I Made Myself Sad Today... On Purpose

So, I'm back. My reasons for leaving for a bit were... I was fighting with a lot of people and it was really depressing me. I just couldn't take one more goddamn fight. So, I stayed pretty quiet for a bit while I sorted through various relationship upheavals and the reality of getting back surgery and being off of work for two months. But let's get to why I'm back today. Let's get to what happened.

So, I didn't really make myself sad "on purpose," more like, I knew that what I was doing was going to lead to a full blown Attack of Sad, but I did it anyway. What I did seems like a seriously dumb thing, but I listened to Johnny Cash's "Hurt" on repeat for like 30 minutes. Like, I was sobbing over making dinner and would start the song over again, and that happened for 30 minutes' worth of music. By the time The Hubby came home, I was almost incoherent.
Now you may be asking yourself a couple of questions: 1) Why the hell did you do that, if you knew it was going to make you cry? and 2) Really? You cried that much over a song? (And Hubby's question, 3) Why don't you turn it off if it makes you this sad, you dork?) I will give a short answer for the second question first, because, basically, to me, if you don't at least tear up at that song, you have a heart of stone and you are dead inside and a stranger to Jesus (kidding about the last part).
The first question is a little more complicated. I have a pretty wide and well documented streak of self-destructiveness in me -- I used to abuse painkillers, I used to cut, I used to do a lot of other stupid shit that was bad for me. Today, I had been flip-flopping in mood all day. I was sad for some friends, I didn't feel really great, and then I walked twice and got dressed and did my makeup and looked AWESOME and went out for a bit, knowing that I was pretty, which is still such a new feeling that it still kind of shocks me to say it. Then, I was making dinner, and I had VH1 on, they were doing the Best Songs of the '00s on, and that kind of thing is nice to have on for background music, etc. while cooking. And they were talking about "Hurt" and Johnny Cash, and I remember my first time hearing that song so vividly that it kind of stopped me in my tracks. When I first heard that song, I was working at a record store in Newport, RI, after having to take some time off from school due to being a suicidal nutjob. I can't remember if it was before or after my major suicide attempt, in September of 2003, which eventually lead to my moving out here to Oklahoma. Now, I want you guys to know, I knew that this song had first been done by Nine Inch Nails but I had not then (nor have I now), heard the original version. I know that's blasphemy to a music-lover, but I just love Cash's version so damn much, it just rips your damn soul out.
But that first line of the song, "I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel," is a good descriptor of what some cutters feel like, what some people who try to drown their pain in other pain are trying to tell themselves. For me, cutting became about control. I wanted to be in control of my pain, so I would hurt myself. But I mentioned my self-destructiveness, I have hurt myself in a lot of ways that weren't inflicted by a razor, although that may be considered the most inexplicable thing I've done. For a lot of things, I think I looked at it as numbing -- I remember saying once when someone suggested I had drank too much that I had not, because I could still feel. And there were a lot of times like that.
I think... I'm still trying to sort out why I made myself sad today. Part of it, I think, was that I may have just needed the release a good cry brings. There have been some major upheavals happening lately, I had surgery, and I may have just needed to let it all out. Maybe I wanted to test myself, to see if I'm really as "healed" and doing better as I've been bragging about. Maybe I just wanted to see if I still feel.
Well, I do. That song brought back every terrible thing I've ever done to myself, every terrible thing I've ever done to others, and made me completely beside myself with grief and worry and guilt and... sincere and utter regret. I know everyone says don't have regrets, but I do. I've made a terrible mess of things on many, many occasions, and those things still weigh on my conscience pretty fucking heavily.
And why didn't I turn it off, when the waterworks and the bad memories started? Well, I guess I have a bit of a martyr complex. Maybe I wanted to punish myself for being happy lately. Maybe I haven't come as far as I thought I have. Maybe I still think that I don't deserve good things.
I don't know. But at least I'm asking the questions, trying to sort this all out. Before I just would have continued sobbing. Before I would have laid down in the kitchen and cried desperately as I wondered what the hell was wrong with me, and that I wanted to go home (as if some magical place that doesn't exist anymore would solve anything). So this process of looking at this stuff logically is a step in the right direction. That's good. Go me.
Now, will someone please come over here and turn this fucking song off?

Pain Makes Me Angry

You know, I'm basically pretty happy with life right now.
I like my job. Me and The Hubby are doing excellent. I love my clothes. I think I'm pretty. I have plans for the future -- a vague one for the career, and a specific one regarding my health, fitness, and general well-being.
But this freaking pain makes me so impatient and grumpy and generally a such a raging bitch, that I wrote a massive email to a friend today, chock full of negativity. Meanwhile, I'm trying to convince him of my woo-woo, flaky belief that if you put positive thoughts in the universe, positive stuff will come back to you. Irony, thy name is Erica.
And I've been listening to Crosby, Stills, and Nash almost all day, which makes me feel very mellow. I don't understand why I was such a Negative Nancy in that email. Oh, right, the friggin pain.
Grrr.
So anyway, I'm going to dinner tonight with the in-laws, including sister-in-law, to celebrate my niece's 5th birthday. (And she, by the way, is the absolute cutest being on the planet.) That will cheer me up. I greatly enjoy my in-laws. They're hilarious and sweet and very, very loving.
So that's my Friday night. Hopefully I will be less of an angerball tomorrow.

