Facebook Ignorance

Read this comment posted on by someone I'm friends with on Facebook and then read my response below.

There are just so many things wrong with this post. It's difficult to know where to begin, so I've decided to dissect it line by line to dispel any thoughts that any part of this Facebook post is (a) accurate (b) not-racist. It's completely racist. There is no single sentence in this post that doesn't reek of white supremacy and entrenched racism. This reflects the superiority complex prevalent on the political right as well as the sheer ignorance many people brought up in overprivileged white communities experience. Am I surprised that someone would think it was okay to post this on a social networking site? No. Not at all. But I've been quiet way too long for me to see something like this and respond with something simple and dismissive like "the ignorant will remain ignorant" or "stupidity is rampant in society, we can do nothing about it."

Let's get to the good stuff. The beginning of the second sentence reads, "However, the liberal media and president Obama are incorrectly portraying this shooting as a case of White vs. Black racism..." I suppose the author believes that Fox News' approach to the situation is a better one, the news station where Geraldo Rivera claims that black parents just shouldn't allow their kids to wear hoodies because the hoodie was as much to blame as the killer. The liberal media is accurate in their portrayal of this as a case of White vs. Black racism. First of all, George Zimmerman is half-white, half-Hispanic. His features are primarily European; we can assume that his experience in society was equivalent to that of a white man. Being half-white is enough to give someone the assumption of white privilege. True, blacks can be a target of racism from a variety of races, but the media is not incorrect in portraying George Zimmerman as white. The author also tries to detract from the fact that this is a hate crime by trying to make it a political statement, as if a black boy's murder is some grand ploy to discredit the GOP.

Another brilliant addition to this second sentence of supreme wisdom is "...a) there is nothing to prove that Trayvon Martin's race played any part in his murder". How many black men have to be murdered for people to realize that race plays a part in their deaths? How many black men have to be killed on the streets for moral elitists to realize that racism still exists in the United States and it isn't the victims' fault? If this author could look me in the eye and tell me a white boy of that same stature, wearing a hoodie, walking home with Skittles and Iced Tea would have been gunned down, he will not only be lying to my face, but he will be demonstrating how seriously entrenched his racism is. Of course the killer will not say that race had anything to do with it, which, if you want proof, is the only way you can get it. But the fact of the matter is, it was an issue of race. If it wasn't, Zimmerman would have backed down when the police told him to over the phone instead of pursuing and violently murdering an innocent child.

Next, he says that "...Latinos in this country are just as oppressed as Black-Americans." When I got to this part of this status update, I couldn't resist scoffing. I am not saying that Latinos do not face discrimination or outright racism based upon the color of their skin, their language and even their culture but the two are not comparable. First of all, in a hate crime like this one, it doesn't matter if the murderer experienced more or less racism throughout his life. The fact of the matter is, Trayvon Martin was killed because he was black by someone who believed himself to be racially superior to him. Black men are villains in society as soon as they were born. Police brutality is unfairly prejudiced against black men. The brunt of racism exerted by the authorities is focused on black men. The two are not comparable, and should not even be compared at all in this case.


The author proceeds to express frustration with what I assume he believes to be Obama's racism. He says, "What frustrates me most, however, is that President Obama has said 'If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon' which implies that his caring interest in the care stems from the fact that Trayvon looks like him." This was a hate crime. This hate crime was committed because Trayvon Martin was black. The author, so busy practicing his color-blindness, must not have noticed that President Obama is also black. In addressing a hate crime like this that quickly rose to national attention, how could the President ignore race? Brushing the issue of race under the carpet doesn't eliminate racism. Ignoring racism only allows it to become quiet, secretly practiced in the home and then allowed to erupt in hate crimes like this, when people can no longer keep their immense hatred to themselves and explode in extreme violence targeting those who do not deserve it. (Note: No one deserves to be killed by a hate crime.)

The dear poster then suggests that black people must abandon our racial identity for racism to stop. This is yet another example of entrenched white supremacist sentiment. In order to appease his false sense that the United States has racial equality he expects people to abandon their identity and assimilate to his. Black culture is different. Black culture is important. Yet, he proposes we "stop defining our lives and our actions by race, then and only then will the racial divides in our country dissolve." This is racist for, "give up your identity to fit my perception of normal and then I will not discriminate against you and support the systematic murdering of your people." The color of our skin is a part of our ethnicity and a part of our nationality. Ignoring skin color will not allow racism to disappear. If I forget for a second that I am a black woman, this will not change how people see me. I cannot hide my darkness. I cannot hide my unruly hair. I cannot hide my black identity and racial equality doesn't mean I have to hide my identity either. Solving racism isn't going to happen as a result of me pretending not to be black. It's going to be solved by people just not being racist.

Not wanting to leave us at the end of his post with any confusion as to whether or not he is racist, the author blames this hate crime on the President and black people in general. He places the blame of "stereotyping, racism, hate crimes and disunity" on the victims of the entire situation. Make no mistake, black people are the victims here, but in an attempt to make the killing of Trayvon Martin an egocentric event, he ignores the fact that racism and discrimination is caused by a white supremacist attitude and not the people who have to worry about their children being legally gunned down for no reason.

Like most racists, he tries to conceal his true hatred for blacks in a wordy post that blames the victim and the liberal media. It reeks of ignorance and disgusts me to the core. Racism is not controlled by the people on the receiving end of it. It is caused by people who perpetrate racist ideals, people do not take the time to educate themselves, people who believe themselves to be morally superior to everyone around them and people who advocate the false notion that color-blindness can exist. He prefaces his post claiming that he is "horrified" Zimmerman hasn't been arrested. But he shouldn't be. People like him are the reason that Zimmerman is free and Trayvon is dead. People like him are the reason that I live in fear of having black sons. People like him are the reason there will be more Trayvons for years to come. 

Relevant Blogs

Yesterday I promised I would post articles, but I think that just posting links to blogs will provide a much bigger picture. Now, there are some posts that I don't entirely agree with but this isn't the case with the majority of them. All of these are tumblrs, and I'm sure there are great blogspot blogs, but I'm early on my path of discovery. 

Happy reading!

http://morecoffee.tumblr.com/

http://menwhotrustwomen.tumblr.com/

http://daughterofzami.tumblr.com/

http://ethiopienne.tumblr.com/

I can update this list and maybe create a special page for it later, but for now enjoy scrolling through and educating yourself.

Black Feminism

I have recently discovered the community of black feminist bloggers on tumblr and worlds have been opened to me that I never knew existed. My entire life there have been feelings and thoughts about society inside of me that I have been unable to express. I do not have a beautiful style or a beautiful manner of expressing myself. I view my writing as that of some kind of dumbed down Hemingway. It has always been hard to know if my feelings are legitimate when there has been no support system or any group of people to tell me that it is okay to feel these things, that my thoughts are more than a loner's delusions. It has been difficult to accept my feelings as legitimate when I can barely find the words to express what is going on in my mind. How can anyone understand what I'm thinking, if I cannot express my thoughts and seem to barely understand them myself?

