I Need This

It’s been way too long. I am so sorry. I don’t have an excuse really. Life just got crazy, writer’s block got bad. You know the drill. This will be a long one. 

I’m in a weird place right now and it’s making it very difficult to write, so excuse me if I ramble for a while. I just need to get the juices flowing, and I think tonight will be uncensored and more of a letter than an entry? I don’t know. We’ll see how it goes, right?

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I need this space. Just like you need air.

I really need this time.

Basically my life in a nutshell right now. For a while I had one very distinct pull. It was a guy and I really enjoyed him. He made me smile, he understood my humor, and he was able to keep up with my political jargon. And then…one day he just stopped. He just stopped feeling for me I suppose, out of nowhere. For a while we tried to get along. We had good nights and bad ones; then just bad ones. Night after night was another talk about working it out or what was wrong. Last night we reached the end of our tug of war. We both just let go and let the rope fall to the ground. Nobody fell. We just let go of the only thing holding us together, and I suppose it was fine if not a bit sad. It was sad not missing him today, but I’m learning to trust my instincts. I can’t say what will happen in the future with him, but this encounter certainly taught me something. It seems that every romantic encounter I have teaches me more and more about what I want and what I definitely do not want.

I don’t want a guy who is hot and cold, even for a minute. Hot and cold violates trust. When you enter a relationship, or quasi-relationship with someone you expect them to feel for you. You trust them to tell you when it’s okay. You trust them to care for you consistently. The fluctuation of emotion day to day makes trusting that person very hard. Instead of enjoying their company, all you can think about is whether tonight he’ll stop saying I love you. Maybe tonight will be the night he tells me he isn’t feeling it? Maybe tonight is a good night or maybe he’s faking it? What once was a source of joy becomes a source of anxiety, and there’s no real going back from this point. Once that bond of trust is broken no relationship can really get back to where it was, simply because you don’t have a relationship anymore. You have an imbalance of power. He is now able to control how you feel about the relationship simply by giving affection or not. It’s extremely unhealthy and is not a good pattern to set your self in. I nearly fell back into that pattern. I’m hoping this will be a daily reminder to not make that mistake again.

In all honesty, I just want to be happy with myself. I have so much more to worry about right now, I can’t afford to waste any emotion on someone not willing to work with me or work for me or act like an adult. It’s funny…I’m sorry really doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t make me feel any better or make me recognize your remorse, if that even exists. It just makes me angry at myself that I’m still sitting here, talking to you, making the mistakes I’ve already made. I’m letting you know that I’m done. I’ve reached the end of my rope and it’s unfortunate, but if you’re hot and cold now…you always will be. That’s just the truth and I learned that lesson the hard way when I was 14. I’m an adult now and I’m not willing to make that mistake again for someone like you or anyone for that matter.

It sounds mean and uncompromising, but why should I compromise? Why should I settle? Why should I wait? There’s no point in waiting for “things to get better” in relationships, I’ve discovered. When times are really awful, more than likely they’re going to stay that way. We are far, far too young to spend any time unhappy or trying to put together a shattered piece of glass. You’ll just end up hurt, and in the exact same place you were when you first tried to put it back together.  

It’s pessimistic, but it’s true. Sometimes there is no happy ending and that’s okay. It just means there’s something bigger and better along the line. It just means we had something really important to learn, not only about relationships, but about ourselves.

Love you all. Thank you for reading. <3
Taylor

Falling Slowly

I love you.

I feel so lucky to have loved before. You know, in most of my blogs I write about what I suffered because of love. I make it sound as though love is this awful, painful thing and that I’ve been better off without it, but that’s not true. Love is beautiful. It’s scary and weird and it changes everything but love is beautiful. Pure unadulterated love is worth every single tear or fight. The feeling of loving someone with all of your being is a feeling unmatched. It’s the greatest feeling one can have in their lives, I believe.

It’s more than just love towards a friend, or the love of a person’s personality. Love, romantic love, is the love of a person’s soul. It is the love of their flaws and the ability to overcome your fears. Love is seeing a person for who they are, not who they want you to see. It’s about fighting and difficult times, but at the end of the day knowing that this person is the keeper of your heart, they sing the song of your heart back to you when you have forgotten the words.

Now, I don’t want people to think that this sudden change of tone is a change of heart. I still feel that love is delicate and should be handled with absolute care, but it shouldn’t be avoided. I was talking to my friend about life and death the other night and one thing he said really struck me: that life is short. Sometimes it ends without warning and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Life is a one time around the track. It isn’t a race or a competition; it’s just life. We all end up the same place eventually. We get one shot to do it right. We have one brief glimpse of life and the universe and how the world turns and then it’s over. Nada. Poof. It ends.

I have this list of things I want to do before I die. I have the usual skydiving, travel the world, change someone’s life for the better etc., but I realized that I don’t have falling in love. Maybe I didn’t put it down because at the time I was too scared of falling in love or that it hurt too much to think about being in love, but as my friend said “life is short”. Life is too short to hide from the wonderful world that love opens up. Life is too short to spend any of it regretting what you said or what you did. It’s too short to stay angry or negative or to let things get you down because tomorrow isn’t a promise. I could not wake up tomorrow. It’s a possibility. It’s scary to think about, but it’s true. And I would die not having truly fallen in love. I have lived a wonderful life, but there is so much more for me to see in this world. There are more sunsets to bee seen, more music to be heard, and more food to be tasted, and people to meet. There are more places to go and things to learn and do. The world is so huge and yet life is so short. It seems cruel almost. Yet, I believe living a fulfilling life is possible. I believe it is possible to travel the world and fulfill a bucket list. I believe it is possible for anyone to fall in love, including myself. I believe everyone should have their heartbroken and have the opportunity to fall in love all over again. But most of all, I believe we should let the love in. We should stop running and letting our fears control us and just live; just fall in love and let go. There are no promises in life, only the gift that is today. Live it. Embrace the beauty that is right in front of you and love. Love fully, recklessly, and with the knowledge that the pain is worth it. I have come to realize that the joy is worth the pain. The joy is absolutely worth the pain.  

