Growing Up Fast: The Not-So-Tough Scary World of Adulting

I graduated in December with a triple major and honors and probably could have done a lot of different things or ended up somewhere making quite a bit more money, but by a weird series of highly fortunate events, I ended up at an abortion clinic. I love my job immensely and it's allowing me some of the most interesting, life-changing experiences I could have imagined for life after college. I could never have been happy as a paper-pusher trapped behind a desk all day. In fact, I did that for a little while, working on grant-making to support organizations fighting gender-based violence. Unfortunately, being the person who reviews the technical merits of an organization's ability to affect change is quite a long way from actually getting down in the weeds and doing something about it yourself. I hated it, not because it was a bad workplace, but just because I felt so detached from the very real battle I was fighting. 

It is with such great fervor and passion that I undertake this new job as the most concrete opportunity I have ever had to make radical, important changes to the very bedrock of out social construction. And I am desperately waiting to find someone who gets it. My family and friends are perfectly willing to put up with my bizarre obsession with rambling on about abortion or other reproductive health issues, but it is with the temperament of a parent towards a child who is persistently up to some odd experiment that is only vaguely interesting to adults. Because it is such a deeply engrained structure of my being to know that this - reproductive justice and gender-based violence advocacy - is the most important battle of my life, and probably the entirety of the 21st century in America, I cannot understand that everyone else doesn't seem to recognize it's importance. 

That isn't to say that people aren't supportive. Overwhelming people are more supportive than I ever expect. It starts with the cagey "Oh, I work at a doctor's office conversation," and as the listener demonstrated themselves to be a safe person to share the real story with ends with compassion and excitement that someone is doing this important work. From an elderly person at church who reveals his daughter works at an abortion clinic in Chicago, to a family friend that reminds me to always be careful because he knew an abortion doctor who was murdered, to an OB/GYN who is excited to meet me as a patient and refer her other patients to our clinic, reassurance comes from unexpected places. 

This in many ways mirrors my experience doing field organizing for abortion access. I think we sometimes fall prey to the false assumption that young people will be the biggest advocates for reproductive justice. While tabling at concerts, festivals, and conferences younger people often pass our tables by, I can only assume because for young people, they assume that since reproductive healthcare access has been comparatively easy for them, it is not a problem. It is older people, however, who, over and over again, come up and commiserate about all the work that needs to be done and how important abortion and other reproduce healthcare are. And then it is always followed by a story, a story of how they remember before 1973, and the horrors of having their friends die or become seriously ill or injured because of the practice of illegal abortions. 

I hope more of these people speak up. I was rereading the One in Three Campaign stories today and am just as compelled by their basic mantra as I was the first time I read them two years ago. As Susan Wicklund's book title powerfully reminds us, This Common Secret is shared by 1/3 of people with uteruses in the U.S. Only 1.7 percent of the U.S. population identities as LGBTQ and yet marriage equality is making waves all over the country (granted marriage isn't nearly the most important issues to most LGBTQ-identified people). If one quarter of the third of us who have had abortions talked about it, where could we be?

It's Better Left to Poets When the Words Think That They Know Us

It's quite surreal to watch someone you love watch someone they love die.

In many ways it's so removed – a person you've met a few times dying. The human loss in palpable, but it doesn't cut so deep, like reading obituaries. Yet you watch someone else feel that deep pain slice into them.

I've never cared much about death. I committed to the idea that dying is just that, your body will recycle back into the earth and consciousness ceases at the last breath and heartbeat. It's an easy place to live, really. Knowing this thing is inevitably coming towards you and that's the fucking end. It makes you live. One of my best friends was chatting with me about religion in high school and I explained my simple view of passing. She was aghast: "You mean you aren't afraid of dying?" She thought that was so liberating – to have the freedom to make what you wanted of a death. I've spent a long time hating the religious leaders that taught her to spend her life terrified of dying.

I also remember my mom talking about her relationship to dying. I remember her recounting a discussion with her agnostic father when she realized why people crave religion. It's so people can make sense of death. At it's core, I completely agree, religion's main purpose to to let people cope with loss. I don't know that giving people something higher to blame or hope of where the deceased is going necessarily does healthy things for humanity's ability to work through loss, but I can certainly feel the appeal of the idea.

