consciousness raised. (trigger warning?)

this is what I was thinking about as I walked to the med center for class on three hours of sleep: One of the reasons I'm a feminist is that feminism is a way of explaining some of the things that happen in our lives. It's easy to think of every good or bad experience as isolated events that affect us individually, but sometimes I'm finding that things are part of a broader pattern. If I'm in a particularly militant mood, the  language is more or less that some things I've gone through are part of the systematic violence against (girls/women/LGBQ people/youth/non-Christians/whatever). But tonight I'm not feeling angry so much as contemplative, and these things make me kind of wistful.

I'm a feminist because it wasn't just me who saw the thin women on TV portrayed as worth loving and the bigger women portrayed as either funny or angry, but always single. It was also not just me who heard the words "fat slob" spoken in their own living rooms about women with BMIs over 19. It was not just my old friend who was beaten up in high school for coming out. For every one person who comes forward about being sexually harassed at work or who resents being whistled at in the street, there are countless more who are silent. My mother was not the only person who had to decide between paying for day care and leaving her job; in fact she was not the only young woman who didn't earn enough money to live on her own after college without a significant other. Years later, I was not the only one whose significant other got away with shit because he was physically larger. And these are just white middle-class troubles.

feminism taught me that none of us are alone. but somewhere in that, it makes us able to unite.

I want to draw little hearts on things in sharpie.

badly metaphor-ed and about growing up

i should no longer be naive enough to believe that you or anyone else can save me
should because this is usually true and i am usually a big girl and i am usually just fine but
sometimes I need to be reminded that I have the oars I can save myself

the next post won't be so miserable, I promise.

I am completely aware that this is stupid and neurotic and irrational but between the following things I feel more than a little alone.

1. I'm getting nothing from my parents but doubt, and really there is enough doubt in my own head from living with them for 17 years.

2. (here we go with the part that makes me sound pathetic) my dog is gone. now really, he's--was--a dog. we put a lot of emotions into those big eyes that maybe aren't there, and people have weird attachments to their childhood pets. but a being that loved me back and was always glad to see me, no matter what, no matter if I messed up or told him his breath was bad or slept in late, is gone. it's not like we could really talk while I was here. but I feel a little lonely without him nonetheless. unconditional love is a lot to ask for from a human.

yes, I am near tears again. whee.

3. everybody I know has their own shit to deal with and their own anxiety and problems and shit they need to take care of. Other people's emotions always rub off on me, especially people I'm close to, and most of the people I'm close to are stressed out about graduating. So I feel caught in this whirlwind of misery and stress and not-knowing that isn't just mine.

it's hard to ask for support. I wasn't raised to do it and it makes me feel a little guilty, since everyone has their own issues this month. But I need a big sign that says "be gentle"

4. everyone needs to stop asking me what I'm doing with the rest of my life

5. i need to get better at answering this question, and at interviews in general.

6. another sign I need to hold up? "needs a hug."
because I don't have all the answers. That's part of the reason that I'm taking a year for pete's sake. I don't know how to plan everything and coordinate things and find answers.

but I'm willing to try. that has to be worth something.

Sunday

All of my dreams are about houses. When I was younger and used to dream, I rarely noticed the scenery; it was always about the people or the feelings. Then there was most of college, when I didn't sleep enough to dream. But now I'm aware of every tile and hallway and storage space.

Unrelatedly, I'm having this weird social anxiety. It's different than the fear I used to have that people didn't like me. I feel...displaced.

deep breaths

more things are going to be done. conversation-type things. good things, I think. okay.

ew. angst.

not enough. not enough. not enough. not enough. not enough I can type it until the letters lose meaning but it will stay, carved into the backs of my hands and the top of each page I write where I can always see it. I am thinking less of the pages in magazines saying lose weight lose lines lose frizz and more of words yelled or muttered in the kitchen and upstairs hallway of my adolescence. 

not enough problems correct

not enough crumbs wiped

not enough hours spent in Grandma's quiet house

not enough muscle 

not enough work hours scheduled, not enough job applications, not enough salary, not enough notice about wanting the car

not enough time spent downstairs, not enough of an answer to questions about tomorrow night, not enough chores and too much sleep

not enough Being a Part of This Family

not enough calories to sustain a monthly cycle.

and then later, not enough sex for the man, not enough time spent studying for the A, not enough credits for a second major, not enough sleep to have dreams or an end to the backaches, not enough research credentials or work experience or cover letter revisions to get hired, not ever enough.

no surprise, really, that now I can't tell which are my thoughts and which are echoes of old words. and less of a surprise that occasionally I wonder whether I listen well enough, whether I ask enough questions or too many, whether I understand enough of what's between the lines of things you say. this is what i really am wondering today, and that up there is why.

scattered good thoughts

Gonna make it.

also, she takes my breath away.

rant!

