Did I live with you in a past life? 

Was I your lifelong partner?

Is that why the idea of losing you torments me so much?

 

How long have I been without you?

- GABRIELA MISTRAL (IN A LETTER TO DORIS DANA)

 

Yesterday we walked to the store to buy more oranges. They're a fan favorite these days and the more I buy the more get eaten, which means many trips to the bulk store which is okay because that's where the good slides happen to be. 

Joe put her tiny warm hand in mine and I sucked in cold air and stifled a mild panic attack because it occurred to me how precious it is, the freedom to walk my daughter to the store to buy oranges. All of the separate, fragile pieces of that freedom - healthy bodies, money to buy things, time to go. Relative safety.

In my dream last night there were lots of people waiting in lots of lines in different rooms of a building where the hallways always led to different places. You had to take a test in order to get a vaccine, and the cost of the vaccine depended on what you scored on the test. I got a low score, which was good and the price that printed out on my little ticket was very low. "It doesn't mean anything," I kept telling the people around me. "I've always been really good at taking tests." I got to the desk where I was supposed to pay and get the shot but realized I forgot my bag in the last room. I spent the rest of the dream trying to get back to to the room where my bag was. I did find it, but then I couldn't get back to the room with the shots. 

one morning

5:00AM: I wake up to Elton John singing "Circle of Life." (Sometimes it's "Call Me Maybe" because those are the only two songs I have on my phone. I think. I really don't know what's on that thing besides cat pictures and the Target app.)

5:01AM: I realize that Diego is still in bed, too. I ask him if he's late for work because these days it's extremely rare that I wake up with anyone other than the cat next to me. He's not. He starts mumbling something in sleepy Spanglish and I tune him out and keep scratching the cat and start mentally organizing a to-do list.

5:30AM: I get out of bed to feed the cat because right on schedule he's gone from happy little purr bucket to attempted murderer. Diego beat me to the bathroom so I start a pot of coffee and then stand in the kitchen checking work emails on my phone until I feel like he's had enough privacy (approximately forty seconds) and burst in on him so I can wash my face and teeth.

5:45AM: Diego leaves and I plow through as much work as I can before Joe wakes up. It's a little bit like getting to work an hour before any of my coworkers, except that they don't need their diapers changed when they walk in. And if they do it's not technically my problem, so.

6:45AM: I bring a cup of coffee into the bathroom and listen to a podcast while I put on makeup because it's important to look SNATCHED even though the only person that sees your whole face most days is your daughter and she's biologically programmed to love you even if you're ugly.

7:10AM: I go into Joe's room, where she's in her crib chattering at her bear and some dolls. We "pick out" an outfit together, I scrape her hair as much into a ponytail as it will go, and we read books for a few minutes before she tears ass into the living room after the cat.

7:30AM: She immediately finds a bag of groceries that her dad left on the kitchen floor last night and insists on eating an apricot and a mango POST HASTE. Then she wakes up all her other dolls so they can watch her give Hello Kitty some face tattoos while I attempt to keep working a little bit before breakfast.

 7:45AM: While I'm pouring her milk I realize that we're out of eggs, which isn't the worst thing because I decide to treat us to bagels in the park. I order some breakfast delivery and turn on the TV, hoping that between the milk and Peppa Pig I can squeeze a few more tasks in before we head to the park.

8:00AM: LOL

8:15AM: We grab the stroller, stuff Joe's backpack full of water bottles and the bagel that has now been delivered, and head to the park while it's still early enough to avoid other people.

8:Something - 10AM: We eat breakfast while watching people run on the track, scare some birds, chase a tennis ball around and play with the marbles Joe has snuck into her pockets. At one point I lose my keys, but don't worry I found them. Exciting stuff, people. A real roller coaster.

10:Something: Come home, "work" some more.

12:Something: I feed Joe some leftover lentils and rice and then she goes down for a nap. I have a meeting. I eat my own lunch and consider taking my own nap.