Emotions Are Weird

When you really think about it, about the weird-ass things that trigger different emotions, they are some bizarre suckers, aren't they?
For example, I started off the day on a good foot. I still hurt a lot, so I wore my brightest, happiest, most-forgiving top and cardigan combination, did my makeup and giggled relentlessly over how much wearing purple eyeshadow and blue mascara makes me happy. Came in to work determined to Get Stuff Done.
I started listening to the podcast of Krissie, Lani, and Jenny together on Reinventing Fabulous, caught up on the podcasts at Popcorn Dialogues, did lots and lots of library work.
And then I was listening to ReFab podcast again and all of a sudden, I got super, super sad. Like all of a sudden the fact that I haven't been in the physical presence of my bestie in ten years caught up to me. And when I hurt this much, it's just a hop, skip, and a jump from reasonable amounts of sad to I Will Die Alone Depression-Ville.
Here's how it works:
"I wish I had friends like these three. They're so awesome. They really are like sisters. That's so awesome. Well, I have Bestie. Bestie's awesome. I haven't seen Bestie in ten years. I'll probably never get to see her. This pain is never going to go away. I'm going to live the rest of my life in pain and on painkillers just to be able to work. And I'll never be able to go out like a normal person, so I'll never have any other friends. And I'll never be able to travel to see Bestie, so eventually she'll get tired of my whining, and I'll lose her. And I'm a raging bitch when I hurt, and I'm going to hurt for forever, so The Hubby will get sick of me and leave me, and I'll be so stressed that he left me that I'll get to the point where I hurt so bad, I can never leave the bed ever, and I'll blow up to one of those people who weigh like 800 pounds, and then I'll really never have friends, because I'll smell from not being able to move, and then I'll die alone, a smelly gross, fat bitch."
See? It's insane, I swear.
And I try to cheer myself up, but when it gets this looney tunes, it's hard to find anything that will work.
So, in twenty minutes, I'll head home and get a hug from The Hubby who will reassure me that he won't leave me if I become a super-bitchy hurty-pants, and I'll believe him... for a minute or two, before the Crazy starts up again.

The Political is Personal, and I am Pissed

I had decided that I wasn't going to share this on here. I had decided that this was just a little too personal to put out there. I had decided that the issue was entirely too polarizing for me, that I would hurt any future endeavors I ever tried if I put this story up here.
But today, I just feel like everything's lining up. The planets are aligned a certain way. All the winds are blowing the right direction. Or something. Everywhere I turn, this story is coming up. It's important. It needs to be discussed. And so, here's a note I wrote and published on Facebook. Here's my deepest, darkest secret in the world.