Samson

From the point I was twelve years old until I was 16 I was in relationships. I was rarely  single during that time; at most I was single for a month. It sounds ridiculous and it is. That’s not how life is supposed to go. Romance is supposed to come in high school and college, not carry you through your formative years. You’re supposed to develop as a person, not as a couple.

I failed that class.

I grew up learning that to be valuable I had to be with a man. I assigned my value as a person to who I was with and what they did and what we did as a couple.  I was never Taylor. I was Taylor and (insert name) or (blank)’s girlfriend, never just me. So after my last run in with the laws of love I decided to respond with a law of Physics: The Law of Action and Reaction. If you push me, I’ll push you back just as hard. I took on a fast; a fasting of the heart. I decided to take one year of being single. A whole year dedicated to just being me and living my life without the interference of boys. My first few months were difficult. I almost gave up on it, but when I wasn’t following my fast I realized I felt like shit. When I was following my fast I felt a lot better about myself. I broke down into tears often, I struggled with my identity, and I didn’t feel right. I felt heartbroken and angry and resentful. I didn’t know who I was and standing naked before the world was frightening. It was more frightening than writing this blog or facing the truth that I had fallen apart. So after 2 months of struggle and debating, I dedicated myself “fully” to the cause or idea of being single for an entire year.

It was a conscious decision to be single for a year. It sounds stupid, but I had a few people I wouldn’t have minded dating, and I almost did date some of them. By some I mean one. The one guy I had consistently been interested in; I was more interested in him than my boyfriend-to-be in the months before Matt and I. And for the first time in the 3 years we had known each other, I was single. He was single. Shit was going to go down.

Shit did go down. But not in the way I anticipated or wanted. We ended up struggling to be friends. We argued a lot, stopped talking, yelled, cried, basically every facet of emotion available. Eventually I realized that losing him as a friend wasn’t worth it to me. The security of being wanted mattered less to me than having him as my best friend. This was the first time in my life I made that choice: friendship over love.

December came on quickly and my resolve was beginning to wear thin. I was tired of being lonely; watching all of my friends fall in and out of love, cute couples at the mall. Most of my single friends laughed at me. I had only been single for 6 months; most of them had been single their entire lives. In my reality 6 months felt like an eternity. I was at a football game with my friends when it hit me…I didn’t want to live like this. I didn’t want to have to force myself to not want a relationship. I realized that wanting a relationship was a good thing, but I needed to want it for the right reasons. My wavering dedication to my “cause” evaporated. I was resolute. I was going to make it one year without falling in love or having a boyfriend, and I was going to find myself in the process. It wasn’t an easy process. As I had learned so much about myself in relationships, I learned infinitely more about myself when I was outside of one.

I don’t need to narrate to you every instance of turning down an opportunity to “get with” someone. There were a few, but not that many. I began to focus on myself. I worked on gaining real confidence, not arrogance. I started to read books I wanted to read, meditate, and go to yoga. I worked out, ate healthy, and I began to form stronger bonds with my friends than I ever had. My life began to turn up. When I wasn’t dedicating myself to someone else I discovered I could do many more productive things. I began to realize that this woman I was becoming was someone worthwhile, someone valuable, and someone I shouldn’t have ignored for such a long time. I realized that discovering yourself is the most important thing you can do before you fall in love. You can’t be in love if you don’t know yourself and I spent years being ignorant of who I was. I assigned who I was to the people around me: my boyfriends, and not to the person looking back at me at the end of the day: myself.

I realized that there was more to my future than becoming a wife and mother. There was college, a career, adventures, life, and so much more. I realized I could discover all of these amazing things by myself, and that that was okay.

On the 8 month marker of the end of my relationship and the eighth month of my romantic fast I walked along the beach Matt and I had spent much of our time together on. In the previous months I had felt sadness, anger, and resentment whenever I went there. And yet, as I stood there, 8 months later I just felt pity. I felt pity for Matt. I finally overcame the hurdle and genuinely felt sorry for him. Not in the “he lost me” way, but I had seen where he had come from. His controlling father and the pressure to achieve drove him rather than his own want to succeed. For that, I felt great pity. On that day, 8 months later, I finally got over him. I got over what happened. I was finally able to set my anger and sorrow aside, and officially move along with my life. From that day on life has changed. Everything has changed. I can’t describe the feeling of being happy with one’s self. I am genuinely content to be who I am and I’m proud of who I am. I love knowing that no matter what happens, I will be able to move onward and that life will take care of itself. My only obligation is to live life and to live life happily, or at least try to.

The four months between then and now have passed rapidly. I’ve graduated form high school, I know where I’m going to college, I’ve met new people, and I have become a new person. Over this year I have realized that life moves so quickly and that it’s waste to spend any of it waiting for someone to tell you who are because you’re the only person who really knows.

This past year taught me more about myself, and my life than I could have ever imagined. I learned to be happy in my own skin and confident in what I was saying. I faced my fears: not only of heights and the dark, but also my fears about myself. I have come to the realization that life can be just as fulfilling alone as it can be with a companion. I feel lucky to have had this experience, even though it was scary and hard and confusing at times.  I stand on the beach I did one year ago. The water is the same beautiful shade of blue, the sand still cushions my feet and drips between my toes. The rain clouds are just as grey and the fog is just as thick, but everything is new. Everything is different. These are not the same blankets or fog or drizzling clouds. This sand is not the sand I stepped upon a year ago. The water, though the same glassy blue, is not the same. It extends to a new horizon, one I could not have even imagined reaching 365 days ago. The world is new, everyday, every hour…and so am I. 

Sweet Disposition

I co-wrote this with my friend Alyssa. She was recently broken up with so this little piece is tinted by a bit of bitterness haha. Enjoy!

I’m just going to get right into this one. There isn’t really anyway to say this: getting engaged at 18 is not a good idea. I will come back to this point in a bit. Relationships ebb and flow, people change, life moves on; you will not be the person you are now in 20 years and if you are I feel sorry for you. I was in the car with my friend Katie discussing love: why we “fell” in love, what love is, what chemicals are released, and how love drives women off the deep end (it totally does).

