It really, really pisses me off when I am forced to defend something I detest, but the latest slew of negative comments, stories, Twitter twats, and overall comments about Kim Kardashian's pregnancy weight has given me great concern.
The Kardashians are a pox on our society, and I can't stand them. I hate that this bitch got famous for a sex tape, contributes zero to society, and that everyone loves her. I don't get it at all. However, no matter how disgusted I am by her, her vacuous sisters, her pimp of a mother, and the whole family, in general, with the slight exception of Bruce Jenner, I think it is really unfair to call her out on her weight gain during pregnancy.
Perhaps there is a fundamental misunderstanding of pregnancy weight gain. Kim appeals to a younger demographic who, maybe, haven't had the experience of being pregnant yet. There are also a fair amount of guys chiming in on the issue, as well. In lieu of a presumed societal ignorance regarding pregnancy weight, let me break it down for you.
Pregnancy weight is like no other kind of weight gain, in that, there is not a tremendous amount of control over it. Yes, you can try to diet and stick to an eating program, but my experience was that the weight comes whether you like it or not. Also, all women have different pregnancies. Kim's younger sister didn't get too large with her pregnancy, but she is a different person, and just like fingerprints or vaginas, not only is every pregnant person different, but every pregnancy is different.
One of the rag magazines claimed that Kim's eating was out of control. Clearly this was written by someone who has never experienced pregnancy hunger. With regular hunger, even if you're starving, you can usually hold out for a little while until you finish a project or arrive at the place you want to eat. No go with pregnancy. When you get hungry when you are pregnant, you need to eat STAT! There is no waiting, there is no finishing that project, food needs to find its way into your mouth immediately. The same goes for being thirsty and using the bathroom. That little critter stewing in your uterus wants what it wants when it wants it, which is the universe's way of giving you a preview of what your life is going to look like once said critter is on the outside.
It used to be that celebrity pregnancy weight was off limits. It was only a few years ago that Kate Hudson got big as a house while she was carrying her children, and none of the tabloids said a word. She blew it off by telling anyone with an absolute that she was pregnant, so fuck off. As someone whose body resembled an inflatable raft while pregnant, I respected her attitude.
This latest trend of fat shaming the pregnant is really disturbing on many levels. First off, women and girls are constantly inundated with the very clear message that fat is ugly, fat is unacceptable, you're not a good person if you are fat, and if you are fat, you have a huge moral failing and a fundamental flaw that makes you an unworthy person. To impose those negative messages on women who are pregnant will lead to, whether conscious or unconscious, unhealthy choices during pregnancy. I fear the day when pregnant women are being rushed into emergency rooms to deliver malnourished babies, because they insisted on keeping themselves on a strict, deprivation diet during their pregnancy to avoid gaining weight.
Second, what kind of message does this send to young girls? My 9-year-old daughter came to me the other day and asked me if she should go on a diet. Rachael is a very healthy weight, and an active girl. She is at that point in development where she will start bulking up ahead of puberty. It is a normal process in the development of a body, but all she can see is that she is not as skinny as some of her classmates.
In many ways, I blame myself for her asking this question. Years of battling my own weight, along with trying every diet ever invented, has likely seeped into her young mind. As of late, I've made the concerted effort to frame exercise as something you do to be healthy, and instead of talking about dieting, I discuss healthy food choices with her. A whole box of cookies, not healthy, but two cookies are okay.
In the epic battle of women vs. the fat shaming media, women need to get a little more militant. Don't buy those magazines that fat shame women, demand normal size models and mannequins at your favorite retail locations and sites, and in the home, talk about healthy choices instead of diets. This is not a problem that will go away when Kim hires a personal trainer and nearly kills herself, post-pregnancy, to get back to her fighting weight. However, it is an issue that we need to get more demanding about. Wouldn't it be nice to live, and raise daughters, in a world where fluctuating five pounds was no big deal instead of a moral failing that makes you a worthless piece of garbage?
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
My 'Gina Is Just Fine, Thank You
I am always amused when men have a "no shit, Sherlock moment" and see something that makes them aware of how badly the media sexualizes young girls in our country, so when brother-in-law saw a documentary called "Sexy Baby" he came to me in eager alarm and told me I had to watch it.