My voice has been institutionally silenced over the years, an intelligent voice that thinks critically about society and wants to understand the world around her. I feel like all I needed was to be educated by someone like me: someone young, black and intellectually capable who continues to defy what society tries to enforce. I understand that what I struggle with is different from what a 100% black female struggles with; I will never be able to really understand what someone darker than me struggles with, but I am willing to educate myself about it. Along with my struggle to find my own identity, I have been educated about the true depth of a black woman's struggle. I have been educated about what it means to reconcile my desires to be a feminist and my desire for racial equality without compromising my culture.

There is so much that I have yet to learn. Reading a few blog posts here and there is not going to be enough, but it's a start in becoming really educated. There is so much that I want to learn and my journey is just beginning. The education I'm receiving is never taught in schools. God forbid you give women, black women in particular, a way to empower themselves. God forbid you teach them about their true potential to impact society. I want anyone who reads this blog to become acquainted with the issues I am talking about. Tomorrow, I will look for some good posts that I've read and link them here. I don't have confidence in my eloquence in rewording them.

It doesn't matter if you are white, black, biracial or multiracial, we can all learn something by standing together with our human sisters. Racism is a social construct that we can begin to destroy as individuals.

Spring Time

I am ambitiously trying to blog outside today. In a wave of unbelievable March weather, it is around eighty degrees here in Vermont and I'm sitting outside trying to make the most of this while it lasts. Of course, my mind is occupied with a variety of somewhat topics, none of which I feel strongly enough about to flush out a blog post. However, today my mind wandered upon something uplifting that changed my mood for the day and caused me to reflect on how I've changed over this past year. This time last year, I was finishing up my final year of high school. I was on spring break about to hear back from a number of colleges at the same time. My news would be mostly good (with only one real disappointment). However this time last year kickstarted my realizations about entering the adult world. I was traumatized by the epiphany that my life and relationships with my friends would change.

Now, I look back at that time, and all the promises I made to myself and others. I feel like I can confidently say that I managed to hold up my end of promises especially about communication. Anything that fell apart was not as a result of my lack of effort. I still remain very close to the girls I prefected a dorm with and I occasionally am in touch with younger students at Groton through various social media.

I have not lost sight of my goals or who I am and would venture to say that I am actually closer to self discovery, something that was definitely my intent. Although academics have not been easy, I have been managing everything that I needed to do successfully. I am working towards something that I have not yet given up on.

My biggest fears seem to have been for naught. However, I still have some regrets and want to make some changes about the way I have started off college. I just wanted to write something small to encourage everyone reading this to continue with their goals. College can be whatever you want it to be. It took me some time to realize that, but I am working on making that realization a part of my daily life.

Oppressing Ourselves

A lot of us may have noticed that certain people, or maybe even just people in general hold a certain power over us. There is something about them that makes us forget our instincts of self-preservation and allows us to become emotionally vulnerable for moments, days or years at a time. This tendency to be weak for a short while is acceptable with someone who will not take advantage of us, but this emotional exposure can quickly morph from a simple change in pace to something masochistic and potentially dangerous.

We forget to love ourselves sometimes, especially if we are in darker places, and believe that we do not deserve to be loved. Letting someone take advantage of you is one of the worst things you can do, no matter how you are feeling. Not only are you feeding yourself to future trust issues, but you are also forcing yourself to experience the emotional pain of disappointment.

It can be difficult to accept that someone you like or love doesn't feel the same way about you. (Yet sometimes difficult things must be done). If something feels incomplete or incorrect, what is the point of continuing to pursue it hoping for some prospective completeness that you crave but can never have? I may not be one to talk; at some point or another I too have filled my head with silly delusions about people who have eventually left. However, I recognize my mistakes. The only bad mistake is one you do not learn from. Before positioning yourself somewhere as an easy target, I want to help you assess your life and how you are emotionally treating yourself. It is difficult to give up on someone or the precious hope of someone perfect, but it is even more difficult to piece yourself together after you have taken one too many falls.

The first step in all of this is convincing yourself you are in control. Although we are not in control of our feelings most of the time (you may love someone totally undeserving or someone who isn't necessarily your "type"), our actions are in our control and to a certain extent we can regulate our thoughts. Think about what you really want out of a personal connection whether it is a friendship or a romantic relationship. Then, it's important to think about whether the person you are preoccupied with can give you want you want, and if they can't give you what you want, do they seem willing to change in the future?

I don't believe that every person will be able to give you everything that you want out of a relationship; there are areas where compromise must exist to compensate for human imperfection. However, it is important for us not to compromise too much for a false sense of security that will eventually diminish leaving us with a crude picture of our delusions. A moment of unhappiness or a fight is not enough to cause us to break off a connection with someone, but when the bad moments start to outweigh the good ones, you will know this in the back of your mind.

What can we do once we have recognized that we are in control and secondly that we may be compromising our happiness for someone who will never compromise their happiness for us? The next step is to eliminate this person from our plans for the future. When you think about where you will be in ten years, imagine a life without them. It is possible to move on from someone. Everyone has done it. Once you recognize your potential to exist without worrying about whether or not this person will remember your birthday or be there for you after a huge disappointment, you will eventually recognize your full potential for freedom and for finding happiness somewhere else.

When things aren't going well and do not fit our imagined constructs of perfection, we can sometimes try to force situations to be what they aren't. If some boy you like doesn't like you back, you will start to attribute meaning to his whispered words and casual glances turning them into something meaningful when they really might just indicate friendship. If someone is vague or ambiguous, there is a tendency to hold out false hope that something may happen in the future. This behavior is destructive. I've been there. Reaching out to friends for advice can often eschew what you are trying hard to avoid: the fact that someone isn't interested. Your friends may know that if you tell them the truth you will not listen or sometimes they've known the truth for so long but feel guilty for having held out. Your friends are there to listen to you, guide you and help you, but they cannot constantly provide harsh reality checks without ruining your friendship. Reality checks are up to you.

People should stop being instruments of their own oppression. There comes a time when you have to truly love yourself and believe that you are in control of your happiness. If you are not happy with yourself or the direction of your life, the "promise" of a future with someone on the cusp of adulthood like yourself will not fix your unhappiness. Whether you are thinking about the comforts of marriage (which is crazy by the way) or just a long-term romantic affair, these are not solutions to uncertainty about the future. Uncertainty is a part of being human. It is our essence and plays a role in our universal significance as a species. Uncertainty cannot be fixed by hurting ourselves for a vague promise of something that would be great "if only".

Focus on people who want to be with you or around you. Focus on how you can make your own future more certain on your own. Focus on loving books, poetry, photography, nature or something that involves expressing human spirituality. A famous Jamaican once said "Liberate yourself from mental slavery". These words become more and more important as we grow up and find ourselves entering a world of adulthood that we feel totally unprepared for. Enslaving yourself to someone's happiness when they couldn't care about your own is not healthy and I would venture to say it's morally wrong. Take a hint from Epicurus. Live for yourself, pursue pleasure and maybe then you can break your cycle of oppression.

The Egoists

I have been traditionally bad at taking criticism. Since I was a child, I did things the way I felt was right. I would follow orders the way I was expected to, but "suggestions"or less powerful commands were frequently ignored in favor of decisions that I'd made on my own. To some extent, everyone is bad at taking criticism, but there is a point when you must get over your egoism and accept that other people's view of the world may be more correct than yours. There are specific cases especially when other people's criticism matters. If someone is pointing out a comment you have made that is racist, misogynistic or in some way discriminatory against a group of people, your opinion on the comment doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you "meant it as a joke"or believe that you "don't have a misogynistic bone in your body".

