So, remember when those Facebook surveys in "Notes" were like, the cooooolest thing ever? (And the biggest procrastinating tool, I might add) Well, I found one, and I am doing it, and taking it EXTREMELY seriously. ;)
1. Name: Jennifer Z
2. Age: 22
3. Best Friend/s: Everyone...but mostly Sydney Rae, Alaina, Mia, Mommy, and Daddy
4. Relationship Status: Single [and feeling like a loser every time I log onto Facebook and see ANOTHER person has gotten engaged, married, or had a baby.] But the joke's on you people, because while you are happily in love and sharing your life with someone, I have more wine to myself and never have to fight over which programs have priority in the dvr. HA!
5. Piercings You Have: Double Pierced Ears, but I used to have a pierced tragis, various cartilage piercings, and belly button
6. Piercings You Want: Absolutely none. I am rapidly approaching thirty.
7. Tattoos You Have: None
8. Tattoos You Want: Maybe a Harry Potter one, maybe none. It's a pretty permanent thing.
9. Favorite Blog: This one, DUH!
10. The Meaning Behind my URL: Um...all the other ones were taken?
11. Favorite Band at the Moment: Train. Favorite band of all time...not just the moment
12. Favorite Movie: Titanic, hands down. Also Varsity Blues, most of the Harry Potter Movies, A Few Good Men
13. A Fact About my Personality: It doesn't work unless you add coffee
14. What I Hate Most About Myself: Insomnia, hangnails, crooked left eyebrow (because I accidentally shaved part of it off in the second grade), big feet
15. What I Love Most About Myself: the freckle on my left hand, optimism, liberalism, tolerance, brown hair, the freckle on the underside of my nose, the little scar on my ankle I got from riding my scooter when I was 5
16. What I Want to Be When I'm Older: A princess, a writer, a lawyer, a wedding planner, Carrie Bradshaw, a woman like my mother
17. Idea of the Perfect Date: Spontaneously jumping into the car and driving to Kings Island (weather permitting), or ice skating, or sushi, or visiting a playground, or just getting Jimmy Johns and watching a movie in bed
18. Thing/s I Hate: Broken hearts, socks with holes in them, rain ruining your hair, Christmas lights that don't work, missing earring backs, losing the screw out of your glasses, being too full, having to use the bathroom at the most inopportune time, sleepovers without your favorite stuffed animal, being too cold or too hot, bagels without cream cheese, or vice versa, having no one to go to the hibachi grill with, a CD that skips, going to the gym.
19. Weaknesses: Oreos, cute soccer players, Starbucks, Vera Bradley, trashy reality shows, trashy gossip magazines, glittery nail polish, pajama pants, Victoria's Secret sweatpants, pens.
20. Phobias: Needles, being alone, getting breast cancer, car accidents.
21. What I Hate Most About School: That it isn't over yet.
22. Things I Find Attractive in Guys: Acceptance of who I am, loyalty, compassion, understanding, loves my friends, gets my sense of humor, supports me, readiness to take on my crazy adventures with me.
23. Biggest Turn-On: Boy smell, making me feel safe, reader of Harry Potter.
24. Biggest Turn-Off: Ignorance, not letting me in, not willing to try new things, being ashamed of who you are
25. A Random Fact I Know: The reason pigs are the villains on Angry Birds is because Swine Flu was in full swing when Angry Birds debuted.
26. A Quote I Live My Life On: A few: "God answers all prayers. It's just that sometimes, the answer is no." "One cannot petition the Lord with prayer." "It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live." "Do not pity the dead, Harry, pity the living, and above all, those who live without love." "In the depths of winter, I finally learned that there within me lay an invincible summer." "But the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you can find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous." "I feel like I haven't done my best work yet. I feel like there's a world of possibilities out there."
27. Something/s I Need to Get Off My Chest: Trick, I wish I would have kissed you...I wish I could have beat her to the punch. Bob-o, I wish you wouldn't have broken my heart into a million trillion little pieces. Aqua Eyes, I wish I weren't jealous of how you feel about your girl. I don't want you, but I don't want jealousy, either. I wish I would have tried harder in school. I'm worried about my health.
28. Beauty Product/s I Can't Live Without: Vaseline, Queen Helene's Soy and Cocoa Butter, Caress bar soap, q-tips, Burts Bees lip balm, My Spots Are Concealed! concealer stick
29. Last Time I Cried and Why: I wrecked my beloved Jeep Jeep and he went to the great junkyard in the sky. He was my PIC for 6 years, and he took all the hits for me. RIP Jeep Jeep, you will be missed very greatly and Stormie has some big shoes to fill.
30. Sex and the City Character that I Am: Miranda, for sure. Type-A personality, walls of steel and a heart of glass. The least fashionable of the group, the one most comfortable in sweats, on the sofa in front of the TV. Also the biggest sports fan, and the least likely to have a child (even though she did). The most career-driven, Carrie's second banana, and the one obsessed with her blackberry.
Hope you know me a little better now :)
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
2011 Roundup: The [sort-of] Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
2011 was sort of a weird year. Nothing really happened, but it kind of did. My bestest bestie Sydney and I were discussing the weirdness that was 2011 in the car the other day. We agreed that while not outright bad, it was rather boring and pointless, much like Katherine Heigl's entire collected film works. It just wasn't an especially profound year. It was the year we became obsessed with a mannish British woman's ass who became famous for said ass and for carrying the train of her sister's wedding dress, the Royal Wedding that was attended by Pippa Middleton and her Ass (and her interloping sister and brother-in-law). We saw Kim Kardashian take the concept of marriage and take a massive, sloppy shit all over it with her 72-day marriage to mediocre New Jersey Nets player and complete idiot Kris Humphries. Gay Marriage was legalized in New York, which should have been the single most awesome thing to ever happen to that state, but it was completely overshadowed by a bunch of hippies who decided to be full-time assholes instead of just handing out flyers in the campus commons. We paid $581 million to see a movie we already saw in 2009, and the final installment of the Harry Potter franchise made everyone cream their underoos with wizardy happiness. A bunch of other stuff happened, too, but that's all I care about for the purpose of this article. So let's rip it all apart!
The Bad
The Bad
Occupy Wall Street
This was the year that we saw the bloody, graphic birth of the Occupy Wall Street movement. It's technically still in its' infant stage, so I suppose that's why it's annoying, needy, and whines all the time.
Let me make two things plain: 1. I am an extremely liberal person. 2. I HATE the Occupy movement with the hell-burning passion of thousand fiery suns.
To hate something, you must first understand the madness behind it. The Occupy Wall Street Movement began when the Canadian based group AdBusters Media Foundation called for a peaceful occupation of Wall Street. The idea was put on their email list and according to them "kind of snowballed from there." It was in part inspired by the Democracy Village set up in 2010 outside of the British Parliament. But what turned it into the current abortion of civilization that it now is was when notorious internet group Anonymous encouraged their followers to "flood lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and Occupy Wall Street."
If that name sounds familiar, then congratulations, you watch the news. If it sounds really familiar, then congratulations, you associate yourself with the absolute underbelly, the dirty, unwashed taint of the internet society world, 4chan. 4chan is where perverts' lips curl with disgust at the utter filth in the annals of their forums, where dreams go to die, and of course, where bronies congregate. Anonymous is a hacking group that encourages civil disobedience, which is a nice way of saying that they fuck shit up and get on the news for it. Wikileaks was just some angry dude releasing confidential government files until Anonymous came along and really started to fuck the whole shebang up. They hacked into PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard when the companies froze accounts associated with Wikileaks and collectively shut down the servers of all three. They called it "Operation Avenge Assange" when their first title "Operation Do Something Besides Masturbate Furiously in the Basement to Redtube" was vetoed. Anyways, what I'm saying is that Occupy Wall Street may have just been confined to a few dirty hipsters who got bored of loafing around outside Starbucks and decided to "protest", but instead the Anonymous stamp of approval and encouragement turned it into the many-headed abomination that it currently is.
If you've never had the displeasure to encounter one of these so-called protests, then let me tell you what you're missing. I had the misfortune to get caught up in the "Occupy Chicago" march when I was there last. It's not so much of a protest than it is a bunch of filthy, entitles hippies waving around signs and chanting about shit that they barely understand. "We are the 99!" they yell. That's their slogan. The best slogan they could come up with is a statistic that requires about as much common sense as a seven-year-old possesses? Fucking obviously people realize that not everyone has a million billion dollars like the bitches on the Real Housewives. But my biggest beef with this movement is that they really have no real aims or goals. Sure, there might be a few core people who really want this to achieve something, to really change, but the majority, the 99% if you will, really have no idea what they're supposedly fighting for. It's sort of like the people who generally oppose mainstream society finally found a more organized way to express their general distaste for America. It was like a magnate for the very fringes of society. Are these people really angry that only 1% of American society holds most of the nation's wealth, or did they need a really huge soapbox to stand on, and this was the perfect opportunity? But the really baffling thing about the Occupy movement is that they really think camping out in tents and waving around posters is going to do something. Like the stock brokers are going to snap their fingers and say, "thank god someone brought this to my attention! I've realized the error of my ways, and will now give all the money I make every day to these righteous hippies and spend the rest of my life serving soup to the homeless. Oh, and here are the keys to my Maserati."
I think the problem I really have with Occupy Wall Street is that it represents what's wrong with my generation. My parents graduated in 1976, and have been working ever since. That's what you did back then, you got a degree, got a job, and got the hell out of dodge. Nowadays, it's more like, get a degree, move back home with your parents, maybe get a job three years later. The problem with Occupy is that it's made it an acceptable form of existence to wipe your ass with your college degree and camp out in front of a building where people have legitimate jobs. Each generation has gotten progressively lazier, but ours really takes the cake. Instead of working for a living and earning a pension like normal people, filthy hipsters with unwashed hair wave signs around and demand they get a pension, just 'cuz. Our generation is so entitled that we feel simply existing requires us to get paid. What the hell have we come to? What, now people are going to want to get paid just to appear on TV and be themselves?
The Ugly
This was the year that we saw the bloody, graphic birth of the Occupy Wall Street movement. It's technically still in its' infant stage, so I suppose that's why it's annoying, needy, and whines all the time.
Let me make two things plain: 1. I am an extremely liberal person. 2. I HATE the Occupy movement with the hell-burning passion of thousand fiery suns.
To hate something, you must first understand the madness behind it. The Occupy Wall Street Movement began when the Canadian based group AdBusters Media Foundation called for a peaceful occupation of Wall Street. The idea was put on their email list and according to them "kind of snowballed from there." It was in part inspired by the Democracy Village set up in 2010 outside of the British Parliament. But what turned it into the current abortion of civilization that it now is was when notorious internet group Anonymous encouraged their followers to "flood lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and Occupy Wall Street."
If that name sounds familiar, then congratulations, you watch the news. If it sounds really familiar, then congratulations, you associate yourself with the absolute underbelly, the dirty, unwashed taint of the internet society world, 4chan. 4chan is where perverts' lips curl with disgust at the utter filth in the annals of their forums, where dreams go to die, and of course, where bronies congregate. Anonymous is a hacking group that encourages civil disobedience, which is a nice way of saying that they fuck shit up and get on the news for it. Wikileaks was just some angry dude releasing confidential government files until Anonymous came along and really started to fuck the whole shebang up. They hacked into PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard when the companies froze accounts associated with Wikileaks and collectively shut down the servers of all three. They called it "Operation Avenge Assange" when their first title "Operation Do Something Besides Masturbate Furiously in the Basement to Redtube" was vetoed. Anyways, what I'm saying is that Occupy Wall Street may have just been confined to a few dirty hipsters who got bored of loafing around outside Starbucks and decided to "protest", but instead the Anonymous stamp of approval and encouragement turned it into the many-headed abomination that it currently is.
If you've never had the displeasure to encounter one of these so-called protests, then let me tell you what you're missing. I had the misfortune to get caught up in the "Occupy Chicago" march when I was there last. It's not so much of a protest than it is a bunch of filthy, entitles hippies waving around signs and chanting about shit that they barely understand. "We are the 99!" they yell. That's their slogan. The best slogan they could come up with is a statistic that requires about as much common sense as a seven-year-old possesses? Fucking obviously people realize that not everyone has a million billion dollars like the bitches on the Real Housewives. But my biggest beef with this movement is that they really have no real aims or goals. Sure, there might be a few core people who really want this to achieve something, to really change, but the majority, the 99% if you will, really have no idea what they're supposedly fighting for. It's sort of like the people who generally oppose mainstream society finally found a more organized way to express their general distaste for America. It was like a magnate for the very fringes of society. Are these people really angry that only 1% of American society holds most of the nation's wealth, or did they need a really huge soapbox to stand on, and this was the perfect opportunity? But the really baffling thing about the Occupy movement is that they really think camping out in tents and waving around posters is going to do something. Like the stock brokers are going to snap their fingers and say, "thank god someone brought this to my attention! I've realized the error of my ways, and will now give all the money I make every day to these righteous hippies and spend the rest of my life serving soup to the homeless. Oh, and here are the keys to my Maserati."
I think the problem I really have with Occupy Wall Street is that it represents what's wrong with my generation. My parents graduated in 1976, and have been working ever since. That's what you did back then, you got a degree, got a job, and got the hell out of dodge. Nowadays, it's more like, get a degree, move back home with your parents, maybe get a job three years later. The problem with Occupy is that it's made it an acceptable form of existence to wipe your ass with your college degree and camp out in front of a building where people have legitimate jobs. Each generation has gotten progressively lazier, but ours really takes the cake. Instead of working for a living and earning a pension like normal people, filthy hipsters with unwashed hair wave signs around and demand they get a pension, just 'cuz. Our generation is so entitled that we feel simply existing requires us to get paid. What the hell have we come to? What, now people are going to want to get paid just to appear on TV and be themselves?
The Ugly
The Kardashians
Kimberley Noel Kardashian is an angel, the purest ray of sunshine that ever existed, sent to us by a higher being to grace the world with her supreme talents and divine existence. Kim and her equally uninteresting sisters are fascinating simply for the fact that they famous for being famous. That concept is so mind-blowing to me, like contemplating the existence of human life or trying to comprehend how big the universe is. They are literally famous for waking up in the morning and being themselves. To the tune of $65 million. Sure, you can say they have a clothes line, and a perfume line, and an everything else line, but the driving force behind all of that shit is the fact that the Kardashians are promoting it. I really hate Bill O'Reilly, but he has a point about the Kardashians: "I think the Kardashians represent all that's wrong with America. Here we have ladies who are making tons of money, who have no talent at all, they do nothing, they can't sing, they can't dance, they don't write, they can't act, all they do is sit around and whine. You can give them credit, being famous for whining, but why are we lionizing them? ...I don't think they set a good example, particularly for young American women. I think they're self-absorbed, I don't think they're working for a living, I mean...I know it's really tough to sit in a make-up chair for three hours...I'm not going to argue with the fact that they've become world famous for no reason."
I really...couldn't agree more. I hate that I'm agreeing with Bill-o, but it couldn't have been more on the nose. Kim Kardashian became famous for (badly) sucking Ray-J's dick. She let fucking Brandy's brother urinate on her. That is why she's famous. I know you're thinking that slogging out four years of classes and filling out resumes and getting a job was how you earned money, but it turns out that all you have to do is let a Z-list rapper piss on you and have a massive ass.
Have you ever watched an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians? Kim and her sisters, Kourtney and Khloe sit around and look pretty and say "like" a lot and complain about how much they have to "work". Kim pays people to do her hair and do her makeup and pick out her clothes. Her mother tells her what to do, where to do it, and what time to be there. She poses for pictures and picks fights with the sister she's jealous of. That's her life. Literally. That's all it consists of.
Perhaps the most mind-blowing part of Kim's life is that she got paid $17 million dollars to marry a man for 72 days. Let me restate that. She married a guy she had been casually dating in a lavish, over-the-top, beyond extravagant ceremony (that purportedly cost upwards of $10 million, most of which was comped) which she got paid SEVENTEEN MILLION DOLLARS and then filed for divorce seventy-two days later. It's not the wedding part that surprises me, nor the inevitable divorce. It's more the general fact that we live in a society where this kind of thing can happen. There's 9% unemployment, peoples' houses are being foreclosed on left and right and center, more people than we care to admit are struggling to put food on the table, and people, many people, came together collectively and agreed to pay Kim Kardashian $17 million to marry her rebound dude after Reggie Bush (sensibly) dumped her ass. I worked a wedding where a mom and dad tearfully admitted they had sold one of their cars to help their son pay for his wedding, and Vera Wang handed Kim Kardashian $65,000 worth of custom-made wedding dresses for free. Yeah, plural. She wore three.
We all knew Kim and Kris were going to get divorced. When Kim finds someone who she likes and can tolerate their presence more than herself, then she'll truly be happy. But Kim won't ever find that person, because they don't actually exist. Kim is in love with the idea of herself. She is obsessed with the idea that everyone else is obsessed with her. Her problem is that she believes her own hype. She drinks her own Kool-Aid. Khloe and Kourtney are only marginally better than Kim because you can tell that if the cameras turned off forever tomorrow, they'd be fine. They have kids and partners and a purpose besides hamming it up for the E! cameras. Kim, however, does not. Kim wouldn't be relevant if it weren't for her "career", therefore she'll never put her spouse first. Kim flat-out told Kris that she would never move to Minnesota because she couldn't have her career there. In the very next breath, she said the sole purpose of life was to settle down and have a family. I think she has confused "settle" with "settle down", because there's no way in hell Kris was truly the man she imagined herself to be with for the rest of her life. To say they were in love is sort of like saying Marilyn Monroe was a natural blonde. Barely tolerating each others' presence is more like it. Just a few minutes of Kim and Kourtney take New York showcases their barely concealed contempt for each other (and how utterly stupid the show is). Kris is an overgrown idiot who acts like a frat boy with a free keg, and Kim is a self-absorbed harpy-shrieking shrew. Kourtney's soul has long since died and left her body (perhaps it fell out of her bajingo when she pulled her own kid out of it), Scott is as smarmy as ever, and the only truly real person on the show is the person who doesn't comprehend the concept of cameras or exploitation.
