Yes. I know. Women can be and often are quite hairy (contrary to many depictions of them), so having body hair is not inherently male (save for its prominence on the face), but that doesn't change my personal aesthetical feeling, in that smooth skin feels soft, inviting, and feminine, whereas hairy, saaaaaaaaaaaay, legs, feels like "OH GOD WHYYYYY...", and while I'm pretty much positive I couldn't care less about hair on OTHERS (who knows? I lack experience altogether so it might turn out that I actually enjoy the tactile sensation of hair more than skin when touching someone; I won't actually know until I've had that first-hand experience so I'm sure not going to be biased one way or another about another person's preferences for their body), when touching MYSELF, hair is just...
Bleh.
Soyeah. I need to shave my body hair. All of it. Because everything is growing, on basically my whole body. I'm fortunate genetics haven't cursed me with a hairy back or chest, but I still have some patches of hair ON my chest. That's one of the worst spots, but I'm really not fond of exposing hair legs...
...Which I do each time I take my workout pants off. And at this time of year at these temperatures, that's all the time, not just at work. (Also not helping things: either the pants never fit me at all in the first place, or they used to but the elastic wore out, so they're too loose now and tend to fall down on their own.)
Given the circumstances, I feel as good as I can. The new gear is lighter than my old clothes, yet feels more feminine. And BOY you should see the shirt I have on as I'm writing this. The combination of red and black is almost exactly as I envisioned Ruby's jacket to be! (This was a contributing factor to me making the purchase in the first place.)
There's no black on the shoulders or across the collarbone (nor are there black pockets, as this jacket lacks pockets altogether), and the zipper's red instead of gray (though to be honest, I only made Ruby's zipper gray to have it stand out from the red/black surrounding it), but otherwise the colors are literally identical to how I envision her outfit.
It even has a black collar in the inside, with red on the outside, exactly like I originally pictured her hoodie to be! (Now granted that may not have been kept, would need to check my art to confirm, butstill my intention was inside = black, outside = red for the hood of the hoodie.)
Now the collar might not exactly be equivalent to a hood, but for me I consider it to be an equivalent 'appendage' on a piece of clothing, as it were, outfit-wise. Hoodies don't really have that distinctive collar in them. Jackets without hoods near-universally have collars; jackets with hoods near-universally don't have collars. Ergo, collars and hoods are basically mutually exclusive because they are the same 'limb' of an upper-body outerwear: the bit around the neck.
It feels neat to wear (it's smooth, it's thin, it's flexible), it's got awesome colors, it's a perfect fit for me (I lucked out and got exactly the size I needed), it feels great, it's just the perfect thing to wear and I could wear it all day. (In fact for today I might do exactly that. I shouldn't wear it overnight and I should only wear it for work because this is a semi-official jacket, but I can let myself wear it a little bit after work, if only just this once.)
Also, in health news, my weight is back up to 138! Almost 139 actually. Now, admittedly. I did what you're not supposed to do: I took this recording very shortly before going to bed last night, rather than taking it basically first-thing in the morning today. (The time you're supposed to weigh yourself and the time that I typically do.) So the reading might not quite be right. Still. Within a reasonable margin of error. It's safe to say that I'm back up in weight.
Of course, stiiiiiiiiiill underweight overall, and my parents are gone for a week so we'll have to see what that does to my weight (I don't think I'll eat less, I might actually eat more, but it's a question of whether what I'm eating is enough because my diet tends to be rather monotonous when I'm left to my own devices meaning that without parents around to cook I might have a lower calorie intake in spite of having a higher food intake), but that's better than where I was, so...progress! I hope.
Plus! My feet are actually feeling better! Now, they're not fully recovered. They're not fully healed. But I feel like they're healing on their own. I took care to not use them that much. The few times I did use them, I was practicing walking with a slightly-exaggerated-feminine-style (essentially swinging my hips as I take steps), which has a bonus of changing where the pressure points of my feet are.
I think one of the possible problems is that with my normal default walking style, the pressure points are...unsurprisingly, at the spots I'm having trouble with. The ring-finger-foot-area, with a slight lean towards the pinkie toe.
Now. I'm pretty sure that's backwards from what you're supposed to have (I'm reasonably sure the big toe is supposed to come first), but I think my normal walking style does in fact involve small-to-big in terms of the rolling onto the ground effect. My body is weird. It has all sorts of backwards things going on in it. We've seen a foot doctor to correct my walking before at least once since it had been noted that there was something off about my steps.
Still. If the problem is that I normally step on that section of the foot. My point is that the problem was fixed with exaggerated hip movements, as that placed me as moving onto my big toe first, essentially. (I hope that's not actually a bad thing, because it felt good to do that. Kinda sorta made my hips hurt since I'm using muscles I don't use often enough, but the legs otherwise felt great.)
Overall...today is shaping up to be a good day. I might have a date with one of my girlfriends; I'll need to confirm plans with her to be sure. And yes. While I imagine my blog readership consists entirely OF said two girlfriends, I still write this blog with at least the theory of having readers outside of them. So with that in mind, I feel obligated to explain:
Yes, you're really reading that right. Yes, it means exactly what you think it means: no, I'm not referring to "girls who're friends". I have WAY more than two girl friends. But I have two, and only two, girlfriends. As in, two significant others. Two people I am dating. And I love them both. Not hippie love. I have platonic love to many people. But I legitimately, genuinely, fell in love with two different individuals, and them, with me.