If someone, especially someone who belongs to the group of people you are "not offending", is trying to correct you, then it's your responsibility to get over yourself, apologize, and try to see what you are doing wrong. If you are unable to do this, then something is wrong with you besides your ability to assess which jokes are appropriate and which ones are not.

There are a certain group of people, most often (in my experience) men, who possess entrenched arrogance so profound that it shocks me continuously. These are also often people who parade around claiming to be the "good guys" simply because they open a few doors and pull out chairs for a lady or two. Now, I'm not going to get hyped up about someone holding a door open for me, but my point is, if you claim to be a nice person, this needs to be reflected not just in shallow mechanical social requirements but also in the way you think.

One of the main ways this arrogance is shown is through an inability  to understand that someone else has the right to correct you. This is often accompanied by becoming agitated and fiercely denying that you are a racist / misogynist when no one has yet accused you of such a thing. When I say, "That's racist", I am not telling you that you are racist, I'm pointing out how inappropriate a comment you made is. I'm sorry about your feelings, but who is looking out for the feelings of people in my race? Nursing the wounds of the overprivileged is the least of my concerns. I am not responsible for your insecurity or your inability to listen to any opinion other than your own.  Of course, the arrogant person jumps to his own defense, rather than opening his mind, quickly painting me as the "angry black woman" who is overreacting, probably because of my period.

The thing that is most unfortunate about situations like this is the depth to which these social abominations are entrenched. An arrogant person will genuinely believe that one Harvard psychology test or the fact that they have a girlfriend proves that they are incapable of racism or sexism. They change the victims of their ignorance into attackers to protect themselves from self-awareness. These types of people will juxtapose the phrase "I am not a misogynist"with something like "women in power are sexy" and see nothing wrong with this. Of course there's nothing wrong with it. Women in power are so uncharacteristic and taboo that when they are in power, they must serve a sexual purpose. Thank god! At least they are sexy so they can serve some role pleasing men. Their power cannot be respected and treated as equal to a man's power, it must be sexy. 

Sometimes, the people who think and behave like this are people close to us. Is it worth it to try to change a mindset that seems impenetrable? Any criticism is seen as a blow to the ego and met with fierce opposition. How can you reach out when reaching out seems to be so fruitless? To a certain degree, we all deviate from our goals of being perfectly egalitarian; we may accidentally make an ignorant comment or maybe we genuinely believe something that is wrong and should be against our personal philosophies. The difference between the occasionally deviant egalitarian and the moral egoist is willingness to accept criticism. I am not one to waste my time. You shouldn't be either. Some people are unchangeable, unfixable and want to remain in a state of perpetual ignorance. This is of course easier for white males in society than it is for anyone else. In the end, it is up to you to decide whether or not you want to be around these kinds of people, forced to eternally be a crusader for a lost cause.  Personally, I am willing to put a certain degree of effort into changing someone's mindset, but after awhile I will move on, fixating my activism on people who have a chance at goodness.

A Narrative

Mornings are time for specificity and organization. Everything must happen a specific way to set the tone for the day. As light slowly begins to fill my room, I wake up, instantly reaching for the gadgets that anchor me to society. I turn every alarm off, everything meant to startle me into the waking world in the event my brain lusts after slumber a little too long. I try to roll out of bed slowly so I don't wake my roommate, unaware of whether or not I am successful. Teeth. Jeans. Brush hair. Contacts. Thick swipe of black eyeliner. Books thrown into a tote bag or a backpack, depending on my outfit and I'm out the door.

On a good day, I can accomplish all of this in fifteen minutes flat. I go to the nearest dining hall for breakfast and sit in a cozy diner style booth with my laptop open. I have to have Orange Juice first, then some kind of food, then coffee. Then more coffee. And my ten minute cups time me through the morning until I am forced to get on with my day and go to my first class, something I often times dread, preferring to sit and write for hours on end in my little booth.

Ritual dictates my days and my weeks. Without a clear idea or schedule I would be lost. I am perpetually following a script for my life. On good weeks, this schedule is perfect and represents exactly what I want. On bad weeks, I throw it all out. I skip class, I miss appointments and I fall off the face of the earth. I want to disappear, so I do. Fuck schedules. Fuck classes. Fuck requirements...

In my head, I've always thought of my tendency to do that as "going to the darkness". No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight. Although I am convinced my morning ritual is what keeps me sane, I know that it only keeps me alive. Sanity is something very distant, something I aspire to. I will be sane when I no longer fade to darkness or when I no longer need silly ritual just to get me to class or to make sure that I get up in the morning.

Although once I try to spill words onto a page, my words become unstable and harder to maneuver into perfection, in my head everything is stuffed with imagination. Intense thought spews out and tries to escape from my tightly shut chest. Everything in my heart and head is under lock and key and I have always operated under the assumption that someone else possessed the key that could pry me open and  force me to be rid of my emotional hang ups. It's either that, or I have to accept the fact that I have the potential to fix myself, but some mysterious force makes me incompetent and unable to do so. I am holding my breath until I am asphyxiated, waiting for some unknown variable to complete the insolvable equation of my despair.

Every inhale is followed by a sharp exhale: realization. Some breakthrough that liberates me from this expectation that someone else needs to help fix me. But once I breathe out, releasing all the tension from my suffocation, once I discover satisfaction, I need to breathe in again and feel the taboo pleasures of being asphyxiated through my own willpower. My breakthrough is diffused and I am right back where I started, gasping for air.

Three shots in. Too much for my head but just enough for my heart. A quiet evening morphs into something with potential before vodka and seltzer has time to catch me up to what is happening. An arm around my shoulder. My head rests on a rib cage, making direct contact with the source his rhythmic breathing. Of course there are words, which come so easily when you've had a bit to drink and you are no longer afraid of showing that you are human. Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too... But everything ends. The infinite is a construction beyond human comprehension; although some moments should last forever, they are so mostly prematurely terminated. Soon, I begin to realize that the words coming out of my mouth are too much. The thoughts running through my head are too much for me to handle... You left me in the dark. Everything is happening too fast for me to process.

I make a hasty escape to my cave of sobriety and lie in my bed thinking more than I should. The unknown has broken through my careful guards against emotion. My daily rituals are insignificant in keeping me sane in a world of the unexpected. Perfection in the morning is so much harder to keep up with at night. During the daytime with the protection of rituals, when emotions or thoughts become too much I can run away. This is supposed to prevent me from "fading to darkness" too easily. I do everything in my power to prevent the trigger of depressive thoughts. I do everything to protect myself.

In the safety of my bed, I realize that I am not protecting myself, but punishing myself. I don't want to feel because I think I don't deserve it. In reality, I want to feel someone else's heartbeat next to mine, a soothing repetition, letting me know "you are not alone" with each pulse. My feelings always become more complex than just wanting to have someone to keep me company at night. I am always the one who thinks more, feels more and loves more, whether or not I express that to the outside world.

I refuse to constantly put myself in the position of being the feeler, the thinker or the lover. I possess an inability to control the intensity of my emotion. Not being in control terrifies me. No matter how nice and sweet some boy might seem, given a week and a half of me believing them to be different.  I can peel away their layers of kindness and destroy my illusions of difference faster than most. No, I don't think all guys are assholes, but I think I can provoke people into revealing the negative aspects of their personality.

