Dear Life, Quit being a Dick

OK, fine, life isn't that big of a dick, but the title popped into my head and I knew I had to use it. 

I mean, it's KIND OF a dick. It's taken two good people I adored from this world in the last two months who were WAY too young to go. 

It's confronted me with some old challenges, and some new. The kind where I'm struggling to identify the base components, sift through, react and respond accordingly and appropriately. 

And let's not even talk about stuff outside my own sphere, like people blowing up marathons or kids or other innocent people both here at home and the world over. 

But overall, I think I'm getting a little better at it, this whole life/adulthood thing. 

I still do dumb shit. I still speak well before thinking. I can still be catty or flippant with people and situations that deserve far more respect. 

But I think I catch things more quickly now. I don't always wait until I'm mired in a thing to say, "Oh fuck. Well, how does one get out of this?"

So, in the spirit of soul puke, here are a few things I'm learning about this beast we call life, which can be a dick, sure, but still has some beautiful parts to it...not unlike that hottie from the bar you bang occasionally.

1. I have what I like to call "life or death" moments.

A dramatic description, sure, but allow me to explain myself (if I haven't already somewhere on this blog before).

"Life or death" moments are the ones where you can foresee the end result of a decision about 27 moves out. 

So, like, texting the "bad news" dude, casually, "just to say hi." That's a move made where--if you're really honest with yourself--you know EXACTLY how it's going to pan out in a month (you, in tears, him all like, "I'm seeing someone else, I thought you knew that.")

For me, I have life or death moments when it comes to my own self-care.

After a regrettable experience with a Mirena IUD that sent me into my first ever bout of for-real, can't-get-out-of-bed, my-whole-body-hurts, I-hate-life, crying-for-no-reason, I-never-believed-in-it-until-it-happened-to-me depression, followed by a round of therapy that helped me to identify that I've been living my life in a mild state of anxiety since, oh, forever, I can tell when I'm on a precipice. 

These moments are never anything terribly bad. It might be a funk, or a mood, or a simple shift in the way I view the world or my life. 

But it's there...it's that moment that could turn into a thousand other moments, which could turn into, "I can no longer function normally and this is dangerous."

I wrote in my journal the other day that these moments are a "sinking, dampening feeling...water seeping in through boots, leaving socks soggy."

Which is like, the WORST feeling ever, amirite??

Anyway, when I have one of these moments, I know I must make a decision immediately or face tumbling into the abyss. Not today, not tomorrow even, or next week. But soon.

I refuse to let that shit happen. 

For me, these moments mean that I need to hit the gym, STAT. Or write it all out. Or call one of my core people.

I am good at the former (at least in the sense that I know how to execute, and it's good for me), and trying to be better with the latter. Getting there. Which leads me to:

2. I am bad at balancing independence/strength with my inherent need for connection.

I think there's this thing that single people do where we scream and shout and yell that we are just fine all by ourselves! We don't need a man/woman/blow up doll to be happy! Haha, look at you suckers all out on date night on Friday! We're in watching Homeland, wearing sweatpants, with a whole pizza and a bottle of wine ALL TO OUR PETS-AS-CHILDREN SELVES. 

WE DON'T HAVE TO SHAVE OUR PUBES LIKE YOU SUCKERS!! MWHAHAHAHAAA!

I think we're doing ourselves a disservice.

I mean, I get it. I get why we feel the need to rail against a society that sells us the Disney Princess lie...that we can only be happy when coupled and fitting in nicely to our gender roles. That we are somehow "rescued" when we're in a relationship. 

But what we're really sliencing is our inherent need for connection. And, yes, we NEED connection. 

Or at least, that's what I'm learning.

I'm learning that it's okay for me to be a strong, independent woman (a thing I fought and clawed for) but also want to connect with someone...

...with my pants parts.

Oh yeah, and my heart and shit. Whatever.

3. Owning your truth can suck hard. Like, real hard.

As discussed earlier, there come those moments in life where your own self-care is paramount.

Maybe it's a simple acknowledgement that French Fries are a "sometimes food," or that you're perpetually making yourself miserable by never getting more than six hours of sleep, or that it's finally time to have an honest meeting with the boss to say, "I'm in over my head and I want to throw up when I think of spending another 14 hour day here."

Then there are those other moments where your heart says, "Let's make this hurt so good," but your head says, "You know that's a terrible idea."

So those are the times you have to say, "Enough."

And it sucks. It'll hurt, yes. And you'll have moments of confusion where you'll wonder if you did the right thing, that maybe, maybe if you had stuck with it, it would defy the odds and turn out differently. 

I guess I'm just at the point in my life where situations that offer fleeting moments of happiness in exchange for consistent moments of my heart to be ground to a pulp isn't an acceptable state of being.  

That's when you start confusing "happiness" with "reprieve." Those feelings are two very different things, friends. 

Owning your truth is less about protecting oneself and more about honoring the reality of one's limitations. There is something raw and vulnerable and honest about saying, "I can only handle this much," then asking others to respect your stopping point with you. 

It's self-care at its finest...and most painful. It's also a step in the right direction.

And that's what adulthood is, I suppose. Lots and lots of tiny steps in the right direction.

All pictures from my Instagram account where I sometimes take pictures of phallic looking clouds. Follow me @sarahjstorer, you goons. 

On Expansiveness

"Stop acting like a 90 year old woman," he said, both kindly and forcefully, as good coaches do. 

We had been going through my goals for the next few years, talking about how I can take my life from "good" to "great." 

Without knowing it or meaning to, I was seeing "great" as an end, as something that, if I reach it, everything I've been working for will get to stop suddenly and I won't have to try anymore.

Oh, and I was seeing it as if it had to happen soon, because...why? Oh, right, I was acting like a 90 year old woman. 

It's cliche, but life really is about the journey, not the destination, and if we are lucky, we get to have lots and lots of journeys. We are capable of great things, and our greatness or our ability to achieve greatness doesn't taper off the older we get. 

As one TED talk I heard this weekend put it, it's better to live life on an incline...things can always, always move toward "better." Always.

***

My word for myself of late has been "expansive."

I've been wanting to shy away from emotions that feel tight and narrow...things like anxiety and fear and jealousy.

Anxiety and fear is a little easier for me to identify now. Jealousy is harder.

Jealousy is an emotion made up of emotions, so it's hard to sift through, identify, name.

