life after 25.

the early weeks of my 25th year have been markedly strange. The number of people who have reached out and reconnected since the passing of this fateful birthday has left me feeling as though I require a translator who speaks life to explain to me what has gone on here.

At what point does something become more than a coincidence and turn into a sign, fate, destiny, whatever? And what is being said with these things. Is it a sign that I'm supposed to be here? A sign that I'm not? A sign to welcome them in or push them away? To reach out to someone I miss, or wait for them to come to me?

I don't remember ever having felt like my life looked so clear, and yet the things the clarity has revealed are...confusing. I am so interested to see what this means, where its going, or if its all a meaningless coincidence and life will carry on as usual.

This always reminds me.

The second sunny day of summer doesn't warm my body like the first.
It doesn't convince me to get out of bed, to brush my hair, to put on my shoes.
The second day only feels like having the flu and a broken heart.
Tuesday feels like the middle of nowhere.
Like being chased by my own tail.
Like following the summer sun as it sets behind the mountains and comes back up the other side.
Tuesday feels like every day ten times over.
The second snow of winter doesn't smell of romance like the first.
It feels like dread and wet feet and a sore throat.
Like dirty hands and no sink.
The second snow of winter feels like the second sunny day of summer might never come.

Transposition.

I don't really know what to say but for some reason I feel like I need to say something.

This is what I've got:

Its late when you call.
Maybe 4 am...how am I to know
As I answer the phone.
Your voice sounds like a driven country road on the other end
And just as far away
But I Feel your fingers on my ribs from here
And I don't know whether to weep or smile at this moment
where we are happy
The fear remains of the known - this probably won't last, but maybe this time it will.
You being on the other end means everything, though you'll maintain it was a late night mistake and keep telling me it won't happen again.
But we both know it will, and soon.
And you'll keep pretending it doesn't mean something, and I will keep pretending I don't know any better.
And I don't, really.
Because I keep answering the phone, and wondering if you truly don't know what that feeling is, or if you just don't know how to get the words out.
But I won't push, I'll just answer again.

Rape and Thank-you

If you don't know what I am talking about, then read this first.

I read a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff that could be categorized as social commentary, or maybe simply just human interest, I don't know. Generally I care a lot less about the 'what' and a lot more about the 'how' and the 'why' of things. I don't think it is unusual to think this way. Anyway, I read all of these things, and frequently I share them with people I know, who would agree or find it interesting. Sometimes they share things back.

Today a female friend passed along an article written in response to the recent ruling against two underage men (or boys? I have yet to decide how I feel most comfortable addressing them). I'm not sure if I would have ever found this article on my own, so I need to thank her for showing it to me.

After reading it, I was profoundly overcome. Most writing that makes me feel this way inspires me to pass it along to the next reader I feel might appreciate it. But it is on my facebook page. and now it is here, and millions of other places on the world wide web I'm sure. But I feel like I needed to say thank-you.

So, to Henry Rollins, thank-you. So frequently I find that men writing about women and their rights, no matter how well intentioned, remains to appear condescending, or like women "need" a man to speak up for them because they aren't capable of having a voice for themselves. I don't know whether or not any of this is true, but I do know that I really felt like an equal while reading this. And I felt so thankful to hear someone say that it is not okay for me to be treated like a possession, or like I had no emotions. That I am not something to be used in a play for power. Not that I haven't heard this before, just that I've never heard someone say it in a way that made me feel like they weren't talking about a baby or an animal.

So here is my two cents on the fight for feminism, I guess. I wouldn't really call myself a feminist in the typical sense. I mean, I want to be equal, but I guess I just don't see it as the battle that other women seem to observe. I'm probably being really naive in saying that. I guess what I figure is, that I was a woman who worked in a highly male dominated industry that I had to leave because I couldn't get the experience I needed. The reason I couldn't get that experience was because those with the power to provide it to me believed it wasn't safe for a young woman to be in that environment. They might have been right. I was small, not very physically strong, 22 and naive. I am still small and weak and naive. But even after that experience, I never really felt like I needed to become a feminist to defend my rights.   I sometimes think if women weren't so hard on each other it wouldn't be as bad - we aren't a very good team sometimes. I guess maybe I just haven't examined my femininity very personally before.

In his response, Henry Rollins asks the question of why women would dress so provocatively that they risk having a photo of their nipple taken, and suggests that men be subjected to the same insensitive practice. We dress this way because it makes us feel attractive. It is human nature, I guess, and fuck if I want to wear a 3 inch wide tube top to cover my nipples well that is a weird thing to do I guess but that sure doesn't mean I am forced to accept unwanted sexual solicitations, and that REALLY doesn't mean it is okay to rape me or otherwise defile my body in any way. And seriously, don't take pictures, and definitely don't post them on the internet. You will get caught that way. Honestly, that is really stupid.

I guess my deeper issue with this is that I feel most attractive when I expose my legs or my breasts or some other sexualized part of my body. I mean, I like the way I look, and I like to wear cut off shorts in the summer when its hot, but sometimes I would just like to wear a long sleeve, crew neck dress, and still feel sexy. Which is hard. And it really is because of men. Men make women feel like it is the exposure of skin and curves that make us attractive. Men have set that standard for us, we didn't choose it. Not each man specifically but this is so deeply ingrained in our society that there is pretty much no way it could ever be changed within my lifetime, or my kids lifetime, or their kids lifetime. But we have porn and strip clubs and rape and women will forever feel the need to wear fewer and fewer inches of fabric to cover their "wobbly bits" and thus feel attractive.

