I've been thinking about the word "angry."

Synonyms "mad," "upset," "pissed the fuck off." I've been thinking about these words as parts of my personal political vocabulary. I've been thinking about them in relationship to how everything prominent members of the Republican party say makes me feel. I've been thinking about them in relationship to the tears that fell from my eyes on the Red Line Wednesday while I read the introduction to Professor Perry's Sister Citizen, reliving the disgust and bitterness at the total lack of regard for poor Black American lives in the days before and after Hurricane Katrina. I've been thinking about them in relationship to how I felt about myself when I got an email last night from Change.org commemorating the one-year anniversary of Troy Davis's death and I momentarily could not remember who Troy Davis was.

I don't think angry fits. I don't find mad to be an appropriate expression of what I feel about these things. Upset is too paltry a word to encompass what I mean. Pissed off does too much work separating the meaning from the message.

I'm not angry. I'm outraged.

Let us presume for a moment that the opposite of outrage must be in-rage. In-rage is seething, festering, the-world-doesn't-give-a-fuck-about-me-so-I-don't-give-a-fuck-about-the-world rage. In-rage is starting to believe the lies the world tells you about yourself. In-rage is internalized racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, fatphobia, ad infinitum. In-rage is fighting to fight instead of fighting the good fight. In-rage is the self-esteem issues of a whole people. In-rage is living in the now because you have no reason to believe in next year, or 25, or 40, as a reality which you will attain. In-rage can be bloody and violent. It can be quiet and cold. It can be fast, a million things all at once that don't make sense together or apart. It can tear a person, a people, asunder. 

I refuse to be overtaken by in-rage. I refuse to soak up all of the world's bullshit like a sponge and just carry it around, being heavy for the sake of being heavy. I deserve to be full of better things than these. So, I will exist in the world. And existing in this world means yeah, racism and sexism and classism and heteronormativity and you're-not-like-me-so-you're-wrong-ism will be flung at me from every imaginable angle, sopping wet and eager to soak me. I am porous, so not only will I be coated and covered by these things, but I will take them in. I have no choice. But when it becomes too much, when I am oversaturated by everything wrong with the world, I can make a beautiful choice. I can wring myself dry. Expel these things from the depths of me, wholly and irrevocably changed. I will expose them for what they are, spread their innards across these pages so that I can know my own. This wringing is outrage. It can be violent. It can be loud. It can come off as harsh or even militant. Those who don't know might even call it angry.     

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.

--Robert Fulghum

(via happinessruns...)

When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.
 

--Elizabeth Gilbert

 

(via La Bella Vita) 

Philosophical Conversations with my friends on Twitter (Vol. 1)

I was reminiscing about our very brief session of middle school drinking games on Thursday night, in which a very good friend of mine asked me why my ex and I broke up. And I sighed and I told her exactly what happened, and then I let her comment on how ridiculous it was, and then I delved a little deeper into what I think we did wrong as individuals trying to be a couple. And contrary to when I clung onto T for dear life immediately after we broke up, or when cried into the phone during all of M's lunch break, or when it felt like K was the only glue holding me together, or every single thing I blogged for the next month...it didn't hurt to talk about this. I wasn't actively suppressing any emotions. There was no choking up. I didn't want to cry; in fact, if someone had suggested that this might be too difficult for me to talk about, I would have laughed at them. And I don't think it was just because I was a little drunk.

So, thinking out loud, I tweeted:

It's weird when you're totally over a situation. Last night, [Choosing Pancakes] asked me about something that had me torn to pieces over the summer, and

I could just lay out the facts like it was something that had happened to someone else. I'm not that person who was so hurt anymore. #growth

 And she responded:

@SuchAnAfroholic In one way, that's comforting, but in another way, it worries me that everything becomes ... less meaningful?

And I replied:

I don't think I could function if everything that ever happened to me retained its original meaning throughout time and space.

Could there be "moving on"? Could I "get over it"? I feel like distancing oneself is a necessary component of development and growth.

She said:

but then that makes me feel stupid for feeling things so intensely now, like i'm exaggerating.

And that is so totally, completely, and thoroughly the opposite of how I ever want to make anyone feel that I had to try to remedy it. 

I think that feeling things intensely in the moment is incredibly important. Those kinds of rushes and losing ourselves in things are

the moments we feel most alive and like what we're experiencing matters. It's like we're artists, and those moments are when we're

painting. We get lost in the colors and the strokes and in creating this glorious thing. But when we're done and it's hanging on a

wall somewhere, we have to be able to step back and say, I could have done this differently or next time I'll do this instead. We can

still be proud of our work, but if we stay in that fever of creation forever, will we ever grow as artists? I'm dubious.