I have no idea what time it really is, let's be serious: Joe wakes up and usually at the waking-up-from-nap point in the day I've abandoned work completely save for answering an email or two. We play with toys, we color, we go for a walk around the block. She throws an inexplicable temper tantrum that lasts fifteen minutes. One of the two women who run her daycare has been making her food and dropping it off, so we "visit" with her and her teenage daughter for a few minutes and Joe pokes at some ants on the steps. Diego comes home FREAKISHLY early, and I ask him to do bath time while I cook so we can all eat together and he does so we do and now she's asleep after many more books and when I'm finished with this I'm going to take a shower and rinse this face mask off and maybe drink a beer and play The Sims but probably I will just fall asleep because even though this day was relatively easy as far as the days have gone because Diego was here for some of it I'm just very tired. And grateful that I have running water in which to clean my hands, and food to put in front of my kid even if she won't always eat it, but also still really tired. As Daniel Tiger says, you can be more than one thing. I hope you're all doing okay out there, and if you feel like shit even though you know damn well that all things considered you personally are DOING OKAY, I feel that.

Oprah tried to tell me. She did.
She said, "Lindsay. The universe is going to try, like, one more time. And then it's going to start screaming its cosmic head off and things are going to get uglier than your forearms after a 'play' session with Griffon." (Or something like that, Oprah says a lot of things.)

The rails, you guys - the rails. I went so far off of them that I couldn't tell what they were anymore. Just bones in my peripherals, that's all anything was. Last night I was driving a motorbike way too fast around some beautiful gardens, and then I went right off the edge into deep blue water. Then there were some broken pairs of glasses and a funeral parade of Scientologists dressed in Victorian clothing and also I didn't get wet in the water somehow. Or maybe that was the night before last. I don't know. What I do know is that right now, it's a little hot here by the window, but it's nice to watch the neighborhood do its Sunday things and know that Griffon is laying behind me with his feet straight up in the air digesting his first breakfast and that later I'll make tofu scramble and banana pancakes and go for a walk with a person who loves me even though sometimes I self-destruct for weeks in a row.

And I'm more than ever grateful to be a part of a universe that isn't afraid to raise its voice. I don't want to be either, anymore. My truth is just as valid as anyone else's - and if I violate some social rules, well then. I'll have interesting things to say to my journal.

You know who else talks to me is Allen Ginsberg:

"Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don't care who's listening." 

30 before 30, brought to you by an impending birthday and morning traffic on the bridge

1. Get through the Tolkien books
2. Ditto some Russian novels, why is it so hard they have everything I like
3. Finish my Bachelor’s (maybe, if I feel like it)
4. Earn Griffon’s love
5. Learn how to knit more than one kind of stitch (stitch more than one kind of knit? Tie different kinds of knots with needles)
6. Learn how to use my sewing machine for more than making dresses shorter (although IMO if that’s all it did, still totally worth the space it takes up)
7. Take a vacation by myself
8. Go one month without spending money on anything besides groceries and bills
9. Complete Tarot meditations/exercises for every card in the deck
10. (I’m embarrassed to even write this one because SERIOUSLY LINDSAY COME ON) Learn Spanish
11. Fill a journal
12. Scrape together a respectable savings account
13. Cook my way through Thug Kitchen, which my mom bought us for Christmas two years ago. Oh did I tell you guys we’re in-it-to-win-it-well-mostly-anyway vegans now? And not like before when I was accidentally vegan because dinner was Swedish fish on the train home from class at 11PM and breakfast and lunch were nothing because I was poor. Man, and I was too tired to appreciate how skinny I was. Just goes to show. It just. Goes. To show.
14. Run 2 miles without stopping (or dry heaving, or crying)
15. When people say they’re “taking a break from technology” I assume that along with staying off of their phones they’re also not using wheels or ovens. So I’d like to be more specific, because I like my toilet and don’t feel like using it is impeding my connection to the universe. Although, I mean, I guess I’d technically be closer to the earth without it. Anyway I’d like to take a break from phones/computers/the internet for a whole day.
16. Let go. Allow. Observe. Appreciate phenomena. Actively practice compassion.
17. Stop farting on the bus
18. Find my shade of red lipstick and figure out how to wear it without looking like a kindergartener
19. Find a semi-regular volunteer gig (remember when I was young and tried harder, me neither really)
20. DIY the crap out of one piece of furniture
21. Get really good at uncorking wine bottles (I suck SO BAD – last night I broke an opener and didn’t even realize what had happened until - as I was digging at the cork with tweezers and a butter knife - I unearthed the screw that had broken off inside the cork.)
22. Write ten personal essays. Like, really write them.
23. Go balls-out at a fancy schmancy spa
24. Finish one cross-stitch project
25. Go a week without makeup
26. Go a day without looking in the mirror
27. Go to one of those BYOB art classes
28. Actually learn Quickbooks for real
29. Develop a workout routine that I’ll actually stick to for real
30. Plan something sweet for Diego because usually I’m a troll

Audible over ocean sounds, made out in dark or too-bright light.
Muted panic.