Okay. I'm pissed. I'm seventeen levels beyond pissed. I am so freaking enraged that I could attack someone without much of a second thought, and I am not a violent person, typically.
But this has gotten out of hand.
Yesterday, OK Senate bill 1433, aka the Personhood Act, was passed in the Oklahoma Senate. Only 8 people voted against it. The bill is expected to pass the House. So, basically, now my eggs are people.
Seriously? That's like saying... that my eggs are people. How freaking insane and ludicrous is that? Extremely.
And also yesterday, the GOP prevented a woman from giving testimony about birth control, which lead to an all-male panel. About birth control. For real. Now, I'm not saying that men aren't invested in what happens to women in regards to birth control, but goddammit, they're hardly "qualified" to speak about it -- which is why they refused a female witness. She wasn't qualified. Guess what, assholes, she has a uterus, so she's quite a bit more qualified than you are.
It's when we're talking about stuff like this when I do start to perhaps hate men a bit. Because men are so often telling women what to do with their bodies and their fertility, without any knowledge of or experience with what it means to be female. That shit pisses me off.
The thing is, men can walk away at any point in the event of a pregnancy. Would he be a total jackass and a piece of shit and would most men agree with that? Sure. But he can. He can walk away and never look back. That's why women demand so much in terms of child support money, because that's the only way to kind of keep things fair. But even then, it's not really fair. (And some guys get completely shafted in terms of child support, I know. Just roll with me for a bit.) It's still the woman who has to carry the child, give birth, and then make the decision to keep the child, put it up for adoption, whatever. If she chooses to keep and raise the child, then that's her life for the rest of her life. And at any moment, a man can just walk away and leave her stranded. That's why birth control is a woman's issue. Because it is women's lives that are really affected.
Women and children are consistently at the bottom of the economic ladder. The largest demographic below the poverty line is single-parent women and their children. So when people complain about welfare, or other government assistance programs, most of the people that are getting help from those programs are women and children. If you want to get rid of the programs, then you have to make comprehensive sex education a priority everywhere and you have to make birth control accessible to everyone. To everyone. In every neighborhood. You don't like abortions? Then make sure that all women everywhere have access to birth control. And access to birth control that they are in control of, like the pill. Not condoms, because you're still dependent on the man. With the pill, the woman is completely in control.
And while we're on the subject. Let's talk about control. That's what all of this is really about, after all. People can tell me that they're "pro-life" until they are blue in the face, but I will never acknowledge that. I can't. Because it's not about "life," it's about control.
The pro-choice movement is all about giving women complete and total autonomy over her own body. She can give birth as much as she wants. She can never give birth. It is all the individual woman's choice and no one else should have the power to make that decision for her. The "pro-life" or anti-choice movement, is about limiting women's control of their bodies. Some refuse any use of contraceptives. Others say that it's only abortion that's wrong. Others waffle around in the middle and say that they dislike abortion for birth control, but that they think abortion is okay in cases of rape and incest.
There is a very, very long history of women's bodies being used by whoever is in power at the time. For example, both Hitler and Stalin made rules regarding women's fertility. They were on opposite ends of the spectrum -- Hitler wanted all women to give birth to lots of pretty white German boy babies and Stalin wanted women to be basically sterile, and state-sanctioned abortion was a big deal -- but both of them decided that women's fertility were tools for their ideological ends.
And that's bullshit. My body and my fertility and whatever I decide to do with it is not, in any way, something to support an ideology or a government or any belief system whatsoever. My body and my fertility is mine. And I truly, truly believe that until other women make these same kinds of statements, we'll never really be equal.
So, anyway. Why do I care? Because I'm just some smart-assed liberal bitch who hates men?
Nope.
Be wary, the political is about to get personal.
I've talked about my depression and my history of being suicidal in other places. So, you know about that. Well, my freshman year of college (my first college, which shows how special all that was), I got pregnant. It was a bad deal. I was already downing bottles of pills on a fairly regular basis in an attempt to either kill myself or drown myself in chemicals. I was 19 and I'd never heard of Planned Parenthood, and I don't even know if there was one in Wisconsin. I didn't have a lot of money, so some friends from my dorm went around and collected money from the college's Womyn's Group, and I went to Madison and had an abortion. Well, it didn't go quite that smoothly. There was a lot of agonizing. When I first found out, I was stunned. You see, I had fainted. And my boyfriend at the time was really worried that I had a concussion, so he took me to the hospital. I wasn't eating a lot, so we thought that that was what has caused the fainting, but the hospital did a pregnancy test, hooked me up to EKG and we waited. Then a doctor walked in said, "You're pregnant. You need to stop smoking and start taking prenatal vitamins." And he walked out. That was it. He just walked out.
I, of course, lost my goddamn mind. I was screaming. I was crying. I threw my shoes. I started jerking the EKG thingies off of my chest, desperate to just the fuck out of there. My boyfriend at the time hugged me and told me that we'd "do anything you want to do." This is important, because he was uber-Catholic. I walked around like a zombie for a couple of days, completely unable to process what was happening. I had a professor who had discussed her abortion in class (we were reading Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants), and so I went to her and we chain smoked and I looked at it from every angle. There were two things that I knew about myself for certain. 1) I could not ever give up a kid, the second I saw the baby's face I would lose it and not be able to give it up. 2) I was in no way healthy enough to be a parent. I was trying to kill myself almost every week. And so, I went to Madison and had an abortion.
It was terrible. But when it was over, I was so relieved I can't even explain it to you. It was like this gigantic rock had been pressing on me, and then once the procedure was over, the rock exploded into tiny little pieces and I was suddenly free.
And about two weeks later, I was watching an episode of The Cosby Show (random, I know), where this older couple unexpectedly found out they were pregnant and they were so, so happy. And that. That was when the guilt hit.
That was exactly ten years ago. Yep, this is one of the reasons why I hate Valentine's Day.
So anyway, that happened. And for nine years, I've been on and off various medications to keep my crazy under some semblance of control. But I started cutting and did a brief stint in a psych ward. When I look back on the last ten years and see that I am *just now* getting myself under control, that I am *just now* learning how to love myself, I can't say that I made the wrong decision. Do I regret it? Yes. I regret the fact that it happened. But I know that I made the best decision. And so this year, I was finally able to look at the whole thing and say, I think I'm okay with what happened. I did the best I could.
In fact, my crazy has been such a big deal, that it still affects my decisions about my body. About four years ago, I was seeing a therapist who told me that I should probably never have kids. Because with my history of suicidal thoughts, depression, and bipolar disorder, postpartum depression would be an extremely significant risk -- and I don't want to be one of those moms on TV who've drowned their kids. So, I went on Mirena, a 5-year IUD, for my birth control, because no one would have tied the tubes on a 25-year-old. I've got a year left on it, and I need to start really thinking about my future and what I'm willing to risk and what I want to do about having kids.
So, knowing all of this, would anyone sit there and tell me at 19 that no, I had to have that baby? Well, maybe not. Although there are some who may have, just because there are some people who are so dogmatic that they can't see through the rhetoric to any one individual's story. But there are a lot of people who would say that I was justified in making that decision, that yes, abortion was the right choice in that instance.
So here's my point. When you can admit to the fact that there are some circumstances in which abortion makes sense, when that's the best decision to make in a shitty situation, then how can you ever start casting stones? Are you going to sit there and ask each and every woman why she's having the procedure? Who gets to decide who's worthy of one and who's not? I'm sure there are some sanctimonious bastards around who would have no problem being the one to make that kind of judgment call, but I'm sure most of us can see the problem. That no one gets to sit and ask those questions. Because it's not our business. And therefore, maybe we should shut up about who deserves the opportunity to have an abortion and who doesn't, because how do we know what the circumstances really are? How we know who's really *deserving*? And just accept that abortion happens. It's not pretty. It's not nice. But I can guarantee you that it is rarely, if ever, entered into lightly. We've thought about it; we've thought about it long and hard and often and made a decision. That is our right. It is our right to choose what to do with our bodies. It is our right to demand that it's nobody's freaking business what we do with our bodies.
So. If you don't like abortion, and I don't blame you, then please do the responsible thing. Demand that all kids get accurate information about sex and preventing pregnancies. Demand that all women everywhere get access to birth control that they are in control of. Don't start talking to me about how cheap condoms are. Don't start talking to me about how people should be more responsible and shouldn't have sex if they can't handle the consequences. Don't do it. Because you're full of shit. There are men who will not wear a condom. There are men who don't give a shit about consent. If you want to get rid of abortion, then start handing out the Pill, start demanding that all women everywhere have access to it. Start being pro-life and start looking out for the lives that are being lived right this moment.
And, by the way, my eggs are not people.

