It's so funny, working for Rob… I actually met him in 2009 at Texas Frightmare Weekend in Dallas. He was there promoting his film Laid to Rest and he started talking to my mom and I. We hit it off and I just really liked him; he came across as a genuine, fun guy with an awesome sense of humor. When I checked out his screening, I was really into the movie and told him so. I had no idea that it would lead to a four-year friendship and finally me becoming his personal assistant. Rob's kind of the example of a self-made man, since he came to Hollywood from a rural town in the deep South with eighty bucks in his pocket and a dream to do makeup effects. He has since become one of the most respected FX masters in the genre as well as a successful director on stuff like Teen Wolf, but he's still the same funny, smart, cool-as-hell guy I met in '09. We've been talking a lot at work and it's really helping me get through some rough patches.
My mom was one of Rob's biggest fans; she absolutely loved him. Every time he came to Texas Frightmare she'd make sure to put together a little gift bag for him with stuff like candy and hand sanitizer, and when we'd walk past his table she'd ask him if he wanted her to get him water or soda or a coffee or anything since he was busy signing autographs and couldn't always leave his spot. When we went to LA one time, Rob offered us a tour of his shop back when it was in the old location. Neither of us had ever been to a big working FX shop before, and we were thrilled to see all of the molds and severed heads and monsters lurking around every corner. Rob took pictures of us with the big demon beast from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and my mom carried their dog Slayer around the whole time.
Now it's funny, realizing that I'm actually a part of this now instead of just a big fan. I'm working alongside Rob every day, watching him piece together what I think is going to be one hell of a smart, fun, scary horror film, and it's like a dream come true for me. I've wanted this for my whole life and now I'm actually able to do it to some degree.
I am so far from religion that it's crazy; I can't remember the last time I prayed or anything similar. I gave up on most ideas of Christianity when I was much, much younger and the last straw was when we found out that mom's cancer was terminal. But I do consider myself agnostic, I don't know if there's a cosmic driving force out there or not, but it's kind of interesting to think about. I'm not going to go so far as to say that I KNOW there are no omnipresent beings out there. For all I know it's Cthulhu. But either way, I was driving yesterday and I started talking out loud. Talking to my mom, because it's so hard not to just pick up the phone and call her.
I know how proud she would be of me. She was always pushing me to go to LA, to move out here and chase my dreams, to run them to the ground and do something with myself. She was in love with Los Angeles; she and I used to walk down the boulevard, taking pictures, laughing, talking. She spent some of her childhood in Sacramento and California was always her home away from home; whenever we started to plan a vacation, it was always Los Angeles we mentioned first. She loved it here and I see her in every palm tree, in the hills, in the sparkle of the neon at night. I want to call her and tell her about the chilly canyons at night or the way I saw a coyote dart across the road one night driving home from a friend's house or the way I eat sushi and soy and tofu like it's going out of style. I want her to know that I am shopping in all of these cool little stores and spending long hours curled up in a dark smoky room with ominous music playing and Terminator statues in the corner, writing until the sky lightens to pre-dawn.
I know how much she loved Rob and loved playing 'mom' to him whenever she saw him; I know she would be so thrilled that I'm getting the chance to work beside him on this movie and that he's inspiring me to better myself, to strive for awesome things, to work hard and push my own limits and learn things faster than I'm used to simply because he believes I can do it and I don't want to let him down or give him a reason to think he made a bad choice in hiring me.
I think I miss her now more than I did when she first died and I was in that deep depression, because now I'm doing things. I'm living on my own, navigating a strange and beautiful city, absorbing everything about this place through my skin and eyes and ears, and she isn't here to share it with me. Some people will say "She is there with you" or "She does know, she's watching over you" but no one can be sure of things like that. Maybe when we die we watch over people and maybe we don't, maybe we just go back into the soil and that's where the story ends. But either way, I want to believe that she would be happy with the young woman I'm becoming, that she'd be proud of me. It keeps me going.
This depression hasn't really got its hooks in me yet, but it feels different than the others. I don't want to hurt myself or sabotage myself or whatever I always did before when I was depressed. I don't want to lie in bed and eat until my stomach cramps. I just want to write, or get out of the house and go explore the boulevard or go people-watch in a swanky little rockstar dive bar. I want to throw myself into life instead of pulling away from it. I want to laugh and love and find a place where I can realize She's gone but I'm going to be okay by myself and I think I'm almost getting there.
I feel like LA is where I belong. Of course I miss my Texas friends and what little family I have left, but this feels so much like a home for my heart. Everything about this place has enchanted me and I don't want to leave; just the idea of moving back to Texas right now makes my heart hurt a little.
I still feel out of sorts in my body. I don't like being naked with my boyfriend, even though he tries to make me feel sexy and tells me I am. It doesn't click, doesn't gel. All I see are my flaws. I know I've made progress, even the pictures with Rob are so hard to look at because I was fooling myself for years about how big I was, how big I was continuing to get. But now there is so much loose skin and I feel so self-conscious about it. Everyone can see it. It affects what I wear and how I wear it. It makes me feel ugly and like a freak.
But nothing's as bad as my stomach region. To the point where when someone hugs me around the middle I stiffen up. I think I was actually less self-conscious about my stomach when I was still fat.
It's just skin, there's nothing underneath it. I'm 213 pounds and if we cut the skin off I bet I'd be more like 180. This isn't even counting my ass/thighs, hips, calves, and all of the other places that are retaining extra skin and cellulite. And I have no idea if I can afford body contour surgery anytime in the future; that's about $20K at the very least, and I'd probably go home to Texas to do it simply for cost reasons.
I feel stupid being this vain when I've lost almost 150 pounds in a year. I should be excited; I should be thrilled about being on the 'thin' side of my life (even though I'm still big by any standards and a fucking elephant compared to most of LA), but instead I sit here pinching at the skin and wishing I had a way to just get it off me.
I don't know if I'll ever truly be happy with what I look like, or if I'll feel sexy or confident or beautiful. It would be nice, but it kind of feels like a mental block that I have no idea if I can get around or not.
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