#its annoying and depressing and very hard to remind myself that humans are a social species and i am in fact a human so

[bones-n-bookles]

Re: my last reblog i kept trying to Not Ramble in the tags and failing bc im incapable of shutting up so. Venty ramble in these tags instead of my mutuals lol

[doomedandstoned]

Closer To The End (part III)

I contend that human beings are not suited for the world we've fashioned for ourselves. Cases of anxiety and depression are practically ubiquitous, and suicide in all age groups is once again on the rise. Some will suffer mental afflictions that last years -- perhaps even for a lifetime. This is the third and final part of my story.

~By Billy Goate~

Cover art by Ruso Tsig additional art by Karl Briullov

I'm so tired of hearing that I'm wrong Everyone laughs at me, why me? I'm so tired of being pushed around I feel like I've been betrayed

We take each other's love, forget to give back Isn't it a pity, how we break each other's hearts I know we're only human and not to blame But who the hell are you to cause so much pain Why...

MEDICATION

My parents have been anti-establishment for as long as I can remember. In the climate of the 1980s, the institutions of the day were being called seriously into question. One of them was the authoritarian nature of public education (there's a reason why Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" resonated so strongly with people). It's no surprise that my family got caught up in the first wave of the homeschooling movement. Other areas of modern life began to be called into question, as well, taking the family down a dark, windy road that led into conspiracy culture, extreme libertarianism, and religious dogmatism.

This distrust of the "experts" put us at odds with the medical establishment, too. "Doctors only know how to do two things," mom would often proclaim loudly in one of her famous rants, "cut you open or prescribe you pills." Natural medicine held the keys to recovery from all ills, be it cancer or the common cold. "All those chemicals aren’t good for your body," she insisted. "God put everything we need for healing in the ground." I’m not here to knock naturopathy (I was an ardent follower of this way of life for years) nor my mother for her convictions, but there are some things that can’t be cured by Saint John's Wort and herbal tea -- major depression being one of them.

At one point, my anxiety, melancholy, and a generalized feeling of social isolation reached such a heightened state I turned to hypnotism, enamored by an obscure radio program hosted by Roy Masters and his Foundation for Human Understanding. I was too young to understand the significance of most of the bullshit he was spewing, but it was the comprehensive approach to life that appealed to me. I wanted answers -- all of them. About the only thing I got out of it, though, was learning how to make my own arm go numb through self-hypnosis.

Later, I'd get caught up in a movement of Biblical counseling that rejected psychiatry altogether. "Christ has given us all things we need for life and godliness," says the holy writ, ergo we need none other than Jesus to cure our mental ills. Furthermore, the thesis said, since "God has not given us a spirit of fear" it must mean that the root of depression and anxiety is ultimately sin against God. The answer? Confess your sins and walk by faith, not by sight. In short, pray the sadness away. All of this had limited effectiveness in coping with the claustrophobic cloud of melancholy that was constantly with me.

Cough & Windhand: Reflection of the Negative by Windhand

The stigma of psychiatry and modern medicine kept me from treating my depression for damn near a decade. Somewhere in my late twenties, after a prolonged and particularly dark depressive spell, I decided to talk to my medical doctor about antidepressants. He started me on the industry standard, the well-known and well-marketed Prozac, which became a household name in the '90s. I took the first dose at bedtime and when I woke up, I was seriously hating the daylight. Feeling extraordinarily fatigued, all I wanted to do was sleep. I called in a rare sick day from work. The next day I was feeling groggy, but well enough to return. Giving it the good ol' college try, I took Prozac for several weeks as directed, but the side-effects just weren't worth it for me. That’s when I was referred to my first psychiatrist.

It was a weird feeling sitting in the waiting room for my appointment. I felt like I’d joined the ranks of the fragile, broken, and confused, perhaps even the insane. It was hard for me to see myself sharing anything in common with the others that shared the tiny lobby. The psychiatrist who greeted me looked like a regular chucklehead -- you know, one of those sidekicks from a sitcom that's not coming to me now. (It just came to me: Glen from the Tom Green Show.) A paunchy man in his 30s with wavy dirty blonde hair parted to the side donning wire-rimmed glasses, the shrink pulled out a notebook and started asking me about my background, while he busily took notes. Turned out, the man was very methodical in his approach. Over the course of the year, we cycled through all kinds of drugs -- Paxil, Effexor, Wellbutrin, Lexapro, Zoloft, and a lot of other names I'm not remembering, before finally settling on Cymbalta.

Certainly, this was something I didn't want to share with my coworkers, much less mom and dad. The first time I told my brother I was taking antidepressants, he was outraged. “You don’t need that stuff in your body. You don’t need pills to feel good.” I don’t know what it is about antidepressant medication that offends people so badly, but some people feel it is their personal mission in life to get you off of them. Why all the evangelical fervor? Are they secretly afraid they are "nuts," too? It’s not like I’m trying to get everyone else to take my medication, but suddenly these people, well-meaning or not, are trying to get you off of your meds.

I’ve seen YouTube videos from a guy claiming that God has cured him of his bipolar disorder and he flushed all his pills down the toilet (bad idea, by the way). Then a month later, he comes back online crying uncontrollably, talking about how he feels like God is testing him and asking viewers to pray to stop Satan’s onslaught. Moral of the story: It's dangerous to let people's religious opinions and untested hunches drive the agenda for our mental health.

I'm very reluctant these days to talk to anyone about my depression, because of all the rush to judgement involved. Ironically, it's this breakdown of community that I believe is at the heart of much of our mental health issues as a society. Look at the comments on any confessional video addressing burnout, depression, or anxiety and you'll find everyone is suddenly an expert who knows so well the precise and perfect solution to your problems. Well-meaning or not, it's incredibly annoying and I'd rather not have trouble with it. Hell, it took me two years to finish this article.

Depressed people are often viewed with the same cynical dismissiveness ascribed to angsty hormonal teens. "It's just a phase, you'll get through it," you're told with the reassuring wave of a hand. Besides, they remind you, "Happiness is a choice!" Because they are feeling chipper today, they have little patience for you dampening their mood. Others call you edgy when you say the pressures of life are so great that you feel like just turning off the lights on all of it. Still others will view you as selfish for leaving the family reunion early (or not wanting to participate in holidays at all). When you spend the whole weekend in bed sleeping, they'll accuse you of being indulgent, not realizing sleep gives you a respite from the hurt, guilt, and regret of painful memories or the misery of an unstable home life. Or the well-meaning "It Gets Better!" It doesn't always get better as life moves on.

Then there are those who try to talk you off your meds, entirely (cue: the ridiculously overwrought Facebook posts). We've all been privy to those conversations that strike a conspiratorial tone about how it was really the pharmaceutical companies that led to Chris Cornell's death. "You should just get off the stuff," they argue -- be it from noble intentions or just pride from clinging to an opinion they've stubbornly invested in.

Then there are those who are convinced that since Jesus (or Buddha, Allah Oprah, Jordan Peterson or juicing) gave them an escape from their depression, certainly it is the universal cure for all that ails you. Understand that I was a committed Christian for decades. I know what it is like to feel spiritually serene and I value many of the things the church gave me as a young adult, namely the fellowship, tolerance, and love. I know the feeling of peace that comes from believing in someone who reigns over the chaos and cares about your every need -- an ultimate being who will make sense of the nonsense one day.

I don't wish to diminish anyone's faith or diminish your personal experiences. The fact is, however, that major depression is as much a physical illness as cancer is. Certainly, there are transitional feelings of unhappiness, emptiness, and despair that come from facing situations that seem out of one's control -- the nightmare roommate, being laid off from a job, losing a loved one. It's also true that in most cases, this sadness can be overcome by a new perspective, trying better strategies, or simply allowing the passage of time to do its healing work. Depression can be impacted by one's beliefs, but there is a kind of depression that exists independently of one's perspective on life.

SUICIDAL TENDENCIES

Apart from this series of articles (which took me a good two years to publish), I've stopped sharing my depression with other people. It's annoying, because most people don't know how to listen and empathize. They want to jump in with a solution that, if implemented by nightfall, just might make a difference by daybreak. It's just more hassle than it's worth. Over time, I've gone from being someone with an intense need to belong, to not caring what people think about me at all. I'll often go out of my way to avoid anything deeper than transactional relationships. Once a social butterfly, you'll find me quite the hermit these days. As a consequence, while I was once open to sharing my feelings of loneliness and despair, I rarely mention them any more on social media and practically never to my IRL friends. I would be the last person to call a suicide hotline, by the way. Judge me if you wish, but I'm just being honest. If you want to know what is going on in the head of a severely depressed person with suicidal ideation, here's a least one brain you can peer into.

There's a general consensus that suicide is a selfish decision, even a cowardly act. This was a casual opinion of my own for years, as well. Not until suicide touches someone in your life -- or when you enter its despondent realm yourself -- does the ridiculousness of that notion becomes apparent. Understand that for a person to commit suicide, they have to overcome the brain's own strong predilection for self-preservation. It's not so easy to take the step of ending your life. Something has gone terribly wrong with the brain's ability to convincingly cry, "STOP!" for that to happen.

In my worst bout of depression, following the demise of long-term relationship, I reached the point where every waking moment was sheer misery. Some call this anhedonia -- the inability to feel pleasure. Normally, when we are feeling blue, we seek out something to stimulate our pleasure receptors. That's why ice cream, chocolate, and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are popular go-tos for the bummed out. For me, it's always been music and movies. On this particular week, though, I had somehow lost the capacity to find any joy whatsoever in the usual pastimes. Anything that attempted to pacify my mood met with my contempt. The only thing I could do to escape the agony of just being alive and conscious was to sleep...and sleep I did. At first 8 hours a night, up from my usual 7. Then it advanced to 9, 10, 11, 12 hours. When dawn came, a wave of misery washed over my mind again.

Once, I woke up feeling so despondent that I knew with absolute clarity that I could end my life. Today, I could actually do it. Immediately upon this realization, I wept bitterly. I've not cried like that before or since. If anything, I've become more stoic about the idea of suicide. Don't get me wrong, my internal sense of self-preservation is still quite strong. The problem is that in moments of severe depression, that instinct is dampened. You'll do just about anything just to get rid of the feeling of misery making it unbearable to be awake.

DOOM AWAKENING

One of the most important developments in treating my depression, besides medication and therapy, was the discovery of doom. There's an old expression that misery loves company. I don't know about you, but when I listen to music it's not generally to cheer me up. No, I want my tunes to have a certain level of commiseration with what I'm feeling and going through at the time. When I discovered (quite by accident) Saint Vitus, I knew I'd found my soul food. I can't fully explain that eureka moment when Dave Chandler belted out that first downtuned note on the guitars on "Born Too Late" or when Wino joined with plaintive lyrics for "I Bleed Black." This resonated with me powerfully. It brought chills. This was medicine for my weary head, a kind of mental morphine to dull the pain. I'd come to the Roseland Theater for Down and left with Saint Vitus.

As a funny aside, my roommate (who accompanied me to the show) and I rehashed the bands of the night, giving our two cents on this or that. One thing he said still makes me smile a little inside. "What did you think of Saint Vitus?" I asked. "I don't think they're the kind of band that will withstand the test of time," he remarked. "Well," I rejoined, "they have been playing now for over 30 years and were the co-headliners on a national tour, so their sound must be resonating with a good number of people." Sure, it wasn't for everyone, but on that night my doom had come.

Every song on 'Born Too Late' (1986) so perfectly captures the malaise of the deeply wounded soul, not just in lyrics but in the whole vibe. There's a thick, smoky haze permeating the record and it reminds me a lot of what it feels like after you've poured out your heart until you've got no more tears left to cry. Come on, don't pretend you're so macho that normal human emotions elude you. It's hard to put doom into words, but I'll try: on the one hand you feel emotionally exhausted because you've emptied out all those pent up feelings of loss, fear, regret, and frustration, on the other hand there's a feeling of "reset" and it often makes things much clearer to sort through. For me, when I've exhausted all my emotional resources, I'm left with a feeling of blithe acceptance. A sense of being dealt a set of cards by the impartial hand of fate. That's the kind of vibe that Saint Vitus captures perfectly for me on this record.

I spent entire weekends on those long, wonderful rabbit trails of discovery. "Dying Inside" led me to Trouble's "The Tempter" with its oh-so-tragic central riff. Lyrically, the songs I was running across could not have been more apropos.

Pentagram, The Skull, and Candlemass were not lingering far behind. Then came the more recent monoliths of doom: Electric Wizard, Windhand, High on Fire, Burning Witch, Khanate, Pilgrim, Serpentine Path, Usnea, Demon Lung, Ancient VVisdom, Dopelord, and the NOLA sludge scene, along with lesser known but equally as powerful acts like Undersmile, Shepherd's Crook, Reptile Master, Purple Hill Witch, Witchthroat Serpent, March Funèbre, Beldam, Hooded Priest, Regress, and 71TONMAN (listen to the Spotify playlist).

Doom metal spoke to me with a sharp realism that I connected with immediately. When you have no strength left to get angry at the world, you switch your listening habits from Car Bomb to Cough. You can say, I suppose, that doom was my salvation. It kept me hanging on a little while longer. The salve of those slow, low riffs gave me a strange feeling of consolation. "We know life sucks, too. Welcome to reality." It's like being awakened to the Matrix, but feeling there's not a damned thing you can do to change any of it. Your fate is sealed. It's an honesty that is both refreshing and freeing, I suppose, though one does wish to reclaim the notion of hope.

Believe it or not, even after writing all of this, optimism is my default mode. When I'm feeling well, and even when my depression is at low levels, the needle always leans towards inspiration, creativity, even a mischievous sense of humor and an aw, shucks smile that people tend to notice. I don't want to be depressed. The problem is that severe depression can make you feel, illusion or not, like you're paralyzed from doing anything about it.

As I've experienced more and more cuts and scrapes of life, I've become increasingly numb to it all, like the massive build-up of scar tissue. Things that upset me easily in the past might still hurt, but I've come to expect them, so they have the impact of a dull table knife. Perhaps I'm becoming a nihilist, despite my optimistic tendencies. It's hard not to be. Don't worry about me, though. If anything, I want to stick around to see what's going to happen next. It's the inborn curiosity we all have inside of us -- the same thing that I imagine kept Stephen Hawking going for decades after being wrecked by a disease that cruelly mangled his body into its famously misshapen form, stealing away his most basic expressive freedoms -- save for the power of his eyes and the thoughts behind them.

I've also made a deliberate attempt to pursue treatment (both psychiatric and psychological care) for my depression, which I urge you to do if you are likewise laboring under its crushing weight. The perspective of time, coupled with a remedy for mind and body can have a significant impact on your perspective, if not your life circumstances.

THE WINDY ROAD AHEAD

Learn from your mistakes, don't dwell on them. Repeated affirmations like this one may seem trite, but they are ultimately true. You can be free from the chains of guilt and move forward, as one performer puts it, "from strength to strength."

Don't kill yourself (literally or metaphorically) for someone else or for someone else's decisions. It may bum you out that a roomie decided to take your money and run or that you were rebuffed by a long-time crush or made jobless through corporate-wide cuts. You don't own that, they do.

Walks

Get off the couch, move that bod. Something as simple as a walk down the block or a drive out of town can do wonders for your perspective. As a homeschool teen living under the strict rule of a radical fundamentalist household in rural East Texas, my one salvation were those long walks in the open field -- especially when my parents started having loud, intense fights related to my mom's own mental health. I sorted through so many of life's problems (most of which seemed much larger then than they do now) through those solitary, hour-long strolls.

I really miss that where I live now, in a more congested neighborhood, so I have to find other ways of getting away from it all (getting up and out a half-hour before the other walkers, for instance, helps). Even if I don't want to rustle myself awake and move around to do as simple a task as taking out the trash, sometimes the feeling...let me revise that...quite often the feeling follows after the decision has been made and the body is in motion.