50 years ago Katie and I would be engaged (not to each other for obvious reasons). We wouldn’t be going to college; we would be preparing to have children. 100 years ago we would have been married by now, having ha done or two children. 500 years ago we would have 4 or more children by this point, we would be half way through our lifespan. Mid-life crisis in the 1500’s was at the ripe age of 18. What joy.

The human body has not changed much over the past 500 years; our brains release the same chemicals. Sure, we live longer, better, and ultimately healthier lives, but how we fall in love and the process by which we are able to have children has not changed and probably will not change unless by some evolutionary leap the powers that be decide a period and endorphins are no longer necessary (I’ve wished for this day and it has yet to come. I’ll keep hoping).

So. Here we are, women of the 21^st century! We vote! We go to school! We run companies; empires! Yet we fall in love at the age of 15. Our body tells us to have children when we are not even a quarter done with our lives. We make life-impacting decisions when we know so little about our selves and the world around us. We have come so far, and yet our vice has not changed over a millennia. We women love men. A process occurs that we have no control over that dictates how our life will move. We can fight it and many women have tried, however most have failed. We will always fall in love. We will always want to have sex, feel love, acceptance, and a place.

Now some people will disagree with me and argue that their value comes from a place deep rooted inside of themselves. To them I say brava. But nothing, nothing in the world, matches the intensity of being in love. Being in love is simultaneously the most frightening and yet most beautiful feeling in the world. Love makes or breaks you. It determines whether today is a good day or a bad day. Love can control you, and often times it does. Now. Take that feeling of being crazy in love and put it in a seventeen year old girl. She has roughly 73 years left in her life. 75 years. 7 decades, 75 graduating classes; unfathomable advancements in technology, medicine, science, literature, music…every single aspect of our society will change. Now, not only is our society rapidly changing, but life is moving. We’re learning new things about ourselves. Our tastes change, we enter the real world. Life moves us rapidly forward.  

When I was 10 I knew I wanted to be an archeologist, when I was 13 I wanted to be a journalist, when I was 15 I wanted to be an anthropologist, 16 a writer, and then in the time I’ve been seventeen it has morphed from activist to politician to humanitarian to writer to motivational speaker to pretty much every single career idea in the world.

When I was 14 I believed in God and Conservatism. At 17 I now believe in neither.

When I was 13 I thought I had met the boy I wanted to marry and be with for the rest of my life. When I was 16 I fell in love a second time and I was REALLY sure this time that this young man was the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with…We broke up 8 months later.

Planning your future, when we have lived so little life, seems foolish. You will change, what you want will change. Maybe you’re one of the few couples that grow together, but most couples grow apart. Being “engaged” on Facebook doesn’t make you and adult. You’re 17. You can’t get married. You don’t even live on your own yet. Changing from engaged to In a relationship to It’s complicated in the matter of a week and then talking about buying a house together doesn’t make you a “normal couple who fights” it makes you children. Professing your love through statuses, wall posts, and cute little videos doesn’t make you in love. Being together for 3 months doesn’t make you soulmates who have weathered many trials. Life will fuck you over, hard and it isn’t fun.

I’m sure those who are reading this who do want to get married to their high school sweethearts are affronted. I get it. It would have pissed me off if someone told me Matt and I wouldn’t be together for forever, but we weren’t and more than likely neither will you. Getting married won’t keep him around and it won’t make your life better. Marriage is hard and complicated and scary. Planning your future is totally awesome and fun, but don’t fall too heavily into the illusion. Look at what being in love means. Being in love isn’t arguing all the time and being married one second and broken up the next. If you break up more than 3 times it’s over. Don’t try it. Don’t make it work. It won’t. You’re young and you have the entire world at your feet and you’re willing to throw it away for someone who you can’t even keep level with. I wish someone had sat me down and bitch slapped me silly before I got so far in with the boys I have dated in the past. Love distorts reality and makes you do things your normally wouldn’t do. Keep a level head. Look at things objectively. Life is too long to spend it with the first boy you kiss, but too short to make the same mistakes over and over again.

I’m sure I’ve offended some of you and I apologize for that, but please wake up. The boy you’ve been dating for 3 months won’t be the only boy you date. You probably won’t love him forever and ever. He probably won’t love you either. It’s hard to hear but it’s life. It hurts and it’s scary, but it’s the truth.

Peace Out,

Taylor

Never Say Never

Well...First off: I now have a facebook page for all the people that actually read this blog. It's great :) . Like it on Facebook!Also I've noticed that people who aren't my friends on facebook are sharing my blog posts! AND THAT MAKES ME FEEL RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME!! So thanks guys :)

Anyways, with the shameless self-promotion out of the way we can get down to the nitty gritty. I have the wonderful feeling that my writer's block is finally over! Yay! *cough* But today's blog post is going to be one of those deep dark intimate fears type posts. So brace yourself. 

There are some things we never talk about. As a society we tend to avoid certain topics, or we tend to not to want to talk about them when they are presented to us. One of these topics happens to be mental disorders; mental disorders such as bipolar disorder, depression, and anxiety (to name a few prominent ones). The reason I'm writing this is because a friend of mine was recently diagnosed with depression. Her parents think it's just a "phase" she's going through, they think there's something inherently wrong or perverse with her condition, as though she's making it up. Her choice to take medication and seek therapy is viewed as weakness by her family, and as a society we tend to see these disorders as taboo. Going to a therapist means you're crazy, taking "meds" insinuates that you would be locked up in a looney bin otherwise, and these things are inherently untrue. 