Roid rage?

So, back when I saw the neurosurgeon's PA, he put me on a steroid to help with my inflammation. An apparently strong steroid.
I have been losing-my-mind angry all freaking day today. Partly that's because a lot of shit has pissed me off, but even still. If someone had said something weird to me, I may have attacked someone. For real.
I've also been eating myself out of house and home, which I didn't realize was happening until I woke up at 2 this morning. To eat. 2 sandwiches. Oh yeah.
So now, I'm all guilty about not eating well, and eating too much, and being blindingly furious at freaking EVERYONE.
Sorry. *forced grin*
Anyway, so yeah. 'Roid rage? Apparently that's a thing.

Slushy Brains and Valentine's

So, I think I've figured out how to describe this weird amount of non-functional I've been going through. It's like, my body is working and doing something, and my brain is off in the ether. And then my brain realizes that my body is doing stuff without it, and then there's this insanely long lag time for my brain to catch up with my body. I have no idea what's causing it. I only know that it's happening and that I really kind of desperately want to sleep for a week.
Anyway, today is 2/14. This is a bad anniversary for me, so I try to pretend that it doesn't exist, but resistance is futile. Luckily I'm not insanely sad this year. Last year I think I cried all day. So there's progress. At least slushy, nonfunctional brains aren't completely embarassing at work.
Because of this anniversary, I don't really get into the whole Valentine's thing. But regardless of the anniversary, the whole idea of this holiday annoys the crap out of me.
Why is *this* the day to show the ones you love that you love them? Why don't you do that every day?
The Hubby asked me what I wanted to do this year, and I was like, "You know, I'd rather have a normal day than anything else. Because it's the little everyday things that show that you love someone." And I firmly believe that. Hubby could buy me ropes of diamonds and buckets of roses and tons of chocolate, and it wouldn't mean as much as emailing Jenny Crusie about signing a book for me. It wouldn't mean as much as the two of us cooking together. It wouldn't mean as much as him taking me to get new boots before the Superbowl. Those are the things that really matter. Those are the things that show someone that you love them.
Don't get me wrong. I love chocolate, jewelry, and flowers as much as the next girly girl (although I don't like any of the standard things, for example, I hate fancy jewelry and diamonds and crap like that). I wouldn't be mad if I got any of those things.
However, I just don't think those things are important, or even meaningful or valuable, as tokens of affection.
This is just me, though. And I maybe clinically brain dead right now. So take that for what it's worth.
And have a very happy day showing your loved ones that you love them.