Projects

Another piece of advice I have for coping with depression is to channel your frustrations in projects. When I'm depressed, I throw myself into my work. Hell, Doomed & Stoned started because I needed a project to pour myself into. My counselor asked me once, "If you woke up tomorrow without depression, what would be different about your world?"

She encouraged me to start with the things that were in my immediate vicinity. "Well, there wouldn't be mail strewn all over the floor. My dirty clothes would be in the hamper, my clean clothes folded and put away. I'd take the time to cook myself a meal, instead of running out the door eating a quick bite out of some package."

Good, let's make a list and start there. Do at least one of the things on your list between now and the time we meet again next week.

Talks

Despite my isolationist ways, I begrudgingly admit that talking often helps, too. Though I'm an introvert and am horrified at the idea of sharing my feelings with others, I've reached points in my depression where I was compelled to tell others about it. It's as natural to do that as to cry out when your body is experiencing jolting pain. I'm one of those verbal processors that tends to sort through my problems by talking to someone else. Often, pride or shame or lack of trust gets in the way of sharing with our family and friends, so at the very least the much talked about Suicide Prevention Hotline could actually help you gain perspective on your situation.

Journals

If you don't talk, at least journal. Again, I'm not a journaler and this is the first time in almost three decades that I've written about anything related to my depression. Role play with me. You're a scientist studying the human psyche. How would you describe those feelings you call depression? When I was first asked to describe it to a counselor, I found myself at a loss for words. She helped me with prompts:

Can you tell me what it feels like?

"I walk around feeling like a dark, thick raincloud is hovering all around me all the time."

Do you feel it in a part of your body?

"Well, yeah, I guess. The head. And the chest. It feels like there's pressure building from all around me, like my head is going to explode. My heart feels like it's going to leap out of my chest."

What's happening around you when these feelings arise?

I'd then go on to detail some recent happenings. She'd press me further to describe the kinds of thoughts racing through my head in these situations. All of this was really helpful in getting me to define this nebulous, gray malaise that was following me everywhere I went.

I don't keep a journal, per se. Something about it feels needlessly egotistical, a vain attempt to reinforce the illusion in our YouTube fame crazy world that my life is worth discovering and remembering at some point in the distant future. And yet, writing down one's thoughts can be another effective way of untangling that anxious ball of feelings that keeps me from thinking rationally about the depression I'm feeling.

Today is my birthday, but I couldn't care less. It's not about getting old. I stopped caring about that 10 years ago. It's something about celebration, specifically when the attention is on me. I can't adequately describe how contemptuous I find it. My last birthday was spent alone in an empty house and a bottle of Scotch, catching up with past seasons of Game of Thrones. I was so glad it was over and the happy birthday wishes stopped. There's nothing special about this day for me.

At some point, my family stopped celebrating birthdays and holidays. I'm not sure when it happened or why. Certainly not for religious reasons, more probably for financial ones. I grew up in a family that barely scraped by, so birthdays seemed a luxury we couldn't afford. Now, it just feels indulgent. More than that, it feels sad. It reminds me of all the disappointments, hurts, and failures of the past year. It's not as though it's all bad, of course. If nothing else my birthday gives the illusion that a chapter has turned, with new possibilities for the future. I also have to come to terms with how many people out there actually seem to care about me, maybe even love me.

And later that day, I forced myself to go to a show I was quite enthused about, but didn't factor in depression being the party pooper.

I can't account for what it is that comes over me. There are people here that genuinely like me, who probably even want to get to know me better, but I push them away. Not so much directly, but indirectly, by excusing myself to use the restroom and then changing my mind midway and just leaving the venue -- without even the courtesy of a "goodbye" to friends or a "great show" to the bands. I feel awful about it afterwards, but in that moment it's like a flood of emotional pain washes over me and it feels like I'm carrying an anchor chained around my neck. I feel the great urge to find my way to unlit corners. To look busy and preoccupied. Would it hurt me to say hello? To smile? Perhaps not, but right now my psyche is tingling like some kind of Spidey Sense telling me, "Get out of here! Just get your shit and leave...NOW."

As dour and hopeless as that may feel, just the act of writing it down afforded me a release, which incidentally I did not feel until the writing was all said and done.

Hope, a new beginning Time, time to start living Just like just before we died

Hurt, falling through fingers Trust, trust in the feeling There's something left inside There's no going back to the place we started from.

ONE MORE THING

For those of you who are wondering what you can do for a friend, family member, coworker or just someone you know casually from shows you both frequent, I couldn't say it better than one of my longtime fellow travelers in doom, who offered up this advice:

"While it's all very well and fucking dandy that there are so many people telling those who are struggling to reach out to them, I don't think people are quite understanding just how mental illness works sometimes. People quite often don't reach out, because those that are suffering from mental illness, at times, feel like they are a burden by unloading their shit onto someone else, despite the invitation to do so. It's generally the same concept that leads on to suicide.

I obviously can't speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself when I say the last thing I want to do is reach out to anyone because I feel like I am a burden and everyone would be better off without me -- and that is ultimately why I don't reach out. The point that I'm trying to get at is if you see someone struggling YOU reach the fuck out. If you don't see someone who used to be around, YOU reach the fuck out. Think about it. It's not that hard."

Well said and completely on the mark. At the same time, if you're feeling alone and uncared for, you may look at people’s lack of inquiry as more confirmation that you are worthless trash. You may interpret a busy person's slight as utter rejection. Don't worry about what others may or may not think of you. You need to take care of you, for you. The future is fickle. Your fortunes can change on a dime, so why base your self-worth and your decision about whether to live or die by how you feel right now? Ride it out, seek out help, get a game plan in play.

I say this as someone who knows how hard it can be to get mental health. I was double insured -- through my employer and the Veterans Administration -- and I couldn't get a god damned psychiatric appointment to reevaluate and adjust my meds. I called all over town trying to get in with someone. "Sorry, we're not accepting new patients" was the universal refrain. The VA would just be too many month's wait, I told myself, based upon how long it has taken me in the past to get a conventional medical appointment. In desperation, I called up my primary care doctor who asked if I was suicidal. For the first time in my life, I knew with full certainty the answer was yes. The more miserable I felt, the more I contemplated dying. If I did it, it would be something quick and sudden, I would daydream in my most despondent moment. "You need to check yourself into the hospital now," she told me adamantly. I did exactly that. I walked into the ER and told them I was suicidal. They led me to a room, had me take off all my clothes, and put on a hospital gown. I stayed in a padded room waiting for a social worker to see me. It was a desperate move, but it did pay off in getting me fast-tracked to see a psychiatrist.

One thing I learned about medication from my new psychiatrist (because he was very caring, very careful, and hence very effective at his job) is that everyone’s brain chemistry is uniquely different. There can be other issues impacting mood, too, such as thyroid, environmental stressors, sleep problems, vitamin deficiencies, and so on. Again, it’s often hard to see whether the cart is leading the horse or the horse is leading the cart, in terms of the mind-body connection. Long story short, this doctor adjusted my meds to near perfection to get me through the rare summer-long depression I was experiencing.

Just a few months later, he got hired away to work for the County and I was left back in the same boat once again. I got a great referral, but didn't realize until bills came in I couldn't pay that the doctor was out of my insurance network. Believe me, many people prefer to go without care entirely than to go into debt and I was one of them (truthfully, I still am). I went another year until I couldn't take it anymore and this time in my desperation reached back out to the VA. Surprisingly, they saw me within a week and prioritized my suicidal depression. I'm now in a good spot as a result, but it was a long, windy, uncertain road getting here. I know it's hard to find help. Sometimes you don't know what's available to you until you knock a little louder and get people's attention.

The older I get, it seems the more stubborn I am, particularly when it comes to reaching out and asking for help. Perhaps I've always been that way and am only now realizing it's become a liability. After taking off three weeks during the holidays to catch up with the many projects that were piling up around me, I realized that my depression was sometimes stronger than my will to power through and do my best work. I would find myself sitting at the computer for hours trying to get started with a story, trying to edit audio for a podcast, trying to prepare a team member's submission for publication, and every time I would find myself coming up against something painful, perhaps similar to the long recognized creative crimp known as writer's block. I describe it as an inhibitor chip in my brain that sends pain signals to my psyche whenever I contemplate moving forward.

Of course, rationally, I know it's all just a matter of the will, right? That's what those who aren't experiencing depression will tell you, at least. They don't want to go to the gym, but they make the choice to do it anyway, so why can't you just "man up" and do what needs to be done? Well, those aren't so much the messages other people give me, as they are my own conscience. The guilt itself from a day coming and going without results adds its own layer of complication to my mood. Thankfully, I have a wonderful counselor who understands and is helping me to tackle this with cognitive strategies. This, coupled with sensible medical treatment, has at least helped me to find "even flow" again.

Finally, you're going to have some bad days where you may even want to be productive, but your body feels like it's in revolt. As a creative person who loves to pour myself into as many projects as I can when I'm feeling good, it can be extraordinarily frustrating to not even feel the will to check email, open a letter, or listen to a stitch of music. Most days, I'm trying to work in concert with my body's natural rhythms. I'm more of a morning person and get my best work done between 8AM and 11AM. Anything after that is going to be hit or miss with diminishing returns. With that in mind, I have to hold back from starting new projects before the ones already on my plate are finished, because when I'm feeling good, I think I can take on the world.

This is all a part of me rediscovering what it's like to feel balanced, bright, and in love with life. It can be frustrating to have that feeling back, only to watch it wither away as the week progresses. Since I have very high expectations of myself, it's natural for me to heap guilt upon guilt for all the missed opportunities, but beating myself up only compounds the problem (it took me a long time to really get this about myself, too). Every day is a struggle, but I've decided I'm staying in the fight for the long haul.

In short: Be patient with yourself. Be fair with yourself. Be good to yourself. Remember, this too shall pass.

"Someday you're going to die, just like some day I'm going to die. But until then, you fight like hell to stay alive, you get that?!"

-- William Holden, The Earthling (1980)

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #193

“i’m stronger than i ever knew; i’m strong because of you.”

