If you never saw the movie, ligers and tigons are what happen when a lion and a tigress mate. They only exist in captivity since lions are from Africa and tigers are from Asia, and thus, their habitats don’t overlap. I always related to ligers and tigons. They were the only creatures in nature that seemed anything like my sister and me. Luckily, as I grew older, I met lots of other liger-and-tigon-kids. And these days, there are more and more of us born each year. In fact, there are so many of us we’ve a carved out a space for ourselves in the demographics of the census. Roar!

According to the New York Times, multiracial children are the fastest growing youth group in America. There are now roughly 4.2 million multiracial people in America. And there are far more of us all around the world. Yet, for lots of folks they still have trouble knowing what to do with us because we’re not exactly one thing or another. This wouldn’t be as much of a problem in most nations of the Caribbean, in Brazil, and in various nations of Latin America, where multiracial is almost the norm, rather than a rare exception. But in America, we’re an inconvenient mélange. Thankfully, as our numbers rise, such difficulties of categorization are becoming less and less of an issue. Obviously, this wasn’t the case when I was a kid.

Imagine this scene.

A little boy stands at a circular clothing rack in the woman’s section of a department store, curiously fingering the fabric of skirts. To his small eyes the variety of colorful clothing seems almost endless. Next to him stands a middle-aged woman, browsing the same skirts. On the other side of the little boy, a young 30-something mother shops. Surprised to see a little boy, seemingly alone in the woman’s clothing section, the middle-aged lady grabs the child by the hand and drags him away from the clothing rack and out towards an aisle. She yells at the top her lungs…

“Has anyone seen this boy’s mother?!”

I was that little boy. The young 30-something was my mother. I was about four feet from my mother when the over-protective middle-aged lady grabbed my hand and dragged me away. Her heart was in the right place. She thought she was looking out for a lost child. What she failed to understand was how a brown-skinned boy could be the son of a little white lady. Our biological connection was missed because the middle-aged woman was looking for an “equally brown mother.”

It’s always been something of a problem for Americans to easily understand. Most folks usually require some math and basic biology to wrap their minds around our relationship. I’m not adopted. She’s my mother. I started life in her body. And yes, that means at one time she had sex with a black man and my sister and I were just two results of that carnal knowledge. You’d think based on some of the questions I’ve heard over the years, people were talking about breeding dogs, crossing donkeys with horses, or perhaps mixing wines, but certainly not children. It’s the 21^st Century. Yet, many Americans are still surprised by how a little white lady could be my mother.

My father is American black (a mix of Ghanaian, Cherokee, British and some unknown West African tribes). My mother is American white. (English, Irish, Scottish, French, Swedish, German, and Dutch). They’re both mixes as well.

To make things in my family even more complicated my sister now has children. Their father is an American white guy. Her children are both fair-skinned blondes. One of her children thinks of herself as white and the other thinks he’s black. Being kids in Ohio they want to be one easily understandable thing. And my sister urges them to self-identify, so neither of them goes with the multiracial tag. I often worry about my nephew, who calls himself black despite his blond hair and fair-skin. Gotta love his chutzpah. But I imagine he’s going to endure all sorts of awkward and hurtful moments when he hears racist comments from folks who assume he’s just a middle American white kid.

When I was my nephew’s age, I was constantly surprised when I was confronted with racial bias- like the time when a racist owner of a Florida ice cream shop ignored me and kept serving white families instead of me. He served three families who came into his store after me before I realized what was happening. I thought he just didn’t notice me waiting. I’ve always been somewhat optimistically naive, kinda like Pollyanna but with a penis.

Now, my sister gets to repeat the same experiences we had as kids. Only this time she’s the differently colored mother. My niece and nephew are so stereotypically white-looking my grandmother, once told me on the phone, “Looks like we washed the black out in one generation.” She’s from Iowa. Her racial “white-washing” statement might strike you as patently offensive, but my sister and I are used to her. My mother’s mother is a straight shooter. She’s wasn’t saying it like it’s a good or bad thing- she just tells it like it is. Ignoring any offensive aspects of her statement, she’s entirely right. There are almost no traces of any American Indian or African ancestry in my sister’s children. None. Which continues to make things weird for our family.

There was this one time when my sister was in town visiting. I took care of my niece to give my sister, who was pregnant with my soon-to-be-nephew, time alone with our mother. My niece was a few months past two years old, new to walking and just learning to talk efficiently, but not expertly. Embracing her fast-developing sense of independence and self-government, as children do in their “terrible-twos,” she often threw temper tantrums when she didn’t get what she wanted. This intimidated me. Not being an expert babysitter, I thought it’d be cool if my niece and I took a walk to get some ice cream. She, like me, loves ice cream.

Halfway there I realized I’d forgotten my wallet. I told my niece we needed to head back to my place to fetch it. She was not into that idea. She’d been promised ice cream and had no interest in going anywhere else. So she turned and ran away from me, down the sidewalk in the direction of ice cream. Money wasn’t something she understood, but ice cream was. She had a head-start. I chased after her.

The problem was, to an observer, my little blonde niece was running from a black man with long dreadlocks who was dressed like an unemployed musician. She ran past a Korean church. The pastor happened to be outside. I was about to catch my niece when he stepped in to protect the crying, fleeing child.

He picked up my niece. And he refused to hand her to me because he didn’t believe I was her uncle. I didn’t get my niece back until two policemen arrived on the scene and were finally convinced when my two-year old niece called me Uncle ZZ. Once she figured out neither the pastor nor the policemen were going to give her ice cream, she knew she had to speak up. The adults listened to a two-year old before they believed me.

I know everyone involved did what needed to be done. In many ways, I’m glad they did what they did. It’s important we protect children. But I think if my niece and I looked more alike, or if the minister and policemen could understand that a black man might have a little white girl for a niece, it wouldn’t have taken them twenty minutes to clear it up and give me my niece back. And I’m sure any multiracial family can tell you similar stories.

When I consider my family tree stretching back into history, I imagine American Indians struggling to survive a surprise famine; and European peasants scratching at the earth, foraging for food to outlast the long winter; and West African hunters dragging home fresh-caught game to quell the hunger of their children, and thanks to all their efforts to live, thrive and survive, I’m here to write this. And yeah, I’m sure for some of them it would be totally confusing if they saw I was the end-result of all their labors, but imagining them gives me a global cultural view. The fact that my family tree’s roots are buried in three different continents makes me feel connected to a much larger story than race as it’s understood in America.

I know, as time goes by, there will be more and more of us caramel-colored kids. Maybe future generations won’t have to put up with so many awkward questions and sidelong stares. Perhaps, we’ll finally transcend the divisions that still bedevil today’s world. This thought makes me happy. Because as my family proves, just like the mutts that we are, stripped of the hues of our human skin, we’re all the same animal. We’re all one family sharing the same planet.

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1. You’ve already given up on most of your travel plans.

You went from just putting it off when the tickets looked too expensive, to just generally convincing yourself that you’ll never actually get there, so you might as well stop torturing yourself by having emails sent to you when the prices are low. You don’t actually say out loud that you’re not going to take that trip through Europe that you always dreamed of, but pretty much everyone knows that you aren’t going to do it. The best you can actually work up the nerve to do this year is take a cruise with your family somewhere around Florida.

2. You took a job you don’t really like.

Although it’s definitely a positive to have a source of income that you can rely on, there is absolutely nothing about your job you enjoy, and even though you’re in your 20s and could easily change — you don’t want to rock the boat. Everyone convinced you that taking the first job that would have you was the best way to secure your future, and now you’re absolutely paranoid of letting it go. You barely get any vacation, your boss is incompetent, you have nothing in common with your coworkers, but it allows you to pay your bills. And now, everything that’s good about your life is centered around what happens after work hours and on the weekends.

3. You’re in a relationship that is going nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

If you really asked yourself, you know you’re not that in love with them. Sure, they treat you right, and there is nothing wrong with them, and you could definitely do worse. But they don’t make you light up when they walk into a room. They don’t inspire you. And you dream about other people. Yet you know that you’re probably going to end up with them, mostly because you’re afraid of being alone again and feel like you’ve invested enough in this relationship that starting over would be too much effort for little promise.