Like Swimming in Concrete

Today was another very weird day. I just feel kind of enveloped in wool. Nothing's really connecting. Although today I think I did it to myself.
Last night we got some snow, the first snow of the whole winter, actually. And it was coming down and I was getting really tense and stressed out by the whole thing.
Why, you ask?
Because Erica is a no-walking-in-the-slick-stuff ass. Also, no-driving-in-the-slick-stuff. I tend to slip and fall a lot in the winter when there's "weather," and I cannot stand driving in it. I'm honest enough with myself to know that I'm not that great of a driver, although I'm okay and I've never been in an accident, but realizing my limitations gets me very stressed out about winter conditions.
So I couldn't get to sleep last night until absurdly late, and then I woke up this morning absurdly early, just because I was terrified and wanted to give myself a crapton of time to get stuff done. And I made it to work fine, an hour and change earlier than the library opened today, and all was well.
Except that that damn tension and stress I'd managed to create was swirling all around me and settled quite firmly into a knot the size of my fist in the middle of my back. God damn my back. So now I'm tired as hell, stressed out, and in massive amounts of pain. So I decided the one thing that I could control was the pain, and took an extra painkiller.
It didn't really do a thing for the pain, but the next thing I know, I'm walking around like some kind of zombie. Fun. Note to self: don't do that again.
I actually did manage to get some things done at work today. It was like swimming in concrete, but I did things.
I also sent in a, what I thought anyway, pretty awesome question for the DBSA (Dear Bitches, Smart Authors) podcast. Yay me! I'm contributing. Haha.
But in general, I've been pretty weirdly useless today. And I'm over it. I'm over my back, too.
Anyway. Yeah, I got nothing.

Much Rambling

It's been a lovely chill day. I've slept a lot, read some stuff, done a little bit of laundry. The Hubby's out with buddies, and I am watching a movie that the Hubby would never want to watch, and I found problematic the first time I saw it.
The movie, folks, is He's Just Not That Into You.
For one thing, I hate Bradley Cooper's character in this movie with a seething, roiling passion. He is such a complete jerkwad. Ugh. He makes me want to puke.
Then there's the relationship between Ginnifer Godwin and Justin Long. The first time I saw this movie I was so happy that there was a relationship between a man and a woman that was based in friendship, not romance. But when I watched their relationship develop, I admit I had some crazy secret romantic streak and I was hoping that they would get together. And I was horrified when she came on to him and he rejected her -- because, obviously he did really care about her. But then he comes back for her and tells that he does love her, and then I was totally disgusted, because of course, they had to make it romantic. They had to have some kind of fairy tale ending, even though the whole point of the movie is to show that romantic expectations are screwed up and unrealistic and can completely damage your relationships.
So, I'm watching it again, to see how it feels this time around.
I'm still completely hating Bradley Cooper's character. I'm hurting for Jennifer Connelly's character. I'm hurting for Jennifer Aniston's character. I'm really debating turning the channel.
My latest book, another one by Eloisa James, is a cross-dressing story, which sometimes bothers me. To make the romance work, the hero has to be attracted to the heroine dressed as a male, which leads to a bunch of questioning of one's sexuality, only to be profoundly relieved when the heroine is revealed to be a woman. It just seems to come across a bit homophobic, which is, of course, to be expected of a character living the 1780s, but it still bothers me a little bit. So I've been having some trouble getting into this one.
I'm a teeny bit jealous of The Hubby going out with friends, since with all of my back stuff I can't really do much, but I'm trying not to be one of Those Wives.
Have I mentioned how much I love Drew Barrymore? I love Drew Barrymore. I adore her. She's totally adorable. She's smart. She's funny. She's completely amazing and I love her with every fiber of my body.
Yeah, my brain is not organized right now. I apologize.
Okay, back to watching this movie, or reading my book, or hating Bradley Cooper.

Grouchitude and Fabulousness

So, I've been pissy all day. I got the only decent night's sleep of the week last night, and I was extremely bitter to have to wake up and do stuff today. Plus, my stomach has been hurting a lot, which is making me hunch over, which is making my back hurt, which is making me, quite possible, the single biggest grump on the planet. I came home and just started bitching all over the place. Poor Hubby.
However, The Hubby knows me, and knows what's going on with me. So when I mentioned that my tummy was killing me, he was like, "Well, let's go get you a salad." So we went to a buffet place where I could make myself a massive salad, get a plain baked sweet potato, and a piece of rotisserie chicken and I am feeling much, much better. That's a good Hubby. I don't know why I don't eat like that all the time, instead of all the crap I usually eat, especially knowing that eating crap makes me feel terrible. Ugh, it's dumb.
Oh well.
Anyway, I'm about to take some painkillers and curl up with the Eloisa James book I'm about to finish, so hopefully I'll be feeling much more personable tomorrow. We'll see. There's been a lot of stress this week. It was bound to catch up with me at some point.
So, to make you all feel like you're getting something good, go check out Reinventing Fabulous (http://reinventingfabulous.com/). The posts from the 7th until today have been hilarious and wonderful, and sure to inspire giggling and big giant smiles. Which is what I want you all to be doing (and loving yourselves, by the way!), while I'm getting over my massive grouchitude. So go there and smile and giggle and have a wonderful Friday night.