I guess what pisses me off most about Kim and her wedding debaucle is the fact that she can get paid to get married to someone she probably can't name ten solid facts about, but happy gay couples who love each other very much and would be happy with just courtroom "I do's" cannot legally get married in most states in this country. Yeah that's right, I pulled the gay card.
The Sort-Of Good
Kimberley Noel Kardashian is an angel, the purest ray of sunshine that ever existed, sent to us by a higher being to grace the world with her supreme talents and divine existence. Kim and her equally uninteresting sisters are fascinating simply for the fact that they famous for being famous. That concept is so mind-blowing to me, like contemplating the existence of human life or trying to comprehend how big the universe is. They are literally famous for waking up in the morning and being themselves. To the tune of $65 million. Sure, you can say they have a clothes line, and a perfume line, and an everything else line, but the driving force behind all of that shit is the fact that the Kardashians are promoting it. I really hate Bill O'Reilly, but he has a point about the Kardashians: "I think the Kardashians represent all that's wrong with America. Here we have ladies who are making tons of money, who have no talent at all, they do nothing, they can't sing, they can't dance, they don't write, they can't act, all they do is sit around and whine. You can give them credit, being famous for whining, but why are we lionizing them? ...I don't think they set a good example, particularly for young American women. I think they're self-absorbed, I don't think they're working for a living, I mean...I know it's really tough to sit in a make-up chair for three hours...I'm not going to argue with the fact that they've become world famous for no reason."
I really...couldn't agree more. I hate that I'm agreeing with Bill-o, but it couldn't have been more on the nose. Kim Kardashian became famous for (badly) sucking Ray-J's dick. She let fucking Brandy's brother urinate on her. That is why she's famous. I know you're thinking that slogging out four years of classes and filling out resumes and getting a job was how you earned money, but it turns out that all you have to do is let a Z-list rapper piss on you and have a massive ass.
Have you ever watched an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians? Kim and her sisters, Kourtney and Khloe sit around and look pretty and say "like" a lot and complain about how much they have to "work". Kim pays people to do her hair and do her makeup and pick out her clothes. Her mother tells her what to do, where to do it, and what time to be there. She poses for pictures and picks fights with the sister she's jealous of. That's her life. Literally. That's all it consists of.
Perhaps the most mind-blowing part of Kim's life is that she got paid $17 million dollars to marry a man for 72 days. Let me restate that. She married a guy she had been casually dating in a lavish, over-the-top, beyond extravagant ceremony (that purportedly cost upwards of $10 million, most of which was comped) which she got paid SEVENTEEN MILLION DOLLARS and then filed for divorce seventy-two days later. It's not the wedding part that surprises me, nor the inevitable divorce. It's more the general fact that we live in a society where this kind of thing can happen. There's 9% unemployment, peoples' houses are being foreclosed on left and right and center, more people than we care to admit are struggling to put food on the table, and people, many people, came together collectively and agreed to pay Kim Kardashian $17 million to marry her rebound dude after Reggie Bush (sensibly) dumped her ass. I worked a wedding where a mom and dad tearfully admitted they had sold one of their cars to help their son pay for his wedding, and Vera Wang handed Kim Kardashian $65,000 worth of custom-made wedding dresses for free. Yeah, plural. She wore three.
We all knew Kim and Kris were going to get divorced. When Kim finds someone who she likes and can tolerate their presence more than herself, then she'll truly be happy. But Kim won't ever find that person, because they don't actually exist. Kim is in love with the idea of herself. She is obsessed with the idea that everyone else is obsessed with her. Her problem is that she believes her own hype. She drinks her own Kool-Aid. Khloe and Kourtney are only marginally better than Kim because you can tell that if the cameras turned off forever tomorrow, they'd be fine. They have kids and partners and a purpose besides hamming it up for the E! cameras. Kim, however, does not. Kim wouldn't be relevant if it weren't for her "career", therefore she'll never put her spouse first. Kim flat-out told Kris that she would never move to Minnesota because she couldn't have her career there. In the very next breath, she said the sole purpose of life was to settle down and have a family. I think she has confused "settle" with "settle down", because there's no way in hell Kris was truly the man she imagined herself to be with for the rest of her life. To say they were in love is sort of like saying Marilyn Monroe was a natural blonde. Barely tolerating each others' presence is more like it. Just a few minutes of Kim and Kourtney take New York showcases their barely concealed contempt for each other (and how utterly stupid the show is). Kris is an overgrown idiot who acts like a frat boy with a free keg, and Kim is a self-absorbed harpy-shrieking shrew. Kourtney's soul has long since died and left her body (perhaps it fell out of her bajingo when she pulled her own kid out of it), Scott is as smarmy as ever, and the only truly real person on the show is the person who doesn't comprehend the concept of cameras or exploitation.
I guess what pisses me off most about Kim and her wedding debaucle is the fact that she can get paid to get married to someone she probably can't name ten solid facts about, but happy gay couples who love each other very much and would be happy with just courtroom "I do's" cannot legally get married in most states in this country. Yeah that's right, I pulled the gay card.
The Sort-Of Good
All Kinds of Weddings!
Gay people were allowed to get married in New York, which is like, the biggest thing to happen to gay people since Ryan Murphy created Glee. But no, really, it's such a huge victory for gay marriage. New York City and the Stonewall Inn are the birthplace of the gay rights movement, and it was seen as a ridiculously huge victory. They gave the gays a ticker-tape parade and the governor declared it to be one of the biggest moments of his career. It was one of those super awesome moments in history that I know I'll look back on and realize it made me proud to be an American. I didn't even mind that Lady Gaga used it as a moment for self-promotion, just like she did for the entire concept of bullying and that one gay kid who killed himself.
Prince William announced that he was getting married to one Kate Middleton, a gasp! commoner he met in college. Upon this pronouncement, the entire world lost their shit. We all went collectively batshit crazy and our Royal Wedding fever was so high it broke the mercury. Everyone I know woke up at 4 AM to watch them get married. I was SO EXCITED. I really was. I watched it with my mom, who had woken up at 4 AM to watch Charles and Di get married in 1981 and I found myself hoping someday I'll wake up at 4 AM to watch another wedding special with my daughter someday. It was essentially the same as Kim K's stupid fake wedding (and I'm sure she fancies herself to be royalty) without all of the drama, free stuff they didn't deserve, and self-absorbedness. Kate and Will are genuinely in love, and they got married because that's generally what people in love do. That, and he is the heir to the throne of the United Kingdom and has an obligation to get married. Kate was a beautiful bride in a simple but gorgeous dress. She wore her hair down, and did her own make-up. My breath caught in my throat she was so beautiful. Not that she's a particularly beautiful woman (she's pretty, not gorgeous) but she simply radiated happiness. She glowed. She was beautiful because she was in love and happy she was getting married. I won't deny that Kim is a very pretty person, but I've never seen a more resigned-looking person on their wedding day. She looked like she was going to the OB-GYN, not down the aisle.
Yes, there were many kinds of weddings this year, most happy, and some not, but the two that consistently made the most headlines were simultaneously the one that made me the happiest and the one that made me frown and realize all that is wrong with our pop culture.
Sequels of Sequels
We paid a LOT, I mean a metric shit ton of money to see sequels this year. There were no fewer than twenty-seven sequels released this entire year, some even being third and fourth installments. Or eighth, in Harry Potter's case.
But Harry went out with a bang. After 10 years and 8 movies, Daniel Radcliffe and co. sent the Potter franchise out in style. The seventh book was split into two movies, and it was the best decision since white-chocolate dipped Oreos. There were a few complaints I had about the movie, but they were trivial in comparison to how awesome the movie was overall. I saw it in 3-D, which is perhaps the stupidest technological innovation of the last few years, but in this case it only enhanced the excellency of the movie. The acting has only gotten better as the years go on. The CGI was amazing, and it was extremely well-written and well directed. It managed to please both the non-readers and the fan-girls (and boys) like me. For people like me who had been entertaining a thirteen-year love affair with Harry, we couldn't have asked for a better goodbye.
This year also gave us The Hangover Part II. Ed Helms screams and freaks out a lot, Zach Galifinakis acts like a fat, bearded Rain Man, and Bradley Cooper learns the true meaning of friendship, and is an asshole. Wait, what? That's the plot of The Hangover. Just kidding. The producers took a leap of faith and decided to bank on the idea that Americans are so brain-dead that they'll see the same movie twice. That leap worked, to the tune of nearly SIX HUNDRED MILLION dollars. That's not a misprint. The writers decided they had a good idea, so they wrote a few new jokes, threw in a cute monkey in a vest, and changed the setting to Bangkok. Oh, and there was a chick with a dick. Which was supposedly more shocking than seeing Ken Jeong's Merkin. While the first time around, it was hailed as a hilariously funny, original comedy with a cool surprise ending. This time, the jokes were stale and the surprise ending that was, you know, not an actual surprise this time, was met with enthusiasm only because people were thankful the film was over so they could get home and bust out the brain bleach to get the image of a hot Thai chick with A PENIS out of their minds.
And on that note, time to crank up Auld Lang Syne and throw on your sparkly party hat. Because 2011's done, stick a fork in it.
And there you have it. So I guess 2011 wasn't exactly a banner year, but it wasn't so bad after all. Kim Kardashian and her ilk proved once and for all that they are the greasy brown stain on the underpants of humanity. She had a fake marriage to a big doofus and she got paid for it, and then wondered why everyone hated her for getting a divorce in a shorter amount of time than it takes to complete construction on a McDonalds. Kate Middleton got married and her face got emblazoned onto collectible china plates everywhere. She reminded us of the little girl in all of us who played dress-up when they were little and imagined they were princesses, too. Her sister became famous for not wearing panties under her dress, and the world continued their fascination with white girls who have big butts. Ron and Hermione FINALLY kissed after ten fucking years and it made even the manliest of men squee. The Hangover II proved we'll pay any amount for bullshit, and the Occupy Wall Street movement reminded us that the hippies are alive and well. We found out that a college degree is nothing more than a $100,000 piece of paper if you shack up in a tent outside of an office building and wave around a sign. We decided that "the 99%" was an appropriate title for everyone who doesn't own the keys to a Bugati and pay mortgages on seven vacation homes, and they finally let the queens actually get married instead of just fashionably plan the weddings.
Au Revoir, 2011. Make sure you send us a Christmas card and one of those annoyingly detailed newsletters updating us of your achievements next year!
Gay people were allowed to get married in New York, which is like, the biggest thing to happen to gay people since Ryan Murphy created Glee. But no, really, it's such a huge victory for gay marriage. New York City and the Stonewall Inn are the birthplace of the gay rights movement, and it was seen as a ridiculously huge victory. They gave the gays a ticker-tape parade and the governor declared it to be one of the biggest moments of his career. It was one of those super awesome moments in history that I know I'll look back on and realize it made me proud to be an American. I didn't even mind that Lady Gaga used it as a moment for self-promotion, just like she did for the entire concept of bullying and that one gay kid who killed himself.
Prince William announced that he was getting married to one Kate Middleton, a gasp! commoner he met in college. Upon this pronouncement, the entire world lost their shit. We all went collectively batshit crazy and our Royal Wedding fever was so high it broke the mercury. Everyone I know woke up at 4 AM to watch them get married. I was SO EXCITED. I really was. I watched it with my mom, who had woken up at 4 AM to watch Charles and Di get married in 1981 and I found myself hoping someday I'll wake up at 4 AM to watch another wedding special with my daughter someday. It was essentially the same as Kim K's stupid fake wedding (and I'm sure she fancies herself to be royalty) without all of the drama, free stuff they didn't deserve, and self-absorbedness. Kate and Will are genuinely in love, and they got married because that's generally what people in love do. That, and he is the heir to the throne of the United Kingdom and has an obligation to get married. Kate was a beautiful bride in a simple but gorgeous dress. She wore her hair down, and did her own make-up. My breath caught in my throat she was so beautiful. Not that she's a particularly beautiful woman (she's pretty, not gorgeous) but she simply radiated happiness. She glowed. She was beautiful because she was in love and happy she was getting married. I won't deny that Kim is a very pretty person, but I've never seen a more resigned-looking person on their wedding day. She looked like she was going to the OB-GYN, not down the aisle.
Yes, there were many kinds of weddings this year, most happy, and some not, but the two that consistently made the most headlines were simultaneously the one that made me the happiest and the one that made me frown and realize all that is wrong with our pop culture.
Sequels of Sequels
We paid a LOT, I mean a metric shit ton of money to see sequels this year. There were no fewer than twenty-seven sequels released this entire year, some even being third and fourth installments. Or eighth, in Harry Potter's case.
But Harry went out with a bang. After 10 years and 8 movies, Daniel Radcliffe and co. sent the Potter franchise out in style. The seventh book was split into two movies, and it was the best decision since white-chocolate dipped Oreos. There were a few complaints I had about the movie, but they were trivial in comparison to how awesome the movie was overall. I saw it in 3-D, which is perhaps the stupidest technological innovation of the last few years, but in this case it only enhanced the excellency of the movie. The acting has only gotten better as the years go on. The CGI was amazing, and it was extremely well-written and well directed. It managed to please both the non-readers and the fan-girls (and boys) like me. For people like me who had been entertaining a thirteen-year love affair with Harry, we couldn't have asked for a better goodbye.
This year also gave us The Hangover Part II. Ed Helms screams and freaks out a lot, Zach Galifinakis acts like a fat, bearded Rain Man, and Bradley Cooper learns the true meaning of friendship, and is an asshole. Wait, what? That's the plot of The Hangover. Just kidding. The producers took a leap of faith and decided to bank on the idea that Americans are so brain-dead that they'll see the same movie twice. That leap worked, to the tune of nearly SIX HUNDRED MILLION dollars. That's not a misprint. The writers decided they had a good idea, so they wrote a few new jokes, threw in a cute monkey in a vest, and changed the setting to Bangkok. Oh, and there was a chick with a dick. Which was supposedly more shocking than seeing Ken Jeong's Merkin. While the first time around, it was hailed as a hilariously funny, original comedy with a cool surprise ending. This time, the jokes were stale and the surprise ending that was, you know, not an actual surprise this time, was met with enthusiasm only because people were thankful the film was over so they could get home and bust out the brain bleach to get the image of a hot Thai chick with A PENIS out of their minds.
And on that note, time to crank up Auld Lang Syne and throw on your sparkly party hat. Because 2011's done, stick a fork in it.
And there you have it. So I guess 2011 wasn't exactly a banner year, but it wasn't so bad after all. Kim Kardashian and her ilk proved once and for all that they are the greasy brown stain on the underpants of humanity. She had a fake marriage to a big doofus and she got paid for it, and then wondered why everyone hated her for getting a divorce in a shorter amount of time than it takes to complete construction on a McDonalds. Kate Middleton got married and her face got emblazoned onto collectible china plates everywhere. She reminded us of the little girl in all of us who played dress-up when they were little and imagined they were princesses, too. Her sister became famous for not wearing panties under her dress, and the world continued their fascination with white girls who have big butts. Ron and Hermione FINALLY kissed after ten fucking years and it made even the manliest of men squee. The Hangover II proved we'll pay any amount for bullshit, and the Occupy Wall Street movement reminded us that the hippies are alive and well. We found out that a college degree is nothing more than a $100,000 piece of paper if you shack up in a tent outside of an office building and wave around a sign. We decided that "the 99%" was an appropriate title for everyone who doesn't own the keys to a Bugati and pay mortgages on seven vacation homes, and they finally let the queens actually get married instead of just fashionably plan the weddings.
Au Revoir, 2011. Make sure you send us a Christmas card and one of those annoyingly detailed newsletters updating us of your achievements next year!
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Wishes and Whiskey
Whiskey's flowing
The lights are bright
I'm out, feeling alright
You're on my mind,
Wish you weren't
Baby no matter how hard I've tried
You've never even left.
I want it all to go away
This pain I feel
The tattoo you've drawn in me
Can never come off.
I wish you knew
Just how hard
It is to let you go.
I try and pretend it's alright
But you know better
Like you always do
That I'm much too fragile
To handle.
I miss you
But I know it's just me
You don't have to tell me twice
That I never mattered at all.
This hurts
Everything hurts
And I'm just so tired.
The pain is deep
So I take it out on myself
And I'm the only one who can hurt me now.
I know you never meant
To carve such deep scars on my heart
And I'm so sorry
I ever chose you to love.
But in the dead of the night
When it's no one but me
I wish
That you could love me too.
A fool's dream
This I know
But still I wish upon stars.
I wish there was a warmth
For the ice that flows through my veins
I wish I could just let you be a memory and
I wish you knew
Just how hard
It is to let go.
I wish you could wipe away the tears that fall
Cure the heart that hurts
And hug the body that aches.
But you never will
And I need to know now
That I'm the only one who can take care of me.
I wish I could fight for myself
Take a stand for me.
It's so sad
That not even I'm on my side.