 I took a short break to confirm that my extended metaphor was working, then continued:

Then I'll say that, to the best of my understanding, most brilliant art arises out of intensity. But art is expression

in the moment, and an opportunity for communication and reflection once the moment has passed. I don't think it loses significance

from the intense-creative-expressive period to the thinking-reflection period; on the contrary, without a period in which we can view

it somewhat objectively and understand the process and plan what to do next, why would the intensity matter at all? It would be

giving and giving and giving OF ourselves without ever giving back TO ourselves.

She liked my metaphor. I do too, a lot, so I figured I'd share. Also, I would like to formally retract a statement I made when I was still anti-Twitter about 160 characters not being enough to drop knowledge. 

Men Ain't Shit.

I seem to be on the road to self-identifying as a feminist. Some of you might be looking at me like, well DUH, but let me explain: I've always had feminist tendencies. It's funny, but since birth I've had this nagging conceptualization of myself as a person that deserves recognition as such...but I digress. I've always had feminist tendencies. I just used to be wary of downright against calling myself "a feminist." And before you start thinking I'm some little punk, it wasn't because of all of the shit that gets talked about feminists. Who gon' check me, boo?!

My problems with feminism come from its longstanding history of ignoring the particular struggles affecting women who are anything other that White, middle-class, and heterosexual. And yeah, okay, I know the movement is officially for all women now, but honestly, I believe that like I believe Santorum was talking about "blah" people...like hell.

Get at me when you stop producing foolishness like this, feminism. It's like, damn, and I liked SlutWalk too...

I still see the experiences of women of color, queer women, and poor women being addressed primarily by in-group members. I still see personhood being portrayed as Whites-only when feminists report statistics about "Women," "Men," "Blacks," and "Hispanics." (Should I clap that you're trying when you're doing it so very wrong?) And it's just like, while I'm so glad the right to breastfeed at work has become protected by law, I'm just much more concerned with the fact that unemployment is rising for Blacks as it falls for everyone else. 

And yeah, okay, I know that Black feminism is a thing. It's a really fucking awesome thing. And then there's the whole womanist movement, too. And when I discovered these, I got more open to the idea of maybe calling myself a feminist. And when I realized the error of my previously pro-life ways, I got even more open to the idea of maybe calling myself a feminist. And the above photograph says more than I ever can about how the movement as a whole isn't doing nearly enough to address race and racism, but at least part of that needs to be interpreted in a Gandhi "It's not your Christ I have a problem with; it's your Christians" kind of manner. 

And there's another It's-not-your-Feminism-it's-your-feminists problem that I have: man-bashing. I really don't know what it's going to take for people to realize that the celebration of one thing does not necessitate the belittling of its opposite (not that I believe men and women are inherently opposites). It is possible to love one thing without hating its counterpart. I love being Black, but that doesn't mean I hate Whiteness. I'm pro-choice but not anti-children (for other people). I'm pretty sex-positive, but that doesn't mean I'm abstinence-negative. And I can't stand it when so-called "feminists" attack manhood and masculinity, rather than attacking patriarchy. I can't stand it when "feminism" doesn't realize that portraying women as "good" and men as "evil" not only belittles both genders by erases heterogeneity, but is creating the exact same issues that patriarchy creates by portraying men as significant and women as not. By talking about all the things that are "wrong" with "men," these people are just playing into the narrow stereotypes and archetypes patriarchy has carved out for men to exist in. 

Men have emotions. They hurt. They think. They dwell. They worry. They love. They fear. They have stories to tell, too.

And with that, I give you this awesome short documentary I discovered thanks to Tunde (@BrazenlyVirile) today. It's called Men Ain't Shit, and it goes out to everyone who has ever said any version of that statement. (I'm guilty of "Boys are stupid.")


Men Ain't Sh?t from Le Femme Flaneur on Vimeo.
 

Something I need to not do:

Project the emotions raised by a situation I went through into the past onto situations that are developing in the present.

See:

And okay, I don't think I'm walking around with a particularly large amount of baggage. I don't actively drag every situation I've ever been in around with me all day; I don't avoid relationships because I've been hurt in them in the past or not apply to competitive research programs just because last year I got rejected from everywhere I applied. I don't even have to pretend to be friendly with my ex--I am fully capable of moving on, I promise. 

But that doesn't mean I don't get a gut reaction when something happens that reminds me of something that caused me pain in the past. I won't necessarily plan my next steps entirely around that reaction, but I can't bring myself totally ignore it either. There has to be a comfortable middle ground where I can recognize a potential warning sign without losing my shit or feeling weighed down. If I totally ignore it, the chances that I'll end up right back where I was last time seem fairly high. But preparing myself for an apocalypse that might never come just seems silly and overly defensive.

