So, firstly, news: I hate the "about me" page on Blogspot, so I made a whole separate page about me with more complete information. You will find it to the left on the dooblydoo there. Yes, I did just blatantly steal a vlogbrothers phrase. Deal with it. (Because I would have said it was in my pants, but the widget thing is actually on the left and not the bottom so yeah.)
And now the actual purpose of this post: These are some poems that I wrote. I do write poems every now and then. Lately I've been writing a lot of them, actually. So yes. (If you're on tumblr, you may already have seen them.) I had another one I was going to publish, but it was about the Beauty and her epilepsy and our relationship and I had to ask her if I could publish it and she said no, so I'll just keep that one for personal enjoyment. Anyway, here you go.
Tired
There is a difference between tired and sleepy.
Sleepy is delicious, fading colors, wrapped in warmth, knowing there is love left and waiting for you, rich, full contentness, cuddling with your teddy bear or maybe that one boy.
Tired means you are done.
Tired hurts and pulls at you, draining you of personality and pleasantry. Tired is sickness, one you don't recover from, not even after the perfect amount of sleep. Tired is anger, and rage- but not explosive, just poisoned honey trickling through your bloodstream, weighing down your limbs.
I am tired- can't you tell?
The tiredness and I are old friends. Sleep and I aren't on speaking terms these days, and my relationship with rest is tenuous, at best. She doesn't really like me- doesn't think I'm worth her time.
Fatigue and exhaustion, in all their charming varieties, are two new friends, ones who say hello often but to whom you are never permitted to say good-bye.
I am tired of these new friends- how I want to sleep, and properly- but my fevered mind will not allow it, racing down roads less traveled and barely-used avenues of thought, seventy miles per hour, no cops to stop me, I can run forever, I am an automaton, why aren't there more hours in a night-
And then I hate this, and want to scream, but I am trapped behind bars of smoke and walls of mirrors, too terrified of losing control to allow myself to drift.
The Love Story Of The Half-Dead Sparrow
Abused and beaten, I fell, landing somewhere I thought I was safe from human hands and wiles.
You find me in the in-between moments, where I watch others slide around me, living in their own bubbled lives.
You find me between those lives and you pick me up- delicately, gently, my broken wings limp on your hands.
I stir, wondering if this is maybe it, something different from the horrors I know.
But you are trying to hold two at once- me, a half-dead sparrow, and some other bird, or cat, or mouse. I cannot tell what she is.
You claim you have two hands to hols with, so it is a balance.
No.
You must use both hands to hold one of us, and forget the other.
I wanted you to keep me, at first- I wanted you to let her drift- but then I realized something.
The hand you held me with was too tight, clenching and squeezing the very life from my sensations and covering me in shadow-misted breath.
And the hand you held her with- well, she was precarious, anyway.
A balancing act and a half, if you will.
I looked, and it was epiphany to me
To realize that you were not the rescuer I'd imagined
Not the hero I dreamed of
Just a horrid little boy, picking up a not-quite-dead sparrow to poke at her brokenness.
Jumping on worms and grinding their tender guts into cold-stone pavement because you can.
So, I pecked your hand.
And you, in pain, released me.
At first I fell, hobbling to the ground with a foot dragging behind me, heavy and pained.
Then I looked back and saw that my foot was fine- you had just shackled it to your little finger.
I pecked you again, sharper this time.
And you pretended like you were better than me
But now I realize that you veil yourself in condescension
That nobody may see how stupid and cruel a boy may be.
And I creep away to find a nest where I can hide alone- and someday, I will fly again.
Salvation
(Warning: This poem contains references to self-harm and suicide. I thought about both of those things a few times in my teens but I promise you I do not self-harm or have suicidal thoughts. And if you self-harm or have suicidal thoughts, please talk to someone about it. You can even talk to me. I'll listen to you.)
Sometimes I see colors nobody else can.
I can't describe them because I'm not sure if they really exist.
If I could explain them I would say
The color of angel wings
The smell of oranges
The taste of pure, sweet vanilla
The sound of a celestial music box
The feel of feathers draping lightly across your skin
And soapy, sudsy bubbles popping on your hands as you wash them, always a layer between you and cleanliness.
That is my color you cannot see.
It's the color that cures me when I am angry, the balm sent for especially from Gilead to soothe and ease.
It is the feeling of inhalation, without the action.
I wish you could see this color.
It is the only reason I am not mad.
It is the only reason that I have not drowned myself, as Ophelia;
poisoned myself, as Juliet;
that I still have hands and tongue, unlike poor Lavinia.
It is the only reason I do not pull the razor from my shower
pick apart the insides
and slice, ever so neatly
along the undersides of my wrists
or on my thighs, which would stand it better and hide the scars.
It is the only reason I do not jump from a great height and land splatter-laughing on the asphalt below.
My color redeems me.
But that sounds like Jesus, you say.
Yes, it does.
Haven't you learned that beauty is from God?
There is beauty in the darkness.
My color is the color you see but don't see when you close your eyes.
It is maroon, but nothing like maroon.
You must find your own color
And safeguard it from the world
Because the world will try and take it
And often they are so wrong.
There you are. Enjoy my po'try. Read it with toast and jam.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Monday, March 18, 2013
Sarah Talks Feminism
I usually do personal posts- so you can assume that this bothers me a lot, for me to be posting about it.
I never used to be a feminist, just so you know. I was content to believe that the world was a lovely place, and that women and men were treated equally. I've been educated since then, and I know that it's not the case. So bear with me: I don't usually make posts like this. Be gentle with me. Don't fight in the comments. If you must fight, please do so only if you spell words correctly and don't deliberately insult me or others.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines feminism as "belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes."