I feel so broken
So alone
And a part of me
Still wishes that what we had was real.
I'm trying so hard
To move on and let go
But it's not as easy as it sounds.
Tonight I'll go to bed
Drunk with the realization
That I'm fighting a losing battle and that
You....will never love me the way I loved you
And all the wishes and whiskey in the world
Will never make it come to be.
I've got myself
I've got my good health
And I guess that's all I need.
The lights are bright
I'm out, feeling alright
You're on my mind,
Wish you weren't
Baby no matter how hard I've tried
You've never even left.
I want it all to go away
This pain I feel
The tattoo you've drawn in me
Can never come off.
I wish you knew
Just how hard
It is to let you go.
I try and pretend it's alright
But you know better
Like you always do
That I'm much too fragile
To handle.
I miss you
But I know it's just me
You don't have to tell me twice
That I never mattered at all.
This hurts
Everything hurts
And I'm just so tired.
The pain is deep
So I take it out on myself
And I'm the only one who can hurt me now.
I know you never meant
To carve such deep scars on my heart
And I'm so sorry
I ever chose you to love.
But in the dead of the night
When it's no one but me
I wish
That you could love me too.
A fool's dream
This I know
But still I wish upon stars.
I wish there was a warmth
For the ice that flows through my veins
I wish I could just let you be a memory and
I wish you knew
Just how hard
It is to let go.
I wish you could wipe away the tears that fall
Cure the heart that hurts
And hug the body that aches.
But you never will
And I need to know now
That I'm the only one who can take care of me.
I wish I could fight for myself
Take a stand for me.
It's so sad
That not even I'm on my side.
I feel so broken
So alone
And a part of me
Still wishes that what we had was real.
I'm trying so hard
To move on and let go
But it's not as easy as it sounds.
Tonight I'll go to bed
Drunk with the realization
That I'm fighting a losing battle and that
You....will never love me the way I loved you
And all the wishes and whiskey in the world
Will never make it come to be.
I've got myself
I've got my good health
And I guess that's all I need.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Going the Distance!
Virginity is a weird thing. By definition, saying you're a virgin means that you've never had sex before. Saying you're a "born-again virgin" implies some sort of religious bullshit experience you've gone through where you "found" Jesus (he was lost?) and realized the sin and error of your ways. It basically means that you had sex, some asshole bigoted [most likely] religious person told you that what is biologically natural is wrong because you weren't fucking married or some shit first, you felt guilty, and thus will proceed to deny your body what is entirely natural to human existence.
I find the concept of abstinence until marriage completely ridiculous. I want to punch people who say they're "saving themselves". Ok. If you're genuinely religious and that's your bag, then go for it. I'll never hate on people who stick to their convictions and are seriously, legitimately invested in what they believe in. But I can guarantee that 90% of idiots who spew off that they're saving themselves until marriage are just spouting off the party line.
Like I said, if you're religious and genuinely believe that saving yourself is the best option, then bravo for sticking to your guns. But all I ask is that you do your research and make sure that it's the best option for you.
67% of all high schoolers will lose their virginity before they have a diploma in their hand. The age that most of them choose to cash in their v-card is sixteen. Most people do not possess a huge amount of reasoning or logical thinking at the age of 16. At sixteen, I had braces and what can best be described as a mullet for a haircut that I very, very mistakenly believed to be a fashionable shaggy bob. I wore stupid, ironic t-shirts, ugly plastic bracelets, and jeans with rips in them. I drove my grandma's 1992 Plymouth Sundance, worked as a busser at Damon's Grill and I thought I knew everything in the whole world. I was a complete insufferable know-it-all. If I met my sixteen-year-old self now, I'd hate me. Mostly for all of those reasons, but because I made so many stupid decisions when I was that age. I don't regret a lot of anything in my life, but if I could go back and at the very least educate myself about something, it would be sex and the levity of whom you lose your virginity to.
I'm not even lying when I say that at age sixteen, absolutely everything I knew about sex was either from my friends around the lunch table or Cosmopolitan sex articles. I was the very last of my group of friends to get my cherry popped, and in a hurry to catch up to everyone, I foisted my v-card off on the first dude who expressed interest in more than just tepid make-out sessions. I haven't talked to him in about 5 years now, so that shows you just how close we still are and how meaningful my first time was. In the years since, I've been with not a million guys, but it's a higher number than I care to admit. I can honestly say that maybe 3 of them have actually mattered to me. The rest were drunken mistakes or idiocy because I naively thought that fucking someone would strengthen the relationship (or be the stepping stone for a relationship, in some cases).
I'm not saying I had some ah-ha moment of realization or that I came to some reckoning about sex or whatever. I possess no soapbox here. What I'm trying to say is that I wish I wouldn't have been so fast and loose with whom I jumped into bed with. I wish I had been more educated. I don't want to get sappy, but sex is a big deal. It's an emotional thing. It isn't something to be taken lightly. No one has ever had sex without getting some kind of emotional attachment. If you say you have, you're lying. There's absolutely nothing wrong with more than one sexual partner, but people (girls in particular) need to realize that they have to be more choosy about it. So, this is the advice I wish someone would have given the idiot sixteen-year-old me.
Full disclosure, it's been a long time for me (personal choice), and I was thinking the other day, going awhile without it kind of almost feels like being a virgin all over again. I, of course, have extraneous reasons for being wary of sex, but the main point is, I look at it differently now. I know that I need to be more picky about who I bang. I need to be comfortable with them, I need to care about them, trust them, be in a relationship with them. In short, everything that I should have adhered to when I was actually losing it all those years ago.
Since I feel like a virgin all over again, I'm just going to go ahead and declare this to be my second virginity. Because I've never actually done it with someone whom I've been in a committed relationship with, whom I loved, that it was a mutual, loving decision that felt right. I guess because I've never really been in a decent relationship to start with, but it's always been because I felt like I needed to, or to appease them, or whatever. But this time, I'm not giving it up till I've found someone I know is right for me. I'm sticking to my guns this time. Every time I feel like I've been given a second lease on things, I want to do them right.
I wish every teenage girl could read this. But if I even change one girl's mind or educate her in the slightest, then I'll be happy.
Looking for Mr. Right Round Two. If I don't find him, I'll settle for Mr. Good Enough with my new and improved outlook on life. :)
I find the concept of abstinence until marriage completely ridiculous. I want to punch people who say they're "saving themselves". Ok. If you're genuinely religious and that's your bag, then go for it. I'll never hate on people who stick to their convictions and are seriously, legitimately invested in what they believe in. But I can guarantee that 90% of idiots who spew off that they're saving themselves until marriage are just spouting off the party line.
Like I said, if you're religious and genuinely believe that saving yourself is the best option, then bravo for sticking to your guns. But all I ask is that you do your research and make sure that it's the best option for you.
67% of all high schoolers will lose their virginity before they have a diploma in their hand. The age that most of them choose to cash in their v-card is sixteen. Most people do not possess a huge amount of reasoning or logical thinking at the age of 16. At sixteen, I had braces and what can best be described as a mullet for a haircut that I very, very mistakenly believed to be a fashionable shaggy bob. I wore stupid, ironic t-shirts, ugly plastic bracelets, and jeans with rips in them. I drove my grandma's 1992 Plymouth Sundance, worked as a busser at Damon's Grill and I thought I knew everything in the whole world. I was a complete insufferable know-it-all. If I met my sixteen-year-old self now, I'd hate me. Mostly for all of those reasons, but because I made so many stupid decisions when I was that age. I don't regret a lot of anything in my life, but if I could go back and at the very least educate myself about something, it would be sex and the levity of whom you lose your virginity to.
I'm not even lying when I say that at age sixteen, absolutely everything I knew about sex was either from my friends around the lunch table or Cosmopolitan sex articles. I was the very last of my group of friends to get my cherry popped, and in a hurry to catch up to everyone, I foisted my v-card off on the first dude who expressed interest in more than just tepid make-out sessions. I haven't talked to him in about 5 years now, so that shows you just how close we still are and how meaningful my first time was. In the years since, I've been with not a million guys, but it's a higher number than I care to admit. I can honestly say that maybe 3 of them have actually mattered to me. The rest were drunken mistakes or idiocy because I naively thought that fucking someone would strengthen the relationship (or be the stepping stone for a relationship, in some cases).
I'm not saying I had some ah-ha moment of realization or that I came to some reckoning about sex or whatever. I possess no soapbox here. What I'm trying to say is that I wish I wouldn't have been so fast and loose with whom I jumped into bed with. I wish I had been more educated. I don't want to get sappy, but sex is a big deal. It's an emotional thing. It isn't something to be taken lightly. No one has ever had sex without getting some kind of emotional attachment. If you say you have, you're lying. There's absolutely nothing wrong with more than one sexual partner, but people (girls in particular) need to realize that they have to be more choosy about it. So, this is the advice I wish someone would have given the idiot sixteen-year-old me.
- First of all, don't do it because all of your friends are. Do it because YOU want to, not because your boyfriend is pressuring you (if he is, dump his ass, because it's not going to get better once you fuck him) or because you're sick of being a virgin when everyone isn't around you. Make sure it's a decision you want for yourself, and no one else.
- Learn some basics. Get the Google machine going and look up some basic facts on sex. There's no such thing as a stupid question when it comes to something you've never done before. I know it sounds dumb, but some people really have no idea actually how to have sex. Watch porn. Aside from the fake tits and fake cum shots, it's actually a relatively good visual on what actually goes on during sex, oral sex, etc. You're gonna learn how to do stuff mostly by trial-and-error, but at least you'll know what to expect.
- Again, Google some facts on STDs and protection. Sex Ed in schools is abysmal at best, so do it yourself. I know it's asking waaaaaay too much for kids to go to a Planned Parenthood or free clinic and get tested or get themselves birth control, so just knowing what's out there is fine for now. Besides, most sixteen year olds are virgins anyways, so there isn't really too great of a need to get tested. Also, asking your parent about birth control is an utterly terrifying thing. I'm nearly 23 years old, and I still wouldn't discuss it with my mom without turning purple with embarrassment. Most kids won't talk to their parents, so it's up to the parents to talk to them. But the sad thing is, parents are just as terrified to talk to their kids about sex as their kids are to talk to them. My point is, Google will tell you what you need to know if you go to the right sites. The Planned Parenthood website, SexEd Library, avert.org and scarleteen.com are all good websites to visit for solid, scientific, unbiased facts. Someone's myspace (who even has those anymore, anyways?) is not a solid fact basis for sex information. Your best friend Amy who's had sex a grand total of four times is not a source for sex education that you should be consulting. Sure, your friends are good for "how does it feel?" type of questions, but not facts.
- It's one thing to know about protection, but it's another thing entirely to know how to properly use it. Like I said, don't be afraid to ask the dumb questions. You're not stupid if you don't know how to put on a condom or how birth control pills work. Don't ask your friends. Seriously, they're idiots and they're just as inexperienced as you. Just suck it up and ask someone if you have a burning question. You're going to have to ask how to do things every once in awhile in your life. And also, don't be too embarrassed to buy condoms. Don't shoplift them. It's a crime, and you'll get caught. Even though we (me and my friends) all did it, just don't. Go to Walmart or Meijer at like 3 AM and use a self-scan so no one sees you. Five minutes of shame is better than a teen pregnancy. Puts it into perspective, eh?
- It's kind of silly (now) to plan sex, but you almost have to the first time you do it. One, don't do it in a car. No one's first time should be in a car. Do it in a bed. And not your parents', it's disrespectful to fuck in someone else's bed. Do it in your own bed. And it shouldn't be rushed, either. Pick a time when you know your parents won't be home for awhile so you can concentrate on the fact at hand and not worry about them walking in on you. Have whatever form of protection ready to go. Light candles if you must, but I'd actually recommend listening to music. It takes the edge off, and no one wants to have sex in silence at that age. You can't get into it and get in the moment the way sexually experienced people can. Don't try any fancy shit, either, missionary position is fine. And for the love of mike, do NOT flush the condom down the toilet when you're done.
- Don't have any huge expectations. The first time for girls is awkward even if you're with someone you love, and it feels about as good as getting a stack of books dropped on your head. It will feel good in time, but not the first few times. A lot of girls bleed when their hymen is broken, so that adds to the freak-out level. But, like all things in life, it gets better. Especially if you're with a partner that you care about, and who reciprocates the feeling.
- Which leads me to my most vital point. All of my previous points are moot if you don't follow this piece of advice. You need to lose your virginity to someone you deeply care about. I don't use the word love because no one knows what that means when they're sixteen. But if you say it to your boyfriend, then at the very least, you care about them and hold them in esteem. I hate when people make a big deal about losing it, like your virginity is some precious flower blah blah blah. Yes, it's a big deal, but it's not the most important decision you'll ever make in your life. Just make sure that it's someone who, if you look back in ten years, you won't regret giving it up to them. You only lose it once, so make sure it's someone who's worth it.
Full disclosure, it's been a long time for me (personal choice), and I was thinking the other day, going awhile without it kind of almost feels like being a virgin all over again. I, of course, have extraneous reasons for being wary of sex, but the main point is, I look at it differently now. I know that I need to be more picky about who I bang. I need to be comfortable with them, I need to care about them, trust them, be in a relationship with them. In short, everything that I should have adhered to when I was actually losing it all those years ago.
Since I feel like a virgin all over again, I'm just going to go ahead and declare this to be my second virginity. Because I've never actually done it with someone whom I've been in a committed relationship with, whom I loved, that it was a mutual, loving decision that felt right. I guess because I've never really been in a decent relationship to start with, but it's always been because I felt like I needed to, or to appease them, or whatever. But this time, I'm not giving it up till I've found someone I know is right for me. I'm sticking to my guns this time. Every time I feel like I've been given a second lease on things, I want to do them right.
I wish every teenage girl could read this. But if I even change one girl's mind or educate her in the slightest, then I'll be happy.
Looking for Mr. Right Round Two. If I don't find him, I'll settle for Mr. Good Enough with my new and improved outlook on life. :)
Sunday, October 30, 2011
I Guess What Life is Trying to Tell Me is that Two Burnt Pizzas are Better than No Pizza at All
This was supposed to be about one person. But a million things are running through my head right now.
First of all, the creep who snuck into the daycare in Indianapolis and had a private bikini fashion show is on the motherfucking national news. Goddammit. Why have we only been making the news for shitty stuff lately? First, "worst team in the NFL", now "the kook who put on a teeny tiny pink bikini and paraded around a daycare".
I sort of feel like I've had a lot of pent up anger lately. "Pent-up" isn't really the word. It's more like all-out frustration at the world in general, and not stupid problems that hippies whine about like global warming and animals being used for testing cosmetics on, just general little things that used to frustrate me on a small level, but now they make me want to dismember adorable kittens in a psychotic rage. I have utter unparalleled levels of rage for people who don't use their blinkers (this will be addressed at length in a future post). It's like I'm losing my nerve or something. Like my laid-back nature is slowly diminishing. But then again, I still don't really let stuff bother me. No, I can definitely pick my battles. Like, for example on Thursday. I COULD HAVE gotten angry that fuckhead Ginger exploded anchovies in the microwave and made the kitchen smell like filthy rotten pussy for a solid 25 minutes, but I chose to not let it fuck up my perfectly good shift. I think I'm just picking the wrong battles.
I think I'm ignoring the genuine problems and instead diffusing my anger onto lesser, more manageable problems. Like being pissed off about idiots who don't use their blinkers. Am I REALLY angry about that, or am I just pissed about Bob-o not loving me or Aqua Eyes staring at me like he wants to eat me (the good kind)? Well, I think I just answered my own question. Fuck me. Jesus. No wonder I hate everything.
It's just like, why am I good enough to flirt with, fuck, or whatever, but why am I never good enough to be your actual girlfriend? I guess some other bitch just beat me to the finish line. I guess that's the real thing that makes me want to punch through drywall. But honestly, none of that really matters, because I got a Pillow Pet in my Halloween goodie bag and that's sort of like the Neosporin on my emotional papercuts for the moment. Baby steps, eh?
But really, what else can I do but get angry about the little things I can fix? It's not like I have the power to make either of them break up with their girlfriends. Or that they'd want to of their own free will, anyways. I'm just stuck between everything, is what I guess I'm trying to say. In constant limbo. Is what I feel real or do I make this shit up in my head? And why am I ALWAYS asking myself that question??
I once told Bob-o I feel like I'm just sitting around waiting for my life to happen. His reply was well, nothing's ever going to happen if you sit around and wait for it. So what the fuck do I do now that I went looking for an adventure and I have mud all over my face? Wipe it off, I suppose, but I'm going to be completely honest, it's getting old fast. And so is whining about how much being single sucks. Seriously, I'd rather be chewing a cereal bowl full of rusty nails and glass bits than be bitching that I'm fuckable but not datable. The glass is half full, but fuck me, being Little Mary Sunshine 24/7 is draining. Seriously. I think I've used up my Positive Points for the month. I need to go brood in my room under the covers for awhile now.
Also the lack of coffee is like someone directly inserting a sewing needle into my brain. Give me caffeine or give me death. They'll have to pry my Starbucks from my cold, dead hands. Gimpy liver be damned, that is the one vice I will not give up. They can have the cheese, but coffee is a battle that will be fought to the death.