So I think I'll compromise by highlighting all of the ways the situation that may or may not be currently unfolding differs greatly from the somewhat similar situation I went through in high school. The players, the scene, the maturity levels, the strength of the involved relationships. Why do we jump to compare situations based on one or two similarities when so many other variables differ? Why is what things have in common more valuable than what sets things apart? 

I am not convinced that I have anything to worry about. And yet a familiar tightness is wreaking havoc on my stomach right now; I think its name is dread. I want to hide from it under the covers. 

My friend J and I learned last night

that little things can make you inordinately angry when you're drunk and stressed out. And as we're graduating seniors who have theses to write and midterms to take and highly competitive jobs to apply for, stress is a given. Drunk is also a given. Thus, being quite rude or even yelling at our friends and loved ones and/or having full-blown emotional meltdowns may happen more often as the time between now and the beginning of April dwindles. Now that we have realized this correlation, we will try to be more cognizant and avoid potential molehills-that-could-easily-become-mountains-in-drunken-stessed-out-perspective, but for the next time or four we fail, consider this our apology in advance. We only hope the same thing will happen to the rest of our friends, so we can be even.

Another conversation-with-E-inspired realization:

The women in my family--as far as I can tell, all of them, with the exception of yours truly--are generally incredibly emotionally unavailable. This is also known as being "strong," and is unfortunately oftentimes considered synonymous with simply being a Black woman. We take shit and keep it movin, right? We have to keep it together for everyone else's benefits...oftentimes ignoring our own needs. 
This wasn't a radical realization. I knew this, at least about my mother and younger sister, I just hadn't ever managed to put that label on it. I could say that my mom and I don't know how to "talk"--we can chitchat, and we can argue, but we can't have real conversations. We don't deal with emotions like "scared" or "hurt"--we can manage worry and reassurances neither of us probably really believe, but that's about as deep as it can go. To the best of my knowledge, I have seen my mother cry twice in 21 years of life. We didn't start regularly saying we loved each other until I left for college. I've only heard her say the word "proud" in relation to me once. My sister...won't be Facebook friends with me. Getting her to eat dinner with us on one of the rare nights my mother, brother, and I all sit at the same table is like pulling teeth. I try to give her hugs when I come home and she tells me to get off of her. 
Another thing to add to the list of reasons why I can't actually be a member of my family and must have been switched at birth is the fact that I am generally ruled by my emotions. We've talked about this. But when I go home, I feel like the only emotions surrounding me are mine. It's kind of oppressive. It's not NORMAL--at least, I hope for the sake of humanity it's not normative. Try as they did to teach me, I never learned to live with my game-face on. It makes me uncomfortable. Just like feeling like I'm being judged for caring makes me uncomfortable. This is just reason # next that I feel like I can't really be myself around my family. And it's nice to be able to verbalize it finally, but it would be nicer to be able to change it. 

I hate when friends tell you to "get over it".

As if it's that simple, just a conscious decision you can make. As if you're not trying. As if all this pain and fear and worry and drama are things you're keeping around because they make you happy. As if your feelings are trivial and insignificant, when in reality you feel like the David to your feelings' Goliath the Hercules to your feelings' that-monster-where-when-he-cuts-off-one-head-three-more-grow-to-replace-it.

See, friend, even if you think I'm being ridiculous, you are still supposed to be there for me. You are still supposed to listen. You are still supposed put some effort into trying to understand how I'm feeling, instead of just discounting it. I am supposed to be able to feel like I matter when I start talking to you about a problem I'm having. My other friend, once she listened, thought I had "reason to be concerned". That little bit of validation and feeling like I'm not going crazy is all I was looking for. I've never done this before, remember? I'm not going to apologize for being scared of being constantly reminded of the hurt I've spent so much time trying to put behind me. I think it is a legitimate fear. I'm not going to apologize for not being Beyonce, who as far as I can tell from her songs about her breakups, has never actually cared about a single man in her life and just keeps them around until they "show their asses" and then tells them to go "to the left, to the left" and then sits around later laughing at their misfortune. I'm not going to apologize for not being jaded just yet. I'm not going to apologize for trying to prepare myself for this--pretending it's going to be rainbows and butterflies is just going to make it worse when it feels like a punch to the stomach. I just...I don't appreciate not being taken seriously.

