Your Mouth and Your Ears

I will not be what you want me to be simply because you want me to be it. I will not do what you want me to do simply because you want me to do it. I will not say what you want me to say simply because you want me to say it.

I have opinions and feelings and a brain and a soul and a demand for respect, same as you. I am not just a beautiful thing to be had or admired; a toy to be played with and tossed aside. I am a full person; a human, same as you. A person who deserves their ideas and needs to hold the same truth. A human whose voice and wants and woes matter just as much as yours.

You must balance the use of your mouth and your ears.

I am not a pet; a dog on a leash. I will not follow or beg or require your care. I am self-sufficient and independently wise, same as you. I will not sit down quiet or shrink into the shadows of your command. I will stand up beside you; to be treated, respected, and valued, same as you. Else I shall stand alone, hold my head high, and look beyond you to better things. For I know who I am, what I want, and all that I deserve.






(this is more than just feminism.)

Absolute Perfection and Complete Catastrophe

"We all fuck up and go a bit batty. It doesn't mean we're not loveable, it means we're having a hard time with something." -GFC

I'm just so frustrated at this point. And I think that's a big part of it. I'm pissed that I wait years - YEARS! - to find someone who makes me feel that certain way again and in just days he says he has me. I'm his "property". "But I have not be claimed!" I protest to a man I barely know well enough to call it "dating" let alone exclusive relationship. Desire is not entitlement. I want my commitment to be earned, not commanded. I want to be wooed and courted and all of those things my step-dad so rightfully insisted. That takes more than 19 days, particularly on the heels of five weeks' absence. Even still, I liked him. Our time together in August had the promising makings of a really terrific story - except for that whole moving and five week holiday shit. I could barely enjoy the time together because for each smile, kiss, laugh and blissful moment, I knew there would be a countering ache once he left for five fucking weeks. I couldn't commit to an absence because each blissful moment became a silent terror of future heartache. Yet, I had hope (that bitch) and I didn't even consider not postponing my move because YEARS! (what's another few months) - and that way he just looked at me. 

But he flew away from my panic of each anticipated absence-countering ache, and left it quietly with no reassurance to screaming insecurities. Completely unexpected of the man I thought I could grow feelings for, he was nothing once removed that I had imagined. He was so quiet and almost cold. Once abroad and silence, I demanded my version because I knew we didn't know each other well enough for it to make sense the way he wanted. I knew better that our jilted communication and limited interpersonal knowledge couldn't sustain us - sustain me - in the way either had imagined. I wanted flowers and wooing - he wanted a girl to just sit an wait for his call. I needed it to be casual until he returned and he surprised me with his willingness to sacrifice postpone his wants for my needs. "Okay, pal." A fair trade, I thought, for having pulled me into this particularly bizarre and uncomfortable situation. However, as weeks passed, he still acted as though he had rightfully claimed me as his: aaaand I OFFICIALLY HAVE NO IDEA WHAT'S GOING ON. What I did know was that while I wasn't dating anyone, it was also not his place to tell me that I couldn't: and to confusion, enter inflamed frustration. He remained intermittently silent, while our separate wants and needs aided miscommunication and then a dual frustration. We were flipping through the same fantastically infatuated book, but we were never on the same page with what we wanted, what we needed, and who we were in the moment - there was never enough time to work that part out. It reeked of absolute perfection and complete catastrophe.

But there was good there!, my heart screams, as it cracks a little at the seams of a sutured history. It hurts again - a familiar pain of wanting what wants you so badly, but persistent is the nagging drone of insecurities and unknowns and the history of you-should-know-better-by-now. It's like a break up with a thing that never had a chance to accelerate beyond a crawl; an infant you lost at birth. And all Skyping serves to do is let you see and hear what you want, but cannot get to - a familiar frustration indeed; the embers of a scar. And all I want is the fucking chance to see if he is something I have waited years for; we were never incompatible, simply unfamiliar. But as time goes on, the increasingly confused separation becomes a sopping wet blanket. I'm so tired of waiting after this: "I don't want to do this anymore!" I exclaim to him when he tells me he has to stay nine more days. It feels like a game of bait and torture; I'm a prisoner of war. Oh look here's this carrot...now FUCK YOU. I'm so tired of waiting and my heart has everything to fear. Every piece of history that sustains my contentment as single and worry-free, is able to haunt five six weeks of semi-silence and total mind-fuckery. I want so badly to just start from scratch with him - to see if there's that chance without all of the bullshit - but who even knows where we stand now. I can't play these games anymore. I want a normal fucking story. I want promising circumstance. I want love - unfettered. Un-fucking-fettered. Not another broken promise of what could be: that hurts now more than anything. Please, I beg of you, my destiny, enough with the bullshit.

September has made me a dude.

Have you ever acted like such a spaz and then you kind of go “What the fuck, why was I such a spaz?” That. And then you continue to analyze yourself and think, “Okay so if I say this and do this everything is fine because that’s what was bothering me,” and then that doesn’t work and reintroduce spaz. Until a few days later when you process your moments to yourself and go back to, “WHY THE FUCK WAS I BEING SUCH SPAZ?!” And then all you can do is hang your head in self-disappointment, which has since become a thing.

Welcome to my September. Spaztacular!