My first exposure to death, at least that I am very aware of was a hamster. I informed my father before I went to bed that my hamster was about to die. He didn't take me seriously and put me to bed. My hamster was dead in the morning. I didn't experience that as a loss so much as being annoyed that I was right and hadn't been listened to. I got a new hamster. Years later my guinea pig died. We had been on vacation and someone else was supposed to be taking care of the pets, so again I experienced mostly anger at the person I perceived to be responsible.

Then the dog that I had grown up with died. My parents got Dinah long before I was born and I was sad, but mostly disconcerted, having never lived in my house without her. I remember my father being the most emotional I think I have ever seen him though as he wrestled a boulder out of the grave he was digging by my swing set. In many ways I think he needed that boulder – it was something to do and something to be mad at.

Maybe shortly after or maybe shortly before one of my friends got into a car accident with her older brother and died. That simply. One day she was in class with me the next morning my mom was waking me up telling me about the newspaper headline. At school I stood in a circle with some other close friends who wanted to pray. It is the only time to date I haven't felt horribly awkward with people praying – somehow then it was sweet, and comforting, and necessary. I went to her funeral but didn't think I could handle the viewing. One of my friend's fathers drove us and I remember him complimenting me on my dress and hating him for saying it. It wasn't a day I wanted to feel pretty. Courtney and Dustin will forever be close to my heart.

Next, I remember one of my grandma's best friends dying. I knew Nancy had been just as inspired by her as everyone likes to tell you they are by dead people but really wouldn't have said that before they died. That always bothers me. We pretend people who have passed away were always saints on earth. It isn't true and them being dead doesn't mean we have to pretend they were. Wouldn't lives be a lot more special if we accepted faults but we able to really engage with the things we loved and hated about someone. Nancy was every bit as amazing as any eulogy might hint and her incredibly memory should stand apart from others. We found out Nancy died during the fireworks show on the 4th of July in the rain. We sat in the rain and watched the amazing display and cried. Fireworks always look different to me now – not bad, just bittersweet. Fireworks will always demonstrate to me Nancy's amazing spirit and be a celebration of that life. Nancy's memorial service was the first time I can remember crying out of pure sadness, not being angry or in pain, but sadness.

I've certainly had other run-ins with death, but those are the ones I know shaped me.

A magnificent woman died this morning and even though I've only met her a few times, I can tell that her spirit, like Nancy's was special. A woman who dropped her life to take care of her family and at height of chemo sickness was cracking jokes and playing with a toddler and will forever be in my heart for keeping the person I love safe and sane through some of the darkest moments imaginable.


If we let it get this far
We might as well follow through to our destiny
But if it's written in the stars
Then we should throw it all away
What are we waiting for?

It's better left to poets
When the words think that they know us
And they're floating right below us
And they're hoping we can swim

Making Choices

Hey there, I haven't written in a while, quite a long while. It's been a time of finding myself again, choosing the battles I want to bring to your screen, evaluating how public I really want my life to be, sorting out career goals, breaking relationships and rebuilding them, and being a witness to struggle and victory. It has been a hard year for us here – watching a friend tangled in the confusing and painful web of an abusive relationship; watching another essentially lose their father; a third, fourth, and fifth redefine themselves and create new spaces within and without; a sixth stagnate, somewhere in between. Throw in some deaths, course scheduling, graduations, and fire alarms and you've pretty much got it.

But I have also spent a year learning about myself.

Anyone that knows me know one of my least favorite activities ever is making choices – I won't choose what to eat for dinner, what to wear, or where to go. In my Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Theory class last week we talked about the difference between feeling born into an identity and having your experiences shape you into that identity. Some people spoke about how they feel their experiences have made them who they are and others talked about having always felt different.

But me? Am I who I am because I have always been this way, or did 20 years of fighting for a "me" shape what they would ultimately become. My class decided that it is different for everyone and both experiences should be respected.

Not me. I don't want to defend or justify who I am or how I got here or that it might change. I have no fucking idea whether I was born me or became me, and, frankly, I don't care.

The last year has been about choosing to not choose things and just be present and experience them. I learned that I don't want to be the center of attention – I enjoy bearing witness to the experiences of others, but I also wonder from what spaces I can do that. 

Let's Talk About the Word Vagina

So you know those people that like to say something just to get people's attention? Sometimes they do it in a really cool way and sometimes they do it in a really annoying way. I work for a woman that does it in a cool way. In a, I just said something kinda messed up but it's something that you might say/just said so why is that, kinda way.

