Pooh Bear, Prison Bars and Unrequited Love

And the last shall be first...

Yesterday I watched an episode of 7th Heaven that aired several weeks ago. Ruthie, the Camden's youngest daughter, is broken-hearted over hunky Martin, and her whole family not only knows, they comment on it. How sucky is that? On the other hand, they're concerned about her, and her father even holds her while she cries. And tells her she'll get through it. I can't even imagine what it would be like to have that kind of open family relationship. The only conversation I had with my mom about a boyfriend when something like this:

Mom: What's wrong with you?
Me: CK and I broke up.
Mom: Just as well. He was too young for you.
Me: (runs off in tears)

Thanks for the sympathy and understanding, Mom. Yeah, okay, CK was too young for me, and probably using me, but I was crazy about him, and the two months we were together were...heaven. I spent a very long time pining and yearning and crying and writing bad poetry and I did my best to keep my feelings to myself. I'd learned long before to keep everything inside.

According to Geneen Roth in When Food is Love:

Food and love. We begin eating compulsively because of reasons that have to do with the kind and amount of love that is in our lives or that is missing from our lives. If we haven't been loved well, recognized, understood, we arrange ourselves to fit the shape of our situations. We lower our expectations. We stop asking for what we need. We stop showing the places that hurt or need comfort. We stop expecting to be met. And we begin to rely on ourselves and only ourselves to provide sustenance, comfort, and pleasure. We begin to eat. And eat.

Which might be why I'm in the shape I'm in. A shape that, it appears, resembles a small, round bear named Winnie the Pooh. I've never seen myself as Pooh, so I think it must have been the lack of height and the profusion of belly that got me the lead role. The lead role! I'll get to be in the publicity photos. Looking all roly and poly. Lovely. That thing in my profile about "look good doing it"? A complete and total lie. Wonder if I can lose enough weight between now and opening night that some people might think that my roundness is due to padding?

And on a completely different note, I had orientation for prison volunteers the other night. It was mostly pretty boring. Three hours of lecture on the history of the prison, barely enlivened by a cheesy video called Lockup USA in which we learned, in great detail, the devious uses to which an inmate could put the handle from a soup ladle. "What they do, see, is they break off the ladle part, and then this handle here, they can sharpen it on the floor and then they'd have a weapon. This is good, sturdy metal right here, and you could just run this right through someone." Yeah, yeah, we get it: don't leave any soup ladles lying around.

The most exciting part of the evening was when we had to list what person we wanted the prison to contact should we be taken hostage. "Guess what, honey?" I said to JT when I got home. "If I should be taken hostage, the prison will call you. Actually, they'll send someone out to tell you in person." JT thought that was the least they could do.

I should be grateful for the training. Three hours, and then we're turned loose with the offenders. Staff members get 260 hours of training, and for the first three weeks on campus, they have an escort. They are not left alone with offenders. Volunteers get three hours and the knowledge that, should be taken hostage, "trained individuals will be working toward my safe release." As long as the hostage-takers don't want drugs, prisoner exchange, or release. In those cases, I'm out of luck.