The only thing I can control is my negativity, but even that seems like such a burden. Have I ever pondered what would happen if I did let go emotionally. What if I actually let someone know that I could feel? What if I showed someone my emotions to someone?

What am I so scared of?

I fear commitment, wanting too much commitment, unhappiness, too much happiness, and so many other things. If I am too happy, then what I view as an inevitable fall from this joy will hurt even more. I am concerned that each time something bad happens to me, it will be harder for me to bounce back in one piece. I imagine myself crumbling at an accelerated rate as it becomes more difficult to rebound from disappointment.

But I can't let this negativity dominate my thoughts. I know that I will never be happy if I view everything as an opportunity for failure rather than an opportunity for something amazing. My main problem is reconciling how I should feel with how I do feel. It's something everyone faces to some extent; I am not alone in this. And dear reader, you aren't either.

Coffeehouse Jazz

Coffeehouse Jazz Pt. 2 from dismantled47 on 8tracks.

I did NOT make this mix, but it is absolutely necessary that you listen to it. This jazz is controlling my life right now. It's speaking volumes to me.

Poem

Make love to me in Spanish.
Not with that other tongue.
I want you juntito a mi,
tender like the language
crooned to babies.
I want to be that
lullabied, mi bien
querido, that loved.

I want you inside
the mouth of my heart,
inside the harp of my wrists,
the sweet meat of the mango,
in the gold that dangles
from my ears and neck.

Say my name. Say it.
The way it’s supposed to be said.
I want to know that I knew you
even before I knew you.

By: Sandra Cisneros, Dulzura

Stand Up For Something

As a biracial girl who grew up in a third world country, I belong in an interesting niche in society. I'm not trying to insinuate that I'm an interesting person, but the world around me has always been fascinating and I have a perspective that might not be unique, but it is rare, at least in the world where I am now. I grew up in a place where I was allowed to become my own person without societal expectations and negative stereotypes playing a role in my becoming a person. No one told me that young black girls were supposed to listen to R&B or that they shouldn't become scientists. No one told me I should overcompensate for the "loud black woman"stereotype by being meek and demure. I was unaware that I had "bad hair"or that I was pretty... "for a black girl". This was a world where being stick thin was looked down upon and being healthy was the ideal.  I lived in a place where I was definitely still the minority and frequently considered white, but I was surrounded by a different black culture than the one portrayed by the media or even the one that exists in most of black America. I was surrounded by black women who were strong, hard working, confident and independent. I was allowed to become my own person without emulating black celebrities. My black identity was defined by family and my role models weren't Aaliyah or Beyonce, but my aunts, mother and grandmother.

When I came to the United States, I didn't feel the need to be an activist. I still don't feel the need to get offended by every subtly racist or inappropriate comment made. I can take a joke about being multiracial or about my island heritage. If something is funny, I can acknowledge it as such. If someone wants to touch my hair, I'll probably let them. I understand when people who come from a primarily white world don't get parts of my culture or need help comprehending the significance of even having a black identity.

But recently, as my cynicism about society grows and my awareness about social issues broadens I have felt drawn to stand up for certain things more than I have in the past. This is not a result of personal bitterness, or a growing "chip" on my shoulder. I am driven out of a need for justice and a need to push for equality  in all areas of life. I am aware that I am probably not going to affect great change in this world. I lack passion and drive for that kind of thing. But within my niche, I can certainly try to change a few minds. After all, isn't that what true social change is: small scale thought revolutions that eventually spread and take over society.

Despite being a self-proclaimed cynic, I actually believe that most people are not inherently racist or sexist. I believe that misogyny and racism comes from ignorance that is entrenched so deeply in American culture that it is often times hard for people to even identify when they have crossed a line. Many people don't realize they've crossed a line when they say that someone is pretty "for a black girl" or when they use the term "gyp"to refer to being cheated out of money. There are many variations on these two examples that come up if you open your ears up. How should you treat comments like that, that may not be intentionally hurtful, but are certainly inappropriate? If someone tries to silence your voice of opposition, how do you react?

On my  good days, I normally just point out when something is not okay by saying exactly that: "That's really not okay", normally accompanied by a brief explanation of why. But, for repeat offenders, it can be difficult to keep calm and not just accuse this person of being outright racist or misogynistic. As a rule of thumb though, pointing out someone's ignorance should always be done without using accusatory words. Sometimes, when reacting to other people's racism/misogyny it is easy to lose sight of rationality and be overcome by emotion, especially if you are passionate about the issue. As a girl, no matter how unemotional I try to keep my reactions, they are often devalued and passed off as me "freaking out". Of course, girls cannot stand up for anything or have a place outside of being "cute".

It's difficult to feel like you cannot be taken seriously. There are a number of facets to my personality, and calling people out when they have crossed the line is one of them. I feel like a lot of what I say can be devalued because of other aspects of my personality and this adds to my cynicism about the people around me. I feel like I should be able to wear six inch heels and dark eyeliner one day and then point out misogyny without my words being either devalued or being called bitchy. I should be able to allow one joke about being multiracial and in the future call someone out on something that crosses the line. It is not up to other people to decide what is offensive to me or to my race.

Even if I feel that it takes a lot of energy to speak out and sometimes I question whether or not my words are changing anyone, I also feel like my life would be empty without some kind of activism. I cannot sit and just accept inappropriate comments. It is not in my nature to lie about what is going on in my head just to fit a stereotype. Standing up for things does not mean that you are bitter or have a chip on your shoulder. If everyone stood up for what they believed in, whispers of change could activate something louder and more powerful.

Hardcore

Today I watched this documentary called Hardcore (2001) about a British woman named Felicity who moved to Los Angeles to try to make it in the American porn industry. I know the film came out in 2001, which makes me a bit late for commentary, but in 2001 I was worried about things like coloring and spelling words right for dictation and not so much the American porn industry. Now however, this film strikes a nerve and I feel the need to write something about it and express some of the thoughts I had.

A part of me wants to believe that this film shows only one case of an adult film actress who was mistreated and doesn't represent the norm. However, I know that this cannot be the case. What I witnessed in this movie went beyond degradation of women. There was rape, emotional and physical abuse of multiple kinds and feelings of incredible powerlessness that accompanied all of those things. A part of me wants to believe that the general population is not aware of what goes on in these films, but I know that they are. The fact that the adult film industry is allowed to continue without government regulation while gay marriage and marijuana are banned provokes a visceral reaction that I haven't been able to shake since watching the film.

The woman who the documentary is centered on, Felicity, experiences mistreatment at the hands of her agent who treats her like his property. This mistreatment begins as sexual harassment but eventually the agent, Richard, moves on to more emotional abuse and comes to manipulate her and control her more and more to make more money. He shows absolutely no respect for Felicity's wishes; he is her only support system in the United States and he takes advantage of her and forces her to push her moral limits. There is one part of the movie where Felicity is basically raped and he does nothing about it and doesn't seem to be bothered by it at all. The prevalent attitude among everyone in the movie (besides the camera man filming the documentary) is that by being a porn actress, Felicity no longer had the right to decide how far she would or would not go.