I haven’t written anything yet, not since I’ve been here, not ever.
You’re waiting in my softest parts to be made into something else.
Release me, you say. I’m trying.

I'll try.

This happened just now:

Inside, I am (well I was) speaking at a regular volume to another person. Outside, there is (was) a lot of noise.

(Well. There’s ALWAYS a lot of noise.
But for a few minutes, just a minute ago, it was especially loud.
One of my top ten least-favorite sounds, right there with motorcycles and human whining, is muffled tinny man voice through a wall. And that’s what we could hear. Plus music which I also dislike.

Well. Not all music. Just the kind that’s traveled through a brick wall.)

The person I’m talking to can (COULD) hear it. I know this because I also can (ARE WE TIRED OF THIS YET) hear it. And her ears are (YEAH, TOO MUCH RIGHT?) not broken, I think.

(Well. I can’t be sure. But I’m pretty. Pretty sure.
Also though, the other kind of pretty. Hi.)

And then we finished our conversation, neither of us acknowledging the noise that we could both clearly (I think) hear. Because in order to Get Things Accomplished, you have to ignore Other Things. (Right? Is that how we’re doing this, then?)

And then I said to myself, “Hey, that tiny baby moment, that one that just happened? That’s what EVERYTHING feels like.”

And then I wrote it down. Am writing it down.

This happened yesterday:

I took a picture of my feet while I was having my lunchtime quasi-nap at work because I had cute shoes on.

Their mouths unhinge in unison with the lifting of their chins; above and all around, the lights dance. We stand for a moment in the cloud of cold they bring in with them – they never stay long enough to be rid of it, not completely. The roughness of their hands, the nothings exchanged, is Christmas.

It’s hard not to feel like I’m just jerking off into the internet when I write anything here – mostly because that’s exactly the essence of any social media platform, the stroking of the self, right? And that’s fine. Healthy even. My seventh-grade gym teacher told me it was, anyway.

I keep starting sentences that want to turn into pages, and I don’t have pages in me right now. What I do have in me is cereal, because I just ate breakfast. And what I’m about to have in me is the rest of the Christmas snacks in this office before they all get thrown out today. Because we won’t be here for a week, which I keep remembering and being thrilled about, because I haven’t had a vacation in two years. And over the next few days I’ll alternate between feelings of sexiness and grotesqueness, and feelings of deep emptiness and overwhelming love (mostly overwhelming love – I’m lucky), because it’s the end of another year and there are tiny lights in all the dark corners.

I don’t know how to say I think it’s okay that we love and are grateful for our cinnamon-pine-berry-scented living rooms when the buildings all around us are burning down and people live inside of them. I don’t know how to say anything at all without minimizing the tragedies we’re watching on the screens of the many devices through which we are now, somehow, more and less than ever connected to each other. It is not, excuse me, fucking okay. Things are not okay.

It’s also not okay to miss out on all the goodness we are fortunate enough to have surrounding us. It’s not okay to let ourselves become mired in all the shit. There’s hope, as long as we’re willing and able to be of service. We must learn from Artax.

So this is what I’m telling myself this year: Love and be grateful for whatever it is you have, even if it’s not a lot, even if it’s bullshit. If you have it to love, love it. And don’t be an asshole.

Merry Christmas.

In one, it’s halfway through the year and I haven’t done any of my science homework. 

In the other, I’m reunited with various colleagues from throughout the years for a new project. We’re at some sort of large, resort-like property. There’s a meeting on an enormous deck that has hundreds of round tables covered with umbrellas. Everyone is heading there, but for some reason I break off from the group because I desperately need to change my clothes before this meeting. I am then somehow in my grandparents’ foyer and there’s a giant pile of my clothes on the floor in between their guest bathroom and the stairs. Their stairs lead to the deck where everyone else is waiting for me, and more people begin climbing the stairs to join the meeting, but I can’t stop trying on dresses. When I finally try to climb the stairs to the deck, it’s like trying to climb a mountain that’s buried in Play-Doh. Everyone has broken off into pairs or small groups. I turn around and leave because I realize I left my phone and all of my notes downstairs.