4. You’re becoming your parents, and you hate it.

You hear yourself saying something really uptight and condescending to one of your friends because they’re having too much fun on a weeknight, and you immediately want to punch yourself in the face. But you can’t help it.

5. Your friends don’t invite you fun places.

There is a free concert going on downtown and there are going to be lots of street performers and alcohol and face painting and it’s going to last all day and night, and everyone knows not to invite you. You’re not going to go. You’re going to feel kind of badly about it for a few minutes, and you’ll tell people “Yeah, maybe I’ll be there a little later, I have some stuff to catch up on and some errands to run.” They’ll play along so as not to cause trouble on the phone, but everyone knows you’re going to be passed out watching old episodes of SVU while the headliner goes on stage. So it’s not really worth asking to begin with.

6. You’re tired all the time and you don’t know why.

You are working out as much as you’re supposed to (kind of). You’re eating right (mostly). And you’re getting to bed at a reasonable hour as often as you can. And yet, you feel this general sense of fatigue so often that it’s become your default state, and you have no idea what’s causing it. It just feels like everything takes too much effort, and you have no drive to do all of the things you used to love. Your sketchpad sits unused, your friends go uncalled, and your notebook has nothing of interest written in it. You’re just tired. And it feels terrible, even more so when you realize that it would be easy to stop, if you could just find the courage to do it.

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People roll through life like Katamaris, picking up objects like juicers, rugs, decorative mirrors, placemats, vases, granite countertops, etc.; yielding to their primal drive to hunt and gather regardless of whether these items are actually useful. In my family, this manifests itself in plates, countless decorative plates no one may eat off of, exiled to the cabinets forevermore. I suspect my extended family’s dishware, if assembled in a single stack, would rise up past the moon, then topple over and kill thousands.

But eventually, we exceed capacity, and we need ever larger receptacles for our objects: a bag, a closet, an apartment, a house, a bigger house, a storage container, and so on (see: George Carlin’s ”A Place For My Stuff”). Before you know it, you end up curator of The Museum of Uninteresting Objects. It’s exhausting, managing all these objects, nearly a full-time job in itself with all the cleaning and organizing, and God help you if you have to move. Then there’s the mental cloudiness that comes from a cluttered environment seeping into your psyche like a leaky submarine. The internal inevitably reflects the external.

I actually think Clooney’s “unpack the suitcase” metaphor is too weak. The way I see it, every object you own is connected to you by a string like the house in Up, and each string is tied to a fishhook embedded in your abdomen. The more objects, the more strings, and the greater the weight on those fishhooks. From Martha Stewart, IKEA catalogues, and HGTV, we’re led to believe each of our objects is a synecdoche for our true selves, and so we invest our sense of individuality in them, but you are not a collection of miscellaneous objects assembled out of the environment any more than an ant is an anthill. You are just yourself, a consciousness in a brain in a skull. That is all.

One reason for acquiring so many objects is to show what evolutionary psychologists call “resource-holding potential”, a way of advertising to potential mates your Darwinian fitness in regards to procuring things, buying things, having things; as in, the practice of bridal dowries or that episode of Girls where Lena Dunham loses her damn mind over Patrick Wilson’s house. Or picture a squirrel lady who, being responsible and assiduous, has stored plenty of nuts for winter. She goes to visit a sexy squirrel boy she’s been dating, only to discover this boy has acquired no nuts, is in fact utterly nutless. “I can’t have baby squirrels with you,” she says. “There won’t be enough nuts between us to keep them from starving.” And the male squirrel says, “But stockpiling nuts makes my tree cramped and claustrophobic, and I actually don’t find nuts all that palatable, and besides, we live next to a grocery store dumpster. We have everything we need.” It doesn’t matter to the responsible lady squirrel. He is displaying poor “resource-holding potential”, the dummy.

Another reason: you believe your objects are magically imbued with the essence of dead relatives; e.g., your aunt’s old rocking chair, your grandmother’s teapot, your great uncle’s oak dresser. This is a great way to not only foist vast quantities of ancient junk on children, but to instill constant low-level anxiety regarding its preservation. Find yourself shouting, “Did you spill wine on my grandmother’s silk tablecloth, you stupid son of a bitch?” or “Oh my God, I broke my great great grandfather’s toilet paper holder!” An object is not automatically conferred value simply because it’s old, and perhaps even deserves less value for being fragile and decayed. The only inherited items I see as precious include art, letters, and photographs; all of these items were made (by the relative), not purchased.

Another reason: consumer behaviors, i.e. shopping, trigger the neurotransmitter dopamine, the body’s reward chemical. This promotes purchasing junk and thus, subverts dopamine’s more enriching purpose which is to encourage the brain to seek out intellectual connections, divine meaning, and synthesize ideas—that is to say, creativity. This is probably why Christmas shopping makes you feel so narcotized and why a director’s movies often become more and more awful as he gets richer and richer (see: George Lucas, James Cameron, Tim Burton, etc.).

When my apartment building caught fire a few months ago, I had to quickly assess what possessions warranted salvation while glass and rubble rained down outside my window and people ran around screaming and smoke alarms shrieked in my ears. After a moment’s consideration, I grabbed my computer, a change of clothes, a couple books, and a snack cake, and threw them in my bag. Then I looked around my room, which was amazingly bare and unfurnished, and I thought, Is this it? Is there really nothing else I need? My bag wasn’t even full, but there just wasn’t. Such a strange and cathartic feeling to watch my apartment building on fire from across the street and realize everything left inside, nearly everything I owned could be incinerated and I’d be fine with it.

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But we men face our share of difficulty too. Advertisements for jeans sport topless dudes with impossible numbers of abdominal muscles. Truck commercials show men capable of lifting heavy things and moving them productively around from place to place. Sitcoms like Mike and Molly and King of Queens portray men having jobs where they earn enough money to help support themselves and their families. It’s unfair to the rest of us who can’t meet these insane demands.

Everyone is born different. There’s no such thing as an ideal human body. Happiness and healthiness take on unique dimensions in each person. I’m finally ready to take a stand, to feel proud of my unorthodox appearance. No longer will I be a slave to the rigid expectations of American culture. My body is my temple, even if it’s a little drafty, and the basement is big and soft, and no one ever visits this temple. I will no longer cower in the darkness for who I am.

First of all, I’m sick of being stache-shamed. Yeah. I have a wispy, patchy mustache. That’s the only kind of mustache I can grow, and I grow the crap out of it. You think I should just shave it off because it’s not some bushy, lustrous Tom Selleck or Burt Reynolds stache? I don’t care. It’s how I was made. Stop clutching your children closer to you, ma’am. I pose no threat. This is not a “molestache” as the teenage boys in my neighborhood call it before I chase them away with a broom. You are judging and stereotyping me by my facial hair. I don’t appreciate it. Regardless of the density and thickness of my whiskers, I am a man with feelings and dreams and a windowless white van to get me from place to place.

Yes. That’s right. I also drive a Ford Aerostar with no windows. It’s practical. I do a lot of odd jobs. The van helps me transport tools. If there were windows on the van, thieves would be able to see my valuable equipment and might smash their way in to steal it. That would not be optimal for my business or van. I work freelance, and a lot of my money is under the table. That’s why there’s no advertisement on the side. Lots of people call it a “creeper van,” but that’s a clear instance of van-shaming. I don’t do anything creepy in my white, windowless van, unless you count storing the materials needed to fix a toilet or assemble a shelving unit as creepy. And if that weirds you out, that’s more your problem than mine.

And while we’re at it, if you have a problem with the fact that I live in my mom’s basement, I bet you don’t have a very good relationship with your own mother. My mom needs some errands done from time to time, and I’ve needed a cheap place to stay since my divorce. It’s a win-win situation. No, a basement’s not an ideal dwelling. I don’t get a lot of natural light, and there are flooding issues, but I make do. Who among us lives in the vast, mansions or penthouse apartments of our dreams? Not many, I’m sure And most of those who do are intensely aware of the sacrifices made to achieve that kind of lifestyle. So yeah, I live with my mother. To use my basement accommodation as a means to define my personality is spatial profiling, and I won’t tolerate it.