I don't want to give away too much and right now I am still in shock from the film so here's a link:


http://hcdocu.blogspot.com/

Form your own opinions and open your eyes to the cruelty and misogyny that is still allowed in the United States today. We might live in a First World country, but this country is far from perfect.

heartbroken morning after mix - 8tracks

heartbroken morning after from everywhereinchains on 8tracks.

Socializing

Despite the fact that this has been a good morning, and I have no immediately conceivable reason to feel lonely or upset there is a sense of a huge burden on my shoulders. I am aware of possible sources of  this anxiety. Any kind of social confusion or lack of control instantly sends me into a distressed state. I am confident about a number of things: being intelligent, being at the very least somewhat attractive and I am decently confident in my sense of humor. Don't worry, I'm not writing this to tell you how much self-confidence I have; anyone who has caught me on a bad night after ten pm will inform you of how quickly this self-assuredness can crumble.

The tricky thing with being confident about friends or just interactions with people in general is the total lack of control. You can't really control how people perceive you, unless you want them to dislike you, which is simple to control by brazenly pointing out some character flaws or physical imperfections. I am good at that sort of thing, but find it harder to get people to really be into my sweeter albeit more obnoxious side.

I think what scares me the most about other people is developing unreciprocated attachments. By chance, this has most often been the case for me. Over time, my fear has increased as each failure has dominated my every day thoughts. My fear has alternately made me more vulnerable and more closed off. If I am scared for a second that something might work out, I try my hardest to sabotage it. I view everything as temporary; I feel like if I accelerate towards the end of something, I am doing myself a favor and sparing myself emotional pain.

I can almost predict what my new therapist would say about this. I can feel her eyes alternating between wanting to fix me and feeling immense pity for me. I want to change being scared, but I know she would tell me that this takes time. I feel things with such polarity: events either bring ecstasy or distress. If I want to fix this problem, she would advise me to try moving towards a neutral step first. But what could this "neutral step" mean? How can we bring ourselves to being scared of opening up to something neutral? Also, how can we fix something that is partially up to chance. Some people I meet will not be enamored with my personality. Some people will be judgmental about the things I say, ignoring any significance that lurks beneath my harsh exterior. I cannot control everything.

To me, "neutrality" always seemed like feigning emotional detachment. The moment I let slip that I wasn't heartless has been the be and end all for relationships of any dimension. (The truly patient are the only people who can be my friends now.) Something about the way I let my emotions spill out drives people away. I am coming to terms with the fact that emotional detachment is not neutrality and is probably not healthy. Despite my obsession with living in denial that I have any kind of problems, I have forced myself to become aware of this fact regardless of the terrifying prospect of not really having a solution.

Most girls view prospective relationships as something to look forward to. I on the other hand dread social pressures of any kind. I have more than a fear of rejection, I have a fear of actually being satisfied. I do not know how to sustain anything good for a long period of time without help. My friendships are not alive because of something I have done, but because of the incredible patience of the people around me.

I am not trying to say that I'm a special snowflake. I do not see myself as superior to other people. In fact I see myself as weaker, more anxious, less healthy and generally inferior. When I come off as cold, it's not because of my disdain for others but out of fear that they will soon come to have disdain for me. My constant sense of "impending doom" is based upon these feelings of inadequacy and how exhausting I find socializing.

Does this mean I am a loner or an introvert? Maybe. But people who put effort into getting to know me will probably think of me as very extroverted so I doubt that is the case. I believe I've heard the word "needy" tossed around a couple of times too, adding to my doubt that I am really introverted. Something that is necessary to work on for people like me, who find themselves constantly moping about their social anxiety is to just take time to calm down and put things into perspective.

It is helpful for me to focus on the people who are my friends rather than the people who aren't. I need to focus not necessarily on instantly befriending everyone, but being more open to friendships instead of assuming people won't like me. Granted, in my first attempt at this philosophy, it turns out my assumptions about being disliked were correct, but I tend not to give up after initial disappointment.

Everything takes work. I've been inculcated with this ideal since I could first understand words. Although working on being social can sometimes feel like it takes more effort than studying for a Biology test, and can often seem more fruitless, I need to convince myself that it is worth it. Hard work has paid off for me in other areas, and I need to convince myself that in the social aspects of my life, it will be no different.

Spring Sunday 8 Tracks Playlist

Made this 8 tracks playlist with the Valentine's Day songs I had before. It's long over due but enjoy. 

Quiet Love Songs from everywhereinchains on 8tracks.

Friday and Jim

Friday.

Beginning with this word is symbolic in two ways ways. I feel like I have Rebecca Black's enthusiasm for this day, and I feel  enough exhaustion to avoid a more creative beginning to this blog post. I don't have much to say this morning. I am under a time crunch and I want to avoid the depressive tone that a few of my earlier posts have had.

This week has been a tough one to survive with sanity and sleep. It seemed that there was so much to do on each day, yet the time went by so quickly. I am glad that I have been busy with crew, my job and homework because all of this has served to distract me from too much negative thinking. It's one of the things I do very well: throw myself into efficient work when the outside world becomes too difficult to deal with.

I wonder how I have kept moving so steadily this week without being destroyed by internal or external pressure. Music has played a large role. I think I've spent more time with my iPod and Jim Morrison this week than I've spent with any book, including Anna Karenina. This week the album that I've been obsessed with is "The Doors" (by The Doors). This album is my survival album. There's something about Jim's voice and the lyrics to his songs that has a calming effect on me.

These lyrics to "The Crystal Ship" are particularly beautiful.

Oh tell me where your freedom lies 

The streets are fields that never die 

Deliver me from reasons why 

You'd rather cry, I'd rather fly 

 Jim's poetry has always helped me think about life and it's fragility. Everything we interact with is so mystical and so beautiful and often times, when we are upset we forget about things that are worth living for: the promise of freedom, fulfillment of our dreams or seeking some immortality in whatever work we are engaged in.

This is the end 
Beautiful friend 
This is the end 
My only friend, the end 

Of our elaborate plans, the end 
Of everything that stands, the end 
No safety or surprise, the end 
I'll never look into your eyes...again 

Can you picture what will be 
So limitless and free 
Desperately in need...of some...stranger's hand 
In a...desperate land 

The lyrics to the last song on the album, "The End" comfort me when I get anxiety about death or any kinds of impending doom. Of course I alternate my feelings about the complex subject of death,  the only constant for all populations of all kinds of life. Instead of fear or a need to gain control, the words to this song encourage me to feel at peace with the concept of my own extinction and the extinction of people who I care about. Jim's ability to synthesize his philosophies regarding human life and turn his poetry into something dark, magical and soothing all at the same time allows me to reach at least temporary euphoria during darker times.

I am aware of the frightening Oedipal overtones at the end of the song, but these overtones don't bring me discomfort. Jim reminds us that we all have something squalid within our minds. Of course, not all of us have psychosexual complexes related to our parents, but we have something powerful, loud and socially unacceptable buried within us that we want to shriek out.

"Take It As It Comes" is my favorite song on the album to sing along to and is probably the one that I should listen to repetitively to bring down my anxiety levels.