It's mostly a fear-based emotion, sure, but it's never just one fear. It's more a manifestation of every insecurity you ever knew you had (and some you didn't), all rolled into one. 

No wonder they call it a monster. 

***

The studio opened a few blocks down from my house and offered a special of $45 for one month unlimited practice. 

It was a new kind of practice for me, but the premise seemed right up my alley.

Heat? Check. Yoga? Check. Minimal effort to get there and make it happen? Double check. Getting to wear less clothes than this for 90 minutes with strangers? CHECK.---->

I arrived my first day, thinking I probably wouldn't be able to keep up with most of the class since I was new, but confident I could at least try, and in the meantime, feel that deep, soul-quieting connection I've learned to love from yoga.

Instead, I spent the next 90 minutes chanting to myself, "I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, when is this over, I hate this, fuck you yoga, fuck you lights, fuck you heat, I hate this, I'm going to vomit, I'm going to die, I hate this, someone please check in on my dogs after I'm dead, I hate this."

And then I sweated from places I didn't know could produce sweat. Our bodies can be disgusting, FYI.

So I decided that if I hated it that much the first time, I should of course go back again the next day. And the next. 

The moral of this story is not what you think.

This is not a story where I say, "I love Bikram yoga and can now Camel Pose the shit out of myself."

In fact, I still fucking hate Bikram yoga with the fire of a thousand suns. It's not the yoga I came to know and love, and the overly rational part of myself wanted to laugh every time they told me that some weird pose was LITERALLY RENEWING BRAIN CELLS or HELPING YOUR POOPS or YOU WILL NEVER NEED TO SLEEP AGAIN WITH THIS POSE. 

This is, instead, a story where I say that sometimes it's good to push through your initial resistance of something, if only to find out if your first impression of that thing was right or wrong.

You can apply that shit to all sorts of stuff. 

Pushing past an initial impression is part of looking at the world expansively, of challenging yourself to go beyond the things you're pretty sure are not "you" to find the truth. In this case, I had to figure out if Bikram was really NOT ME, or if I was just being a turd about exercising and trying something new.

Well, sorry Bikram, but you are really NOT ME, but I gave you the old college try.

And to be honest, I at least reaped some other benefits from it, like discovering that I didn't hate staring at my half naked body in the mirror for 90 minutes, because hey, that thing still does all right. Hey, girl.

***

I've been a redhead since college, and The Naked Redhead since 2008. 

Redheads are cool people...there's a certain brother/sisterhood formed when you're a ginger (real or fake). Maybe it's that whole Recessive Gene Club thing. Or the notion that people with this color hair are passionate or "fiery." 

Either way, it was a fun club to be in for over ten years. Thanks to all you real gingers for inviting me in. 

But it was time for something different, and I've cut my hair short enough times now to know that it's a bad fucking idea, so I decided to join another special group. 

While it remains to be seen if blondes do indeed have more fun, it's still a change of pace that doesn't involve me being a "triangle head" for the foreseeable future. Carrie Bradshaw, I am not (something I've learned in my 33 years, thankfully).

But WHO KNEW that going from red to blonde would be such an arduous process?! So far, it's been a total of eight hours in the salon over two visits (thank you Phia!! You guys are AMAZING), with one more to go.

(ALSO, also, for inquiring minds who want to know, apparently using Feria is the same as allowing the Devil to take a dump on your hair...so maybe avoid that in the future?). 

Here are photos from the process, because I love selfie-ing the shit outta...er, myself. 

Before: The last time as a redhead, lookin'...wow. Fantastic, obviously:

Step One: They had to basically leech my hair from all the color after dumping box after box on it for a decade. Also, I have roughly a metric fuck-ton of hair.

Step Two: Foil, bleach, color, toner. At one point, I had three people with their hands all up in my business. I felt like a rockstar.

Step Three: Not a bad first stab at it. I'm a little more brown than blonde here, and still some "strawberry," but it's getting there. And I like to selfie in the car. DEAL WITH IT.

Step Four (Getting Closer to an "After"): 2nd visit to the salon, getting lighter, but still a little strawberry in the mix. I like it.

So there you have it. The Naked Redhead is now blonde. 

I've had a lot of people (like, three) ask how I can still be TNR as a blonde.

To me, I guess I don't even think about this place like that anymore. Sure, it originally came into being partly because of my physical identity, but for any of you who have been around for more than two posts know this blog is about my emotional identity anyway.

...a phrase which makes me throw up a little bit, because WHY IS MY 17 YEAR OLD JOURNAL TRYING TO MAKE AN APPEARANCE HERE, but whatever. Sometimes the truth is corny. 

I guess I'm just at the point where I don't feel like I need to be tied to my perception of myself, if that makes sense. 

I'm not a 90 year old woman, after all. 

Let's Talk About Rape

Let's talk about rape, shall we?

It's an important talk, so don't get squeamish. 

It's not a talk about a "women's issue."

It's not a talk about football, or if children can rape, or whether or not woman "asks for it" when she's raped...that maybe an inch of length on her skirt, that a higher neckline could have prevented a willful violation of her body, mind and spirit. 

This is a talk about a "human issue," because rape--and rape culture, specifically--affects both women and men. It violates, hurts and scars our sisters and mothers, and it's born of a fundamental flaw in how we raise our sons, what our brothers and fathers have been taught about privilege and power and the value of a woman. 

The question for me when I think about Steubenville, is not whether these young boys "deserved" their sentence or not, but whether they had, in fact, raped before...or if they hadn't been caught, when would they have raped next?

***

I'm tired.

I'm tired of posting things like the following to my Facebook page and having someone report it as offensive: 

I really don't understand what's so difficult about "don't put your dick in a person who doesn't give you express permission to do so." If you should happen to put your dick into someone who does not give you permission (or does not have the ability to give you permission), it is not the person's fault who did not grant permission, it's actually your fault. 

These concepts are not complex. Permission? Yay! Put your dick in that. No permission? Aw, shucks. Do not put your dick in that. 

Oh, and your perceived idea of a person's willingness to have you put your dick in him or her as demonstrated by that person's drunkenness, clothing choice or situational behavior isn't, in fact, "permission." Get it together, Internet.