For a long time I've been wanting to write about music

and what one might call the spiritual connection we humans have to it: its ability to get deep down into your soul and compel you to act, whether that action be singing along at the top of your lungs, or dancing, or crying, or lipsyncing, or tapping your foot, or sighing. Music acts as this great equalizer, because even though people from certain backgrounds are more likely to enjoy certain kinds of music over others, a good love song, regardless of genre, can make anyone say "I want that" or "I remember that." A good song about pain can elicit from anyone this sense of "Yes, I hear you. I have been there too." In my humble opinion, you'd be hard pressed to find anything else so profoundly social, anything else that brings people together like that--concerts are one place where, even in 2011, you can find evidence of Emile Durkheim's concept of collective effervescence. Anyway, there are lots of things I want to say about music, but I found this via my friend N's tumblr last night, and I'm not sure I've ever read a blog post that has more truth in it than this:

" On Music And Melancholy

Aug. 1, 2011

By Tasha Frost Over at ThoughtCatalog

Music is a strange animal. There are the songs hit your spine like a lightning bolt, earthing themselves in your feet, forcing you to dance, laughing through the sweat at the simple joy of being moved by a beat until you collapse of exhaustion. Then there are the songs that can reach straight into you, grab that taut thread of emotion and go twang. Sometimes so hard that it snaps, softly, and suddenly you’re crying over something or someone that you had most certainly forgotten by now. The voice isn’t singing to you, but singing the words that you wish you had said. Not just the words, but the harmony and melody too. This is exactly

how you felt, feel, thought but never what you articulated. The chaotic buzz of emotion is given order, and thus made understandable.

These singers sound like they put a little piece of themselves into every note. The force of their personality powers the key changes that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. The harmonies are invested with an emotion so personal, it’s inevitable that the listener picks up the feeling as if it’s contagious, whether melancholy, regret or exhilaration. They really mean every word and trill.

And then you have to sing along. It’s primal, it’s beautiful. But you know you’ll never hit the notes and probably won’t be in time. You don’t care. There’s the urge to shout me too within the safe confines of the song. Not just “me too”, but “us together” and, most importantly, “I understand”. It’s so easy to feel close to singer/songwriters who seem to reach right into your head and project all of this onto a ten-foot tall billboard. Sing yourself hoarse.

This is the song that says it all – you need to strap that person down and say, “Sit still. Stop struggling, you won’t get free. Listen. This is what I need to say to you. But I’m not articulate enough, brilliant enough, or brave enough.” Bravery is what it comes down to. Songs that can touch raw emotion are also a remarkable display of vulnerability; the writer puts his or her innermost thoughts out for the world to listen to. It must be incredibly scary to commit your memories to the recording studio, but also freeing. And, if you do it well, satisfying.

More than writing, music is able to pull at the loose threads of the patchwork of memory and feeling; it can approach its audience with the eloquence of the written word and so much more. A beautiful harmony, the rise of a crescendo and the skilful use of an occasional silence that forces attention. Certain songs are able to hotwire your inner circuit board, take you for a spin and burn out the brakes. Music can hit you straight in the vulnerables when you least expect it.

I take refuge in ambiguity and vagary; it’s safer and easier. You can’t pin down fog, and fog has a great deal more consistency and substance than the nonsense I throw around on a daily basis. It’s easier to work with people you don’t like if you don’t express it explicitly. It’s easier to say, “I’m busy” than “I’m miserable, and I keep having dreams that I’ve forgotten how to breathe.” Much of the time, I’m not brave enough to say exactly what I’m thinking. It is a major downfall. I’ve known brave people, loved them, hated them, and been incredibly hurt by them occasionally. But at least they said what they thought. Of course, there are consequences to always speaking your mind, so perhaps a degree of self-censorship is a good thing.

But I wish that I could express myself with the fluency and efficiency of my favorite songs. It’d be so much simpler. Unfortunately, my vocal range is more suited to a rendition of ‘Smellycat.’ Maybe it’s time to give good old-fashioned talking a go."

I hope this is the end of posts about this. This one gets REAL.

I find the intensity with which I can feel various emotions for short periods of time to be incredibly interesting. I guess I just give in very easily to wallowing or celebrating, depending upon the nature of the emotion. I let myself get carried away by feeling. 

I guess what intrigues me about this right now is the question: how much of the feelings those moments of intensity are based around is legitimate? If I can put so much energy into feeling angry, or feeling sad, or hell even feeling love or happiness, that when the moment of intensity passes I just feel...sort of used up and like I need to recharge, then what becomes of the emotion once it has consumed all of my energy? It makes me wonder how much of a flame was there in the first place, and how much is just some part of my brain leaking gas to feed it. Even if the emotion is negative, a large part of me very much enjoys letting myself be overcome by it: it's like lighting something on fire and watching the fire burn itself out. Except the something is me. 

But I don't think it's healthy. Realizing it makes me not trust myself more than anyone else. If I keep shooting myself in the foot by feeling things so intensely it scares people, I am going to always be lonely. This habit gets me into all kinds of bad situations. 