The other night, I was putting on fake eyelashes when what I really wanted to do was go to bed. I’m telling you this not so you’ll feel sorry for me (“Poor sweet darling, forced to leave her cave after dark”), but so that you’ll understand I was under the influence of sleep deprivation and perhaps not judge me too harshly for what happened next. This is the thing that happened next: I thought the fake eyelashes were too much, so instead of TAKING THEM THE FUCK OFF I decided to TRIM THEM WHILE THEY WERE ATTACHED TO MY FACE. And while I was doing it I thought, “It sure would be stupid if I cut my own eyelashes, ha! ha! I’d look SO DUMB! ha! ha!”

It’s a good thing nobody notices my haircuts, because I gave one to my eyelids. Fuck. So that’s how I’m doing lately, in case you were going to ask. Fuck, is how.

Also, I have SO MANY ZITS. I’ve only been half-paying attention to them, because everything is terrible*** so why wouldn’t my skin also be? and my chin pretty predictably throws a tantrum every month or two so whatever who cares. But for the past, mm, week and a half? my skin has been OUT OF CONTROL. And one day I just noticed it all of a sudden, out of nowhere, like, you know, how I seem to notice most things lately. HI I’M TERRIBLE. DIDN’T YOU NOTICE? No, actually, I didn’t. OH WELL I AM. SORRY ABOUT IT.

And then I found out by accident that some people break out when they quit smoking. And I did that! So these zits are actually a good thing. BYE, TOXINS. BYE FOREVER. Now, I need a similar thing to make me feel better about these terrible bangs. And my stubby eyelashes. Isn’t there a song about this? “There is a season la la la, a time to be ugly, a time to get hot again, la”? If there’s not already I just wrote it. DON’T COPY ME JONAS BIEBER I KNOW YOU’RE READING THIS.



***Come on, guys. Everything’s not terrible. Or maybe a lot of things are but we can work on making them not as terrible. We really really can, and we really really need to. So let’s keep fighting the good fights and let’s start some new ones where there aren’t any but there should be. And also, let’s hug. Except if I don’t know you that well, then please don’t hug me, it’s not you, I have a thing? But we can stand close-ish to each other, in solidarity. Solidarity is important. Remember that.

some disjointed thoughts about catcalling, though I don't think that phrasing is very cat-centric

Over the summer I was leaving a corner store when a very young man almost ran into me on his bike. He stopped short, and we looked at each other for a very brief moment while my heart worked its way back down my esophagus and he (probably) assessed my in-one-piece-ness and whether or not I was going to yell at him. As he biked away, he called out his apology (which I believed and believe was sincere since I generally operate under the assumption that people do not leave their homes in the morning with the intention of mowing me over on the sidewalk) and then: “That’s a great dress!” It was a great dress. Is. I did a good job picking it.

Same street, further down. There is a woman I see sometimes as I surface from the train at 116th. She is, in a word, magnificent. She looks like someone painted her. I don’t know a way to keep describing what she looks like without being reductive, but the thing that most people would probably notice first is the expanse of her hips – it is a great expanse. The first time I saw her, something audible tried to get between my teeth.

“You could fall empires,” I wanted to whisper.
“The tides, they search for you.”

But I didn’t, because I’m not a fucking asshole. So I understand the impulse, when faced with the female form, to voice awe. I also understand, though, that I do not have the right to insert myself into her day by commenting on her physicality. I do not assume that her presence in front of me is a question I need to answer. She does not need or want my validation, and she is certainly not asking for approval by walking by me. She doesn’t have to smile because I think she’d look prettier if she did. She doesn’t have to acknowledge me at all. She doesn’t owe me one single thing. Nothing.

I also understand - it is not about awe.
You feel powerless, inadequate. I understand. But you're wrong.

The only thing worth saying out loud about what's in this picture is how much stuff is on the floor.
We are slow-at-furniture-buying humans. Okay?

Same street, still. Outside the cute bakery. I’m listening to voicemail (who leaves voicemail? I hate it so much) and weaving through the slower-moving of humans on the street when I hear someone call me a “big-legged white girl” and loudly wonder what my name is. He stops on the sidewalk and turns to watch me walk away, which I know because I gave him this look:

And then kept walking, phone still attached to my head.