I'm tired of explaining that presenting a post like that with the word "dick" in it several times is still far less offensive than a culture that permeates rape. I'm tired of knowing that one of my so-called "friends" had some sort of issue with the post because of my flagrant use of crass language, rather than seeing that the reason I feel like I must be crass is to hammer the message home, clearly, in black and white. 

Because we're far past the point of talking about rape in hushed tones, with language that might be acceptable at a women's tea.

Rape is not a polite topic, because rape is not polite.

And if we're STILL having conversations like some of the ones I've seen and heard on the Internet since Monday's verdict, you bet your ass I will refuse to have a calm, decent discussion about rape. I will yell and scream and swear not just until someone listens, but until I'm heard.

***

We had hooked up once, a not-so-great experience, due to his love of substances that tend to have an adverse effect on erections.

For some reason, we found ourselves hooking up again, and I'm--surprisingly--enjoying myself, but not exactly heading toward a "resolution." 

No big deal. An orgasm, to me, isn't always the point of sex.

He had other ideas.

"What's wrong with you?" he said. "You must be really repressed."

As if, somehow, his dick were magic. And of course, me even looking cross-eyed at it would mean multi-orgasmic bliss. 

Fuck. Off. 

I'm tired of meeting men who feel like their advances toward women work on a "risk/reward" system. That somehow, when they pay attention to a woman, or talk to her, or buy her a drink, she "owes" him something as part of the deal.

This sense of entitlement pervades the mindset of many men in our culture.

I owe you absolutely nothing if I wear a short skirt. I owe you nothing if I flirt with you. I owe you nothing if you buy me dinner or a drink. I owe you nothing--not even the tiniest orgasm--EVEN IF I SLEEP WITH YOU. 

When it comes to my body, my person, I owe you nothing. Ever.

***

She and I walked down the street to our car. It was late, the neighborhood sketchy, but we were alert, vigilant, as we've been taught to be. A habit born of far too many stories and incidents and statistics.

She grabbed my arm, said, "Let's walk faster," when two men on the other side of the street decided at that moment to cross, and made what looked like a beeline toward us.

I straightened my spine, set my jaw, re-gripped my keys...an instrument only so recently a means to start my car, now a makeshift weapon.

We held our breaths as they overtook and passed us, breathed again only when they walked into the waiting bar.  

***

"Can I walk you to your car?" he asked. 

We'd met for the first time earlier that evening, in what would be my last foray into dating strangers off the Internet. He was twenty minutes late, and started the conversation with a rather foul joke about fucking a South American girl, then pissing blood a few days later. 

I don't know why I stayed. I normally leave those situations immediately, throwing down cash for my drink and ignoring consequent text messages and phone calls. But I stayed, disregarding the tightness in my gut, thinking, "If only he has a smart, intelligent, powerful woman explain things to him, he'll calm down."

Instead, the jokes grew worse, and his eyes lingered on my body far longer than a casual glance. When I didn't laugh at his jokes, he became agitated. "I thought you could handle it. You presented yourself as a person who could handle extreme humor."

I shot back a long-winded response about appropriate humor, that me being a slightly edgy, funny woman doesn't mean that--like most women--I appreciate disgusting, denigrating jokes about women, and I certainly don't appreciate a man not going out of his way to at least appear somewhat non-threatening in what still is--despite all modern conveniences--a relatively dangerous situation for women. 

He scoffed, couldn't believe that women believe the all-too-true joke by Ever Mainard, "Here's your rape."

Because for us, it's not an "if" situation, but a "when."

"Can I walk you to your car?" he asked as I closed my tab and made to leave. 

"Absolutely not," I said as I walked out, putting as much distance between us as I could. 

He followed slightly behind.

"I'm good," I said emphatically, putting my hand up, indicating he should stop at the edge of the lot. My keys were out, ready. My car, parked under a light. I'd taken precautions.

"So," he said, "Will we do this again?"

"I don't think so," I said, in disbelief, immediately wishing I had used stronger language. I climbed in my car and locked the door, glad to see him walking away.

Later, he texted to say that I had "hurt his feelings" by not wanting to go out with him again. 

Sorry YOUR feelings are hurt, asshole. Also, you're what's wrong with American men.

***

We are far past the point of imagining that rape is something that only happens "SVU" style...that the only rapes that matter ("rape-rape" according to certain celebrities) are the ones we see violently personified on television. All white vans and masked men and bruises. 

It's not as if those rapes don't happen. They do. But most rape is far more insidious. 

Most rapes are perpetuated by people the victim knows, and it may not be the violent, multi-camera experience that makes us sensationalize (then rationalize) rape.

Rape happens between husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, or high school classmates at a party. 

***

Let's talk about rape.

Let's get angry and gesture-y and scream and shout. 

Let's refuse to be shouted down, to be called "feminists" as a euphemism for "trouble-maker."

Let's not be satisfied with living in a country where twenty-two of our elected politicians would vote AGAINST a Violence Against Women Act. 

Let's talk about rape with our children. Explain to our sons what it means to be kind, explain to our daughters the value and beauty of their personhood, explain to our children the meaning and joy behind "enthusiastic consent." 

Let's not stand idly by while cowards shield themselves with a computer screen and threaten anonymously to rape the women they see on YouTube, read on blogs. They are not anonymous...they are people close to you, wrapping their real views on women in language disguised as "jokes" or behavior masquerading as "this is the way a real man acts."  

Let's talk about it when we see it, call them out, put their foolishness and misogyny on display. Find the cancer, excise it without worrying about neatness.

Let's take rape personally, because it's personal. It affects every one of us in one way or another. It's not something removed from our everyday experience. It permeates and pervades our communities, leaves nothing untouched.

Let's talk about it until there's nothing left to talk about, and may that day come sooner than we hope. 

Think the Right Words, Demand the Right Things

I was invited by The Womens Fund of Central Ohio to discuss Teen Dating Violence Awareness month. This post is my response to a round-table discussion with Rae Reed, Lara Ketler, Nichole Dunn, Celeste LaCour and Sharon Reichard.

***

"In August of 2011," she said, quietly, "my daughter was shot and killed in our home by her ex-boyfriend."

We sat around the table, listening, our silence heavy. 

The story was not one I expected when I was invited to the discussion. In my naivete, I thought we might discuss Teen Dating Violence as an off-shoot of empowering young women.

I assumed we would share a few sobering anecdotes of young women we knew, or even a personal story or two about how we'd demanded less than the best for ourselves, how we missed the signs. 

