“You Dress Too Young”

Someone decided that when you are an adult, you are no longer allowed to be frivolous joyful or silly. Such things are for the young. Who decided this???

Then the Judgy Asshats took it a step further and summarily included bright colors, tight clothes, revealing tops, and edgy outfits in the “Too Young” category.

If you feel good in clothing that is predominantly worn by young women, then dammit, wear it! If you love bright colors, glitter and random feathers flaunt that stuff! You want to wear your Star Wars Lightsaber – go for it!

There is no such thing as “too young” or “she’s trying to recapture her youth”. Fuck that view and the backwards ass it rode in on.

If you enjoy wearing the current fads and you feel good in them, then flash that shit around and ignore every small minded bitch who comments behind your back or to your face. Fashion is fun, and the funkier it is the more fun it is.

There is an AMAZING bit of film on 5 women whose average age is 80. They understand. If you don’t, go watch them.

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You might have decided from this post that I am walking around in some wild and wonderful outfits. Alas, this is not the case. My tastes tend toward the conservative and my depression depletes the energy it takes to look fabulous. But I do enjoy glitter, blue nail polish and am constantly considering dying my hair blue.

I do have a 50 something friend who has the lithe body of reminiscent of a teenager. She looks 15 years younger than she is. She works hard at it and she wears clothes and styles that highlight it. And every jealous bitch out there tells her she is dressing too young. Its all about jealousy not about reality.

Why I think Marriage is Overrated

OK. I got some pushback on the idea that Marriage is overrated. So I thought I would expand on my thoughts a bit.

This is what marriage becomes:

Its spending all of your waking moments with someone whenever you aren’t doing something more interesting.
Its spending the times when you are tired, sick, annoyed, ugly, smelly, sleeping, burping, farting and generally being an ass with the person you love.
It means being so exhausted from being nice to the rest of the world that you have nothing left to give to the person you married and they get whatever is left, which is often mean.

That is not the recipe for marital bliss.

Here’s the ideal relationship:

Spending time doing interesting things with someone you find interesting. Don’t marry them. Date them.
Going on vacation to interesting places with someone you enjoy being with. Don’t live with them. Go on vacation with them.
Giving your best energy to the person who makes you the happiest.

Yes, But what about Children?

If you want to pro-create, fine. Create a contract and set of rules. You don’t have to be in the same house when you raise the child together. Its just been done that way in the past because it was necessary. Its not necessary anymore. Just like its not necessary to ride a horse to get across town. Times change and you can change too.

Here’s the best part, if you don’t tie marriage to having children, then the father doesn’t have to be the man you are in love with, does it? It can be your best friend, or it can be ANYONE you think you can have a good child rearing partnership with. Tell me why can’t you and your best friend decide to raise a family together? The contract doesn’t have to be with someone of the opposite sex. It doesn’t have to involve the genetic parents at all. Sperm banks are everywhere. Heck, if you are a woman, free sperm donation is available at any bar in America. (Although I don’t really recommend this course of action.) Foster Children are waiting. Adoption is available.

My point is this. Stop thinking like you always thought, and think like an individual with a multitude of choices. Marriage is the most limiting choice you can make.

You won’t have to be trapped:
If you aren’t married or living together you always have choices. You don’t have the trapped, paralyzed, frozen in a life feeling. How many people do you know who are struggling in a marriage or live-in relationship but feel that leaving it is so HUGE.

Its physically huge because there is a move, separating stuff, finding a new space, settling accounts, etc.
Its financially huge your single life may cost you more, credit can be screwed up, and legal costs are high.
Its emotionally huge. You have now made part of your identity this marriage or live in relationship. When you end those relationships, you are negating a part of your identity. That’s really tough and ugly.

Sure, a long term relationship without living together is still going to be incredibly painful when it ends, and some part of you is identified with it, but its not going to be nearly the devastation and loss involved in ending a marriage or live in relationship.

Changing your dating relationship is several magnitudes easier to manage and get over than marriage/live in.