One last thing. About my going through the neighborhood trash barrels at night. First of all, it’s not a crime. I only root through barrels that are positioned on the sidewalk; I never trespass. Secondly, I never litter. As soon as I’m done, I replace the garbage in the proper receptacles. I don’t see what the problem is. I’m not some hobo, digging for cans. It is merely that I identify as “otherkin.” I feel, though I inhabit the body of a forty-one-year-old human man, my spirit is that of a raccoon. I eat meals with my front paws (hands). I keep nocturnal hours. And yes, sometimes I will dig through the trash for useful scraps. It’s just how I express myself. It does no one any harm, and it satisfies my need to outwardly manifest how I feel on the inside. Please don’t chase me down the street with a broom like I’m a disrespectful teenage boy.

So please, stop creep shaming me. Yes, I’m an adult man with a thin, scraggly mustache who drives a windowless white van and lives with his mother and digs through the neighborhood’s trash at night. But I deserve the same respect and dignity as anyone else. If you can’t embrace it, at least let me live in peace. And for goodness sake, stop spraying me with the hose.

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1. Write About Them

If you happen to write — professionally, on a blog, or even occasional tweets — don’t be shy. Invoke your parents! Take their antiquated advice and charming slip-ups and use them! Write about them! Expose them. That should make them think twice before calling you.

2. The Deadline

The mere word is forceful and implies professionalism. It is also one of the greatest conversation enders known to mankind, and a one-way ticket to parent-free days. And the best part is you can assign them to yourself at your own accord.

3. Leave Your Phone At A Friend’s House. (Or Just Lie That You Did.)

It was actually last week, after a deluge of phone calls from my parents, that I decided they were robbing me of my ability to live. I told them I left my phone at my boyfriend’s place. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, and one I’ll never regret. Almost instantaneously, phone calls transitioned to emails, and I felt a weight lift off my shoulders.

4. Save It For Dinner

If you’re one of the lucky ones like me who live in the same city as your parents, then you’ll inevitably have a meal date with them on the horizon. Do what I do and, when they call, say, “I’m seeing you next week! Can’t we talk about it then?”

5. Utilize Service-Free Zones

Often times, I’ll call my parents while walking to the subway. What better way to hear your mom ask for the 700th time whether you made your dentist appointment, than while walking down the subway steps into the depths of no cell service?

6. Get Blackout

Try drinking an inordinate amount, and then confusing your dad’s number with a friend’s. Whatever the outcome, I can assure you it will be of the TMI-variety, propelling him to back off for at least 12 hours. On my 18th birthday, I blacked out. Dad called me. And though I missed the call, I apparently didn’t miss him, for I proceeded to text him, “Yo. At genesis, 88th and 2nd. Do it.” It’s unclear what happened thereafter, but what I do know is my father responded, “Have fun sweetie,” and didn’t call me again the rest of the night.

7. Get THEM Blackout.

Turn the tables on ’em; shake things up a bit. Though, of course, this requires you to be physically with them and is under the unlikely assumption that you can force your parents to guzzle Jägerbombs.

8. Fake Sick

Got the runs? Sore throat? How about a headache? The options are endless, especially the nonvisible ones. It’s the oldest trick in the book, but still manages to work every time.

9. Business Meeting

Ah, ye olde “Last-minute business meeting, can’t talk” text. The claim is simply incontestable. And if you’re unemployed, don’t fret. I used this gem religiously when my only job was a shop girl in retail.

10. Pretend They’ve Got The Wrong Number

Pick a day, any day, and every time a parent calls, answer with a heavy Mexican accent, “Hello, Papaya Dog here. How may I asseeees-ju?” I don’t care what they say. Keep at it. Eventually they’ll come to the conclusion that your cell phone number they’ve had stored in their phone for 14+ years is now, miraculously, the number to Papaya Dog.

11. Call Them At 5 Minute Intervals

Remember that time you tried calling your parents incessantly to give them a taste of their own medicine? Me neither. But it’s worth a shot. Best-case scenario, they find you insufferable and cease calls for a week. Worst case? They stay on the phone for an hour each time you call.

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I’ll rest there for as long as you’ll let me, for as long as I can.

I’ll flirt with the very idea that this could be the last time I’ll ever see you. You live all the way over there, I’ll point to middle of your Adam’s apple, on a map I created on your 5”9 body. And I live here, pointing to the tip of the nail on your pinky toe.

And your body’s laughter becomes contagious and together we’ll stand close and shake.

I’ll pretend I know the exact thing to say in this kind of moment. Something seriously maddening like: I’ll start washing my dirty dishes or I’ll quit picking fights with you over which TV show we should watch together on Tuesday nights.  All in a desperately embarrassing attempt to try to get you to stay. Just don’t go, don’t let me go.

And your lips on the peak of my cheek will silence my rants.

You don’t say a word. Your lips are sealed with Elmer’s glue as your heart tries to throw up dialogue that it knows it should say. I’ll feel your body zig before it zags and the mumbled vowel sounds of the ever-important I…U…Y…barely get their time in the spotlight before it’s all over.

The cleaning crew at the movie theater, the voice over the intercom at the airport, the beeping noise on your phone telling you it’s about to die.

It’s like this every time.

I have to go. You’ll say, like it’s a decision that can’t be reversed. Like there’s no room for debate.

You don’t have to do anything.

But they will start closing in on us. Cleaning up lonely pieces of popcorn with their broom, demanding a final boarding call on Flight 61 back to Los Angeles, a rapid beating countdown to a juiceless phone battery.

5 more minutes…

And you’ll break the puzzle pieces of our interlocked fingers and release a final kiss on my forehead. And I’ll stand there, swirling my eyes and try one last time to make you stay.

…please. 

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Image - Love & Other Drugs [Blu-ray]

In 2000 I was buying every IPO I could. It was already after the dot-com bust. I bought 50,000 shares of GoAmerica at $20. It went down to $1. I don’t know where it is now. I think now they give wireless devices to deaf people. I made lots of decisions like that. I went completely broke doing that. ZERO. So I took all the equity out of my apartment, about $1 million. Then I did the same thing. I lost all of that money also. Someone asked me how much money. The summer of 2000 I lost $15 million in cash. All of my money. I regret it.

I regret going broke. I could’ve helped people. I could’ve started other businesses. I could’ve helped my dad when he had a stroke. There was a new device I had read about that would have rotated him around in the air to stimulate his brain cells. It would’ve cost maybe $100,000 or more to fly him across the country and have him try the device. But I couldn’t afford it. I had no money and I had the IRS up my ass. After everything he had done for me. I couldn’t afford to save his life.

I regret all the stress I felt for years as I tried climbing back. It wore on me. Now my stomach is constantly in pain no matter how much I meditate, pray, relieve stress, do yoga. It will take years to untie the knots in my stomach, if they ever get untied.

There were women. I regret what I did to them. I regret the tears one of them had when she told me I had to go. She hated me. I regret the baby that was killed.

I regret the six days a week I spent working in the city. My daughter, Josie, would have a nightmare at night. She’d wake up crying. I couldn’t climb into her bed and hear about the nightmare of a 4 year old and comfort her until she fell back to sleep. I was never there. I regret all those moments I couldn’t comfort her tiny voice as she explained things and explained things and explained things over and over again as she tried to understand the world around her.

I regret the two businesses I started when going through a separation in 2008. I wasn’t ready yet to begin a life. I regret getting people involved in those businesses when they were destined to amount to nothing.

I regret hitting a man and breaking both his legs when I ran through a stop sign while driving a car when I was 18.

Everyone has regrets. Historical is hysterical. It’s easy to look back at the past now and see the road signs we missed. The forks in the road we could’ve taken. Those forks are regrets. Is it bad to look back? Of course not. I can’t help it. I have regrets every day.

But you can’t move forward until you move past the regrets. It’s impossible.