I'm going to put even more of my business out here than usual and walk you through a recent example: a little under two weeks ago, I got really scared that my then-boyfriend [who I am still in the long-process of trying to let go, though I still can't say I want to fully. I wish we could just change the nature of things and leave them as they were. But this isn't about that.] didn't think I cared about him like I should. He called attention to a mistake I had made in a previous relationship that I talked about here and without letting him explain himself at all or what he thought we should talk about about that post, I freaked out and I sent him an email of things that were (I still believe) entirely accurate about how I felt about our relationship and how I felt about him and I hoped that was enough. But that fear about what he might be thinking just kept gnawing away at me until I couldn't stand it any more [living alone and taking 4 trains every day and working in an environment where you have very little human interaction means you have WAY TOO MUCH TIME TO THINK] and I started writing a letter full of frilly romantic things, which I now believe to have mostly been exaggerations of how I actually felt. Throughout our whole relationship, he had been the frilly romantic one and I had been the one who kept how she was feeling to herself until it had to be let out in little bursts--this was a big burst and though I believed it then, I can't look back at it now and feel like it was real and/or legitimate. Love was the emotion I got carried away with then, and I think I could tell that I was unsure about everything I wrote (I don't even remember most of it) because I almost didn't put it in the mail the next day. But then I remembered our "open and honest" policy and how in the previous letter I'd written to him, I stressed that I wanted us to be able to tell each other anything. So I drew little hearts on the envelope and left it in my mailbox for the postman to pick up. And what clues me in that it was an emotion wave is that by a few days later, I was worried about us growing apart while he was gone and I had this terrifying thought of what if we get to the point where saying I love you is a habit as opposed to a truth, and that came with a sister-worry of whether we were already there. He pointed to other things that made him realize it was time to end this, not just that letter, but I can't help but feel like these stupid emotion waves ruined this for me. 

Except the more accurate culprit is my apparent inability to voice my feelings about a situation with a person to that actual person. If we had just really talked and really listened none of this would have happened, I think. I'm beginning to believe that neither of us was completely open or honest or fair to the other for a very long time. And I think that's the reason I can latch onto for why I have to let this go. I've been struggling for days to solve this puzzle: 

lust < x < love

What is x and how am I supposed to feel about it? But wondering how one of us is supposed to feel or what the other expects/wants us to feel is what got us into so much trouble in the first place. 

So let's instead ask the radical question, how DO I actually feel about it? And the brutally honest answer is that as good as it has made me feel, and as much as I have an incredibly strong desire to just make it more casual and not stop, it is [very] possible that any improbably feasible course of action that involves lowering expectations and just enjoying each other for a while such as I have been privately entertaining over the course of the past few days wouldn't leave me feeling good in the long run. Where is the line between enjoying each other's company and using each other? I don't want to find out. I would rather this be over than find out. That's the first time I've been able to say this being over is not an entirely cruel happenstance. 

So now it's time to perhaps buy a new vibrator since mine doesn't vibrate anymore, and figure out how to not get overwhelmed by the desire to have his (someone's? his? someone-I-trust-and-am-physically-comfortable-with-which-describes-him-more-accurately-than-anyone-else's? Door Number Three sounds like the winner.) hands and mouth all over me, so that I don't have to go back on my statement that I want to be friends come the fall. I will find a way to stand not being able to wrap myself around him and a way not to miss the warmth and protection of his arm around me while we sleep, because more unbearable than either of these is the idea of yet another mistruth between us.

And while I'm doing all these seemingly-impossible things [preferably without doing any of the aforementioned things with someone who doesn't deserve me, because the best way to get over a guy is definitely not to get under a new one...], I will also learn to keep myself in check. I will learn to take a step back from whatever situation I find myself in and say 'Maya, how much of this is real?' Because I just don't have the time/extra energy/desire to keep putting myself through these waves, no matter what they're related to. And more importantly, the other people in my life who are affected by these waves DON'T DESERVE THEM.             

Confessions:

Small font because I'm whispering this:the hardest part about not hating him is that I have no reason not to still like him.

There. I said it. I know I'm not supposed to. I know this isn't a positive step forward in the healing process. I [think I] know it's a waste of my time. I know all my hardcore feminist friends are shaking their fists and lamenting my lack of pride right now. But silly hearts, they don't listen to heads very well. And my silly heart keeps wondering exactly how wrong it is to continue to be lovers if you aren't in love. K says married people do it all the time. Idk which option is sadder.