I have been seeing a therapist on and off for 5 years, but more consistently over the last two. By consistently I mean every other week/every week. It isn't because I'm "messed up" or "broken". I see my therapist because it's nice being able to go to someone and work out all the little road bumps in your life. I'm a 17 year old girl and at times life can be awfully overwhelming. Going to college, boys, friends, my ever fluctuating hormones and emotions make life seem more complex than it really is. I started seeing my therapist consistently when I went through my anxiety-filled, nauseating relationship with Matt. Yes...there's a blog for that too! (Get It Right) And since that time I have been going very consistently. I have come to the realization that I can't figure out everything on my own and I shouldn't have to. It shouldn't be "bad" for me to talk to someone. It shouldn't be "wrong" for someone to struggle with depression or bipolar disorder or anxiety. These things aren't caused by wanting them to happen or faking it, these disorders are chemical, not personal. 

So back to my friend, she's really struggling with her depression. The fact that her family doesn't support her isn't helping things either. It's making it worse. She feels alone and scared and absolutely out of control of her life, and she doesn't feel like there's anybody for her to hold to. She shouldn't have to feel that way. Her family should be supporting her 150%, and showing her the love she deserves. Her disorder doesn't make her any different or a different person. It isn't her fault. It's nobody's fault and that's what gets to me. It gets to me that people seem to think that depression is a choice, that these can people can just "make themselves" happy, or snap out of it. And those suffer from depression seem to think that they're alone, and they aren't. Most people suffer some form of depression; it's normal. 

Being depressed or bipolar or having anxiety doesn't make you a social leper. It doesn't make you any less valuable or wanted. It jsut means your chemicals react differently and that's okay. You haven't done anything wrong, you aren't broken I can promise you that. Some people may argue that having a chemical imbalance is something "wrong" and you know being depressed isn't the best thing, but it doesn't define who you are. The person you are isn't bad, it's just you and your depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety don't define you, even if you may feel that it does. 

I suffer from anxiety. I can keep it under control most of the time but sometimes I spiral into these anxiety filled holes where I feel like my anxiety controls my life. Sometimes I feel that it drowns me and takes me captive and that there's no way out of it, and that's not the truth. My anxiety is a flaw and it's something I deal with, but it isn't who I am. I am a perfectly normal person and I am proud of who I am. My anxiety could rule ym life if I let it but I can't do that, and neither can you. I can't turn my anxiety on and off, I can't just make it go away or fix it, but I can try my best to make it easier. I can go to therapy and work on ways to calm myself down. I can be who I am and do the things that scare me because I am more than my anxiety. You are more than your depression, bipolar disorder, or anxiety. You are a person, a normal person who deals with a normal problem and no matter what people say you aren't broken. There's nothing wrong with you because almost everyone goes through it, you're just aware of it. 

When I first started uncovering my anxiety (because identifying it is kind of a step.) I felt so worthless and broken and fucked up, to say the least, and my dad told me one thing. He told me that being selfaware is the most important aspect of becoming who you are. So many people walk through life being completely blind to themselves. They live this half full life, never knowing why they don't feel right because they're too scared to admit anything is wrong or that they might not be as happy as everyone else. And that's not good, denying your disorder only lends it more control over your life. It sounds weird, but admitting to yourself is the most freeing experience if you let it be.  

There's support out there for people struggling with any mental disorder, please reach out to it especially if you're hitting a particularly low point. Life is beautiful, even if it doesn't feel like it. I promise. 

I hope someone reads this blog and leaves feeling a bit more hopeful and a bit more accepted. Obviously disorders can't be sumemd up in a thousand words and these aren't supposed to be a cure or have weird healing powers. I just hope that they are a reminder that you are who you are, you aren't you disorder. 

And most of all...I love you. And I'm not the only one. 

Scheiße

So. Something made me upset today. I was driving to Barnes and Noble and I see this girl on the corner walking to her car. I am not a particularly observant person, but this young woman caught my eye, and the eyes of every single person who drove past. Her hair was bleached to a white blond, her legs spray tanned to a dark brown. Her shorts were nonexistent and her shirt was easily 4 sizes too small. By all of societies standards this young woman is what we would call “hot”. Her shirt was a “hooters” shirt, leading me to the assumption that she probably worked there as a waitress. And this upset me. The morbidly obese men breaking their necks as they sped past, the looks that the women in the car next to me gave her made me upset. This young woman would be branded by society as a slut or whore by society by the way she dressed and where she worked.

            Places like “Hooters” are upsetting to me as a woman because they reduce women to their lowest common denominator: skanky clothes, stupid games, serving old men and horny college students mediocre food and booze. These waitresses serve the express purpose of exciting men they make themselves sexual objects rather than people. Watching her walk by I suddenly had a large amount of respect for the tacky ties at Tahoe Joes.  I mean seriously? What allure does this resterraunt have besides its waitresses?

            In the deep recesses of the “Hooters Handbook” there lies 4 statements that the female workers at Hooters must affirm. Among them I found this gem:

The Hooters concept is based on female sex appeal and the work environment is one in which joking and entertaining conversations are commonplace.

Lovely…I’m so glad that we have places like this; places where the entire structure is based upon female sex appeal. It’s degrading. Some people may argue that these young women are “embracing their sexual power as women.”

Well I’m calling bullshit. The entire concept of the restaurant is based around making women into sex objects. Now, some people may see no problem in this and that’s fucking terrible. People are free to do what they please, yes, and some women probably enjoy their jobs as being disposable, minimum wage pin-ups. However, some women like me find it offensive. Some people find the concept degrading and stupid. A woman’s body is not only something to be admired, but respected and it’s irritating as shit to watch young women just throw it out the door. Decades of work by feminists to make women MORE than just a sexual object is thrown out the door in mere seconds by Hooters, by Girls Gone Wild, by Playboy.

These institutions and companies set women back decades. They argue that these are new, highly sexualized times, and that they are encouraging women to embrace their bodies. No. You aren’t. You’re encouraging women to look like pornstars, to please you, to receive little to no sexual satisfaction. You’re encouraging women to become nothing but a body. Playboy says their shoots are “classy”, because a woman posing for a magazine geared towards male satisfaction is classy. A woman putting silicone in her breasts, collagen in her lips, and dousing her hair in hydrogen peroxide until it’s stiff is classy? A woman bearing her body for the world because “Heff suggested it”? That’s what passes for class nowadays? Audrey Hepburn and Jackie O must be rolling in their graves.