It was filled with the typical info; blah, blah, blah, media telling young girls that they were only as valuable as the sex they could provide to men, blah, blah, blah, if you want to be worthy as a person you need to whore yourself out for acceptance, blah, blah, blah, and more stuff I wrote an academic paper on over a decade ago.
The only new information presented to me, someone who has been very aware of these issues for close to 20 years, was the whole labiaplasty phenomenon. I heard of this procedure about six or seven years ago in the context of a 15 year old girl who was about to have it done for medical reasons. This poor, young thing had been born with freakishly large labia that had caused her real problems in life. She was athletic, but had trouble doing things like riding a bike and running. She loved to play softball, but dreaded the uniform pants, and even had trouble wearing underwear. To me, this was no different than women who, during development, end up with one boob considerably larger than the next. When the story aired, I was happy that there was a surgical remedy for an issue that was beyond her control.
During "Sexy Baby", it was a different story. The documentary profiled a stunning beautiful, young woman who was obsessed with having labiaplasty done. From years of looking at pornstar images, and through crude remarks from an insensitive group of assholes, she called male friends, she got it in her head that her sweet lady bits were ugly and terrible, and the only solution was to go under the knife. These thoughts were further enhanced by a sleazy doctor, whose sole business was labiaplasty. This poor girl had gone so far as to take a second job to save up for her labiaplasty.
I watched her story with a mixture of anger and bewilderment. All my life, I have held to a few solid truths; grass is green, the sky is blue, and all vaginas are different. Like weddings, vaginas come in all shapes and sizes, some are interesting and fun, and others are routine or weird, but because they are different, it's all good. I felt that the "your vagina isn't good looking enough" was almost like the one last place where our society could go in telling women how ugly and inadequate they were. We are already told we are too old, too ugly, too fat, not tall enough, not hairless enough, our teeth aren't white enough, why not tell us our vaginas aren't good enough, either. What's next? Will there be a big x-ray trend where the media tells us that our internal organs aren't as quite up to par as they could be?
I really wanted to reach out to this young girl, and talk to her. If I could, I would first tell her to get new guy friends. She seemed to be about 24 years old, so assuming all her guy friends were in their mid-20s, I would let her in on a little secret about them; they are all completely full of shit. They may go on about being such amazing dudes that they would, absolutely, turn down a vagina for not looking proper, but we all know the truth. I have met tens of thousands of men throughout my life, and barring the ultra-religious, I would venture to guess that when presented with a naked and willing vagina, the men I've met wouldn't likely turn it down due to lack of symmetry, and if they did, I would question whether they were really into vagina to begin with.
I would tell this young lady to quit her second job, and enjoy her young, happy life. As I said, she was stunningly beautiful, and seemed like a genuinely sweet girl. She doesn't realize what an amazing catch she is, and that made me sad. She is the kind of young woman that any decent man would be proud to have on his arm, but all she could see were her own flawed girly parts.
She said her previous boyfriend once made a comment about her labia being too large, which I suspect was a subject she first introduced, and given the male company she kept, was likely a 20-something asshole with way too much ego. I would give her the best comeback ever. When the asshole made the remark about her labia, all she had to do was look at him and say something to the effect of, 'Hmm...that's strange. I've been around naked women before and I'm fairly average. Maybe it's not that my labia is too big, but that your dick is too small.'
Then I would encourage her to unfriend him from Facebook, take his number off her phone, and tell every female she knew that he was in intensive taker with a small penis. If every woman were to stand up and do this, then I guarantee, the labiaplasty trend would subside in a heartbeat, and the procedure would be relegated for medical necessity only, once again.
It was filled with the typical info; blah, blah, blah, media telling young girls that they were only as valuable as the sex they could provide to men, blah, blah, blah, if you want to be worthy as a person you need to whore yourself out for acceptance, blah, blah, blah, and more stuff I wrote an academic paper on over a decade ago.
The only new information presented to me, someone who has been very aware of these issues for close to 20 years, was the whole labiaplasty phenomenon. I heard of this procedure about six or seven years ago in the context of a 15 year old girl who was about to have it done for medical reasons. This poor, young thing had been born with freakishly large labia that had caused her real problems in life. She was athletic, but had trouble doing things like riding a bike and running. She loved to play softball, but dreaded the uniform pants, and even had trouble wearing underwear. To me, this was no different than women who, during development, end up with one boob considerably larger than the next. When the story aired, I was happy that there was a surgical remedy for an issue that was beyond her control.