But then I remember that everyone deserves relationships that are equal partnerships, in which each partner is getting as much as s/he is giving and visa versa. Everyone deserves equal rankings in the priorities hierarchy. So even though right now I almost feel like if we had just a) listened to each other and b) been straightforward with each other from the beginning, we might have been on the same page the whole time, you can't go from trying to reach grown-person concepts like love and devotion to just trying to have fun and enjoy each other's company. #Lifedoesn'tworklikethat #That'sjustnothealthy

But [insert womp-womps here] #Knowingthatdoesn'tchangehowIfeel  

More songs because music makes the world go round:

 #WhatI'mtryingtobeabletomeanwhenIsayit

(I just mean the goodbye part. He's kind of intense.)

#ExceptmaybeIshouldbesayingthis

#AndwhatIactuallymeanisthis

Even smaller font because I don't even like admitting this to myself: It was easy to say that even if I knew then what I know now, I would do this again. That's still true. It's a lot harder to say that knowing what I know about everything that happened here, I'd still rather not let this go. But, silly little heart, you a) have to stop being selfish, and b) can't always get what you want. 

Continuing the confessions that are really hard to make: I'd never been treated so well in my whole life. That will be the hardest thing to let go of, I think. 

INSANE WHIRLWIND OF EMOTIONS cannot begin to accurately describe the past two days.

Extreme sadness. Hurt. Fury that almost scared me. Fear separately. Deep confusion, or maybe simply a profound lack of understanding.



All of those feelings are done now. Well I'm still sad that it's over, because I wanted to snuggle into this and stay there for a long while, but I feel nothing like the overwhelming _________ I was feeling. I feel surprisingly good right now. I feel like nothing was as bad as I'd thought/imagined/suspected/worried/feared. I am not a bad judge of character, and I would like to come out and publicly say to all of you who know me in real life and know the other person involved in this situation--he is not the villain here. This situation doesn't have a villain. It has two good people who made some bad choices and that's it. #theoppositeofpubliclyflaming


I'm not gonna list out all the terrible things that have been running through my head. They don't need mentioning, as they're all either flat out wrong, unwarranted, invalid, or have been deconstructed to the point of my being content. It may have felt at first like the world was ending, but up is still up, down is still down, and I don't think anything permanently damaging happened here. 



I have, however, learned a lot. And the things I have learned can be listed:

1.  It is entirely impossible to undervalue honesty, especially when you know the truth is going to hurt. 
2. Wanting to mean something is entirely different from meaning it. Changing your definition of something so that you can mean it isn't being honest either. 
3. Relationships are based on a lot of assumptions. It's probably a good idea to talk about things rather than assuming you're on the same page about X issue.
4. It actually shocks me that these words are about to come out of my mouth, but maybe it really is the thought that counts. Intentions mean something, even when they lead down unpredictable and hurtful paths. Sometimes people deserve the benefit of the doubt even in the most unfortunate situations.
5. Anger is actually an essential part of the healing process. 
6. My friends are awesome. But I already knew that.
7. Pain does not automatically negate all the previous joy a situation gave. Hurt does not erase prior happiness. I'm not saying "don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened," because I think that crying is a healthy part of LIFE in general, and it's important to be unabashedly sad when something makes you sad...but when it's all said and done, everything good that happened still happened. And that's what you should focus on. 
8. Your world should always be bigger than one person. I think I forgot that mine was for a little while until the support came rushing in from every direction while I was freaking out and I remembered that I have a whole network of people who love and care about me. 
9. Love is a nuanced, nuanced thing. It has so many layers and components and meanings and strivings. It varies from person to person and situation to situation. There are lots of things that love is. There are also lots of things that love isn't. And I'm still learning the differences, I think. Maybe we all are. 
10. Don't underestimate the benefits that can come from actually talking to someone who hurt you, instead of just festering in your own emotions. Every story has two sides. 
11. Analysis of every tiny detail of a situation is pointless and futile. Analysis of what major mistakes were made and what should have been done differently in those specific instances is an opportunity for growth that should not be overlooked. 
12. It is evidently possible for me to open up to my father under times of complete and total duress. It is also evidently impossible for my mother to let me open up to her during such times. This is unsurprising. Maybe I should be less freely open with my mother and talk to my dad more. 
13. I have no regrets. None. I might even want to change everything I've ever believed about exes and want to try to be friends. And on that note, I will pick a song:

And I'd choose you again...

Four-Letter Words

Some folk don't like them. (Sorry, had to make that whole sentence four-letter words, lol.) Fuck. Damn. Shit. Hell. I use these words a lot. Some would say too much. But there's one four-letter word I pepper my speech with possibly more than all the others combined, and that's L O V E. 

