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.

Meditation practice.

Meditation is hard, you guys!

It's amazing how doing something as simple as sitting in one place for ten minutes can completely test one's patience. As an adult with ADD, sometimes the most simple tasks become exponentially more difficult.

And what could be more simple than sitting, focusing on the breath and clearing my thoughts?

Apparently, everything!

It is unbelievable how many times a mind can wander... and where it will go! I'm not quite sure if my brain just vibrates at a higher level, bouncing thoughts back and forth at an extreme frequency, or if it is a weird self preservation instinct. Regardless of why, one week into an attempt at a daily meditation practice, I am still having an infuriatingly difficult time just. sitting. still.

Thinking. Thinking. Thinking.

Our whole lives are full of the stuff.

What's for breakfast? Am I going to be late to work? Does my boss like me? Do I like me? Should I gym or should I relax after work? Does my butt look big in these pants?

It's simply instinctual. And we're so used to it that silence is deafening.

Enthusiasm.

I miss my youthful enthusiasm. I'm not quite sure I can pinpoint exactly when it left me, floating away from me like a dandelion seed on the wind. It was suddenly just gone, vacated the premises.

I'm sure that it was the result of a variety of factors. Growing up is a tough process, full of bills and disappointments and responsibilities. It tends to beat the fun out of you with an invisible bat, one you can't see or hear or feel.

But, opposed to what it may seem, this isn't meant to be a depressing or sad post. It's one about hope, the hope that I'm on the path to regain some of that childhood sense of excitement I may have lost.

I'm 33, but I'm not quite sure how old I'm supposed to feel. Despite paying all (most) of my bills on time, I would rather sit on my couch with a good book or giggle with my friends than do something productive. I've lost touch with a lot of them over the last few years, mainly due to a serious bout of depression than rendered me slightly overweight and anxious and withdrawn.

Now, I can feel the thaw coming. I'm appreciating things more. I'm wanting to work on myself, my body, my health. I want to socialize, to get out of the house (sometimes).

It's nice to feel want although, as a Buddhist, I know I should work on being liberated from it as well. I'm just happy to feel it for now.

1/1/2015.

Last night was the first New Year's Eve in a long time that I chose to stay in, don comfy pajama pants and celebrate quietly with my wife. To be fair, it was also the first year that I've had a wife (yay)! It was amazing... relaxing, less worry about all the other drunk drivers on the road, more snuggles with the warm and furry ones that are most important to me (minus my mini-me who was with her father seeing Blue Man Group in Chicago).

Today was much the same. I, of course, made big resolutions. I want to lose 50#, but mostly get healthier. I want to do more yoga and meditate more. I want to write more (chiggity checking that off my list for the day). Overall, my goals are to clear out the nonsense on focus on breaking down my life to its barest, most basic essentials... love, peace and security.

Yes, I want to buy a house at some point. I'm working on my credit score and we've created a budget. But the things that are the most important to me are making sure I'm taking care of my temple. We only get one and I have definitely not been treating it right (to the tune of a 20# weight gain since the summer - mostly after getting my gallbladder out and being able to eat food again).

I'm going to be writing most days so be warned. :)

Here's to hoping your New Year's Eve and 2015 in general is MAGIC.

165.2#

After a crazy year of ups and downs with my health, I weighed in today at 165.2#. This means I have officially gained 10# since my gallbladder surgery in September and am 7# away from where I started two years ago.

Instead of choosing frustration, I'm choosing action. It isn't just because my wife and I are going on a cruise in January, it isn't because I want to look better in jeans... I want to FEEL better. I know that my food choices and lack of activity can be most linked to laziness and comfort. I need to get off my ass, use the gym membership we're paying for, eat food that actually nourishes me instead of making me feel sluggish and make positive changes FOR ME.

I feel like I have a good shot at it this time.

Even though I have changed into pajamas, my clothes still smell like bonfire. It's imbued into my hair, my skin, my fingernails... and, although I could shower again, I like it that way.

Tonight might very well be the last birthday bonfire I have with my grandparents.

We've been doing them as long as I can remember, since I was a child. I grew up around that bonfire, went from eating hot dogs to veggie dogs and back again (and since back to veggie dogs!). I matured, came out of the closet, got married, got divorced, had a kid... and every year I knew I could go back to that place and have one thing in my life be stable.

It's difficult to admit that my grandparents are getting older because it's even harder to admit that I am. When my grandmother said that this may be the last bonfire because it's too difficult for them to set up and haul around everything needed to prepare ahead of time, it made me sick to my stomach. I understand and respect it... they have earned it... but it still makes me sad.

Writer's block.

It's been awhile. Too long, in fact. I can't even remember the last time I sat down to write and flex my muscles. 

This makes it hard to pick the habit back up. I've started a few entries only to immediately erase them. My mind doesn't seem to be working with the written word as easily as it used to. 