20 Ways to Deal With Regret

A) Ask yourself, “What am I doing TODAY?” Today is the day we care about. Where we can improve ourselves, help people. Move forwards. What are you doing today? This is a good mental discipline. WHEN Regret comes up about yesterday, ASK yourself, “What am I doing TODAY?” Practice this. Then practice it again.

B) The Daily Practice.

Ultimately, it has consistently been the only way I’ve been able to bounce back from events that caused me deep regret. Otherwise I sink into them. They bury me. In a book I have coming out in a few weeks I write about modifications to the Practice that has made it easier for me when I’ve been totally on the floor and unable to pick myself up.

C) Some parts of the Daily Practice need kickstarting to work. I start with The Power of Negative Thinking. Or Nine Ways to Light Your Creativity ON Fire. The first post deals with how to build a discipline of labeling thoughts “useful” or “not useful”. You have a finite number of thoughts in life before you die. Might as well make as many of them as possible “useful”. This is hard. For me, it’s like telling myself to exercise every day when I spent the first 40 years of my life not exercising. Something I regret. “Not useful”.

D) Make friends. Make sure you don’t talk about your regrets with your friends. Are your friends trying to improve their lives? You can be inspired by them and they can be inspired by you.

E) Don’t judge people. The other day I wrote about a dinner I went to. I was surprised how many people wrote me disparaging the IQ of one of the people at the dinner even though they didn’t know that person. In order to judge someone you don’t know you have to have a lot insecurity and ego. It’s hard to get rid of that insecurity. One way to do it is to never judge people. Particularly people you don’t know. That’s a good way to practice not judging yourself.

F) Honesty. Honesty can lead to wealth. Being honest also helps you avoid denial about your regrets. Stop blaming others. It’s important to realize that both Most things don’t work out AND most of the time, It’s Your Fault. I was often in denial about both of those things. They are both truths.

G) Laugh. Watch a funny movie. When I was going through a period of deep regret I watched the movie “Superbad” probably about 20 times in a row and I wish I could say I am exaggerating. That movie saved my life. Laughter reduces stress, brings you to Today. Leaves behind yesterday.

H) Deal with Failure. When I was a kid everyone told me I was a genius. Expectations were really high for me. It was extra hard for me to realize later on that I was far from it. Everyone had told my dad he was a genius also. When it came time for his regrets he couldn’t get over it. It sunk him like a bag of cement in the ocean and he never swam again. I’m always afraid to be like him. It’s ok to fail. Hey, what are you doing today?

I) Good will. Practice this: everyone you see on the street today – wish them well. Wish that they all make a lot of money and have a lot of health and that they are all having passionate sex with someone tonight. I never watched that movie “the Secret” but I imagine this is the real Secret: wish enough people good will and eventually good will happen to you.

J) Stop being brainwashed. A lot of my posts (don’t go to college, don’t own a home, abolish the Presidency) are there because I like to think in opposites. Some people write me and say, “are you just trying to be sensational?” No! I’m trying not to be brainwashed all the time. I know that with 10,000 ad and media impressions hitting my eyes every day that I am constantly being brainwashed by the Zombie Recruitment Machine. Training your mind to think in opposites helps you avoid being brainwashed. This includes reducing the number of ad impressions and media impressions you see each day. Replace that time with time with friends. Or time sitting by yourself. The more brainwashing, the more regrets.

L) Should have, could have, would have. These are never useful phrases. Even when analyzing a situation that led to a regret (and it’s important to analyze your losses). Instead of saying, “I could have done X” ( a regret) say, “Next time I’m in a similar situation, I’ll do X”. If you know you’re never going to be in a similar situation then no reason to do the analysis. Historical is hysterical. What are you doing Today!?

M) Don’t deal with Crappy People. I don’t care if you have to see them every day. At the dance. I see every girl but I don’t have to dance with every girl. Don’t dance with the crappy people. Always check yourself on each interaction – did I just dance with them? You don’t need them to like you. Who cares if crappy people like you?

N) Don’t drink. I know a girl who is filled with regrets. “Was I bad to my ex-husband?” “Did I eat too much?” “Did I miss this opportunity?” I asked her, “What did you do last night?” She tells me she hung out with people she’s constantly trashed to me in the past, she ate at the fanciest steakhouse in town, and she drank and had a hangover in the morning. I said, “can you stop doing that?” And she was honest and said, “I don’t think so.” That was one of the last times I spoke to her. I used to drink all night with her. I know what it’s like. She won’t be able to stop the regrets. People don’t usually give this as advice because it’s so built up into our culture to have a drink occasionally. Fine, have a drink occasionally. But the drug is a depressant so just limit the number of depressants you put in your body.

O) List the positives. List all the good things that came out of the moments you regret. If I had never lost all my money a decade ago I never would’ve started other businesses, this blog, I never would’ve met all the amazing people I’ve met since. I never would’ve met Claudia. I never would’ve had the relationship with my daughters I have now. I probably wouldn’t be living right by the river, in relative peace.

P) Mourn. We often regret actions we’ve done that caused us to lose things that were important to us. In most traditions, there’s a mourning period when people die and then you are told to move on. So mourn for those things that were important to you. Mourn the money you lost or the people who left you. Pray that everything works out for the best. Give yourself a time period for mourning. Then move on.

Q) Look to your left and look to your right. When I was in school a common refrain used by professors was, “look to your left and look to your right. One of the people you just looked at is going to fail this class.” You can do the same here: look to your left and look to your right. Both people you just looked at have done things they later wished they could undo, have done things they deny in order to survive the pain, have done things that have cost them severely. Just acknowledging that helps you to deal with your own regrets. We’re all trying to be happy. We all have expecations that are probably too high. We all do stupid things along the way. It’s not the stupid things that makes us worse people, it’s how we deal with them afterwards. What are you doing today?

R) Sorry. Say “I’m sorry” when you can. It doesn’t matter if your apology is accepted. That’s the other person’s issue. But if you say you’re sorry, you’ve at least acknowledged that you’ve made a mistake and you’re ready to move on. If you regret something you did to yourself, say you’re sorry to yourself. Accept the apology. Try to be friends again with yourself.

S) Eat What You Kill. Reduce reliance on others. Even a boss or a job. Learning how to eat what you kill will reduce the things you will later regret. It will also force you to focus on what’s going on today instead of the past. Else you don’t eat.

T) Be passionate about your work. If you aren’t, then quit. Don’t blame the recession or the job market. Those are media myths. They aren’t about you.

Why did I write this post?

I wrote this because many people in the last three or four weeks have asked me how to get off the floor after doing things they deeply regret. It’s not easy. It doesn’t happen in a day. It has to happen EVERY day.

I think a lot of people have lost money in the most recent stock market downturn. Or a lot of people are afraid by the horrible and misleading headlines in the media. Or a lot of people are afraid of the worst case scenario of what’s going on. I know I am. I lost money also in this downturn. I regret it.

Today I’m going to make sure I can practice The Daily Practice I recommend. I’m also going to attempt to be creative. I’ll play games with my daughters. I’ll watch a funny TV show. I’ll return emails to people who were kind to me. I’ll attempt use my own advice to not be angry at the people who try to bring me down. I’ll fight the fears that constantly come up.

I think every day about the money I’ve lost and the people I could’ve helped with that money. I also regret what I’ve done to certain people. But I expected too much from myself. I expected too much from others who have let me down. Look to your left. Look to your right. What are you going to do today?

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I mess a whole bunch of stuff up and have to start over all the time. You name it, I’ve probably done it. Here’s some things that all my screwing up as taught me:

No one gives a shit. No one cares if you are hungover, no one cares if you are in a bad mood, no one cares if you pulled a muscle taking out the trash and didn’t get to go to the gym for 2 days and you’re cranky and no one cares if you stayed up late and hit snooze 25 times- you still have to show up places on time, do what you’re supposed to do and be where you said you’d be or you’re an asshole.

People will just disappear. One day they will like you and won’t be able to get enough of you and the next they will just be gone and you’ll never hear from them again. It won’t matter if you tell them you miss them or if you say you’re sorry for something- they won’t come back and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it except get over it.

