https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvxHPtEsmFc&index=3&list=TLpeq8S1i6LwNK1D2FmPLMg93sSTLV0wpv
This video is one of my favorites. I believe that most people fall in love more than once in their lifetime. Some are just the “ideas” of what being in love really is… we yearn to feel accepted and crave that feeling of Love by different people. Continue reading
Not long after I turned 18, I came home from class one day to find that my mom was home early from work.
I walked in the door to find that she had several bags packed in the kitchen. I asked her what was going on and I got this response:
“Honey, I got fired today. I knew there was a risk of this for a while now, but I didn’t want to worry you. I’m just going to stay at Sean’s house for a week to clear my head. I’ll be back in a week with a plan okay?”
Sean was her boyfriend that lived on the water somewhere near the Eastern Shore. He had cheated on her and broken her heart before, so I wasn’t a fan of him at all, but after watching several boyfriends leave or break her heart, and after watching her struggle constantly with online dating, who was I to stop her from being with him?
Growing up, my mom was constantly dating, and she was very open about it. My whole life had been taking care of her, because it was never in her head that she was supposed to live alone. Sure, she was incredibly strong, but she was also incredibly confused and depressed. She grew up wanting a husband and kids, and while she got the kids, she never got her perfect husband, and my sister and I had to constantly live with her disappointment. My mom went to stay with Sean, and never came back. I got a text message from her that she got married, and she made a life for herself. Since I was 18 I was technically an adult, so technically she did nothing wrong, but you don’t realize just how young you still are when you’re 18 years old.
I didn’t no how to cope with such an enormous empty feeling, so I replaced it with what I learned to do: have a lot of sex.
I went from sleeping with one person, my first love, to several people, in a span of months. It was awful. I had some really great guy friends, and when they showed interest in me, I automatically assumed I needed to sleep with them in order to receive love from them. I’d wake up in the morning feeling filthy, wrong, and quite frankly very unfamiliar with myself. Who was this person that suddenly slept with every man that moved? This wasn’t me! I put these guys before everything, including school and work, and it all came back to haunt me soon enough.
One I ruined my GPA, had no job, and lost nearly all of my guyfriends fro obtaining quite a reputation and getting heartbroken from nearly all of them, I hit rock bottom, and felt the emptiness all over again. None of this was solving any of my problems, but actually just severely avoiding them. I had to find out who I was and what I wanted to do with my life.
I’ve spent this past few years really finding myself, and who I want to be. Sex is faaaarrr in the back of my mind (unless I’m watching a scene of Lord of the Rings with Aragorn), and I’ve dedicated my time to a fresh start. I transferred to UMBC, turned to therapy and acupuncture, started playing the banjo, and have been working as a barista for nearly two years.
I didn’t tell you my story to get sympathy, or to show off who I am today. I just wanted to share the difficult lesson I learned. Sex does not promote your self-esteem, and it doesn’t solve problems. Also, it’s really, really, really okay to hit rock bottom sometimes. As Kurt Vonnegut said: “I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center”
“No Shave November” has become a trend where guys do not shave for the entire month of November, growing their victorious beards and basking in their masculinity. Well guess what boys, I’m participating this year. Continue reading
Recently, I have started going to yoga classes at the RAC twice a week with my roommate and one of my suite mates. After going to a few sessions, I realized how much yoga makes me aware of my body in different ways.
First class: I walk into the room where the class is held, and I see a slew of medium-height, slender girls (and a few guys) with perfectly toned bodies who gracefully rolled out their yoga mats and sat down and stretched their perfectly formed muscles. Continue reading
This past Friday I finally had a date with the guy I really liked for about six months, who also happens to live in Pennsylvania. I don’t fall for people very often..but when I do, I fall HARD. We’re talking send-a-care-package-in-the-mail-just-because-you-have-a-busy-semester kind of hard. And folks, it went horribly on Friday. I’ve been putting the list of things in my head that made this night turn into a similar scenario to the bombing of Pearl Harbor (maybe I’m a bit dramatic..but here it is):
Continue reading
I’ve always been fat. And until a couple of years ago, I was completely unaware that I had permission to love my body exactly the way it was. And so does everyone else. Everything changed when I discovered body positive bloggers on Tumblr who wrote about fatness. When I first read these posts, it was as if a wave of recognition washed over me – I felt validated and like I was no longer alone.
As our fat bodies studies took full swing and we were pushed to think about some examples of how the fat body is devalued, my mind also drifted to the obvious counterpart; the thin body. I couldn’t stop my mind from wandering to a website called The Chive… more specifically, an album called “mind the gap”. What gap you ask? No, not the Gap Store… Not the ominous warning at the London Underground, heeding people to be wary of the gap between the train and platform (yes, that’s a thing)… This gap…
***WARNING: thin bodies, thin pictures, thin-talk***
Sometimes when I look in the mirror I don’t always like what I see. Sometimes my jeans are too tight, sometimes my thighs jiggle too much, sometimes I just feel downright ugly. Continue reading
I’m not going to class today.
I can’t say that it’s because I have a fever, or because I had a dentist appointment, or because anybody died.
I’m not going because of the sensations I feel when we talk about fatness. The sickness and the overwhelming feeling of inadequacy (that has always been pushed in to my mentality from various points in my life) always crop up as we talk about our fat, or not so fat bodies. It’s inevitable, this distinct sucking feeling, as if my gut has become a vacuum, and I can zip myself away like a fancy reusable grocery bag.
We talk critically about the hegemonic institutions that create these body ideals. We complain together, air our grievances, we nod and shake our heads together. We are a good class, a good group of people who can empathize and understand each other’s problems, but that’s not enough to save me from wanting to shrink into my backpack and cry in a bathroom stall.
Unruly Bodies 