Obviously, I'm devastated. Logically I understand that writing is a muscle, that it can atrophy without use. But to sit down in front of the computer and have it be so completely blank, that flashing cursor laughing in my face, is difficult to say the least. 

It's not that I don't have much to say; it's just that I can't seem to find a way to say it.

Today, I started back on a journey towards health. Over the course of wedding planning and honeymooning, I gained back a substantial portion of what I had lost the year before. I'm now sitting uncomfortably back at 165#, which sets my body dysmorphic disorder on a sharp, downward spiral. I am convinced that my backside is 20 feet wide, that my jiggling arms could create a tsunami... all completely unrealistic things that my brain convinces me are encyclopedic truth.

I set all that aside today and I ran. I didn't run fast, I didn't run far, but I ran. It felt great. I was hot and sweaty, but I was doing something positive for my body for the first time in a long time. I know it's a process, but it's a process that I am fully ready for.

The one thing I have a hard time with is justifying my desire to lose weight with my feminism. It's difficult to really suss out my reasons... am I brainwashed by society to think that I'm not attractive or worth anything if I don't fit into a certain size jeans? Is it really about wanting to be happier for myself? Although I can say that I would feel better having lost 20#, I know from experience that I wasn't very happy even when I weighed 107# in high school (with an eating disorder).

I've always been happy to be a mold breaker and I would have hoped that getting older and gaining maturity would have help continue that pattern into my 30s. I've found that now I just get stuck in different molds - career, job, credit score...

But, for now, I'm going to throw myself into running. I'm going to focus on doing what I can to make myself feel better for me.

This kid...

I very strongly believe that raising a child is a perfect mix of nature versus nurture. You decide what is important for you and attempt to instill those values into your child while, at the same time, understanding that your child may also choose to value other things as he or she gets older.

Although, years ago, my child responded to a question about what I've taught her over the years by saying that she knows to be "responsible with [her] money and [her] vagina," I've always known at some point she was going to go her own way. I've been prepared to have a cheerleader, a Republican... anything that is polar opposite of who I have grown to be over the years.

What I ended up with, at least so far, has been a miniature version of myself. Case in point, we rearranged her room this evening and she quickly put up her two Girls Rock! posters and a Crimethinc poster above her desk. I couldn't be more proud. Of all the things I want to instill in her, a strong sense of self and belief that being a female ISN'T a weakness are some of the most important.

She's going to need all the help she can get in this world, unfortunately. I want her to go out there and grab the world by its neck and not be afraid to tell people (not ask!) what she wants.

I'm pretty sure she's getting there. :)

Remember when you were a kid and your parents/grandparents told you to put on clean underwear before leaving the house in case you got into a terrible accident?

In today's day and age, the equivalent is what is left behind on social media.

While reading an article about the twelve-year-olds in Wisconsin that are accused of luring a "friend" into the woods in order to prove that Slenderman (an online social media folklore creation) exists, I stumbled upon an article that goes in depth into the parents' Instagram accounts.

Apparently the fact that the father likes "death metal" and the mother had a fascination with skulls makes them culpable for their daughter's decision. This disturbs me, to say the least. As a parent with crows, skulls and pin-up girls around the house, I find home decor and photo sharing choices very rarely inform any parenting decisions I make.

Are we at a place where, through mostly our own actions, literally every choice we made is documented on social media and capable of creating judgment? Are we able to step back enough to live the lives we had 10+ years ago, before Facebook and Myspace and Instagram took over? Do these online lives really decide who we are as people? As parents? Can it make us murderers?

Maleficient (spoilers so, like, don't read if you haven't seen it yet - duh!)

A few years ago, I saw a documentary at the Normal Theater called Miss Representation. As I sat there, next to my then ten-year-old daughter, it occurred to me just how under and poorly represented women really are in the media. Women are pitted against each other, made unnecessarily into sexual objects, dumbed down and made minor characters mainly serving as love interests. There are few movies with a strong female lead that doesn't have giant breasts (I'm looking at you, Lara Croft) or just unnecessarily made weak by lusting after a man.

Going into it, I was nervous that this was going to be another love story gone wrong. Girl meets boy, boy breaks girl's heart, girl turns evil... you've seen it a million times, chewed up and spit out into the same tired configurations.

Man was I wrong.

I absolutely loved this movie and the newer trend of bucking the old stereotypical love stories with female leads. Although some parts of the movie were uncomfortable to me (did anyone else see the wing dismemberment as a pseudo date rape situation? It legitimately made me nauseated.), I loved that this movie focused on who Maleficient was (and who she thought she was) and her relationship with herself. Bad things happened, she followed the "human" path of wanting revenge and learned that it doesn't fix things, opened herself to alternative forms of love (besides the cliched romantic variety).

This movie, written by a woman, is an amazingly strong retelling of a fairy tale that we thought we knew with HUGE feminist undertones. We need more movies like this for our girls. You don't need to wait for your true love, you can have bad things happen to you and come back stronger and, ultimately, YOU are in charge of your own destiny.