My thoughts are that, they are that “I like your dress” is not “I want to ___ all your ___, *****!” I think of the grays in between, the insidiousness, the overtness, the anger. It’s easier for me to hear about having my “___ ____” than it is to have the word “big” applied to any part of my body, because the former I can easily identify as violence and the latter directs my analysis to myself. There are compliments (which actually belong in a place nowhere near or touching this conversation), and there is aggression, and there is the inability to differentiate between the two, and there is violence and assertion of power and there are many many well-written articles that are written about male gaze and rape culture that articulate the thousand years of oppressions that have led us to today.

This, obviously, is not one of them. But it's what I'm thinking about while I should be answering emails. So, do me a favor and pretend you emailed me and this whole thing was me answering you.

There were three, I think. Perhaps a fourth escapes me. 

A hallway built through them, like a needle stuck straight through. 

The giant’s hands at work. 

Yes, maybe. I don’t know.

It ran right through. It made bridges between them, and under the bridges and along the sides were empty lots that filled up by mid-morning. More would come, the lots spilled over, the excess a slow circle back into itself.

The piercing was the common thing. The structures stood without regard to the other. Other than the piercing, and the movement.

I’ve been where you are. I can tell you some things.

Like,

On a certain floor on a certain day, separate yourself from the current. The door under the north staircase opens into a concrete courtyard, suspended below one parking lot and above another, concrete steps in a double helix through the center. Sit down on a step. Light a cigarette. The step will be cold.

There’s a photograph on each step. Her hair, when she appears, isn’t quite the same.

It’s close enough. Until it isn’t.

Don’t stay outside too long.

It was only later that the map’s breath could be heard. Apart from lungs, from wind. A beating.

THE INTERNET, that strange and uncertain frontier, was the perfect kind of fertile. It occurs to me now to wonder if the seeds I was dropping in fact led me there, pieces of the secret parts of me as they were, minions of the map that lived (lives, still) in the molecules of my more malleable parts. It occurs to me to wonder, but at the moment this salivating and breathy map of mine wants us to focus on our presence before the vast expanse. On our expanding ribcage, the hot pressure of a rapidly swelling flesh balloon.

We allow the glass to dull the edges a bit, is how we keep going. I tuck my tiny rectangle away because when given the choice I prefer not to be a caricature and am rewarded with more opportunities to be horrified at myself. The man, for example, vigorously emptying the contents of his stomach onto the floor of the car I’m about to get onto only very slightly alters the trajectory of my evening. The following is a spoiler: I do not make sure he gets home safely. I do not make sure he has a home to get to, safely or otherwise. I only just now, at the time of this writing, hope that he had someone to make him rinse his mouth out before he went to bed. I didn’t hope it then because I didn’t have room to. If I let those type of hopes bubble up when they wanted to, I’d fall over. I’d overflow. Seated a distance I judge to be too far away for vomit to splash, I listen to two other men discuss in great detail and at great volume the ripped-ness of a third (absent) man. He works out a lot, has very little body fat. He eats only brown rice and vegetables. They repeat these facts to each other, over and over, in as many different ways as they can think of. It’s not a lot of different ways. Finally I have to look, I have to know the source of this inanity. But I don’t, really, because first I see that one of them has a wound on his leg that is openly bleeding. Another spoiler: I do not say, You’re… bleeding. You are bleeding blood. Kind of a lot.  I do not think, BLOOD. I am not moved to action. No. I think, THIS is what I get for trying to “be present.” This is what the present has to offer.

But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.
Haruki Murakami

We had to take headshots at work, and everyone’s photographed selves turned out a little denser than their alive selves. So I didn’t mind too much about that, but the beginnings of lines around my eyes were unsettling. I’m not actually going to live forever.

I made this today while I was on hold (so, all day) (so, this is basically what I did today) (along with ruminate, which I just learned is the name of the thing I am sometimes doing) (I'm working on a post on compulsions, specifically mine because I know marginally more about those specific ones than about, you know, compulsions in general) (although it is possible to know more about a "thing" in the general sense than you know about it in the sense that it applies directly to you, I guess) (anyway it is specifically a "blog post" and not just regular writing because I want to put it on the internet because it turns out that the internet is directly involved in said compulsions, so, poetry and things - and that makes it harder because a lot of it is SHAMEFUL! like I already feel like I've said too much aah) (nobody cares, please see below):

and if you say hide, we'll hide

Spouting Violets is private right now, because I'm halfheartedly looking for a new job and realized that if you google my email address it eventually brings you here. If you just google my name, the only things that come up are pictures of a blonde girl who is not me and that dumb blog post I wrote twenty-nine years ago for that nonprofit that shall remain nameless. (Yep, still mad about the typos. Not mad enough to ask them, again, to take it down - but, still pretty bitter. Stiiiill stewing.) "Why would they google your email address, Lindsay?" Because that's what I do when we're interviewing at the place where I currently work - you'd be VERY surprised at the types of discussion boards Google turns up when you google the email address on some people's resumes. You'll sure feel a lot of feelings. I know I do.