So, in conclusion, I have no idea what to do about anything. Well, I can do homework, and go to work, and sleep. But everything else is just one big pile of peanuty, nougaty clusterfuck. I could probably solve the case of the Lindbergh baby more easily than I could my own goddamned life problems. Everything's just weird and I'm all jittery and jumpy (especially since I started watching American Horror Story on a regular basis...creepy shit) and I'm sore and car-less. Generally, I just need a hug. And some method of keeping the tip of my nose warm...seriously, it's numb and no other part of my body is this cold. Have they invented nose-warmers yet? A quick google search reveals that they have. Only you have to knit them yourself and they look like those hawk-beak death masks or like you have a nasal STD and have to contain it via mask. Wait, they have an entire website just for hand-knitted nose-warmers? And the shit costs $17 bucks a pop? I think I'll just stick to pinching it to try and warm it up.
I guess the moral of this story is that it's a full-time job to be jealous of other people's happiness. Well, I already have two part time jobs, which I figure equals one whole job, so I'm going to quit the fake one that involves the draining of my emotional well-being. I'll let you know how that goes. In the meantime, I'm just going to look at wedding dresses online for the imaginary wedding I'm not having. I'll keep you posted.
I'm going to round off this whole fiasco by throwing a shout-out.
ERL- we met three years ago today. I loved you then, a year from then, and two years from then. Now...we're just sort of existing peacefully in each others' lives. I do love you, but in the same way love your car after being in an accident with it (which is strangely fitting I suppose): you're bound together because you survived so much shit together. And baby, we went to hell and back twice and have the scars to prove it. You'll always be in my heart, and I'll always be there for you, no matter what the situation or circumstances. I won't break that promise. The difference is now, I'm free and I have my closure. I can come and go, if you will. I think soulmates exist, but not in the sappy, stupid way, they are the people that you love unconditionally who come into your life when you need them the most. You're a soulmate to me because at that time in my life, I couldn't have possibly loved anyone more than I did you, and I needed that so badly. You were the life preserver I needed to cling on to so badly when I felt like no one in the whole world would ever love me. I think you needed me too, but you'd never say that. I kind of worry about you, because I know you keep your problems inside, but you have my number and you know you can text me if the going gets tough. I used to say that I never gave up on you, and I guess it's good that I didn't, because if I had, we never would have reached this peaceful plateau. I'm gonna think of you today and smile, not because I'm still clinging on to some sappy memory, but because I'm finally free and whole and happy. Well, not quite as happy as I should be, but I'll be there in time. I wish you all the happiness in the whole world, and I wish from the very bottom of my heart that you'll find happiness and peace and love in your life. Any girl would be more than absolutely lucky to call you her own, and any girl that passes you up didn't deserve you in the first place. I'm fortunate I got to have you for a small amount of time. This is goodbye, in a way, to the way I used to feel about you. I felt this day would be a good day for a proper send-off. But it's never goodbye, only see you later, because I hope we'll be in each others' lives for many, many years to come. I won't ever forget you, my dear. Lots of love. -J
God, I didn't want that to be gushy and it totally was. Ahhh, sorry. Oh well.
I can't put an ending on this quite yet.
First of all, the creep who snuck into the daycare in Indianapolis and had a private bikini fashion show is on the motherfucking national news. Goddammit. Why have we only been making the news for shitty stuff lately? First, "worst team in the NFL", now "the kook who put on a teeny tiny pink bikini and paraded around a daycare".
I sort of feel like I've had a lot of pent up anger lately. "Pent-up" isn't really the word. It's more like all-out frustration at the world in general, and not stupid problems that hippies whine about like global warming and animals being used for testing cosmetics on, just general little things that used to frustrate me on a small level, but now they make me want to dismember adorable kittens in a psychotic rage. I have utter unparalleled levels of rage for people who don't use their blinkers (this will be addressed at length in a future post). It's like I'm losing my nerve or something. Like my laid-back nature is slowly diminishing. But then again, I still don't really let stuff bother me. No, I can definitely pick my battles. Like, for example on Thursday. I COULD HAVE gotten angry that fuckhead Ginger exploded anchovies in the microwave and made the kitchen smell like filthy rotten pussy for a solid 25 minutes, but I chose to not let it fuck up my perfectly good shift. I think I'm just picking the wrong battles.
I think I'm ignoring the genuine problems and instead diffusing my anger onto lesser, more manageable problems. Like being pissed off about idiots who don't use their blinkers. Am I REALLY angry about that, or am I just pissed about Bob-o not loving me or Aqua Eyes staring at me like he wants to eat me (the good kind)? Well, I think I just answered my own question. Fuck me. Jesus. No wonder I hate everything.
It's just like, why am I good enough to flirt with, fuck, or whatever, but why am I never good enough to be your actual girlfriend? I guess some other bitch just beat me to the finish line. I guess that's the real thing that makes me want to punch through drywall. But honestly, none of that really matters, because I got a Pillow Pet in my Halloween goodie bag and that's sort of like the Neosporin on my emotional papercuts for the moment. Baby steps, eh?
But really, what else can I do but get angry about the little things I can fix? It's not like I have the power to make either of them break up with their girlfriends. Or that they'd want to of their own free will, anyways. I'm just stuck between everything, is what I guess I'm trying to say. In constant limbo. Is what I feel real or do I make this shit up in my head? And why am I ALWAYS asking myself that question??
I once told Bob-o I feel like I'm just sitting around waiting for my life to happen. His reply was well, nothing's ever going to happen if you sit around and wait for it. So what the fuck do I do now that I went looking for an adventure and I have mud all over my face? Wipe it off, I suppose, but I'm going to be completely honest, it's getting old fast. And so is whining about how much being single sucks. Seriously, I'd rather be chewing a cereal bowl full of rusty nails and glass bits than be bitching that I'm fuckable but not datable. The glass is half full, but fuck me, being Little Mary Sunshine 24/7 is draining. Seriously. I think I've used up my Positive Points for the month. I need to go brood in my room under the covers for awhile now.
Also the lack of coffee is like someone directly inserting a sewing needle into my brain. Give me caffeine or give me death. They'll have to pry my Starbucks from my cold, dead hands. Gimpy liver be damned, that is the one vice I will not give up. They can have the cheese, but coffee is a battle that will be fought to the death.
So, in conclusion, I have no idea what to do about anything. Well, I can do homework, and go to work, and sleep. But everything else is just one big pile of peanuty, nougaty clusterfuck. I could probably solve the case of the Lindbergh baby more easily than I could my own goddamned life problems. Everything's just weird and I'm all jittery and jumpy (especially since I started watching American Horror Story on a regular basis...creepy shit) and I'm sore and car-less. Generally, I just need a hug. And some method of keeping the tip of my nose warm...seriously, it's numb and no other part of my body is this cold. Have they invented nose-warmers yet? A quick google search reveals that they have. Only you have to knit them yourself and they look like those hawk-beak death masks or like you have a nasal STD and have to contain it via mask. Wait, they have an entire website just for hand-knitted nose-warmers? And the shit costs $17 bucks a pop? I think I'll just stick to pinching it to try and warm it up.
I guess the moral of this story is that it's a full-time job to be jealous of other people's happiness. Well, I already have two part time jobs, which I figure equals one whole job, so I'm going to quit the fake one that involves the draining of my emotional well-being. I'll let you know how that goes. In the meantime, I'm just going to look at wedding dresses online for the imaginary wedding I'm not having. I'll keep you posted.
I'm going to round off this whole fiasco by throwing a shout-out.
ERL- we met three years ago today. I loved you then, a year from then, and two years from then. Now...we're just sort of existing peacefully in each others' lives. I do love you, but in the same way love your car after being in an accident with it (which is strangely fitting I suppose): you're bound together because you survived so much shit together. And baby, we went to hell and back twice and have the scars to prove it. You'll always be in my heart, and I'll always be there for you, no matter what the situation or circumstances. I won't break that promise. The difference is now, I'm free and I have my closure. I can come and go, if you will. I think soulmates exist, but not in the sappy, stupid way, they are the people that you love unconditionally who come into your life when you need them the most. You're a soulmate to me because at that time in my life, I couldn't have possibly loved anyone more than I did you, and I needed that so badly. You were the life preserver I needed to cling on to so badly when I felt like no one in the whole world would ever love me. I think you needed me too, but you'd never say that. I kind of worry about you, because I know you keep your problems inside, but you have my number and you know you can text me if the going gets tough. I used to say that I never gave up on you, and I guess it's good that I didn't, because if I had, we never would have reached this peaceful plateau. I'm gonna think of you today and smile, not because I'm still clinging on to some sappy memory, but because I'm finally free and whole and happy. Well, not quite as happy as I should be, but I'll be there in time. I wish you all the happiness in the whole world, and I wish from the very bottom of my heart that you'll find happiness and peace and love in your life. Any girl would be more than absolutely lucky to call you her own, and any girl that passes you up didn't deserve you in the first place. I'm fortunate I got to have you for a small amount of time. This is goodbye, in a way, to the way I used to feel about you. I felt this day would be a good day for a proper send-off. But it's never goodbye, only see you later, because I hope we'll be in each others' lives for many, many years to come. I won't ever forget you, my dear. Lots of love. -J
God, I didn't want that to be gushy and it totally was. Ahhh, sorry. Oh well.
I can't put an ending on this quite yet.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
An Open Letter to all the Men I Currently Have Feelings For
Title's pretty self-explanatory.
In no specific order:
In no specific order:
- Aqua Eyes: I can't even believe I'm writing this. I resisted it as long as I could, I really did. I swore up and down and sideways that I wasn't going to fall for another manager. But here I am, giggling like a fucking fourteen year old every time you look my way. I don't know what it is about you; something that I can't quite put my finger on intrigues me. I'm usually pretty good at reading people, but you--just when I think I have you all figured out, it turns out there's a million more pieces to your puzzle. I know I shouldn't. I know I have to stop. Not just because you have a girlfriend, but because me and you would never happen. Plus, like I told you, you're guarded. Whether it's me, or the fact that we're employee and manager, I don't know. I have this theory that your walls are really made of butter, and you're just waiting for someone to melt them. I'm scared I'm not good enough for you to want me to push those walls away. Blame it on ERL, I say. He started it all. This one, I'm gonna chalk up to a schoolgirl crush, since we did in fact go to school together. But the eyes. You've got to quit looking at me like that. And no, I really didn't realize your eyes were like, the deepest brown. But now I can't see anything else.
- Ginger: First of all, fuck you. And not in the literal sense. Yeah, I wanted to. Maybe I could even see some relationship potential there. But you went and fucked that all up to hell. Oh, who the fuck am I kidding? I've always got one more chance for everyone. But I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty stung after you shot me down. It's not too often that I would consent to want to fuck someone, but way to make a girl feel like a loser for 1. doing the booty-calling (instead of being the booty call-ee) and 2. being attracted to you in the first place. I don't know what's going to happen to me and you. I'm butt-hurt, to be quite honest; my pride is damaged. I thought we had a good little thing going on there, but I guess I was wrong. But that doesn't mean I don't still want your dick. Just get me drunk first, is all I'm saying. Now, let me make one thing clear. Just because I only want to fuck you doesn't mean I don't think you're good enough for a relationship. It just means my sexual attraction to you far exceeds your boyfriend potential. No offense. I'm sure you're an extremely nice dude, and I don't doubt for a second that you'd treat a girl well. But I promised myself I'd never fall for another stoner. Again, blame ERL. Plus, you said it yourself, you can't even take care of yourself, how could you possibly take care of me when I need it? Again, no offense. Plus, those soccer players get me in trouble. Speaking of...
- Bob-o: Where do I even start with you? There's so much pain. I'm so incredibly hurt and jealous, I can barely articulate it. I was waiting for you, damnit! And then you had to go and fuck it all up with that bitch. I guess she's alright (never met her, so I don't really know) but hear this: she'll never be me. I fucking loved you. Still do. But the fact that you were texting me up until like, three days before you were officially in a facebook relationship with her, that hurts. You wonder why I asked you if I was good enough for you (that seems to be a theme, doesn't it?)? Because it seems like I was only ever good enough for you in secret. She's good enough to be your girl, but I'm not? I want to know what she has that I don't. Because I want you. I want all of you, now and always...I want to be your first choice, not your fucking consolation prize. Hear me now though: I won't wait forever. I will always love you, but I will not be some backburner bitch until you're done with her and finally decide you want me.
- Trick: Ahh, I saved the very best for last. I've been thinking about you a lot lately. I felt like such an idiot for texting you. I don't even know why I did it. I feel like you're throwing me a sympathy bone in saying we'll hang out. You know what? I'm still in love with you. I'm so sorry, but I am. I don't think I ever fell out. It's the way you used to look at me. Like we were the only two people in the whole world. I miss that...I miss you. I miss everything about you; your silly shout of a laugh, that nose twitch you do, the way you smell. I have so much to say to you that I really don't even know what to say. My thoughts are a jumbled mess. Sometimes I'm angry. Why did you come into my life if I can't have you? It hurts so much to care about someone and not be able to be with them. It's like you're dangling in front of me, just out of my reach. You...made me feel alive for the first time in such a long time. You know my secret and you didn't judge me. I felt so safe with you; like you'd never ever let anything bad happen to me. I feel like we just missed the mark, you and me. I'm constantly wondering, what if? What it I'd just met you a few months earlier, would we have had a shot before she came into the picture? I have a quote up on my board, and it says "One cannot petition the Lord with prayer." I put that up there, in part, because I so often found myself wishing and hoping some extraordinary circumstances would occur for me and you to come together. I've tried. I've tried to put you out of my mind, I've tried to move on, tell myself you're happy with someone else. But you always manage to creep into my thoughts. I can't help it--I want to be with you. I want you to want me. I want all those fantasies that play out in my head to come true. Am I selfish in wanting you to leave her and come be with me? Absolutely. But the heart wants what the heart wants. Am I so wrong in that? Am I so wrong as to deny my heart's desire? Am I so wrong to want you to take me to dinner, to hug me like you mean it, to tell me you think I'm beautiful, to just call you up and tell you about my day? I want all of that so badly, and I know could get anyone to tell me I'm pretty or bitch to about work after a long day. But...I want you. I wish, oh I wish so badly we could have just one chance.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Everything Changes, Doesn't It Baby?
Today, I went into Border's. If you've been living under a rock or are somehow blind to the signs in 490-point font plastered all over the building, it's closing. The entire chain of Borders is going out of business, bankrupt and foreclosed. Borders was once a giant; much like in You've Got Mail, Borders was the Fox Books that stomped all over mom-and-pop bookstores like the Shop Around the Corner. They were once palaces of books, music, and movies, massive stores chocked full of everything ever printed, recorded, and filmed. Bookstores were one of those things everyone thought was recession-proof: even if we didn't have two dimes to rub together, we'd still read, right? Wrong. Borders took a big gamble when they didn't immediately jump on the eReader bandwagon. They were the very last bookstore to cling onto selling CDs when digital downloads are at an all-time high. When the unemployment line was wrapped around the block, Borders seemingly snubbed their nose at this; continuing to sell books at full price. Glossy hardcover tomes sat unsold on the once-proud shelves of Borders as Amazon sold the Kindle for $114 and Barnes and Noble wisely downsized the number of stores they had. And now, finally, the drain has been pulled. Borders has had the final nail slammed into their coffin, just another casualty of the ruthless economic downward spiral our country has been plunged into.
It's part of a bigger picture. Borders going out of business isn't just a byproduct of a bad economy. I've felt the effects of that; losing my job at the restaurant hit a little too close to home for me. I know nothing is a constant today; nothing can truly be counted on as a surefire business opportunity. Stores and restaurants are closing left and right, and occupations that everyone always thought were recession-proof are becoming spare, and everyone's always afraid and nervous that they're going to be next; that they're going to lost their job, or their house, or that gas will shoot up again and they'll be forced to choose between driving and paying bills. It's so odd to be experiencing this. As a child of the nineties, I grew up in a time of relative economic prosperity. No one worried about high gas prices or losing their homes. If you turned on the news, you didn't hear words like "recession" and "unemployment" and "foreclosure". It was just a very different time.
I wonder if this is just all part of growing up? Do places that you couldn't imagine living without go out of business? Do some storefronts become other things? As I was driving down 135 this evening, I tried to think about what used to be what. Acapulco Joe's (now out of business) was Piper's. Walton Dentistry was a clock repair shop. Luca Pizza di Roma was Boston Market. AutoZone was Blockbuster and many things didn't even exist, like all the apartment complexes, the Starbucks, Panda Express, Menards, Home Depot, and Chik-fil-a. It's like whiting out things on a piece of paper and writing in other things, then forgetting what you whited out in the first place. It's hard to imagine the landscape without things like Meijer, but there was once a time when it wasn't there. Will I just grow used to Border's not being there? It seems so hard to imagine.
I wanted to go to Border's because I wanted to go there one last time. But before I even walked in the door, I regretted it. I saw a few people carrying out a bookshelf and loading it into a minivan. It wasn't bad enough that the store was closing, that they had to rip the very foundations of the building up? I opened the door and instinctively looked to the right, where they always had bargain books and other books of interest. During Christmas, they always had trees there. Now, there were badly Xeroxed fliers advertising things for sale like the cash registers and even the damned boiler. It was like all pretense had been abandoned and no one cared anymore. I was surprised that there weren't fliers in the bathroom advertising that the toilets were for sale as well.
I walked around the store, taking it all in. Gone were the racks and racks of magazines, the coffee shop had been dismantled, and the entire contents of the store were clustered in a few shelves in the center of the store. I walked over to where the kids section used to be, and all that was left of it was the outer spaced patterned carpet. There was a ring of dust around the border of the carpet where they had removed the three wide, flat steps that kids could sit on. I just stopped dead in my tracks. It was an empty, blank space. Although it was brightly lit, it was very dim to me. I can't even describe what I was feeling right then. I had so many happy, shining memories of that place, and seeing it like that broke my heart. That's not how I wanted to remember it: broken down and useless, bits of it being carted off like items at a gypsy fair.