Young women now look up to models like Miranda Kerr, Playboy bunnies like Holly Madison, and reality TV show stars like JWoww and Snookie. Women of my generation have forgotten the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt and Betty Friedan, little to none even know who Simone de Beauvior is, and that’s sad. It’s sad that young women look to those who shove us back into the kitchen instead of those who battled and still are fighting to give us the rights and recognition we deserve. Women have forgotten how we got to where we are. We have forgotten how long it took us to earn the right to vote, to equal pay, the right to divorce, and the right to own our bodies.

            Now, I’m not saying that sex is bad or that men are the devil. I am not advocating no distinctions between genders, I am simply asking women to LOOK at themselves and ask themselves what they’re doing with their bodies; for their pleasure or for the pleasure of others? Some, I’m afraid, will see no difference between the two. 

Solitude

My first blog post in a while. Sorry for the delay guys…Life gets kind of crazy/my writer’s block just sucks. 

You know breaking up is hard. It’s difficult losing that one person. Sometimes it’s a mutual thing, other times it comes as a complete surprise. Sometimes it is painless and quick, other times the loneliness and anger haunt you for a very long time, but what I’ve discovered is the worst is the moment when all of that anger and sorrow falls away and you have nothing left to take away from that experience. I have discovered that it is easier to hold on to that event as some sort of turning point in your life because it means you can look back whenever you want to without feeling guilty. I am writing this blog because I am finally naked in front of the mirror. The wounds have healed, the scars have faded, and now it’s just me.

I miss the anger sometimes. I miss being able to wrap myself up in this cocoon of rage and pain because it kept others at arms length. It meant I wouldn’t have to deal with people and I had an excuse to curl up in bed and cry. I miss being able to reflect on what happened and still have unanswered questions because answering those questions hurt. I miss the sorrow because at least I knew it was coming. I miss being consistently able to blame my problems, my anxiety, and my fear on one event. I used it to define me and as a social identifier. It was my façade.

Today it just fell apart. I don’t know whether it was the laughter with friends and the realization that my life was about to change or finding the shoebox I threw all of the memories into and not feeling anything, not even sorrow. And it made me cry. It made me cry to realize that this huge event, this painful, terrible, life-changing event had taught me all that it could and now there were new lessons to be learned. I guess it kind of goes along with this theme of change and motion and new things. My life as I know it is ending. I am graduated from high school, moving onto college. I am officially forfeiting my childhood and entering the transition to adulthood.

I guess my break up was the final thing to let go of. I had let go of everything but this one singular moment in time. It was an important moment in time, but now it is time to set it in the box of memories and lock the lid. It’s time to move onward. The past is what it is and all that I can take away from it is knowledge and the assurance that I can survive. I think that’s all anyone can take away from the past. And I think it’s all anyone can wish to gain in the future. Knowledge in the past, joy in the future, but in the present there is only hope; only the hope that tomorrow will be a new beginning and the knowledge that it can be anything we wish it to be. 

No Day But Today

It’s a terrible feeling realizing that your body has a breaking point. It’s scary and weird and overall just not a very fun experience. Today I went out on a run. I run often, and often run (aha!) long distances. Today I was going to keep it simple with about 3 miles minimum, it was a bit hot and the path I chose had little shade. I was roughly half way through and all of a sudden my body just stopped. It stopped functioning. I began to walk immediately, I felt light headed, nauseated, and overwhelmingly exhausted. I could have laid down in the middle of the path and fallen asleep. At first I assumed it was a temporary set back, but as I continued to walk I began to feel worse. I leaned up against a tree, closed my eyes and just tried to breathe. My entire body was shaking and not only from this weird exhaustion but fear. My body had never done this to me before. It had never just given out on me. I mean we all have our problems. I have bad knees, some people have bad shoulders, but this was different. My entire body was in this state of complete dissonance. Even though I had only run a mile and a half maximum, I felt as though I had just finished running ten miles at full speed.

I don’t know if it was dehydration, the heat, hunger, or exhaustion that caused my body to freak out, but regardless it was easily one of the most frightening experiences of my life.

The fear not only was for my body but also for my lack of control over my body. I wasn’t telling it to do this, it wasn’t conscious and there was no inkling that it would occur, but it did. Part of my panic was the fact that I lost control of the only thing I can really control in this world. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to lose control of my body permanently, to be paralyzed or be confined to a bed with a disease that I couldn’t control. This got me really thinking about life, my life in particular, and wondering if what I was doing was really living life to the fullest. What if I died 5 minutes from now in some freak Panera-related incident? Would I die happy and satisfied with life? Or would I go out kicking and screaming; begging for more time?

In Buddhism we are taught to relinquish worldly desires to achieve enlightenment and to focus on the “inner light”, to respect your body and others, to treat people with compassion, and to live a content life. If I truly was content in life I should be able to die any day and die feeling accomplished and content. The fact that I plan so much into the future is probably a very poor reflection on the type of person I am.

I consistently look towards tomorrow, and rarely do I focus on today. I never just sit back and marvel at all the beauty the world has to offer. Even in meditation it is so hard to just be in the present because life seems to press in from all corners. Life seems to want to rush us forward and we as human beings seem to want to go faster, bigger, better, stronger, and we try to understand the world by becoming greater.

This quest to understand the bigger picture by growing more great and consuming seems detrimental, and as I write this a quote by Buddha comes to mind:

“If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change”

I am going to start looking for the miracle in the flowers, in the wind, and in people’s laughter. There is no promise of tomorrow, only of this moment. This very moment is the only promise, and I need to live it. This moment encapsulates all that is beautiful about life, and yet I brush moments away, they fade with time, and in the end I am even more clueless and wanting than before…Today is gift and tomorrow doesn’t truly even exist. Today life is beautiful. Every moment life is beautiful.