She casually used the word "pussy" in class the other day. It didn't even phase me. It was whatever; we were talking about virginity double-standards in Southeast Asia. She's a sex-positive feminist sociologist, what did you expect.

But half the class freaked out. And then we digressed into a conversation about the etymology of the word "vagina." To which I said it means "sheath," to which the class was aghast, to which I had to Wikipedia it to prove that, in fact, "vagina" comes from the Latin "literally 'sheath' or 'scabbard'."

Look I know I'm not the first person to mention how fucked up that is, but seriously, that's so fucked up. Its not even the comparison of vaginas and scabbards that bothers me so much, but the implied correlating comparison between penises and swords (though, apparently, technically the word "penis" comes from the Latin for "tail").

Regardless, penises are not violent tools of pain and overpowering those who are less well trained, prepared, and informed.

What a disturbing metaphor. Maybe we need a new word, not that I particularly like "pussy," but mostly because I have an aversion to cats. 

Perfect Storm

It is an intriguing talent of the cosmos to always make everything happen at the same time, even when it seems like it shouldn't. I was very pleased with my schedule this year after syllabus week because my classes all managed to have pleasantly spread-out schedules as far as work load. A paper at the beginning of November, mid November, late November, early December, much better than last semester when I frequently had two or three ten-page papers due within hours.

As per usual, however, the universe is an expert at conspiring against everyone and I'm in for two papers, a presentation, a panel, an interview, two extra shifts, one extra staff meeting, two swim meets, two quizzes, a discussion, and an RA application in the next few days. And an optional stress management session for my floor. And today, it rained, and we all know how I feel about that. Well played, universe, well played. 

Reevaluating MBTI

My dad's side of the family gets together every two years for a week-long reunion. I think they're crazy, but it gave me a good way to make time and my development growing up. I can remember myself at each reunion and it gives me a plot point for who I was at different moments in my life. I

t helped that my aunts, uncles, parents, and grandparents had extensive rituals for systematizing all of that information, from lists of all of our clothing sizes and interests, scrapbook pages, measurements (height and weight), and to a bi-yearly reevaluation of where we stood on the Myers-Briggs test.

ENTJ. I have always tested an ENTJ. Always. Like, massively, dramatically, unquestionably ENTJ. Extroverted, intuitive, thinking, judging.

Last August, Ben and I started dating. Two weeks after that, I took the MBTI for work. I was an ENTJ, barely. I was almost an INTJ. An E to and I. An E, the part of that status I have always held most dear, taken the most pride in. There were only ever two Es at family reunions, my mother and I, the odd-balls of the group for sure. That E that put off my family for so many years started to retreat.

I'm not sure why I've always been so attached to that extrovert status. Maybe because I never really was and I was trying to grab at something I thought I could be because I kept testing that way.

When I took the test last summer someone pointed out that the introvert/extrovert dilemma isn't about how you usually spend your time, it's about where you draw your energy. Maybe that misconception is why I always tested an E; I have always tried to be busy, spending lots of time with friends and getting involved in my community.

But where do I draw energy? Increasingly over the last two years my energy comes from being alone (or virtually alone, because in many ways I consider being with Ben, being alone). The moments I am sitting in a dark room, writing a terribly self-assessing blog posts, are the moments I live for.

Perhaps as my life gets busier in terms of school and carer planning, it is nice to be calm and safe and quiet and alone.

And I think, increasingly, I like that. 

Shutdown Schmutdown

What the hell does a government shut down even mean really? The zoo animals are still getting fed, wars are still being fought, and congress is still having a crisis.

I live in the capitol city and I'd just like to put out there that not a who lot has changed.

I am NOT saying that that isn't a problem. I'm saying that's a horrible reflection on what our government gets done on a normal, non-shutdown day. In case you were unclear, it's very little. That's a lie, a lot of paperwork gets done and a lot of other bureaucratic mumbo-gumbo, but in our daily lives, little of what the federal government fights about trickles down to us.

This isn't an argument about the size of government, either; I don't much care how big or small it is as a general figure. It is an argument about effectiveness. We are doing less than the Do Nothing Congress, and for that, we should feel terrible about ourselves' utterly ashamed that we can't shut up about whether we are conservative or liberal and get some shit done, like, oh, maybe not defaulting on our debt and tanking the American economy. 