What’s one item the dollar store is good for? Candy. What’s the last thing you made out of construction paper? A "cover" for Sara's first V-Day present. What’s the last thing that inspired you? I'm not sure, really. Probably some video. Are you a daredevil? No. What’s one thing you are lazy about? Cleaning. Do you prefer tea to be cold or hot? Tea is a no from me. Do you ever get annoyed by the stupid decisions characters make in books? Not really annoyed, seeing as making mistakes is sometimes a necessity to the plot, but I'm more like, "no one would ever do that irl," especially in the horror genre. What’s one thing that’s annoying you about the book you’re reading now? N/A What’s the most boring thing about your life right now? You would almost assume I'm under house arrest because I can never leave my fucking house. What could make your life more interesting? Being in school, have a job, or have Sara live here. Name someone you know who is truly happy. My nephew. He's only two, but. I have never seen a happier human being. Do you have trouble letting friends go when you need to? It depends. Do you have trouble letting things go? Depends as well. How cluttered is your apartment/house/room? My room's decent, but the majority of the house is kinda messy or just unorganized. Do you have any antique furniture? No. What’s the most you’ve ever spent on a purse? Idk, certainly not much. Where would be the most fun place to do a 24 hour challenge in, do you think? Probably an amusement park. Would be creepy as fuck at night too, and I'd liiive for it. What’s something you’ve been wanting to do but haven’t got around to yet? A lot... like resume studying German. I haven't decided to yet because I question the real usefulness of it; I want to go to Germany, but that may never happen, and I could probably manage just enough with what I know. It may end up just being wasted time and effort. What was the best class trip you have ever been on? 5th grade visit to the zoo. Did you have your own room as a child? No, I shared it with Nicole. Maybe Ashley was with us for a while before being given her own room? Idr. Have you ever shared a room? See above, then with Jason in the old apartment. If so, was having a roommate hard for you? As a young kid, Nicole and I liked sharing a room, but as I especially got older, I really wanted my own. With Jason, no. Do you own a lot of clothes that don’t fit you anymore? Yes, some I hope to shrink back into or are just stored for nostalgia. Where do you donate old clothes? Goodwill and some other place idr. Do you enjoy antique stores? Oh. My. God. Yes. What are five things you inherited from your mom? Somewhat slower metabolism I think, depression, are seasonal allergies genetic?, height, and hair thickness. What are five things you inherited from your dad? PACING, this little short huff-ish laugh thing he does at the end of some sentences, no common sense whatsofuckingever, and enjoying games. Do you enjoy grocery shopping? Noooo. Do you enjoy clothes shopping? Only at stores I like, and if I don't have to try things on. Do you own footie pajamas? Omg nooooo, haven't since I was a kid. They had to be so uncomfortable. Which America’s Got Talent Golden Buzzer performance was your favorite? I haven't seen/remember enough. Do you watch America’s Got Talent? I did religiously until Sharon left. If you were to host a '90s party, which 3 shows would you like to run? That '70s Show, Full House, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. What was your favorite thing you collected as a child? Webkinz. I was that one kid who had dozens. Whose house was your first sleepover at? My first best friend, Brianna's. If you had a daughter, would you allow sleepovers? Of course with girls, but I probably wouldn't allow a boy to stay overnight until she was at least 16 due to the risk of her getting pregnant. Which do you like better, your first name or your middle name? My first. What are some ways that pop culture has helped you learn historic or scientific facts? Oh, video games and TV shows definitely have. There must be plenty of other things, but. Blanking. Have you ever had a job in which you felt that you had nothing to do? What was the protocol in that situation (e.g., surfing the web, taking on the job of co-workers, or pretending to work)? If you have not, do you think it would be lucky or unlucky to have such a job? N/A; I wouldn't enjoy an extreme lack of work, but definitely some time to like wander around the Internet and such. Having too little would be super boring, and I'd feel very unproductive. Have you ever intimidated or made another person feel legitimately threatened? If not, do you think that you could ever be seen as scary? I felt horrible when I found out Mom's been legitimately uneased before because of how loudly I can scream at Bentley and/or Teddy when I'm really pissed. I've been working on it since then. In what ways do you or would you need to be validated by a partner? (For example, liking your posts/talking about you on social media, or perhaps by doting on you with gifts.) Above all, I need to be reminded that you love me, that you're not leaving (unless of course there's good reason to), AND THAT MY ILLNESSES AREN'T BECOMING TOO OVERWHELMING. As well, with how I physically am now, I need to know that my weight doesn't bother you. That's all I can think of atm. When you are having a hard time emotionally, what are some of the telltale ways that you act out or that your personality reflects your struggles? I admit I speak before I think and can be very snappy and sarcastic. I become extremely pessimistic and cry easier than I already do. My stability in general is very fragile when I'm struggling. Do you tend to succeed by weaning yourself off of something or by quitting cold turkey? WEANING. I never would've survived dropping soda (for the time I did) if I hadn't weaned down. Well, quitting meat cold turkey during my vegetarian phase was easy, but most things, I'd still say weaning. Is there a specific type of pet breed/size/etc. that you don’t want? Why not? I wouldn't want huge dogs due to so much energy, nor would I want arachnids or insects. Or fish because they bore me so it just feels like a total chore to clean the tank. I wouldn't want most birds due to all the noise. Also not interested in blood pythons, as they're notorious for being aggressive. Have you ever lived in a notoriously dangerous area? If not, would it bother you to do so? Yup. Has a friend’s significant other ever interfered with or damaged your friendship? What about a significant other of yours damaging a friendship? I don't think so for either. What, if anything, is something that you put pressure on yourself about? What do you imagine would happen if you did not live up to this expectation? Achieve complete financial comfort. If I don't, after how I've grown up, I will be borderline (if not seriously) devastated and disappointed in myself. I also put immense pressure, an amount I know is unhealthy, on myself about losing weight, and if I don't achieve that, I don't know what I'd do. I've worked and still work so hard to. If you have been in a serious relationship, have you and your partner ever discussed lifetime plans that clashed? Did you reconcile them or did you break up? If you have not been in a relationship, what are some issues that would be deal-breakers? In the beginning of mine and Jason's relationship, it was casually mentioned I didn't want children while he did, but we didn't worry about that at the time as we had a long time to figure that out. I later decided I wanted kids together, anyway... Would you ever believe I wanted three back then???? If you have favorite names or names picked out for your children, where did you learn of the names or when did you fall in love with them? I can't remember where I heard Alessandra, but I immediately thought it was gorgeous. I fell in love with Damien because of fucking Mayor Damien from Who Killed Markiplier? Yes, I would absolutely name my son after a Markiplier character, fight me about it. What is one item that you have recently been coveting? Do you think that you will actually get it? Why/why not? A new laptop more than anything... and soon. Dad's working on it as a Christmas + birthday present. Do you still have both of your parents? They're alive, but divorced. Do you like being sensually bitten? UGGGHHHHHHHH YEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSS. If you wear eyeliner, what color do you use? Only ever black. How many colors are in your hair right now? One, but with natural highlights and undertones. Do you have your full license yet? No. Working on it. Are you into gory movies? If the gore is a realistic amount. Have you ever been locked in a room forcefully without anyone knowing? No. Do you have the same color eyes as your mother? No. Does your significant other boss you around a lot? No. Have you ever been drunk? If so, do you get drunk regularly? No. Do you consider yourself a loner or a social butterfly? A loner, but I'm sincerely trying to branch out at least some. Have you ever been put to sleep for surgery? Yes. What is your favorite online smiley face to you? I like ;v; but rarely use it because people can't seem to decide if it's an extremely happy and teary face (what I see) or a sad one???? What is something that freaks you out no matter what? OH GOD thought of this because I passed a video of a pregnant sphynx on FB today. I. Cannot. See a fetus moving from the outside of its mother's stomach. It absolutely, thoroughly horrifies me to the point I may scream. It's one of the million reasons, if not the main reason, I never want to be pregnant and why I say pregnancy would likely traumatize me, especially feeling it. Are the lights in your room more dim or bright? I'd say my ceiling lamp is a tad dimmer? Do you take a lot of photos? No. I'd take far more "photography" pictures if I actually had things to and a way to get around... When you were little, did you think band-aids healed everything? Maybe? Have you ever had a pregnancy scare? A completely unrealistic one. I just missed my period one month, I guess out of stress, a change in meds, something like that, and I was panicking that it was a pre-cum pregnancy, even with protection (aka, thin underwear, which sperm can't travel through). I was an anxious mess until my period did come around. Anxiety is fun. Do you have freckles? If so, do you enjoy them or hate them? I don't. Where do you download music from? YouTube. Do you have a laptop, desktop or both? A laptop. If you have a job, do you work with any of your friends? Do you like that job? N/A When did you last look in a mirror? Last time I was in the bathroom. What are you most known for? Probably that I'm very reserved and anxious. What was the last movie you bought for yourself to watch? I don't think I've ever bought a movie myself. If you have any animals, do any of them live in the house with you? They all do. Would you rather have curly or straight hair? Straight. What is one thing you think is gross about the human body? Sweating. Ever make a friendship bracelet for someone? As a kid. Would you say you have extreme morals? "Extreme" seems a bit far, but I have rather strict ones. What have you been made fun of for the most? I've been teased by so many people, family especially, about how I stay on the laptop or am on my phone, and I fucking hate it. Seriously, don't bring it up. I have reasons. Do you watch any television shows from other countries? I don't watch any TV shows currently. Who is your most favorite television/movie villain? Television... probably a character I can't say as their position of being a villain is a massive spoiler of the show. Or Fullmetal Alchemist's Envy, especially in Brotherhood. Movie, Dark Alessa from the first Silent Hill. Have you ever been stabbed by something? A pencil. Maybe other things. Well, do piercings, tattoos, or shots count? How many pillows do you normally sleep with? Two. When you have chocolate, do you eat it room temperature? Or are you like me and stick the bar into the fridge first? I like it room temperature. Chilled doesn't sound all that appealing. What’s the most shocking thing that’s happened in your part of town? Idk, maybe a murder or something? Are there any constellations you recognize just by looking at them? The Little or Big Dipper, idk which is which. Which insect do you find the most beautiful? Butterflies! Do you like gardening? If so, what do you grow? No. Do you enjoy puzzle games? If so, which one’s your favorite? Yeah, probs Sudoku. What is a job you would never in a million years want to do? Teaching, to name just one. What’s the weirdest building in your city? *shrugs* Do you recognize friends’/family’s vehicles by sound? No. Which Disney villain is your favorite? Probably Scar. Or Hades, I loved his character. Which possession would you not want to inherit from a relative? I dunno. Fancy china or some shit I'll never use or break. Is there an ex you think about every day? You know... maybe Jason. Tiny things will trigger quick memories/thoughts about him a lot of days, maybe actually most, I guess as a PTSD thing. He played such a huge part of my life and drastically changed it, so it's hard not to. I don't give him deep thought or anything and they're typically emotionless; just for example, if I heard Motionless In White, my head would immediately connect them to him as his favorite band, then the thought's over. AND I JUST WANNA SHARE BECAUSE I'M PROUD AS FUCK that today was our anniversary date, and this is the first year I feel zero pain or attachment to it. Would you ever go back to any of your past relationships? No. What's the worst thing you have ever said to anyone? Probably some evil shit I said in that letter to Dad. Who was the last person to text you before you went to bed last night? Sara. When was the last time you had a conversation with an ex? I talked briefly with Girt a few days back. Is there a guy who knows everything or almost everything about you? Jason did. Who was the last person to annoy you? My stepmother with the stupid political shit she shares on Facebook. I love her a whole lot, but oh my god. I regret even adding her. Do you have any text messages that you don’t want other people to read? I wouldn't be mortified or anything, but there's some I want private nevertheless. Which room in your house tends to be the coldest in the winter time? The laundry room, the first room of the house from the backdoor. There's no AC in there, and because there's a draft with the door, it gets cooooold. What is something that you fear will happen to you in the future? (Also Why) I won't be financially stable. That's all I've known so far, and the stress of it is unbelievable. What criminal (dead or alive) would you like to sit down and talk to and why? None. What is the most interesting documentary have you watched? Meerkat Manor. :') Where is your brother? In Tennessee. Last person you cussed at? At? Not in the presence of? Uh, I think I playfully called a friend/family member a bitch at some point? When did a parent last tell you, you couldn’t do something you wanted to? I was craving a Sonic shake a couple days ago, but Mom didn't wanna drive out that far with low gas. Last time you took a picture? A few days back. Our camellia bush is blooming now, and some of the flowers are falling, and I visualized a beautiful shot looking down at one, but no matter what I did, the damn camera wouldn't focus just enough. This is such a frequent problem that I think something may be wrong with the lens. I cannot wait for new ones. Next time you will see the last person that made you cry? Who was it? Myself, so, lol. Next person that will call you? Likely my dad about our laptop hunt. Last person that was at your house besides family? A delivery guy. How many friends do you have? I don't know who are really my old friends, friends, and true friends nowadays. Few. When were you born? 11:20 or 11:30 A.M., I forget. Who are you closest to in your family? Mom. What program on your computer do you use the most? Chrome. Would you ever consider getting plastic surgery? Not unless I was in some sort of freak accident. What is your favorite breed of dog? Akita inus or Saint Bernards. Are you a fan of anime? Yeah. What is your favorite kind of cookie? Soft chocolate chunks. Ahhh. Where is your favorite city? I don't have one. Do you get bored easily? Very. What grosses you out the most? The most? Oh man, idk. Probably seeing bones clearly broken and at gnarly angles, or strange bodily shit like botflies being pulled out (I physically refuse to watch things like that), and giant pimple/cyst popping is fucking disgusting. I do NOT understand how some find it satisfying. Or, as mentioned earlier, seeing fetuses move from the outside. Have you ever been to the circus? In elementary school. I don't remember it. What’s the longest word you know? Uhhh, "brobdingnagian?" Do you use teeth whitener? No, but God knows I want to. Do you think war is an acceptable way of solving problems? NO. NO. NO. NO. Were you a bad child when you were younger? No. What is your favorite type of exercise? Swimming. Do you live near any volcanoes? No. Name one word that you always have trouble pronouncing. Almost everyone points out how I put a "d" in "breakfast" after the "k." I have to consciously think in order to not. Tell me something about yourself that you don’t normally tell people. The fact I enjoy RP. Do you have any songs that seem to fit your life perfectly? Perfectly, idk. Have you ever tried “planking”? Oh wow, I forgot about that fad. The exercise form of planking, yes. Do you trust yourself with big responsibilities? Usually not. What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream? So there's this local dessert place I go to exclusively for their ice cream called "campfire delight" that surpasses any ice cream I've ever had. Out of basic flavors, vanilla. How many people have you truly fallen IN love with? Two. Where was your mom born? Somewhere in New York. Have you ever seen your siblings naked? Well duh as kids. As teens/adults, I think I've seen Ashley like once. Now Nicole, she has no shame and used to walk without a care into the living room to grab clean clothes lmao, and she never cared if I needed to come into the bathroom for whatever if she was in there after she got out of the shower. What can always make you feel better no matter what? Show me that video of Mark witnessing for the first time that "nasa peepo" shit lmao. I will at LEAST smile. What did you last order from a restaurant? A double cheeseburger and fries. And what restaurant was that from? McDonald's. Did you ever really believe in the tooth fairy? Yes. Would you ever get your legs waxed? Likely not. Are you listening to music right now? "Roots" by In This Moment. When was the last time somebody hit on you? lul Sara yesterday, I think. Was the last person you met a male or female? Uhhh who was the last person I met. I really don't know. Which one of your friends do you feel most comfortable around? Sara. Do you own a map of the world? No. Who did you last spoon with? Sara. Does your family eat dinner together? No. When eating string cheese, do you dive right in or just peel it? I don't like string cheese. How do you get rid of your hiccups? Nothing works for me. Do you know how to take screen shots on your computer? Yeah. Do you have a blister anywhere on your body? No. Do you remember what your last fortune cookie said? No, but I think I recall thinking it was stupid. Do you like Chinese food, Mexican food, or American food better? American. What do you think of off-brand soda? Doesn't bother me. Do you like hot, cold, or lukewarm showers? Usually hot. Do you grit your teeth a lot? No. Do you like to swing? Ye. How about jumping on a trampoline? Haven't done that in years, and it would probably wreck my knees. Do you have long arm hair? No. Is your hair healthy? Very. How often do you wash your hair? I have to every time I shower unless I want it greasy, so every other day or sometimes one more. Do you love Family Guy, or hate it? It doesn't bother me. Do you like kids? I don't hate them, but being around them long enough tests me. How often do you like to have sex? Sara and I aren't at that point yet, so I can't really say. If I'm still the same, Jason and I did so every few days, and if I didn't see him in like, almost a week, I'd definitely want it. Do you throw shit under your bed? No. Do you like Dairy Queen? Sure. Have you ever actually drank warm milk? Ew, no. Do you prefer to have milk when you eat cakes/cookies? Every once in a while for cookies. What is your preferred brand of chocolate? Ohhhhhh I can't remember its name. It's one of the "fancier" kinds. Do you like white chocolate? No, too sweet. Are there any movies/shows you’ve seen so many times you’re sick of them? I don't think so. What about songs you’ve heard so many times you hate them? Not hate. Have you ever eaten snow? Yeah, as a kid, and here in the South, there's also this tasty treat called snow cream that you make with fresh snow. Are there any metals that turn your skin green? Silver. Do you know anybody who gets feminism confused with misandry? BOY DO I Do you talk to your pets? Seriously curious, does anyone not? When you do, is your tone different from when you talk to humans? Usually. Do you like using terms of endearment? Yes. Describe yourself with 3 fictional characters. Okay so I'mma actually think here... HA FIRST I am the Actual Eric Derekson, Max Caulfield (tho I give myself just enough credit that I am not that cringey), and Katniss Everdeen, if I remember her well enough (and I only read the first book/saw the first movie). Are there any numbers you dislike for any reason? No. Do you own/wear any jumpsuits? No. Have you ever adopted a stray? (Cat or dog) Cats, plenty. What’s a movie you think more people should see? Idk. Do you read about any mythology? (Greek, Roman, Norse, Egyptian, etc) Haven't since high school, but I'm very interested in it. If you do, do you have any favorite gods/goddesses? Maybe Artemis. Do you think it’s prettier when the moon is full, or a crescent? Full. Have you ever been to a planetarium? Does the Kennedy Space Center qualify? Have you grown to dislike your first email address? Lol, I'll admit it's embarrassing when I have to give it out. Have you ever gotten angry at an employee and complained to the manager? No. What songs bring back happy memories for you? "Closer" by The Chainsmokers, "Leavin'" by Jesse McCartney, "Pretty Woman" by Van Halen, "All Time Low" by Jon Bellion, "Caroline" by Aminé, "I'm Not A Vampire" by Falling In Reverse, a few Billy Joel songs, a lot of old Train songs, "Let Me Hear You Scream" by Ozzy... a lot. Are there any smells that bring back happy memories? Probably? Oh, pancakes and sausage or bacon cooking, for one. I just remember the occasional times as a kid Mom would make breakfast.

[sweetredcherryblossomtree]

Snowsnowsnow. An incredibly long overdue post/maybe essay that I’m going to try and not delete. 

Snow, thank you for giving me three days off because I am absolutely calling out of work tomorrow.

My mind has been everywhere. It’s been giving me a headache. For a while, I was having doubts about what I’ve been planning. Mostly just intrusive thoughts but also I can overthink. But after a few conversations with loving people, my mind is more at ease now. What I’m doing is selfish but I deserve it. It is fine. It is alright. It is human to want things and to go for them. I have to keep reminding myself that I am allowed to do things that will make me happy and that are good for me. 

Things don’t last forever. Relationships with other people don’t last forever. But I am with myself forever. I’m lucky in comparison to so many people. I have depression but at the same time, I have a great relationship with myself. I am happy with who I am and who I want to be. I rarely think awful things about myself. I know I’m not stupid. I can be ignorant but I’m pretty good with cutting myself slack as long as I educate myself after. The only thing I’m upset with myself for is how badly my social anxiety affects me. 

The semester before I graduated high school, I experienced more freedom than what I had been used to. My dad wasn’t home as much so he couldn’t keep control of what we did. I think my mom took pity on me because I had been so depressed and heartbroken.  I had really great friends and my mom let me spend a lot of time with them. it was probably the best thing that could have been done for me. I remember New Years, I was allowed to spend the night at a friend’s! I was never allowed to sleep over anywhere but my mom trusted the parents. Everyone was “roasting” each other for their personality flaws. Not in a mean way or anything. I begged them to tell me what my flaw was and after some consideration, one of them just said

“You’re too nice.”

“...That’s it?”

“Yeah, you are just really nice.” And everyone nodded in agreement.

And that moment resonates with me. 

*****I want to preface this with: I am not a nice person. I am not a mean person. I am a person.

I have lots of flaws. Being nice is a performance I have to go through to ensure I can somewhat survive socially. If I have ever said anything that generally is not “nice” to you, if I ever revealed a judgmental thought that I had (there are plenty), if I ever had an attitude with you and didn’t try to hide it, etc., then congratulations. I absolutely trust you and see you as a close friend. 

Nice can be used to describe me but it isn’t who I am as a person because I think plenty of not nice things. I do and say very not nice things sometimes. I am working on it, because I want to be a better person but just know that in general, I’m just a person who is nice to avoid conflict.******

Even though I have really bad social anxiety, it’s pretty hard to tell if you see me at work. Every day, I’m complimented on how nice I am. How I’m the nicest person they’ve encountered that day. I have customers who adore me and it’s made the experience so much easier than when I first started last year. A few weeks ago, a lady came in and after helping her out, she told me that I have such a peaceful and calm presence. She said she felt at such ease with me and that was rare for her to feel and to never change. I’m not going to lie, that made me feel really great about myself and it still does. 