No one can make you happy except yourself. People may make you feel good in lots of different ways, but at the end of the day, you have to be able to sit alone for a while and like the person hanging out with you.

Bitching and complaining without doing anything is really, really pointless. Sure, vent sometimes, but then get over it or do something about it. You had a bad breakup? You hate your job? SUCKS DUDE. This entire planet is made up of people who have been hurt and rejected and sad and angry at some point in time and we all have to learn to deal with it. If you find yourself unable to get over something, people let you pay them money to talk about things and sometimes they give you pills if you need them and there’s not a thing wrong with talking to someone or using medication if you need it.

Be yourself. Pretending to like bands, movies, books, TV shows, boys, girls, cars, sports or anything else just because everyone else is doing it is DUMB. Just be like, “man, that show Game of Thrones sucks.” or “baseball is boring as fuck.” and who gives a shit? If you like blowing on the tuba and playing world of warcraft- go on with your bad self. I promise you that you are a lot happier than anyone who makes fun of you for being you.

Let yourself fall in love again even after you’ve been hurt. Being hurt is just part of it. It sucks and it’s really sad and sometimes you will think it’s easier to just lock yourself up and never go through it again, but being in love is awesome and being a “tough guy” won’t make your life any better or easier.

Life is too short to waste your time with people who aren’t honest or respectful of your feelings. We are all selfish, that’s human nature, but sometimes we go back to people who are just using us. We go back to people who never really ask about us or listen when we have something to say. Maybe it’s a friend who always expects you to be there but never shows up for you. Maybe it’s a guy that you have lots of fun with getting drunk and having sex, but beyond that, he doesn’t really care about you. Learn to walk away from these people after a certain amount of time without change. Some people just don’t deserve to be in your life.

If you mess up, it’s okay. Almost everything you do can be worked out. I promise you that I have done some things that I thought were horrible, and they were, and I thought I’d never forgive myself or get over it, but I did. Some days that’s harder to accept than others, but I know I am okay and that all I have to do is learn from what has happened in my life and be a better person because of it.

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One of the universal truths of a great relationship is that the partners involved are able to communicate with one another. It’s crucial to be able to discuss things that you are less than satisfied with. Discuss. Not interrogate, finger-point or blame. This requires two people who are willing to lay it all on the line, be vulnerable, and actually listen to one another.

But so often, when we sit down to talk about these things, it turns into an issue that we brought it up in the first place and rather than solving problems, more are created. Alternatively, some people leave their problems unaddressed until one day someone loses it and/or the relationship just crumbles. Here, my friends, are 7 principles to consider for effective communication:

1. Make sure you’re in a relationship where you can talk about your problems with someone who cares enough to listen, empathize and change… or at least make an effort to. Plain and simple: if you aren’t with someone who cares enough to work on things, you’re wasting your time.

2. Approach these conversations from the perspective of, hey, I really care about you, and I care about what we have together, so I’d like to share with you some things that are bothering me so we can talk about it. Not argue about it, not ignore the problem, but talk it through. You have to make sure you communicate that you are not attacking this person, rather you care enough about them to deal with the discomfort of talking about the things that aren’t so perfect between you.

3. The environment for these conversations must be a) neutral, b) private and c) when neither of you are angry. By neutral I mean don’t talk about these things in your parent’s house where they could possibly overhear and your significant other feels obligated to act one way or another because, for God’s sake, you’re visiting your parents. Which leads me to my next point of make sure you’re in private. These conversations are nobody else’s business. Lastly, and probably most obviously, nothing good comes of a conversation where one or both of you enter fuming.

4. Be willing to hear if and how you are part of the problem. Don’t ever expect that your partner will feel that he or she is entirely the problem and that you have no role in it, even if you are most compelled to feel that you don’t. This is not a one-sided thing where if you’re unhappy your significant other has to change to appease you. Accept that you may be faced with the idea that you are part of the problem or that they also have things they want you to work on.

5. Don’t think you have failed because you have some strife in your love life. It is absolutely inevitable for two people who are around one another for extended periods of time while also deeply emotionally invested to not have negative feelings arouse now and again. As long as you put forth your best effort to work through them in a healthy manner, don’t ever feel as though you’ve failed.

6. Ignoring problems will not make them go away.

7. Understand that it’s not easy to hear how someone you love very much is dissatisfied with you. Don’t be surprised if defense mechanisms are utilized. Don’t be surprised if you’re met by excuses fueled by embarrassment. What’s key in this process is listening to what you’re saying and imagine if it were being said to you.

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Ah, swamp ass. The bad news is there’s no way to avoid a swampy booty and dripping pits in the summer. We wait all season for the warm weather to strike and the snow to melt, but when it gets here we’re excited for like 10 seconds before weareoverit.com and start complaining about how freaking hot it is all the time. Ugh it’s too hot to sleep! You have to take like five showers a day before you dare to go out into society! You can barely look cute because you sweat through everything! The good news is that everybody suffers from swampy bodily crevices in the summer, so we’re all in this together. Even when you get on public transportation and somebody raises their arm to hold on to the handle and oofthat bitch is sweattttttty…

DON’T JUDGE THO!!!

You know we are in the thick of summer when you leave your apartment and on the 10 minute walk to the subway you are basically DRENCHED. Even if you work in a nice, super air-conditioned office building, you will be forced to leave it at some point.

Here are 7 ways to avoid swampy asses and embarrassing pits this summer. You can thank me in the comments!!

1. Do Not Wear A White T-Shirt!

The first thing you don’t want to do when it is really hot out is wear a white t-shirt. White looks wet sooner than everything else you have. Why do you think nobody has wet t-shirt contests with like black t-shirts! I know this might not make much sense, but you should wear black shirts or darker colored shirts if you want to hide your sweat. The brighter the color you wear, the more visible your stomach, back, and pit sweat gets!

2. Use Baby Powder

You should use some baby powder, too. I know you’re not five months old anymore but whatever. Baby powder is awesome. Throw some baby powder in your underwear or on your pits or wherever else before you leave the house. Bring it with you and replenish yourself during the day as you see fit. The powder will suck up at least some of the moisture and will leave you with an uplifting, refreshing scent!

3. Wear A Tank Top

Tank tops are your BFFs in the summer time. They give your body so much more room to breathe. Also? Shave/trim those pits!

4. Drink Cold Water And Eat Cold Stuff — Like Ice Cream!

As if you needed another excuse to treat yourself to your favorite scoop.

5. Shower A LOT

You’re going to have to take like 3 showers a day, there’s just no other way around it. This will help you wash away all the funk BUT ALSO the showers will help you feel cool again and forget about how dreadfully hot you were today. When you’ve been running around all day, back and forth, up and down stairs, in and out of the subway, you feel hot and gross and sticky. Taking a shower is like giving yourself a fresh start! Don’t be that guy who smells like a rancid nut sac.

6. Bring An Extra Shirt With You

You’re already carrying around a bag with your computer in it around the city, why don’t you bring a shirt change with you just in case? Sometimes it gets so hot that you’ve pitted out your shirt and it is already too late. Keeping a fresh shirt in your bag will extend your freshness throughout the day. Plus, who doesn’t love a gratuitous mid-day outfit change!

7. Or You Could Just Practice Topless Activism, Like This Lady!

She’s drawing attention to the fact that in New York State it’s legal for a woman to be topless anywhere that a man can, since 1992. Won’t you join her cause?

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Check
out Madison’s eBook, “How To Be Beyonce,” here.

At some point in the next week or so you’re going to start to wonder why I haven’t texted you back or why I haven’t had even 45 seconds to compose you a short, sassy email. “I’m supposed to be the busy one,” you’ll think. You’re going to be even more confused when you reach out again, only to realize that our iMessage thread is becoming increasingly one-colored. Well, I don’t want to be passive aggressive with you, and I can’t adequately explain my frustration in 300 characters or less. So here, sir, (I’d call you out by name but I think I’ll leave that to Taylor Swift), is your answer.

