my body to look a certain way to have them.

Being thin will NOT HEAL DISORDERED EATING. 

Not every fat person has an eating disorder, but I know a fair number who do. Restricting your caloric intake and upping your exercise, even if it results in temporary weight loss, will never heal an eating disorder. Ever. My binge eating was worse than it had ever been when I was thinnest because I was so obsessed with the amount of calories I was eating as they pertained to how I looked.

Loving my body has brought me an incredible amount of joy. 

I love my body. I love what she can do. I love what she looks like. I LOVE how wide my hips are, and how strong my legs are. And apart from what she looks like I love that she houses me so well. I love that she reflects the largeness and delicacy of my spirit and of my heart.  I am proud of her.

Why do we all want to lose weight so badly? We want to be enough. We want to be loved or admired or beautiful or healthy or whatever other words our diet obsessed culture tells us we can be if we are just thin enough. But what if we could be all those things right now? Wouldn’t that be worth transferring all the effort we have been putting into wishing our bodies were different into enjoying our bodies for what they are?

I think it would be.

It was for me.

Feist

DISCLAIMER: This blog contains BLATANT artist worship.

Back in 2005, I was working at my very first full-time job at Boston University. I don't remember if I saw the video or the iPod commercial first but either way I heard Feist's "1234" and thought, "Isn't that catchy?" I went to iTunes and the album cost $8 so I bought the whole thing instead of just that catchy song.

Isn't the video fun? I am assuming that all those colorful dancing people are all coming out of her blue sparkly jumpsuited self. I probably think this because I am pretty sure that a myriad of people of different races, ages, and body sizes wearing different colored outfits run around in my blue sparkly jumpsuited self too. Reason 1 of a thousand I love Feist.

So I bought The Reminder. And I listened to it. I had grown up listening to Phantom of the Opera and was obsessed with Showtunes through High School (I still maintain "One Day More" from Les Miserables is one of the most exciting musical moments in any musical EVER). I loved Radiohead (duh) but they were the only band I really listened to. The first album I ever bought was whatever Ace of Base album had "The Sign" on it. I would listen to the radio while driving around in my '85 powder blue dodge caravan so popular music to me was Britney Spears or that "Meet Virginia" song by Train.

Needless to say I didn't know pop music could sound like Feist. I didn't know lyrics could be that lovely and sad and wonderful and honest. So I listened to it again and again and again. I listened to it on repeat at my desk so often that my dear friend Caitlyn, who's job had her sitting 5 feet away from me and who had already heard of Feist, came to hate the album, something I still feel a bit bad about. 

It is times like these I wish I had some sort of pop music vocabulary so I could talk about why I loved this album so much. If I were Pier or Maloneykins I would (as they are the smartest music lovers I know) but since I am me, all I can say is that it felt like my whole heart and body was engaged in listening. 

While listening to this album on repeat, I met two people who knew pretty much everything about Indie music: a man who worked in the Art Gallery downstairs who burned me CD after CD (Vampire Weekend, Cat Power, and a mix featuring The New Pornographers and the Arcade Fire among others), and a dear woman named Alex who burned me Let It Die, Feist's first album, Shallow Grave by the Tallest Man on Earth, and the self-titled album of the Fleet Foxes. I MEAN, COME ON. 

So, needless to say, when I heard she had a new album coming out, I was nervous. What if it wasn't good? What if I hated it? Could I EMOTIONALLY HANDLE THE DISAPPOINTMENT?!?!?

My worries were unfounded. Metals. Is. Brilliant.

Yesterday I read an interview with Feist in the New York Times. In it she says,

“I always think about how I’m in my room alone writing... and eventually most people listen to music alone. So there’s actually a quiet little direct line between writing and listening. It’s a strange bubble of solitude, because you’re linked, but you don’t know each other, yet you’re communicating.” 

She. Is. Genius.

The point. Leslie Feist was the first artist I really ever loved, and I feel like myself and all those who get to listen to her music and experience her as an artist are so very lucky. Any knowledge or love I have of popular music is because I loved her first.

In conclusion, I love her. In an unapologetically idealistic, romanticized way.

The. End.