I can remember being so happy there, feeling so safe and tucked away from the world, curled up with a book on those steps. The thing I associate most with Borders is Harry Potter. Harry Potter's world was my world, I was safe there. Harry was a friend when I often felt like I had none. If Harry was my friend, then Borders was the playground where we played together. It was like waking up and finding out that playground had been demolished.
I supposed it's all relative. It's all about growing up. When you're young, you can't wait to grow up. But as you get older, you realize those were the best times of your life. This happens to everyone I suppose, but no one tells you just how hard growing up is. No one tells you how sad it is.
I know it seems silly to be sad about a bookstore, but I guess I never thought that such a huge part of my childhood would be gone. But I won't remember Borders that way. In my mind, it's always going to be a bright, happy place full of books and music; a place that made me exceptionally happy for a large chunk of my life. Yes, it's gone the way of floppy discs, videocassettes, and Paramount's affiliation with Kings Island, but all of those things, they still exist in my memories. And that is one thing that a floundering economy and burgeoning adulthood can never take away.
They can place all of the nails in the coffin of my childhood that they want, but I know I'll always be a kid at heart. A kid curled up with a book at Borders, at that. :)
It's part of a bigger picture. Borders going out of business isn't just a byproduct of a bad economy. I've felt the effects of that; losing my job at the restaurant hit a little too close to home for me. I know nothing is a constant today; nothing can truly be counted on as a surefire business opportunity. Stores and restaurants are closing left and right, and occupations that everyone always thought were recession-proof are becoming spare, and everyone's always afraid and nervous that they're going to be next; that they're going to lost their job, or their house, or that gas will shoot up again and they'll be forced to choose between driving and paying bills. It's so odd to be experiencing this. As a child of the nineties, I grew up in a time of relative economic prosperity. No one worried about high gas prices or losing their homes. If you turned on the news, you didn't hear words like "recession" and "unemployment" and "foreclosure". It was just a very different time.
I wonder if this is just all part of growing up? Do places that you couldn't imagine living without go out of business? Do some storefronts become other things? As I was driving down 135 this evening, I tried to think about what used to be what. Acapulco Joe's (now out of business) was Piper's. Walton Dentistry was a clock repair shop. Luca Pizza di Roma was Boston Market. AutoZone was Blockbuster and many things didn't even exist, like all the apartment complexes, the Starbucks, Panda Express, Menards, Home Depot, and Chik-fil-a. It's like whiting out things on a piece of paper and writing in other things, then forgetting what you whited out in the first place. It's hard to imagine the landscape without things like Meijer, but there was once a time when it wasn't there. Will I just grow used to Border's not being there? It seems so hard to imagine.
I wanted to go to Border's because I wanted to go there one last time. But before I even walked in the door, I regretted it. I saw a few people carrying out a bookshelf and loading it into a minivan. It wasn't bad enough that the store was closing, that they had to rip the very foundations of the building up? I opened the door and instinctively looked to the right, where they always had bargain books and other books of interest. During Christmas, they always had trees there. Now, there were badly Xeroxed fliers advertising things for sale like the cash registers and even the damned boiler. It was like all pretense had been abandoned and no one cared anymore. I was surprised that there weren't fliers in the bathroom advertising that the toilets were for sale as well.
I walked around the store, taking it all in. Gone were the racks and racks of magazines, the coffee shop had been dismantled, and the entire contents of the store were clustered in a few shelves in the center of the store. I walked over to where the kids section used to be, and all that was left of it was the outer spaced patterned carpet. There was a ring of dust around the border of the carpet where they had removed the three wide, flat steps that kids could sit on. I just stopped dead in my tracks. It was an empty, blank space. Although it was brightly lit, it was very dim to me. I can't even describe what I was feeling right then. I had so many happy, shining memories of that place, and seeing it like that broke my heart. That's not how I wanted to remember it: broken down and useless, bits of it being carted off like items at a gypsy fair.
I can remember being so happy there, feeling so safe and tucked away from the world, curled up with a book on those steps. The thing I associate most with Borders is Harry Potter. Harry Potter's world was my world, I was safe there. Harry was a friend when I often felt like I had none. If Harry was my friend, then Borders was the playground where we played together. It was like waking up and finding out that playground had been demolished.
I supposed it's all relative. It's all about growing up. When you're young, you can't wait to grow up. But as you get older, you realize those were the best times of your life. This happens to everyone I suppose, but no one tells you just how hard growing up is. No one tells you how sad it is.
I know it seems silly to be sad about a bookstore, but I guess I never thought that such a huge part of my childhood would be gone. But I won't remember Borders that way. In my mind, it's always going to be a bright, happy place full of books and music; a place that made me exceptionally happy for a large chunk of my life. Yes, it's gone the way of floppy discs, videocassettes, and Paramount's affiliation with Kings Island, but all of those things, they still exist in my memories. And that is one thing that a floundering economy and burgeoning adulthood can never take away.
They can place all of the nails in the coffin of my childhood that they want, but I know I'll always be a kid at heart. A kid curled up with a book at Borders, at that. :)
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Nothing's Perfect, But it's Worth it
I heard something really interesting today. It was actually on the Secret Life of the American Teenager, which is a great show, but I hate how every script of every show is basically one giant PSA. And I hate the sounds the buttons on their cell phones make. Real cellphone buttons don't sound like that. Real cellphone buttons don't actually have a sound at all, nowadays. And I can't for the life of me figure out what's wrong with Beverly Mitchell's eyes. Are they crossed, or is one fake...I just don't know. Well ANYWAYS, in this week's episode, she corners Jack and they're having this whole huge conversation about how he can't get over Grace and she's the one and she's the only one he'll ever love, blah blah blah. But Beverly the cross-eyed counselor that completely oversteps her boundaries as a high school counselor said something really interesting: she said that maybe Grace is the one for him, maybe they'll meet up again one day, but then again, maybe there's a really lucky girl waiting out there for him. The underlying message in all of that (according to my interpretation, anyways) is that "you can be hung up on someone all you want. Maybe you'll meet up again in life, maybe you won't. But the most important thing to keep in mind is that you're a wonderful person and you deserve someone equally as wonderful, and you never know who could be out there. So if you're tied up with so-and-so in the past in your mind, you can never be with someone new in the present."
BOOM. I know this shit. I know it like the back of both of my hands, and my feet. But why is it just now hitting me like a two-ton stack of shitbricks?
I guess I just don't know. I don't know a whole lot of a lot, but I feel like I've gotten a deluge of information since I've come home from being away at college. IU was supposed to be a bastion of lessons learned. I guess it was, in a way, but I feel like everything that happened there was a total clusterfuck, and I'm just now smoothing out the wrinkles. But that's life, isn't it? Trainwreck now, clean up later. Maybe it's because I'm getting older and wiser. I can see how things are going to fit together before the actually do fit together. I don't act first, ask questions later like I did when I was younger. I'm more cautious and less promiscuous. Much less, heh. Maybe that makes all the difference?
My main point is that the past needs to stay in the past. There's a reason why people in your past didn't make it to the present, right? Or am I nuts in thinking that people like ERL are going to come back into my life once more? Even if it's 1 day, 1 month, 1 year or 10 years from now, I have this intrinsic feeling that he'll come back into my life in some way. I don't hold any silly reservations that we'll have a Meg Ryan-like fairy tale ending where he sweeps me off of my feet in Central Park, but I do think he'll come back into my life.
Let's try and examine this in a semi-logical way: I met ERL when I was 19, and I'm 22 now. That's coming up on 3 solid years I've known him, loved him, whatever. I feel like I've dissected my love for him so thoroughly at this point that it's almost overdone. But anyways, three years. I don't want to say wasted, but I've spent so much time pining over him that I've probably held myself back from others. Those are three years of my life I won't get back.
ERL, he never deserved me. He didn't even deserve half of me. I will never, ever as long as I live, forget the way that he made me feel. One won't ever forget the first person they loved. How can you? I think I've just been confused. I think I've been confusing that first love feeling with "I'm not good enough for anyone but him". It's a bad, icky mentality to have, and I've unfortunately fallen trap to it. But I'm seeing the light now. Really, I truly am. I promise. No more pining for ERL because, honestly....there's no point. It'd be like eating spoiled mayonnaise on a sandwich....gross and wrong, and potentially bad for your health. Today is a new day, a new month, and a new leaf is being turned over.....it's all about me and my well-being, not worrying about shit that happened 3 goddamned years ago and analyzing and over-analyzing it to death. I just can't do it anymore; I've hit the wall with him--I don't hold feelings of animosity. I just don't care anymore. It's faded enough into the past that I can look back with fondness and not worry about 'what if.' Yes, he was a huge part of my life, but he needs to stop dictating my present and future decisions. I know I've said it a billion and one times, but there will never be anyone quite like him--but that's a good thing. I really mean it this time.
The thing that stuns me even about myself is that through everything, not just this but all the bananas shit that's happened in my life, I've retained my hope for love. I really and truly have never given up. Even after the worst heartbreak, I've always known that there was a better tomorrow, a new horizon out there. And I hope this will never be taken from me. Cynicism isn't all it's cracked up to be. I believe in love, but I have a tainted view of it. Mumford and Sons puts it well: And there will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears.
And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears. It's so true...I know, just know that there will come a time when I can see love from the other side of the rose-colored glasses. I can feel it, like it's so close I can almost taste it. It's just a little bit out of my grasp.
As Sydney says (among the many, many wise things she utters) when the time is right, you'll know. You'll know in your heart of hearts when the right person comes along. There IS going to be a time when love doesn't break my heart. It's done nothing but that so far, but I know...I know there's someone out there who will mend it all and make everything all better. I don't need someone to mend my broken heart...but rather fill in the tiny little holes that have been chipped away. Make it a beautiful heart. It's already a whole one. I've got friends and family and all the love in the world, a roof over my head, food to eat, and many beautiful things that I'm very blessed to have. My heart is just fine. I just need someone to make it glow. Kind of like a nightlight.
I've written about perspective before, and how just looking at something differently can make all the world of difference. But the full impact of that hasn't hit me until now. Everything can be made to look good if you look at it in a different way, but it's got to truly mean something to you. It's kind of oddly hilarious that a stupid, poorly written and even more poorly acted television drama would make me realize that, but you know. The Force works in mysterious ways.
And coming back to the 'right person' mantra...I also think that all of my other issues, all those fears and reservations that I have...I also think those will melt away when the right person comes along. I really do. They're pretty huge things to overcome, but I think they'll take a backseat. I think to the right person---they won't be a roadblock to the relationship. I really believe in this with all of my heart. I do.
It's all gonna be alright. It's all gonna work out. It's like I've been completing a million-piece puzzle and I'm getting down to the last hundred pieces or so. An end is in sight. I feel it deep down in my bones.
There's so much more to say, everything's all a garbled mess in my brain. My thoughts, work, school, tests and quizzes, they're all interwoven with the present, and the past. A tall, blonde guy who's always going to have a piece of my heart. A man with "beautiful aqua eyes", and a [[certain]] redhead. What does it all MEAN?? I don't even know. I'm just going to go wash my hair and then go to class.
And that right there...that's all the difference. I'mma just do me...and let everything else fall into place. :)
BOOM. I know this shit. I know it like the back of both of my hands, and my feet. But why is it just now hitting me like a two-ton stack of shitbricks?
I guess I just don't know. I don't know a whole lot of a lot, but I feel like I've gotten a deluge of information since I've come home from being away at college. IU was supposed to be a bastion of lessons learned. I guess it was, in a way, but I feel like everything that happened there was a total clusterfuck, and I'm just now smoothing out the wrinkles. But that's life, isn't it? Trainwreck now, clean up later. Maybe it's because I'm getting older and wiser. I can see how things are going to fit together before the actually do fit together. I don't act first, ask questions later like I did when I was younger. I'm more cautious and less promiscuous. Much less, heh. Maybe that makes all the difference?
My main point is that the past needs to stay in the past. There's a reason why people in your past didn't make it to the present, right? Or am I nuts in thinking that people like ERL are going to come back into my life once more? Even if it's 1 day, 1 month, 1 year or 10 years from now, I have this intrinsic feeling that he'll come back into my life in some way. I don't hold any silly reservations that we'll have a Meg Ryan-like fairy tale ending where he sweeps me off of my feet in Central Park, but I do think he'll come back into my life.
Let's try and examine this in a semi-logical way: I met ERL when I was 19, and I'm 22 now. That's coming up on 3 solid years I've known him, loved him, whatever. I feel like I've dissected my love for him so thoroughly at this point that it's almost overdone. But anyways, three years. I don't want to say wasted, but I've spent so much time pining over him that I've probably held myself back from others. Those are three years of my life I won't get back.
ERL, he never deserved me. He didn't even deserve half of me. I will never, ever as long as I live, forget the way that he made me feel. One won't ever forget the first person they loved. How can you? I think I've just been confused. I think I've been confusing that first love feeling with "I'm not good enough for anyone but him". It's a bad, icky mentality to have, and I've unfortunately fallen trap to it. But I'm seeing the light now. Really, I truly am. I promise. No more pining for ERL because, honestly....there's no point. It'd be like eating spoiled mayonnaise on a sandwich....gross and wrong, and potentially bad for your health. Today is a new day, a new month, and a new leaf is being turned over.....it's all about me and my well-being, not worrying about shit that happened 3 goddamned years ago and analyzing and over-analyzing it to death. I just can't do it anymore; I've hit the wall with him--I don't hold feelings of animosity. I just don't care anymore. It's faded enough into the past that I can look back with fondness and not worry about 'what if.' Yes, he was a huge part of my life, but he needs to stop dictating my present and future decisions. I know I've said it a billion and one times, but there will never be anyone quite like him--but that's a good thing. I really mean it this time.
The thing that stuns me even about myself is that through everything, not just this but all the bananas shit that's happened in my life, I've retained my hope for love. I really and truly have never given up. Even after the worst heartbreak, I've always known that there was a better tomorrow, a new horizon out there. And I hope this will never be taken from me. Cynicism isn't all it's cracked up to be. I believe in love, but I have a tainted view of it. Mumford and Sons puts it well: And there will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears.
And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears. It's so true...I know, just know that there will come a time when I can see love from the other side of the rose-colored glasses. I can feel it, like it's so close I can almost taste it. It's just a little bit out of my grasp.
As Sydney says (among the many, many wise things she utters) when the time is right, you'll know. You'll know in your heart of hearts when the right person comes along. There IS going to be a time when love doesn't break my heart. It's done nothing but that so far, but I know...I know there's someone out there who will mend it all and make everything all better. I don't need someone to mend my broken heart...but rather fill in the tiny little holes that have been chipped away. Make it a beautiful heart. It's already a whole one. I've got friends and family and all the love in the world, a roof over my head, food to eat, and many beautiful things that I'm very blessed to have. My heart is just fine. I just need someone to make it glow. Kind of like a nightlight.
I've written about perspective before, and how just looking at something differently can make all the world of difference. But the full impact of that hasn't hit me until now. Everything can be made to look good if you look at it in a different way, but it's got to truly mean something to you. It's kind of oddly hilarious that a stupid, poorly written and even more poorly acted television drama would make me realize that, but you know. The Force works in mysterious ways.
And coming back to the 'right person' mantra...I also think that all of my other issues, all those fears and reservations that I have...I also think those will melt away when the right person comes along. I really do. They're pretty huge things to overcome, but I think they'll take a backseat. I think to the right person---they won't be a roadblock to the relationship. I really believe in this with all of my heart. I do.
It's all gonna be alright. It's all gonna work out. It's like I've been completing a million-piece puzzle and I'm getting down to the last hundred pieces or so. An end is in sight. I feel it deep down in my bones.
There's so much more to say, everything's all a garbled mess in my brain. My thoughts, work, school, tests and quizzes, they're all interwoven with the present, and the past. A tall, blonde guy who's always going to have a piece of my heart. A man with "beautiful aqua eyes", and a [[certain]] redhead. What does it all MEAN?? I don't even know. I'm just going to go wash my hair and then go to class.
And that right there...that's all the difference. I'mma just do me...and let everything else fall into place. :)
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Patriotism, or how the KFC Double Down Made Me Realize that America is the Greatest Nation on Earth
It's nothing new, but KFC has invented a sandwich called the Double Down. It's two deep-fried (or grilled, if you're watching your figure) chicken patties, and sandwiched in between those are slices of cheese, bacon, and sauce. That's a sandwich. Like, the meat is the bread. It clocks in at a whopping 1,380 calories (you're supposed to have about 2,000 a day) and basically it's representative of how gluttonous and gross and fat our society has become. We're such calorie-obsessed, disgusting gluttons that we've actually invented a sandwich that can induce a stroke just by thinking about it.
Foreigners are always quick to point out the "McDonaldization" of the globe that has happened at the hands of Americans. We've taken everything that's nasty and artery-clogging about our nation and are polluting other nations' pure, clean existence with our smog, Nikes, and hot, tasty french fries. It's been a low grumbling for years, but it came to a shout when the Double Down was released. America's really done it now, they said.
I thought so, too, at first. I even tried the sandwich. It's not bad, but I only made it through half of it before I started crying tears of grease out of my eyeballs.