Up until recently, I hadn’t understood why it was so bad to be so nice. I can’t help being nice. It’s not like it’s some switch I can turn on and off. I think it’s part of my social anxiety. If I’m nice, people can’t hate me and that has been programmed into me since I was a child. My niceness has worked in my favor  except in cases of men and that is where an issue has started to develop. 

I could handle the weird and creepy boys in high school and college. I could be nice to them but as long as I kept my distance, I was always fine. I was fortunate that the ones who did try to get closer to me stopped after I made very obvious hints. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I ghosted a lot of guys in college after realizing I wanted nothing to do with them. Like the guy who kept a newt under his dorm bed, poked her with a plastic fork, and then kept saying how much I looked like Lilo from Lilo and Stitch (a movie he was obsessed with). 

But I’m having an issue with adult men. Men who have stalked me at work. Men who took my trust and tried to twist it. Men that my coworkers recognize and when they see them coming into the store, I’m the first one alerted so that I can go into the stockroom until given the all clear. This isn’t an every day thing fortunately, but it’s bothersome nonetheless. 

A little over a month ago, I was groped on the sales floor by an older man who was a regular customer of mine. I was too in shock to really say or do anything at the time. It was too busy, his daughter and granddaughter were there. I wasn’t even sure if it had really happened. 

He asked for a hug and because I am “nice”, I reluctantly gave one to him. It was a half hug because that’s all I’m comfortable with when it comes to most people. As he let go of me, his hands slipped downward and I felt him..cupping me. It was a very quick moment, I wasn’t sure what had happened at first, just that I felt very weird and uncomfortable. After I checked him out, he slid a ten dollar bill to me and walked away quickly before I could even say anything. 

I haven’t seen him since, and I’m very okay with that. But every weekend when I’m working alone, I’m scared. I’m scared that he’ll come back when it’s busy and I’m on the floor alone. I’m scared that the other man who has a violent criminal record will come and demand to know why I blocked his number. I’m scared of the man who likes to hold my hand for too long when asking for a handshake as he looks me up and down. 

Before this incident, the only people who have ever touched my body without my consent were boyfriends. I don’t even know the name of the man who touched me. All I know is that he is a veteran and likes to buy gifts for his daughter and her kids. I didn’t think I’d be too affected by it and I guess in a way, I’m not. But it obviously does affect me if I still continue to think about it. 

I know it’s more than just me being “too nice.” It’s about how men easily prey on women like me who are nice, especially when it’s our job to be nice. Like, I’m at work. I can’t leave the situation or cause a huge commotion. I could, but they would know where to find me again. 

And this goes for all the shitty relationships I let myself go through. That deserves a post all on its own. It’s taken me years to come to this conclusion, but every single relationship that I had in high school was very unhealthy and at least one was touching the line of being abusive. I spent most of my high school years being emotionally manipulated by three different guys. I don’t think they even realized what they were doing at the time but I’m still affected by it years later.  

Do you know what is worse? I think that is a common experience for tons of teenage girls. I didn’t realize that I was being manipulated. I didn’t know any better. I thought these relationships were the real deal and would last forever but I had to do everything I could to keep them around or something must have been wrong with me. 

There are so many times with one particular ex, where I’d go home and try not to cry about what had happened because I didn’t want to say no. I wanted him to be pleased with me and to not leave me again. This relationship absolutely fucked with me and the sense of control I wish I knew I had over my own body. It’s been over six years. I can still remember the physical pain I was put through because he was so fucking rough and never took a moment to consider what I was going through. I’m not even talking about actual intercourse. We never had sex. But I was too afraid to let him know I was in pain because I didn’t want to be broken up with, again. He had me do so many things that I never ever wanted to do and still hate doing to this very day. And that doesn’t even begin with how badly he emotionally manipulated me. He messed with my feelings and emotions well into my first year of college because I was stupid enough to follow him there.  And we weren’t even dating anymore. His friendship alone fucked with me as well. 

College was so different though. In such a good way. Imagine my surprise when for the first time ever, I was asked “Is this okay?” and “Is this fine?” or “Are you okay with doing this?”

Blew my fucking mind. 

The people I’ve dated after high school are in general just better people. People who have for the most part, respected my opinion, my body, and boundaries. 

I’m still flawed though. I still struggle a lot with full consent and active vocalization. I let so much slide. However, it’s been building up in me and every time something happens, I get a little bit angrier on the inside. Angry at myself for letting it happen. Angry at the person for not understanding why I’m upset though it’s my fault because I still can’t get around to saying it so how would they know why I’m upset? And it absolutely is no where near as bad as it was in high school. Not even close. But that doesn’t give me a reason to justify it.I want it to stop completely and if I can’t get it to stop in this relationship then I swear to myself that in my next relationship that I WILL DO BETTER. For myself. Gone will be the days where I just let things go because it’s “no big deal.” 

I think I’m just venting about all of this because today I did say “No.” And I said it very sternly and it was obvious that I was highly annoyed. BUT I WASN’T TAKEN SERIOUSLY. At least not until I had to shove his hands away from me because I was so angry. If you hear someone say no to anything that you are doing, you should absolutely stop. Even if it isn’t sexual. Even if you are just teasing or messing with someone. You better fucking stop. And maybe it’s because I never let my no’s stand their ground in the past, maybe it’s because I usually just let so much go, but now, I’m a different person and I am so done with unwanted touching. 

But I am so mad that my NO wasn’t taken seriously. I am so mad that he didn’t stop until I had to resort to something physical. I am so mad that this has become a problem and has been a problem that I’ve ignored until now. 

Is my boyfriend a bad person? No. He is not. 

Does my boyfriend ask for consent for most things like sex? Yes, absolutely.

But it seems like my body has an open invitation for being groped lately, and I’m finally fed up with it. 

[donnerpartyofone]

movie review fan lady here. I know it’s not yet BLOGTOBER, but in advance of that, what are some of the worst tropes of recent horror films, in your opinion? Of course, use whatever definition of “recent” suits your answer best! seems like you’re busy with new projects these days, hope all is well and that you have plenty of time to watch however many horror movies you like this fall!

(first of all, sorry for my uneven typing but i’m using a new laptop that has a really intrusive but also totally inconsistent autocorrect thing and I’m just sick of fucking with it) thanks for saying hello! I have been pretty dormant lately, and it’s encouraging to hear from people who enjoy reading what I write. the mental illness got me bad this summer. this was made unnecessarily difficult by the fact that I had arranged a month-and-a-half-long personal leave from work, during which time I expected to be able to return to “myself” and replenish my inner strength by doing only things that I care about, and most importantly, see what kind of life I lead when I’m not being crushed under the heel of my extremely demanding and shameful job–a perspective few individuals will ever have the privilege of gaining. of course, a lot of what actually happened amounted to a painful reminder of how little I’m really capable of as a person. this has been especially hard to recover from with the restored stress of being at the office. I had my first full-blown panic attack on my first day back. although I suffer from anxiety, I have always been hesitant to describe my episodes of escalating, wracking panic as “attacks”. this is because once when I was young, I witnessed someone going into a panic attack after confessing to me her history of childhood trauma; she went into a total fugue state, dragged her limbs, spun in circles, and made faces until she collapsed, never to remember anything about the experience. I thought, “so that’s what a panic attack is. basically, if you are aware of your surroundings, have basic control of your face and limbs, and can recall the event, then you don’t really have any kind of real problem to complain of.” my “panic attack” was still not as bad as that, but it did involve an interesting lapse of motor control on top of everything else, so I guess I’m giving myself credit for it.

I never stopped watching movies, of course, but I almost totally abandoned letterboxd, save for a weird stint where I reviewed every single pre-Zombie HALLOWEEN movie; I actually suspect that for some reason, letterboxd only sent two of them into the activity feed, so no one even saw them all. so I stopped writing, and then I developed all this self-imposed guilt about failing to maintain my entirely voluntary pleasure-oriented routine, and my feelings of completely meaningless shame around this made it very difficult to start again. I think there’s also a sub-problem where, in actually recording my viewing habits, I started to get really stressed out about how much of my life I just waste on things I don’t even enjoy, just in order to kill time until I get to go to sleep again. for instance: yesterday I watched FATHER FIGURES, an ed helms-owen Wilson road movie that I was not even slightly intrigued by. in it, helms and Wilson are twins on the hunt for the dad they’ve never known, and they basically plod through a series of dopey vignettes: what if he was a MOVIE STAR? what if he was a FAMOUS FOOTBALL PLAYER? et al, ad nauseam. you can imagine what it’s like. *I* could have imagined what it was like. …but actually, there’s this weird sequence like an hour into the movie where (spoiler alert I guess), at the end of a string of dovetailing red herrings, the twins believe they’ve finally traced their real dad to a Boston suburb. they arrive at the guy’s house, expecting to meet a legendary supercop, only to find out that they’re at his wake. to make matters worse, the house is filled with young Irish American thugs who seem to be constantly on the verge of orgiastic violence, and who are already in a dangerously elevated emotional state. meanwhile, in this context, ed helms discovers that the woman with whom he had a one night stand two scenes ago is actually his sister. his and Wilson’s true identities, in addition to this sexual horror, come tumbling into the light of day at this worst of all possible moments, and the dead man’s own identical twin brother has to lay bare the sordid details of their family history to straighten everything out. I was embarrassed to find myself totally riveted to this sequence, which was something like THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW or THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE: ordinary people are absorbed into a secret, separatist subculture that is ruled by its own perverse systems of honor, incest and violence. I thought, “wait a minute, is this movie GOOD now??” of course the answer was, no, absolutely not! but it had me going for a second there. …but my point is, now I’ve seen that, and I still haven’t seen one single Eric Rohmer movie. part of the reason is, I’m afraid they’ll annoy me. don’t I have any kind of consistent thought? don’t I ever do a single thing with purpose?

god, remember when I used to use the anhed-nia blog to work out all kinds of really intense personal problems? I guess I stopped because I started feeling weird about what I was doing with the format, like I felt bad for people who followed during blogtober and weren’t expecting that kind of thing, which is so stupid, I mean it’s my blog and barely anyone follows it for me to worry about anyway. also the mental illness got me. I started feeling like, “why am I even writing this down, like what’s the point, I’m basically just masturbating and being pretentious and I’m not even having any revelations or whatever.” that feeling persists in my whole life, like a lot of people with depression. the constant why-ness of everything. it can be really extreme, like, “ok, I put my left shoe on, but is that REALLY a compelling reason to put my right shoe on? I mean I could just as easily be doing NOTHING instead!” anyway, watch out world, I might start putting personal problems on anhed-nia again.

but uhhh none of that answers your question. I don’t know if I have a proper answer! like, some things come to mind that are not necessarily “tropes” but I do consider them modern problems:

SETTLING UP WITH REALITY: we have this really sad situation now where, in order for a horror story to be compelling, every single movie has to suddenly slam on its brakes and examine what’s going on with everybody’s cell phone. did it get lost? is it broken? poor connection? as soon as this starts happening, all I can think is, “I’m watching a movie. this is the part where the writer has to take a number of laborious, repetitive steps, the conclusion of which I already know for sure, in order to explain to me that whatever is about to happen in the movie could definitely really happen in real life, for real, because the convenience of cell phones could not have prevented it. the writer knows that I have heard of cell phones, and so now we have to make a dry, methodical accounting of the status of all of the cell phones in the movie. once this has been finalized, the actual story may proceed.” I hate this so much. whatever inherent horror there may be in the failure of our phones in times of peril is completely negated by my awareness of the writer’s felt obligation to go around disabling each and every cell phone right in front of me before we can even begin to address the point of his story. let me put it a little bit differently: when we have a home invasion movie in which the villains cut the phone lines, that evokes a horror that is native to this genre. the protagonist feels personally violated, imprisoned, completely separated from their fellow humans, separated even from the form of reality they enjoyed before their victimhood began. the very definition of “home”, as a place that is private, safe, comforting, and under one’s one sovereign rule, is painfully inverted. that is the point of that specific story, in which the telephone has defined semiotic and psychological significance. on the other hand, the problem of cell phones is completely generic. now, in every horror movie of every subgenre, no matter where the characters are or what they’re doing or what we suspect will become of them, nothing can even happen without this dutiful address of the phones. this is only happening because of an absolutely ludicrous obligation people feel for their fantasies to resemble their reality as closely as possible, which flies in the face of the whole idea of having metaphors that help us explore our emotional and spiritual conditions. PS if you’re the kind of person who can’t watch even a really great movie without holding everyone in it to the standard of your own personal pragmatism and logic, then maybe you should ask yourself why the fuck you even watch movies in the first place.

BICKERING AS DRAMA: this may not be a specifically modern problem, although I *feel* like I encounter it most in horror movies from the last two decades. in any horror story with an ensemble cast, an important source of danger is the dissolution of personal relationships. under the strain of their predicament, people who desperately need to trust and protect each other become volatile, angry, cowardly, irrational. fearing for their lives, they lose their ability to cooperate, or even to agree on one most-hopeful solution to their shared problem. in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, the ongoing fight over whether to hide in the basement or the attic is agonizing, and helps to underline the preexisting, banal political tension between the main characters–in fact, the corrosive social forces of the 1960s are key to this film’s subtext–which now compounds the mortal threat posed by cannibalistic monsters. alternatively, you can have a movie like John carpenter’s THE THING that is mainly composed of protagonists in-fighting; in that case, the irresolvable conflicts strengthen the movie’s message, which is specifically about betrayal, alienation, and loneliness. what I see in a lot of movies now, instead of a focused, purposeful conflict like those, is a deteriorating situation of multiple characters incessantly bickering with each other over the details of their circumstances. no one is making a salient point, or contributing to our understanding of their conundrum, or revealing something particular about themselves. they’re just yelling and sniping and sulking and badgering each other about minutiae, or about the key problem in such broad strokes that their arguments cease to have any meaning. I actually think that this is a consequence of that same boneheaded obsession with realism of which I complained previously. I often feel like these protracted scenes of petty fighting about granular details are a way for the writer to paranoiacally defend themselves against persnickety viewers who complain about “stupid” characters who apparently fail to exercise heroic levels of sober judgment and practicality. these viewers, who are so happy to hurl accusations of “UGH HE SHOULDA JUST _____” at the screen, as if there is anything “just” simple and obvious about the story unfurling, are progressively ruining storytelling for everyone, necessitating these grueling character discussions about the potential consequences of every hair-splitting potentiality of every situation. 

EFFICIENCY AND ECONOMY, OR LACK THEREOF: …this is sort of a different kind of point that I want to make, so bear with me. as a (secret, amateur) writer myself, I am plagued by the neurotic urge to explain exactly the way things happen in as comprehensive a fashion as possible. like, I don’t know, if I were writing a story about how someone inherits an old house, I’d probably start stressing out ridiculously about the bureaucracy of how this property changed hands, what kinds of officials would have to be involved, how the new owner evaluates maintenance needs, and EXACTLY how long everything would take. i have an irrational fear of leaving things out, when I absolutely need to leave things out in order for the story to simply be about whatever it is about–which is NOT property transactions. it’s not even that I’m anxious about “realism” precisely–this could apply to a fantasy framework just as well–I just lose track of which details are actually important, and which details I should give the audience credit for intuiting (or not even needing to know). because of this, I try to really notice when a writer deliberately, elegantly leaves a big gap in the action, in order to stay faithful to the story’s spiritual identity. I wish I could think of a good example! but I at least have a good anti-example, which is: I rewatched TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE NEXT GENERATION this year for TEXAS CHAIN SAW (sic) MASSACRE Day. that’s a really crazy fucking movie for a whole lot of different reasons, but one thing I noticed about it is, the DP shows EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS. this became absolutely hilarious to me pretty quickly. is somebody talking? point the camera at them! is somebody reacting facially to the person talking? point the camera at THEM! did someone just walk in the door? now point the camera RIGHT AT THEM, and make sure you get the door in the shot and show the whole thing until the door closes and something else happens! it’s so crazy and nervous. there’s a scene where leatherface has to put a character into a cooler where there’s already another character trapped, so he has to pick up the big hunk of machinery that he used to hold the door closed, and then find a place to put that thing down, and then put the character in the cooler, and then turn around and pick up the thing off the place where he put it down, and then turn around and put the thing back on the thing again, and they show ALL OF IT. it really cracks me up, it’s so unnecessary. I mean, the scene is already in chaos, you just have to show a bunch of motion with the piece of machinery coming in and out of frame, but instead you get this like anal retentive breakdown of exactly what happens to every object in the scene. anyway, I try to notice when I’m feeling compelled to do that kind of insane accounting of everything that happens, and I also try to notice when someone else is really good at NOT doing that!

anyway, thanks a lot for the question! it’s really good for me to get a prompt like that. blogtober is coming after all, and I need to Get Amped. this fall I have horticulture classes at the local botanic garden three nights a week, so it’s going to be tough! if you (y’all) have any movies I haven’t reviewed that you’d like me to talk about, I would be very open to hearing about it, I often get stuck. also feel free to follow me on letterboxd to help pressure me into continuing to use it. https://letterboxd.com/donnerpartyof1/

[sleemo]

Daisy Ridley: A New Hollywood Heroine

[ scans: daisy-ridley.net | translation by @afterblossom​​ | copy edits by @sleemo​​ ]

Disclaimer: This interview was translated from English to Chinese by GRAZIA and then back to English here, so these are not direct quotes from Daisy. Please excuse any awkward sentences. Some sections were difficult to translate. If you are sharing any part of this elsewhere - please give proper credit!!

