the patriarchy work retreat is drawing near so i'm eat home lounging in the spring sunlight and sorting old assignments for letters of recommendation. i'm taking my liberty with my feminist-sickness so i can have my feminist cake and eat it, too. and seriously, letters of recommendation are the worst. the three teachers i worked at length with have all retired, and there is one teacher left who is my lone hope but i think she will write me something good. at least i'm hoping, because it's seriously my last chance. i only took one class with her but i crushed it so i hope she will take pity on me. i had to have a come to jesus moment with myself that i need to pull up my bootstraps and just ask. here's to hoping i can find those old tests with 100%s on them.

i'm also watching wild. when i watched it in the theater i had been looking forward to it for months. it was a sunday morning and i was so relaxed and the theater was so empty--there were maybe one or two other people in there. right when the movie starts this guy comes in and sits not in the seat next to me but two seats over. this immediately set me on edge. he was muscly and very, very out of place in the theater where i and a few others were about to have this wrenching, beautiful heart-to-heart moment of healing with cheryl strayed and reese witherspoon.

he sat there and was kind of looking sideways at me (or was i exaggerating and imagining it?) and fiddling with his hands. does he have a knife? why the f is he in this movie and why would he sit next to me in an empty theater? the deep, uncomfortable irony of feeling this way in a movie that was ABOUT THIS was not lost on me. should i take my keys out? if he takes my purse or something then at least i have my keys. but if i do that will it let him know i suspect him? will it make him more irrational? i should take my phone out so i can at least call dh if something happens. i don't even know his phone number by heart so i'm screwed if this guy takes my phone. but will my nice phone just entice him? all i would need to do is run out into the theater lobby and management would help me, right? ........they would, wouldn't they?

maybe he's a film student. maybe he just really appreciates the book the way i do. maybe he's a rebellious, tender but really masculine film student who just wanted to watch wild on a sunday without his friends judging him.

no, i don't owe it to him to write safe, non-threatening narratives for him.

i'm still mad at that guy for putting me on edge for the rest of the movie. nothing happened and i bolted as soon as it was over, but could he really be that oblivious? could a guy watching wild really not understand that it was his responsibility to mind his own business and not make a woman uncomfortable?

the hobo times part was his favorite, if that counts for anything.

i'm still scared of guys in movie theaters and thinking about it today and i'm hiding in my house for a few days so i don't have to go to a gendered work retreat. i always feel like, for me, the line between self-care and being pathetic is extremely thin. maybe i'm just being seriously so pathetic right now. but the alternative, right now, is not worth it.