Who You Are

Lets start with the basic assumption that everyone has an identity. We all have a core of immovable values, morals, ideas, and thoughts about ourself. This core defines the decisions we make and what kind of person we become.  Who you are is such a difficult concept though. How do we even know who we are? Life is constantly changing. We change sides of the political spectrum, we meet new people, try new things, believe and see different things. It would see foolish to peg who we are down to one set idea, because we always grow and change as life goes on. Yet, there is that solid aspect of who you are, there is always that characteristic that is distinctly you. For me it might be that I talk too much, but I like to think of it as my compassion. I want to try and live a life where I treat everyone with kindness and compassion, but I struggle with it daily.

Sometimes who we are isn't "socially acceptable". Sometimes who you are wouldn't or doesn't fit in with the "popular" crowd or the people you work with or even the people you live with. It's always hard to gauge when you should stuff it and just get through the day or when it's a good time to let your freak flag fly. I don't have much experience in the work situation but I imagine keeping your job is rather important. So obviously disagreement with coworkers over fundamental moral issues..probably not the best thing.  However, I do have some experience as far as social experiences come. Who among us hasn't struggled to fit in or find friends? Who among us hasn't conformed or changed something about ourselves to better fit the mold? Who among us has tried and failed?

In middle school I was a nerd. Not to brag but I was kind of the "teacher's pet" and the "smart girl" if you will. I had struggled with fitting in since I was a little girl. I was pretty much unwaveringly blunt in my opinions and I saw no reason not to be, but my peers didn't really agree. While most girls my age were starting to dabble in make-up and boys I was more occupied with the genocide in Darfur and the newspaper. I was pretty much socially incompatible with my peers, part of which was my fault I will admit. I was so frightened of people getting close to me that I would push them away with a ten foot pole. My pole of choice was, and remained so for a long time "I'm smarter than you. I know more than you." It was very effective at pushing people away, yet I always wanted to fit in. I wanted to be like these popular girls.  I tried too. I dressed in American Eagle and Hollister. I straightened my hair and got bangs, I tried to enjoy the things they did, but to no avail. I was always the odd one, probably because I was so uncomfortable in my own skin that I made others uncomfortable in general.  And eventually I just stopped trying. There was no point. People didn't really like me and for good reason. I was angry and a loudmouth and very "high and mighty". I saw it as the only way to protect myself from getting hurt. I saw what these girls did to their "friends" what they still do and what we all do. (Its so much easier to talk badly about someone than to look in the mirror and admit to yourself that you're insecure. Something I personally struggle with, something I think a lot of us struggle with.)

I didn't want to be alone but I didn't want to give up what I believed either. I chose to keep myself apart. I chose to be less socially compatible than to give up what I felt was more important, and by the end it paid off. I learned to be happy on my own, but I didn't learn to be comfortable in myself...that came 4 years later. It was an agonizing wait...

In my previous blog Get it Right I talked about my relationship and how that changed who I am and how I changed who I was to make the relationship flow. Because let's be honest...a very opinionated liberal agnostic dating a conservative born again Christian? Probably wasn't going to go over well...it's times like these I wish I had written a pros/cons list about Matt. I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have dated. To be blunt: our relationship was doomed from the start. But I didn't want to lose the attention he gave me and the security of having someone there to hold me, so I stuffed it.

I stopped arguing with him. I sat passively during his dad's racist and chauvinistic remarks. I converted to a religion I thought was ridiculously overblown and (in some cases) over-commercialized and fake (not saying that about all Christians. I don't have an issue with most Christians but not gonna lie..Christianity in some cases is used more as a social marker than a life choice). I became a complete shell of who I was. I'm a very opinionated, blunt, and stubborn person. In some cases it's a virtue in others it's a character flaw, regardless of that though it's who I am and I let that go. I stopped talking to people who I loved to be around and I abandoned my core principles. I stopped asking questions and pushing myself to learn. I became the girl you see everyday, meek and quiet with nothing much to say. I let my hair get blond and I stopped wearing the clothes I loved to wear. I was too scared that Matt might not like them and in turn not like me...It was a brutal cycle and it didn't break until we broke up.

It wasn't until I looked back that I realized how far I had fallen, how far i had drifted away from who I truly was and I know I'm not the only one who has gone through this so you aren't either. It's so hard to be true to yourself and I get that. The world makes it so hard to be an individual, to stand by what you believe without persecution or being socially ostracized. But, if I've learned anything over the course of my life is that life is too short to waste any of it being someone you're not and that it doesn't matter how great you are at conforming, one day who you are will come out. One day you'll wake up and you won't know who the hell is looking back at you in the mirror.

That moment when you realize that you can't even recognize yourself is so heartbreaking. it's so scary realizing that who you are isn't there anymore; that you have essentially drowned yourself in this sick batch of ideas that aren't even yours. It's the most dramatic wake-up call one can have, I believe.

So, words of wisdom (basically this entire blog post summed up) :
Don't lose who you are in the blur of the stars
Seeing is deceiving, dreaming is believing
It's okay not to be okay
Sometimes it's hard to follow your heart
Tears don't mean you're losing, everybody's bruising
There's NOTHING wrong with who you are. 


Peace Out,
Taylor

Get It Right

THIS IS REALLY LONG

I don’t really know how to start this one. It will probably be the most intimate blog post I will ever write simply because it’s my story. Some people may argue that this is a story between two people, but honestly I think this is my story to tell. The other character in this tale has chosen to remain silent, so I became the storyteller, and the story came to mean more to me than I expected. It isn’t until you look back on the path you have made that you really begin to understand why life moved you the way it did. But I guess I should probably tell you my story. I know…the suspense must be killing you inside.

Once upon a time there was a boy named Matt, and I loved him. I loved Matt more than I had loved anyone else. I trusted him in ways I hadn’t trusted others. He was my best friend, my “boyfriend”, and at times I considered him to be the love of my life. I could say how silly that is now, but you always have 20/20 hindsight right? Anyways, I was in love. I was crazy about him and for a while it was amazing. I felt like I could be myself around him. We would talk until 2 in the morning about everything. We’d laugh until our sides hurt. I could tell him anything and everything and the world seemed at peace.