Let's look at that. Belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.
Firstly, social equality. That means that men and women are equal in relationships of any kind. Neither a man nor a woman is better than the other on the basis of their gender alone.
Hmmm. Makes sense, doesn't it?
Then you have political equality. That would mean that men and women are equal in matters of politics. So, basically, men and women would be represented equally in government (which they both are and aren't; more on that later), and men's and women's issues would be decided upon separately because they deserve equal respect and consideration (also more later), and men would not be making decisions about women with women getting no say in the matter.
Huh. Gets interesting here. Funnily enough, though, this doesn't happen. Most Congressmen are men. Admittedly, this is because the people who run are generally men, and because even when women do run, people generally vote for men. That's fine. Nothing wrong with that- unless you're voting for a man because he's not a woman. Then you're a misogynist and we're going to have a problem. So first of all, we don't have equal representation for men and women in the government.
Then, you have people making decisions about men and women's issues, who really shouldn't have any say in the matter. Now, I am a Mormon, and generally speaking, I believe in the sanctity of life before birth. But I also believe that a single woman's decision about getting an abortion or about using or purchasing birth control is between her and her doctor and God. There is nobody else involved in the decision. That begs the question: why are politicians allowed to make decisions about this? Why are the sexual and medical lives of women regulated by the government? This makes no sense to me.
Picture this: you and somebody you like go to the park on a picnic. The park is public property, you aren't breaking the law in any way, and you are enjoying your lemonade and ham sandwiches. Then an obnoxious bystander comes along and says, "What are you doing? Why are you drinking lemonade? That's wrong. You shouldn't drink lemonade. And why ham sandwiches? Why not turkey? Or roast beef? Or pastrami?" And then, not content with being unpleasant, they start throwing dirt at you, or they try to force you to eat stale crackers and anchovies instead of ham sandwiches. And then, when you get angry and start to protest this violation of your picnic, which was not hurting anybody in any way, especially not that bystander, they get angry and offended and act like it's all your fault.
That is what I think of the government being involved in issues like abortion and birth control. These things are sensitive topics, ones that people you know and love suddenly act like they're sitting on pinecones about.
And lastly- to return to the OED- you have economic equality. Now, I have no actual proof that women are paid 70% of what men are paid in the same jobs- but the fact that there's even a rumor of this worries me, because at some point in time and in some places, it's probably true, or it has been true in the past. And that isn't fair.
Why does this bother me so much? I mean, I'm a good little Mormon girl. I have no plans on ever getting an abortion or on using birth control.
It bothers me because even if I'm happy and comfortable with my life, there are people who are not. And I'm not naive enough to believe that everybody can be happy all the time, but I'd be okay with optimum happiness all around.
I have a ton of issues I can talk about. This might well end up being a super long blog post.
Let's start with a term I've recently taken issues with: "femi-Nazi."
Okay, first of all, I am willing to admit that there are feminists who are militant to the point of being crazy. There are, and always have been, crazy people. I am not willing to continue to let people believe that all feminists are "femi-Nazis." Because while that term might provoke a laugh from your white male privileged friends, it's inappropriate. In no way is any feminist comparable to the people who gassed six million Jews and other minorities in torture camps. It's both disrespectful to feminists and to those who died at the hands of actual Nazis.
Is that okay? Good. Don't ever call any feminist a "femi-Nazi" ever again. If I ever hear you using the term, I will tell you off. And if you are younger than forty and male, I will probably slap you.
That brings me to my second point. Feminists gained the reputation of being super left-wing liberal in the seventies and eighties. This is because, generally speaking, conservatives had the attitude toward feminism that corresponds with their name: they were conservative. There is nothing wrong with thinking whatever you want. It's insisting that every person you know has to follow your same line of thinking. The liberals, on the other hand, have been welcoming to feminism and women in general. In fact, women are more likely to vote for liberals than conservatives. Why is this? It's because left-wing politics are more open to discussing women's issues, such as abortion and birth control. The fact is, people like Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and other prominent liberals know that by being open and welcoming to women and other minorities, they will get a huge payoff in the long run, in increased votes and the support of voices and money for campaigning with.
So if you ever wonder why feminists are usually liberal, that's why. Conservatives, you kinda missed the boat on that one, as a whole. And I'm not saying that conservatives can't be feminists. It just usually doesn't happen, that's all.
My next issue: the dictatorship of the patriarchy.
"Dictatorship?" you say, confused. "But this is 'Murrica. We don't have dictators!"
No, we don't have dictators. Not actual, real dictators. But we do have the undeniable fact that it's white older males who tend to make a lot of the decisions about things that dictate women's lives.
Let's talk about clothes. I decide I want a new sweater, a big, baggy one that will keep me nice and cozy without breaking the Honor Code. I am a size 16, or an L, in misses' clothing sizes. Sometimes I'm an 18, or an XL; sometimes I'm a 14, or an M. It depends on the day. I walk into a popular store at the mall- let's say, American Eagle, or Hollister- I find a sweater I like, marked L or XL, and I go to the dressing room to try it on.
Surprise! It's not made for a bodacious, beautiful L like me. It's made for a starving midget, who thinks she has just enough boob to be called a large.
Do you know why this is a problem? Let me tell you. I like the sweater. The sweater is made by a factory with orders to sew it this way and with so much fabric (not enough for my fantastic figure though). The factory's orders come from the designers. The designers draw things they think are beautiful. The problem is where the fashion designers get the idea that being thinner than a starving child in Africa is beautiful.