During "Sexy Baby", it was a different story. The documentary profiled a stunning beautiful, young woman who was obsessed with having labiaplasty done. From years of looking at pornstar images, and through crude remarks from an insensitive group of assholes, she called male friends, she got it in her head that her sweet lady bits were ugly and terrible, and the only solution was to go under the knife. These thoughts were further enhanced by a sleazy doctor, whose sole business was labiaplasty. This poor girl had gone so far as to take a second job to save up for her labiaplasty.
I watched her story with a mixture of anger and bewilderment. All my life, I have held to a few solid truths; grass is green, the sky is blue, and all vaginas are different. Like weddings, vaginas come in all shapes and sizes, some are interesting and fun, and others are routine or weird, but because they are different, it's all good. I felt that the "your vagina isn't good looking enough" was almost like the one last place where our society could go in telling women how ugly and inadequate they were. We are already told we are too old, too ugly, too fat, not tall enough, not hairless enough, our teeth aren't white enough, why not tell us our vaginas aren't good enough, either. What's next? Will there be a big x-ray trend where the media tells us that our internal organs aren't as quite up to par as they could be?
I really wanted to reach out to this young girl, and talk to her. If I could, I would first tell her to get new guy friends. She seemed to be about 24 years old, so assuming all her guy friends were in their mid-20s, I would let her in on a little secret about them; they are all completely full of shit. They may go on about being such amazing dudes that they would, absolutely, turn down a vagina for not looking proper, but we all know the truth. I have met tens of thousands of men throughout my life, and barring the ultra-religious, I would venture to guess that when presented with a naked and willing vagina, the men I've met wouldn't likely turn it down due to lack of symmetry, and if they did, I would question whether they were really into vagina to begin with.
I would tell this young lady to quit her second job, and enjoy her young, happy life. As I said, she was stunningly beautiful, and seemed like a genuinely sweet girl. She doesn't realize what an amazing catch she is, and that made me sad. She is the kind of young woman that any decent man would be proud to have on his arm, but all she could see were her own flawed girly parts.
She said her previous boyfriend once made a comment about her labia being too large, which I suspect was a subject she first introduced, and given the male company she kept, was likely a 20-something asshole with way too much ego. I would give her the best comeback ever. When the asshole made the remark about her labia, all she had to do was look at him and say something to the effect of, 'Hmm...that's strange. I've been around naked women before and I'm fairly average. Maybe it's not that my labia is too big, but that your dick is too small.'
Then I would encourage her to unfriend him from Facebook, take his number off her phone, and tell every female she knew that he was in intensive taker with a small penis. If every woman were to stand up and do this, then I guarantee, the labiaplasty trend would subside in a heartbeat, and the procedure would be relegated for medical necessity only, once again.
Monday, March 25, 2013
"Having It All": The Reality Version
As a post-70s feminist, I grew up with the belief that if I wanted it bad enough I could "have it all". "Having it all" refers to this insane theory that, as a modern woman, you can have a thriving, go-getter career, a happy, fulfilling marriage, a wonderful family who you perfectly mother, time to go to the gym, a good circle of friends you spend time with, and a fucking partridge in a pear tree, if you wanted it. All you had to do was want it bad enough.
Well, I wanted it bad enough, so I went on the road to delusion to try to "have it all", and I found the truth. I do "have it all", but "having it all" is like a diet. On Atkins, you have to completely cut out carbs, which means there are things out there that you absolutely cannot have. On Weight Watchers, you can have anything you want, but the size of the amount depends on how much of a fat ass you are.
When men think of "having it all", they go right to the Atkins plan, because they know that in order to have a thriving, go-getter career, they are going to have to give up some things, cold turkey. Women who choose to have big careers are put on the Atkins plan by society, because, after all, there is no way a female corporate CEO could possibly lead a thriving company and not be a neglectful wife and mother. Sure, male CEOs never have that issue, but female CEOs, that's another story.