Time to live 
Time to lie 
Time to laugh 
Time to die 

Takes it easy, baby 
Take it as it comes 
Don't move too fast 
And you want your love to last 
Oh, you've been movin' much too fast

The beginning of this song is very basic, yet  this obvious message is so easily forgotten as we move through our lives searching for the "meaning" we are told we should have by now. It is so easy to get wrapped up in distress, euphoria, laziness or a variety of crazy emotions. Young people either rarely stop to ponder, or ponder too much. This song reminds us that there is a time for everything that we're feeling. We do not need to do everything at once. It is alright, and maybe even better to "take it easy" once in a while. In order to have some kind of sanity we need to not move too fast. This week, I tried to let some of Jim's chill California demeanor take over my spirit and inspire me to push through the tough parts of this week without falling into a desperate state.

Survival

Let yourself be "over it". Let yourself be free from guilt. Do not dwell on people who do not care about you. Let your thoughts run freely but once they reach negativity, push them away and attempt to find some kind of happiness. Try not to get offended easily. People will like you and people will dislike you. But do the people who dislike you matter? Probably not. In the long run what is important is keeping yourself alive. Don't think about the way the cold wind feels when it cuts your skin and freezes your uncovered ears. Don't think about the words of your demons clawing at the remnants of your sanity. Do not think about what you have broken down or the things that are your fault.

Try to think of the feelings of warm sand between your toes. Think of late nights outside of Sheppe's dorm with a bottle of mosquito repellent and two people you loved. Ponder your trips to Washington and New York surrounded by people who cared about you. Think of faces: the faces of people who will never abandon you because they understand and possibly love you. If someone doesn't care, are they really worth  your time? Is this person worth a single tear, a lump in your chest, a lowering of your self-esteem?

~

Yesterday, I went to a therapist. A counselor. Whatever you want to call them to make yourself feel that you aren't a "crazy". After about an hour of me trying to avoid using specifics, she referred me to a local psychiatrist. I am scared beyond belief. I am horrified to even type this and admit this weakness of mine to a world of strangers. (Truly, anyone who reads this blog is anonymous to me and perhaps there are things here that I should not make public.) I don't know if I even believe in clinical depression, general anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder or whatever it is I am plagued with, which adds a degree of irony to this situation.

When I first suspected that I had emotional issues, I tried to argue my way out of getting any kind of help. Medication will kill my personality. Therapy is for people with real problems, I only have first world problems. But these thoughts seem irrelevant now. I am too scared of my thoughts to not get help at this point. I am worried about medication killing my inspiration to write, but what is the alternative? I can't write if I'm dead and my writing will be horrible if depressive insanity takes over as the only tone in every piece. I don't have problems. And by that, I mean my problems aren't external. I think what I'm realizing now is not that I have a hard life, but I have a hard time processing the things that happen to me. I have a hard time viewing things realistically and responding the way a normal person does to the events in his / her life.

I should have done something earlier. I should have realized that ignoring the fact that I was unhealthy was hurting people around me. Yesterday, the woman I talked to said "It sounds like this has been going on a long time." She was probably right. There comes a point when your friends start becoming sick of you, where you need to take responsibility for yourself. I committed what I've always viewed as one of the greatest sins: selfishness. I need to start taking responsibility for the negativity of my emotions and trying to do something to fix that.

It's amazing what kinds of things can inspire us to be strong and to take risks (because going to see a therapist when you believe it's bullshit is indeed a risk).  I feel like I should have been inspired to do this by someone a while ago, by a person who was much more significant to me. But what could I have done at Groton? I think any ex-Grotties and current Grotties reading this can all agree that the counseling services at Groton were proved ineffective last year. Despite my confusion back then, I should have done something to prevent this from going too far.

All I want is to be a normal, well-liked person. I don't want to be a rebel, an eccentric, an artist, a prep, a bitch or anything else. I want to experience the world like everyone else. I don't want to have short bursts of goodness followed by incredible depressions. I don't want to be triggered into anxiety by hearing particular songs, names or watching sad scenes in movies. I don't want to be self-destructive and I don't want to destroy others for small moments of relief at being able to express my immense anger.

In the end, this is all about my survival. Do I want to live for a long time? Sometimes. And, in one of these rare moments of wanting to live I have consciously made an effort to save myself. It wasn't all me. There are people I want to thank. Of course, I never mention other names in this blog, but there are certain gingers, Asian girls, extremely tall friends and siblings who I think of whenever things are bad. Not all of them can be at this college with me, but they can at least support me from a distance, and keep me from succumbing to my selfishness.

The Truth

I am honest. Although I have told the occasional white lie to get myself out of a seriously sticky situation, in general I am the person who doesn't hold back. I say what's on my mind. I express my feelings and I never mislead other people about what is going on in my head. I admit, right now might not be the best time to write this with girly weeping clouding my thoughts as well as the ghost of lost friends harsh words haunting me as my fingers tremble over this keyboard. But I cannot wait. I cannot hold back. I need to be completely honest with myself and with my readers before it is too late. Too late for what? I'm not entirely sure, however, I am sure that I feel the pressure of time, and  I feel the pressure of fear that if I don't say what I'm thinking or feeling now, it will become just another lost emotion buried deep within me that will one day explode into something far more negative than a distressed blogpost.

I make mistakes. A signature part of my personality is making huge irreparable mistakes that hang over my head and haunt me when I least expect it. Walking to Biology? Remember that one time your best friend said that you were angry all the time and he was afraid you were rubbing off on him and he could no longer be around you? I never forget mistakes. And I think in the end I end up hurting myself more than I've hurt others.

Of course, I like to time my huge social mistakes very close together. So, when I finally feel like I have rebounded from one error and I'm close to figuring my life out, I make another mistake. I add another brick to my castle of self-loathing and I fall deeper into darkness.

Today I didn't make a mistake; I did what was smart and correct. I have moments fraught with foolish bravery and these moments have always left me initially hurt but better off in the long run. Today, I took a risk. I asked a question I was afraid I knew the answer to. (Don't we always know the answers to our big questions?) I pulled it off well. As the response to my question smacked me across my face, I put on my perfect emotion concealing smile and walked away betraying nothing that was going on in my head. I'm good at that too: it is the only consistent brand of dishonesty I allow myself which I use to avoid having my emotions manipulate others to becoming liars. Other people are so easily  changed into liars with a few tears or a sweet smile. How many people have you forced to say I love you? How many people have  made you say, "I love you too" or "I miss you too" against your will?

As a result of my risk, I realized something important but I also realized that I am trapped, because no person will ever be as upfront as I am about everything. No one is like me in this regard and if I meet someone who is like I am, I will probably cling to them and never let go, which in turn is likely to scare them away. Not like it matters what scares someone off, because I'm likely to think of something eventually.

Imagine me sitting here, feeling what you feel when someone you really like says that they dislike you. I don't mean really like in the romantic sense, because I haven't felt that "romantic sense" in a while anyway. I have learned something about dishonesty that makes me uncomfortable and frightened because I thought I'd left it behind when I left Groton. But here I am, crying tangible tears, feeling things that I try so hard to bury. Why? By now, I should know that the people I like rarely like me back. People get sick of me so easily. They don't understand me and they don't try to. I am used to this, and in a sense, I am okay with it if someone is honest enough to admit what they are thinking. I am uncomfortable with the pretense of friendship. I don't understand the point of letting someone trust you and open up to you if you don't actually like them. I think that is far meaner than any word that has crossed my lips.