This, of course, was compounded by the fact that I got what I can only assume was the upper respiratory black plague that – 3 weeks later – is still lingering around with a cough that makes people cover their faces when it emerges from my otherwise no longer sickly looking face. And that, of course, was compounded by my first ever ovarian cyst, which was subsequently only discovered because my abdomen began to hurt when I coughed – which was often, thanks to the lingering plague. And then the doctor grabbed it and – from the radiology reports – ruptured it. So now I know what it’s like to be kicked in the balls. I know what it’s like to have your balls kicked, squeezed and popped - and admittedly it made me almost throw up and pass out. (Although she blamed it on "hearing news I didn't want to hear", which I didn't - due to the horror stories of friends with ruptured cysts - but no, while my hormones were spaztacular, my brain is not quite that nauseatingly powerful, Doc.)

Now, you’re probably thinking, hey there girl, thanks for the fucking overshare. But whatever, 1. ovarian cysts are common, 2. I now can say “Actually I DO know what it’s like to be punched in the nuts”, and 3. this explains why I have been such a spaz. Because ovarian cysts? Oh yea, apparently they make you kind of crazy, in addition to a million uncomfortable side effects you probably misattribute. On top of that and stressing out about what the hell was wrong with my body, I had the plague, this Turk situation I’ve been ineffectively navigating - in part to him ineffectively listening, my new car with a fucking starter or alternator issue before I even made my first payment, and, you know, 31 looming - a reminder of last year's birthday from hell, and, you know, age. Ugh. It’s as if my ovaries needed to make their presence known as they travel into 30-something and go: HEY BITCH, REMEMBER US? USE THIS SHIT OR ELSE.

And in addition - just on the heels of ovarian news that scared the shit out of me - I learned that The Turk has to stay in Turkey for an extra nine days. Talk about timing. So, for those keeping track: that’s 19 days of knowing one another, five proper dates, and 43 days abroad. Normal, totally normal; wasn’t interested in that dangling carrot or anything; wasn't looking forward to the end of this ridiculous hostage situation, which obviously were aiding in the spaz since we were clearly on separate pages when this thing started and now I’m fairly certain we flipped through trying to find where the other one was at and instead just ripped the book apart.

Good job, September. You dick.

Now, as I hopefully can finally stop freaking out about what’s wrong with my body, I’m also hoping that everything else falls back into place again; hormones regulate; side effects subside; stress diminishes; and I go back to my normal fucking self. Because I can’t take this crazy bitch I’ve been dealing with anymore. She's driving me nuts. So to recap: I’ve been kicked in the balls. I've lived with a crazy chick who spazzes irrationally. I drove off this person who was totally into me. And I have had my head under the hood of my car half of the time.

via

Officially, September has made me a dude. Fuckin' A.

Life.

via

A Girl with a Postponed Cross-Country Move

Tangled little heads halfway across the globe; yup, I’m going to talk about that again, but perhaps in a more interesting way than I had anticipated. Life is nothing, if not one big long lesson – subject after subject, with Netflix marathons sprinkled in between.

From the beginning The Turk has been all about exclusivity, whereas I have been very anti-exclusivity. After my history with love and men and falling on my face, I don’t enter into these things lightly and historically take a few months of vetting a guy to commit to him anyway. And I like to think I learn from my past mistakes, trips, and those that's-nice-but-not-rights. Shortly into his departure I made sure he knew where I stood: it was my fear any potential would otherwise crash and burn; my head already spinning. It would be like putting all of your eggs in one weird-ass Goodwill sans-instruction-manual pressure cooker. The differences between Egypt and Turkey, The Ex and The Turk, working and holiday, five months and three weeks, 22 and 30, and ‘I love you’ and ‘I like you’, are worlds apart – a world that would fuck up any potential.

Our communication and understanding of one another isn’t sufficient enough to overcome misunderstanding or convey hurt feelings 5000 miles away. Our modes of in-relationship were never established. And, moreover, hypothetically irrelevant since we were not, in fact, in a relationship: You can’t just claim something have it be true. If he wants me, he needs to earn me - à la Olivia Pope. Plus, this is a man I barely knew. You can't just graze right past all the fun parts of infatuation and newly dating to immediate missing misery. That's not fair! I want the good stuff first!!

via

Also, I have this horrible tendency to just fall into relationships; like my head is a weight into a hole...or onto staircase. A tendency I have spent years rebelling against. Still, as much as I resist, once I let go, it’s a mother fucking rabbit hole...or face plant into the second step. And I sure as shit wouldn't fall in love with a promise or to commit myself to a memory of 19 days. And I remind myself of this as I think of him still, but also fearing that I’m forgetting everything. And fearing that when he comes back, he’ll have forgotten about me, as he has the opposite problem of getting - in his term - “distracted”. (Not a insecure mindfuck at all there, guy.)

All in all, this has grown into an incredibly strange thing. I miss the idea of what he has the potential to be and the nightly calls (as much as I hate to admit that), which have stalled to a once a week Skype. But as I sit here halfway through his absence and heading into being apart longer than we were getting to know each other, I begin to wonder if we built enough desire to survive not seeing each other for twice as long as we hung out. Can a romance of 20 days survive the absence of 40? And how’s that for the fucked up part: I’m the one who’s resisting and also the one worrying I’ll have nothing to resist.

So, here I am: dating put on pause. What an awfully awkward position this is - as if I'm not weird enough in totally normal circumstances! While I uncomfortably navigate this fucked up situation, complete with general fears and personal oddities, I retain hope that we can start over when he gets back. But this world apart lacks the understanding of longevity to trump all the awkwardness and confusion, so we’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, I should enjoy being solo, because at the moment that’s all I still am: A single girl with a postponed cross-country move to Seattle. And a new tentative date set for late March/April 2015.