The fun side of the permanent dating relationship:

You look forward to seeing them. There is the tingle of anticipation. When you see someone all the time, you feel lots of comfort, lots of ease. And I think its the death of a good romantic relationship. You can get comfort and support from friends and family. You can get your interest and excitement from your romantic relationship.
Sex is a whole lot more fun when its not a roll over, why not, did you brush your teeth, event.
Attraction is a lot easier to maintain when you don’t see someone plucking their eyebrows, clipping their nose hairs, scratching their balls, pushing up a tampon. These are not things that should be shared. Lets not. Put your best face on for this person. You will feel better, they will feel better and the mutual attraction will last longer.
Fewer bones of contention. How many arguments happen over things like leaving the toilet seat up, how you fold laundry, taking out the trash, not paying attention when you should, being cranky when your shouldn’t, and generally not being nice to your partner. A huge portion of those petty squabbles are eliminated when you are not sharing permanent quarters.
Money isn’t such a weighty matter how many couples have huge difficulties over money management and philosophy. If you remain independent of each other, these issues will largely disappear. They could surface, but if they are not manageable, you are not in a situation where ending your misery will cause you more misery.
Self Development and independence: A great many of my friends have so completely identified themselves with their marriage that they have stopped developing their own interests. Because if the interest does not coincide with their partners interest, its not done. So before marriage there were two large circles of interests one for each person. Those circles intersected on shared interests. So there were three things to talk about each person’s interests and their shared interests. At marriage, they give up unshared interests and suddenly they have a very tiny circle of interests. Life just became boring. This can happen without marriage, but is less frequent. And it can also be that married couples maintain separate interests and pursuits. But its a whole lot easier to do when you remain resolutely independent and don’t sew yourself into someone else’s life by living with them.
Your own space. Your space is your own. Its by you, for you and no one else has to be considered. Permissions for use of shared items – Nope. Consideration of others when guests are invited – Nope. New paint color – Your choice. Clean or Messy – Your choice.

Finally, what’s the big hurry?

If you don’t have marriage as a destination then there is no more desperation. You can actually choose a decent person to be with. No settling. No feelings of there won’t be another one in time. You aren’t getting married anyway. Remember?

Seriously, this is what I really mean.

The real reason why I advocate remaining mostly single: You are you. This is mostly a female viewpoint, but when women get married they become Mrs. And I mean that psychologically. Many women feel incomplete, less than whole, unattractive and generally worthless without a man. Even those who can’t identify with that statement very strongly, feel it at some level because we have thousands of years of culture to reinforce the idea.

Remain single and over time you realize that who you are is good without marriage. That another person is not in any way going to make you a whole person. That support comes from lots of places and expecting support from one person is both unfair and a recipe for disappointment. That you can support yourself financially and there is something incredibly self reliant and freeing in being the only source of your support. That life is not what cultures define, its what you do.

I am not vehemently anti-marriage.

I recognize that there are advantages to it. In fact, I realize that having a supportive spouse would probably have helped me with managing my mental illness. A good marriage is a built in support system.

I realize that its not likely that most people will see my viewpoint. Even the most liberal among us still get married or live together. There are many supportive and enjoyable relationships in marriages. But I think there are times when the marriage is endangering even the strongest of those great relationships. I think my viewpoint is the future. In 150 years marriage will probably be an anachronism in many parts of the world.

Things That Are Overrated

Marriage – I have come to the conclusion that marriage is the death of romance.
Christmas – this is the ultimate over hyped, under performing holiday on record.
Movie Critics – I have rarely felt a similar level of regard or hatred to a movie as the critics have.
Almost any possession before you own it. The act of wanting and purchasing something inflates its value. Once you own it, it loses something.
New Years Eve Parties. Too much drinking with strangers you don’t really care about.
Talent – I am seriously wondering if its even a necessary ingredient for success. Which is not to say that there aren’t talented successful people, its just that there are so many talentless successful people that it becomes clear that its not a requirement.
Safety – For every safe thing we do, we lose a freedom. We lose options, we lose fun, we lose courage.
Central Heat – This was one of my musing the other day. If you grew up with central heat, you think its necessary for survival. But for hundreds of thousands of years our ancestors lived and survived without it. Its comfort, but its not necessary.