You led me on. I thought we were on the same page. I thought when you called me “babe” and told me that talking to me makes your entire day better that you meant that you hadn’t put me on the same rung of the ladder as some guy on the rugby team. I thought when you would text me from your bed in the early hours of Tuesday to tell me that you missed me you meant “it’s 3am and I’m thinking of you as I lie here in my empty bed.” I thought that when you sent me that email telling me that I was your priority, that you would drop anything you were doing to talk to me, that you had somehow placed me in a different category, perhaps one that didn’t include your sister or your roommate. One that didn’t bear the label “friends.” I thought that when I made it abundantly clear how I felt about you and you sent me a flirty text the next morning you meant “I’m all for this,” and were trying to encourage me. I thought that when you begged me to come home early or offered to fly to another continent to see me you meant “I’m going crazy here without you. I need to see you (and, you know, kiss you).”

The thing is, I could understand you telling me that you wanted to take care of me if we were close friends or something before this escalated. (And no, I’m not crazy. It did escalate.) I wouldn’t have read into you texting me every day if we had ever been in contact beyond us bumping into each other on campus before I disappeared to another country. I wouldn’t have thought so much of you asking to travel the world with me if the last time we’d spoken face-to-face you hadn’t told me that you had always had a bit of a crush and could I please, please just come home.

So forgive me then, friend (that’s all you are, right?), if I was a bit confused last night when we Skyped and you asked if I could break up one of my best friends and her future husband so that you could date her. Pardon me if I was taken aback when you called me “dude” instead of “chica.” Please excuse me for finding it weird when during our 28-minute conversation you checked your email twice, responded to a few texts and said you were falling asleep. Don’t mind my eyes for widening when you said you intended to spend the summer chasing women. And don’t you dare hold it against me that I hoped you were joking.

But I know, with every bit of my scraped-up heart, that you weren’t. I know, with every inch of this head that has cried itself into dehydration, that whatever this bi-continental electric current was between us, it’s been shut off. I can’t know why. I can’t know if you met someone else of if I texted you first more times than was advisable or if you just woke up one morning and were bored or decided that we were in too deep.

I would offer the explanation that maybe this was nothing at all. That maybe I just romanticized everything from 5,000 miles away. That I was just reading something into the texts in which you told me how much my sarcasm turns you on.

But you and I both know that that isn’t true. I’m not crazy, and this idea of us did exist outside of the dusty corners of my mind. You, you as my good morning text, you as the subject of so much of my writing, you as the guy that I thought I might finally bring home to my parents — you were not merely a figment of my imagination. My name is not Alice and I refuse to believe I was living in Wonderland.

And as such, I posit my original thought. The thought that tore around my brain until 4:45 this morning, destroying every idea I had of you picking me up at the airport, of you telling your friends that I was your girlfriend, of us cooking that five-course meal together like we had planned. You led me on.

I don’t think you’re cruel, I don’t think you’re just an asshole and I don’t think that I should have seen through this from the beginning. But I do think you’re selfish. I think you were dealing with more than you ever have work-wise and that you didn’t have a support system in your new city. I think that I made you feel good; that our witty exchanges let you know that someone was thinking of you, that someone cared that you had spent four hours on the road of that you hadn’t slept in days. I guess I can’t blame you — everyone likes to be liked. But there is a Sharpie-thick line between politely and platonically accepting the compliment and taking emotional advantage of someone’s feelings for you. And you, friend, marched right on over it.

So that, essentially, is what I want you to know. I feel taken advantage of. I feel led on. I feel like toying with someone’s heart is one of the most selfish things you can do. Human hearts all have emotional hemophilia — let’s not pretend we don’t know how easily they bruise.

And now, now that you’ve looked up from your work long enough to notice that I’m gone, I want you to know one more thing. You’re too late. There will be no “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize what a good thing I had until it disappeared.” There will be no “Hey babe, I miss you. When can I see you?” And there will most certainly not be a point at which I decide that you, you with your quick tongue, you with your goofy smile, or you with your emails that make me feel like I’m in a movie, will ever be worth more to me than my self-respect.

People only treat you how you let them treat you. And you, sir, are done treating my heart like a tin can on a string.

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Last Monday, as I scrolled past cat memes and cute corgi puppies on my Facebook feed, I discovered that the mother of one of my close girlfriends had passed away. On Tuesday, Facebook informed me the brother-in-law of one of my best girl friends was stabbed seven times after saving a woman from being stabbed by her husband. On Wednesday, I discovered a lump on my left breast. On Thursday, my co-worker’s husband died. By the time I crawled into bed crying Thursday night, all I could think about was boarding my Friday flight to San Francisco and how wonderful it was going to feel to hug a close girl friend of 12 years who I had not seen in six.

She and I had planned to move to San Francisco and be roommates. Then, one day, while I worked on “saving money” (read: spending money) in ATL, she’d called and said she’d booked her flight. She departed in a week. She was moving to San Francisco. I was not. That was two years ago.

Nine months ago I left ATL for Las Vegas with plans to crash with my older brother and save money so I could finally actually move to San Francisco, but all that ended up happening was that I freelanced for a bit, was unemployed for a bit, worked a shit job for a bit, and as of three weeks ago, finally got a decent job. No money was saved, just the accumulation of passed time.

And because I do not have the money to move to San Francisco, I decided the least I could do was get a buddy pass from my bro and go visit my friend. I have other close friends in the Bay Area, but of everyone there she’s the one I’m closest with and has known me longest. She’s seen me through a decade’s worth of phases (like me with a tongue ring. seriously? seriously), and heartache (he was ten years my senior with neck tattoos … need I say more?), and the many failed attempts at learning my way (too many to specify).

Nick Frost

Over the weekend we didn’t do much other than walk up and down the streets talking and drinking and hugging the way girl friends do when they haven’t seen each other in a long while. We talked about what we wanted and where we were headed. She told me she was leaving San Francisco. She hadn’t found what she was looking for. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she hadn’t found it there. Except she had no home to return to. She’s lived in so many places, she no longer knew home.

And despite the laughter and hugs, the more we walked and the more we talked (and the drunker we got), my mind could not help but go back to all the deaths from earlier in the week.

It was three weeks ago I’d video chatted with my girlfriend whose mother passed away. Her mother had been sick. We spoke about our mothers and whether or not they were so strong because they were raised by a much older generation or if it was because they grew up minorities in white, male-dominated society as her mother was Indian, and mine is Puerto Rican. We spoke about how much we admired them and wanted to be like them when we grew up. “My mother,” she wrote on Facebook after her passing, “who goes to see Salman Rushdie read with me, who sends a Diwali card to president Obama, who watches Malcolm X videos with me.”
My other girl friend whose brother-in-law would die from the stab wounds after saving a woman’s life had recently immigrated to the U.S. from Ecuador with his wife and four-year-old daughter. His daughter was there when the attack happened. My girl friend met her half siblings for the first time in Ecuador a couple of years ago, finally completing the puzzle pieces missing from her life. Over Facebook, she communicated her confusion and struggle to understand why this happened to a good man. Her sister lived in another state. I knew at the very least she wanted to give her sister a hug in person.

It’s a weird feeling to find out about your friend’s life-changing moments over an artificial medium that is simultaneously very much real. I could feel their pain, but I couldn’t comfort them; I couldn’t reach out and hug them.

I was in the office when my co-worker got the call about her husband. She’d recently come back to work after being on bed rest due to complications with her pregnancy. Her husband swapped her computer and cell for TV and pampering. She was two weeks away from having their second child, their first girl. Her four-year-old son phoned her at work. “Daddy can’t breathe,” he said. Before the phone call, she’d walked into the office from lunch with the kind of lazy sway one has on a typical, uneventful weekday—satisfied and sedated from a stomach full of one of her husband’s many delicious homemade chef dishes and the comforting confidence that comes with knowing today will be like the last. Then the call came and she ran out the door, her 9-month belly racing ahead of her as if her daughter knew she and her father were in a race against time. Two hours later we received the news. He went into cardiac arrest and passed away. He had an enlarged heart. He was 34 years young.