Men: Using Privilege for Good, Speaking Truth to Power, Being Good Feminists

Toward the end of the summer, my boyfriend was walking me back to campus one afternoon. I took an unusual route, looping the outer edge of campus, rather than walking through the main quad. He asked why. I walk that way because it is quieter, not much longer, less crowded, and, in the mornings when I am usually walking home, much prettier. I added as a caveat, assuming ti was why he had asked, that I walked on the busier, more populated quad when I was alone late at night.

He paused and said to me "I am so sorry that you have to think about things like that."

Not "Oh, my goodness I'm never letting you walk home alone again!" He didn't try to claim the experience, or take it over; with that simple phrase, he just acknowledged it, acknowledged that it was something he would never have to face, and reassured me that he was there.

A few weeks later he was reading an article called something like "100 Things Men Can Do to Help Women." As he read down the list he would occasionally ask for confirmation. "Would that really be helpful?!?" Usually, the answer was yes.

There are a lot of problems with men thinking they can improve the situation for women, as so many oppressed groups find, your oppressors cannot unchain you, you must unchain yourself. But we give men a bad reputation. Many, if not most, men are allies.

This wonderful man, from whom I have heard in the course of our friendship and subsequent relationship some unwittingly offensive things, now tells me I can bring him home a pink and black "THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE" t-shirt from work. He has never paused for a moment to question my struggle as a woman when I choose to articulate it to him. He validates my experiences and doesn't ask how to fix them for me, though I'm sure he would do anything I asked. I occasionally tell him to check himself – his position, his privilege – and he does.

The power we have when we trust our allies to be our support, not our saviors, is immense. Too often, we fear letting allies in because we worry they will rewrite our stories as their own. So thank you, Benjamin, for continuing to allow me to struggle, for quietly reassuring me that I am not alone, but creating spaces where I have autonomy, self-authorship, and the freedom to choose my own battles, path, and destiny. 

Tabula Rasa

Sometimes I wonder what my political views would be if I had gotten the opportunity to make those choices outside of the context of social construct that is political life in this country. I would like to think that I would still be as socially liberal as I am, I don't much care what my fiscal policy would be, but I am way less confidant of that than I would like to be. If I was raised in a socially conservative, heavily capitalist, "Don't Tread on Me" environment, I don't think I could say I would be what I am.

I was sitting in a class last night and we were talking about school choice. School choice means a lot of different things and I'll preface this discussion with the caveat that I have no idea how I feel about the concept. One aspect of school choice is public choice, where a parent can choose to send their student to any other public school. Currently, this typically happens when schools aren't meeting the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) standard of Annual Yearly Progress (AYP). Once a school is deemed "failing" parents are allowed to voluntarily move their students to other public school. The second educational choice is to enter a charter school. Usually entrance to a charter is determined by a lottery within the community, with preference sometimes given to families (basically, if the brother/sister is already in the school the second, third, fourth, etc. children have higher chances). I went to a Montessori charter school for three years and truly enjoyed my time there, especially the second two years, but I watched many of my peers really struggle, particularly upon reentry to the traditional public school system (the charter was only K-8). The third and generally most controversial form of choice is voucher systems. If voucher programs are available, students can move to private schools and their public funds will follow them.

Republicans tend to favor voucher programs, the Obama administration has actively opposed them, and I don't think I like them very much, but I have no idea whether that is because I really think they're wrong, or because I know that being liberal means I oppose them. Charter schools are an even bigger shenanigan, largely because people seem so divided. I think I like them, but I liked the one I was at. I really disliked a recent school board candidate in my hometown who didn't like them, but I don't know if that is because it feels like a personal affront to a system that served me well, or because I really think charter schools are important.

Mostly, I just wish I could have had a chance to make up my minds about these issues, and all issues, outside of the bubbles of liberalism or conservatism. And I wonder how different of a person I would be, and, for some reason, it really disturbs me that I might not be exactly who I want because I grew up in a society that was giving me competing views on what to believe. There is much agreement that the social construction of beauty is dangerous for women's health and happiness, why, then, is politics not subjected to the same criticisms of a socially constructed institution?

So the point I end up at is one where there cannot possibly be any right or wrong, even though I desperately want to believe civil rights, freedoms, and liberties are right. And if that's the truth then nothing I think really matters much anyway. That's an incredibly disheartening place to be.