Holy Starving Yourself…

Have you ever heard of Proana? Its someone who promotes and supports anorexia as a good thing.

I’m a woman who is the antithesis of starvation. I will eat, even when eating makes me very literally, not in any way metaphorically, sick. Curled up in a ball, sick. I do it to myself at least once a quarter. I deliberately eat things that I am consciously aware will make me sick as a dog.

Yet despite all the pain that eating gives me, I have no desire to starve myself.

Still, in a weird bizzaro world way, I understand the person who decides to embrace the horror of what is killing you.

Under the premise “If you are being run out of town, grab a baton and lead the parade”, I have often redefined my problems as strengths. That is what the proana person does, of course. They don’t want everyone to say they have a problem, so they make the problem into a badge of honor. A trait that is enjoyed and giving them happiness.

We are often told to reframe our problems as opportunities or a natural part of our psyche, to be loved and accepted.

Its a dangerous thread to walk. It takes a huge amount of self awareness and wisdom to weed out whether you are being self destructive or self defining. And larger amounts of courage to face your deepest most self defining issue and choose to change.

The level of self awareness needed and the character strength needed are not traits of very young people. And that is when we are often forming our self definition. When we are forging those frames that keep us from recognizing whether we are deceiving our self or whether we are accepting our self.

Proana, perhaps, is the flip side of the heavy person who chooses to embrace their size and eating choices, despite all evidence that its not healthy.

Its a weird world we live in.

Thoughts While Cutting my Toenails:

The big toe nail could easily have evolved into a weapon. Like the horn on a narwhale.

I have cut the back of my ankle with it twice in my life, when I haven’t cut it down properly

Just walking along barefoot, and BAM- I’m bleeding.

20,000 years ago I think I could have used it while fighting over an animal carcass.

These are the thoughts I have while cutting my toe nails. I knew you’d want to know. You’re welcome.

Being called a cunt…Is it really a bad thing?

Let’s think about this. Why do we get upset when called a cunt?

Basically being a cunt means:

Men (and a good number of women) will do just about anything to get some time with me, despite the fact that I’m not all that attractive. In other words, they love me for what I am, not what I look like.
When people touch me, I feel AWESOME!!.
When I touch other people, they feel awesome!
Making other people happy makes me feel explosively happy.
I am flexible and expandable.
I am a conduit to life.

I can’t find one demeaning thing in being called a cunt (or vagina)

Find a new insult. This one lacks a lot of the sting that is intended.

Lets discuss the way we throw around the word “love”.

We have all read or heard the words “Know you are loved.” Everytime I hear them being spoken or written to strangers I just want to scream. On Tumblr you see variations of this posted in quotes or pseudo psycho babble posts that are meant to encourage.

The writer has no idea if the person reading is loved. If they want to suggest that they love them it’s worse. Because they don’t, obviously. They don’t even know them.

Lets stop demeaning Love by using it as so much confetti to be thrown into conversations.

Love is both an act and an emotion. It is something you feel, something you do to demonstrate that feeling.

What it is not – is the word. The word is not love. Using the word does not make love appear. I do not feel loved because a someone says “You are loved.” or “I love you.” unless there is actual reason to think that.

Do you know what constitutes reasons to believe that? KNOWING ME.

If you are a stranger to me, don’t say “I love you.” Love is not something you feel for strangers or even bare acquaintances. You cannot love everyone.

You can be kind. You can be generous. You can be sympathetic. You can be helpful. But you cannot love unless you know me.

I get the impression sometimes that people find it easier to say to acquaintances and strangers and rarely say it to those they truly care about. There is a reason for that. Love is a huge thing. It’s hard to say when you deeply mean it because it’s expands in quality when it uttered. The more you mean it the more it becomes your source of fragility to rejection and loss.

If you don’t mean it, saying you love someone creates a sense of imbalance and incongruity in conversations. It feels out of place, makes me question your integrity because it has no context.

Love is not just a word. Its an action and emotion and you don’t create it because you write or say it.

You demean real love when you toss it into conversations until it litters the world like cigarette butts at highway exits.

Words of Sympathy

People often share anecdotes when someone dies. We tell stories of how that person fit into our lives. Stories about us, really. And how our lives intersected with the person who no longer exists.