The worst part about dishonest people is realizing that they will let you go on believing their lies and they will watch you rip yourself apart just to protect themselves from the mild pain of saying that they dislike you (unprompted). The worst part about dishonesty is the inherent selfishness in it. Every interaction or moment of happiness that I felt in this (apparently) imagined friendship is irrelevant, false, a waste of my precious time on someone unworthy of it.  (Note: this is not person-specific; anyone who dislikes you is unworthy of your time by definition). Apparently, late conversations, watching television shows together and having philosophical discussions about the differences between the west and east coast is a not a sign that you are close to someone. For me, this was a particularly unfortunate realization as I  feel even more isolated than ever at this school.

Ironically, earlier today this person I considered a friend, asked me, "Why do you try to be something other than human?" This is why. My humanity is a burden to me. Even if the power of great love could outweigh the most powerful depression, this is useless to me if I can never have great love. Optimism is a burden when the people you are optimistic about end up hurting you. Trusting people is a character flaw if this trust puts you on the breaking point right before your midterms. Becoming vulnerable to others is pointless, because every person you show weakness to will take advantage of you, or worse, pretend they understand when in reality they want you to shut up and leave them alone.

But here I am, writing about what I would normally bury within myself. Mostly, it's to prove a point. I can be brave. I can admit to my flaws. I can admit that I have a lot of problems that need fixing but I'm not sure how to go about fixing them.

I feel.

Fine, I said it. Although I appear to be callused and crude, although I appear to be malicious and angry all the time, I feel things too deeply for me to continue to pretend I don't. I am scared, vulnerable, easy to bewitch. I am brought to laughter quickly, but just as quickly thrust into the throes of depression. I fall in love with personalities. And to make it worse, I fall in love easily. I think that most people I know are perfect, no matter how much they hurt my feelings or how angry I ever am with them. I am inclined to blame myself for everything, even things that are out of my control. In a falling out, I never badmouth the opposing party and turn every angry thought that I am feeling against myself as some masochistic motivator to become someone better. I want to deny all these parts of me. I want  to have the ability to exist as a sociopath: without connection to society and without the ability to be harmed by the people in it.

Now, I live on a tether. Soon I will be fine, like I always am. I will have my characteristic soulless smile, my eyerolls up to the ceiling, my dramatic groans and sighs and all my behavior will be like nothing is wrong. My strength is in my disguise. My strength lies in my ability to admit that I am hurt by people yet bounce back. So, thank you friend for reminding me of why I don't want to be human. People like you who feel moral superiority over everyone else wouldn't understand me and they are too full of themselves to even try.

A Busy Life

I am coming to terms with the fact that my life will be busy. Before, I had a lot to do but with hours to spare that could be spent relaxing and hanging out with my friends. Now I have much more to account for. I need to cease skipping class for "personal days", spend three hours daily at the river for Crew, with the occasional erging practice, work six hours a week at my job, keep up with the readings in my science classes and ace midterms, quizzes, tests and lab assignments. I wonder if I will have time to breathe, think or keep up the pretenses of a social life when I start this new life. Will a social life fall into place and feel more meaningful? Will I get a better social life as a result of branching out and joining this team?

I am anxious for a number of reasons. I am uncomfortable in new social situations. I am easily overwhelmed and I am terrified of keeping up a decent GPA this semester. Although I admit to being somewhat of an overachiever, I am not used to obsessing about my GPA. As a pre-medical student however, my GPA is actually important to my future so I find myself on the edge about every single assignment and every single thing that my get in the way of my ability to perform well. My job is great but the late hours have me worried about not getting enough sleep. I loved crew in high school, but I'm not sure what the feeling of this particular team is yet. I'm not willing to have the same excessively competitive experience I had in high school. Midterms are approaching and I am concerned about doing well on these.

My anxiety can become destructive. I have compulsively ripped about many full sheets of paper into tiny shreds. I have chewed apart three Papermates and destroyed a couple Ticonderoga pencils that don't belong to me. I can feel a build up of tension in my upper back and neck. My thoughts tend towards the negative. When I am alone at night I don't feel tired, but wide awake and terrified of some unknown future that I dread discovering. I feel distressed by the simplest of things. The tiniest thing that doesn't go my way can reduce me to a cold depressive state for hours upon end. I recognize the problems with my anxiety and with my fragile emotional state under stress and I need to find ways to keep everything under control until the storm has passed.

One of the main reasons I feel like I need to continue with crew is that my crew coach understands me. In an e-mail he sent me over the weekend he advised me to take 20 minutes to myself every day in order to relax. As hard as this will be for me, I think that I need to take this into account. I occasionally count my time to myself on a morning as my stress free time, but I'm considering picking up meditation. No matter what, taking time to disconnect from worldly stresses is a good method to stay relaxed during this time.

Something else I will start paying more attention to is forcing my thoughts towards the positive end of the spectrum. I need to make positivity a part of my routine no matter how difficult it is for me to maintain it. So far, I have a desktop Post-it note with a variety of encouraging phrases to help me push through this week. Are they cheesy? Yes. It feels better to have someone (even if it is myself) encouraging me to commit, work hard and push through tough times. There is nothing pathetic about encouraging yourself; you cannot rely on people to be your motivators. Everything you do academically must be out of self-interest in order to end successfully. Of course, financial success can be obtained by people who are doing work they do not love out of interest for their family or out of competitive drive. However, I view success as a combination of happiness and financial security. Pushing yourself towards happiness and hard work is the best thing you can do to ensure future success.

I have a lot of trouble remembering that I am not alone. I urge anyone going through stress at this point to remember that you are not alone. There are people who care about you. Your parents care. You have at least one friend who cares. And if you ever need support, there are places you can go. Take it all in, the experience you are having. Whether you are in college, towards the end of high school or even just between the two of them, you are making something great out of yourself. The end of all your work may seem so far away, but it is important to remember that you can have whatever you want if you have the drive and determination to just take it. Just keep your head above.

My Relationship With Words

The scent of old books, the feel of crisp textbook pages beneath my fingers, the curve of a pen and my hands' caress of my keyboard bring me pleasure that I cannot derive from anything else. I am in love with anything having to do with type and the printed page. There has always been something attractive about language that is a combination of evolving and consistent. Books, once they are printed, will be the same except for a few changes in editions over time. However, there will always be new books, new worlds and ideas for me to discover. I will have blank pages of notebooks and journals to fill to prevent  myself from displaying too much emotion or revealing too much.

I am not a writer because I am good at writing. I manipulate words in a juvenile manner. My style is rigid, to the point of being a weak Hemingway imitation. My vocabulary is recycled. My topics are childish and uninspired by anything new. I am a writer because I need to write. If I do not put my thoughts down onto paper, or onto a word processer, breathing becomes harder. It is more difficult to go to class, to learn biology, to brush my teeth, to eat or to listen to music without writing.

Although my work is crude and stylistically raw, I need to create it. Without my ability to create I am nothing. The words that escape my fingers create a semi-permeable wall between my life and my death. No outlet for my thoughts would lead to the wall becoming weaker over time. Growing weaker, this semi-permeable wall would erode, and everything evil, harmful and dangerous to me would escape in a disorganized fashion ruining my relatively calm exterior and undoing any work I'd done in preserving my sanity.