Well, who thinks tall, thin models are beautiful?
You guessed it: older white males. Or, as I like to think of them, chauvinist pigs.
This is annoying because I am the approximate shape of a pear, and these clothes are pretty and attractive and fairly cheap and they are made for women who are as thin as twelve-year-old girls and who weigh less than a hundred pounds but who are also seven feet tall in stilettos. I am five feet and five and a quarter inches and I weigh approximately fourteen and a half stone. Most of that weight is in my hips and thighs. Some is in my stomach. Some is in my upper chest area. I do not have the body type for these clothes. And the average size of the American woman is a 12. That's a small in misses size clothing- not petite or juniors.
If I want to find clothes that are my size, I have to go to department stores. They are correspondingly more expensive.
This is unfair. I should be able to buy clothes in my size with no illusions as to what that size actually is, without chauvinist pigs deciding that my physical beauty is determined by a little number sewn on a tag on the inside of my jeans. Beauty shouldn't be measured in numbers. It should be measured in what makes a smile come onto your face, or what your hair looks like when the sun shines on it. It's not quantitative- it's qualitative. And I just really hate that this idea that big is not beautiful has been ingrained into us, breeded like animal testing into our minds until it's natural. Big is beautiful.
Healthy is the most beautiful, of course. If you are bigger and you know that you can lose weight, I of course encourage you to do that, not because you'll be thinner and prettier but because it will make you feel good about how you look and about what you're like as a person.
Next comment: rape culture.
This is touchy, what with the rapists in Ohio and things. Of course, that girl is a terrible, terrible person, and it's a shame she ruined those boys' lives the way they did.
DO YOU SEE WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS?
The folks on CNN are saying that it's a shame that the rapist's lives are ruined? What about the girl? She got raped, for heaven's sakes! No matter what your opinion is on this particular issue, whether she was drunk or not, it doesn't matter, because RAPE IS WRONG.
Tumblr has provided me with the occasional good argument against rape. I'm not going to link you to the post, because you might, Heaven forbid, find my tumblr account. But this is one I found compelling, and not, you know, laced with profanity.
You have a boy about three or four years old. He's pushing and shoving a girl of about the same age. You say, "Awwww, look, he likes her! Young love, it's so sweet."
The same boy and the same girl are now twelve. He shoves her. You say, "Well, boys will be boys."
The same boy and the same girl are now eighteen. He grabs her arm. You say, "Hey, that's not okay. That's assault."
Funny, how it's not assault until he's a legal adult. If you teach boys that violence toward others is okay, even cute, when they're little, they will keep on doing it when they're adults.
The problem with rape culture is that we are teaching women that in order to avoid getting raped, you should not walk alone on dark streets at night wearing short skirts. Personally, I think it would be common sense not to do that- but I've read about people who were wearing jeans and a t-shirt when they were raped.
The problem is that we are teaching women to avoid being raped, and we are not teaching men not to rape in the first place.
And you wonder why women don't feel safe to go to the grocery store by themselves at night.
Let me go back to the first thing, to conclude. Feminism. Feminism is about equal rights and opportunities in social, political, and economic issues for both sexes.
I'll ask you this: do you think men and women should be equal socially, politically, and economically?
Your answer should be yes, because that's common sense.
And if you say yes, you are a feminist. It's that simple.
Feminism is not about being better than men. It's not about one-upping them. It's not a power play. It's women trying to get what rightfully belongs to them. It's anybody who believes that gender should not be a factor in whether or not two people are equal. The genders are different, yes. Nobody denies that. But there is no superiority involved.
This is me, dismounting from my high horse using my soap box so I don't fall off the high horse. I'm going to bed now. Play nicely in the comments, if you please. And for heaven's sakes, don't say anything misogynistic. That's just asking for me to chew you out. Good night.
I never used to be a feminist, just so you know. I was content to believe that the world was a lovely place, and that women and men were treated equally. I've been educated since then, and I know that it's not the case. So bear with me: I don't usually make posts like this. Be gentle with me. Don't fight in the comments. If you must fight, please do so only if you spell words correctly and don't deliberately insult me or others.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines feminism as "belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes."
Let's look at that. Belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.
Firstly, social equality. That means that men and women are equal in relationships of any kind. Neither a man nor a woman is better than the other on the basis of their gender alone.
Hmmm. Makes sense, doesn't it?
Then you have political equality. That would mean that men and women are equal in matters of politics. So, basically, men and women would be represented equally in government (which they both are and aren't; more on that later), and men's and women's issues would be decided upon separately because they deserve equal respect and consideration (also more later), and men would not be making decisions about women with women getting no say in the matter.
Huh. Gets interesting here. Funnily enough, though, this doesn't happen. Most Congressmen are men. Admittedly, this is because the people who run are generally men, and because even when women do run, people generally vote for men. That's fine. Nothing wrong with that- unless you're voting for a man because he's not a woman. Then you're a misogynist and we're going to have a problem. So first of all, we don't have equal representation for men and women in the government.
Then, you have people making decisions about men and women's issues, who really shouldn't have any say in the matter. Now, I am a Mormon, and generally speaking, I believe in the sanctity of life before birth. But I also believe that a single woman's decision about getting an abortion or about using or purchasing birth control is between her and her doctor and God. There is nobody else involved in the decision. That begs the question: why are politicians allowed to make decisions about this? Why are the sexual and medical lives of women regulated by the government? This makes no sense to me.