Ultimately, those stories are about how we were fractionally made into who we are by the deceased.

At one level this seems sort of narcissistic – to talk about oneself rather than talking about the deceased’s accomplishments.

But its not. If you have ever been bereaved, you know the fascination and comfort that comes from hearing these sorts of stories. They are life affirming and important to remembering the person meant something.

Compare that to the dry list of accomplishments that you often see in obits. Even of famous people. Its really not nearly as meaningful to hear that someone was a manager of this, or had 3 kids, or got an award for this, or climbed Kilimanjaro.

But to hear how they touched a life is immediately life affirming. Their life meant something – they touched someone. And honestly, it doesn’t even have to be in a profound way. Just a story, funny, touching or banal.

Humans are defined by those moments. We don’t think too much about it, but every time you interact with someone you influence in some small way they way they view life.

Human interaction is where life is enjoyed. You can own a yacht, but the yacht itself is not what brings joy. Having friends out to play on the yacht with you is what is enjoyable. Its the human part of equation that makes the moment.

Human interaction is where life gains meaning.

We don’t exist but for a moment in time. We are terrified of the loss of the moment. The only way to extend the moment beyond our own consciousness is to have a place in someone elses. And that only happens when we interact – when we touch other people mentally and emotionally.

So the next time you don’t know what to say to someone who has lost a dear one, see if you can’t share a story about the deceased. If you knew them at all, you probably can. If you can’t, sit down with the bereaved and ask them to share stories about the person.

If you have ever been in the hospital with undiagnosed pain

or been with a loved one with undiagnosed something, the doctor that comes in with the diagnosis is like God.

I was admitted to the hospital about 15 years ago, with acute abdominal pain. It had built up for months, with me thinking it was just a normal side effect of my gastric bypass.

Until one day it crossed the line, and I could no longer just ignore it and couldn’t function at all. But instead of going to the ER, I made an appointment with my GP. I really didn’t think it was that important.

After barely examining me, he called the ER to tell them I was coming.

In the ER, I was curled up on my side wondering why the IV pain meds weren’t really working and becoming more and more frightened.

And then, (after multiple tests) the surgeon came in and explained. I had an adhesion on my bowel (which wasn’t what I thought it was) and I needed surgery immediately because it looked like there might be some leakage.

I thought that surgeon was the kindest most wonderful person EVER.

Imagine if Morgan Freeman walked in as a doctor and explained what was happening and how it was going to be fixed. That was this doctor.

And then.. he said he was going off duty and his colleague would do the surgery.

To me, he was God and then he handed me over to some regular human to deal with my surgery. I cried. Literally. I didn’t beg but I did ask him if maybe I could wait until he was back on duty. But no. It was apparently urgent.

After he left, I knew I would die at the hands of unknown cretins. So I cried.

Of course he was just a human. And my association of him being the perfect doctor was entirely unfounded. I thought he was wonderful because he solved a terrifying mystery. Because he was kind. Because he was late 50’s and sounded like he had both confidence and experience. I felt safe with him.

The surgeon who did the procedure was a cocky young asshole, who turned out to have a great reputation, and was probably a great surgeon. I recovered and he was still an asshole. But the IMPORTANT part is that he was a great surgeon.

We don’t remember that enough. We are focused on how we feel about an interaction rather than actual competence. And I FELT so safe with Dr. Trustworthy. I WAS safe with Dr. Asshole. I never liked him but I have been told by two doctors since then that he is one of the premier surgeons in the area.

Dr. Asshole will probably be sued one day, if he hasn’t been already. I bet Dr. Trustworthy has never been sued. Studies show that we don’t sue doctors we like, we sue the ones we don’t. It has little or nothing to do with actual competence.

Still, I love Dr. Trustworthy. I have no idea whether he was any more or less competent than Dr. Asshole. Which is the most terrifying part of this entire thing. I only know Dr. Asshole is a great surgeon because I have had 2 separate doctors say so later, unprompted. Most people don’t have that luxury and certainly don’t have it before an emergency procedure. People just get the lottery of surgeons, just like I did.