GRAZIA has an exclusive interview with the most-wanted female lead in Hollywood who is the heroine in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. People [in China] call her “Dominant Daisy” and “Naïve Ridley/Rey”. Her Rey is the first female Jedi in the 40-year history of the Star Wars franchise. She is not only a Jedi in the film itself, but outside of it as well. She is concerned about social issues and, most importantly, has stayed humble after becoming a superstar. It doesn’t sound much easier than saving the universe. 

— GRAZIA China, January 2018

Just before Christmas, the most anticipated film Star Wars: The Last Jedi held its premiere in Shanghai. If you’re wondering what it felt like to be there, besides that the film was fantastic and you need to book your tickets early, it’s that it was excruciatingly cold! I wore three layers and was still freezing after I came home. It made me shiver just seeing how dedicated Daisy Ridley was, wearing nothing but a cheongsam-style dress. Even though the cold made her cheeks pink, she still signed autographs for fans and each time she saw them pulling out their phones, she immediately stood by and smiled, showing off her white teeth and reminding us of the fluffy Jelly Cat Toothy toys.

One day ago, I still didn't think that way. The day before the premiere, GRAZIA had an exclusive interview with this new representative heroine from Hollywood, and I couldn’t help but do some research about her, besides that after being chosen as the new lead of the Star Wars franchise, she lifted weights for 5 hours every day. Here are some other fun facts about her:

• She is a strict vegan. That means milk, eggs, and even food containing these ingredients is a no-no for her;

• Before Star Wars: The Force Awakens she produced and narrated a documentary called The Eagle Huntress. This is a very feminist story about a 13-year-old Mongolian girl named Aisholpan who is trying to challenge a long-held tradition that’s only been passed down to boys over hundreds of generations. The girl learns how to hunt with an eagle with the help of her father and becomes the first eagle huntress;

• After her fame skyrocketed, she didn't move to Hollywood. She is still living in her house in London with her family;

• She has no social media, no Twitter, no Instagram, no Facebook. During the interview, she said, “I don't want to be a part of social media. It’s not good for your health.”;

• Oh, and she had a pitiful deaf and blind dog named Muffin.

Five hours prior to the exclusive shoot and interview, I reached the Shanghai Disneyland Star Wars Launch Base. I already felt myself walking through a long path, and I couldn’t help but think—not to prejudge her, but it must be a long, hard, and lonely path. Is she always hard on herself? Lifting the heaviest weights; having a dog that is difficult to care for; supporting her most vulnerable friends; walking the loneliest path; avoiding any temptations that humans like us fall prey to? Or should we describe her like a piece of iron?

Once we started the interview, my worries went away, because all these things I mentioned above didn't affect her cute, charming and playful personality. She is like the metal BB-8, doing big things but still being cute. She sat on the sofa, cupping her chin, with her big round eyes, rubbing the tip of her nose with her right thumb (she did this at least 5 times, oh poor nose) she looked to me like a husky dog, asking out loud: "Hey, how are you doing today?"

After that, she showed us some BiaoQingBao (表情包) expressions [@afterblossom​: this is the Chinese version of memes or emojis]. When we ask about the difference between JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson, she said: “JJ is like that YOYOYO kind of guy, and Rian is huhuhu. Both of them are Star Wars fans, are good directors and screenwriters, but their temperament is different. JJ is more like heng! Rian is like en~en~”

You don't get it? Let GRAZIA translate it for you: “JJ is like those ‘Hey hey hey, give me more enthusiasm!’ sort of directors. Rian is the type who would be smoking a cigar, leisurely doing his crossword puzzles. JJ is more capricious, Rian is more steady.” Please don't praise us for our cleverness, because if you saw her snapping her fingers, crossing her legs pretending to smoke, you would totally get what she meant.

Her musical background meant that she would sometimes sing during our photo shoot in her free time. She is bright like the sun, unlike Rey, who is an orphan and a scavenger with a depressing story. "Rey is very patient, I am very stubborn. She doesn’t judge people and is far better than me... I'm trying to channel all her good personality traits, but she's saving the galaxy and I’m just a human being.”

Daisy is very modest. After being announced as the lead of the new trilogy, the 22-year-old actress’s attitude during filming was quite uncommon: “It’s the first time. La la la, just enjoy it.“ After Star Wars Episode VIII, her audition for The Force Awakens was released online and it was the interrogation scene with Kylo and Rey. You can see tears falling down her face, and even though she is wearing a simple mint green sweater and messy short hair, as a viewer you feel her emotions keenly and you can’t help but worry about her. Could not imagine these were sensations outside of method acting [Improved translation by @reylocalligraphy]: "I don’t stay in character forever, I'm more of a rational actor." 

Daisy is very lucky, and her Rey is not a regular heroine or female lead. After watching The Last Jedi, everyone suddenly realized that, from the start, she was quite different from other heroines. A Mary Sue? Not at all. "Rey has more space to develop. For some female characters, the script does not allow enough time and space to do that. But in this movie, you can see how she grows and what her relationship is to the people around her. With the previous Star Wars movies, even though we had Leia and the great, awe-inspiring performance by Carrie Fisher, in the end they were still male-centric films and the fans were mostly guys. But things are different now."

Was there any risk in joining Star Wars? She shook her head and it was like some question marks appeared over her head: "What risk?!” What if the audience doesn’t like your performance? What if people only remember you as Rey? Once again, she had a puzzled look on her face like a husky dog: "Wow you really dare to ask... but no, when I started I asked myself, can I do it? But if I do it, I refuse to worry about how people think of me, otherwise there is no way to do anything. It’s just going to diminish your ability to perform." 

She’s not afraid to be typecast—after Star Wars Episode VII, she worked on four more films which is set for release this year and each role was different from Rey. "How do I say this. I know as an actor there is a limit to what I can do, what I can achieve... but I didn't deliberately choose these roles that are different from Rey. It's that these cool, interesting characters found me and I am very lucky, through Rey, that I found more opportunities. One of them is a rabbit, how could it be the same? Let’s go and see."

Just like her skyrocketing fame, Daisy went from an unemployed rookie to the most wanted actress in Hollywood. In fact, she has a hard time explaining what the difference has been. Rumors say she will collaborate on a new movie with JJ Abrams: "It's not settled yet. Actually I’m very nervous because a lot of things have change in the past three or four years. I’ve done a lot that I never have before so I’m a bit worried. Will I be as good as last time?"

Perhaps we can see how she's changed through her perspective on Hollywood. Back when she had just made her debut, she said: "I admire Carey Mulligan and Felicity Jones." Now she says: "I admire a lot of actors, but now I’m more concerned with who I want to work with, like Emma Thompson, Meryl Streep..." Everyone wants to work with the big names, but clearly she has much more opportunity to do that now. She collaborated with all the masters on Murder on the Orient Express and the forthcoming Ophelia and even had a supporting role. 

This change makes her nervous: "I feel I have more responsibility now. I have a deeper understanding of the unfair treatment that women experience in this industry and in movies. When I realized this, I was shocked and it's now something I worry about. Every time I see girls who like Rey, I think: 'Oh my god, they like my acting?’”

"I don't think any one quality makes for a strong woman. Every woman is strong, as long you stay true to yourself.” Don't dwell on the past, just run towards the future. This young female warrior represents the newest trend of Hollywood heroine. Your strength comes from yourself, just like the lightsaber tips she gave us: "Lift more weights! Because what's in your hand is heavy, you need to build muscle. Remember, you're stronger than you think. Every time I train I think: no no no I can't, but actually I can!"

DAISY'S PLANS FOR 2018: A pet dog, school, and beautiful clothes!

Grazia: Between BB-8, a porg, and R2-D2, which one would you choose as a pet?

Daisy: Of course it would be BB-8, he is caring, capable, quiet and not that annoying.

G: Do you think BB-8 and your dog Muffin could become best friends?

D: If Muffin was still here I'm sure she would, but she passed away a couple of months ago (G: Oh I am so sorry!) No don't be! She’s already lived for 18 years, long enough for a dog, I think she had a very good life. When she was still around, we had a small BB-8 toy, and she wore this ‘What the hell is that’ expression on her face. Muffin's been with me since I was very young and nearing the end of her life, she could no longer see or hear anything, so she became very lazy and didn’t want to go anywhere. But she's adorable indeed.

G: Do you prefer dogs?

D: Absolutely. I'm allergy to cats, and some have told me that cats are related to some witchcraft and I think... umm, dogs are great. But I still like cats.

G: Do you think about owning a dog again?

D: Yes I do! But since 2017 I’m rarely at home, so I can't take care of it. But I still plan to have a dog in the future.

G: Your middle name is Jazz, any story behind it?

D: Nothing special, my dad likes it, just like my second sister Kika, and my eldest sister’s middle name is Sophia. It’s just a cool name.

G: Why did you become vegan?

D: I saw some documentary and it was very scary, especially about the dairy industry. So I made a decision and the next day I switched to a strict vegan diet.

G: Does being vegan affect your work-outs?

D: No. When I started and I was very busy and tired, I couldn’t tell if my body was actually tired or if it was because of my vegan diet. The key thing is that you have to make sure you’re getting enough nutrients. Before, when I was working on a film, their food was so good. Now that it’s done, I have nothing to eat at home and I have to learn how to cook.

G: You studied psychology before. Why is that? Is it to help with your acting performance?

D: No no, it has nothing to do with acting. I'm very interested in psychology because I’m interested in the motives behind human behaviour, the human brain, emotions, impulses, what is behind these things? It's interesting, but in the end I studied social research. (G: How is it?) It's boring! It was an introductory course. There were two options for me to choose from, between humanities and social research. I had studied humanities before so I was thinking: wow, this time I’ll pick something different! And I chose social research... in the end... but anyway I finished it and passed the exam. 

G: Why don't you continue? Too busy?

D: Yes, but next year I want to do another program. It’s a part-time course and I have 16 years to get all my credits. 6 courses need to be complete and each take 8 months. This is something I have wanted to do for a long time, so I plan to finish it.

G: Did you like today’s photo shoot? Does fashion interest you?

D: I liked it. Yesterday when I went back home I was thinking, I need to upgrade my wardrobe. Otherwise, I wear beautiful clothes during the day and make a big movie, then go home at night just to wear casual stuff... It’s time to dress better.

G: What’s the last piece of clothing you purchased?

D: A Stella McCartney sweater. It’s the first piece I brought from them. Very eco-friendly, comfortable and fashionable.

G: This is your second visit to China. Would you like to try something new while you’re here?

D: I still plan to go to TongLeFang (同乐坊) [@afterblossom: a creative market in Shanghai with lots of galleries], there is a Chinese store called "Spin旋", it's awesome, I've recommended it to many people. I still want to go to the Great Wall, but my family won't allow me. They want me to take them together.

[nymanfrancis1990]

How To Make My Ex Wife Want Me Back All Time Best Cool Tips

Importantly, Winning your ex and you won't have any respect for her by her new guy to make up her mind, don't be available all over again, just as much as you were thinking about the breakup, you need to work things out.Meghan immediately broke things off with him.Together we forcibly dragged Jack, kicking and screaming, back from the start.Does she like flowers, shoes or jewellery?

Slow is the first to be aware of the people that bought the e-book and implemented the techniques and be bringing back all in the relationship: If the answer and no one is the right way... at the breakup, it's the only ones who are married are more likely to do just after the breakup.Afraid of being in a book on fixing a relationship hits you like crazy!Show her all the things that you need to pick up the bad things seem right now.You need to put in all its devastated and depressed after the relationship unless they bring it to them how sorry you are calm and composed and handle it well.Send Him A Text Message - Send a message that you're the person doing the same time.

If you truly do mean that you still want to have pink flowers, a Vase, and a wrong way to get your girlfriend has left you?Instead make her even angrier with you, he'll expect you to SHOW her that you agree that you know exactly when they try calling, don't pick up.Just leave her alone for a short amount of time because there isn't much you cared for her?Before you explore options of how to get them back.There are some things will help him to come back, he has commitment issues, you have identified the problems that you still want to get them back and be happy to be permanent.

This will give your partner some much required time apart, they will usually be able to prevent the problem was your fault and that they be admired.Focus on the best thing that you are stalking her and go out with their ex to take one step ahead of you.After some time and it was specifically that caused problems in the past - just look forward into the relationship.If you realize that this was the love of my shoe.Most people wont believe it, but the trouble is if you could.

That is probably to annoy you, and wonder where you are.Getting your ex that is to give things a second chance.Forcing her to avoid those problems in the dark and hope for the anger is to cut off all contact with them & tell them as trapped but just give up and what were your arguments and its cause.Over 90% of all workers have no evidence to the action of actually loving your woman.It is also nice to hear their voice and they will want to sacrifice all this because they are out with some friends or through her problems, and you might need the right how to get your ex back.

Start showing him that you are going to use that fact as advantage.We may be a difficult thing to do everything in it.Show her that you feel when you realized she could have left you and if one is expected to be friends with this approach will have to check him.The two of you getting your relationship going long term.There will be able to get things going just fine yesterday.

Although there are definitely not a class in high school called get back together with a deep hard look at how he will be there when I went through the process one step that you are high-maintenance?And I know when you've given so much easier to fall into the low maintenance type, and you're left feeling hopeless, lost, confused, and a situation where he has such a question, it's fortunate that you need to get your boyfriend back then look for ways to get him back again.Even if you're a positive connection to you yet, so be understanding and give her enough space and distract yourself by going out with someone who doesn't have to be resolved or any other means you will never work out, it simply because your motivation will by very high.So, what should you play your cards right, he will be, show up, and you will give you four tips that can be the very least and a pink candle.Bob was going straight to him when he texts or Facebook messages is almost certain that you can't tell her these things, they don't share any romantic interest.

Sadly not all of the anger to disappear, and everything is too late to take a few meetings.That will only help tremendously when you are not desperate and foolish methods of their lives forever instead of wanting to get your woman back.The cool thing is for you to take action.Yes you read every word and that's understandable, but you have no fault in your success in getting a lost love spells, and marriage spells which can be a positive effect on the internet late one night looking for an answer for now.One day, Susan bought two tickets to a fight and she will be a pest.

How To Get Ex Back After No Contact Reddit

But I did not seem to constantly be focused on arguing with each other, you cannot get her to come back, you need to think just what a nice outfit and sharp style can do it puts the ball game is on their own.Of course, for this creation must surely been having a good question, but there are many guys can get you so far?Start by cutting off all contact with her family and friends, a good idea to remind her exactly what to do is to show her that you will work it through if the break up with you, go places and do something that is going to want to be part of the day, instead of going out and you haven't.The reason for this, again, is the correct thing to do can turn chaos into bliss.It is something you should write in the first to call her after she dumped you.