In many ways I crave being right, yet at the same time we reside in this culture that, at least at face value, places the utmost importance on respecting all opinions and recognizing all positions as valid. I cannot be right and recognize others' rightness, so I must be wrong?

The Failings of People

One of the greatest mysteries to me in this world has always been hate: bigoted, racist, sexist, ideological, homophobic, adamant, fearful, unwavering, unfounded hate.

A student of sociology I completely understand how one learns to hate. What is around us, shapes us. If we grow up in a community and a culture that hates, that is almost invariably our course. But we land in that position not by thinking we are hateful and going on anyway, but by truly believing the lies that we are being fed to be true. Generally not even by malicious people, but by other people who were raised and taught the same way,

What really baffles me though, is maintaining all of those feelings after being given clear and contrary evidence. A child gets told all gay people are sinners, and so they believe. But when they later meet lovely gay folks, and learn about them and their lives and their dreams, logic would require a tipping point at which all minds were changed.

Hate seems to be one of the easiest things in the world to learn, but one of the hardest things in the world to unlearn. It seems to me that one of the sole priorities of humanity on this planet now should be figuring out why.

Grieving for Girlyman

I don't think it ever occurred to me that I could grieve for something other than a person.

As I've now written here many times, I saw Girlyman for the first time the night before my first day of high school. I remember not really wanting to go to the Indigo Girls (Girlyman was opening) concert because it was the idea of an aunt I don't like very much and I was so nervous to start school the next day. I feel in love with Nate's song about his grandmother, and only in writing this have I come to realize that that is largely because is many ways "Reva Thereafter" reminds me a lot of my own grandmother. I don't know that there are many musical groups that an 80-year-old woman, 50-year-old woman, and 20-year-old woman can consistently enjoy together, but we managed it. Girlyman has always been a bit of family affair for us.

I spent high school surviving on the power they gave me. I screamed songs at people that had hurt me as I sung along, we would have rousing choruses in the car, and it helped me to articulate love.

Several months ago, Girlyman announced that they would be taking a hiatus from touring and writing as a group to work on themselves and other projects. I was annoyed, but fine.

Yesterday, Girlyman announced that they were permanently breaking up and I find myself profoundly angry.

Who gives these four people the right to take away one of my greatest joys over the last four years, second only to my job and my amazing relationship. I can't even listen to old music now because it is too painful a reminder of something I will never get to have again. I never get to sit in an audience next to my two best friends in the world and just lose myself in the magic and the moment and the ability to feel.

Perhaps it's because I have always found it rather hard to express or validate my emotions, even to myself, and Girlyman was a space in which I could do that. They kept saying everything I wanted to but hadn't figured out how to yet.

"It's not quite gone, but it's not around. Must be somewhere different now."

Except it isn't. You made it gone. And I don't how or if I will ever get past that. And so now I am stuck grieving a thing I didn't know I could lose. And I don't think a new star is growing out of this supernova.

"Gone the supernova's over, burned out. Everywhere I look for it I strike out."

To Move Beyond, Must We Forget?

Twelve years ago I was sitting in a third grade classroom two miles from Ft. Detrick as my peers names were coming in continuously over the intercom saying their parents had come to retrieve them. Today, I sat in the Pentagon Memorial reading 184 names of people that are no longer with us. The youngest person on flight 77 was three. Her older sister was nine. Their parents were both on the place as well.

Walking back a friend mentioned that one of our peers was annoyed that the anniversary services are getting smaller and smaller each year. But isn't that natural, even appropriate? Those of us that are young adults now barely remember our 7-year-old selves; the U.S. is moving out of the wars 9/11 got us into.

We cannot move forward, thinking about the attacks less and less only to whip out a giant ceremony once a year to make ourselves feel like we aren't being irreverent. We can and should be moving on. And we shouldn't be afraid that moving on means diminishing the value of those lives or our sympathy for their sacrifice.

As a nation we cannot continue to pretend one a year that one day 12 years ago still plagues our day-to-day national consciousness. 

Bill O'Reilly, Blogs, and Summertime

I did this thing once, where I wrote this amusing blog. It is probably as good an update about my life currently as anything.

I'm about to wrap up my final week as an intern at the Feminist Majority Foundation in D.C. It's been a ton of fun and I get to do all sorts of exciting things like build websites and write things. So that was one of those things. 