My relationships are still both young. In their infancies, even. But by god I want this to work out because I absolutely don't want to lose either of them and I don't know what I would do if I ever did. Actually. I kinda do. And that thought scares me even more. (I'm about to go dark on you but keep reading I swear I'll get lighter again. Bear with me for a bit, this will take some explaining and you'll need to read the whole thing to get my message.)
It terrifies me, even. I'm new to love. This is the first time I've felt this emotion in my life, and I'm blessed to have felt it for two people and to have them reciprocate. I've had crushes, girls I liked, but I've never actually loved someone before, yet now I am. Love is scary in of itself, and especially this part of love, because I know just how badly it can end if things go wrong.
There are hundreds of ways for things to go wrong; there's only a handful of ways for things to go right. And if things do end up at any point leaving me dealing with heartbreak...well. I could end up coping with it the same way I would death. Albeit, this would make me look like a jerk because it'd give the impression I never cared, never loved, which couldn't be further from the truth.
...It's just that this would be the better option because the alternative is so much WORSE. For those who need a refresher on how I deal with death, it's largely influenced by my autism. Essentially, it makes me look like, "Oh. It is what it is." That what happen(s/ed), happen(s/ed); nothing we can do will change anything about that.
For death, this is already something which can be disturbing, sure, but when you get the full picture it mostly just becomes a quirky upbeat view essentially of taking the world as it is, all the bad and the good and holding faith in death having an influence on creating meaning in life.
...For a relationship. There's...not that same tune. It's terrifying, horrifying, to think about. The thought that if I experience the pain of loss, I could attempt to seal it all away and never acknowledged it, saying nothing except that it happened and is gone now.
Some might consider that nonchalant attitude a blessing--it's not; if that were to happen, it'd be a curse, a living hell. A Lumineers line stands out to me: It's better to feel pain, than nothing at all; The opposite of love's indifference. Because the pain wouldn't go away. It couldn't ever. It'd simply be repressed, pushed down, pushed aside, and make things worse for me because of me ignoring it while it influences my life since an emotion that strong simply can't react well to being removed from center stage.
The reason this would be preferable though, is that the only other way I could realistically see me handling a loss is that instead of my autism being in control, having my BIPOLAR DISORDER driving my emotional reactions. And were that to happen, the absolute best case scenario would be depression bad enough to cause me to shut down, to close myself off and atrophy from the world, to become more introverted, to become more reclusive, to stop doing tasks that I have been, and so on and so forth.
I don't even want to think about the worst-case scenario for what would happen if I experienced a loss. Yet with luck, I'll never need to. It might be true that there are hundreds of ways for things to go wrong and only a handful of ways for things to go right.
But I've got a few things going for me which at least somewhat, hopefully, tip the scales back in our favor of things not getting screwed up beyond repair. All of us want to make this relationship work. And despite how in many ways I am in my infancy in this sort of affair...despite me knowing just how easily it is for there to be hurt.
I can describe my feelings thusly: I will never stop loving them. Ever. No matter what. No matter what happens, good, bad, ugly, doesn't matter what they say, what they think, what they feel. That emotion won't fade. It couldn't. It might come in waves of strength, where sometimes I am really passionate and sometimes I am still in love with them but yet I don't have the capacity to really do much with it. That comes with the territory of my emotions in general since like it or not I am bipolar (and autistic on top of that), a bad mix since I tend to not handle things consistently.
I can collapse. I can become a mess. I could maybe theoretically enter a time period where I feel smothered. (No, my two lovelies, you don't have to worry about smothering me any time soon. <3 I don't feel that way even remotely right now. But I could theoretically feel that way some time in the future and that's something that I feel there should be awareness of as a possibility. Hopefully one which never manifests, yet something which is not outside the realm of happening at some point.)
I can have any number of reasons why I couldn't give them what I need to give them, especially if we have bad timing. (For instance, a moment where they would need me, but where I wouldn't be able to help because of me needing help; this kinda sorta came close to happening once already.) Those kinds of disasters could happen. Where my love of them wouldn't be as self-evident as it should be. Where they would come to doubt me.
That is something that could happen. Yet I can give my word. The emotion won't go away. I love them. I will never stop loving them. If something happens, I would manage to live. They say they don't love me, something causes a divide where even in spite of loving each other we still split up, something disastrous happens such as them passing away, doesn't matter. The love would remain.
And I think ultimately. I would find a way to continue on. Still loving them, but accepting whatever had happened which would have separated us. Somehow. I would figure out how to survive. So they wouldn't need to worry about me. They wouldn't feel the need to force something they don't want, for my sake. They wouldn't be miserable to not hurt me, because they'd know that I'd be okay.
I know that slightly contradicts what I said before. But this is more or less the overall way I feel. And I believe they've both expressed at least vaguely similar feelings to my own. And it's with this that I have the confidence we will make it through. Because while our emotions might be a bit young. While we might not be able to fix every problem.
We are trying. We are working hard. We have put thought into things. We're communicating (maybe not quite enough, hard to say, is there ever a point where we'd actually be talking enough and if so would that even be feasible because I imagine that we could talk literally all day every day and still not fix all potential problems), and we have those feelings, those things which could potentially shift but can never go away.
So I hold hope that we will have this work.
And on that note.
As soon as this is posted, I'll be talking more with my girlfriends. <3