Ultimately, I assumed--erroneously--that each of our stories would end with a shrug of the shoulders, an "I'm so glad THAT'S over" smile, and the feeling as we left that we'd done our part for the day. 

Instead, I sat while a broken, grieving woman shared the literal worst case scenario, and was humbled when she said, "If I can save one mother from going through what I've been through, my work will be worth it."

***

I sat across from an angry, bitter young woman. She nearly vibrated with rage and hurt, but had learned how to keep it boiling under the surface, to have civil discourse while feeling anything but civil.

After her power had been stripped away by a trusted family friend at the age of fourteen, she'd set out to reclaim control. At first, her efforts to seek stability followed suit with normal teenage rebelliousness: missed curfews, surly boyfriends, deep sighs and slammed doors.

But when no one listened, when a judge said that she was "ruining a young man's life" for seeking justice in court, when her parents couldn't understand why she wasn't "over it," she screamed louder. Surly boyfriends became abusive boyfriends. Slammed doors became screaming matches, fists, knives and pills.  

Our meeting came on the tail end of her dismissal from yet another group home, after release from yet another quiet hospital bed. 

I listened and tried to be the one adult who heard her, who saw through the rage to the broken, scared kid.

And then I asked--hoping her answer would be an emphatic 'no'--"You don't think...do you really think you're at fault for what happened all those years ago?"

She looked down at the table and shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe I could have done something different."

***

I struggle with knowing how to be angry, yet productive. How to grieve, yet proactively move the needle toward positive change. 

I may rant here about my upbringing, what it's like to struggle through a divorce. And, while I don't talk about it much, like many of our sisters, mothers and friends, I've suffered an abuse or two at the hands of less than honorable men. 

But as a somewhat well-adjusted adult with the means, resources and support to seek help, I can live my life healed and whole in the manner of my choosing.

When I think of teenage girls who can barely handle the pressures of crazy hormones and changing bodies and pressures to fit in, I don't know how violence or abuse or rape can be processed by their young minds.

While February is "Teen Dating Violence Awareness" month, I still can't help but think of teens (and myself at that age) as children. Children who need our help in teaching them the signs of abuse, in knowing what real, respectiful love is, in understanding enthusiastic consent, in processing the emotions that come with love and breakups.

And not just our girls, but our young men, too. Both need to have the space and understanding that we are all emotionally complex creatures, that we are not rigidly defined by gender stereotypes, that the healthy expression and communication of our feelings is the key to healthy relationships. 

When you can think the right words, you can demand the right things.

***

I asked, "If you only had time to tell a girl one thing about teen dating violence, what would you tell them?"

They said:

"Think about how you want to be treated, and think about whether or not your relationship is one you feel a level of comfort in. If there's anything that you're questioning about this person and your relationship, then think twice, and share with a friend, parent or counselor. But really look at your relationship, and if there's any one thing you're concerned about, deal with it. Don't ignore it."

"Stay close to your mother or trusted advisor. If you feel the comfort to share openly with that person, that means you're not doing anything you're ashamed of, which means you won't take the slap, the sex if you don't want it."

"Talk to your children. Talk to your kids. Get to know what's going on in their lives. Know who is in their lives."

Brick by Brick

This: 

Mostly, the tears have subsided—“in public, anyway,” she says one afternoon, as we sit in a Tribeca café. “I still cry a lot.” Forget what you know of the church. Just imagine what it is like to walk away from everything you have ever known. Consider how traumatic it would be to know that your family is never supposed to speak to you again. Think of how hard it would be to have a fortress of faith built around you, and to have to dismantle it yourself, brick by brick, examining each one and deciding whether there’s something worth keeping or whether it’s not as solid as you thought it was.

I know that paragraph. I've lived it. 

I've taken my life apart, brick by brick, and examined it. I discovered even recently, that there was an area of spiritual cognitive dissonance in my life.

More dismantling. More examining. 

And this...why I also often feel like a "late bloomer" in many ways:

At times, there’s something about the way she unpacks these observations and answers my questions that makes her seem much younger than her twenty-seven years. There’s an innocence, almost a naivete. But how else would it be? How else could it be, given the boundaries that have always marked the hours of her life?

When there is a line in the sand, when your former life no longer makes sense with your present one, there is inherently the need to understand yourself in the now.

You must almost become childlike to answer the questions of adulthood. 

Take it from the beginning, open it all with wonder. 

We were brought up in a world so black and white that gray can be a beautiful and compelling nuance. 

My gut says she's not done. She's at a way point now...a place that feels comfortable in her slow peeling of the bandaid. 

But one day she'll wake up and find that much of that sheltered, oppressed girl is gone. She'll discover that she's wanted to do good intrinsically, and always has, religion or no. She'll still unpack and unstack and question and rebuild. Always.

She'll relearn to trust her emotions and feelings after a life of being told that anything outside of a sunny disposition is false and displeasing to the same Sky Dude who has a history of wiping out whole villages.

But the beauty in growing up like we did is that, in many ways, we will always approach life with wonder.

There are many things we will never take for granted...like the ability to be a woman with autonomy, or learning something new about human nature and the ability of others to love and be loved. 

And we will continue to be in awe at our own capacity for love and brokenness and rawness and forgiveness. 

I hope she finds, like I did, a motley crew of individuals with the patience and heart to teach and comfort her. A stitched-together family who will surprise her at their capacity for kindess.

Because when you've lived a life like that, and you're suddenly set adrift, you need at least one person you were told all your life was a terrible sinner who will, when you are at your lowest point, take your hand and look you in the eye and say, "You're a good person, you know that?"

She will sob the first time she hears that...because it will be the thing she is hoping is true, but has no way of knowing for sure anymore.

Brick by brick. 

Endless Path photo here.

On Being an Adult

I used to tell people that the first time I felt like an adult was when my divorce was finalized. 

Five years of marriage, a six year relationship, all boiled down to nine numbers stamped in red on a sheet of paper.

He and I sat there together in the courtroom, hearing other cases while we waited our turn. We both knew that our situation wasn't "bad" like some of the other ones we listened to that day.

While we had said and done hurtful things to each other, those things weren't out of scope of a typical breakup, and in some ways, even though we were still raw and broken, we  knew we'd be okay. 