Reading is another great comfort to me. I tend to thumb through most books only once now;  I no longer have the luxury to re-read books when I feel there are so many currently un-read. However, the memories of books-past comfort me at night. There are happy endings, plot twists, unhappy endings and disappointments. As long as there is a good story, it doesn't matter how a book ends. It's never about the end at all, but a journey throughout a life different from your own. Books are about watching characters grow, and watching plots take unexpected turns.

A good story parallels life but is just unrealistic enough for you to detach and enter a world that is not your own. You go to a world where you are safe. No one can harm you emotionally and even if you empathize strongly with the struggle of a main character, all you have to do is put the book down, and escape from pain. Such luxuries are not awarded to us in real life; books allow us control we would not otherwise possess.

Words teach us about emotions whether or not we are consciously aware of it. Read Eliot's Wasteland or Hollow Man without giving a damn about the significance of his allusions. You can feel Eliot's desperation, you can feel where he wants you to speed up or where he wants you to stop and think. Faulkner's Quentin teaches us about depression and how hopeless you can feel even if you appear to have everything. We learn about infatuation from Gatsby and forbidden love from Anna Karenina. But, we don't only learn about the happier things. We learn about villains and acknowledge the human capacity for cruelty. Books give us the tools to fight our Jason Compsons or our Tom Buchanans. They give us the tools to realize the injustice behind the phrase "All animals are created equal. Some animals are more equal than others". Morality is derived from our experiences with literature rather than the teachings of just one Book.

I can never see myself loving a person as much as I love  literature and language. I will never have to face abandonment or permanent heartbreak at the hands of a novel or a poem. I love the sounds of words. I love the way words creep into my brain and force the festering of emotions in my mind. I am able to view the world from the perspective of someone who isn't a confused island girl. Books will stay up all night with me when friends have long since shed their worldly concerns and drifted into peaceful slumber. A book will sit with me through weeping fits and peals of unceasing laughter. No matter where I am in the world, there will be something new to read, some unheard of page to absorb into my thoughts. The best piece of advice I have been given goes like this, "The best thing you can take to bed with you, that will never disappoint you, is a good book."

Our Sacrifices

To fit in with our friends, sometimes it feels like we need to sacrifice parts of ourselves. Whether it is losing your accent within a month of being in the United States to stop people from making fun of you, or repeating your every word in a butchered faux-Jamaican lilt or whether you conceal your weird hobbies so that people believe you to be well-adjusted. There was a stage in my life where I manipulated my personality to a mix of who I thought I should be and who people thought I was.  If I was going to be an outcast, I wanted that to be a personal choice.  I refused to be a desperate social climber, kissing bottoms and feigning cuteness in order to fit in with people I didn't like.

However, there was a down side to this manipulation of self that I am still recovering from. I am lost, empty and I feel like I am actually becoming the person I was pretending to be. The moment I am certain that my pretense is no longer will be the moment I grow up, the moment my kid-self dies. The essence of my childhood will be dead by the time I no longer think naively about the world, maintaining some hope in its inherent goodness. My innocence will be killed when I can no longer go a full week without a cloud of negativity ruining my seemingly futile pushes towards optimism. 

I want to return to a younger version of myself but it is difficult to even remember who I was before I started to become socially acceptable. My guess is I was nicer, more optimistic, had more hours of sleep and spent a lot of time actually being selfless rather than just thinking about it. I was open about my emotions; I didn't feel the need to hide how I felt under the guise of being a strong person. It was easy for me to admit I cared about people. I didn't take things personally and I was secure in my future and in who I was. I was certain of a successful future and ignorant of the human potential for disappointment. 

The best kinds of people are the ones who let you be your entire self. Fixing myself is important to me now. I want to become a different person and in order to do this, I want to surround myself by people who are willing to assist me with my search for myself. To all people who are lost, I advise finding friends who will understand the fact that you are lost and will let you find yourself however you need to. Surround yourself with people who can deal with your unbelievable highs and throes of depression. Find people who will accept your weird hobbies and your fetish for collarbones. 

One of my biggest regrets is wasting too much time trying to be someone I'm not for people who didn't care. It seems so obvious that you should not compromise yourself for others, but it is a difficult thing to be aware of. Right now, I am thankful for people who let me exist as I  am. New friends will occasionally ask, "Why are you friends with X, he/she's such an asshole!" And that is really none of their business. I am friends with assholes, bitches, douche bags, nice guys, nice girls, basically anyone who lets me live my life the way I live it without trying to change me or without abandoning me. This is so difficult for some people to grasp, yet I feel it should be intuitive. To me, it doesn't matter what others think of my friends because they don't get it. The first people to make you feel guilty about the ones you associate with are the first to abandon you when things get difficult and when you slip up from your image of perfection. I'm done trying to find flaws in people who support me. Why should I focus on their flaws when they clearly ignore mine?

Midterms Are Soon

My second set of college midterms are coming up. I believe I have either two or three midterms in the next week and I will be getting into the full swing of things balancing the crew team (rowing three times a week) and my job which has a lot of late night shifts. So, in a dramatic turn from some of my heavier posts the past two days (read: last night's angst filled post) I will post a list of necessities for mid-term survival and I will publish a mid-term survival playlist as soon as I have an ethernet cord and more than thirty minutes of time.

(1) A quiet study space
I am opposed to crowded study places like libraries or huge study lounges because I often find them to be twice as distracting. I suggest finding an empty classroom or a room in a lesser occupied building where you can go to escape from group study sessions with your friends that often end in excessive distractions and very little studying.

(2) Water and a small snack
Constantly snacking on junk food while studying is not ideal but having a small snack and water can hold you over for an extra thirty minutes before you head off to the dining hall. Hydration is supremely important; I find that if I'm dehydrated while studying, the quality of my work steadily decreases.

(3) Techno-free
If you need to use your computer, block certain websites. There is a variety of available software for this on PCs and Macs; a simple google search will teach you how to block tumblr, twitter, gmail and Facebook for as many hours as you need to. Put your phone away. This is the most important one. The moment you have your phone out is the moment you think you should text your eighth grade best friend to catch up. If you have a long distance relationship or are counseling a friend, the phone should still go away. If someone really cares about you they will understand that midterms need to beat out texting every time in terms of importance.

(4) A good playlist
If you can't study with music ignore this. But if you need a little noise, choose a playlist where you don't know any of the songs. Choose something acoustic or classical with not a lot of production noise. I like to pick songs that I don't really know the lyrics to so that I'm not belting out "Someone Like You" instead of memorizing Psychology terms. Go to the playlist I'm going to post, and that will hopefully not disappoint if you're too lazy to make one yourself. Another option is going to www.musicovery.com where you can choose a mood. Avoid energetic, unless work-out music is what you study to best.

(5) Sleep and Stay Organized
I'm cheating a little bit by combining these two, but they should be obvious. All-nighters never work. Your memory worsens the less sleep you get. It's better to study 50% of the material and remember that 50% than to "study" 75% and remember 30% of it because you didn't sleep. Keep your notes together and your books well organized so that studying will be easier. Try to keep the space you are occupying neat so that your life doesn't fall apart during mid-terms.

Stay strong fine collegiates and others who are generally using my advice to guide their academic lives.

Love,
The Overachiever Fairy