People say I'm a really affectionate drunk, and that I love everyone and everything once I've had a few. This is both true and untrue...most of the time, I just stop giving a fuck about what is socially normative in terms of affection and love when I've been drinking, and treat everyone how I'd like to treat them all the time. Because the people I grew up with, they taught me that a friend is someone you hug without asking, and whose back is comfier than any pillow, and who it's okay to contact 949379834 times a day, and for whom concern and worry are the most natural things in the world. A friend is only a strange half-step away from a lover, and that step might not even be down. And I love those definitions of friend; I'm not really ever going to be willing to give them up. I just attempt to tone (ha!) them down a little in daily life because other people are more reserved, or something, I guess. [And yet E talking about her wannabe boo who is so overly overtly physically affectionate like I want to be and how open and in touch with her emotions it makes her feel makes me consider dropping the normal act and--call me cliche, but--reaching out and touching someone whenever I get the inclination to.] 

What I'm getting at here is that I'm a pretty loving person, and I'm usually pretty open about that, even when I'm sober. I love mozzarella sticks, I love the way B's hair feels when I run my hands through it, and "M, I love you, but [insert some criticism or refusal here]". I love my single, I love studying in the large library, I love my JP topic, <3s in my facebook wall posts and when I'm saying goodbye to anyone on AIM or Skype. It's, like, the opposite of a big deal when I drop an "I love you" in casual conversation; people seem to interpret this as meaning "I appreciate/enjoy your company", which is fine by me.


But a friend of mine is going through some drama with his boyfriend that is causing me to, at the very least, wonder about this emotions-wide-open-heart-on-my-sleeve philosophy of life. His boyfriend said he loves him for the first time a few months ago, and he has been unable to say it back. Truth be told, I was really surprised when he told me this,  because he's one of the friends with whom I can't part ways without exchanging i-love-yous. But once he explained it to me, it made perfect sense. It's like, right now, to the best of his understanding, he loves his boyfriend the way he loves me, the way I drop I-love-yous in casual conversation, in the I love being around you/I love the way you make me feel/I love the person you are and the person I am when I'm with you kind of way, but totally not on that I wanna ride off into the sunset on a horse with you and live happily-ever-after tip. He's having trouble recognizing the differences between the various ways of loving other people, and whether there is a middle ground worth recognizing between the point A and point B I just described.


I've never talked about this to anyone before, but here's a secret. I accidentally told J I loved him on like, the second or third night of our relationship. It was really late and we were on the phone and it just seemed natural, because I am that kind of person. And on one level, I did love him then. Because on some level, I draw no line between "I love X-cool-thing about you" and "I love you". I never have. But what's going on with my friend and his boyf right now has made me realize that someday, this distinction will become important. I will have to know when it is okay to say I love you to someone I'm romantically involved with, and what that means compared to with someone I'm simply emotionally involved with. I will have to understand what the difference is. Why does it matter that I love my hypothetical boyfriend any more/in any other way than I love my actual best friends? I'm not sure that even makes sense to me. I don't see love in the real world as sunsets and horses and the whole cast breaking into song and dance; love is compromise and love is work and love is building something to come after honeymoon-happy. Love doesn't automatically entail ever-afters, but I don't think that means you can't love if you're not planning on buying the horse, if that's not too much of a mixed metaphor.


And this may possibly be the root of my recurring boy issues. I throw the word and the idea of love around so much that my brain doesn't really distinguish friend-love from romantic love or familial love (for instance, I say I love my girls like my sisters, but I treat them SO MUCH BETTER than I treat either of my sisters, and would be hard pressed to say I didn't care about them more. Goddamn, I'm rude. Anyway.), and thus flip-flops around between the two when it comes to boys I absolutely adore. So maybe if I figure this out, my boys can just be my boys and that's it. 


I just like to love people. I love almost instantly (along with trust), and will love and trust fiercely unless/until something is done to ruin that love and trust. Call me a hippie, but I just want to be able to love everyone, and for it to not ever be weird. I wish everyone gave hugs freely and leaned on people's shoulders when they felt like it. The world would be a better place.

I had a geode once...

^Sort of like this.

The person I was with told me not to buy it. His argument was something to the effect of there would probably be better things I could spend my money on. My counterargument was that I'd always wanted one.

...Damn it's crazy how hindsight is such a BITCH. Those three sentences really sum up his and my entire relationship...and happened within a matter of hours before the relationship ended.

I don't know exactly what happened to that geode. I may have gotten rid of/hid it somewhere in  one of the bouts of depression and anger I wrestled with for months after this all went down. Which really SUCKS, because despite all the metaphorical deeper-meaning-ness of that statement, I really have always wanted a geode.

I bring this up now because my residential college is sponsoring a trip to the Dodge Poetry Festival. 