The more I thought about it all, the sadder it made me. Mostly, I was really fucking angry. Also: I really wanted a cigarette. I had decided to use my trip to San Francisco as a catalyst to get healthier and quit smoking, as you can’t smoke indoors in California, and then I found the lump in my breast. It was two nights before my trip. It was the first time I truly felt 30 years old. It was the first time I felt mortal. “It’s something or nothing,” a girl friend told me over Gchat. “Worse case scenario, you die. Best case scenario, you don’t. And medium case scenario, you get new perfect tits.” Then she added: “I pretty much hate my tits.” All I could think was, “But I love mine.”

The more I walked through San Francisco, the more I dreamed of moving there. It was the second city I ever romanced, the first being New York City, which I never lived in. Instead, I ended up in ATL after college. It was supposed to be a stepping stone, and for years I had a love-hate relationship with the city, but eventually I came to truly love all it had to offer. Still, after spending my entire 20s, I was ready to move on and explore something new. Ask me why I want to live in the Bay Area so badly and, honestly, I don’t have any real solid answer. I just … I like it. Sure, it’s expensive, but it’s clean and pretty and there’s so many trees, and I would rather always carry a light sweater and perpetually have fog moisture caught in my hair than sweat my vag off in this dry desert heat. And yet, as I walked around, something occurred to me: I liked San Francisco, but I was in love with ATL.

Atlanta is underrated. Not only is it affordable, but there’s always a great art or literary or music show, and our city streets have the most beautiful street art and murals and it’s sunny and grassy and the people are sweet and chill. But above all else, it’s where most of my really close friends are. And as much as I love the Internet and technology, virtual touch is not the same as real touch. Who wants an e-hug after a shit day when you can get the real deal in person? And yet … I’m not ready to return to ATL. It’s too soon, too familiar. San Francisco, like most romances I pursue, may not be the one for me, but I’d rather have my heart broken then be left wondering “What if?”

On Sunday I changed my flight and flew back home early to be with my mom for Mother’s Day dinner. As I unpacked my bags back in Vegas, I watched a TED Talk by Breneé Brown on the power of vulnerability. It was probably the accumulation of an entire week of ups and downs, but I broke down in tears as I listened to her speak. A part of me still wanted to move to San Francisco, another part of me wanted to move back to ATL, and another part of me wanted to stay in Vegas and spend more time with my mom while I still have her.

According to Brown’s studies, people who are willing to be vulnerable, that are willing to put themselves out there, live more wholeheartedly and therefore have a more satisfied level of happiness. “Let ourselves be seen,” she advises, “Deeply seen. Vulnerably seen. To love with our whole hearts even though there’s no guarantee.” I am a lot of things, but making myself vulnerable is a trait I have slowly closed myself from over the last few years, the result of crushed dreams and failed relationships. But, at my core, I know that being vulnerable is the only way to truly grow, to truly be happy.

My default nature is that of a neurotic, anxious, somewhat depressive person that overthinks most everything. But it is because of all these negatives that have allowed me to become the friendly, optimistic dreamer I am today. As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that I’m not the only one who feels weird and lonely and anxious. That the person next to me probably feels the same way, and that I’d rather take the risk of sounding weird and lonely and anxious than not tell the person hello or flash them a smile or tell them I like their outfit or tell them to have a nice day. The result of which is usually a returned smiled and a returned compliment and a renewed sense that positivity and love have been restored in the universe.

Recently I read an article that said people shouldn’t talk about their promotions or breakups or illnesses over Facebook because nobody cares and it’s inappropriate. If that’s the case, then what the fuck is social media for?! Oh, yes, please, tell me about how you’re at Denny’s or at the supermarket buying toilet paper. I not only enjoy sharing life’s smallest and largest moments over Facebook, but I also enjoy that of my friends’. Facebook has allowed me to connect and stay in touch with so many close friends, and I especially don’t know what I would have done without it during my move to Las Vegas.

Our desire to connect is hardwired in our DNA. It’s part of what makes us human. The truth is you and me and all of us want to feel special. It’s easy to think nobody is listening, that nobody cares, but that’s not true. We exist, even when we don’t think we are. But it’s a horrible feeling, when you think you aren’t being noticed, when you feel discarded and invisible. It’s why I’m such Facebook slut, clicking “Like” on so many people’s shares. It’s the reason I post so damn much. You don’t have to “Like” it, but it just might resonate with you, and that’s reason enough for me to share.

Like last week, when a friend shared the beautifully produced video that brought to life David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005. I loved the piece so much I posted it on my wall, shared it with friends, and e-mailed to the creative department I work in, hesitant that my work peers would think me weird or over-sentimental. The day before her husband passed away, I saw her watch it on her computer just three feet away from me. And while other co-workers e-mailed me to tell me how much they loved it, she didn’t mention anything to me. I figured she hadn’t liked it. Which was perfectly okay, of course.

And then I sat at her husband’s memorial. Bob Marley’s “Could You Be Loved” played as photos of her husband played on a large flat-screen TV. He was a big guy, which everyone said had an even bigger heart. It was ironic he died of an enlarged heart, as if he’d love too much. His mother stood up and spoke about how he always tried to make everyone feel special, how he made her feel like a super hero.

Finally my co-worker stood up to speak. She said she hadn’t prepared a speech, but she recalled this video someone sent her about a commencement speech an author gave at a college. It was the video I’d sent her. She talked about how life was all about perspective; about living in the present and appreciating what you have, and that her husband lived like that every single day. I kinda lost it at that point. I thought about all the things in life we never think people notice and how much beauty exists.

I have this running joke with close friends where I say I hate people, because I do kinda believe that we’re all selfish pricks only looking out for our own backs. But even so, I really kinda do love everyone. I’m a ball of love. And sitting in that memorial I just thought about the deaths and love lost the past week, about how I wasn’t there to hug my friends during their time of loss, about how much I miss my friends, about how my mom is my best friend and I never want her to leave me. I thought about the lump in my breast and that New York Times article Angelina Jolie wrote about her double mastectomy and about how I don’t want to be sick; about how I don’t want to die. I prayed. I said, “I don’t know who you are, or where you are, or if you even exist, but thank you for my life for I am blessed.”

After the memorial, I stepped outside the building into the hot desert sun and fought the urge to smoke a cigarette. I’d only broken down and smoked one on Saturday since I’d quit, and I was determined not to break down again. Standing there in my all black outfit, I looked at the Vegas Strip in the distance. I stared at the fake pyramid and the fake New York City and the fake Seattle and all I could think was “This is a dumb fucking city.” I mean that with no disrespect to anyone who is from Vegas or lives here or loves it here, but this place is not for me. It’s hot and it’s plastic and the more I stared at the strip in the all I could think about was how Vegas was a fantasy of all these other great American cities it would never live up to. It was like one vulgar, sweaty porno flick sticking its middle finger to love and romance. “I can’t stay here,” I mumbled under my breath.

Riding in a co-worker’s car, I set my thoughts aside as we bullshitted on the way back to the office. Soon the traffic became sluggish as we approached a car accident. “I hope that’s no one from the office,” my co-worker said. “I can’t,” I responded.

When we got to the office, we heard the news. Three of our co-workers were in a car crash, including two of the women in our copy editing department. Of us five, one’s husband had passed away, and now the other two were in a car crash, one of whom is seven months pregnant and was rushed to the hospital after experiencing contractions. In the end, none of them suffered severe damages, but they still needed to be taken to the hospital and monitored. It turns out the lady who crashed their car was high on oxycodone and a bunch of other pills.

After hearing all this, I gave into my new daily routine and went to the bathroom and cried. The entire week had been a pile of what-the-fucks flung in every direction, smearing against the walls upon impact. I cried because I was angry for everyone’s loss, I cried because I was sad for their loss, and I cried because I was so effing happy to be alive. I was happy to have my family and friends, even if some were far away.