Picture this: you and somebody you like go to the park on a picnic. The park is public property, you aren't breaking the law in any way, and you are enjoying your lemonade and ham sandwiches. Then an obnoxious bystander comes along and says, "What are you doing? Why are you drinking lemonade? That's wrong. You shouldn't drink lemonade. And why ham sandwiches? Why not turkey? Or roast beef? Or pastrami?" And then, not content with being unpleasant, they start throwing dirt at you, or they try to force you to eat stale crackers and anchovies instead of ham sandwiches. And then, when you get angry and start to protest this violation of your picnic, which was not hurting anybody in any way, especially not that bystander, they get angry and offended and act like it's all your fault.
That is what I think of the government being involved in issues like abortion and birth control. These things are sensitive topics, ones that people you know and love suddenly act like they're sitting on pinecones about.
And lastly- to return to the OED- you have economic equality. Now, I have no actual proof that women are paid 70% of what men are paid in the same jobs- but the fact that there's even a rumor of this worries me, because at some point in time and in some places, it's probably true, or it has been true in the past. And that isn't fair.
Why does this bother me so much? I mean, I'm a good little Mormon girl. I have no plans on ever getting an abortion or on using birth control.
It bothers me because even if I'm happy and comfortable with my life, there are people who are not. And I'm not naive enough to believe that everybody can be happy all the time, but I'd be okay with optimum happiness all around.
I have a ton of issues I can talk about. This might well end up being a super long blog post.
Let's start with a term I've recently taken issues with: "femi-Nazi."
Okay, first of all, I am willing to admit that there are feminists who are militant to the point of being crazy. There are, and always have been, crazy people. I am not willing to continue to let people believe that all feminists are "femi-Nazis." Because while that term might provoke a laugh from your white male privileged friends, it's inappropriate. In no way is any feminist comparable to the people who gassed six million Jews and other minorities in torture camps. It's both disrespectful to feminists and to those who died at the hands of actual Nazis.
Is that okay? Good. Don't ever call any feminist a "femi-Nazi" ever again. If I ever hear you using the term, I will tell you off. And if you are younger than forty and male, I will probably slap you.
That brings me to my second point. Feminists gained the reputation of being super left-wing liberal in the seventies and eighties. This is because, generally speaking, conservatives had the attitude toward feminism that corresponds with their name: they were conservative. There is nothing wrong with thinking whatever you want. It's insisting that every person you know has to follow your same line of thinking. The liberals, on the other hand, have been welcoming to feminism and women in general. In fact, women are more likely to vote for liberals than conservatives. Why is this? It's because left-wing politics are more open to discussing women's issues, such as abortion and birth control. The fact is, people like Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and other prominent liberals know that by being open and welcoming to women and other minorities, they will get a huge payoff in the long run, in increased votes and the support of voices and money for campaigning with.
So if you ever wonder why feminists are usually liberal, that's why. Conservatives, you kinda missed the boat on that one, as a whole. And I'm not saying that conservatives can't be feminists. It just usually doesn't happen, that's all.
My next issue: the dictatorship of the patriarchy.
"Dictatorship?" you say, confused. "But this is 'Murrica. We don't have dictators!"
No, we don't have dictators. Not actual, real dictators. But we do have the undeniable fact that it's white older males who tend to make a lot of the decisions about things that dictate women's lives.
Let's talk about clothes. I decide I want a new sweater, a big, baggy one that will keep me nice and cozy without breaking the Honor Code. I am a size 16, or an L, in misses' clothing sizes. Sometimes I'm an 18, or an XL; sometimes I'm a 14, or an M. It depends on the day. I walk into a popular store at the mall- let's say, American Eagle, or Hollister- I find a sweater I like, marked L or XL, and I go to the dressing room to try it on.
Surprise! It's not made for a bodacious, beautiful L like me. It's made for a starving midget, who thinks she has just enough boob to be called a large.
Do you know why this is a problem? Let me tell you. I like the sweater. The sweater is made by a factory with orders to sew it this way and with so much fabric (not enough for my fantastic figure though). The factory's orders come from the designers. The designers draw things they think are beautiful. The problem is where the fashion designers get the idea that being thinner than a starving child in Africa is beautiful.
Well, who thinks tall, thin models are beautiful?
You guessed it: older white males. Or, as I like to think of them, chauvinist pigs.
This is annoying because I am the approximate shape of a pear, and these clothes are pretty and attractive and fairly cheap and they are made for women who are as thin as twelve-year-old girls and who weigh less than a hundred pounds but who are also seven feet tall in stilettos. I am five feet and five and a quarter inches and I weigh approximately fourteen and a half stone. Most of that weight is in my hips and thighs. Some is in my stomach. Some is in my upper chest area. I do not have the body type for these clothes. And the average size of the American woman is a 12. That's a small in misses size clothing- not petite or juniors.
If I want to find clothes that are my size, I have to go to department stores. They are correspondingly more expensive.
This is unfair. I should be able to buy clothes in my size with no illusions as to what that size actually is, without chauvinist pigs deciding that my physical beauty is determined by a little number sewn on a tag on the inside of my jeans. Beauty shouldn't be measured in numbers. It should be measured in what makes a smile come onto your face, or what your hair looks like when the sun shines on it. It's not quantitative- it's qualitative. And I just really hate that this idea that big is not beautiful has been ingrained into us, breeded like animal testing into our minds until it's natural. Big is beautiful.
Healthy is the most beautiful, of course. If you are bigger and you know that you can lose weight, I of course encourage you to do that, not because you'll be thinner and prettier but because it will make you feel good about how you look and about what you're like as a person.
Next comment: rape culture.
This is touchy, what with the rapists in Ohio and things. Of course, that girl is a terrible, terrible person, and it's a shame she ruined those boys' lives the way they did.