I really didn't expect this to be as long as it is now. I thought I just wanted to say thanks, but I guess I had a lot more on my mind than that. I don't mean to come off preachy or self-righteous, although it probably does because I have a way of doing that and then offending people. But really I just think this: I don't want to be raped. I don't want any of the girls I know to be raped. I don't even want the girls I know to feel like they have to reveal themselves in order to feel attractive. I think maybe if we talked more, if we educated more kids, if we had heroes of all races and sexes and religions, we would probably all be better people. I don't know what sort of scary environment would result in two boys raping a young girl, filming it, and laughing all the way through, but it makes so many parts of me hurt to imagine it.

Henry Rollins, thank you for making me realize all these things about being a woman tonight. I imagine that when people talk about men making women feel strong and powerful this is what they mean. I'm not going to show up to work tomorrow in a mini skirt, but at least I know that the next time I do decide to show some skin, I won't feel guilty about being mad at men who think I am "asking for it". 

Nobody asks for rape, because the minute you do it isn't rape anymore.

P.S. On the topic of the length of their sentence - its true that they likely wouldn't be more sorry for having served a longer sentence, but I just wish they could suffer in pain the way the girl whose life they have savagely broken will for the rest of her life. I want them in jail not so that they will learn, but so that they will suffer. I'm sick and twisted maybe, but thats what I would want. 

Now I will be different.

Now I will stand on this hill alone. beyond reach, beyond reproach.
I will stay here and reach down to the hands below me, but I will never come down.
I expect to remain until truly passionate, painful, dangerous, ruining, consuming, overwhelming, destroying love reaches up and pulls me down.
Then I will fall down the hill, feet first, then head, then feet again.
 I will be broken and torn and wrecked and bloody and barely able to stand again, these million pieces of me all left to belong to someone else.
Until then I remain, whole and alone, on my hill. To be touched but not yet broken.

Things I've learned today - February 7, 2013

- Sarcasm is a crutch, but its a great one.
- The best way to get out of answering the question "what are you doing?" is to answer it in the most immediate sense. When people really want to know about my current employment, relatiionship status, or otherwise, I prefer this conversation:
"what are you doing?"
"eating this handful of almonds."
I thank New Girl for this.
- Happiness, for me, is a job at Disney. not forever, but just to see what it would be like.
- I've always thought that the question of what one does for a living is as rude as asking how much a person makes. I don't ask it if I can avoid it. I thought I was strange for thinking this, but it turns out I'm not alone.

Some days I learn more things than others. Some days I am more willing to appreciate what I've learned. I need to try to be more conscious of this, remember it, and write it down, so that I can use those little things to create bigger ones.

When you don't think things could get any worse...

...they inevitably do.

I need to stop and be thankful for a moment that I have a roof over my head, food in my fridge, and the people I love are healthy.

But depression. Seriously. I described it recently as feeling as though you are living your life for someone else. You don't feel alive, you live because you have to, you live to get by. Its something nearly impossible to describe to people who haven't felt it before. David Letterman said to Oprah that depression feels like "you get on an elevator and the bottom drops out. You can't stand looking at the sunlight, you can't wait to get back into bed at night..." It sounds so simple yet its exactly true. Every time the sun shines it feels worse, like it is a reminder of how everyone else is so happy and excited to be out in the sun, and all you want to do is crawl back into the dark. Depression eats you from the inside.

I suffer from depression as a result of a generalized anxiety disorder with Obsessive Compulsive tendencies. The anxiety eats all your energy until you have nothing left but to remain in a depressive state. depression is almost a way of controlling the anxiety and OCD tendencies.

When I was first being diagnosed, I remember my doctor going through her litany of questions about how I feel and how I function. At one point early on she asked me "has anything happened that might have triggered these feelings?" I thought to myself "what hasn't happened?" There is always something - this break-up, that family tragedy, this loneliness, that homesickness, this fall out with a friend, that bad grade at school, this work problem....I had an endless stream of things that were causing me to feel this way. Everyone does, that is just how life works. It is full of ups and downs, and its all about riding those and getting stronger from them. My problem was not that these things were happening, it was my inability to cope. One small setback sent me into a tailspin, and if there wasn't something wrong I felt panicked and was sure that I was just waiting for the next thing to go wrong.

Right now it feels like I can't catch a break. I have moved back in with my parents, I have no job and no money, I have been dropped from the program I was hoping to take at school, and the guy I thought had great potential was less than kind about leading me on and then calling things off when his ex came back in the picture. None of it really sounds that bad. None of it really is that bad. But it feels like my world is ending, like I'm living for everyone else and not for myself.

I want to be able to write about how I have overcome this illness and now I live a happy life, but I can't yet. This is a really hard fight, harder than I ever thought it would be. I thought by acknowledging there was a problem and trying to get better everything would just get easier but it doesn't. It takes a fight, and I haven't won yet. I really hope I do someday, and I have to have faith in that, especially today when it feels like I'll never just be happy.

Someday I will write about my fight and what it took for me to be happy, but for now all I can say is that this is how I feel, and its awful, and I would give anything not to feel this way anymore.