A long time coming...

Hello friends!

It's been a long time.

I've been doing some side projects here and there, which have made personal writing nearly obsolete for longer than I'd like to admit.

In fact, many of the things that I would consider making me the person I am have gone by the wayside as I focus on school, job, and money.

I'd really like to change that. I have this nearly insatiable tingling urge in my brain to create words, to spill my guts on (virtual) paper.

With my incredibly time and energy consuming class just a few weeks from being over (and ignoring the fact that nursing school is hopefully soon to come), it's given me pause to think about what I feel is going well and what needs to be going better in my life.

I need to write more, for me. I may never have a career that involves writing, but it is an essential part of maintaining my mental health. I also need to cook more. I get lazy, my ADHD kicks in, and all of my best-laid plans go to shit. When I'm cooking, when I'm baking, I'm calm. Happy. Distracted. Why I don't do it more, I'll never understand. I also need to work out more, especially in the dark season.

Why do we neglect so much of our own self-care in favor of driving ourselves into the crowd with stress and worry, just for a few dollars more? What would happen if we, just for a day, put aside all of what we "should" be doing and focus on what we want to be doing?

I encourage you, as we go into this stressful holiday season, to really look out for yourself. Listen to your body, your mind. Focus less on the "have to's" and the "should's" and more on the "want to's" and "need to's." Be your own advocate, your own best friend.

It's a little like putting the oxygen mask on yourself before you try to help anyone else.

The year of no fucks given...

I thought about starting this entry a few different ways. In the end, I've decided to fight against all those weird, apologetic instincts and stick to writing in the "no fucks given" manner I'm intending on perpetuating for the remainder of this year and beyond.

My life has changed substantially over the past few months. No, it's no one's business. Facebook and social media in general pushes this weird social narrative that all relationships are public knowledge, for public consumption. I know, personally, I've been caught up in that gossipy bullshit where I feel like I want to know all the details about hook ups and break ups... but, in actuality, it really is a private manner and I'm done trying to have to explain myself and my life to anyone (especially people who just want to know and don't actually care).

This has also pushed me to take a huge step back from social media in general. I'm keeping a presence for writing and to keep up on activism and friends that I don't get to see frequently, but I'm done feeling like I have to explain, compete, be funny, be intelligent... I'm never gonna be anything other than exactly who the fuck I am and I'm pretty ok with that. I'm happy with Melle and, if you're not, hit the unfriend button and move along.

This year is all about fighting back... against our new political environment, against social norms, against my own and other people's expectations of how I should behave and who I should be. I'm ready to perpetuate my tribe, however small that may end up being.

"Patriot's Day"

It's 9/11. My Facebook feed is awash in patriotic sentiment - where people were when the planes came, when the towers went down. On some level, I understand that this is still a sense of processing, the need to relate a tragic event to your own life, a community engaging of sorrow and healing. Hell, I've done it in years past too (my daughter's due date was 9/11/01 but, as is her standard now, she was stubborn and came late).

Over the past few years, though, it's become more hollow and increasingly apparent to me what's really happening...

Blind patriotism is dangerous. We're all being conned.

Maybe I say that because I can not remember a time in my life when I've felt "proud" of being an American. I've never been inspired to wave a giant American flag or cry during the National Anthem. I don't view Fourth of July as anything more than a giant red, white and blue orgasm of fireworks, hot dogs and beer.

But don't try to feed me that "freedom isn't free" bullshit. I've been a military wife, have watched friends be lowered into the ground in service of a country that did not give a fuck about them, and been able to do nothing but cry and scream internally when they fired off the 21 gun salute. I raised my daughter alone for the first few years of her life while her father was in Afghanistan, Iraq... being shot at and killing people because he was told to do so.

But let's start from the beginning.

Many of our ancestors fled England due to religious persecution, poverty and indentured servitude. Think about that for a second.

They sailed over here in boats, full of hope and enthusiasm, proceeded to slaughter nearly an entire indigenous population and then become the very thing they were escaping from. Since then? We still persecute people who practice religion differently than what the "norm" is (or, god forbid, not at all *gasp*). The poverty level is not only obscene, but people are being judged, scolded and harassed for seeking any sort of help. We've relegated Native Americans to reservations with terrible education, alcohol problems and sexual assault (and set dogs on them when they protest the desecration of their burial lands and water sources). And slavery? Well, our ancestors must have forgotten about wanting to escape from that pretty quickly.

And we make today Patriot's Day? Fuck that. What is patriotic about today? We've become everything we hate, everything we try to bomb out of other countries. Sure, we may have more "freedom" then some of them, but do we really? We tell other countries what they're doing wrong and hold ourselves up to the world as some sort of golden standard... but totally ignore everything that needs fixing (and not just ignore...actively defend or deny).

We publicly abhor how other countries handle women's rights and sexual abuse, but we give rapists less than 3 months in jail and spend a ridiculous amount of time and energy trying to take legal rights away from women and continually attempt to defund Planned Parenthood.

We hate Muslims, but let our Christians quietly become the KKK and say nothing (I'm not even going to begin to go into Donald Trump's rise to candidacy fame).