For those of us who want to "have it all", we essentially put ourselves on the Weight Watchers program. I "have it all", but all that I have is portioned out to a point where I don't ever feel like I'm getting enough of anything to eat. I have a career, but if I went to work full-time, I could really make great strides. I have a family, but depending on what my job is doing, I have to miss kid activities and bring home fast food for dinner some nights. I have a marriage, but live with the constant discomfort of having to watch my husband not really have to contemplate the work/life balance. I have friends that I would like to see more often, but schedules get in the way on both ends, and my gym time has been replaced by an exercise bike in my room, because fitness often comes at about 10:00 pm if at all.
The short answer to the long question of "having it all" is yes, you can, but not the way you want to. Since we are stuck on a diet motif, and diets suck ass, the better way to think of "having it all" would be a great big Eileen's cheesecake. There are only so many slices you can get from one cheesecake. You can try to divide it into tiny slices, so you can make it last, but this is an Eileen's cheesecake, so that's not realistic. In the middle of the night, you will sneak out of bed and grab another slice when no one is looking, you know you will, so it becomes a balancing act.
Yes, I would like to be Mother of the Year, but I need to make money and keep my resume current, because someday those kids are going to leave, and I don't do well sitting around the house with nothing to do. I also have to make money, but I can't make as much as I want, because I have to make sure my kids have a mom who is present and involved in their lives. I would love to have the time to mold my body into something that could be remotely considered "killer", but in reality, I have 45 minutes max, four days per week that I can dedicate to this. I keep up with friends on Facebook, because kid schedules make phone calls a rare thing. I'm living the Weight Watchers lifestyle, but hey, I "have it all".
My goal is not to piss and moan, because I created this situation, and 70% of the time, I'm okay with it. I just want society to get more realistic in what it expects from women, and I want young women to realize that "having it all" is kind of a myth fraught with double standards and a hell of a lot of marketing.
Well, I wanted it bad enough, so I went on the road to delusion to try to "have it all", and I found the truth. I do "have it all", but "having it all" is like a diet. On Atkins, you have to completely cut out carbs, which means there are things out there that you absolutely cannot have. On Weight Watchers, you can have anything you want, but the size of the amount depends on how much of a fat ass you are.
When men think of "having it all", they go right to the Atkins plan, because they know that in order to have a thriving, go-getter career, they are going to have to give up some things, cold turkey. Women who choose to have big careers are put on the Atkins plan by society, because, after all, there is no way a female corporate CEO could possibly lead a thriving company and not be a neglectful wife and mother. Sure, male CEOs never have that issue, but female CEOs, that's another story.
For those of us who want to "have it all", we essentially put ourselves on the Weight Watchers program. I "have it all", but all that I have is portioned out to a point where I don't ever feel like I'm getting enough of anything to eat. I have a career, but if I went to work full-time, I could really make great strides. I have a family, but depending on what my job is doing, I have to miss kid activities and bring home fast food for dinner some nights. I have a marriage, but live with the constant discomfort of having to watch my husband not really have to contemplate the work/life balance. I have friends that I would like to see more often, but schedules get in the way on both ends, and my gym time has been replaced by an exercise bike in my room, because fitness often comes at about 10:00 pm if at all.
The short answer to the long question of "having it all" is yes, you can, but not the way you want to. Since we are stuck on a diet motif, and diets suck ass, the better way to think of "having it all" would be a great big Eileen's cheesecake. There are only so many slices you can get from one cheesecake. You can try to divide it into tiny slices, so you can make it last, but this is an Eileen's cheesecake, so that's not realistic. In the middle of the night, you will sneak out of bed and grab another slice when no one is looking, you know you will, so it becomes a balancing act.
Yes, I would like to be Mother of the Year, but I need to make money and keep my resume current, because someday those kids are going to leave, and I don't do well sitting around the house with nothing to do. I also have to make money, but I can't make as much as I want, because I have to make sure my kids have a mom who is present and involved in their lives. I would love to have the time to mold my body into something that could be remotely considered "killer", but in reality, I have 45 minutes max, four days per week that I can dedicate to this. I keep up with friends on Facebook, because kid schedules make phone calls a rare thing. I'm living the Weight Watchers lifestyle, but hey, I "have it all".
My goal is not to piss and moan, because I created this situation, and 70% of the time, I'm okay with it. I just want society to get more realistic in what it expects from women, and I want young women to realize that "having it all" is kind of a myth fraught with double standards and a hell of a lot of marketing.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Screw You and Your Cookies, Too!