It didn’t really matter to me that I was balancing a difficult workload, going 7am-9pm (7:00-21:00) days at school and then coming home and working harder until midnight, and sometimes not getting sleep at all. I wasn’t eating healthily, I was stressed to my highest capacity. It was not the right time to have a boyfriend, but I didn’t care. He made me happy; he made me feel worthwhile and for me that was enough. Our relationship was uneventful until the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. With nothing to do, he became the focus of my life. After all, we were talking about getting married. I was going to go to college near by and we were going to live happily ever after…but then things started changing. He started to pull away. I don’t know if it was my fault or not but it happened, and like most girls I clung tighter to him because I was so scared of losing him, losing that connection. 

I don’t quite remember where everything started to go sour…If I honestly think about it, it probably started the day school ended for me. Things were already stretched thin. With him playing lacrosse and studying for finals, and me doing Academic Team and preparing for AP tests we hardly had enough time to communicate. I started spending weekends with him in an effort to have enough time together. 

So back to summer: June rolled around and we spent a week together. Day and night and to me it was wonderful, but I began to notice a change. He would look at other girls while we kissed, he was reluctant to do anything aside from lock ourselves in his house and lay around.  I think that’s where my anxiety really began to boil up, when I started to cling to him.

You see, over that span of time my relationship with Matt became all that I had. I converted to Christianity for him, I swallowed my liberal political beliefs, I stopped hanging out with friends and virtually cut out my closest and dearest friend. I was making sacrifices for that relationship to keep working, sacrifices that were not and never will be worth it. I became a complete shell of myself. I began to feel terribly about my body, even about my academic career. I was ashamed that I wasn’t heavier, that I didn’t look like other girls. I began to obsess over my body, over how I acted, what I said, what Matt said in return.

I had known for a long time that Matt had friends who were girls, so I never really started to worry about it until that summer. It was silly, but I was insecure. I asked him to stop texting a girl in his class who wasn’t a part of his “immediate group”. He didn’t. They talked everyday, even though he wouldn’t text or call me that day. I know it’s stupid and ridiculous, but that made me feel even more insecure in our relationship. I began to wonder if he was really as all in to this relationship as I was. I began to panic.

I had already been rather thin due to stress during the school year, but I dropped even more weight. I wouldn’t eat because when Matt and I would fight (which was often) I would get so anxious that I would throw up. It got a point where I was either in a fit of hysterics or barfing my guts up everyday. There wasn’t a day where I just felt level or myself. It was the most terrifying time of my life. My parents began wondering if they could send me to college, and in all honesty, in the state I wasn’t in, I certainly wasn’t ready for it. However, my parents believed that my relationship was my business and they let me alone. Though they were worried for my health, the figured you don’t learn if you don’t hurt, and I agree with them on that.

The weekend of July 23^rd I spent with him and his family. At first it seemed like every other weekend, but it wasn’t. I’m not going to bore you with the details of how he told me he loved me and that we would be together forever blah blah blah. Fast forward to the night of July 25^th. We had just finished dinner, my mom was over, and the table had grown silent. I felt my instincts tingling, I knew something wasn’t okay or it wasn’t going to be rather quickly.

I’m going to skip the speech and get straight to the point: his father broke up with me. Matt didn’t say a word, he just stared at the floor and held my hand. I felt sick. I had been completely ambushed and Matt had known. He had known the entire weekend (since June actually) that this was going to be the end result. I grabbed my bags and ran out of the house, my mom followed after me. I don’t remember much of what happened after, just a lot of yelling, glass breaking, and the cold cement. I curled up on the sidewalk and cried. I had no idea what had just happened, just that it hurt and that I had never hurt this badly. Matt tried to touch me to “explain”, but no explaining could be done. What happened had already happened and there was no taking it back. My mom and I got in the car and left. I haven’t been back to that city since. Even now, a year later, it makes me feel sick to even think about looking him in the eye.

I could say that it was one of the worst times of my life, but that night was easily the best. It was horrible and it hurt but it freed me. The next day we picked up my best friend in the entire world and I ate. For the first time in months I ate a whole meal. I didn’t throw up. I didn’t feel anxious. A huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. It was as though that night was water to a parched garden.

Of course, it wasn’t a miracle transition either. I didn’t suddenly return to the person I had been. I don’t think that is even possible. I will never be the girl I was when I met and fell in love with Matt and I won’t be the girl that needed him either. I learned so much from that relationship, but only in retrospect. I was angry for a long time and crushingly depressed, but I refused to let that lead my life. I got up every morning and lived my life. I refused to let what had happened control my life and still keep me prisoner.

Eventually days started to fly by again. Minutes didn’t drag on. I could breathe without it hurting. I could think about him without breaking down into tears. My heart was healing, so it was time that my soul started to too. I went to a therapist, probably the best choice I have ever made. I began to look at why I had become who I had become when I was with Matt and began to wonder what lay before me. I realized that what lies before me is all I want it to be. Life became something full of choices rather than a confinement.

I learned that you can never sacrifice who you are for someone. If you have to become someone else to receive love, then you shouldn’t be in that relationship. I learned that it is never too late to recover who you are, that you can always pick up the pieces and become a better person because of the hurt.  But most importantly, I learned that who I am is good enough. I deserve the best. We all do. We all deserve someone who is going to love us without question, someone we feel more than comfortable around, and someone we can love without sacrificing who we are. It’s easier said than done, but if someone reads this and can avoid the pain that I did, then my purpose is served.

I regret nothing. Life has been kind to me and I feel blessed to have had that experience. I wouldn’t be the same person without it. So thank you, Matt. Thank you for showing me how beautiful love can be, yet also how destructive and painful it can be when you stop looking at the world around you.

Life is too short to spend it in regret, but it is much too short to spend planning for a life that you don’t even want.

A year later I am going to college, I am single, and I have never been happier. I take care of my body, I laugh everyday. Life is so much more vibrant and more beautiful than I could have ever imagined. And to think, I could have never seen such great beauty if I had not experienced such pain.