So anyway, it's private right now, but it won't be forever. Only for a little while. I know this, but you don't yet. Secrets, and ship lights. We'll meet in the morning.

I don't have many words right now, anyway. I'm working on making writing a priority again, because it's an important part of how I make myself be a real human, but I'm feeling a bit burrow-y of late. December feels ten days shorter every time it comes around, and the things I have and want to do at the end of each year seem to keep multiplying. My birthday is on Thursday, and by the next week I hope to have made a few decisions and perhaps have an answer or two.

In the meantime - David Bowie, huh? I think it's weird that I spent the night before he died playing vintage arcade games in the village and then going uptown to listen to "Let's Dance" and its ilk under a glowing Rubiks cube. And I know I am not alone in that some of the first sexual feelings I can remember having were for Bowie in The Labyrinth. Don't lie, broads. Don't lie. (Him, and the cartoon wolf from the Three Little Pigs Silly Symphony. OH HEY.) 

(And Eric from The Little Mermaid but duh.) 

I opened my mouth and pulled out a scrap of paper. On it were words warning She Who Loves Roses not to cry about thorns, but Sappho didn't actually say that and it's not like you to be sloppy. You are precise, like a collarbone. Or a blade.

(Touching either one of them means a bloody finger. Maybe that's what you meant to tell me when you lowered this scroll down my throat.)

The room is bright and filled with pianos. They are very close together. Suggestions of walls recede in proportion to my distance from them, which adds to the difficulty of navigating the sea of wood and ivory.

but my heart knows the walls and thinks my eyes are foolish anyhow
and the Brain, it writes off as impractical

Once in a while I check my boyfriend's Facebook 

so I can look at my mom's Facebook 

and make sure she isn't cheating on me. 

I'm ashamed of getting so bored at Carnegie Hall.

A couple weeks ago I was scrolling through the archives of her wall to make sure there weren't any pictures of her looking too comfortable with any babies or girls my age (now that I think about it it's probably about time I check again), and I saw a video called "Dear Fat People" she'd posted something about. And yes, I did leave a comment via Diego. I shall post it here:

Here's a tip: If you can't mind your own beeswax, as I sometimes cannot, hire some bees to do it for you. They're very hard workers, bees are. 

Since I am as usual an entire gestational period late to the pop culture discussion and I feel stupid writing at any length about a girl whose main credential is "Youtuber who makes videos that are essentially lists of jokes everybody has already heard", I'll make my thoughts on the actual video quick. Well. Quick-ish. Mostly: I can't understand why this video got SO much attention so quickly, because the woman who made it failed to say one thing that was the least bit insightful. I don't mean this as a hateful comment toward her, but that was literally some of the most derivative comedy I've ever seen. And there's nothing "wrong" with being derivative, per se, and that's a conversation unto itself. (Also another conversation: Whether or not we're calling her video "comedy." I am, because what it definitely was NOT was a PSA about obesity.) But because exactly zero of what she said wasn't straight from a narrative that most of us know by heart, I'm having trouble understanding why anyone cares what she said. She literally just repeated every single joke and anecdote about "fat" people that many other people have already made ad nauseum. 

I'm ashamed of all the times I tell Diego I'm tired so we can leave shows a little bit early when really I just don't want to risk being smushed in with 100 drunk/"high on the music" people on whatever mode of transportation we have to take home.