But you know what? America is not only about fast food and cheap, greasy meals. That isn't all that defines us. Yes, we do love a meal that only cost us $5 for a grease-stained sack of fries and burger that includes a gigantic drink, but that meal represents the greater American work ethic. We work our tails off from nine to five so that we've earned that right to drive our gas-guzzling SUVs through the drive-thru and enlarge our carbon footprint by doing so.
Every person who lives in this great nation is proud to be here, even the most begrudging ones. Tell me you've never teared up when the national anthem is played at the Olympics. Tell me you don't always root for the American competitor, even if you don't know who the hell he is. Tell me you aren't proud as hell when fireworks are going off and it's the fourth of July. Sure, we didn't invent fireworks or hot dogs or even ice cream, but we will eat and blast ALL of those off in the name of celebrating our country.
Yeah, we do a lot of things wrong, but for such an infantile country, we sure as hell do a lot of things right. Who cares if that car you drive was assembled and entirely made in China? The automobile was invented right here in the good ol' US of A. Other nations scoff at us for not "being green" and walking or taking public transportation, but every single American knows that we here in this fine country have a long tradition of cars, whether it means making them here or just hoping on the road for a trip. We buckle our seatbelts and put on our turn signals knowing that we're damn proud to own these cars. The men who made them are proud to be in unions, and they were proud to work for fine American companies.
We will get in our big, giant cars, and we will go to the Starbucks drive-thru in the morning. Call us greedy for going to our big money-making jobs, but we know we worked our asses off in college to get that degree. And part of that college experience was going to football and basketball games, and drinking too much beer and cheap vodka. Feeling like you were a part of something every time they played the national anthem or sang the school fight song. Isn't that why we do all of that?
Maybe other nations come together, but no nation can come together like the United States. We can be united in our love or hatred. This whole entire week, Republicans and Democrats have been fighting over a debt ceiling and divided over debt in general, yet not a single person wasn't standing on their feet with thunderous applause as Rep. Gabrielle Giffords proudly walked into Congress to cast her vote.
You can take bits of our skulls, but never our spirits. You can tumble our buildings, hijack our planes, threaten us, hate us, but you can never take that burning, searing flame of hope that every single American has burning down deep inside of them. When our great country is threatened, you'd better hold on, because we will come together faster than you can even imagine.
That brings me back to my original point of KFC. Here is a quintessentially American business, a fast-food joint that mass-produces fattening food. But that right there is the American dream. We work our butts off so that we can have someone else prepare our meals. And when someone else does prepare that food, we would like to know it's a zitty-faced teenager preparing foods that we know and love so that he can earn minimum wages and someday contribute to the great American hamster wheel of Capitalism.
And it just isn't fast food hamburgers. America is open roads and country music. It's jazz music, R&B music, Motown music, and all kinds of music. It's Hitsville USA, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Times Square, and the Golden Gate bridge. It's the assembly lines of Detroit, the steel mills of Gary, the cotton fields of Mississippi, and the skyscrapers of New York City. It's the Hoover Dam and the glittering lights of Las Vegas. It's playgrounds and swingsets and classrooms and teachers. It's students and colleges, guitars and drums. It's baseball, football, tailgating, and beer. It's waving the flag, lighting fireworks, riding a rollercoaster. But it's so much more than the physical trappings. It's getting your hands dirty. It's overcoming, over-doing it, and over-thinking it. It's that feeling of coming together and being part of something that's bigger than yourself. It's knowing that 50 years ago, black people were fighting for the right to be recognized as true citizens. Now a black man is our president. It's knowing that despite the tragedy that occurs, there is still happiness and hope and belief that we will overcome. America isn't the most religious nation in the world because people cling to the belief that a deity can solve their problems. No, this isn't a nation of blind trust and blind faith. We believe, every single one of us, because we were raised to know that something bigger than ourselves will always be there to take care of us.
We aren't just beer, brats, and Sunday afternoon football. We don't paint our faces to look like idiots. We don't eat sandwiches simply because they have almost fourteen hundred calories in them. We do that all because it's the American way. Yeah, we WILL put a boot in your ass. It may be stamped "Made in China", but you can bet your ass the foot connected to it is pure, 100% American bred-and-born.
How a sandwich from a restaurant chain could possibly represent every aspect of the American spirit is probably beyond most people. But the American dream is just that: maybe you can't envision it, but someone else will, and they'll put it in your hands. And every drop of their blood, sweat, and tears is in that product in your hands, even if it is just a greasy fast food menu item. But to every American, their dream is an important part of our nation's fabric. We all come together to form one big, beautiful thing. Maybe we don't have all the original ideas, but we have the drive and passion to make the ones we do have come to fruition.
The KFC Double Down isn't our greatest achievement. It isn't even our best idea. But that's OK. We've got plenty to be proud of. :)
Foreigners are always quick to point out the "McDonaldization" of the globe that has happened at the hands of Americans. We've taken everything that's nasty and artery-clogging about our nation and are polluting other nations' pure, clean existence with our smog, Nikes, and hot, tasty french fries. It's been a low grumbling for years, but it came to a shout when the Double Down was released. America's really done it now, they said.
I thought so, too, at first. I even tried the sandwich. It's not bad, but I only made it through half of it before I started crying tears of grease out of my eyeballs.
But you know what? America is not only about fast food and cheap, greasy meals. That isn't all that defines us. Yes, we do love a meal that only cost us $5 for a grease-stained sack of fries and burger that includes a gigantic drink, but that meal represents the greater American work ethic. We work our tails off from nine to five so that we've earned that right to drive our gas-guzzling SUVs through the drive-thru and enlarge our carbon footprint by doing so.
Every person who lives in this great nation is proud to be here, even the most begrudging ones. Tell me you've never teared up when the national anthem is played at the Olympics. Tell me you don't always root for the American competitor, even if you don't know who the hell he is. Tell me you aren't proud as hell when fireworks are going off and it's the fourth of July. Sure, we didn't invent fireworks or hot dogs or even ice cream, but we will eat and blast ALL of those off in the name of celebrating our country.
Yeah, we do a lot of things wrong, but for such an infantile country, we sure as hell do a lot of things right. Who cares if that car you drive was assembled and entirely made in China? The automobile was invented right here in the good ol' US of A. Other nations scoff at us for not "being green" and walking or taking public transportation, but every single American knows that we here in this fine country have a long tradition of cars, whether it means making them here or just hoping on the road for a trip. We buckle our seatbelts and put on our turn signals knowing that we're damn proud to own these cars. The men who made them are proud to be in unions, and they were proud to work for fine American companies.
We will get in our big, giant cars, and we will go to the Starbucks drive-thru in the morning. Call us greedy for going to our big money-making jobs, but we know we worked our asses off in college to get that degree. And part of that college experience was going to football and basketball games, and drinking too much beer and cheap vodka. Feeling like you were a part of something every time they played the national anthem or sang the school fight song. Isn't that why we do all of that?
Maybe other nations come together, but no nation can come together like the United States. We can be united in our love or hatred. This whole entire week, Republicans and Democrats have been fighting over a debt ceiling and divided over debt in general, yet not a single person wasn't standing on their feet with thunderous applause as Rep. Gabrielle Giffords proudly walked into Congress to cast her vote.
You can take bits of our skulls, but never our spirits. You can tumble our buildings, hijack our planes, threaten us, hate us, but you can never take that burning, searing flame of hope that every single American has burning down deep inside of them. When our great country is threatened, you'd better hold on, because we will come together faster than you can even imagine.
That brings me back to my original point of KFC. Here is a quintessentially American business, a fast-food joint that mass-produces fattening food. But that right there is the American dream. We work our butts off so that we can have someone else prepare our meals. And when someone else does prepare that food, we would like to know it's a zitty-faced teenager preparing foods that we know and love so that he can earn minimum wages and someday contribute to the great American hamster wheel of Capitalism.
And it just isn't fast food hamburgers. America is open roads and country music. It's jazz music, R&B music, Motown music, and all kinds of music. It's Hitsville USA, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Times Square, and the Golden Gate bridge. It's the assembly lines of Detroit, the steel mills of Gary, the cotton fields of Mississippi, and the skyscrapers of New York City. It's the Hoover Dam and the glittering lights of Las Vegas. It's playgrounds and swingsets and classrooms and teachers. It's students and colleges, guitars and drums. It's baseball, football, tailgating, and beer. It's waving the flag, lighting fireworks, riding a rollercoaster. But it's so much more than the physical trappings. It's getting your hands dirty. It's overcoming, over-doing it, and over-thinking it. It's that feeling of coming together and being part of something that's bigger than yourself. It's knowing that 50 years ago, black people were fighting for the right to be recognized as true citizens. Now a black man is our president. It's knowing that despite the tragedy that occurs, there is still happiness and hope and belief that we will overcome. America isn't the most religious nation in the world because people cling to the belief that a deity can solve their problems. No, this isn't a nation of blind trust and blind faith. We believe, every single one of us, because we were raised to know that something bigger than ourselves will always be there to take care of us.
We aren't just beer, brats, and Sunday afternoon football. We don't paint our faces to look like idiots. We don't eat sandwiches simply because they have almost fourteen hundred calories in them. We do that all because it's the American way. Yeah, we WILL put a boot in your ass. It may be stamped "Made in China", but you can bet your ass the foot connected to it is pure, 100% American bred-and-born.
How a sandwich from a restaurant chain could possibly represent every aspect of the American spirit is probably beyond most people. But the American dream is just that: maybe you can't envision it, but someone else will, and they'll put it in your hands. And every drop of their blood, sweat, and tears is in that product in your hands, even if it is just a greasy fast food menu item. But to every American, their dream is an important part of our nation's fabric. We all come together to form one big, beautiful thing. Maybe we don't have all the original ideas, but we have the drive and passion to make the ones we do have come to fruition.
The KFC Double Down isn't our greatest achievement. It isn't even our best idea. But that's OK. We've got plenty to be proud of. :)
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Tulle, Twinkle Lights and Train-Length Veils: A Consolodated History of how Weddings Changed my Life
Like a million other little girls, I've dreamt of my wedding day all my whole entire life. Ever since I've known what a wedding was, I've been thinking about mine.
I can remember sneaking out of my bed when I was a little girl, early in the morning to play wedding with my Barbies. I only had one Barbie wedding dress that was kind of flat and ugly, but fortunately I had Cinderella Barbie's detachable poofy skirt to go over it and give it a nice ballgown look. I also had one veil that was tragically, the kind with the elastic headband that went across their forehead. But hey, Barbie can't not have a veil on her wedding day. Top that off with her glittery plastic shoes (that had a nasty habit of getting sucked up in the vacuum cleaner) and Barbie was set!
Her bridesmaids were various other Barbies, and unfortunately their dresses never matched, but which ever Barbie was the bride never seemed to mind. I only had one Ken doll and a Prince Charming doll, so they swapped off being the groom. The groom's tux was splendid; it was a glittery black number with a pale pink tuxedo shirt and shiny black shoes. Because I had twenty-something odd Barbies and only 2 Ken dolls, Ken and Prince Charming were the most brazen polygamists on the block. They each had several marriages with all of the Barbies.
And much like their TLC counterparts, they all lived in one big, pink Barbie Dream House. No, really I had a Barbie dream house that was cotton-candy pink with a neon blue textured roof. It had a front patio, a downstairs sitting room, a kitchenette, an upstairs bedroom complete with jacuzzi, and it even had a functional elevator. Barbie and Ken often consummated their marriage(s) on the pink plastic twin bed.
And of course, these frequent wedding ceremonies were always attended by their parents. My mom's retro Barbie and Ken doll always happily filled these roles; dutifully making the trek down from their cases in the upstairs closet. Vintage Barbie had interchangeable heads with different hairstyles, so that was always fun and in no way horrifying whatsoever to a young child. But she had wacky blue eyeshadow and the snooty look a true mother of the bride ought to have. Vintage Ken just complacently drove the pink Cadillac convertible.
I can distinctly remember doing this everyday of my adolescence until it was no longer cool to play with Barbies. So I packed them up and put them in the closet. But I never stopped loving weddings.
I can remember very, very distinctly the first wedding I went to. It was my piano teacher Michelle's wedding. She was Jewish, and she and her husband had a traditional ceremony, complete with the Chuppah, the Yarlmukes, and the stomping of the wine glass. It was the most exotic thing I had ever seen at eight years old. When they lifted them up on the chairs, it was wild. I was wearing a blue and cream floral print dress with dyed-to-match shoes and I was in heaven. I can remember the bride walking down the aisle, her veil being lifted, and the reception.
I was down at IU, miserable and majoring in journalism. I literally woke up one day and decided I wanted to be a wedding planner. I was never one to waste time when I wanted something, so I dropped all of my journalism classes, signed up for event planning classes, and set out with stars in my eyes. I didn't have a clue what I was doing...at all.
When I began working for my catering company, we used to cater to a facility downtown called the Mavris Arts and Event Center. Mavris is absolutely beautiful. Sealed hardwood floors, exposed brick walls, wooden beams wrapped with twinkly lights. It's right in the heart of downtown, so when you go outside or look out of any of the windows, you have a spectacular view of the city skyline. I can distinctly remember one wedding reception that I worked. It was a Saturday night, in the summer. Late June. the weather was sublime. Not too hot or humid, a slight breeze, and the night sky was full of a million billion stars. We took the trash out and I lingered outside for a minute. The dumpsters at that place are against a large brick wall, and you have to walk on sort of a sidewalk/ledge to get to them. If you lean up against the wall and look out, you have just a perfect view of the whole city. I took a deep breath of the summer air, and I was at peace. Everything was so wonderful right at that moment, and I never wanted it to end. And I knew. I knew that this was my city, and this was my calling. To plan beautiful weddings in Indianapolis, the city I loved. I've never had such a moment of mental clarity in my life. This is what I'm meant to do and this is where I'm meant to be. I never wanted that feeling to go away.
And so I will sit on my laptop late, late at night when I should be studying and sleeping, and look up venues in downtown Indianapolis. I'll research catering, linen companies, and bridesmaids dresses. Even though I don't have a boyfriend, I'll plan my wedding like it's coming up tomorrow. Because I love it. I love it all. Wedding stuff is like crack to me; I get bride magazines in the mail, I watch all of the wedding shows on TV, I belong to TheKnot.com. If any potential suitor knew all of this, he wouldn't run, he would sprint in the opposite direction. Because some girls are like that. Some just want to get married just to have the wedding. So that's why I plan. "Those who can't wed, plan," said Jennifer Lopez in The Wedding Planner. But it all just makes me so happy. Weddings make me so very happy, and that's all I need. All I need is to be happy with what I do and I'm set for life.
So that little girl who played with Barbies, the young girl, wide-eyed at her first wedding, and the ambitious college girl in the city are all rolled into one. It's a journey everyday, and I wouldn't change a minute of anything. It's nice sometimes to be reminded of why I'm where I am today.
It's another lovely summer night. I take one last breath of the summer air, and go back inside. One day, it will be my day. But until then, I'm alright.
Life can be grand. But only if you follow your centerpiece, buttercream, and champagne dreams. ;)
I can remember sneaking out of my bed when I was a little girl, early in the morning to play wedding with my Barbies. I only had one Barbie wedding dress that was kind of flat and ugly, but fortunately I had Cinderella Barbie's detachable poofy skirt to go over it and give it a nice ballgown look. I also had one veil that was tragically, the kind with the elastic headband that went across their forehead. But hey, Barbie can't not have a veil on her wedding day. Top that off with her glittery plastic shoes (that had a nasty habit of getting sucked up in the vacuum cleaner) and Barbie was set!
Her bridesmaids were various other Barbies, and unfortunately their dresses never matched, but which ever Barbie was the bride never seemed to mind. I only had one Ken doll and a Prince Charming doll, so they swapped off being the groom. The groom's tux was splendid; it was a glittery black number with a pale pink tuxedo shirt and shiny black shoes. Because I had twenty-something odd Barbies and only 2 Ken dolls, Ken and Prince Charming were the most brazen polygamists on the block. They each had several marriages with all of the Barbies.
And much like their TLC counterparts, they all lived in one big, pink Barbie Dream House. No, really I had a Barbie dream house that was cotton-candy pink with a neon blue textured roof. It had a front patio, a downstairs sitting room, a kitchenette, an upstairs bedroom complete with jacuzzi, and it even had a functional elevator. Barbie and Ken often consummated their marriage(s) on the pink plastic twin bed.
And of course, these frequent wedding ceremonies were always attended by their parents. My mom's retro Barbie and Ken doll always happily filled these roles; dutifully making the trek down from their cases in the upstairs closet. Vintage Barbie had interchangeable heads with different hairstyles, so that was always fun and in no way horrifying whatsoever to a young child. But she had wacky blue eyeshadow and the snooty look a true mother of the bride ought to have. Vintage Ken just complacently drove the pink Cadillac convertible.
I can distinctly remember doing this everyday of my adolescence until it was no longer cool to play with Barbies. So I packed them up and put them in the closet. But I never stopped loving weddings.
I can remember very, very distinctly the first wedding I went to. It was my piano teacher Michelle's wedding. She was Jewish, and she and her husband had a traditional ceremony, complete with the Chuppah, the Yarlmukes, and the stomping of the wine glass. It was the most exotic thing I had ever seen at eight years old. When they lifted them up on the chairs, it was wild. I was wearing a blue and cream floral print dress with dyed-to-match shoes and I was in heaven. I can remember the bride walking down the aisle, her veil being lifted, and the reception.