The Face of God

I find, since college has started, summers are a time of tumult, change, passions (all of them, not just romantic), and courage. They are the moments we have to strike out and try new things and when we begin to find our way. They are free opportunities to explore the options life offers. They are also moments to reflect, on ourselves, on the progress of those around us. For the most part, people float through summers, undocked and adrift in the possibilities. In an unusual string of events involving some idiots, some opportunities, and a lot of luck, I have found myself decidedly grounded.

There is a line at the end of Les Miz: "Remember the truth that once was spoken: to love another person is to see the face of God." There is something very different between knowing love and seeing love. You can know love though hearing it spoken, reading it written, or witnessing or receiving actions that make it evident. But when all you have to do is look at someone to know love...

I have spent most of my life as an atheist  largely because I just don't care, but, seeing that every day could make a me a believer. 

Six Year Olds and Drag Queens

This morning for work, the professer I partnered with last semester and I took some of our students to Drag Brunch at Perry's in Adam's Morgan. It was a lot of fun, even though it's a little pricey and you need to get there pretty early. A great show, about ten ladies each of whom performed twice, and an impressive variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. Admittedly, men dressing up as women and dancing on me still throws me off a bit (I made the mistake of sitting at the seat along the walkway, a dangerous move), but that is, essentially, what I came for. Okay, well, actually, we came to sociologically observe an optimization of gender as a performative action, but whatever.

Anyway, in the corner of the room there was a little boy. The first time I noticed him he was handing a dollar bill to one of the performers which made me whip around and stare wide-eyed at my professer, which was supposed to communicate "What the hell? Why is there a little kid here?" She got the message, but just sort of shrugged and ignored me. As the show went on, the boy continued to be sent down with bills. The point, let me clarify, is that you give queen a bill and she dances on or at you for a moment. Many of the performers clearly did not know what to do with the kid, obviously you can't dance on him. One of the queens, Justin, who talked to the audience for a while called the kid over.

"What is your name?" Justin asked.
"Isaiah," he answered.
"And how old are you, Isaiah?"
"Six."
"Are you having fun?"
"Yes."

Good, because it's important that the six-year-old be having fun at the sex parade.
I turned back around to my professer, making another face. Instead of the "Wow," I expected, she said that his parents were probably here a lot and it just isn't a big deal to them or him.

Now I have mixed feelings. On one hand, yes, I think sex is absurdly under-discussed and, quite frankly, over-sexualized in our society. And part of me feels like this restaurant is a really open, friendly, and welcoming place where there were all sorts of patrons, performers, and staff. But the other side of me questions the appropriateness of a drag queen bouncing splits on the ground with gigantic fake breasts falling out of a few bedazzled coverings three feet away from a six-year-old. And I wonder why his parents thought that would be good. I wonder more why they think he should be the one to run over and hand the performers money.

I know I want to say that it is great that we can be that open about sex and the human experience, but I don't think I believe that. There's a difference between explaining the emotions and biology associated with sex and letting a Kindergartener watch porn. At least, they stil seem different to me.

Do you hear the people sing?

I first heard the song of angry men a few days after I turned 12. It was a birthday present to go see my first real show. My grandma, mom, and I went to the National in Washington, D.C. on a school night and saw Les Miserables. I was taking French at the time and I suppose they picked it for being one of the more "serious" shows touring at the time. I was absurdly excited and sang the entire way home. I also remember that some character made a sex joke and I thought that was pretty impressive. It started to snow on the way home, which later became a theme for my mom and me seeing shows. It also meant I usually went in to school late the next day, which was helpful. Les Mis has never stopped fascinating me, or making me cry. Over the next few years I saw the movie version (which isn't a musical) in French classes and listened to the soundtrack pretty frequently. It has always struck me for its passion. Any good show should have passion, that isn't my point, but the pasion of two or three people and the passion of a nation are very different things. Les Mis makes me sad that I wasn't alive to fight the French Revolution because half way through the show I'm ready to leap up on stage, risk my life, and stand on the barricade. Last fall, the movie came out. I have some issues, but, overall, it captured me in just the same way. Tonight, I will go see the musical production again, at a theatre I have grown to love. Every time I revisit something I love, I worry for a split second in the midst of excitement that perhaps it will have lost its magic. But that isn't how magic works. Watching Brigadoon emerge out of the Scottish highlands is still just as impressive and magical now that I know it's on a sound stage in Hollywood as it was when I was five and very possibly really thought there was a town like that across the ocean in what, accurately or not, I consider my motherland. So, will you be strong and stand with me? I want to see the world beyond the barricade, over and over and over again.

