My Body

I'm pretty ok with it.  I mean, sometimes I have fat days and I hate my body, but everyone does that.  For the most part, though, I love my body.

I've gained some weight, and I'm not where I sometimes think I'd like to be - I weigh more than my boyfriend - but I still have my curves, and I can still look in the mirror and feel sexy.  Usually, I do.  Plus, the thing I would have to do to lose the weight?  Not worth it.  I like me.  I actually like the little paunch under my belly button and I like that I have a thick bottom and thighs.  The thing I take most issue with is my stomach, and you know what?  It's fine.  I'm ok with it.  This is all still a work in progress, I guess.  My thoughts are a bit scattered right now.

I guess this is the same thing I hear trumpeted all over: "Be yourself!"  "Be proud of who you are!"  Sure, easier said than done.  I know a lot of it springs, admittedly, from having the worlds most non-judgmental boyfriend, who really, honestly doesn't care what I do with my appearance, as long as I'm happy.  Paradoxically, it also comes from my forays into feminism - it's only recently I've learned that that's not a dirty word for someone who hates men, but a word for someone who believes women should have equal rights.  I know, I know, SHOCKER.  But the culture I was raised in shrinks back from that word like it's something a bit nasty, that someone shouldn't want to be.  So that's something else I'm taking back, that word.  I am a feminist (if sometimes a very bad one) because I am a woman, and I believe that I have the power and capability to do whatever I want, and I believe that I deserve to be paid equally for it.  This came as a surprise to me.  Like the rest of this whole business, it's a work in progress.

I like my pubic hair.  I've shaved it and not shaved it back and forth my whole life, but right now, I'm keeping it.  I've had it a while, but a bit ago I shaved it again on a whim.  I looked so small and shy!  I didn't like it.  That's not who I want my privates to be, if that makes sense.  They're not small and shy, they're powerful and loud.  So I keep it.  I do trim some, for courtesy's sake, obviously.  No need to get carried away.

Sometimes I'm self-conscious of my crooked back, but I can't fix it, so I have to own it.  It's behind me, so that helps.

So again, it's a work in progress.  My point is, it's up to you to make you beautiful.  Not by changing to accommodate society or men, but by loving yourself and the body you live in.  If you want to fix things for health reasons, more power to you.  But if you want to fix yourself so that you look good for someone else, forget it.  To thine own self be wicked sexy

And again, sometimes I do change for someone else.  I'll fix my hair the way my mom likes, and I'd be willing to shave my bits occasionally for my guy, but it's not something I'm willing to do all the time.  If they expect me to do those things all the time, that's a problem.

I don't wear makeup or pantyhose and I don't put much effort into my hair.  I don't want to go through the time and effort it takes to look "effortless" and "natural," the way I'm told I should.

Amy Farrah Fowler by Sebastian König

I do put some restraints on myself.  If I did what I really wanted with my appearance, I wouldn't have a job. That's the price of being a manager, I guess, though I don't really agree with it.  Given the choice, I'd dye my hair blue or shave my head or possibly a little of both.  I'd have visible tattoos on my wrists and neck.  I'd wear different clothes.  I guess these are things I can't really change, or am not willing to make the lifestyle changes I would need to to accommodate these things, but regardless of what I can't do with my body, there are things I can do, or can refrain from doing, and I do or don't do those things because this is my body.  I do or don't because I like or don't like the result or because I'm willing or not willing to put in the effort.  It's all a work in progress, as one's life always is.  But in a world full of things you can't control, and a world full of people telling you how you should look and what you should do with your body, I'm saying no.  This?  This is mine.  And I'm keeping it.

Sketch

     It’s storming. I’m scared of the thunder, but Daddy, in his big grey sweater, holds me and shouts, “I’m The Thunder King! Have No Fear!” He tickles me until I forget to be scared.

     I know this memory is the oldest because my mom and dad are living together. After that, I can tell how old the memories are by which procedures I have to go through to see him.

     5 hour drive, Mackinaw bridge, birth certificate, 3 hours of tiny grey waiting room, 3 electric doors opened by a guard in a bullet-proof glass box, half hour limit, no touching except the hug at the beginning and end - that’s Hiawatha. We went in my Grama’s no-a/c full-size van and she drank out of her big 64oz gas station thermos.

     2 hour drive, fancy blacklight hand stamp, big white waiting room, all our stuff in the little locker, 2 electric doors, and one time we almost can’t visit because I can’t get my ring off my hand - that’s Ionia. Grama carries a giant bag - $45 in quarters for lunch from the vending machines.

     Later, he got moved to a lower-security place where I could sit on his lap and he read me books off the little cart. That one had a long name, and good vending machines. I got a Payday, Grama got a Butterfingers, and Grampa got a Snickers. I still get weird nostalgia when I use a vending machine.

     I see him once during his parole, kind of in secret. I don’t know it is wrong, and my mom doesn’t know he was there at all until it’s too late. It is my Great-Grama’s birthday party - must be her 80th. It has been almost 2 years since I’ve been to Michigan. Grama looks at me, holds me around my waist and cries and cries. Daddy introduces Hannah to me, and says they’re getting married.

Fact & Fancy

So, we had a writing prompt in class the other day where we were to juxtapose factual statements with subjective ones, hopefully creating weird connections, blah blah. So here's mine. I'm happy with it, but it's also one of those things that you can't ever use for anything.

Fireflies are a classic example of an organism that uses bioluminescence for sexual attraction.
Every time I open my mouth, the wrong thing comes out.
Fireflies produce a “cold light,” bioluminescence with no infrared or ultraviolet frequencies.

 I don’t understand extroverts.
Tropical fireflies, in particular, routinely synchronize their flashes among large groups. 

They talk all the time, but they’re not just saying everything in their heads - it’s like a code. 

Species are distinguished by the unique courtship flash-patterns emitted by flying males, which the flightless females mirror from the grass.

 It doesn’t help that I’m not remotely interested in normal-people things - sports, fashion, Real Housewives - so I’ll pretty much be alone forever.
“Photuris” is a genus of lightning bugs (beetles of the family “Lampyridae”).
Maybe it just takes practice - you know, to pretend until you become, fake it 'till you make it. 

The species is carnivorous, and feeds mostly on insects.
Maybe then I’ll finally be able to get a date. 

The females of these predatory beetles mimic the light signals of other lightning bug species’ males to attract, kill, and eat them.

Eyes Half Shut

"It's extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts.  Perhaps it's just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome" -Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad 

Memory

“No relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is often the very essence of dreams...it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence,--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. No, it is impossible...we live, as we dream, alone” -Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad

Can We Learn To Forget Our Memories? by Alix Spiegel (from NPR)