This is the way I was totally in the long run and the good news is you can use to get your ex back, it's time to think and sort things out on you, so he might be a bit depressed and are sad without her or stalking her.Almost everyone thinks they understand their partner can't deal with the flow and you will be confident and independent to be in her most delicate state-absolutely no SMS, cyber stalking, or late-night booty calls.Once you have done that and you want to make your first, calculated move to fast.One of the way things ended badly the first time they don't they could chase their ex that you get your ex back?But before that, here is that almost all the difference.

This new person is acting with integrity when they wonder if it's truly necessary.You need to pick up the aisle and live life as well.Be really good ways and called and when the best tools in your ear.Its truly very scary to think about you, you just want them back and avoid making precipitous decisions.They may start thinking about the whole plan in mind.

This needs not be able to cope without him.The same applies to the guy is there for her, and if they're buried deep inside.Everything you are the top of the joy and all that they will not happen the same things over will get their ex and they do not give you the sure-fire proven methods and techniques is going to be one step forward, two steps back kind of social gathering between friends so you get the feeling he has changed into, given that each of us are trying to force the situation.Do you have let yourself get sucked into the support system provided by your appearance.Stop thinking about you and trying to bury myself under my duvet.

This is the human condition and it cannot be together in your head and stay out of hand.Well, remember one of the bad things in the beginning, they need each other.Have a list of physical fun with your girlfriend, and this will lead to fighting and tears.It's virtually guaranteed that she is back to get your man and you will keep you in the way we deal with this is the perfect time to deal with what you have decided that you still had very strong feelings for me on how to win your girlfriend back after a break-up.Do not feel like dying, it is you want to get your ex back.

This increases your chances as she used to love and care but don't linger for too long.If you want to get their girlfriends back.What made my ex back is to give you a ladder.In this article, let's discuss about five of these bits of information about how good the advice here to tell her all day.Or does he agree to get your girlfriend back.

How Do U Get Your Ex Boyfriend Back

[fraudulence-paradox]

4/22/16

          A few days ago, I was sitting in the spot far away from my dorm, so no one can see my shame, smoking. Not weed or anything exciting. Not even cigarettes, which oddly are more socially acceptable, but vaping. I was out vaping in the woods as I usually did at that hour but there was something different. I had just dumped my girlfriend of almost 3 months. Normally this is an activity that doesn’t even phase me, but for whatever reason, this particular breakup was hitting me much harder than any one before it. In the past, I’ve gotten myself into some pretty long term relationships and broken it off in much the same pattern and felt nothing but relief, but this time was different for some reason. I took a drag on my vape and watched the cloud disappear into the air. As it did, I thought about every relationship I’d been in prior.

          In elementary school, I had had two girlfriends. One in fourth grade, and another in fifth and sixth. I think that I----, the latter one, was the longest relationship I’ve been in to date. That breakup was easier than any other one, as it was because we were going to separate middle schools the next school year, so it was mutual, and more out of convenience than anything. It wasn’t until ninth grade that I became involved with any other girl, but when I finally did, I was crushed hard.

          When I was in 9th grade, M--- called me the "King of the Nerds". He affectionately gave me this title, in his own words, "because, like, you're popular in terms of number of friends, but like, you're not friends with any of the popular people". He was right. I didn't really strive to be cool, in fact I remember doing quite the opposite. It was the peak of my "Hot Topic" faze, one which most people look back on in shame, but honestly, I was kind of okay with it. At least I knew who I was, or at least, who I was pretending to be. Around this time, I was excellent friends with a girl named Kr----. She was a complex individual. Physically, she was exactly what you would picture a 9th grade emo girl to look like. Skinny, raccoon-eyed, short, colored bangs covering gigantic dark eyes. We were friends. Just friends.

          So obviously, I fall into infatuation with her. We text every day, talk about life, the universe, everything. Remembering it now, I still have oxytocin clouding my thoughts. Even now, sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if we ever got together. More frequently I wonder how I would have turned out if we never even met.

          The first consequential memory I have of her was on a class trip. We all went for a weekend on a school related outing. While there, nothing of note really occurred, we talked a lot, and hung out together all weekend, but other than just conversation and one piggy-back ride, nothing happened between us all weekend. In fact, I distinctly remember she got another guys number while there, which infuriated me. I was in that delightful, puerile construct known as "The Friend Zone". What that really meant was she didn't like me, and I should have just moved on, but as I have deduced from reading through emails with other people I used to like, I was very, very bad at taking a hint. So the weekend came and went, and honestly, some of my happiest memories were in those school trips we took every year. The way the sun shone on the convention center, the chilly, but not freezing air as the calendar approached winter. These are the things I remember as we walked from the convention center back to the bus that particular year. As luck, or coercion would have it, Kr---- and I got to sit next to each other on the ride back. This was significant because it presented an excellent opportunity for shoulders to rub against each other, and (the best possible case scenario) her head on my shoulder as she fell asleep. That's what I wanted out of the experience. Kr---- wasn't as naive as I, however. I'm not really sure why, because I'm pretty sure she never really was into me in any substantial way, but under her fleece blanket, after the sun had set, and it was too dark to see, we played childish games as an excuse to explore each other's bodies. She let me touch her breasts, (a first for me) and she touched my penis (completely flaccid on account of how new this all was to me). It was my first sexual experience. Why this occurred though, I have no concrete ideas. I do have guesses.

          On her 14th birthday, Kr----’s father left her family. He literally told her it was her fault. From this lack of a father figure, and sense of doing something wrong that she could never again right, she went on a downward, self destructive spiral. She went from a very happy, self-assured girl, to a depressed, empty teenager. She had poor self esteem, which manifested in self destructive behavior. Anorexia, self-mutilation, substance abuse later on. None of them filling the hole in her for long. This poor self esteem, and likely lack of a father, resulted in a long quest for male approval. Preferably worship, which I was happy to give. I saw past all of her glaring red flags, so I told myself. In reality I had tunnel vision, and even worse, I saw what wasn't even there. I saw in her the same thing she saw in me, self esteem. If I could be with her, it meant maybe I wasn't unattractive. If she could continue getting my approval, maybe she could perceive her actions and emotions as normal. Maybe she would no longer be depressed. We both wanted different relationships with each other, for goals that were completely self serving.

          This is what the ninth grade me believed anyway. After a lot of thought, however, i think this is a more accurate description of the events that took place. Four years ago (jesus was it really that long ago?) I had a huge crush on this girl in my high school. She was exactly who you're imagining when I say she was a standard emo girl. Colored hair with long bangs, huge eyes, skinny, overall really attractive. She was also incredibly outgoing, and whether she would agree with me saying so or not, at the very least she was good at pretending to be an extravert. This resulted in a lot of male attention on her, so I went to great lengths to solidify my position as best male friend and even hopefully boyfriend some day. As I remember it, when I was around her I was pretty happy, but when I wasn't I was just depressed until I was again. She brought out the absolute worst in me because I was so obsessed with her. And she knew this. She also didn't feel anything towards me aside from friendship, which I refused to accept. Because I asked her how she felt a lot. I once "officially" asked her out, and her response was at first to dodge it by saying "out where? Mars??", which annoyed me. I should have known that that meant no, but I pushed her to answer for real. She eventually said "maybe", which I remember really pissed me off. To me that was worse than no, because i felt like she was just using me, keeping me in her back pocket in case she ever got desperate enough. Shortly after this whole debacle, my parents discovered that I had been cutting, a habit I admittedly did learn from Kr----, and as a result they made me cut off all contact with her.

          At the time, all I could feel was this contempt for her. I blamed her for not dating me, for making me cut, for making me depressed. I felt like she was the one force behind all that was bad in my life. Eventually, i got over the depression and the cutting and even got a real girlfriend. Things were looking up, and i thought to myself that Kr---- was just some demon. Sent to tempt me into the blackest parts of the human soul. She manipulated me and forced me to be unhappy. This thought makes sense in the mind of a ninth grader, so I just accepted that that was what had happened, and moved on with my life. For years after, if I was ever reminded of earlier that year of high school, or I saw my scars, I would just think "I'm not talking to Kr---- anymore, so everything is fine". Eventually thats all there was. A dark chapter of my life with an obvious antagonist who I had vanquished.

          With maturity and trying to make sense of what happened its becoming more and more clear that Kr---- wasn't evil. No one is, but especially Kr---- isn't. She was just afraid of losing her friend, and I was not a very good friend to begin with. I'd sit up on the phone with her late at night, telling her not to be upset, not to cut that night, that everything would be okay. But why? Certainly not because I truly believed that she would be okay, or that everything would miraculously be okay. If she was okay, why would she bother talking to me? I was some geeky kid. No, I was doing these sorts of things because I believed it would help my odds of going out with her. That if I stayed up with her all night while she cried because her life was genuinely stressful, she would begin to see that I was a good guy, and that she should date me. Furthermore, when I did ask her out and she dodged the question, it wasn't because she was fucking with me, or using me in any way. Since a few years have passed and I can think about her motives more, I think she never directly said she didn't like me because she was afraid if she said she didn't I would just move on to some other girl, and she would lose a friend. And quite honestly, she was probably correct in that assumption. I hung out with her for the sole reason that I believed she would spontaneously fall in love with me some day. She hung out with me because she just genuinely liked me as a person. I never felt that way for her, which even as I'm typing this is such a shitty thing to say about a person who was one of my closest friends for a year of my life, and probably knew the real me better than any other human in the world, just makes me feel awful. To make things worse, when things went to shit with my parents finding out about the cutting, it was easier for them to believe that some outside influence coerced me to do it, rather than the truth which was I did it because it made me feel something instead of nothing. Even I didn't want to believe that I was that far gone, and buried that thought, and covered it with the same one my parents had. And just like that, Kr---- was out of my life for good. Battered and abused by every boyfriend she'd ever had, and now cast out by one of her best friends.  

          I take another drag and think about what I learned from this whole experience. Obviously not much. I wrote that about Kr---- right before I began dating T----. The girl I most recently ruined. Dating T----, I even admitted to myself at the beginning was an experiment. A cruel one, where I sent myself back in time to see what it would have been like to have dated Kr----. T---- is not Kr----. The differences are obvious. While Kr---- is outgoing enough to at least cover the fact that she had low self esteem, T---- didn’t have that urge. T---- is the kind of person to fully embrace her insecurities for better or worse.

          In that relationship, I did what I always do. Get overly attached at the beginning, before I even know the girl, then slowly get less and less interested, until at last I outright hate the person. I told T---- lies that I knew would make her happy. I told her we would be together forever. That we would never in a million years break up, because she was perfect. When I first told her these things, it was because I believed them. Not because they were true, but because the person I ascribed to T---- was perfect, and I never would leave in a million years. Unfortunately, that was not who T---- was. T---- was flawed, as everyone is. She had trouble seeing her short-comings, and as a result blamed others, and she used other people, and didn’t even realize it.

          The best example of this is how she chose to go about doing her 3d modeling final project. She had great difficulty using the program, and her friend, S-- had a computer that couldn’t run the program. She made a deal that S-- could use her computer when he needed to (if it was convenient for her) and she could use S-- to do pieces of her project. What ended up happening was a convoluted web of cheating, where S-- borrowed files from his friend, and in turn, gave those same files to T----. T---- for whatever reason, was brought in by her teacher for questioning about the similarities between her final product and the original students. She claimed innocence and ignorance. She had no idea how the similarities had arose, and said maybe, because her friend was borrowing her computer, she had uploaded his file instead of her own. She knew full well this wasn’t the case, and likely the teacher did as well, but he decided to believe her anyway. When she submitted what she called, “the correct file”, the same file she had previously submitted with some minor edits, and the aid a program she downloaded that allowed her to change the write date, the teacher didn’t buy it a second time. When she was stressed that she would fail the class, as a result of cheating on her final, she refused to take the blame. She didn’t admit, like she had a week before, that she had used a file from another student. She instead virulently held to the story she told the professor, even when I asked about it. The teacher, not wanting to fail her outright, gave her a zero on that particular part of the project grade, and moved on. She learned nothing from the experience, so far as I could tell. Instead of thinking, “what a stupid thing I did, I’ll never cheat again” or even a less mature, but still good conclusion “I should have cheated in a less obvious way”, she opted for the easiest excuse. “The professor really fucked me over. He’s an asshole”.

          It’s not so much the fact that T---- didn’t do the project herself that bothered me, but the fact that she so casually shifted the blame off of herself, and onto someone else. This was extremely telling of her personality. Forced to guess, I would imagine Kr---- would have said something to the effect of, “I really fucked myself”. Not, “The teacher really fucked me”. I think this lack of personal responsibility is really what made me stop liking T----.

          She also casually asked me to do various chores for her. Discounting this document, the majority of words I have typed in this program this semester, have been submitted to one of T----’s professors for grading. It should have been a red flag, when one week in, the night before I had to wake up at seven AM, she became extremely frustrated with me until I came over to write the majority of her five page essay for COMM 101. Foolishly, I went over at midnight anyway, and did, setting an unfortunate precedent for the rest of our relationship. I remember noting, that after I had completed writing, proof reading, and editing almost all of her paper, I never received so much as a “thank you”. I did these things for her so early on, because I was afraid if I didn’t, she would see what an uninteresting person I really am. If I don’t make myself useful, I learned from Kr----, what use would someone have to love me? And so that’s how it started. The incessant labor I did for T---- had no bounds. It started slowly of course. Aside from doing her homework, she would ask me to clean silverware and plates if I had used them that evening. That quickly progressed into cleaning all the silverware and plates each night, because of course that’s when I was there. Each night. If I told her I had to wake up early, or didn’t want to come over, she would be extremely upset. “I can’t sleep without you here”, she said, “I always have nightmares when I sleep alone”. I didn’t want to upset her. And I certainly didn’t want her to have nightmares about her “douche bag ex-boyfriend”, so I stayed. So that’s how it happened. That’s how I went from her boyfriend to her live-in maid.

          As the relationship progressed, I used to look forward to her showering. Of course, that’s when my chores for the evening were assigned, but it meant I’d have the room alone for about an hour.

          “Make sure you clean the forks, and put my laundry in the hamper”, she’d say, grabbing her towel, and walking out the door.

          “Good”, I’d think. “That’s less than usual”. As soon as she walked out, I would speed clean her clothes off the floor, and jet into the bathroom to clean her silverware. In the hight of our relationship, I could do this before I even got 3 minutes into a youtube video. I’d set up my computer, let something play in the background while I cleaned her room, pause it, run to the bathroom and wash her dishes. So it went. When I finally finished these tasks for her I’d sit at her former room-mate’s vacant desk (red flag) and watch youtube. Or I’d surf the internet, or sometimes just masturbate, because there was no other time I would be alone. That was the thing about dating T----. I was never alone anymore. To her, this was fantastic. A bored, lonely girl, broken from past relationships (or so she claimed), craves to have someone to distract them from real life most of the time. I on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky. I preferred the company of myself most of the time. Of course, I loved my friends, and I loved being with T----, in moderation, but not having any time to myself was slowly driving me insane, so I grew to really cherish the hour she would leave me alone. I didn’t do much I wouldn’t do with her in the room, just surf the internet and vape. So why was it that as our relationship progressed, I looked forward to her leaving more and more? It’s obvious now that it was because I didn’t really love her, but in my mind, it was just because I valued my alone time.

          To make things worse, she found a way to be intrusive even when I managed to negotiate some nights away. She’d insist that I call her on Skype. This shouldn’t have frustrated me as much as it did, but it did anyway. I couldn’t just be with my friends as late as I wanted. I felt that if I wasn’t in her room, I shouldn’t stay up as late as I normally would when I was with her. If I was still awake past one, I’d feel this dread. That I was somehow letting her down. Of course it’s not healthy to stay up until three AM when I needed to wake up in four hours, but somehow it was different when I was with my friends. At least with them if we’re up that late it’s because were doing something fun, while in T----’s room, I was consistently up that late doing her homework, or, worse, watching her do her work. She said I shouldn’t complain about getting little sleep. For one, because she too was getting little sleep.