Dear Nicole, I agree with you that people get offended by the dumbest shit, and that there are a lot of folks who spend more time policing what other people say than they probably should. But if you have to be mean to get people to pay attention to you and you can't be even be original about it, then you might want to stick to filming things that other people have written until you can come up with your own jokes. Also, I'd like to point out that you have the same luxury of not having to face an actual human's IRL reaction when you post your videos as the "keyboard warriors" you gripe about do when they post all their dumb shit. (Maybe I'm wrong, because I don't know you, but I sincerely doubt that you would ever say any of those things in that tone of voice to an actual overweight person that you cared about.) What's of real concern to me is that so many reactions to your video centered around you being a "skinny white blonde bitch" because when people call you those things, when they reduce you to your physical appearance, they are doing exactly what they're mad at you for doing. Although - and I say this out of love, because I care, like you purport to, "care" - the only thing you really did in that video was "appear." You talked a lot but it's clear you have nothing to say. All you did was regurgitate messages that have already been received. In closing, I dig your pink hair but because it has no impact on my life whatsoever, because you have not asked for my opinion, and because I do not genuinely feel that it is a danger to you - I will refrain from writing a blog about it. Signed, Lindsay

I'm ashamed that I made it exactly two blocks in these shoes before getting in a cab. They're FLATS.

Here's the thing: Outside of a Stephen King novel, I cannot imagine that anyone who is overweight to the point of being immobile became that way because of genetics. I do not believe that at no point did they have any control over their weight gain, or that their extreme size is not in very large part a result of choices that that person made. I just don't. (I also think it's VERY important to know who the word "fat" is being used to describe. To be clear, when I say "fat" I am referring to people who have excess body weight to the point where it limits their ability to navigate spaces beyond their bed. To be clearer, I use the word "fat" as a descriptor of physicality the same way as I'd say "brunette", not as a way to define the people I'm referring to. This is tricky because there are so many different definitions of what "fat" is, just like anything else. I mean, we're all fat to ants, so.) I just don't believe that a thyroid problem could by itself blow someone up to that extreme.

But I also don't believe that telling a "fat" person that they "smell like sausages" in a YouTube video is an effective method of intervention. 

That is exactly as helpful as approaching a person in less than clean clothes who is sleeping on a park bench smelling strongly of whiskey and urine, shaking that person awake and saying, "EXCUSE ME. YOU AREN'T VERY CLEAN AND ALSO YOU SMELL LIKE WHISKEY AND URINE - STOP DOING THAT" and walking away feeling like you just changed that person's life when really you just made them sadder about it. Which exacerbates their problem because their coping mechanisms are what landed them on that park bench to begin with. 

I'm ashamed of all the white clothes I ruined this summer (stay tuned for post titled "Adventures in Fake Tan"). I'm not ashamed of my rubber banded camera, because I am MacGyver and MacGyver isn't wired for shame. I'm also ashamed of taking selfies to make sure my hair doesn't look weird. One day I'll show you ALL the "do I look weird" selfies I have and oh. How we'll laugh.

For the record, yes, I 100% think that there are people who are extremely overweight simply because they will not eat a vegetable unless you wrap it in bacon and deep fry it. I do think that laziness is a factor in a lot of cases - especially in extremely obese people my age-ish, I really feel like there can be a very Augustus Gloop "Mommy's special snowflake angel" thing going on.

But you know what else factors in? Companies adding sugar to every god damn thing. The fact that the availability of food in this "first world" country of ours is so inconsistent - far too many people do not have access to places to buy the foods they should be eating, even if they have been educated about what those foods are, and even if they have the money to buy that food. Which a lot of the time they haven't been, and most of the time they don't. Perhaps the most important factor, at least in my mind, is that quality healthcare - mental or otherwise - for far too many people is basically a fucking unicorn. What some might be quick to label "laziness" might actually be a symptom of mental illness - in my mind.

(In someone else's mind I'm making excuses for "fat" people. In someone else's mind I'm fat shaming. And in yet someone else's mind there is a hamster running on a wheel or a monkey banging cymbals a la Homer Simpson because this blog is so long and boring and there aren't enough pictures.) **Edit: I used this formerly picture-less blog as a random photo dump after the fact. I LIKE COLOR OKAY.

I'm ashamed of ever feeling bad about my body because this woman custom made it for me. (Those are our "heroin chic" poses by the way. And that is my "haven't done laundry in two weeks" outfit. In case you weren't sure.)

Look, I smoke cigarettes and do my damnedest to manage an eating disorder. I'm not a stranger to addiction, especially to food. I get it, I truly do. But I also do not believe that food is AS addictive as, say, heroin - and I feel like the idea that "it's harder to quit food than it is to quit drugs because you have to eat food to live" a lot of times gets treated like a blank check for people to eat whatever they want to without taking responsibility for the consequences. I hate that comparison when people on either side of the "fat shaming" fence make it - I hate it when a person who just won't give up Taco Bell (PENNY ON MY 600-POUND LIFE, I'M LOOKING AT YOU) says, "But I'm addicted! Tacos are as hard to quit as heroin!" I hate it more when someone like Nicole Arbour uses the comparison to make jokes about a person addicted to methamphetamine accusing others of "meth shaming."