When I volunteered to help with the fundraising element of my oldest daughter's Brownie troop, I never thought in a million years I would end up with the title of Cookie Mom.
That's right, I am one of those moms who stands at the green-clothed table at the door of the grocery store and oversees noisy, kinda stinky, adorable girls in green or brown vests as they try to sell you diabetes in a box.
The Girl Scout cookie racket is fairly cut and dried; do a big initial order and divvy the cookie boxes out amongst the girls in the troop. Keep up with their requests for re-orders through a reasonably easy website, and make sure you get a booth sale (i.e. green-clothed table in front of a grocery store, restaurant, park, etc.). Since I volunteered, I was determined to do my due diligence by making sure my paperwork got in on time, and answering texts from parents who needed cookies in a timely manner. Frankly, I thought I should have gotten a medal for clearing out a corner of that shit pit we call a garage for cookie storage.
All seemed to be going well until I was hit with the creeping death super cold that took out nearly half of the U.S. this past winter. I was sick that fateful day in December when the booth sale lottery took place. Apparently the booth sale lottery is the shit. You get to pick the day, time and location your troop can sell cookies. Anyone who doesn't show up to the lottery is stuck with the leftovers. I didn't stress. We were a first year troop who had never done cookie sales, so we had zero expectations.
I put in my request for a booth sale once I could drag my dead, sick ass to an upright position, and continued on with life. Three weeks, and four email requests later, I was sent a roster of dates, times, and locations. I picked my top five, hoping to secure two booth sales, so that each girl had the opportunity to participate, because they get badges for it, and badges equal bragging rights. I like to think of them as the girl version of stitches scars. The boys go to the E.R. bleeding and cut wide open from doing stupid shit and end up with a scar. The girls do accomplishments and end up with adorable badges on a vest. Yet, somehow, we are the weaker sex?!?
In the end, I got one lousy, three hour booth sale. Again, we had no expectations going into this, so I was only a little miffed, until the beginning of this week when I found out that the mom who does the booth scheduling scheduled half of the available booth sales for her own daughter's troop. Are you fucking kidding me! It's this type of bullshit that makes living in Suburbia a particularly nasty piece of Hell.
As a mom, I totally get wanting your kid to be successful and accomplish things that give them pride and self-esteem, especially if they are girls, but if you do a bunch of sickly, underhanded shit to make that accomplishment happen, you haven't helped them achieve their goal. By tipping the scales, and cheating others at the same time, you end up looking like a pathetic asshole. What happens in 10 or 15 years when your kid figures out that they sold enough cookies to get the iPad, because you locked everyone else out of selling? Whatever money you saved not buying her that iPad is going to go right to the therapist in a "everything my mother ever told me was a lie" round of sessions.
The biggest dilemma now is do I say anything or keep my mouth shut? The problem with a mostly volunteer organization is that the moment you bitch too loudly about how something is done, your ass gets chosen to do it the next year. Although it seems like something that could be easy to do, filling open spots, given the amount of politics and bullshit that I just had to deal with in the past two months hocking cookies, something tells me it would be eight weeks of Hell on Earth.
For now, I will keep quiet. I'll put this tidbit of knowledge in my back pocket, and try not to be sick as a dog next year when I will, without a doubt, because I volunteered, end up as the troop Cookie Mom. I will try to schedule two good booth sales next year, and if I get any flack, I have no problem with confronting the offender about her own gratuitous scheduling. After all, the one thing you can always count on is that the suburb dwellers hate confrontation and uncomfortable situations that might rupture their perfect little bubble of Suburbia happiness, whereas, I live for it.
That's right, I am one of those moms who stands at the green-clothed table at the door of the grocery store and oversees noisy, kinda stinky, adorable girls in green or brown vests as they try to sell you diabetes in a box.
The Girl Scout cookie racket is fairly cut and dried; do a big initial order and divvy the cookie boxes out amongst the girls in the troop. Keep up with their requests for re-orders through a reasonably easy website, and make sure you get a booth sale (i.e. green-clothed table in front of a grocery store, restaurant, park, etc.). Since I volunteered, I was determined to do my due diligence by making sure my paperwork got in on time, and answering texts from parents who needed cookies in a timely manner. Frankly, I thought I should have gotten a medal for clearing out a corner of that shit pit we call a garage for cookie storage.