DO YOU SEE WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS?
The folks on CNN are saying that it's a shame that the rapist's lives are ruined? What about the girl? She got raped, for heaven's sakes! No matter what your opinion is on this particular issue, whether she was drunk or not, it doesn't matter, because RAPE IS WRONG.
Tumblr has provided me with the occasional good argument against rape. I'm not going to link you to the post, because you might, Heaven forbid, find my tumblr account. But this is one I found compelling, and not, you know, laced with profanity.
You have a boy about three or four years old. He's pushing and shoving a girl of about the same age. You say, "Awwww, look, he likes her! Young love, it's so sweet."
The same boy and the same girl are now twelve. He shoves her. You say, "Well, boys will be boys."
The same boy and the same girl are now eighteen. He grabs her arm. You say, "Hey, that's not okay. That's assault."
Funny, how it's not assault until he's a legal adult. If you teach boys that violence toward others is okay, even cute, when they're little, they will keep on doing it when they're adults.
The problem with rape culture is that we are teaching women that in order to avoid getting raped, you should not walk alone on dark streets at night wearing short skirts. Personally, I think it would be common sense not to do that- but I've read about people who were wearing jeans and a t-shirt when they were raped.
The problem is that we are teaching women to avoid being raped, and we are not teaching men not to rape in the first place.
And you wonder why women don't feel safe to go to the grocery store by themselves at night.
Let me go back to the first thing, to conclude. Feminism. Feminism is about equal rights and opportunities in social, political, and economic issues for both sexes.
I'll ask you this: do you think men and women should be equal socially, politically, and economically?
Your answer should be yes, because that's common sense.
And if you say yes, you are a feminist. It's that simple.
Feminism is not about being better than men. It's not about one-upping them. It's not a power play. It's women trying to get what rightfully belongs to them. It's anybody who believes that gender should not be a factor in whether or not two people are equal. The genders are different, yes. Nobody denies that. But there is no superiority involved.
This is me, dismounting from my high horse using my soap box so I don't fall off the high horse. I'm going to bed now. Play nicely in the comments, if you please. And for heaven's sakes, don't say anything misogynistic. That's just asking for me to chew you out. Good night.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Resilience: We Are Worth Someone Genuine
This will be a blog post about me.
They usually are, but this one's going to be different.
My life, as you may have gathered from the bits and pieces I've let drop since January, has been up and down like a roller coaster. I've had moments of indescribable joy, times where I laughed until I couldn't breathe, precious seconds where I opened my eyes and saw something new, and best of all, the flashes of inspiration that come when I want to make an idea new, when I want to see a story come to life under my fingers.
I've also had bad spots. I've learned about growing comfortable with people, and about the dangers of sharing your soul with someone who doesn't appreciate it. I've learned about betrayal, and I've learned that just because I'm resilient doesn't mean that nobody else is. (That doesn't make sense. Neither did the situation I was in.) I've learned that my words have power- they have a terrible, vicious power, and that I have to be careful when I use them, or I can hurt people.
And I've learned that sometimes, for your own personal health, you have to hurt people.
That's what this post is about.
When I was about thirteen or so, I was in a public setting with the Beauty. I'm about five thousand percent sure she's not going to read this, so I'm okay with relating the story in a mildly censored form. What happened was that we were bickering, like we tend to do, and I was mad so I up and slapped her. In public.
She hasn't forgiven me, but I understand that, because 1) I had no right to slap her in a public setting, whether I was right or wrong, because slapping somebody is a form of humiliation that is only deserved by people who cheat on their significant others or who've committed some other form of betrayal, and 2) the Beauty's scale of forgiveness has a much greater length of time than everybody else's. She tends to hold a grudge. And since it's something of a family trait- she gets it from my dad's father, who was a massive grudge-holder- I understand it.
In other instances, in my relationships with both the Beauty and the Beast, I've been cruel and vicious. I write well; this is a talent I know I have. Unfortunately, it also puts me in a position of command over words, words that have power to cut and slash and hurt and destroy. If I wanted to, I could, in moments, destroy an entire relationship with somebody. Words do have that power- especially when there is rage boiling behind them.
I did that to somebody recently.
Sparing you the details, I was cruel. I was vicious. I was horrid- and I took a positive kind of pleasure, in the way I struck back at somebody who had hurt me. I was a viper, a dog that bites at the hand that feeds it. In that moment of writing it- in that moment of awful amusement- I was something less than human.
I had reasons, at the time. I had been betrayed, by somebody who I never thought would hurt me. I was innocent and guileless, until around December. And then this person kept hurting me- not physically, not verbally, not even intentionally- but slowly and unconsciously, like being poisoned. It was hurting me, sucking my life away. It confirmed every bad thing I'd ever believed myself and made it into some horrible nightmare. There were days in late December and January where I would wake up and feel like I was walking through molasses, like I was trapped somewhere dark and narrow, with a monster creeping towards me, and I couldn't get away. And no matter how much you pray, God can't help when the person who's hurting you isn't willing to change.
Finally I spoke to people about it, and I received some saving advice from Superwholockmarauder, who understood this kind of thing better than a lot of people would ever do. She told me I needed closure.
I hadn't thought about it before. Closure. When you see a couple in a relationship, they're happy, and when they break up, they aren't. But if one or the other of them doesn't have closure, it's going to turn into one of those on-again-off-again relationships where they keep going back into it. You know, those people you see on your Facebook feed who are constantly in and out of relationships by the week. You know who I'm talking about- everybody knows at least one couple who does that.