And from there, from that first taste of adulthood, I proceeded to make terribly un-adult decisions.

In reality, though I had just gone through a very adult situation, I was still very much a child. I had to learn what it was to live on my own, that yes, I could make my own choices, but maybe I should choose to NOT go to work still drunk from three days in a row at my favorite dive bar. 

***

My brother wrote me the other day. The subject line read, "You left..."

He told me how he remembered when I announced to my family I would be moving to Florida for my first year of college. We were at dinner, and he looked me in the eye and said, "I'm glad you're leaving."

"It's strange the way we try to protect ourselves from hurt," he wrote.

I think, oddly, he was trying to apologize for something that happened almost fifteen years ago.

I didn't remember the incident until after he reminded me of it. And I smiled sadly, thinking, "We were just kids. You hurt me more later when we were adults."

***

It's funny what we remember, and what we don't. 

The thing is, being a kid is hard...but being a good adult is harder.

We remember all our shortcomings from childhood, and in some ways, still feel like that younger person. I still feel like that kid nobody gets. 

The key to being an adult, I think, is to be courageous, get past those insecurities or faults that crippled us as children, ask for forgiveness when necessary, and move on. 

Another huge part of being an adult is seeing the easy routes in life and being courageous enough to take the hard ones instead...even if the hard route may result in a mistake.

All in all, being a good adult takes a lot more courage than I ever imagined. 

It takes courage to be emotionally flayed and to say, "I will keep myself open to doing this again."

It takes courage to be hurt and to forgive.

It takes courage to forgive and still say, "I love you, but cannot have you in my life."

It takes courage to love yourself and others when you and they are broken. 

It takes courage to find the truths and un-truths in other people's criticism of you...even if that criticism is delivered in the form of an insult, a breakup, or an off-handed comment. 

It takes courage to say, "The way I'm self-medicating is unhealthy, and I need help."

It takes courage to sit across from someone who makes your heart go pitter-pat and think, "Whatever happens, I'm okay."

It takes courage to say, "I'm not done. I still have more to learn, room to grow."

***

It had been eight years since we saw each other last. Our last conversation happened when we were still 20-something children deep in the throes of an oppressively conservative Christianity. 

Since then, I've been married, divorced and single, and she proactively faced her fears and challenged the notion that, "I'm not the kind of person who does _____."

She's a budding world traveler...I soul puke on the Internet. We both have our things we've accomplished as adults.

We didn't come by our things traditionally, or when people say we should have. But we're here, and we're trying.

"You seem happy," she said. 

"I am," I said, with a smile. "You do, too."

Tricycle photo

Dive photo

Being Nice vs. Being Kind

That summer, I was 16. I was emerging from horribly awkward phase and was finally (FINALLY) far less “little girl” and far more “young woman.”  

That summer, he was 14. My little brother had spent the last two years in a blissfully unaware awkward phase, with no intention of leaving anytime soon. He habitually sung to himself, or made weird noises, and still regularly would yell gleefully as he ran out of the house that he was going outside to “play.” 

And though our separate journeys through puberty were on completely different schedules, we found ourselves attending church camp that year in the same age group. 

I was excited for camp that year. It was the same camp I had attended since I was eight years old, and I knew I’d see friends from years past, meet new boys, and, as an older camper fresh out of a training bra, finally be in the “cool kids” group. 

I don’t know if Sam was excited to go or not, but go he did. Maybe he thought it’d simply be a week of going outside to play. 

It didn’t take long, however, for him and his friend Silas to become the butt of jokes and laughter and bullying. 

It’s already hard for a short, chubby, glasses-wearing kid, and a tall, painfully thin, buck-toothed kid with terrible social skills to fit in. Add the fact that they could usually be found building stick forts in the dirt while everyone else was flirting with each other, and it quickly turned from a fun week of playing outside, to six days of being bullied in the woods.

I remember at one point, we were all sitting around waiting for an activity to begin. I sat with my friends on a rough wooden bench, talking and laughing, when I saw Sam and Silas playing quietly off to the side in the dirt. They pretended to not hear the bigger boys behind them making fun of them, pointing, laughing, kicking dirt and stones in their direction. 

I was torn. My heart went out to my dirty little brother, but I had also finally “made it” and felt like I was the teenager I had always wanted to be. 

I didn’t know if intervening in my brother’s bullying would destroy that image. I was selfish, and a coward, but I still felt like I had to do something. 

So I got up from my bench, told the bullies to cut it out, then crouched down with my brother and Silas in the dirt.

They wouldn’t look at me. In fact, they were in full-on self-preservation mode…”we are here, but we will pretend we--and you--are not.” 

I started getting a little teary, and I did the only thing I could think of to do. “Try not to play in the dirt, you guys. They won’t make fun of you if you don’t play in the dirt.”

They both nodded, but continued drawing circles in the dust around them. I stayed crouched there for a few moments more, then sighed and got up. “Don’t play in the dirt, okay?” I said again. 

I gave the bullies a stare, hoping that my new status in cool kid land would help to shut them up…that maybe realizing that my brother’s affiliation with me would make him off limits to continued taunts. 

Of course, the bullying didn’t really stop…not until Amy came along. 

She was one of those teenage girls who was blessed with real self-assuredness. She was pretty, but not conventionally so, and her clothing style was the type I’ve always admired in women: “I like it this way, so fuck off.” She had wild hair, an exuberant laugh, and an irrepressible spirit. She was all wind and energy and joy.

She truly could have been friends with anyone that week. Instead, she decided that Sam and Silas were her friends. 

She did what I couldn’t: she was kind when I could only be nice. 

She didn’t ask them to stop playing in the dirt…she stooped down and played with them. She didn’t get annoyed at Silas’ science puns…she laughed at them. She didn’t think Sam was weird…she thought he was unique and worthy of friendship and attention. 

She bucked the teenage status quo in every way. I watched those two boys go from cowering self-preservation mode to having the time of their lives in just a few short days. 

In fact, I think it’d be safe to say that Amy probably saw right through the cool kids. She saw us for what we were: a bunch of insecure children, trying to be adults, not really understanding the things that matter in life. 

Being a teenager is hard. Everything is in flux. One minute, your body is doing terribly weird things, the next, your social circles are accepting you or casting you out. 

Amy saw through the hardship to the things that really mattered. She saw that most of life is complete bullshit if you’re not willing to be kind instead of nice.