I felt like shit when I first woke up and rolled back over, and the feeling seems to have stuck. I'm not sure what it is exactly, but it probably has to do with the number of Things going on in my tiny slice of existence. I feel a little trapped and a little alone, like one of those dreams where you're trapped in a fishbowl and you're the only one that realizes you aren't a fish.

Venting commence.
1. Dear person (who is not my girlfriend), leave me the hell alone. You need some damn therapy and not some goddamn senior with her own problems to get you through transition and dealing with your friends being abroad. Latching on is not a good let's-be-friends tactic.

2. Dear best friend, it bothers me more than I'd like to admit that you have become absent and a little self-absorbed. I miss you. I also sort of need you.

3. Dear universe, can I please have my puppy back now? Thanks.

4. where am I going to live?

5. what am I going to do this summer? How am I going to afford Europe?

6. why won't it stop snowing already?

an incoherent way of saying that i like you for yourself

I want to eventually make this into something more coherent, but here's where my mind has been wandering. I don't feel too good about the form it's in at present...

i like hips. mostly i like personalities, but i like freckles and shoulders, separately or together. i like facial expressions and calves and people who fidget.

none of these apply to victoria's secret models.

i like this about myself even though it is a set of things that happened and not a set of things I worked hard for.

keep breathing

I need to go for a drive in the country and blast music and sing until I'm hoarse. I need to lie down in the sun and read fiction for hours. I need to make a necklace and unstring it and make it again. I need, essentially, to lose myself in something.

I'm afraid that if I lie down and cry, I will not be able to get back up. probably irrational, but I'm a little lost for hope at the moment.

(backstory, my dog probably isn't going to make it until I go home on the 30th, and I'm not feeling too good about job prospects in Rochester)

end of a rough day

Maybe I am asking too much of my mother. Maybe it is hypocritical and selfish and it applies too much of that thing where you apply your own standards [feminism] to people who don't believe in them.

but for the love of all that is good, would it kill her to support me, even if my dad doesn't? to be her own person instead of parroting the things he says? to understand that I'm about to do things differently than she did? to [act like she] believe[s] in me?

I'm not even asking for her to defend me against him to his face. just to maybe demonstrate that she's thought about this for herself.

and yeah, I recognize that this is ugly. it's representative of so many conflicts in my household. and it's things that I think are too cruel to say.

jumbled and out of context

I am still trying to forgive myself for this:

Emotionally I am a big spoon, in most of the ways you'd imagine. I listen. I'd hold. But every event from conception to the year I quit soccer has graced me with narrow shoulders and bad circulation against my will, and generally my-arm-around is almost painful.

I'm a collection of recessive traits and weird genes from two families of tall, curvy, strong women (among other things) and sometimes I feel especially out of place in this body. I somehow never learned the language of comforting words or when to hug, maybe because I wasn't listening and maybe because people don't teach you these things when you cried easily and when nature didn't give you childbearin' hips.

I'm not sure why I'm thinking of this tonight. Also, it's hard to be not so good at the things you sometimes want to do.

words

I liked the way she said "yet."

bill watterson is my hero.

this is how i feel sometimes about dirty words like "july 2011" and "graduation".

change in the wind

I am a reasonable person with restraint, dignity, and patience. I'm shy.

...and then i smell your shampoo and my mind is blown

academic panic

why did i possibly think that writing a senior thesis was a good idea?

i feel like i've forgotten everything i've read since August, and I have zero pages of the main document written.

shit.

I am too shy for anything but the following

her words make my heart race.

ovaries? check!

I feel like I should be writing something, because I have a good amount of emotions going on, but I'm feeling strangely writer's block-ed.

I never wanted to kiss anybody so badly as I wanted to kiss her the past few days. Sure, part of it was the buildup, the delay, the mutual hesitance that kept it from happening. But a lot of it was her presence. the energy between us is unlike anything I've ever known. like cotton candy, soft and more pliable than it should be but indelicate and strong. I can't explain it but I feel a physical pull that's entirely new.

I'm also nervous as hell, but I'm aware that it's mostly myself that I'm afraid of.

This is actually how I feel. written a few days ago

Desire I feel you finally, an ache in my hips and a pulse in my chest. Pull me closer but hover in suspense until less-chemical peals work their way to the top

In her presence there is no questioning the meaning of your cries. I promise to listen to you this time, and I swear I'll let your beat enter this electric space

not Over, just Worrisome

I hate this. I hate this from the base of my stomach which is encompassed so nicely by the harsh sound of the word Fucking. The blistering uncertainty, the crushing dread. The sense of the inevitable sudden announcement that they've been mulling over this for ages. Not the you fucked up; I never get that far, but the you chose wrong, the I can't do this, the sorry for letting you try.

It's not even that speech that burns the backs of my eyes. It's the day or the decade before where I know something is wrong but I don't know what and I don't know how to hit the brakes on the oncoming car crash that is my heart.

This ought to be titled Impending Doom because I try to tell myself it's all right and it never is. (and this is what I mean when I say my anxiety is about every other time as well as tonight. I write so it doesn't eat me alive.)