On Audience and My Navel

Oh my god. I had this excellent post and it all just vanished. Sigh. Damn it.
Anyway, let's try this again.
Jenny Crusie posted this (http://www.arghink.com/2012/02/09/blog-ramble/) today, and it's been making me think. It's been making me think a lot, actually.
You see, I am apparently running this blog all kinds of wrong. Instead of asking "Why would people want to read this?", I'm saying, "I have stuff I want to say." Now granted, I created this blog as a place for me to figure out what I want out of life, to try to achieve some direction and maturity before I turn 30, so it's mostly a lot of navel-gazing and me, me, me, me, me. But I have on occasion addressed other people's concerns about the tone of the blog, and then I addressed concerns that I thought my defense of the tone brought up. But for the most part, I'm just rambling away about something that's all about me and my pretty, pretty navel, and probably has zero affect or interest for anyone else.
Also, I never expected to attract huge numbers here. I knew that this was going to be for me, so I didn't think too many people would be too interested in what I had to say. (I'm actually shocked that I've heard from as many people as I have, and that all of them have been male.) I did try to keep it somewhat apolitical, because since this was a place for self-reflection, I didn't want to get into the kind of debates that political topics can become. I have no problem with them in other spaces, but I didn't feel like it was right for what I was trying to do here. See, not a lot of concern for my audience here. Sorry.
Anyway, I'm thinking about this more seriously than I may have before because I've been considering starting another blog -- one dedicated to reviewing books that I'm reading. And while Journey to Thirty is purely for me and my sorting myself out, I would want this reviewing site to be a little more inclusive to others, because I would like it to eventually do something for me... like show authors that I understand how stories work and that I could be paid to edit their e-books for them... So, for that project I need to think more about audience than I have been, and that's going to be an interesting thought experiment.
Anyway, I'm not starting it anytime soon, so I have plenty of time to try to work out all the kinks and to try to come at it from the right side, like Jenny suggests in her ramble.
Speaking of this blog and its purpose, I feel like it's really been doing some good. I feel like I'm starting to focus a little more clearly on what I want to do. I always knew I loved reading and writing, but I don't think I ever really understood just how much story meant to me. Now I know that I'm eventually going to write my novel, and the others floating in my head, regardless of what happens with them. They can get published or not, but I will write them because I must. I know that I am passionate about stories and I will defend them to the death, and talk about the books I've loved, and the books that fell down. So reviewing is looking really wonderful -- and it's something I've considered doing before, so it's not totally out of the blue. But all of these things are something that's going to happen because they are things I love doing. They can wind up being my career one day, or I can go to library school and become The Cataloging Goddess of All Time, which I would also enjoy, but I will still read and write and discuss books.
And for not even a month into this project, the fact that I found these truths out already is pretty exciting and encouraging. Who knows what else could happen?

Respect

Okay, so I got into a huge fight today with someone pretty important, a member of an extended family of sorts. This fight was about political stuff on Facebook.
Now, my general policy is that if someone posts something that I disagree with, I ignore it or mumble something under my breath. But I never, ever go on to someone's personal page and tell them that they're wrong, or anything like that. For the most part, they seem to do the same for me.
But there are a couple of people who feel the need to post sarcastic, antagonistic, or otherwise disrespectful comments on things that I post. I may argue with them for a bit, but for the most part, I try to ignore them because I feel like they're deliberately baiting me.
Today, a person attacked one of my friends because of a comment my friend had on a post of mine. And I couldn't take it. This person's comments lately had been increasingly anatognistic, and I was getting fed up. So I sent a message saying (to put it succinctly), "Listen, you can disagree with me all you want, but please don't come on my page and attack my beliefs or my friends. Please show me some respect." And this person started in on me how I was completely disrespecting America and a horrible person, and I didn't respect anyone else's opinion, and so on.
Now, this annoys me. Because clearly I do respect other people's opinions, as I never attack anyone else's posts. I have been sorely tempted, but I never do, because that's freaking rude.
Plus, the whole point of this country is that we have the ability, the responsibility even, to dissent when we feel our government is wrong. Look at the Declaration of Independence.
And the simple fact of the matter is, that during this contentious period of political history, everyone is dissenting. Everyone feels wronged by our government. Some people hate the things Obama has done, some people hate the things that the Congress has done or is trying to do, some people hate other things. That's the one commonality we all have, across all divisions of ideology, class, race, gender, and sexual orientation -- we all feel like we have been wronged by our government.
I don't mind having a conversation with someone of opposing beliefs. I have no problem with that at all, and have frequently found myself changing my mind about something due to something that they said. But the way to have a conversation is not to attack someone and say that they're stupid and wrong for believing what they do. That is disrespectful.
Needless to say, the fight with this particular person didn't end well. I don't know what the future holds. On one hand, I feel terrible that I kind of started this argument. But on the other hand, I feel good that I loved and respected myself enough to demand that I be treated well. That's big progress for me.
So, I welcome respectful discussions. Did I go too far? Did I mess up? Let me know. Respectfully, please.