As I’ve worked over the last few years to truly surround myself with the type of people who I know can have a positive benefit on my life, kindness has pushed to the forefront of my search criteria in both my friendships and romantic relationships.

In college, my dad asked me what my current goals were. I told him that I really wanted people to think I was a nice person.

“Hm,” he said. “I think that is a good goal…but maybe you should hope, instead, to be known as someone who is kind.”

Now long past college, and long past the era when I thought being a nice person would mean that I was a more godly person, I still think about those words. 

Lately, I’ve been thinking more and more about the difference between nice and kind and why I would seek a quality of kindness out in my relationships with others. 

This 2011 article by psychiatrist Marcia Sirota on the Huffington Post sums it nicely: 

The nice person is overly-invested in the emotional pay-off they're hoping to achieve by pleasing and taking care of others. They're also unwilling to face how much hurt or anger they're carrying. They're resistant to changing their behaviour, despite the consequences of their compensatory addictions.

Kind people are happy people to begin with, and add to their happiness through acts of generosity and altruism. Nice people are needy people who inadvertently create more and more unhappiness for themselves. 

In my camp experience, I didn’t make fun of my brother, or laugh with the bullies, or ignore him…but my actions didn’t address his need for acceptance.

I was so focused on being nice and on being perceived a certain way, that I couldn’t do for my own brother what a stranger did that week, and kindly embrace two boys who didn’t need me to be nice. 

As that week continued, and I began to grow tired of the social politics of hanging with the cool kids, I remember a moment when we were participating in one of those full-camp games that involved things like flags and paint and water and faux-enthusiasm. 

Amy came running through a group, Sam and Silas not far behind, their head-down demeanor replaced with the kind of happy relaxation that comes from the security of knowing love and acceptance. 

I smiled at Amy and she smiled at me. Then I thanked her for being a friend to my brother.

I was being nice again.

But Amy said, kindly, “Oh! Not a problem! I think he’s awesome.”

Photo by Brazenfaced on DeviantArt

Sittin' and Thinkin'

My parents tell the story of my dad finding me on the couch, alone, four years old, hand to chin, staring off into space.

When he asked what I was doing, I said simply, “Thinking.”

It’s not as if I’m especially brilliant. I wish I could say that moment as a four year old was some foreshadowing of the great mental gymnastics I’m capable of doing today.

Well, I do mental gymnastics, but for a different, less important reason.

And those “gymnastics” are more like the accidental tumble a person takes when tripping down a flight of stairs.

(Which, incidentally, is hilarious.)

Last summer, as I participated in what was the most ridiculous, yet most helpful round of therapy ever, my therapist told me in our first session, “As a high-anxiety person, you’ll need to learn to self-soothe and regulate your emotions.”

WTF, dude. Seriously?? Me?? High anxiety? I’m not anxious! Intense, yes. Driven, yes. Nervous sometimes. Prone to stress, with racing thoughts and tightness in my stomach and chest which sometimes prevents me from going about my normal behavior and activities...

Oh. My. God. Fine. Anxiety. WHATEVER.

Therapy, working out, yoga, a whole lotta breathing and keeping track of my emotional state helped me to realize that yes, I felt anxious, oh, pretty much all the damn time.

So, after half a year of hard work, I felt like I had things under control. I felt pretty even keel. Confident. Relaxed. Playful. Unflappable. 

Lately, though, I’ve been “thinking” again. A lot. I don’t know if it’s because I’m feeling a little like I’m in transition, or if I haven’t been as vigilant as I should be with taking care of myself.

(It’s probably NOT the two boxes of mac and cheese I ate this week, though. Or those donuts. Definitely not the donuts.)

So...transition, then.

I feel somewhat in transition because of a few things…

1. I’m ready to date again, but I don’t want a relationship.
2. I don’t want a relationship because I’ve got shit to do, and relationships are distracting.

There are days when I just want to say “fuck it.” I know I don’t want a relationship, so what’s the harm in taking the time to focus solely on my work and goals for 2013?

And then there are days when I want to go hog-wild on OKCupid and start the whole 3-coffee-dates-a-week cycle again. Because sometimes a girl gets lonely…and needs to get The Laidz.

...Then I remember that it’s likely that most of those dates will be “not good” and I’ll be wasting a lot of time deleting emails and meeting 40 year old dudes with unhealthy cat obsessions.

(Story: one man I met last summer was particularly invested in his cat. When he told me about his little guy, I said, “Aw, I like cats, but I’m allergic to them.” He responded by getting in my face and saying, forcefully, “TAKE A PILL!”

Keeper.)

...THEN I think that I’m probably overthinking, that online dating can probably be enjoyable if I approach it with a positive attitude and focus on meeting new people, period, rather than hoping for an outcome…

…an outcome I’m not all that concerned with anyway, since I don’t really want a relationship.

And here we are, full circle.

It’s okay to admit that there is something nice about having dinner or drinks with someone you are attracted to who is not your friend (yet?). It’s enjoyable to have an evening filled with flirting and conversation and sexual tension.

There’s also something great about saying, “I’d like to jump your bones some time, but I also have work to do. And friends to hang out with. And an episode of Girls to watch. Alone.”

If you haven’t caught it already, The New York Times recently published an article titled "The End of Courtship", and bemoans how all the youths are on their texty devices all the time so no ladies are being asked on dates and wooed and stuff.

Major publications using anec-data to write entire pieces aside, the article irks me a bit because it assumes that I, as a grown woman, would of course want to be romanced all the way to the alter. That an “adult life” means that I would ONLY WANT to be scoping out the next Mr. Ex-Naked Redhead.

And let’s not get into this:

“Further complicating matters is the changing economic power dynamic between the genders, as reflected by a number of studies in recent years, said Hanna Rosin, author of the recent book 'The End of Men.'

A much-publicized study by Reach Advisors, a Boston-based market research group, found that the median income for young, single, childless women is higher than it is for men in many of the country’s biggest cities…. This may be one reason it is not uncommon to walk into the hottest new West Village bistro on a Saturday night and find five smartly dressed young women dining together — the nearest man the waiter. Income equality, or superiority, for women muddles the old, male-dominated dating structure.”

OH NOES. TEH END OF MENZ.