We should all be so lucky to have a little Maleficient in us.

Rainbows for the first.

It was especially poignant to see a rainbow today, the day marriage equality became state-wide law in Illinois. If I were religious, I might see this as a sign that maybe God  doesn't care as much about gays getting married as some of the more bigoted Illinoisans would have us believe.

I feel very grateful to live in a time and place that affords us these basic rights. We're not so far removed from the Stonewall Riots for me to understand just how lucky this makes me. Having marched on Springfield, having listened to lawmakers tell their personal stories, having my child not be as afraid to "come out" as the child of two moms... we have so many daily victories that we often take for granted.

Today also marks 12 days until I marry the love of my life. Dresses have been purchased (two in my case!), plans have been made... all we're doing now is waiting to celebrate with our friends and announce our love in public. I'm ready to make this thing legal (if you like it then you gotta put a ring on it, amiright?). Last night, We were sitting at a movie in the Normal Theater and the manager asked the crowd how many people were married. 75% of the crowd raised their hands and I just sat there, smiling to myself, knowing both how exciting it will be to raise my hand and how still slightly subversive that simple act is.

What it really comes down to, for me, is basic liberty. I pay taxes, I go to work, I make dinners and pack lunches... all I ask for in return is the right to sign a piece of paper, put a ring on her finger and go on doing what were were doing before. I'm still completely flabbergasted and confused how that effects anyone else's lives except mine, my daughter's and my soon to be wife's. If someone could sit down and explain that to me without a Bible verse, I would be hugely grateful.

But today, I celebrate with my LGBTQIA brothers and sister. We won this one and I'll be ready to fight again alongside you for the next one too.

Spring awakening.

This winter has stretched out absurdly long. I'm beginning to feel the ice and snow settle and crystallize in my veins, turning me into an ice creature that longs for warmer days. I worry that, once those days come, it'll take my soul some time longer to thaw. I long for spring, the scent of warm rain, the green around me on the hiking trail. I need to get outside, to find myself lost and able to really contemplate life.

For all of the discussion of the "free man," we, as a whole, are chained beasts. We fool ourselves with this vision of freedom while we slave away, content to live our lives for the few minutes of the day when we truly feel free. What do we do with this freedom? We watch TV, subjecting ourselves to corporate interference that makes us feel "less" - less attractive, less intelligent, less worthy. We zone out, tune out, drop out of the moment. We aren't truly present in our lives, no matter how fast we run out of work.

Our lives are routine, a hamster on the spinning wheel. Eat, work, sleep, repeat. Connections are becoming fewer and more far between, mainly due to technology becoming our mode of communication. When you talk to someone via text message, can you see their face? Can you watch their eyes when they say something? Do they mean what they say or are they being untruthful? We become solitary creatures, no matter how many people we surround ourselves with. 

It worries me that I find myself with a harder shell, an awkward exterior unable to push through the initial discomfort and eye contact to make a deeper connection with people. I've set aside so many of my friends for the comfort of solitude, the ease of not having to make the right joke at the right time or feel like I'm being judged even when I'm not. I've settled uncomfortably into being a hibernating homebody but, with spring so close yet so far away, I feel the thaw begin. I only hope that I come out the same as I went in. 

Death.

Children have no concept of time. Try telling a child to wait for an hour, a week, a month... they'll still ask you constantly if it's time yet. When we're young, the concept of death is also foreign. Maybe, if we're lucky, we only have to brave a few funerals, get kissed on the cheek by a few aunts and uncles and move on, eventually forgetting about the person who just passed (likely someone we didn't know very well or see very often) and the concept of death entirely. We live our life with glory and gusto, the way only children can.

When we get older, we realize just how omnipresent the specter of death really is. The reality of dying hits us... we really could go out to get the mail and get hit by a car. It's a statistically possibility. Some of us are better at hiding this fact that others. We go on about our days as though they aren't numbered, that there's not an invisible number over our heads. Others live with the threat every day, somewhere in the back of our heads. I live somewhere in the middle... the idea of death, of its absolutely finality, terrifies me but I'm usually able to look past it enough to function.

Today, I learned my childhood babysitter is dying. She's 96 years old and the majority of my formative years were spent with her... her handmade Christmas ornaments, her cards, her tiny TV that only showed PBS when I was over. She has been in the nursing home for a number of years and, over time, my visits have become few and far between due to growing up and falling even more completely out of the nest of youth. Tomorrow, I will go see her for what will probably be the last time. Honestly, I'm filled with dread and panic about it. My stomach is in knots. I've shed tears.

There is a difference between death being an invisible threat and watching it play out. Conversing with someone I love, both of us knowing that she is near death and that it will likely be the last time, makes me physically ill. How does one do that? What do you say? How do you encompass a lifetime of love into a single, last conversation? I'm not sure I know that answer.

What I do know is that today, my mortality is a solid figure. It's no longer a ghost or a shadow, a step behind.