I'm ashamed of every cocktail I've ever denied myself.

Whether you're addicted to sugar or to cocaine or to shopping or to sex the bottom line is that at some point you're going to need to take responsibility for yourself, summon up some willpower, and deal with it. Or you can continue dealing with the consequences of your choices. At the same time, we shouldn't be spending our time comparing one person's struggles to another person's struggles. Some things are harder for some people, they just are. And we don't need to shame each other, or accuse other people of shaming us about whatever our struggle is, because you can't shame someone for being something they aren't! And if you know you're not a thing, then you can't feel shame about it! Say for example Nicole actually read my letter to her. I have no control over whether or not what I said makes her feel ashamed, because if she actually made her video because she cares about helping people and her intentions were actually good then she has nothing to feel ashamed of.

"shame - a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety."

Webster says so. So if someone says something that sets off bad feelings inside of you, before you freak the fuck out at that person maybe take a moment to examine your thought process. This isn't easy. It requires getting to know yourself. But the better you understand yourself, the more self-aware you are able to be and the less you will give any fucks if someone actually is actively trying to shame you. KNOW THYSELF, and possess the power to tell the actual shamers to fuck thyselves. And then we can stop the endless cycle of shame, because if we're all comfortable with ourselves then we'll all be comfortable with each other and then nobody has to feel shame.

You're not less of a person because you are any type of anything.

My GOD this is an epic ramble of nonsensical proportions. I'll close with this much better example of a Youtube video addressing a specific group of people, because just in case I did shame Nicole Arbour I'd like to make up for that karmically by supporting someone whose videos are fucking hilarious and also relevant and also contain many, many things that she thought of herself inside her own brain:

where you drink champagne and it tastes just like cherry cola

Today I opted out of putting on makeup and being nice to people I think are stupid and out of phone calls and emails and especially out of having zero control over every single thing that anyone is ever yelling at me about. And that list is long, baby.

Today I asked myself who I think I am, and what on earth I want. I probably won't have an answer today, or tomorrow, or next Thursday. But since I cannot provide myself with an answer right now, or possibly ever, I'd like to gently remind myself that I can always, always be anywhere else.

Someone tell me that this is a moon thing. I like to blame things on the moon.

today our hearts won first prize

According to the zillions of HR articles in my inbox that I mostly ignore but find helpful to have handy in case I need something on my computer screen that looks important, one of the leading causes of dissatisfaction at work is a vague job description. As in, people just straight up do not know what their responsibilities are. It can lead to unhappiness, to poor performance, to termination.

Today I was talking to someone and I said, "I just wish I knew what I was supposed to do." I was referring to a relationship, not to my job, but of course relationships are work.

If you're lucky, relationships are the best kind of work. They're challenging and rewarding, they satisfy you and force you to grow. There are all different kinds, and compensation varies. Some come with amazing benefits packages. With others you get to travel a lot and there's a pool table in the break room and company-sponsored happy hours. There are temporary jobs. There are the shitty jobs that you hold onto for maybe too long. And then there's that one incredible job you had on the shore the summer after senior year, the one that so dramatically altered your life trajectory that you cannot imagine your life without having had it.

For me, relationships are hard work that I am sometimes good at when I apply myself but that I am very exhausted by. In many ways and for many reasons. So many ways and reasons.

Maybe I'm thinking about relationships a lot because an old friend is coming to visit and this particular friend is one I'm not always sure why I keep. And at the same time, is one I'm not always sure why I treat so poorly. Maybe it's because my mom and I are choosing the tattoo we're both going to get, which brings up some things. Maybe it's because in less than two weeks I'm leaving for my two-year-anniversary-BONANZA mini vacation with Diego. (This weekend we have no plans except to sit next to a pool for a little bit and go hard on Breaking Bad. I am SO EXCITED for a weekend of nothing. Italics and capitals do not come close to emphasizing how strongly I feel.)

Well THIS post sure started as an outlet for some backed-up pictures and wound up being something else entirely, now didn't it? BYE, FELICIA.