Until Tomorrow,

Taylor

Uncharted

I checked my blog stats this morning and I had over 100 views, which I know in perspective of the billion internet users out there it isn't that great, but I feel pretty damn special. It is truly remarkable how quickly internet can spread things, what messages we can push to each corner of the universe. Yet, it can also be a bad thing. Some people who read this blog probably have no idea who I am and the fact that they can see into some of my most intimate thoughts is scary. Then again, if it really freaked me out that much I wouldn't be posting a blog right?

COMPLETE CHANGE OF DIRECTION
It's tough for me to write today but I'm motivated to write in this thing as I would my journal, everyday or at least often. I know, how arrogant of me to think my thoughts actually merit a daily blog posting, but ah well :). I kinda want to talk about music today. My high school is a musical school. Everyone sings or plays and instrument (or at least tries/is forced to) and when I walked in the doors 4 years ago I was a singer but musically illiterate. I couldn't tell you the difference between a whole note and a half note (though the name  kind of says it all).

Over the past four years I have become pretty intimately involved with music. it fills my everyday life. I can't live without it. from Bhrams as I brush my teeth to Glee with my friends; Lady Gaga, Adele, The Naked and Famous...I listen to classical, romantic, jazz, atonal, pop, rock, soul...When I walked in those doors 4 years ago I couldn't even begin to tell you why music made me feel how it did or why I loved it so much. Like most people I didn't really know where music came from. Music was just music, sound that made me feel, that I sang along to. And then my world gradually changed. I began to see what  music was made of, how it made me feel what it made me feel. I saw music in the ocean, in the wind. I felt it in the summer sun and in my tears. Music came from what is inside of all of us. Our own hopes, pain, joy, sorrow, anger. It's all in there. It's all in the music.

Some of us like screamo, some of us (like my Government teacher) listen only to Classical music, some of us dabble, and others of us don't "really listen to music" (something that breaks my heart to be completely honest). But what all of this is moving up to is the idea that music is human. It's us. It's everything private and public and beautiful and scary and ugly and amazing about life. All through sound. Music is the most amazing thing in the entire world to me. I cry when I listen to Chopin and I smile when I listen to Freelance Whales. I feel liberated when I turn up Lady Gaga and heartbroken when I listen to Adele.

Music is the most amazing thing in the world. It's so crazy to me just how AWESOME it is. How we all sing along. It's so amazing how universal music is and it has taught me so much. Music in schools changed my life.

I don't know if music is to everyone else what it is to me, but what i know for a facts is that music connects us. It makes us better people and understanding it allows us to understand everyone. Music is the universal language because it moves us all. We all feel it. Music is the only true way to say anything, I think. Because music goes places where words can not. It touches your soul, your heart. It brings out that primal instinct in you to dance and celebrate. So get up. Dance. Celebrate...Celebrate life. It's the only one we have.

Set Fire to the Rain

Today was a rough day. I fought with one of my best friends  I guess we're ex-friends now. We fought over sex. Not between us, between him and his girlfriend. And though I understand that his sex life isn't exactly my business we were super close. He had been "pandering" his girlfriend for sex and he asked me if asking his girlfriend for sex (even after she told him she wasn't ready) was a bad thing. I don't know why but this made me really angry. I don't think it's fair to "pander" or "pressure" a girl about sex. If she doesn't want to have sex, she doesn't want to have sex.

Our culture has become so ridiculously centered on this idea of women as sex objects, there's almost no room for dissent. If you have sex at 16 you're a whore, if you're a virgin by 21 you're a prude. It seems that people have forgotten that some girls move at their own pace, something I feel should be respected. I know everyone says sex is a big deal, and it is for your first time. Society overlooks the emotional repercussions of sex. Some people are capable of having "casual" sex, but let's be honest. Being as humanly close to another human being is an intense experience, and intimate experience, and for most people those emotional repercussions just can't be turned off or toned down. In most cases sex is intimate. It is serious. And often in the first time, it is a well thought out and talked about decision.

Now, I'm not saying that sex for the first time can't be good sex, on the contrary the emotional connection can be one of the strongest of your life, but most of the time it's awkward, uncomfortable, painful, and the girl doesn't get true sexual satisfaction. It takes a woman 20 minutes to orgasm and only 20% of women can achieve orgasm by penetration alone. Men take quite less time to orgasm, and most young men hardly know what a clitoris is, let alone what to do. But it's the young women who don't tell them what they need, mostly because they (we) don't really know. I know this isn't something talked about very often but, women's orgasm/pleasure has become some sort of taboo. A man and his "right hand" are common cultural references and are not seen as taboo, but what about women? Don't we have a right to know what pleases us? Why must our discovery be shrouded in cultural taboo and shame? Why do covers of magazines give you "101 Ways to Please Him" instead of "101 Ways to Please Yourself"?

I'm taking a huge leap here but: isn't sex that is mutually satisfying lead to more satisfying sex overall? I mean I could be wrong, but when both parties achieve orgasm doesn't that make for better sex? Or am I off the deep end here?

I know this is an intimate topic, and most people don't share my stance or bluntness, but here's the deal gents (if any gents read this):

Most of the time she's faking it. Most of the time, you aren't.

Ladies:
Don't fake it. Because once you discover what gets you off your sexual partner will probably be realllly confused when you suddenly stop proclaiming his greatness after a 10 minute romp in the sheets.

And most of all:
Just because you're young doesn't mean you can't know what gets you off. Experiment and enjoy yourself. And just because "everyone's" having sex, doesn't mean you have to, and trust me...everyone is just as confused, scared, and emotionally unprepared as you. You aren't alone. Don't feel pressured by society to punch that V-Card because your first time should be a glorious experience not a 5 minute disappointment. Sex is complicated and scary and yet it can be amazing and special. Wait if you have sliver of a doubt. Wait if you think it's the wrong time. Wait if you think it's the wrong guy because down the road he'll be gone but that memory will be there forever. Set a high standard, put yourself first. Your body and how you feel matter.

Just some words of advice. Not the Bible or the word of God, but ideas.

Peace Out,
Taylor