A Defense. Or, I Swear I Don't Hate Men

Okay, what I'm about to discuss has been swirling around my head all day, so I have a lot, a lot of thoughts and most of them are not really organized. So, when this starts to ramble, please just hang in there. I have a point.
(deep breath.)
So, it has been brought to my attention that my "central theme" on here seems to be that I hate men. I've had the Fem-Nazi, man-hater epithets thrown my way before, but this was the first time I ever took the phrase seriously. This is because the friend who told me about it told me to brace myself before he said it, because he knew I wasn't going to like hearing it, because he knows that I don't actually hate men.
So I did a little reading on here in the wee hours of the morning and while I never say "All men are scum who should be sent to a fiery death," I say things like "Women suffer under a lot of shoulds" and "The romance genre is ridiculed because its created by and for women and promotes a healthy female sexuality," which could be read, especially by someone who's read my more virulent Facebook posts, as "This happens because all men are scum and should be sent to a fiery death." And therefore, I find myself at a weird point. I certainly don't hate Men, but I certainly don't want to be one of those male apologists who thinks Eve Ensler is the devil. So, what to do? Well, this is my best attempt to clarify my position on feminism, men, and why I write about women's issues the way that I do.
I am a feminist. I am not ashamed of the descriptor. I don't think that the word translates to "some crazy woman who doesn't shave, thinks all men are the devil, and saves her menstrual blood in a jar in the fridge." Nope. I am a feminist because, quite simply, I believe in women's rights. I believe a woman should have every right a man has. I believe that the presence or absence of a Y chromosome has nothing to do with what a person can achieve in this world. I idolized Susan B. Anthony as a second grader. When I found out who Gloria Steinem is, I idolized her. When I found out that I am extremely distantly related to Lucy Stone, another first wave feminist leader, I was ecstatic.
But look at me. I wear makeup and I love it. I'm married, and I even took my husband's name (although, to be honest, I was planning on hyphenating and then wrote "just Moore" at the last minute -- I do like it though, it sounds very literary). I am not your stereotypical "bra-burner."
Because I love men. I really do. I love all humanity (just not when I'm driving).
There have been a few men who have done some seriously shitty things to me. I've been raped, I've been hit because I wouldn't have sex, I've been treated like a whore, I've been mocked and harrassed and told that I wasn't pretty enough to date, or that I was pretty only so long as I was thought to be sexually available to them, and then I was a bitch and so have you. I have a complex about never being good enough because of how some men in my life treated me. There were a group of guys in my first high school who decided for some reason that I was a lesbian and made my life a living hell for two years, until I switched schools. And so on.
But just like I think it's wrong to judge one ethnic or religious group by the actions of a few people, I don't judge all Men and say that they're all rapists or abusers. I know that that's not right. There are a ton of men in the world who would never think of raping someone, who would never think of hitting their girlfriend, wife, or lover. I know that.
And let's face it, men don't have a monopoly on misogyny. Not by a long shot. Some of the most hateful, horrible, vitriol-spewing women-haters in the world are women. Phyllis Schafly, I'm looking at you.
In fact, god love her, my whole complex about being too fat and not pretty came from some well-intentioned but poorly executed statements from my mom. When I was in elementary school, I wanted to take ballet, and she told me I was too big for ballet. She meant tall because she thought dancers were short, but my brain took "too big" and made it into "too fat," and I've had a complicated relationship with my weight and food ever since. When I was ten, I told her I wanted to be an actress and a writer. And she asked, "Wouldn't it be better if you were a writer? Something that didn't focus on your appearance." Now, my mom loves me and my brother more than anything in the world. She never meant to imply that I wasn't pretty. What she was hoping for, was that I wouldn't caught up into caring about my looks and deriving all of my self-worth from appearance. But my brain said that she meant I wasn't pretty, and then the universe seemed to hammer that message home for years, and of course, I became obsessed with how I looked.
Women have done terrible things to women. Women have done terrible things to men. That is true. A wealthy white woman in the antebellum period definitely had it better than a black man. But a black man had it better than a black woman. And the white woman was still basically property, in a lot of instances.
Race, class, and gender all intersect and someone's experience isn't limited to just one of those factors. So, when I post things about women having a rough time, I never mean to imply that all women have it worse than all men all of the time. Not in the slightest. My world is seen through a lens of a roughly middle class, college-educated white girl. I don't always describe it in those terms, because that's a lot of descriptors to put on something, but I generalize and speak in broad strokes about the female experience, as I have seen and felt it to be.
So when I talk about all the shoulds placed on women, I don't mean to imply that there isn't a list a mile long of shoulds for men. There is. Definitely. And in a weird way, I think it's harder for men sometimes, because while the expectations of what women should be have been largely consistent through the years, the expectations for men are constantly shifting :
A man should be a "manly man" who has no feelings, drinks whiskey and eats red meat for every meal, as raw as possible because he's a Man. A man can't be a singer and dancer and not be thought "less than a man" (which does double-duty as also a horrible insult to gay men). A man can write poetry about daffodils. Real men don't write poetry. Men should be concerned about their appearance. Men should roll around in dirt all day.
And so on and so forth. It's ridiculous, really.
So, why didn't I acknowledge the shoulds placed on men? Well, for starters, I never imagined more than one guy would ever read my blog, and the one that I knew was reading it knows that I'm a feminist and that's how I see the world. Also, I'm not a man. I can comment on what I see portrayed on TV and say that men are getting the same ridiculous body-image messages women have been getting for years. I can say that all these Superman truck ads, and the Dr. Pepper 10 ad, are all serving this image that a "real man" is an action hero, and, above all Not Female, and that is a very limited view of masculinity and misogynistic at the same time. But, since I am not a man, I don't feel those pressures every day. I don't know what those standards do a man's sense of self worth. I'm a woman, so I talk about how women feel. And I don't even talk about how all women feel. Just what I've seen and experienced.
So. There. I don't hate men. How'd I do?