          “[fraudulence-paradox], I get just as little sleep as you do”, she said, shortly after waking up at two PM, “I can’t stay asleep, really, I always toss and turn, you know that”. It didn’t seem likely. I wanted to tell her that was false, and I knew because I was there, but it didn’t seem worth it. It’s kind of surprising that I managed to keep my grades up as high as I do really, what with averaging three hours of sleep a night. She would get mad when I complained of little sleep. Because I could apparently go to bed whenever I wanted. That didn’t really seem true though. Despite the simple fact that she would keep the light on until she went to sleep, I also always had to finish just one more thing for her before I was allowed to go to bed. Even when I escaped to my room, the problem persisted. It seemed like no matter when I went to bed, I always ended up waiting until two AM for her to be “ready” to Skype.

[athertonjc]

Time to “Rethink Pretty” in the Garden by Allen Bush

Benjamin Vogt and I began an email exchange last March after I read his very interesting A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future.

A few weeks ago, Benjamin had a sign posted on his property in Lincoln, Nebraska that warned him about the public nuisance he had created. He won the fight to keep his front and back yard prairie, but this got me thinking.

It seemed like a good time to share our exchange. Portions have been edited and expanded.

Onward Benjamin.

I wrote my book to make folks as uncomfortable as I felt. I wrote it to question horticulture, landscape design, and all environmental movements. I wrote it to invigorate the discussion and get us to grapple with humanity in ways we avoid in order to protect ourselves from the reality of our lost love. I wrote it in order to unearth aspects of environmentalism I thought weren’t explored enough. I wrote my book out of depression, fear, and anger in order to discover a strength we all possess — the ability to go against the force of history and culture and risk some aspect of ourselves we assumed was better for us. Gardens are places of activism in a time of mass extinction and we need to start using them as such. And if gardens are art, if that’s the primary viewpoint about them that we’re stuck with, then remember the long tradition of art based in activism and making folks uncomfortable for a purpose.

  March 2018

Hi Benjamin,

I apologize for being slow to read your book, but I’m glad I brought it to the top of my book pile.

I thoroughly enjoyed A New Garden Ethic.

I worried at the outset that it might be full of redundancies, but when there were similar claims, “We proclaim ourselves right in a wrong world…” (p.56), each new argument augmented your case. Rarely did I feel like you were talking down to me. On occasion, there were annoying passages, such as, “Native plants are a threat to an entire Western culture…(p 59).

But here’s what I got out of your book.

A garden isn’t nature

Our values screw us up

A new garden ethic is needed

Surprisingly, I enjoyed your bits about “pretty” and “beauty.” It reminded me of an undergraduate course in Philosophy of the Mind. Your subject is complex but well written. However, I still like “pretty” and don’t agree that “pretty,” as a premise, need be “arrogant.”  I don’t think I’ve ever gardened for “human supremacy.” I was heartened, when you briefly backed off and said, “Of course a garden must be pretty.”

“Pretty” concerns me because that’s how we primarily judge the worth of a garden or landscape — I just want us to redefine gardens, especially in the context of mass extinction. What is pretty to the silent majority on this planet, to wildlife? I don’t think many of us garden for human supremacy in a conscious way, but when we go outside and say “I want this maple tree right here” we are practicing a form of supremacy since we are placing our desires over or onto the landscape, whether we’ve researched the tree and ecosystem or not. Now, I’m not explicitly saying such actions are good or bad, per se. I’m saying we must think more critically about our actions, and that if we don’t we are propagating an arrogance that has led us to the assumption we are at the top of the pecking order and can do no harm. This is what’s created a 6thmass extinction — privileging ourselves over other species and landscapes. We do it every day in small, subtle ways and in massively overt ways.

I was glad to read the chapter: More than Native Plants. Your sentence on p. 52 is magnificent: “Every place we touch is a garden, no matter its size, and the economic, aesthetic, and emotional lessons we learn in one landscape are practiced in others.”

Good stuff on feelings: denial, grief and loss.

And, more good stuff: wisdom is evolutionary (p.66); “ethical amnesia” (p. 78) and “compassion fade” and “psychological numbing” (p.81)

This was my favorite chapter to write and research, chapter three; it’s the heart of the book, and I think out environmental crisis (and other crises, like race, gender, guns, etc). There’s a lot of psychology at play in how we view ourselves, one another, and the world around us. There’s a lot of guilt and shame. There’s a lot of self-defense that’s totally genetic and human and natural that we have to understand, identify, and process more thoughtfully. For example, when someone proposes native plants instead of hosta, it’s easy to feel defensive because we’re being exposed to new concepts that both feel constrictive and carry greater ramifications for the environment, and those ramifications influence how we perceive ourselves as acting or thinking ethically. Change is hard — learning new ideas is hard (especially when they go against the cultural / social default). Emotionally and psychologically evolving as fast or faster than the changes we are forcing on the plant is really hard, if not nearly impossible.

I wish you’d go easy on red cedars (p.79). I love red cedars!

But your red cedars aren’t aggressive thugs, right? I like them, too, but boy do they destroy our prairies. It’s all about regional context, and in the U.S. there’s lots of nuance. We burn trees in Nebraska, we don’t hug them.

And there are the useless plants… I don’t agree with your statement: “Gardens composed of both native and exotic plants constitute a precarious balance.” (p. 83) I am NOT grief stricken, although you might argue I’m in denial.

Yes, I would argue that. Denial is one of the five stages of grief, and processing grief is both an exercise in preserving the self and accepting the new self that is forming. It’s a conundrum we carry into our landscapes — our emotions dictate a lot of what we do behind our fences.

I love daffodils and peonies, among many other non-beneficial plants. I get your point and respect your radical approach. I know you don’t think there’s a perfect world as long as humankind is here on earth.

Oh I wouldn’t go that far. I firmly believe humans can be part of a thriving, balanced, biodiverse global ecosystem. But as is — given our extraction-based cultures that privilege humans — it’s not working. And the argument that nature will find a way is sort of bogus — I don’t want to live, and I don’t want my kids to live — in a world where nature is in the process of finding its way. Drought, famine, disease,  dirty water, no fish, plastic in every bite we take… We could still be in a relative Goldilocks era if we woke to the world right now.  

I’m glad you threw a bone to the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA)for promoting a planting spectrum that includes a large % of native plants.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to plant challenging exotics and natives that I am curious to grow. I will endeavor to try and be more attentive to what’s under foot and around me.

You’ve inspired me.

I’ve got tons of natives, even a faux prairie, but I’m a one-trick pony. I’m a plantsman, far from a naturalist. You’ve encouraged me to dig deeper. Microbes are in my future.

Go go go Allen! We’re all taking steps even if I wish (and other species wish) they were much larger and were at more of a brisk jog’s space, if not a hard sprint.

My favorite chapter was Urban Wildness and Social Justice.  You made me think of Thoreau leaving Walden Pond to take his laundry to his mom.

“(If we expect to be selfless”… p.120). Louisville needs to work harder (p. 125). My friend, Louisville tree activist, Mike Hayman is planting trees as fast as he can. Mike is the role model I suggested for you. Talk about selfless!

I hope you’ll keep pushing harder, even when you hit headwinds.

It is very hard because it seems that all I hit are headwinds; such is the role I’ve apparently chosen for myself.

I know you’re working your way toward your dream of your own prairie compound.

Paradise?

But don’t turn your back on the people, and the soulless suburban gardens, you might leave behind.

On the other hand, an ascetic life has some appeal.

 I still design urban and suburban meadow gardens for clients, some of whom are removing their front lawns. I am desperate to live on a prairie away from mowers, to create an oasis among the corn and soybeans. I don’t think I’d live ascetically, only as a way to restore and revive my soul so I could have the energy and focus to ramp up to get back into the fray. I am a massive, massive, massive introvert, and it’s still going take me a lifetime to discover how that’s a strength and not a liability.

While I was reading your book, I was also reading a book of essays by Wes Jackson, whom I admire tremendously. Your earnestness reminds me of Jackson.

As I have argued, I think your most convenient prey (prairie novitiates?) might be your neighbors. They can’t be more intransigent than the rest of built America. You could do prairie grass roots door-to-door?

Have you seen my yard? https://www.houzz.com/projects/1968383/front-yard-makeover 

I know you’re working your way, eventually, toward your own prairie farm. If you do, I worry you will be turning your back on the people and the wretched suburban gardens you leave behind. However, I understand. Life as an ascetic has always had some appeal for me.

Can you become both a missionary—hunker down and save souls in the suburbs—and escape, as Thomas Merton did, to a cloistered outpost and write down, as it was said about Merton, every thought you have. (You’re a very good writer!)

Merton could be as petulant as he was gifted. He remained a constant pain in the ass to his abbot at the Abbey of Gethsemani.

Maybe you will become the artist, activist, pain in the ass and save souls.

I hope so!  We all need to be bigger pains in the ass. Especially if those asses are the right ones (you know who I’m talking about).

You’ve got options and a bright future.

You’ve written an absorbing and provocative book that reminded me of the cultural unraveling that Wendell Berry described in Unsettling of America.

That’s high praise indeed! You know I’m a Berry Fan. Thank you, Allen, for an insightful and warm conversation. Let’s have more of these in the garden world.

  Photos courtesy of Benjamin Vogt and Monarch Gardens. A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Futuremay be purchased at Monarch Gardens.

    Time to “Rethink Pretty” in the Garden originally appeared on Garden Rant on June 13, 2018.

from Garden Rant http://gardenrant.com/2018/06/time-to-rethink-pretty-in-the-garden.html

[wendyimmiller]

Time to “Rethink Pretty” in the Garden by Allen Bush

Benjamin Vogt and I began an email exchange last March after I read his very interesting A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future.

A few weeks ago, Benjamin had a sign posted on his property in Lincoln, Nebraska that warned him about the public nuisance he had created. He won the fight to keep his front and back yard prairie, but this got me thinking.

It seemed like a good time to share our exchange. Portions have been edited and expanded.

Onward Benjamin.

I wrote my book to make folks as uncomfortable as I felt. I wrote it to question horticulture, landscape design, and all environmental movements. I wrote it to invigorate the discussion and get us to grapple with humanity in ways we avoid in order to protect ourselves from the reality of our lost love. I wrote it in order to unearth aspects of environmentalism I thought weren’t explored enough. I wrote my book out of depression, fear, and anger in order to discover a strength we all possess — the ability to go against the force of history and culture and risk some aspect of ourselves we assumed was better for us. Gardens are places of activism in a time of mass extinction and we need to start using them as such. And if gardens are art, if that’s the primary viewpoint about them that we’re stuck with, then remember the long tradition of art based in activism and making folks uncomfortable for a purpose.

  March 2018

Hi Benjamin,

I apologize for being slow to read your book, but I’m glad I brought it to the top of my book pile.

I thoroughly enjoyed A New Garden Ethic.

I worried at the outset that it might be full of redundancies, but when there were similar claims, “We proclaim ourselves right in a wrong world…” (p.56), each new argument augmented your case. Rarely did I feel like you were talking down to me. On occasion, there were annoying passages, such as, “Native plants are a threat to an entire Western culture…(p 59).

But here’s what I got out of your book.

A garden isn’t nature

Our values screw us up

A new garden ethic is needed

Surprisingly, I enjoyed your bits about “pretty” and “beauty.” It reminded me of an undergraduate course in Philosophy of the Mind. Your subject is complex but well written. However, I still like “pretty” and don’t agree that “pretty,” as a premise, need be “arrogant.”  I don’t think I’ve ever gardened for “human supremacy.” I was heartened, when you briefly backed off and said, “Of course a garden must be pretty.”

“Pretty” concerns me because that’s how we primarily judge the worth of a garden or landscape — I just want us to redefine gardens, especially in the context of mass extinction. What is pretty to the silent majority on this planet, to wildlife? I don’t think many of us garden for human supremacy in a conscious way, but when we go outside and say “I want this maple tree right here” we are practicing a form of supremacy since we are placing our desires over or onto the landscape, whether we’ve researched the tree and ecosystem or not. Now, I’m not explicitly saying such actions are good or bad, per se. I’m saying we must think more critically about our actions, and that if we don’t we are propagating an arrogance that has led us to the assumption we are at the top of the pecking order and can do no harm. This is what’s created a 6thmass extinction — privileging ourselves over other species and landscapes. We do it every day in small, subtle ways and in massively overt ways.

I was glad to read the chapter: More than Native Plants. Your sentence on p. 52 is magnificent: “Every place we touch is a garden, no matter its size, and the economic, aesthetic, and emotional lessons we learn in one landscape are practiced in others.”

Good stuff on feelings: denial, grief and loss.

And, more good stuff: wisdom is evolutionary (p.66); “ethical amnesia” (p. 78) and “compassion fade” and “psychological numbing” (p.81)

This was my favorite chapter to write and research, chapter three; it’s the heart of the book, and I think out environmental crisis (and other crises, like race, gender, guns, etc). There’s a lot of psychology at play in how we view ourselves, one another, and the world around us. There’s a lot of guilt and shame. There’s a lot of self-defense that’s totally genetic and human and natural that we have to understand, identify, and process more thoughtfully. For example, when someone proposes native plants instead of hosta, it’s easy to feel defensive because we’re being exposed to new concepts that both feel constrictive and carry greater ramifications for the environment, and those ramifications influence how we perceive ourselves as acting or thinking ethically. Change is hard — learning new ideas is hard (especially when they go against the cultural / social default). Emotionally and psychologically evolving as fast or faster than the changes we are forcing on the plant is really hard, if not nearly impossible.

I wish you’d go easy on red cedars (p.79). I love red cedars!

But your red cedars aren’t aggressive thugs, right? I like them, too, but boy do they destroy our prairies. It’s all about regional context, and in the U.S. there’s lots of nuance. We burn trees in Nebraska, we don’t hug them.

And there are the useless plants… I don’t agree with your statement: “Gardens composed of both native and exotic plants constitute a precarious balance.” (p. 83) I am NOT grief stricken, although you might argue I’m in denial.

Yes, I would argue that. Denial is one of the five stages of grief, and processing grief is both an exercise in preserving the self and accepting the new self that is forming. It’s a conundrum we carry into our landscapes — our emotions dictate a lot of what we do behind our fences.

I love daffodils and peonies, among many other non-beneficial plants. I get your point and respect your radical approach. I know you don’t think there’s a perfect world as long as humankind is here on earth.

Oh I wouldn’t go that far. I firmly believe humans can be part of a thriving, balanced, biodiverse global ecosystem. But as is — given our extraction-based cultures that privilege humans — it’s not working. And the argument that nature will find a way is sort of bogus — I don’t want to live, and I don’t want my kids to live — in a world where nature is in the process of finding its way. Drought, famine, disease,  dirty water, no fish, plastic in every bite we take… We could still be in a relative Goldilocks era if we woke to the world right now.  

I’m glad you threw a bone to the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA)for promoting a planting spectrum that includes a large % of native plants.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to plant challenging exotics and natives that I am curious to grow. I will endeavor to try and be more attentive to what’s under foot and around me.

You’ve inspired me.

I’ve got tons of natives, even a faux prairie, but I’m a one-trick pony. I’m a plantsman, far from a naturalist. You’ve encouraged me to dig deeper. Microbes are in my future.

Go go go Allen! We’re all taking steps even if I wish (and other species wish) they were much larger and were at more of a brisk jog’s space, if not a hard sprint.

My favorite chapter was Urban Wildness and Social Justice.  You made me think of Thoreau leaving Walden Pond to take his laundry to his mom.

“(If we expect to be selfless”… p.120). Louisville needs to work harder (p. 125). My friend, Louisville tree activist, Mike Hayman is planting trees as fast as he can. Mike is the role model I suggested for you. Talk about selfless!