I was hurting. And the idea of closure hinted at something I hadn't had in my troubled heart since- well, since before I began to get these inconvenient little crushes on boys. It had just a little touch of something warm and soft about it, like the blanket my mother knitted for me when I went to college. It was peace. I had known it in glimpses and flashes- the week every summer I went to girls camp with my church, for instance, or moments when I was playing with the orchestra or band or for the choir or just by myself, when I could throw myself into music and let worlds of sound wash around me like the tide on an ocean floor. Those moments, I knew peace.
And closure, for me, meant peace.
I have been tired, for a long time now, of feeling unwanted, unloved, unappreciated by the opposite gender. I have made blog posts about this before. I won't rehash them now. But understand me to the fullest extent of my meaning when I say that when I thought I had this one opportunity, for a couple of short, but oh-so-long months, where maybe, somebody wanted me like I wanted them. I thought for a brief, shining moment, that I could be happy. And that, too, was peace.
But it was snatched away from me- not all at once, you understand, but every little bit I got, there was less. And I realized that if the other person wasn't going to commit to being in this relationship, it was never going to go anywhere. But they didn't want to give me up, either. It was a situation of Aesop's dog in the manger. They couldn't have me, but they wanted me anyway.
And that hurt just like every other time I had learned that somebody didn't like me that way, or that they liked somebody else. It was like somebody had reached for my chest with claws of iron but instead of scratching out a hefty chunk of my heart, they just raked it, until it was a poor, bedraggled thing with no faith, no hope, no light, no peace. Just the everlasting hurt and rage that I had, and still have, because I'm too nice to say no and not easy enough to say yes, constantly vacillating between self-respect and the heat of the moment.
When I saw that chance at something like peace, I closed my eyes to the consequences, wrote a very, very nasty email, and waited.
And I got what I wanted, in the end. I am alone, unattached, drifting free on the wind. My heart is not yet healed- but it is mostly intact, and that was what I was looking for.
I can wake up in the morning and grumble to myself about how tired I am, about how I want to sleep some more. I can shower and sing songs for my manly alto voice as I scrub myself clean of the illusions of yesterday. I can walk to work and pretend I'm in a music video as I sing along to my MP3 player, and pretend I'm not singing when people pass me on the sidewalk. I can scoop twenty-five chocolate ice cream cones for a field-trip's worth of kindergarteners and their teachers and smile at the genuine joy in their faces. I can go to class and color on the cover of my notebook and revel in the wild amounts of color I'm using. I can walk home and listen to exactly three songs before I get to my apartment, just in time to relax. I can go to the public library and check out seven books and read two of them the same evening, and get all my homework done. I can practice speaking in Russian. I can watch episodes of Supernatural and get upset about things happening to my favorite characters. I can admire Jensen Ackles in a suit and fedora. I can laugh at what's funny and cry when I'm upset and eat ice cream whenever I want to, and for a change of pace I can walk down the street and buy myself frozen yogurt. I can close my eyes and see, for a blessed change, nothing but blackness interspersed with warmth, instead of the face of somebody who makes me feel both good and bad about myself. I can drift off to sleep and wake up dreamless.
For once, I am all right. I'm not languishing- but then, I've never been the languishing type. I've always had a remarkable ability to fake my own happiness. That sounds pathetic, but sadly, it's true. I can be cut deeply in an instant but cover it up with a laugh and a smile, and you'll never know the difference, not even when you look into my eyes. Or you might. I wouldn't know. I'm always on the true side of my own hurt.
I don't regret severing my relationship with the person who hurt me. It was poisonous- I would probably admit to the nature of it as being abusive, if pressed. I regret a little bit that I was so cruel, that I hurt them.
Of course, they bounced back pretty quickly, too. You observe things, even when you don't want to- pictures, conversations, things that indicate that for them, life is also going on.
I don't know quite what I want to say here. I was vicious, yes. I was cruel. I regret being unkind because I don't like how I have the power to hurt people. It's a dangerous power, and I shouldn't have used it so liberally.
But the important thing is that I came out unscathed. I am moving on, seeing the world with fresh new eyes.
The other day, I was driving with Superwholockmarauder to Smith's to buy groceries and things. The sun was just setting, and I was seeing the trees against the sunset, which is my favorite kind of way to see trees and sunsets, and I recalled that I had always seen it as looking like black lace. And I just enjoyed that black lace, over the golden-rose sky, and I breathed in and out and remembered that I am strong and beautiful. I am vibrant and maybe not so much ladylike as vaguely womanly. I am intelligent, I am creative, I am healthy, I try to be kind, I try to respect others, and I am a person worth being, a person who deserves more than somebody who will treat me the way I was treated.
If anything, I would say of this period in my life that it was like having an addiction. I had one, and it thoroughly messed me up. And now I don't have one, and though it's certainly left its scars, I am going to take care of myself a little better than I did before. I'm not just going to give my heart out to anybody who's polite and has a pretty face. I'm worth more than the superficiality required to present either of those things to me. I'm worth someone genuine.
And the thing is... so is the person who hurt me. He's not a bad person. Not really. He just has no idea what he's doing. None of us do. We're all clambering blindly about ourselves in the darkness, looking for something to hold for the sake of security. I got trampled in his efforts. And when the lights came on, I'm sure he regretted it- briefly- before the lights went out again, as they always do.
Everybody is worth something genuine. No matter how much you hate somebody, or are angry at them, they are worth something genuine. They have lives and feelings and they do matter. And once you know how to take care of yourself, how to understand what you need and what you don't need, you can help take care of them. And you should at least try and help other people before you have an idea of who you are, because often, doing is the journey.