I'm sure most of you don't automatically see the connection here. The Dodge Poetry Festival is where I bought the geode. It's where I almost had my first kiss. It's the first place I ever publicly belonged to someone else since the days when my father wanted to put me on a leash (don't even get me started...). It is without a doubt one of the most naturally beautiful places I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing. 

It's also the place where my heart was broken [hopefully] harder than it will ever be broken again. It's the place where I realized that having a past doesn't necessitate a future, and that even someone I have trusted for as long as I can remember may not necessarily deserve said trust. 

It's a place I want to go back to and also a place I fear ever returning to.

The trip is free.

I should go. I know I should. I'm just going to need some time to turn that should into a will.

I mean, can returning really be that hard? Can it be as hard as turning him down when he came slinking back into my life freshman year was? Will I see the haystack we rolled in, the tree I climbed, the bench we sat on, and feel the urge to contact him? Will I kick myself for still having his number? 

Or will I just go and have a good time at a festival I love? Can life be that easy, just this once?

Bonus points if you get the literary reference.

Grrrrrr...

Being angry at someone for the first time is an interesting experience. I suppose it becomes more and more interesting depending on how long you've been close to the person before having to cross this bridge of anger. One of my closest friends on campus is really flaking out and making my life difficult right now (I'm sure he doesn't mean to be, but regardless), and it's putting me in a really bad mood. It took me a while to realize that this funk I'm in is anger...this is what it feels like to be angry at him.  

It's just emotions takin me over...

Two words: 

 emotional detachment

I really don't understand them as a concept. My best friend has been going on all these dates with all these guys and my close-mindedness is rearing its pesky head, because I disapprove of all of this so hard. She sounds like an asshole guy (my apologies for the sexism) saying that she's just "having fun" with them. And I'm sorry, but I really just can't support using another human being for whatever pleasure you derive from them and then tossing them to the side. No matter how you spin it and try to dress it up, that's just not okay.

She says it's all just part of this game called love, and I realized that's my biggest problem with this whole romance/dating thing; why the fuck do we as a society treat something that is so important like it's a GAME?! It's why I can't watch any of those reality dating shows either; this should not be a fucking joke, and I really can't stand that people think of it like that these days.

Call me old-fashioned, but I STILL cry when Mufasa dies. I can't watch war movies because looking into a soldier's eyes for half a second and then seeing a bullet rip through him will leave me in a puddle on the floor. As much as I claim to hate sappiness, The Notebook and Titanic are my two favorite movies of all time. I cried when Obama was elected and I cried when I found out someone thought I had been rude on the first day of the conference and I cry when I'm happy, when I'm sad, when I'm frustrated, when I'm upset, when I'm feeling overwhelmed, etc. etc. Also, it is physically impossible for me to watch someone else cry, even on television, without tears springing to my own eyes.

To make a long story short, I'm an overly emotional person. My swimming teacher in 5th grade once told me I cry at the drop of a hat...to this day, she's not far off. I form instant bonds with people and things and lose a part of myself by losing that bond. It causes me to keep a lot of objects (and probably people) in my life that I should have let go a long time ago, but I have a serious problem letting things go. One might say I'm an emotional hoarder. But as an always-writer and sometimes-artist and trying-to-be-free-spirit, what else can I do? Emotions are the crayons of my coloring-book world, and as much as I love black and white photography, sometimes the grass just needs to be green. 

That being said, emotional detachment as a concept terrifies me. It's, like, a fate worse than death: it would mean being so far removed from a situation that I don't form a bond. I am and have always been the kind of person that tries to give all of herself to everything in her life...but maybe I'm a bit too literal about the word "everything". Unless I'm totally and completely not vibing with a person, and thus feeling like I should not trust them for some reason, I open the door to my coloring-book world and ask them what color they'd like. It's really as simple as that. You're in or you're out. Ain't no such thang as halfway crooks!

So this detachment thing...it would require an inherent inability to trust. And there can be no love without trust. And what is life without love? (SN: this is a word I also use far too liberally. "Like" is total weaksauce in my book, and be wary if I use it around you...I'm probably trying to be nice.) It would be like saying NO I WILL NOT CARE ABOUT YOU before they even get a chance. I don't understand how I could be myself without getting my emotions involved; hell, I don't understand how I could be anything but a bump on a log. I don't understand why I would even listen to a word they say or remember their name if I'm trying to be detached from the situation...why even try to make memories? I tell you, I don't understand it. My world used to be walled in, but the right people came along and tore that me down, brick by brick. Now I only call on the guards in EXTREME circumstances, haha. I'm an open book, and I invite (almost) everyone in to color my world. Tabula rasa, right? Well imagine all the pages that I'd be missing if there was a waiting period before I handed people a crayon? How different would my world be? What parts would be missing?