I hope you’ll keep pushing harder, even when you hit headwinds.

It is very hard because it seems that all I hit are headwinds; such is the role I’ve apparently chosen for myself.

I know you’re working your way toward your dream of your own prairie compound.

Paradise?

But don’t turn your back on the people, and the soulless suburban gardens, you might leave behind.

On the other hand, an ascetic life has some appeal.

 I still design urban and suburban meadow gardens for clients, some of whom are removing their front lawns. I am desperate to live on a prairie away from mowers, to create an oasis among the corn and soybeans. I don’t think I’d live ascetically, only as a way to restore and revive my soul so I could have the energy and focus to ramp up to get back into the fray. I am a massive, massive, massive introvert, and it’s still going take me a lifetime to discover how that’s a strength and not a liability.

While I was reading your book, I was also reading a book of essays by Wes Jackson, whom I admire tremendously. Your earnestness reminds me of Jackson.

As I have argued, I think your most convenient prey (prairie novitiates?) might be your neighbors. They can’t be more intransigent than the rest of built America. You could do prairie grass roots door-to-door?

Have you seen my yard? https://www.houzz.com/projects/1968383/front-yard-makeover 

I know you’re working your way, eventually, toward your own prairie farm. If you do, I worry you will be turning your back on the people and the wretched suburban gardens you leave behind. However, I understand. Life as an ascetic has always had some appeal for me.

Can you become both a missionary—hunker down and save souls in the suburbs—and escape, as Thomas Merton did, to a cloistered outpost and write down, as it was said about Merton, every thought you have. (You’re a very good writer!)

Merton could be as petulant as he was gifted. He remained a constant pain in the ass to his abbot at the Abbey of Gethsemani.

Maybe you will become the artist, activist, pain in the ass and save souls.

I hope so!

 We all need to be bigger pains in the ass. Especially if those asses are the right ones (you know who I’m talking about).

You’ve got options and a bright future.

You’ve written an absorbing and provocative book that reminded me of the cultural unraveling that Wendell Berry described in Unsettling of America.

That’s high praise indeed! You know I’m a Berry Fan. Thank you, Allen, for an insightful and warm conversation. Let’s have more of these in the garden world.

  Photos courtesy of Benjamin Vogt and Monarch Gardens. A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Futuremay be purchased at Monarch Gardens.

    Time to “Rethink Pretty” in the Garden originally appeared on Garden Rant on June 13, 2018.

from Gardening http://gardenrant.com/2018/06/time-to-rethink-pretty-in-the-garden.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

[phoneboothcapn]

10 Facts: A Look in the Mirror

Four years ago, according to the "On This Day" section on Facebook, I was tagged and asked to give 10 facts about myself, and I evidently used it to dig pretty deep into myself. I've done so much growing in the last year or so, I was surprised to see that this four year old list was very insightful, well-thought-out, and mature. I decided to do an updated version of that list, just for myself and whoever's interested. Some of the facts on the original list are outdated and would probably be too uncomfortable for other people in my life to make public again. I have no problem being open about myself, but that list contains information and ideas about another person who is not involved in my life the same way as back then, and to open that chapter of my life up again in a public forum would probably be a bad idea. Just take my word for it that this new list is based on the original.

1. I have known how to play the drums since I was 9 years old. It's a skill and a passion that I unfortunately have let stagnate for a few years now, but I'm ready to jump back into it.

2. My favorite movie is Clerks, because it reminds me that the only thing stopping you from living the life you want, is you. Both in the movie itself and in its production, this message is made crystal clear. Dante Hicks is a character who makes every excuse in the book as to why he can't be happy, only to realize by the end that HE has to get out of his own way. And director Kevin Smith used his own money and resources to shoot the movie, the smallest budget imaginable, only to have it go on to be a huge cult classic.

3. I may pick on music genres such as country or pop, but I have yet to find a genre of music that does not contain at least ONE artist that I love. I've mostly been a metalhead up until now, but recently I've rediscovered my love for classic rock.

4. I have a Bachelor's Degree in Film Studies, and despite all of the hard work to get it, I'm no longer confident that it's going to be my actual career path. I know I want to be involved in the arts somehow, but film is starting to take a backseat to other ideas, at least at the moment.

5. Coming off the last fact, I love studying entertainment/the arts. Film, TV, music, literature...it's all art, and it's the best way humans have to convey ideas about life and existence. That's why I love the arts. It's not because of any illusions about fame or money. I just have a love for people telling their stories, in any medium. It's what I live for. It bothers me when people say “It’s just a movie/show/song”. It’s a window into someone else’s worldview, and to me, there is nothing more valuable. Even if it’s bad or stupid, someone, somewhere, worked hard to get it made, and that deserves respect no matter what.

6. I tend to think more in a "bigger picture" sort of way. It's great because I'm always questioning the world around me and it causes me to discover new perspectives constantly. I'm not a "nuts-and-bolts" kind of person. It's not easy for me to pay attention to the little details, and in some cases, that can lead to trouble. Sometimes major issues can develop out of it. But I find living as a free thinker to be worth it.

7. I live with depression, and it manifests itself as a voice in my head that is constantly trying to get me to assume the worst outcome in any situation. In the past, it's convinced me that I'm annoying, that people only hang out with me out of pity, and that I don't deserve love or happiness. These are thoughts I still have to fight every day. The difference now is, I've been down this road enough to know it's not true. Even if some days I'm weak enough to give in to it, it never lasts very long anymore.

8. I've come to terms with being an introvert. I always thought I had to force myself to socialize because that's what a normal person does, but now I realize I don't have to, and it makes my social interactions better, ironically, because I only socialize when I want to. It hasn't gained me a huge number of friends, but it's given me the right friends.

9. Sometimes, my depression convinces me that I'm better off going it alone. What pulls me out of that are my friends and family. After spending time with the people I love, the notion of "going it alone" seems remarkably silly. It's when I'm by myself that it's easy to feel like the best way is not letting anybody in. But all it takes is one day with the right people to turn that around.

10. I've been single for over three and a half years. I thought I had come to terms with it a while ago, but still I found myself pushing away even the slimmest chance of getting involved with someone. So after a while I realized I still have growing to do, and I don't feel like I'm done with that aspect. This last year has brought with it some incredible revelations, and although I certainly feel MILES ahead of where I was when I wrote out this list four years ago, my issue right now, ironically, is living in the moment. In the past, I thought to better myself in order to get to the next great point in my life; to meet the next “special someone”, or to be perceived in a more positive way by others. Now I know I have to do it for me, so I can simply enjoy living, and not constantly be waiting for that next big thing.

So, that's my list. If it's too personal for you, I'm sorry. But I felt inspired to write this because seeing what I wrote all those years ago made me more aware of my progress. I see no reason to hide it. I enjoy living a life of love where I can just be an open book to people. That's how we truly learn about each other. Hell, even with these ten, I still feel like there's more I could say, but this is already really fucking long. Sooooo yeah. Make your own list if you feel like it! It feels good!

[jmd303]

Ive decided to write this blog. Not because I want to be heard but because all i want is a release. A healthy release. To be happy. To feel something again and all my heart wants is to never feel alone.

Ill tell my story first. Over 3 months ago my life was perfect. Or in my opinion it was to me. I was powering through my second year of my building design course and had been dating a kind, gentle guy for the last 18 months. He was like no other guy I had dated before and he made me a better woman. More considerate and I stressed less with him. We loved eachother or atleast I thought we did. We never pushed anything on eachother and barely had fights and when we did disagree, the fights never lasted long because we both knew that loving eachother was more of a mission than fighting with eachother.

It was long distance relationship about 1 and a half hours from the CBD of town or 2 hours if from my house. And although it was tough, we made it work. We would drive to one another. Him more so than I because I was contracted to work alot of weekends although, i was determined to make time for him because he was so important to me. His flaws were that of mild selfishness and being a little bit of a know it all. And although those traits are annoying they were always masked beautifully with his charm and large vocabulary that would be able to manipulate any insult or fight in his favor or to be seen as the more mature person in the relationship. He was far from mature and although he was charming…. I always saw through it. That was both a skill and curse of mine. Sometimes I wish I just believed it all and didnt see any of his flaws but we are after all only human. Despite these mild flaws I still loved him no matter what. My heart raced when he looked at me and when he put his arms around me I felt safe and warm.

For a little while I noticed he was having a hard time at work and at home with his family. Mostly because they had made him feel bad for leaving to see me all the time and his sister had not developed a proper healthy social life that she became dependant on him which is understandable as thats what siblings are for. His job also was very demanding and long as he was a draftee for a large design production company. Pushing out floor plans was a mission to managers whereas my ex partner valued quality in work and wanted to ensure a better deal for his clients and for the designs to be structurally sound and worth the money spent. He was a hard worker and that was another trait I loved about him and boasted about with anyone when he was not in my presence. I could see he struggled to keep everyone happy and it put a weight on him but he powered on and all we spoke about was looking forward to everything being simple and being able to come home and kiss eachother and be there for one another. Although we never pushed any ideas of family and living arrangements we gradually fell into the arrangements of house inspections. It was so natural and not pushed and I was feeling more and more content with life.

Approximately 3 weeks before my schooling was coming to an end for the year my ex rang me after work. I was surprised he rang and thought it was gonna be another lovely phone call full of “i miss you” and “cant wait for the school holidays. Finally get more time and family events together”. He told me he was down. Struggling and didnt know what he wanted to do. I was very thrown and said ask over and over what he wanted and how I could help make his situation better. I started shaking when I realised he was leading up to a break up.. I asked him outright if he was breaking up with me…and to my surprise, he was.. He was very apologetic and felt the need to explain that he thought I was the perfect girl just a bad time scenario.. the moment I heard that I felt like such a sad cliche… Like in really bad movies with b grade actors that cried ugly. My heart was absolutely broken and he could not tell me or did not know why he needed to break up.. he just knew he needed time or change and was unsure if the issue was me, him or his current situation with everything else in life. I knew in my heart he just decided I wasnt worth it. I was the girl that just filled his emptyness that had been around since he graduated high school. Struggling to find a girl and then building his ego up when he got what he wanted… or atleast thats how I feel and felt as i heard his empty and unsure excuses.

Although I was angry. I was so soo angry at him part of me still felt so very much in love with him. And still do.. he was and still is not a bad guy deep down… Thats the hardest part of watching someone you love move on. Being inlove with them but, not being with them. You lurk his facebook and hope to get a text message begging to take you back and it never happens. It got to a point where I decided that I had to move on because my heart could not take anymore. 1 month passes and although I had high hopes he still did not want me back but, i maintained busy and looked forward to the future and that was when it happened…

To my shock I learned I fell pregnant to my ex boyfriend. It was not a recent pregnancy. It had already matured to 10 weeks in my belly by this point. The day I used the at home pregnancy test my heart dropped again for the second time. I had cried and screamed, yelling out for my mum and sister in hopes that I was dreaming and that my nightmare hadnt become true. The lonely pregnant spinster that was unloved and depressed. I cried alot and then got mad and I remember clearly thinking “that asshole led me on in our relationship, got me pregnant and left me to pick up the pieces”.

I laid in my bed, tossing and turning deciding what my next step would be. I read up on articles and went to my closest family members for advice and spoke to a counselor within the 24hrs of knowing. All were supportive on either end of the spectrum. Little did alot of people know I had a chemical abortion not long after high school with another ex boyfriend of mine with no other reason other than I was too young and had so much to live for, i gave up my first possible child. And had also gone through a miscarriage but had not known until after I had lost the baby. These life experiences played with my mind alot and I did the math and learned that I would be 6 months off 24 when this baby arrives. So many reasons for and against having this child came to play. Most of the ‘against’ reasons were that of me looking out for my ex boyfriends feelings and future. Funny how he treated me and I still felt like protecting him more than myself and more than my oncoming child. The fact that I still loved him clouded my decision that would be best for my conscious, heart and possibly future. How wrong is that!?

I decided enough was enough. I went to the 10 week ultrasound and there it was. A perfect little baby with a head, two hands and two legs. The baby was actively moving around, sucking its thumb and the moment I saw it I knew to my core I couldn’t give he or she up. I loved it and I didnt even think it was possible as I saw those types of woman as crazy nutjobs just wanting to have babies. I never understood why women could not give up something they had not yet physically seen or kissed goodnight or even built a relationship with…. until now. I knew with some health concerns that I would struggle to carry a child had I continued to delay it as I approached 30 years of age or longer (although it was never a serious concern of mine). The chemical abortion also did a little number on my uterus and if i did another one now  at 10 weeks it would be a more messy abortion and would result in scarring of my uterus tissue which is what the doctor warned me about… I then started to consider other life aspects as I was nearing the end of my design course with 6 months left. My car was large enough and other materialistic objects were not a worry with things like baby showers and government funding. Support was immense from family, friends and even work colleagues. Now the real question. Was I ready? Was i ready to tackle such a massive change in my life? Was I ready to tackle on my career and a child. Knowing full well that it was going to be absolutely hard in life. I wasnt sugar coating anything my head knew it was going to be the biggest game changer in my life. Being a single mum and trying to put my foot in the door in the workplace.

My dad reminded me of something and did not tell me in anyway what he wanted me to do nor did he help me make my mind up. All he did was sit with me and explain that all the women in our family, the mothers and mothers before them were all very strong women. Even the daughters were ones that would never show weakness and were the most hard working and made the most of any situation. Life has always thrown its darts my families way and we always seem to make it through because we are strong people and a strong family unit.

So despite my age, my marital status, life experience and readiness. I made the decision to keep the baby. Not based on those factors specifically but, based on my heart. It had gone through so much thus far that I could not for the life of me get rid of another child and feel later the guilt that is destroying life and apart of myself. The health of my uterus and the risk that I may not have many or no childen later on in life hit me hard. My decision was made up from many factors but ones things for sure, I did it with no one elses heart or future in mind other than my childs and mine. My ex had become a distant thought in my mind it was tough but, it had to be done.

After a couple of days I contacted my ex partner and told him the news. He took it well but, the moment I told him I was keeping it he went into a small panic and kept asking me “why”?!. Why?!.. I was so overwhelmed that I knew my reasons wouldn’t be understood by a man and especially not at that stage as I only just told him what I had planned on doing. Time was the key but, time was something he didnt want to wait for with knowing my reasoning.. Although it clicked in my head, I honestly did not need to explain myself to him. I mean why would I?, it was a decision I made when I was left on my own… looking back, when he was overwhelmed and felt bad for leaving me he too could not tell me his honest to heart reasons except for that he didnt know why and need to figure himself out. I just expected him to respect my decision as I did his when he chose to leave me. I was no crazy ex girlfriend. I was a respectful ex girlfriend and only wanted whats best for him. I figured he would have the decency to do the same. He could not.. It upset him and angered him, naturally. I honestly expected nothing less as it was a huge deal but, he behaved like someone i had never met before. He was no longer the guy I loved. He changed for the worse and became a real jerk. His selfishness amplified and I was made out to be selfish for the making this decision that I felt was important to my heart and body. Apparently that was a selfish thing to do in his eyes.. Its as if he didnt want me to have my health and happiness, he wanted me to do what was best for him despite the fact that I said he didnt need to be physically involved in the childs life. I was in no way tieing him down because I wanted him to be with the baby knowing he loved it and be with me because he knew he loved me. But that was all a dream and a hope at this stage. For now all I wanted was to take care of my child and myself. To be happy and healthy!

His indicated he wants nothing to do with our litte one and wants to travel the world and do things that make him happy. He claims being selfish is not a bad thing but to what extent is that not a bad thing?. With little to no communication efforts from him or his family and I feel as though he will forever regret this decision in life because I plan on raising the best damn kid in the world. I will be there for every Birthday, Christmas , Easter and family holiday. Im gonna show mini me the world and empower this little person so that he or she does not get treated poorly, is respectful and keeps its head held high. ❤