My life since October has been a mess. It's not how I ever imagined my life going. I never imagined I would have the power to break somebody's heart. But in the end, I don't suspect I actually did. We are all human. We are all resilient.
I'll close with this, the immortal words of Draco Malfoy, as adapted by the Starkids: "Do you know who I think is the ugliest girl in school? Hermione Granger. You know what I'd give her on a scale of one to ten, with one as the ugliest and ten as the prettiest? I'd give her an 8... 8.5... or a 9... but not... NOT over a 9.8. Because there is always room for improvement. Not everyone is perfect, like me. I'm holding out for a 10. Because I'm worth it."
Maybe we're not all as perfect as Draco Malfoy. But you are worth it. You are. I had to go through a whole lot of pain and mess to figure out that I was worth it. I hope you won't have to go through the pain and mess to figure out that you are worth it. I'd tell you to take my word for it... but I never believed people who told me I was worth it, either. I don't expect you to believe me. I'll tell you again. You are worth it. I am worth it. We are all worth it.
Never settle for anybody who doesn't make you feel like a whole, complete human being. Because you are worth it. We are worth someone genuine. If you remember nothing else of me, remember that.
They usually are, but this one's going to be different.
My life, as you may have gathered from the bits and pieces I've let drop since January, has been up and down like a roller coaster. I've had moments of indescribable joy, times where I laughed until I couldn't breathe, precious seconds where I opened my eyes and saw something new, and best of all, the flashes of inspiration that come when I want to make an idea new, when I want to see a story come to life under my fingers.
I've also had bad spots. I've learned about growing comfortable with people, and about the dangers of sharing your soul with someone who doesn't appreciate it. I've learned about betrayal, and I've learned that just because I'm resilient doesn't mean that nobody else is. (That doesn't make sense. Neither did the situation I was in.) I've learned that my words have power- they have a terrible, vicious power, and that I have to be careful when I use them, or I can hurt people.
And I've learned that sometimes, for your own personal health, you have to hurt people.
That's what this post is about.
When I was about thirteen or so, I was in a public setting with the Beauty. I'm about five thousand percent sure she's not going to read this, so I'm okay with relating the story in a mildly censored form. What happened was that we were bickering, like we tend to do, and I was mad so I up and slapped her. In public.
She hasn't forgiven me, but I understand that, because 1) I had no right to slap her in a public setting, whether I was right or wrong, because slapping somebody is a form of humiliation that is only deserved by people who cheat on their significant others or who've committed some other form of betrayal, and 2) the Beauty's scale of forgiveness has a much greater length of time than everybody else's. She tends to hold a grudge. And since it's something of a family trait- she gets it from my dad's father, who was a massive grudge-holder- I understand it.
In other instances, in my relationships with both the Beauty and the Beast, I've been cruel and vicious. I write well; this is a talent I know I have. Unfortunately, it also puts me in a position of command over words, words that have power to cut and slash and hurt and destroy. If I wanted to, I could, in moments, destroy an entire relationship with somebody. Words do have that power- especially when there is rage boiling behind them.
I did that to somebody recently.
Sparing you the details, I was cruel. I was vicious. I was horrid- and I took a positive kind of pleasure, in the way I struck back at somebody who had hurt me. I was a viper, a dog that bites at the hand that feeds it. In that moment of writing it- in that moment of awful amusement- I was something less than human.
I had reasons, at the time. I had been betrayed, by somebody who I never thought would hurt me. I was innocent and guileless, until around December. And then this person kept hurting me- not physically, not verbally, not even intentionally- but slowly and unconsciously, like being poisoned. It was hurting me, sucking my life away. It confirmed every bad thing I'd ever believed myself and made it into some horrible nightmare. There were days in late December and January where I would wake up and feel like I was walking through molasses, like I was trapped somewhere dark and narrow, with a monster creeping towards me, and I couldn't get away. And no matter how much you pray, God can't help when the person who's hurting you isn't willing to change.
Finally I spoke to people about it, and I received some saving advice from Superwholockmarauder, who understood this kind of thing better than a lot of people would ever do. She told me I needed closure.
I hadn't thought about it before. Closure. When you see a couple in a relationship, they're happy, and when they break up, they aren't. But if one or the other of them doesn't have closure, it's going to turn into one of those on-again-off-again relationships where they keep going back into it. You know, those people you see on your Facebook feed who are constantly in and out of relationships by the week. You know who I'm talking about- everybody knows at least one couple who does that.
I was hurting. And the idea of closure hinted at something I hadn't had in my troubled heart since- well, since before I began to get these inconvenient little crushes on boys. It had just a little touch of something warm and soft about it, like the blanket my mother knitted for me when I went to college. It was peace. I had known it in glimpses and flashes- the week every summer I went to girls camp with my church, for instance, or moments when I was playing with the orchestra or band or for the choir or just by myself, when I could throw myself into music and let worlds of sound wash around me like the tide on an ocean floor. Those moments, I knew peace.
And closure, for me, meant peace.
I have been tired, for a long time now, of feeling unwanted, unloved, unappreciated by the opposite gender. I have made blog posts about this before. I won't rehash them now. But understand me to the fullest extent of my meaning when I say that when I thought I had this one opportunity, for a couple of short, but oh-so-long months, where maybe, somebody wanted me like I wanted them. I thought for a brief, shining moment, that I could be happy. And that, too, was peace.
But it was snatched away from me- not all at once, you understand, but every little bit I got, there was less. And I realized that if the other person wasn't going to commit to being in this relationship, it was never going to go anywhere. But they didn't want to give me up, either. It was a situation of Aesop's dog in the manger. They couldn't have me, but they wanted me anyway.
