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.

Musings from a walk.

After a long, tough day at work I decided to come home and take my usually very misbehaving puppy out for a solo walk.

Usually, when I'm alone, I tend to lean on technology to stay out of my head. Sometimes it can be a scary place and I don't usually have the emotional bandwidth to deal with all the rush of thoughts that can float around in there when I let them.

Today I decided to let them in. I put on Pandora and just enjoyed the walk. It was interested because, instead of judging myself, I let the thoughts come in and leave without judging them. I also learned something things about me.

For instance, when I was younger, I used to think I was an extrovert. It turns out that I was (and am) really good at fooling people into thinking I am... faux extroversion if you will. Truly, I'm an introvert. I like being on my own. It isn't antisocial; it's more that I enjoy observing people from the outside.

The problem with that is that people view me as being antisocial, hard to make and keep plans with. I think that I push people away because I'm afraid of people seeing my vulnerability.

Anyway, the dog was good and I learned some stuff. I'll be doing that way more often.

Just a little Thursday reflection...

When September hits, both of my most recent ex-girlfriends will have moved across the country. One is moving to California, like she's been talking about for ages, and the other to Maryland to pursue new love. I'm happy for both of them, even though I have no right to be and have no real relationship with either of them.

However, this spurs my gypsy soul into motion.

Honestly, I'm not sure I can even find total contentment. I always want bigger, better... confusing movement with progress. I never make enough money to be happy, never live in a nice enough place, never live up to the lofty goals that I've set for myself.

I'm saddled with anxiety and depression to top it all off, reminding me on the daily that the world is much bigger than me and it doesn't tend to be too super concerned with the life of one person (no matter how important I may convince myself I am).

It's weird to think of these people that I used to be so close with moving forward with their lives. When you break up with someone, part of you keeps that person as exactly who they were when you were together. I'm not sure why it makes me uncomfortable to think of them moving on, other than the fact that it reminds me that I'm not.

Don't get me wrong. I love my fiancee and am very much looking forward to marrying her. I love my job. I love my family. But I'm still here. I always thought I'd be somewhere else, somewhere bigger... every day an adventure. I didn't think I'd be approaching 32 with my nose to the grindstone.

I guess this should spur me into motion as well. I also need to remember that envy, desire, comparison ... those things are the root of unhappiness.