All seemed to be going well until I was hit with the creeping death super cold that took out nearly half of the U.S. this past winter. I was sick that fateful day in December when the booth sale lottery took place. Apparently the booth sale lottery is the shit. You get to pick the day, time and location your troop can sell cookies. Anyone who doesn't show up to the lottery is stuck with the leftovers. I didn't stress. We were a first year troop who had never done cookie sales, so we had zero expectations.
I put in my request for a booth sale once I could drag my dead, sick ass to an upright position, and continued on with life. Three weeks, and four email requests later, I was sent a roster of dates, times, and locations. I picked my top five, hoping to secure two booth sales, so that each girl had the opportunity to participate, because they get badges for it, and badges equal bragging rights. I like to think of them as the girl version of stitches scars. The boys go to the E.R. bleeding and cut wide open from doing stupid shit and end up with a scar. The girls do accomplishments and end up with adorable badges on a vest. Yet, somehow, we are the weaker sex?!?
In the end, I got one lousy, three hour booth sale. Again, we had no expectations going into this, so I was only a little miffed, until the beginning of this week when I found out that the mom who does the booth scheduling scheduled half of the available booth sales for her own daughter's troop. Are you fucking kidding me! It's this type of bullshit that makes living in Suburbia a particularly nasty piece of Hell.
As a mom, I totally get wanting your kid to be successful and accomplish things that give them pride and self-esteem, especially if they are girls, but if you do a bunch of sickly, underhanded shit to make that accomplishment happen, you haven't helped them achieve their goal. By tipping the scales, and cheating others at the same time, you end up looking like a pathetic asshole. What happens in 10 or 15 years when your kid figures out that they sold enough cookies to get the iPad, because you locked everyone else out of selling? Whatever money you saved not buying her that iPad is going to go right to the therapist in a "everything my mother ever told me was a lie" round of sessions.
The biggest dilemma now is do I say anything or keep my mouth shut? The problem with a mostly volunteer organization is that the moment you bitch too loudly about how something is done, your ass gets chosen to do it the next year. Although it seems like something that could be easy to do, filling open spots, given the amount of politics and bullshit that I just had to deal with in the past two months hocking cookies, something tells me it would be eight weeks of Hell on Earth.
For now, I will keep quiet. I'll put this tidbit of knowledge in my back pocket, and try not to be sick as a dog next year when I will, without a doubt, because I volunteered, end up as the troop Cookie Mom. I will try to schedule two good booth sales next year, and if I get any flack, I have no problem with confronting the offender about her own gratuitous scheduling. After all, the one thing you can always count on is that the suburb dwellers hate confrontation and uncomfortable situations that might rupture their perfect little bubble of Suburbia happiness, whereas, I live for it.
Where the Fuck Have You Been?
I started blogging years ago in this very journal to work out the fact that I was a punk who found herself living in the doldrums of suburbia. It just didn't make sense how I, someone who had dreamed of a more hardcore, rock 'n' roll lifestyle, could end up in this situation.
When I was in my 20s, I did everything to make sure I didn't fall into the suburban dream that seemed more like my mother's lifelong ambition than mine. My mom always wanted the perfect, nuclear family with the children, the loving husband, and the comfortable life that forever came with the happy ending. Instead, she got instability, turmoil, a man who only appreciated her for the work she could do and made her do that work 24/7, and kids who couldn't wait to get the hell away from her. She had anxiety and depression issues, but we didn't know that until she died at 49 years old.
It is kind of a sad, sick irony that I wound up with the life she always wanted, and thanks to that irony, I've spent more than my fair share of hours on therapists' couches trying to figure out whether I truly chose this path, or if it was something that was pounded into my head as I was growing up.
I could contemplate this situation for a thousand years, and probably never have an answer, so I took to writing to relieve some of the angst. It helped, and worked great for a few years, then I was struck with the most cruel of afflictions; writer's block. I've been writing since the second grade, and it has always come easy to me. The words just flowed out of my fingers and onto a page without a second thought. I love to write, and it was the one thing I felt I was truly good at, so I can't even tell you how fucked I felt when my gift was gone.