I was down at IU, miserable and majoring in journalism. I literally woke up one day and decided I wanted to be a wedding planner. I was never one to waste time when I wanted something, so I dropped all of my journalism classes, signed up for event planning classes, and set out with stars in my eyes. I didn't have a clue what I was doing...at all.
When I began working for my catering company, we used to cater to a facility downtown called the Mavris Arts and Event Center. Mavris is absolutely beautiful. Sealed hardwood floors, exposed brick walls, wooden beams wrapped with twinkly lights. It's right in the heart of downtown, so when you go outside or look out of any of the windows, you have a spectacular view of the city skyline. I can distinctly remember one wedding reception that I worked. It was a Saturday night, in the summer. Late June. the weather was sublime. Not too hot or humid, a slight breeze, and the night sky was full of a million billion stars. We took the trash out and I lingered outside for a minute. The dumpsters at that place are against a large brick wall, and you have to walk on sort of a sidewalk/ledge to get to them. If you lean up against the wall and look out, you have just a perfect view of the whole city. I took a deep breath of the summer air, and I was at peace. Everything was so wonderful right at that moment, and I never wanted it to end. And I knew. I knew that this was my city, and this was my calling. To plan beautiful weddings in Indianapolis, the city I loved. I've never had such a moment of mental clarity in my life. This is what I'm meant to do and this is where I'm meant to be. I never wanted that feeling to go away.
And so I will sit on my laptop late, late at night when I should be studying and sleeping, and look up venues in downtown Indianapolis. I'll research catering, linen companies, and bridesmaids dresses. Even though I don't have a boyfriend, I'll plan my wedding like it's coming up tomorrow. Because I love it. I love it all. Wedding stuff is like crack to me; I get bride magazines in the mail, I watch all of the wedding shows on TV, I belong to TheKnot.com. If any potential suitor knew all of this, he wouldn't run, he would sprint in the opposite direction. Because some girls are like that. Some just want to get married just to have the wedding. So that's why I plan. "Those who can't wed, plan," said Jennifer Lopez in The Wedding Planner. But it all just makes me so happy. Weddings make me so very happy, and that's all I need. All I need is to be happy with what I do and I'm set for life.
So that little girl who played with Barbies, the young girl, wide-eyed at her first wedding, and the ambitious college girl in the city are all rolled into one. It's a journey everyday, and I wouldn't change a minute of anything. It's nice sometimes to be reminded of why I'm where I am today.
It's another lovely summer night. I take one last breath of the summer air, and go back inside. One day, it will be my day. But until then, I'm alright.
Life can be grand. But only if you follow your centerpiece, buttercream, and champagne dreams. ;)
Monday, July 11, 2011
Keep Holding On, Cause You Know I'll Make it Through
I just don't know anything anymore. Casey Anthony, like OJ, proved that only in America™ can you murder a member of your family and get away with it. A slut murdered her baby, yet a jury says she didn't do it. Rod Blagojevich has bad hair, is a bad liar, and is going to jail forever, perhaps. What the fuck? Jose Baez is licking his chops and cracking his knuckles with excitement. Casey Anthony winks at the cameras and that twinkle in her eye says, "got you good, fuckers!!!!" The world has ceased to make sense.
I'm angry, I'm jittery and nervous. I'm not hungry but I eat anyways. I don't know what's wrong.
Actually, I do. I'm just scared shitless of everything, and I don't want to let go of the people I cared about in the past. You know who. Well, not You-Know-Who...not Voldemort. Never mind.
I know I mean nothing to him at all. AT ALL. But he meant something to me and it's so hard to let go, really. It's a daily struggle. Wait, who am I talking about? Either/or.
I know there's supposedly a point to everything, and everything happens for a reason, but what the FUCK?
I just don't understand it right now. I know that refutes everything I've ever spewed in my writing, but right now, at 3 AM, nothing makes sense. I hate the whole world, and I want to throw things until they break. I hate whatever fates exist in the universe for bringing me to him and falling for him. What was the point?? Just to throw it in my face at 1 AM in a parking lot of a Mexican restaurant? All of that for that kind of humiliation? I don't get it. Everything hurts. It feels like being punched in the gut a million times, then no one helping you.
And E? I don't get him, either. I don't understand him as a person or understand why I spent three goddamned years of my life pining after him. I don't understand falling in love with a person only to never speak to them again. I know that was my choice, but he brought me to that decision with his own actions. I don't know what hurts more, to love someone and not be able to be with them, or have loved and lost? It doesn't matter, I guess.
I have so much anger pent up towards E. I really, really do. Three fucking years of my life I gave him. I loved him absolutely unconditionally despite all of the shit he put me through, and all of his many emotional problems and problems otherwise. I never once, EVER wavered in my devotion for him. I was there every time he needed me and more. Every time he asked me to, I drove my ass all the way to Bloomington. If he said "jump", I said "how high?" All I ever wanted to do was be with him. For real, not just between his sheets at 4 AM. And he could never give that to me. And then to add insult to injury, he fucked my friend. After I'd been nothing by loyal and kind and caring and loving to him for three. Fucking. Years. I know he never asked for it, but A) that's not the point and B) I loved him with all of my whole heart, and I wouldn't have done anything less for him at the time. I guess that's the point, you're supposed to see the beauty in a sea of ugly. But I don't want to. Right now, I just want to be hateful and childish and throw a pity party for myself.
And Trick...well, I don't really have anything to say. Well, actually, I do, but most of it is an illogical argument that I don't care to state. I liked him so much, and it seriously hurt more than he'll ever know that I made an ass out of myself by telling him I was in luuurve with him, and for him to just stand there and mumble awkwardly. I mean, what did I expect him to do? Throw his arms around me in a fit of passion and declare his undying love for me right back? HAHAHA, no. Why on earth would he do that? He has a girlfriend henever talks about is perfectly happy with. My bitterness is like a lemon wedge; small, but still there. But why should I be? I liked, I lost. Move on, right?? Except it's not that easy, cause I really liked him a whole lot. It hurts not only that I don't get to see him anymore, but that he doesn't really care that he isn't seeing me, either.
That's the very worst part.
What matters is these men I keep falling for that let me down like a stack of bricks. I don't understand what I did to deserve it. I look at other people who are happy and wonder why I'm not good enough for that. Why do I continually get shit on when everyone else gets to be happy in love with rainbows and butterflies? All I have is a cold and a billion guys who want to send me pictures of their man business. Fuck that.
EE is the only man I trust. And he's a stuffed Disney animal.
...................I'm fucked.
I'm angry, I'm jittery and nervous. I'm not hungry but I eat anyways. I don't know what's wrong.
Actually, I do. I'm just scared shitless of everything, and I don't want to let go of the people I cared about in the past. You know who. Well, not You-Know-Who...not Voldemort. Never mind.
I know I mean nothing to him at all. AT ALL. But he meant something to me and it's so hard to let go, really. It's a daily struggle. Wait, who am I talking about? Either/or.
I know there's supposedly a point to everything, and everything happens for a reason, but what the FUCK?
I just don't understand it right now. I know that refutes everything I've ever spewed in my writing, but right now, at 3 AM, nothing makes sense. I hate the whole world, and I want to throw things until they break. I hate whatever fates exist in the universe for bringing me to him and falling for him. What was the point?? Just to throw it in my face at 1 AM in a parking lot of a Mexican restaurant? All of that for that kind of humiliation? I don't get it. Everything hurts. It feels like being punched in the gut a million times, then no one helping you.
And E? I don't get him, either. I don't understand him as a person or understand why I spent three goddamned years of my life pining after him. I don't understand falling in love with a person only to never speak to them again. I know that was my choice, but he brought me to that decision with his own actions. I don't know what hurts more, to love someone and not be able to be with them, or have loved and lost? It doesn't matter, I guess.
I have so much anger pent up towards E. I really, really do. Three fucking years of my life I gave him. I loved him absolutely unconditionally despite all of the shit he put me through, and all of his many emotional problems and problems otherwise. I never once, EVER wavered in my devotion for him. I was there every time he needed me and more. Every time he asked me to, I drove my ass all the way to Bloomington. If he said "jump", I said "how high?" All I ever wanted to do was be with him. For real, not just between his sheets at 4 AM. And he could never give that to me. And then to add insult to injury, he fucked my friend. After I'd been nothing by loyal and kind and caring and loving to him for three. Fucking. Years. I know he never asked for it, but A) that's not the point and B) I loved him with all of my whole heart, and I wouldn't have done anything less for him at the time. I guess that's the point, you're supposed to see the beauty in a sea of ugly. But I don't want to. Right now, I just want to be hateful and childish and throw a pity party for myself.
And Trick...well, I don't really have anything to say. Well, actually, I do, but most of it is an illogical argument that I don't care to state. I liked him so much, and it seriously hurt more than he'll ever know that I made an ass out of myself by telling him I was in luuurve with him, and for him to just stand there and mumble awkwardly. I mean, what did I expect him to do? Throw his arms around me in a fit of passion and declare his undying love for me right back? HAHAHA, no. Why on earth would he do that? He has a girlfriend he
That's the very worst part.
What matters is these men I keep falling for that let me down like a stack of bricks. I don't understand what I did to deserve it. I look at other people who are happy and wonder why I'm not good enough for that. Why do I continually get shit on when everyone else gets to be happy in love with rainbows and butterflies? All I have is a cold and a billion guys who want to send me pictures of their man business. Fuck that.
EE is the only man I trust. And he's a stuffed Disney animal.
...................I'm fucked.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Breaking Up with BlackBerry
He's up in my room. I hid him up there so he won't know that I'm carrying on a clandestine internet affair. I spend hours watching videos of the new guy, browsing the online store to see what I can buy for him. All while my current one sits upstairs unsuspectingly. Just minding his own business, not knowing his end is near.
I'm talking about phones, of course.
My torrid love affair with smartphones began in the fall of 2009. I acquired a BlackBerry, and it was love at first sight. It was all sweet in the beginning. We would sit and play brickbreaker for hours on end. I would marvel at the fact that I could browse the internet via a small device in my hand. He would wake me up each morning with the sweet pings of spam email. Then, the honeymoon phase was over. We got comfortable with each other, and I began to long for something more. It became a chore to take care of him. The trackball that was once lovingly caressed by my thumb was now clogged with oil and germs. He froze all the time and his keys began to stick. I just couldn't deal with it, so I pulled the plug. Our relationship, a tender year old, had soured. We decided to go our separate ways and I upgraded to a new model.
It was like discovering that there was more than one position in which to have sex. My new Bold was everything the Curve was not. He was faster, sleeker, and best of all, no trackball! Instead, he had a smooth touchpad sensor. We have been happy thus far. He's been very good to me, and when he upgraded his software, it was like going on a second honeymoon. But yet, something still was missing. I longed for a love I once considered forbidden.
I vowed in my existence to never own an Apple product besides my iPod. I loved my iPod, but I refused to own an iPhone. But in the back of my mind, I wondered...what would life be like with an iPhone? There is a certain stigma attached to owning an iPhone. That stigma being "douche". The 'iPhone douche' is the modern-day equivalent of the nearly-extinct 'Mustang douche'. He is the guy in the bar who talks too loudly and brags about having an iPhone. He may even sport that stupid little white sticker in his rear windshield that they send you with your bundle of cords and manuals when you get an Apple product. The iPhone douche is the guy who is so convinced that his iPhone is superior to your other smartphone that he appears to be educated in nothing else but iPhone facts and stats. He actually uses the line "there's an app for that!" He may or may not have sexually explicit fantasies involving Steve Jobs. He puts too much gel in his hair and shops exclusively at Express Men.
That was then. But now, everyone has an iPhone. People who are clearly not douches. My dad owns an iPhone, for Christ's sake. They're clearly superior products. The app store has about 700 bajillion apps, some of which are damn awesome. There's one where you can turn the lights on and off in your house. There's a homework scheduler thing, there's a flashcard app, and a Netflix app. Also, Fruit Ninja. (New high score 230!!) I did not know a life existed before there was Fruit Ninja. It gives me pangs of sadness that I once felt those same feelings for Brickbreaker. Now my BlackBerry sits forlornly up in my room, wishing with all of his little SimCard that he could be relevant once more.
It wasn't an easy decision to make. I, the renown hater of Apple products has decided to acquire an iPhone. I vowed never to join the cult. But I've drank the Kool-aid, put on the Nikes. Hell, I drank the Kool-aid while I tied on my Nikes and pulled the blanket over my head. I didn't think it would ever be. But, slap my ass and call me a Thetan, cause this bitch is soon-to-be the proud owner of an iPhone!
But first, I must end things with the Bold. I think he knows it's coming. He watched today as I simultaneously played Words with Friends and kicked ass on Fruit Ninja. A tear gathered in his little screen as we took a picture with the front-facing, 5 megapixel camera of Sydney's iPhone. We didn't speak on the way home.
This is two phones I've cheated on now, and I'm not proud of myself. But I think I've found happiness with the iPhone. I think we'll stick together. I spent too much time denying our true love for one another. At last, my smartphone has come aloooooong. Lonely days are over. And life is like an iTunes song. :)
I'm talking about phones, of course.
My torrid love affair with smartphones began in the fall of 2009. I acquired a BlackBerry, and it was love at first sight. It was all sweet in the beginning. We would sit and play brickbreaker for hours on end. I would marvel at the fact that I could browse the internet via a small device in my hand. He would wake me up each morning with the sweet pings of spam email. Then, the honeymoon phase was over. We got comfortable with each other, and I began to long for something more. It became a chore to take care of him. The trackball that was once lovingly caressed by my thumb was now clogged with oil and germs. He froze all the time and his keys began to stick. I just couldn't deal with it, so I pulled the plug. Our relationship, a tender year old, had soured. We decided to go our separate ways and I upgraded to a new model.
It was like discovering that there was more than one position in which to have sex. My new Bold was everything the Curve was not. He was faster, sleeker, and best of all, no trackball! Instead, he had a smooth touchpad sensor. We have been happy thus far. He's been very good to me, and when he upgraded his software, it was like going on a second honeymoon. But yet, something still was missing. I longed for a love I once considered forbidden.
I vowed in my existence to never own an Apple product besides my iPod. I loved my iPod, but I refused to own an iPhone. But in the back of my mind, I wondered...what would life be like with an iPhone? There is a certain stigma attached to owning an iPhone. That stigma being "douche". The 'iPhone douche' is the modern-day equivalent of the nearly-extinct 'Mustang douche'. He is the guy in the bar who talks too loudly and brags about having an iPhone. He may even sport that stupid little white sticker in his rear windshield that they send you with your bundle of cords and manuals when you get an Apple product. The iPhone douche is the guy who is so convinced that his iPhone is superior to your other smartphone that he appears to be educated in nothing else but iPhone facts and stats. He actually uses the line "there's an app for that!" He may or may not have sexually explicit fantasies involving Steve Jobs. He puts too much gel in his hair and shops exclusively at Express Men.
That was then. But now, everyone has an iPhone. People who are clearly not douches. My dad owns an iPhone, for Christ's sake. They're clearly superior products. The app store has about 700 bajillion apps, some of which are damn awesome. There's one where you can turn the lights on and off in your house. There's a homework scheduler thing, there's a flashcard app, and a Netflix app. Also, Fruit Ninja. (New high score 230!!) I did not know a life existed before there was Fruit Ninja. It gives me pangs of sadness that I once felt those same feelings for Brickbreaker. Now my BlackBerry sits forlornly up in my room, wishing with all of his little SimCard that he could be relevant once more.
It wasn't an easy decision to make. I, the renown hater of Apple products has decided to acquire an iPhone. I vowed never to join the cult. But I've drank the Kool-aid, put on the Nikes. Hell, I drank the Kool-aid while I tied on my Nikes and pulled the blanket over my head. I didn't think it would ever be. But, slap my ass and call me a Thetan, cause this bitch is soon-to-be the proud owner of an iPhone!
But first, I must end things with the Bold. I think he knows it's coming. He watched today as I simultaneously played Words with Friends and kicked ass on Fruit Ninja. A tear gathered in his little screen as we took a picture with the front-facing, 5 megapixel camera of Sydney's iPhone. We didn't speak on the way home.
This is two phones I've cheated on now, and I'm not proud of myself. But I think I've found happiness with the iPhone. I think we'll stick together. I spent too much time denying our true love for one another. At last, my smartphone has come aloooooong. Lonely days are over. And life is like an iTunes song. :)
Sunday, June 19, 2011
I'm Gonna Change a lot of Things, Starting with Me
I reason that I spend the majority of my complaining time on boyfriends, or lack thereof. I'm a total poster child for type-A personalities, so I'm a natural list-maker. Thus, I have compiled a list of reasons why, at this particular time, I should NOT have a mate of any sort. I think I make my case pretty succinctly, if you ask me.
REASON #1: I'm not ready to grow up.
I really should be ready to grow up. I'm 22, theoretically most people have graduated by this age, and have their first job. But I'm still dicking around in college. I've changed my major 3 different times, and up until last May, only recently had the vaguest clue of what I wanted to do. But the real problem is that I enjoy being taken care of by my parents way too much to want to move on to the next phase of my life. Being in a relationship at this stage of your life means that you're probably considering marriage, cause most people are engaged, married, or on the engagement track at this point. Or at least it feels that way. But being in that serious of a relationship means you're ready to take on adult responsibilities, and are willing and able to be responsible and take care of another person. It means you're ready to take care of a household, manage your own finances, have a big-girl job, and most importantly of all, commit to being someone's spouse. It's more than just buying a pretty dress and saying "I do". It's a lifelong bond. I take marriage extremely seriously, and the person I marry is the person I intend to be married to until death do us part. I have realized that now, at this stage of my life, I'm not ready for that level of commitment.