And that hurt just like every other time I had learned that somebody didn't like me that way, or that they liked somebody else. It was like somebody had reached for my chest with claws of iron but instead of scratching out a hefty chunk of my heart, they just raked it, until it was a poor, bedraggled thing with no faith, no hope, no light, no peace. Just the everlasting hurt and rage that I had, and still have, because I'm too nice to say no and not easy enough to say yes, constantly vacillating between self-respect and the heat of the moment.
When I saw that chance at something like peace, I closed my eyes to the consequences, wrote a very, very nasty email, and waited.
And I got what I wanted, in the end. I am alone, unattached, drifting free on the wind. My heart is not yet healed- but it is mostly intact, and that was what I was looking for.
I can wake up in the morning and grumble to myself about how tired I am, about how I want to sleep some more. I can shower and sing songs for my manly alto voice as I scrub myself clean of the illusions of yesterday. I can walk to work and pretend I'm in a music video as I sing along to my MP3 player, and pretend I'm not singing when people pass me on the sidewalk. I can scoop twenty-five chocolate ice cream cones for a field-trip's worth of kindergarteners and their teachers and smile at the genuine joy in their faces. I can go to class and color on the cover of my notebook and revel in the wild amounts of color I'm using. I can walk home and listen to exactly three songs before I get to my apartment, just in time to relax. I can go to the public library and check out seven books and read two of them the same evening, and get all my homework done. I can practice speaking in Russian. I can watch episodes of Supernatural and get upset about things happening to my favorite characters. I can admire Jensen Ackles in a suit and fedora. I can laugh at what's funny and cry when I'm upset and eat ice cream whenever I want to, and for a change of pace I can walk down the street and buy myself frozen yogurt. I can close my eyes and see, for a blessed change, nothing but blackness interspersed with warmth, instead of the face of somebody who makes me feel both good and bad about myself. I can drift off to sleep and wake up dreamless.
For once, I am all right. I'm not languishing- but then, I've never been the languishing type. I've always had a remarkable ability to fake my own happiness. That sounds pathetic, but sadly, it's true. I can be cut deeply in an instant but cover it up with a laugh and a smile, and you'll never know the difference, not even when you look into my eyes. Or you might. I wouldn't know. I'm always on the true side of my own hurt.
I don't regret severing my relationship with the person who hurt me. It was poisonous- I would probably admit to the nature of it as being abusive, if pressed. I regret a little bit that I was so cruel, that I hurt them.
Of course, they bounced back pretty quickly, too. You observe things, even when you don't want to- pictures, conversations, things that indicate that for them, life is also going on.
I don't know quite what I want to say here. I was vicious, yes. I was cruel. I regret being unkind because I don't like how I have the power to hurt people. It's a dangerous power, and I shouldn't have used it so liberally.
But the important thing is that I came out unscathed. I am moving on, seeing the world with fresh new eyes.
The other day, I was driving with Superwholockmarauder to Smith's to buy groceries and things. The sun was just setting, and I was seeing the trees against the sunset, which is my favorite kind of way to see trees and sunsets, and I recalled that I had always seen it as looking like black lace. And I just enjoyed that black lace, over the golden-rose sky, and I breathed in and out and remembered that I am strong and beautiful. I am vibrant and maybe not so much ladylike as vaguely womanly. I am intelligent, I am creative, I am healthy, I try to be kind, I try to respect others, and I am a person worth being, a person who deserves more than somebody who will treat me the way I was treated.
If anything, I would say of this period in my life that it was like having an addiction. I had one, and it thoroughly messed me up. And now I don't have one, and though it's certainly left its scars, I am going to take care of myself a little better than I did before. I'm not just going to give my heart out to anybody who's polite and has a pretty face. I'm worth more than the superficiality required to present either of those things to me. I'm worth someone genuine.
And the thing is... so is the person who hurt me. He's not a bad person. Not really. He just has no idea what he's doing. None of us do. We're all clambering blindly about ourselves in the darkness, looking for something to hold for the sake of security. I got trampled in his efforts. And when the lights came on, I'm sure he regretted it- briefly- before the lights went out again, as they always do.
Everybody is worth something genuine. No matter how much you hate somebody, or are angry at them, they are worth something genuine. They have lives and feelings and they do matter. And once you know how to take care of yourself, how to understand what you need and what you don't need, you can help take care of them. And you should at least try and help other people before you have an idea of who you are, because often, doing is the journey.
My life since October has been a mess. It's not how I ever imagined my life going. I never imagined I would have the power to break somebody's heart. But in the end, I don't suspect I actually did. We are all human. We are all resilient.
I'll close with this, the immortal words of Draco Malfoy, as adapted by the Starkids: "Do you know who I think is the ugliest girl in school? Hermione Granger. You know what I'd give her on a scale of one to ten, with one as the ugliest and ten as the prettiest? I'd give her an 8... 8.5... or a 9... but not... NOT over a 9.8. Because there is always room for improvement. Not everyone is perfect, like me. I'm holding out for a 10. Because I'm worth it."
Maybe we're not all as perfect as Draco Malfoy. But you are worth it. You are. I had to go through a whole lot of pain and mess to figure out that I was worth it. I hope you won't have to go through the pain and mess to figure out that you are worth it. I'd tell you to take my word for it... but I never believed people who told me I was worth it, either. I don't expect you to believe me. I'll tell you again. You are worth it. I am worth it. We are all worth it.
Never settle for anybody who doesn't make you feel like a whole, complete human being. Because you are worth it. We are worth someone genuine. If you remember nothing else of me, remember that.
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