I tried writing several times, but it was pure crap. I cringe when I recall the two pieces I wrote for a British feminist indie mag. They were pathetic, and I knew it. The worst part was that I couldn't figure out what brought on the block; was it the second baby or the job that nearly ran me into the ground or maybe it was moving from Seattle to sunny Southern California. There were many nights when I stayed up trying to write, only to end up in tears, and I'm not someone who cries over much of anything.
I had nearly given up on ever writing anything again, and had even thought of killing this blog. Then I got hit with the time bomb known at 40. I began dreading the arrival of my 40th birthday back in mid-December. As it came closer, I wrestled with the realization that half my life was officially over. I know we don't know how long we will be here, and at any point we could all be hit by a bus or keel over from some crazy shit we didn't know we had, but statistically, the average life expectancy of the American female is 80 years old, so I was at the halfway mark.
To deal with the pending doom of admitting that my youth was gone, I did something so pathetically cliche I laughed my way through it; I created a bucket list. I filled it with things I wanted to do and places I want to see, and since it was 1:30 am when I did the list, I finished it and went to bed. I don't know what kind of crazy voodoo magic happened on the night that I created that bucket list, but I woke up the next morning and spent an hour and a half writing 40 pages of a graphic novel that's been stewing in my head for a couple of years.
I guess this is the long way to tell you, the very few who still check in and wonder where the fuck I've been, that I'm back, and I plan to continue writing with the same flare I always have. I may be a couple years older, and still living in suburbia, but I'm just as much of a punk as I ever was, and now I'm 40, which means I give even less of a fuck than I did before, only now when I give less of that fuck I'm probably wearing yoga pants while drinking wine. Cheers!
When I was in my 20s, I did everything to make sure I didn't fall into the suburban dream that seemed more like my mother's lifelong ambition than mine. My mom always wanted the perfect, nuclear family with the children, the loving husband, and the comfortable life that forever came with the happy ending. Instead, she got instability, turmoil, a man who only appreciated her for the work she could do and made her do that work 24/7, and kids who couldn't wait to get the hell away from her. She had anxiety and depression issues, but we didn't know that until she died at 49 years old.
It is kind of a sad, sick irony that I wound up with the life she always wanted, and thanks to that irony, I've spent more than my fair share of hours on therapists' couches trying to figure out whether I truly chose this path, or if it was something that was pounded into my head as I was growing up.
I could contemplate this situation for a thousand years, and probably never have an answer, so I took to writing to relieve some of the angst. It helped, and worked great for a few years, then I was struck with the most cruel of afflictions; writer's block. I've been writing since the second grade, and it has always come easy to me. The words just flowed out of my fingers and onto a page without a second thought. I love to write, and it was the one thing I felt I was truly good at, so I can't even tell you how fucked I felt when my gift was gone.
I tried writing several times, but it was pure crap. I cringe when I recall the two pieces I wrote for a British feminist indie mag. They were pathetic, and I knew it. The worst part was that I couldn't figure out what brought on the block; was it the second baby or the job that nearly ran me into the ground or maybe it was moving from Seattle to sunny Southern California. There were many nights when I stayed up trying to write, only to end up in tears, and I'm not someone who cries over much of anything.
I had nearly given up on ever writing anything again, and had even thought of killing this blog. Then I got hit with the time bomb known at 40. I began dreading the arrival of my 40th birthday back in mid-December. As it came closer, I wrestled with the realization that half my life was officially over. I know we don't know how long we will be here, and at any point we could all be hit by a bus or keel over from some crazy shit we didn't know we had, but statistically, the average life expectancy of the American female is 80 years old, so I was at the halfway mark.
To deal with the pending doom of admitting that my youth was gone, I did something so pathetically cliche I laughed my way through it; I created a bucket list. I filled it with things I wanted to do and places I want to see, and since it was 1:30 am when I did the list, I finished it and went to bed. I don't know what kind of crazy voodoo magic happened on the night that I created that bucket list, but I woke up the next morning and spent an hour and a half writing 40 pages of a graphic novel that's been stewing in my head for a couple of years.
I guess this is the long way to tell you, the very few who still check in and wonder where the fuck I've been, that I'm back, and I plan to continue writing with the same flare I always have. I may be a couple years older, and still living in suburbia, but I'm just as much of a punk as I ever was, and now I'm 40, which means I give even less of a fuck than I did before, only now when I give less of that fuck I'm probably wearing yoga pants while drinking wine. Cheers!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)