We wring our hands about North Korea and how unacceptable it is there, but then threaten to kill people who don't stand for the National Anthem.

We don't have segregated drinking fountains any more but we still are quick to call POC liars, niggers and drama queens when they point out how they're still being singled out.

If you ask the internet, the white man is the most oppressed group in the entire United States.

I call bullshit on all of that. I can't watch one more video of someone leaping out of the Trade Towers and somehow be asked to translate that into patriotism. True patriotism is helping to make this country greater, calling out its flaws and helping to fix them.

What we're constantly being asked to do isn't patriotism, it's nationalism. It's dangerous and I worry we're just now starting to see the turn the country has taken into terrifying territory.

2016.

It's here... a bright, shiny new year. A clean slate. A blank page.

But, is it really?

As human beings, we're always searching for finish lines and starting gates. The race, the real work of the thing, gets lost in concept.

I'm just as guilty as the next person.

This year, I want to finally get healthy. I want to write more. I want to paint more. I want, I want, I want.

But who am I already?

At my core, I'm a deeply imperfect person. I don't say that with any disdain. I love my life, my imperfections. Right now, I'm sitting on the couch, writing this, watching a movie and drinking a glass of red wine. There are many things I could and probably should be doing... my kitchen is a mess, my laundry needs done... but I'm focused on (and possibly hyperfocused - it has recently come to my attention that hyperfocus is a symptom of attention deficit disorder which I have been vehemently ignoring that I have for years) what I want to do.

At some point, all this arbitrary bullshit that we continually pile onto ourselves in an attempt to "become a better person" just ends up being too much, right? Work out, eat right, travel more, spend more time with family, with friends, with ourselves... when do we just embrace our genuine humanness and stop becoming a list of shit we should be doing?

Choice.

I am pro-choice.

Thankfully, I have never been placed in the position of having to choose to have an abortion myself. 

I have, however, seen first hand the decision making process required when I drove a close friend to a clinic thirty minutes away and sat in the car waiting for her, unwilling to bring my new baby inside. I didn't want anyone who had made that choice feel guilty.

Abortion is legal. It has been since Roe vs Wade in 1973, however, the history of abortion dates back to the 1800's in America. The first laws attempting to regulate abortions were passed in 1821. Think about that for a minute. Think about what life was like for women in the 1800's. Women couldn't vote. They were basically baby making machines, restricted to aspirations that could only include the home and family. 

It startles me to think of the new push to defund Planned Parenthood. The (mostly male) Republican candidates spit those words out of their mouths as though they were poison, something to be embarrassed about and cast away.

What they don't understand is that Planned Parenthood prevents abortions. Planned Parenthood performs breast checks that lead to mammograms that save lives/prevent breast cancer. They provide necessary STI checks to people who otherwise couldn't afford them. They perform pap smears and catch cervical cancer before it has a chance to become more insidious. 

And even if they didn't? Even if they did 100% abortions? 

Abortion is legal. You don't have to like it. You don't have to make that choice or even be nice to someone in your life that has made that choice (even though that does kind of make you an asshole). But to attempt to change the laws that make abortion safe and legal for anyone who has to make that choice so you can be more comfortable in your religion or personal ethical code? That is unconscionable. 

This world is built on personal choice. How to do your hair, what job you choose, who you marry, what religion you follow... all things that make you an individual, with autonomy.

Don't push your religion or choice on me. The right to choose is just that... a right.

And I'll be standing there, wearing and waving pink, making for damn sure you know how hard people have fought for centuries to allow that same choice.

Chelsea Dagger.

The last time I heard Chelsea Dagger, I was standing in a crowd of people at the Chicago Pride parade. The Stanley Cup sat proudly on the float, there was cheering and excitement.

I stood there, surrounded by cheering, and cried. My tears were tears of joy, of course, but they were also tears of grief.

Tonight is the first game of the regular season for the Blackhawks. I will celebrate. I will cheer. But I will, above all, miss my sweet puppy.

Chelsea was hit by a car just after the Hawks won the Cup. There isn't a day that goes by where I don't miss her with my very soul, that I don't wish she was still here, letting me hold her up and make her dance to the music.

Thankfully, my memory of seeing her tiny body crushed by the car, the noise of the impact and the feeling of screaming comes less and less frequently. But every day her absence is made clear.

Brambles.

My heart is brambles, barbed wire, landmines. There are days when everything is sunshine, days where I casually skip through the landmines with a grenade held gingerly between my front teeth, eyes closed, missing detonator after detonator.

Then there are days when I swing my feet to the floor and immediately hear the unmistakable click of landmine, prepping to explode. I hear the blast, I feel myself being ripped limb from limb and yet I am still expected to get up, put on a smile and put on a show. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine.

The truth is, I'm never fine. Even in my most pristine, flexible, death-defying moments I am still perched on the edge of oblivion. The specter of anxiety and depression looms directly behind me, breathing smoke and brimstone down my neck.

But I fight on. I breathe through it, even on the days the smoke chokes my lungs. Sometimes I look in the mirror and don't recognize my own face, don't recognize the look in my eyes and the person staring back at me. On those days, I smile. I nod at her and move forward. She knows.