A Literate Rant

I have admitted I was a pretty big snob about literature. I either read literary fiction, some kind of nonfiction (usually histories or historical biographies), or YA, where I would indulge my passion for fantasy and love stories. I mocked my mom and grandma for reading romances. Romances were dumb, I sniffed, pointing my little elitist nose up in the air.
And then something changed.
I left my first college because I was suicidal and I realized that if I stayed there, one of my attempts would probably wind up being successful. So I moved home for awhile. When I'm deep in Depression Mode, I tend to stay up all night and sleep all day. One night, I had nothing to read and I was bored, so I went down to our basement where a lot of my mom's books were kept. I dug around for awhile, looking for something that wasn't a "romance." I found Fast Women by Jennifer Crusie, with an innocuous cover with a white teacup and a red lipstick stain. It didn't look like a romance, so I read the back cover and the book sounded pretty interesting. So, I took it upstairs to read.
I devoured it. It was smart, funny, and interesting. I kept going back down to my mom's books in the basement, finding more titles by Jenny Crusie -- all of them without the cheesy bodice-ripper-looking covers that made me cringe. But every one of the stories were smart and funny, I frequently would laugh out loud reading, and they were sexy without being embarassing or corny. There were no throbbing rods, no heaving bosoms. I was hooked, so I started hunting bookstores for more of her books. At some point I realized that her books were considered romances, but I argued that they weren't "real" romances, they were romances for smart women.
One night my depression kind of exploded and I tried to kill myself. My dad took me to the hospital and I was admitted in the psych ward for the night. When I got out, my parents took me to my mom's apartment to stay, and I promptly showered and curled up with one of my favorite Crusie's, Welcome to Temptation. I started to laugh reading some of the funny dialogue, and it was so amazingly comforting to be able to go to this lovely world Crusie had created.
So eventually, I started losing my snobbery. I started reading other romances. Mostly they were paranormals and I went through a phase where I read every romantic suspense Mariah Stewart had written. I have finally dove into the historical pool and I have found some seriously awesome stuff. I started to lose my embarassment of being seen in the romance aisle of the bookstore, I have started to stop stressing if a great book has some completely ridiculous cover.
This process has been hastened by my realization that "literary fiction" is not always better written, or smarter, than romances.
Michael Ondaatje used to be one of my favorite authors. I still love The English Patient and Anil's Ghost, they are excellent stories, written in a fantastic, interesting style. However, I'm kind of over worshipping Ondaatje as a writer. A couple of years ago, I saw that he had a new book out -- Divisadero. It was about these two sisters who lived on a farm or a ranch. One of the sisters had a limp, the other sister had a sexual relationship with the young man who worked for them -- until one night, the father busts in and finds the lovers and all hell breaks loose.
That's the first section of the book. It was great stuff.
The second section started with the young man from the farm/ranch, older now, and he's doing something sketchy involving a poker game. I never really understood if he was cheating cheating or if he was counting cards or what, but he won a game and then he and his group all had to scatter for awhile. Then the sister with the limp runs into him. Then somebody wants him to play poker for them, and he refuses, and they drug him and beat the shit out of him, and the sister with the limp is trying to nurse him back to health. Then the third section starts. It starts off with the story of the other sister, who's living in France, in some guy's house, who she is studying and writing about. This sister is also sleeping with some Gypsy guy. And then the story veers off into the Gypsy guy's past, and then it may go into the story of the guy the sister is writing about. And then it ends.
And I threw the book at the wall.
I mean, seriously, what the hell?! How you end a book and not finish the freaking story? What happened to the ranch-hand guy? Did the sister with the limp ever tell her other sister about seeing the guy again? Did the sister finish her book? What. The. Hell?
Now, not all romances are perfect. Far from it. But I have never read a romance that just ditched the major characters halfway through the book. But, yet, romances get zero respect, and anything considered "literary fiction" is immediately deemed to be better than anything genre fiction -- and romances are considered the bottom of the barrel of genre fiction.
It's such a goddamned crock of shit.
There are a lot of theories about why this has happened to romance: Because romances are made by and for women, they are "less than." Because romances focus on emotions, relationships, and sex that is positive and not degrading to anyone. Because romances focus on the happiness -- the happily ever after of the couple -- when, basically, happiness is not cool, not valued.
I think it is because of these things that romances should be valued and appreciated. In a world that devalues women and in a society that sees women as varying degrees of whore, it's important to see women in healthy relationships, where female sexuality is healthy, important, and natural. It's empowering to hear women's voices. I love that.
For more on how important romances are, check out Beyond Heaving Bosoms : The Smart Bitches Guide to Romance Novels (Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan) and Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels (Sarah Wendell), and the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books website: http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/.