Searching for Silver

I often find myself surprised by the moments and people who give us the most strength. I would never have expected a young woman I've met once in my life and tend to think isn't that impressive to become the silver lining that puts a sparkle in what will undoubtedly be a long, dark tunnel, but she did it. And she didn't even do anything for me: all she did was ask for a phone number and make a few Facebook friends. I would never have expected the people who keep me sane and give me hope to be people I've exchanged just a few sentences with in my life and mostly see from the distance of a front row, at best. But that's the power music has. I debated with a friend once about the difference/similarity between music and books. We each argued (I for music, she for books) that it was an escape. I think that was a poor assessment. Music doesn't take me away, it brings me back to the present. When my mind races and life is overwhelming, music grounds you to the singer and the instrument and the message and the moment you're in, and isn't identical to your life and your problems, but it's just close enough that you can think about them without them killing you. Funny, that the people who help us the most will never know.

Snow

I remember a high school teach telling me in my junior or senior year that I would stop liking snow when I went off to college and it became a hassle rather than an excuse to skip school and play. Perhaps it's because my university tends to be pretty liberal about dolling out snow days, but I still enjoy it. I don't have the same desire to run about outside and play in it that I used to, but that is mostly due to a lack of appropriate clothing at school. My appreciation of snow is now from afar, glancing out the window, or more likely staring for a long time. Snow makes everything inside cozier, I assume because of the juxtaposition of temperature. Sitting inside during the snow with a mug of hot cocoa or tea and being curled up under a blanket, makes you unbelievably appreciative that you aren't braving the weather outside.

It's ironic that I post about snow on this day, when, for the first time, we actually have a few inches of snow, and yet, the university texted everyone saying, "All classes at activities will be held at regularly scheduled time." They are taking away the magic of snow. The magic that is tilling inside, looking out. The feeling that the outside world is very isolating, very quiet, and that you have this enclave, wrapped up in your blanket, of warmth and happiness, and hope.

Et je vais essayer de vous fixer.

My boyfriend once said to me, "Well, you do seem to attract broken people." I laughed and said, "So does that mean you're broken?" He shrugged.

My entire childhood, as soon as I got upset about anything, my mom would start listing solutions. This, frankly, annoyed me. I just wanted to be allowed to upset for a while; rarely do I want things to be fixed, rarely do I need them to be fixed. But, she wanted to fix things...and I'm starting to realize I inherited it.

If the last seven months have taught me something, it's that there is a time to be quiet: a time to not open your mouth because getting the last word in matters a lot less than not going to bed angry, a time to quietly listen because you don't know the solutions. I have learned that I am really bad at watching people fall apart, even though in those moments I often feel the closest too them. I, like my mother, want to be able to fix things, and, when possible, will quietly fix everything I can. I will wake up and make coffee or help you time manage if that will make your day better, because there are some things that I cannot fix, that cannot be fixed. I can't make a parent love you, or take away all the scary things that have happened to you. Those are moments for silence, not solutions.

He's right. I do attract broken people, but, get real, who isn't a little bit broken.

The Langelan Standard for Good Sex

So you may have gathered that I took a Sexual Harassment class this weekend (an academic class, not a workplace seminar). This little old lady spent a weekend yelling at us on and off about how we could all help solve the problem. One of her more amusing outbursts was about our standard for sex. The debate is always was it forced or consensual. "Get rid of consent!" she said, "Consent is a terrible standard." "The standard should be enthusiasm." She proceded to rant for ten minutes about how if we ever found ourselves in bed with people that weren't enthusiastic we should "get out of that bed." She argued that enthusiastic sex would always be better anyway and I think she's right. Chatting with girlfriends over winter break who complained that with exes they've gotten bored, been watching tv, not cared, waited for it to end, etc, I was really sad for them, but even more now. I was also appalled last semester to hear one of my close friends say she swooned when a guy asked her what she liked. PEOPLE: IF YOU HAVE NEVER BEEN ASKED IF YOU FEEL GOOD/WATCH TV/ARE BORED/HAVEN'T BEEN ASKED IF YOU FEEL SAFE/WAIT FOR IT TO BE OVER, TRY SOMETHING OR SOMEONE NEW! Please. Make your standard for a partner and your standard for yourself enthusiasm, every time.