REASON #2: I'm not the best "me" I can be.
Back when I paid someone to listen to me bitch about my life problems, she actually dished out a few sage pieces of advice. One of the gems I've kept with me since then is "you can't find someone until you've found yourself." I know that isn't really the most awesome, amazing piece of advice ever doled out, but it's had an impact on me. I think "finding myself" has been an ongoing process for about the last 4 years now. It's amazing how well you think you know yourself, only to have your life up-ended and have to start back at square one. Just when you think you've reached the end of the road, you realize you've got about a million more miles to go. I think that self-improvement is a lifelong thing, but really knowing who you are and what you want out of life, defining boundaries and setting firm standards, those things all have finite deadlines. I've just yet to set my date. I need to figure out what I truly need to make ME happy. I need to improve my life to the point where I'm happy with the finished project. I'm a jumbled mess still in the blueprint stage right now.
REASON #3: I don't like the person I see in the mirror.
Part of being the best person you can be is liking who looks back at you in the mirror. Gerard Butler said to Katherine Heigl's character in The Ugly Truth "if you don't want to have sex with you, then who does?" Exactly. If you don't like the way you look and feel, then a guy sure as hell isn't going to like it either. Insecurity is very unsexy. I wish I could say that I'm comfortable in my own skin, but I'm not. I hide under baggy clothes and stretchy pants. I wish I were more tan. I'm terrified if I lose weight, that my boobs won't be as great as they are now. But I'm not happy with my weight. I can't get motivated to exercise, and I can't force myself to eat healthy. I reward myself with fast food, only to regret it later. It's just a cycle I don't have the energy to break. But it's the first step that needs to happen. I firmly believe that improving what's on the outside will be a kick start to improving the inside. Speaking of...
REASON #4: I'm crazy.
No, really. Actually, "crazy" is a super-offensive term to describe mental illness. But for the past couple of years, I have been battling a bone-crushing bout of depression, to the point where some days I can't even get out of bed. It comes and goes in waves. Good for a few months, bad for a few, severely bad for a week or so. I can better keep it in check during the summer. But the bigger problem is the fact I've chosen to ignore it and not seek professional help. I've tried to act like it's something that will go away on its' own, like a paper cut. But it's not something that's going to go away overnight; or any of its manifestations. I need help. I'm just too scared to receive it. Which is a problem, since I can't present myself to someone being an emotional wreck the way I am. Not because being depressed in a relationship is unacceptable, but because I could never expect my boyfriend to be my entire support system. I can't heavily emotionally rely on someone that way, nor can I expect them to put up with emotional mood swings. I need to be a strong person all of the time.
REASON #5: Every guy I meet isn't E*** L*****.
I bleeped his name out, lest he google himself once again and actually read this (he will henceforth be referred to by his initials, ERL.) He was my first love, and I've never quite gotten over him. I met him at a frat party when I was 19, and he was supposed to be a one-night stand. He evolved into the person for whom I gave my love virginity to. He means more to me than any guy ever will because of this. A girl never forgets her first anything, and I'll never forget him as long as I live. But the problem is that I didn't have my first love in high school, so I never got over him while still in high school. It just hasn't run its course yet. In my mind, I still wax poetic about him, even though we had a horrible relationship. It was never even a real relationship. More like a catastrophically dragged out hook up session. It was mentally and emotionally draining to be in love with him, and it took over my entire life. I had to leave town to get away from it all. I physically couldn't be in the same area code with him. But it was much needed, because once I moved away, I was able to gain some perspective on the situation. I still love him in a way, but the real problem is that I've done a bang-up job of convincing myself that I'll never love anyone the way I loved him. It's going to take me time to realize that's a good thing that I never will.
REASON #6: I've convinced myself I have too many skeletons in my closet.
Everyone has so-called "skeletons" in their closet; secrets they think would scare other people away. Sometimes when I evaluate my life, I feel like I have a disproportionate amount of secrets only a handful of people know about me. Granted, they are pretty hefty items, but I don't think it's anything too out of the norm. I feel like I've slept with way too many guys, I'm ashamed to admit that to potential suitors. I've also had things happen to me that are far more common than one would think. But it still makes you feel like damaged goods. And that thing....it's so hard to admit that it's happened in the first place, and it's ten times harder to realize that it's affected every aspect of your life. You don't ever fully recover from something like that. But I haven't even completely come to terms with it. I've never sat down and actually admitted it to myself, or fully recognized the repercussions of it. I know it will eventually be something I can deal with, but right now it seems like climbing Mount Everest without a handy Sherpa guide. This all leads to...
REASON #7: Major trust and intimacy issues.
As a direct result of what happened to me, I have a LOT of trouble not only trusting men, but being physically intimate with them. My dirty little secret is that I've only soberly hooked up with one person in the last 4 years. The rest have all been drunken or high encounters. I don't even know how to initiate contact with a guy anymore. I need alcohol as courage to take my clothes off. Which is so wrong on so many levels, I don't even know where to start. I recognize that I have trust issues, and I grill guys and give them the third degree, which drives them off too early on. It all leads back to my point that you can't sell someone damaged goods. Guys do not want a girl who can't trust them, and who is making them sign a contract right up front. They don't want a girl who's in denial about her salad bar of problems and insecurities. And they especially don't want a girl who is going to be questioning their loyalty all of the time.
REASON #8: I'm looking too hard. Or just looking period.
I've been told more times than I can count that you don't find someone, they'll just fall into your life when it's perfectly right and when you least expect it. It's completely true. I met Jeremy when Syd dragged me over to AK's house the day after Thanksgiving. I met ERL at a party they basically forced me to go to. And those guys were right for me at that time. I'm just trying waaaaay too hard. The desperation is wafting off of me like the smell of a skunk. I keep looking in stupid places like work, bars, and online dating services. None of those work, of course. And for the people they do work for, they're the exception, not the rule. First off, you don't shit where you eat. Dating someone you work with is a recipe for disaster. You're just on top of each other, and you get sick of each other. Meeting someone in an alcohol-induced haze is never a solid foundation for a relationship. And all of the guys on dating websites are either virgins, damaged from their last relationship, or just looking for sex. I've been told so many times that I just need to focus on myself, then Mr. Right will waltz right along. Speaking of Mr. Right...
REASON #9: I still think "Mr. Right" is coming along
I'm super bad at taking my own advice (duuhh) but let me tell you that Mr. Right ain't coming, honey. Because he doesn't actually exist. I have knowingly made the most common dating mistake. I've cooked up a list of traits, Frankensteined qualities together from past dudes that I like, and slapped it all together to make some imaginary Ken doll of a man that I expect to come along and sweep me off my feet. But the truth is that men like that don't exist, and women who think they do hold themselves back because they pass up perfectly good men in their quest for the "perfect guy". You have to realize that, A-no one is perfect, and B- you yourself could potentially have qualities others don't dig, so why hate on others for their quirks? The golden rule tells us to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you don't want to be judged for your quirks, then don't do it to other people. My problem is that I find one tiny thing wrong with a person, and banish them away. I also have a tall list of expectations they have to meet. I read somewhere that you should have five "non-negotiables" when it comes to dating, and that's it. Five things that guys absolutely either must or must not have. My problem is that I have like 225, not five. The more you narrow your focus, the harder it is to find someone.
REASON #10: I'm the "dog catcher".
This is what my dad calls me. I tend to scrape the bottom of the underside of the barrel when it comes to guys. My problem is that I take any and all. No one isn't welcome at my door. My standards are way too low, in addition to being too narrow, as referenced above. But the abovementioned reason contributes completely to the problem. I tend to look more at guys' credentials than their actual compatibility with me. Hence me getting involved with so many dudes who aren't right for me, hence me getting my heart broken and let down over and over again. I continually voluntarily date shitty guys who I know aren't right for me, then get shocked every time it doesn't work out. Like it was gonna be a surprise or something. And the kicker is that I know exactly the moment I meet someone if they're right for me or not. Yet I still pursue these guys even if I know they won't work out. I need to realize that it's ok to be alone.
[[Hopefully no dude actually reads this. Because it's great to have perspective on your problems, but who really wants an itemized, detailed list of everything that's wrong with a girl?]]
And all of this makes me sound really, really batshit crazy. But I'm gonna do me, and I'm gonna do it right. Next time we talk, hopefully I'll be a little bit better of a human being, thus on my way to true happiness. :)
REASON #1: I'm not ready to grow up.
I really should be ready to grow up. I'm 22, theoretically most people have graduated by this age, and have their first job. But I'm still dicking around in college. I've changed my major 3 different times, and up until last May, only recently had the vaguest clue of what I wanted to do. But the real problem is that I enjoy being taken care of by my parents way too much to want to move on to the next phase of my life. Being in a relationship at this stage of your life means that you're probably considering marriage, cause most people are engaged, married, or on the engagement track at this point. Or at least it feels that way. But being in that serious of a relationship means you're ready to take on adult responsibilities, and are willing and able to be responsible and take care of another person. It means you're ready to take care of a household, manage your own finances, have a big-girl job, and most importantly of all, commit to being someone's spouse. It's more than just buying a pretty dress and saying "I do". It's a lifelong bond. I take marriage extremely seriously, and the person I marry is the person I intend to be married to until death do us part. I have realized that now, at this stage of my life, I'm not ready for that level of commitment.
REASON #2: I'm not the best "me" I can be.
Back when I paid someone to listen to me bitch about my life problems, she actually dished out a few sage pieces of advice. One of the gems I've kept with me since then is "you can't find someone until you've found yourself." I know that isn't really the most awesome, amazing piece of advice ever doled out, but it's had an impact on me. I think "finding myself" has been an ongoing process for about the last 4 years now. It's amazing how well you think you know yourself, only to have your life up-ended and have to start back at square one. Just when you think you've reached the end of the road, you realize you've got about a million more miles to go. I think that self-improvement is a lifelong thing, but really knowing who you are and what you want out of life, defining boundaries and setting firm standards, those things all have finite deadlines. I've just yet to set my date. I need to figure out what I truly need to make ME happy. I need to improve my life to the point where I'm happy with the finished project. I'm a jumbled mess still in the blueprint stage right now.
REASON #3: I don't like the person I see in the mirror.
Part of being the best person you can be is liking who looks back at you in the mirror. Gerard Butler said to Katherine Heigl's character in The Ugly Truth "if you don't want to have sex with you, then who does?" Exactly. If you don't like the way you look and feel, then a guy sure as hell isn't going to like it either. Insecurity is very unsexy. I wish I could say that I'm comfortable in my own skin, but I'm not. I hide under baggy clothes and stretchy pants. I wish I were more tan. I'm terrified if I lose weight, that my boobs won't be as great as they are now. But I'm not happy with my weight. I can't get motivated to exercise, and I can't force myself to eat healthy. I reward myself with fast food, only to regret it later. It's just a cycle I don't have the energy to break. But it's the first step that needs to happen. I firmly believe that improving what's on the outside will be a kick start to improving the inside. Speaking of...
REASON #4: I'm crazy.
No, really. Actually, "crazy" is a super-offensive term to describe mental illness. But for the past couple of years, I have been battling a bone-crushing bout of depression, to the point where some days I can't even get out of bed. It comes and goes in waves. Good for a few months, bad for a few, severely bad for a week or so. I can better keep it in check during the summer. But the bigger problem is the fact I've chosen to ignore it and not seek professional help. I've tried to act like it's something that will go away on its' own, like a paper cut. But it's not something that's going to go away overnight; or any of its manifestations. I need help. I'm just too scared to receive it. Which is a problem, since I can't present myself to someone being an emotional wreck the way I am. Not because being depressed in a relationship is unacceptable, but because I could never expect my boyfriend to be my entire support system. I can't heavily emotionally rely on someone that way, nor can I expect them to put up with emotional mood swings. I need to be a strong person all of the time.
REASON #5: Every guy I meet isn't E*** L*****.
I bleeped his name out, lest he google himself once again and actually read this (he will henceforth be referred to by his initials, ERL.) He was my first love, and I've never quite gotten over him. I met him at a frat party when I was 19, and he was supposed to be a one-night stand. He evolved into the person for whom I gave my love virginity to. He means more to me than any guy ever will because of this. A girl never forgets her first anything, and I'll never forget him as long as I live. But the problem is that I didn't have my first love in high school, so I never got over him while still in high school. It just hasn't run its course yet. In my mind, I still wax poetic about him, even though we had a horrible relationship. It was never even a real relationship. More like a catastrophically dragged out hook up session. It was mentally and emotionally draining to be in love with him, and it took over my entire life. I had to leave town to get away from it all. I physically couldn't be in the same area code with him. But it was much needed, because once I moved away, I was able to gain some perspective on the situation. I still love him in a way, but the real problem is that I've done a bang-up job of convincing myself that I'll never love anyone the way I loved him. It's going to take me time to realize that's a good thing that I never will.
REASON #6: I've convinced myself I have too many skeletons in my closet.
Everyone has so-called "skeletons" in their closet; secrets they think would scare other people away. Sometimes when I evaluate my life, I feel like I have a disproportionate amount of secrets only a handful of people know about me. Granted, they are pretty hefty items, but I don't think it's anything too out of the norm. I feel like I've slept with way too many guys, I'm ashamed to admit that to potential suitors. I've also had things happen to me that are far more common than one would think. But it still makes you feel like damaged goods. And that thing....it's so hard to admit that it's happened in the first place, and it's ten times harder to realize that it's affected every aspect of your life. You don't ever fully recover from something like that. But I haven't even completely come to terms with it. I've never sat down and actually admitted it to myself, or fully recognized the repercussions of it. I know it will eventually be something I can deal with, but right now it seems like climbing Mount Everest without a handy Sherpa guide. This all leads to...
REASON #7: Major trust and intimacy issues.
As a direct result of what happened to me, I have a LOT of trouble not only trusting men, but being physically intimate with them. My dirty little secret is that I've only soberly hooked up with one person in the last 4 years. The rest have all been drunken or high encounters. I don't even know how to initiate contact with a guy anymore. I need alcohol as courage to take my clothes off. Which is so wrong on so many levels, I don't even know where to start. I recognize that I have trust issues, and I grill guys and give them the third degree, which drives them off too early on. It all leads back to my point that you can't sell someone damaged goods. Guys do not want a girl who can't trust them, and who is making them sign a contract right up front. They don't want a girl who's in denial about her salad bar of problems and insecurities. And they especially don't want a girl who is going to be questioning their loyalty all of the time.
REASON #8: I'm looking too hard. Or just looking period.
I've been told more times than I can count that you don't find someone, they'll just fall into your life when it's perfectly right and when you least expect it. It's completely true. I met Jeremy when Syd dragged me over to AK's house the day after Thanksgiving. I met ERL at a party they basically forced me to go to. And those guys were right for me at that time. I'm just trying waaaaay too hard. The desperation is wafting off of me like the smell of a skunk. I keep looking in stupid places like work, bars, and online dating services. None of those work, of course. And for the people they do work for, they're the exception, not the rule. First off, you don't shit where you eat. Dating someone you work with is a recipe for disaster. You're just on top of each other, and you get sick of each other. Meeting someone in an alcohol-induced haze is never a solid foundation for a relationship. And all of the guys on dating websites are either virgins, damaged from their last relationship, or just looking for sex. I've been told so many times that I just need to focus on myself, then Mr. Right will waltz right along. Speaking of Mr. Right...
REASON #9: I still think "Mr. Right" is coming along
I'm super bad at taking my own advice (duuhh) but let me tell you that Mr. Right ain't coming, honey. Because he doesn't actually exist. I have knowingly made the most common dating mistake. I've cooked up a list of traits, Frankensteined qualities together from past dudes that I like, and slapped it all together to make some imaginary Ken doll of a man that I expect to come along and sweep me off my feet. But the truth is that men like that don't exist, and women who think they do hold themselves back because they pass up perfectly good men in their quest for the "perfect guy". You have to realize that, A-no one is perfect, and B- you yourself could potentially have qualities others don't dig, so why hate on others for their quirks? The golden rule tells us to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you don't want to be judged for your quirks, then don't do it to other people. My problem is that I find one tiny thing wrong with a person, and banish them away. I also have a tall list of expectations they have to meet. I read somewhere that you should have five "non-negotiables" when it comes to dating, and that's it. Five things that guys absolutely either must or must not have. My problem is that I have like 225, not five. The more you narrow your focus, the harder it is to find someone.
REASON #10: I'm the "dog catcher".
This is what my dad calls me. I tend to scrape the bottom of the underside of the barrel when it comes to guys. My problem is that I take any and all. No one isn't welcome at my door. My standards are way too low, in addition to being too narrow, as referenced above. But the abovementioned reason contributes completely to the problem. I tend to look more at guys' credentials than their actual compatibility with me. Hence me getting involved with so many dudes who aren't right for me, hence me getting my heart broken and let down over and over again. I continually voluntarily date shitty guys who I know aren't right for me, then get shocked every time it doesn't work out. Like it was gonna be a surprise or something. And the kicker is that I know exactly the moment I meet someone if they're right for me or not. Yet I still pursue these guys even if I know they won't work out. I need to realize that it's ok to be alone.
[[Hopefully no dude actually reads this. Because it's great to have perspective on your problems, but who really wants an itemized, detailed list of everything that's wrong with a girl?]]
And all of this makes me sound really, really batshit crazy. But I'm gonna do me, and I'm gonna do it right. Next time we talk, hopefully I'll be a little bit better of a human being, thus on my way to true happiness. :)
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