And let’s not forget this gem of a quote:

“’It’s hard to read a woman exactly right these days,” she added. “You don’t know whether, say, choosing the wine without asking her opinion will meet her yearnings for old-fashioned romance or strike her as boorish and macho.’”

Uhhh, yeah, let’s go with option B here. Always.

I rarely yearn for the type of old-fashioned romance spoken of here…especially if it’s the kind of romance I think she’s suggesting: a brand of Don Draper machismo that assumes that all the things I’m doing with my life are super cute for now, but really, Sweetheart, you’re too pretty to have to work.

All that to say (didn’t I say, “let’s not get into this?” Oops.) I am not yet sure how to navigate dating as a woman without an “agenda”.

The world according to The New York Times (and Bloomberg, the Atlantic and The Wall Street Journal) thinks I have an agenda (meet someone, get married, pop out 2.2 kids, live the Disney Princess dream) and that the changing dating landscape is ill equipped to meet said agenda.

I’m ready to do something different.

Maybe that opens me up for a little criticism from people (men and women) my age who are in serious “finding the one” mode. Maybe it means that I have to be honest up front and say, “I find you attractive, and I enjoy your company, but only want to see you every two weeks.”

Maybe there are those who think that’s a sad way to live.

As my therapist would say, though, “It doesn’t matter what other people think. What do YOU think? What do you really want?”

Also, “Breathe.”

Photo by Basistka on DeviantArt

Love Managed by the Hands of a Clock

This post is a guest post from The Queen of Broken Hearts. Enjoy!

When I was 15, I cheated on the love of my life with a Danish smurf. 

Or, rather, a 16-year-old blue-haired Dane named Joakim who made me believe that a dance with his devil was worth throwing away a year-long courtship with a sweet, unassuming boy who had captured my heart 12 months prior.

I remember the day I met Morton. It was the summer before my freshman year. I was finally starting to look like a normal human being after a most unfortunate period where I was more reminiscent of my brother than a younger version of my mother.

I had signed up to be a part of an exchange program wherein 12 students from my hometown would host 12 kids from Denmark for a summer, and they would host us the next. Spanning two summers before the dawn of the internet, it was the kind of experience where relationships would flourish under the most traditional of circumstances – letters sealed with kisses, sent slowly across the pond. 

When Morton first got off the plane, it wasn’t love at first sight. He was strange. He smelled and looked different from any other boy in my hometown. His English was broken, but mostly understandable. He wore skinny jeans 15 years before boys wore them here. He was the first foreign boy I had ever met.

That first night, a group of us went to see Batman Begins. Because what’s a better place to get to know our first non-American friends than a quiet theater? It was the desperation to get to know one other mixed with the forced silence and obviously surging hormones that heightened the excitement. I haven’t had that much fun at the movies since. 

By the time the movie was over, Morton and I had shared a few surreptitiously delicious glances over our buckets of popcorn. But it wasn’t until the next day that I like to say we fell in love. 

At a popular amusement park, Morton and I “somehow,” got separated from the group. This was before the era of cell phones, with no means to find our friends. When we realized we were mutually happy being lost, it was one of those movie moments where the camera will blur everything else in the shot other than the two people, in love, protected and connected by some indescribable force.

Maybe that’s why I believe my life is a romantic comedy – because I’ve experienced those moments.

The month that followed was one of the best in my life. Morton was my first love. It was a connection I hadn’t had until then, or, sometimes I think, since. We knew the month was coming to a close, but we were comforted by the promise that we would see each other the next summer when I came to Denmark.

When you know that your love is managed by the hands of a clock, you enjoy every second.

I still have the first letter Morton sent me a month after he went home. 

“Dear Megan – How are you? I miss you so much. I don’t know what else to say other than I love you. So I will fill the page with it.” 

And he did – 127 “I love yous” on the page. It was the most romantic thing I had ever received. And since.

When it was time to go to Denmark the next summer, I had grown up a lot. High school changes a person. Morton and I had exchanged dozens of letters over the year, each one more strained than the last with the weight of the distance between us. But we knew there would soon be a time where we would be reunited.

This time, when I got off the plane in Copenhagen, something had changed. When I saw Morton, a wave of paralyzing fear came over me. Despite the words we had exchanged all year, all of the “I love and miss yous,” I didn’t know what to say. 

While we eventually warmed to each other again, it wasn’t the same. Time and distance had turned us into different people. I knew his feelings were the same, but my heart had been hardened. From what? I don’t know. And I think I subconsciously blamed him for my sudden insecurity. 

Being in a foreign country for the first time, without parents, leaves one extremely vulnerable. And yet, it wasn’t Morton who took advantage of that vulnerability and lured me into a private tent at a backyard sleepover. It was Joakim.

While that wasn’t the defining coming-of-age moment, I’ll just say it was a significant step in me exploring my sexuality. Morton knew it was happening and said nothing. After all, it was in his parents’ backyard that the seduction took place. Not saying a word, he was decorum incarnate.

Not surprisingly, the standard story of adolescent romance played out from there. Girl loves boy. Girl is talked into betraying boy with the promise of love from another. The other loves her and leaves her. Boy moves on.

While we didn’t speak for years after that, Facebook has allowed Morton and I to reconnect, and I’ve loved seeing how he’s lived his life in the 15 years since, growing up to be a gorgeous, successful businessman in Copenhagen.

And while I’m not vain enough to assume he thinks of me as I do him, there will always be a part of me that wonders what would have happened had I not let hormones take over 15 years ago.

Guess there’s only one way to check...

One way ticket to Copenhagen, please.

The Queen of Broken Hearts is a die-hard romantic who "jumps every day," safety net or not. You can read about her philosophy of love or check out how Vanessa Williams ruined her life. 

Photo by Glamz on DeviantArt.

One Ring to Rule them All: a Story of Purity

I received a special ring somewhere around my 16^th birthday. 

The ring was a purity ring.

I know what you’re thinking…

…”why does that whore have a purity ring?"

And I would say unto you, “That’s a fair question.” 

I mean, why, exactly, would someone like me who writes a blog that includes vibrator reviews, a running commentary on how the state of my downstairs grooming often correlates closely with how badly or not badly I would like to meet a man, or musings all the dirty things I'll be doing to my next cat-caller have a purity ring?

The answer:

As the daughter of a Baptist minister, there were certain expectations of young women in the culture I grew up in, one of which was to make sure that we arrived to our wedding days as “pure" as possible. 

