The Dark Side

I have joined the dark side. I have became a dieter. I had vowed never to become one of THOSE people. You know, the kind that look at you with so much painful longing thinly veiled as self-control and superiority as you eat a scone from Starbucks. They say things like “you do know that that has about 500 calories in it, don’t you.” Yeah, that’s me. In fact a Starbucks scone ranges from 440 to 520 calories according to their website, I looked it up.
Its not that I think I’m fat. Its not that I just want something to bitch about (although that’s a big plus) its mostly just that everyone is getting married and I am gearing up for the wedding season. I am attempting to lose all the weight I have gained and memorize a monologue which describes howutterly fabulous my life is. I need to impress all those people who I was once friends with. All those people who moved away and most likely do live utterly fabulously lives will be there and they need to walkaway from the experience believing that all their efforts to be betterthan those of us who stayed in T-town are for naught. Mostly my big thing is that I did not stay in T-town either. No one with a single iota of self esteem simply stays here. I, like most of us who reside here now, left for periods of time; sometimes months sometimes a year or more. The reason I have something to prove is that I did not fly in here on a plane toting my diploma and a slew of job offers, leaving behind all the trendy sparkle makeup and clothes I loved in college. I do not drive my fancy dream car from my fancy job to my fancy condo stopping at my fancy gym on the way to work off all the fancy coffee I have to drink to keep my fancy ass moving in my fancy, fancy life! Instead I came home in a u-haul. My mother flew in, packed my broken life up, smiled sympathetically at me and my dog and drove us and all the evidence of my failure as a human being back to my parents' house. My father helped me unpack the slim leftovers of a life I had really left with my ex in some godforsaken dustbowl of a red state. In short, I came back with my tail between my legs. This unproud moment gives me something to prove. Maybe it is because I was supposed to get married first, maybe because I have always had a little less money and a little lower grades, maybe because I drink more or have slept with more men or done more drugs or crashed more cars, maybe it is because I still want everyone to like me. I'm not quite positive what the real reason is but I do know that when all the friends I had in high school clean up their boyfriends and hop on a plane back to T-town, I want to be here waiting, looking better than they do in a summer dress. Do you think that this makes me a bad person, wanting to out do everyone in at least one aspect of my life that does not actually make them think less of me? I have been able to out drink everyone foryears now. I think my real problem is that 3 of myfriends called me this week to complain about problems I dream of having (like hating the dealership you lease your Lexus from, or having the hot tub on the roof of your condo not work on the forth ofJuly or getting lost in Beverly Hills because that is where you bought your wedding dress) and my problems are more like my uncle died and I can't afford a house I would like living in.