(Side note: there is nothing pure about two horny Christian youths rabidly dry humping in the front seat of a rusty old Ford pickup in the name of saving themselves for marriage.)

So, my parents, like many parents in conservative Christian circles, gave me a purity ring as a way of leaving a physical reminder of the promise I gave to some Old Bearded White Dude in the Sky about that whole walking down the aisle a virgin thing…

…a promise I gave on the tail end of the only two times my mother ever had a sex talk with me.

The first talk was actually in the form of a book by noted homophobe and “men and women are created equal, except you with the vagina: get back in the kitchen” proponent, James Dobson. 

The second talk went something along the lines of, “There are some times that all you’ll want to do is cuddle, and he will definitely want more.”

My father—bless his heart—took the purity of his daughters very seriously. Any gangly, awkward young man who wanted to date us had to first ask my father’s permission. At which point, my father would do something far more frightening than polish his gun collection (yes, he has one. 'MERICA). 

No, instead, he’d say, “Son, of course you may take my daughter to Wendy's to offer her two value menu items of her choice. I entrust her to your care. But Son, I’d like to walk my daughter down the aisle a virgin. I’d like to know right now how you’re going to help me with that.”

Needless to say, I didn’t have many dates in high school. 

In some ways, you might say that the ring worked exceptionally well. I did walk down the aisle a virgin on my wedding day. And, like, I was a FOR REAL virgin. I think maybe my boob had been grazed once by an over-zealous 15 year old, and that was it. I was pretty experienced in enthusiastic French kissing, but that was about it.

Not to worry, though. The anxiety and awkwardness of that first night with—you got it—another virgin, is now firmly ensconced in my past…as is my divorce.

In the meantime, I’ve done my best to make up for lost time, as it were. I’ve educated myself both in theory and practice. I’ve been to a shit-ton (that’s a Canadian measurement) of therapy. I’ve read books like “Intimacy and Desire,” “Blow Him Away,” and everyone’s favorite sexual tome, “Oops, I Didn’t Know That Would Be Sticky.”

(LOL, JOKEZ)

So why—if I’m an open, enlightened woman who sometimes writes about her vagina on the Internet—why, when I found this old ring the other day, did I grow a little misty-eyed?

Because as protected, and yes, happy in some ways, as my upbringing was, there is something fundamentally flawed about viewing your purity as a gift to be saved and guarded, then ultimately given away to someone else. 

And because, like any gift or thing that you give away into someone else’s possession, there is not only the danger that you’ll begin to believe that your gift was never yours to begin with, but that this precious thing in the hands of someone else can just as easily be used and abused and broken as it can be cherished and loved and preserved. 

As I went through 2012's Summer of Tears (as I am now lovingly calling it), I remember a moment in my therapy when I realized I truly did not believe that my body belonged to me. I mean, sure, I knew I could say yes or no to sex, but at the same time, I only believed that to be true in "extreme" situations--like meeting a dude at the bar, or being accosted on the street--and not necessarily within the confines of a relationship.

Which, as you may guess, is extremely problematic. 

The problem with purity is that it suggests that there is a before and after, right and wrong, or even a point in time where "pure" as an individual passes into "pure" or "right" as a couple. Anything outside those confines is dirty, wrong or out of scope with God's plan.

(Yeah, no pressure there. Just some omnipotent being with a history of wiping out entire cities has a plan for you that you better not screw up. You got this!)

Another problem with purity, especially in the circles I grew up in, is that it falls squarely on the shoulders of young women to maintain the standard of purity.

We were taught that we had to guard ourselves from the insatiable, uncontrollable desires of men (what's up, first few steps of victim-blaming! After all, should something happen, it was probably your fault. Actually, it was your sexy, sexy knees or lack of turtle-neck's fault). 

Purity also suggests that eventually, one day, a young woman would be owned and mastered by her husband. This principle, in particular, was blatantly taught (not merely suggested) in many sermons, meetings and other social situations within the church culture. And no amount of quoting a little Paul in there about how we're, like, all equal now in the blood of Christ could really change that "submission" really meant "do what I say when I say to do it." 

I'm not saying that it's a terrible thing to wait to have sex until you're married. Lots of people do this sort of thing, and in some ways, I get it. There are plenty of reasons to value love, connection and sex, and to want that first time to have meaning and to be special. Cool. Do it up. Rose petals and champagne and whatnot. 

(I'm also not saying that Christian marriages are unhappy marriages (though the divorce rate is exactly the same as non-Christian couples). My sister and brother-in-law have been married for twenty years, my parents for forty-one, my grandparents for sixty-six. My grandparents are easily the cutest and most loving people I've ever seen. Each couple takes the time needed to make their relationships work..but they all have very defined roles within their relationships, and then men always, always have the last word.)

What I'm saying is that if there is no value attached to sex outside of this model, no value to your body or person beyond the confines of a piece of legality, you'll likely get some fucked up ideas about your own intrinsic value. 

Sometimes I look at that ring and see it as simply a pretty piece of jewelry. And still other times I look at it, put it on, and immediately feel the weight of it.

And then I mourn for that scared little girl who grew up thinking that her one purpose in life was to protect something that never belonged to her in the first place. 

I am still trying to articulate parts of my upbringing that fall into the category of "fucked up." Sometimes when I think I've really worked through something (e.g. do I actually believe in God or not) something else will come up (e.g. do I have control over my own body). 

I'm not angry anymore. And honestly, I don't really blame anyone for it. The people I grew up with are well-intentioned, loving people. But they are also products of a culture that is by nature controlling and patriarchal, homophobic, and elitist.

Call it what you will...perhaps it's just a misinterpretation of Scripture and the "real" Christians are completely different than the picture I've painted here. (Case in point, a recent survey shows that the new generation of evangelicals are more open-minded).

I can't even blame Christianity as a whole, really. I understand the need to connect with a community that finds meaning in believing in a higher power. And it's not as if there are not other cultures in the US that teach the same kind of harmful things.

This anecdote is simply my experience, and one that I have had both the privilege and misfortune to experience. When I look at that ring, I'm learning to see it as a reminder of who I was, and the person I'm trying to become.

I want to get to the point where I can wear it and it can simply be a piece of jewelry again, and if someone asks about it, I can say, "Oh, this old thing? It was a gift."

Maybe one day.