I thought about how short life is and half the time it feels like we take it for granted and worry about really dumb shit—like me being sad about losing my favorite leather jacket at the airport on my way to San Francisco. I was actually upset about losing a fucking jacket, an inanimate object. My mom had bought it as a Christmas present for me when I was 21. “It’s too masculine,” she’d said. “I like it,” I replied. Black with zippers, when I wore it I felt like a cross between Joey Ramone and Joan Jett. It’s true I felt like a badass when I wore it, but I don’t need a leather jacket to remind me I’m strong, same as I don’t need heels and a dress to make me feel like a woman. The only real thing in life that make me feel badass are me myself and I, and my rad-as-fuck friends and family. You are not your your khaki pants, and I am not my leather jacket.

In the bathroom, I pull my shit somewhat together and head back. As I walk into the office, Otis Redding’s “Sitting On the Dock of the Bay” streams from a computer. I don’t know that I’ve ever truly heard the lyrics to the song until this morning.

I left my home in Georgia
Headed for the ‘Frisco Bay
Cuz I’ve had nothing to live for
And look like nothing’s gonna come my way

That was the moment. As soon as I heard those lyrics, I decided I am going to apply for jobs in San Francisco, because, FUCK IT, that’s why. I don’t want to fantasize with a city, I want to experience it in real life. I may not be able to move at this very moment, but I can’t continue waiting to live today tomorrow. So I’m applying for jobs. And I’ve decided that if and when I get one, I’m going to give myself two years there. If I don’t find whatever it is I’m looking for, whatever experiences my soul seeks, I’m headed back to my home—Atlanta, GA.

It’s not eloquent to say this week has fucking sucked, but you know what? THIS WEEK HAS FUCKING SUCKED. It shouldn’t take tragedy to make us live our lives, but, hey, it’s easy to forget. Luckily, I’ve been reawakened. Life is short, and then you die. And I just want to live and laugh and love and connect as much as I can before it’s too late.

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Desire is a funny thing. Desire is a second drink. Desire is a salted rim. Desire is fluid.

Let’s go to the movies in Bryant Park.  I mean, it doesn’t have to be Bryant Park; it’s just that they’re playing my favorite film this year.  It’s my all-time favorite film, starring my all-time favorite actress, written by my all-time favorite writer, who also wrote my all time favorite book; what are the odds?

Let’s sit on a blanket and not touch.  Let’s not touch like when you’re in high school and closeted. When all your friends play with each other’s hair, but you don’t play with anyone’s hair because if your gay skin accidentally hits their ungay skin, then they’re know for sure.   Then everyone will know for sure.  I don’t know anything for sure.  Except that I think it would be nice to kiss you.

In the movie, there is a scene where a character says the line: “By the authority vested in me by Kaiser William II, I pronounce you man and wife. Proceed with the execution.” Isn’t that just slightly intriguing? Doesn’t it pique your interest? Aren’t you even the littlest bit curious?

I mean, aren’t you even the littlest bit curious?

The actor in the movie is not my favorite actor.  He’s great, but he’s just not my favorite.  He’s also in this other movie. That other movie is the all-time favorite film of many, many people, but it’s just not my favorite.  In that other movie—which is great, but just not my favorite—there is a song called “As Time Goes By.”

You probably know the song. It is very famous. My dad used to sing it all the time.  He also used to practice his baseball swing in the air a lot during conversations.  I sing the song to myself sometimes.  I’m happy to have inherited this trait over the baseball swing thing.  The first line of the song is: “You must remember this; a kiss is just a kiss.”

Well, actually that isn’t the first line of the song at all.  That is the first line of the chorus, when the song was originally written in 1931. However, it was the first line of the song that the piano player sang in the film—the one that is not my favorite—when it was shot in 1942. The film was very popular and the film-version of the song also became very popular, so for all intents and purposes, that is now the first line of the song.

I promise I won’t talk about any of this on the blanket.

We can just sit there and watch the movie. We can just sit there and not touch.  We can just not touch for the whole movie. We can just not touch so hard. But after the movie, I’m going to suggest we go for a drink. And once we finish that drink, I’m going to suggest we have a second. Not because I’m thirsty.

Because I think it would be nice to kiss you.

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Kiki Kirk wrote an article last week for In Our Words about an experience she had riding the Metra. Kirk shared it with four women who were having an open dialogue on Kim Kardashian’s body. One of them inquired about the state of Kim Kardashian’s weight gain, asking if she was “getting big,” and the others quickly chimed in: “She’s huge!” “You could seriously fit two Kate Middletons inside of her at this point.” “And her boobs are the size of my head, but not in a good way.”

This is hardly the first time that formerly thin celebrities have been shamed for putting on pregnancy weight, and holding women like Jessica Simpson to a higher standard of beauty says a lot about what we expect of women. They aren’t allowed to be real or “own their own [bodies].” Kirk says those women talked about Kardashian “like she wasn’t even a person.”

Such gossip is indicative of the internalized body shame many women feel and a culture that tells us to tear down women when they don’t fit our expectations of womanhood. Body shame is the 21st century corset, binding us to one acceptable shape.

Looking at the women on the train, Kirk thought about their children, who would receive many of these same messages about their bodies.

Kirk writes, “I wanted to tell them that no matter how many times you tell your daughter she’s ‘beautiful no matter what,’ when she hears you gossiping with your friends about how fat and ugly so-and-so is, she will look in a mirror and see fat and ugly. She will begin to hate herself because of the hate she heard spewing from your mouth.”

Girls are receiving these messages at increasingly younger ages—so much so that One Direction songs now include lyrics like, “You still have to squeeze into your jeans / but you’re perfect to me.”

After the band’s clunkily written “Little Things” debuted, Entertainment Weekly’s Grady Smith asked if young girls need those messages directed at them.”

“Last I checked, One Direction’s fans aren’t composed mainly of aging obesity victims — they’re little girls who range in age from about 8-14,” Smith argued. “The carefree 9-year-olds who nibble on fruit roll-ups on the way to gymnastics class. The ones who watch Good Luck Charlie before bed, getting one last year out of their Sleeping Beauty nightgowns.”

Although I agree that the song feels strange and disingenuous coming from One Direction’s line of Abercrombie models, Kirk’s example shows exactly why better messages of body positivity are needed. This ideal version of a girlhood free from shame doesn’t exist.

In high school, I worked with a Teen Counseling program that provided classroom resources for local elementary and middle schools on issues facing their students. In the fifth grade class I facilitated, most of the girls were already on diets, and others were graduates of fat camp. One girl had already battled an eating disorder. She was 11. None of these girls looked like there was anything wrong with them to me, but I’m not a preteen girl.

These girls aren’t alone. Research has shown that girls as young as three internalize messages of body shame from the culture. In a study conducted on pre-schoolers, 3-5 year-olds were presented with “fat and thin” dolls, and those the children identified as “fat” were universally rejected.

They were then shown images of big-bodied and skinny women, and “children consistently labeled the ‘chubby’ figure as ‘mean’ and the thin figure as ‘nice.’” Children were more likely to identify the skinny girl as the one they would most like to be friends with or “be like,” and this was true for respondents in every body type bracket.

According to another 2003 study, when “presented with pictures of children who were in a wheelchair, missing a limb, on crutches, disfigured, or obese, most young children voiced that they would least prefer to play with the child who was considered ‘fat.’”

Such sentiments can have incredibly harmful effects on female self-perception, and studies indicate that “the mental well-being of [big bodied] women to be worse than that of the chronically ill or even severely disabled.”

As the Wall Street Journal’s Jeffrey Zaslow argued, this shame will last them the rest of their life, and it’s especially crucial we fight negative self-perception at a young age.

In 2009, Zaslow followed up with fourth-grade girls he profiled back in 1986, when 80 percent of their peers were dieting. Instead of getting better, their body perception was “even worse.”

“They and their peers have never escaped society’s obsession with body image,” Zaslow explained. “Some told stories of damaging diets and serious self-esteem issues regarding their weight.”

By the time girls reach college, around 8 in 10 report a negative body perception, and one in 10 will suffer a “clinical or nearly clinical eating disorder.” In 2012, a survey from Glamour magazine “found that 41 percent of 18 to 24-year-old women retouch their own photos before posting them to social media sites.” Photoshopped images of models tell women how they look doesn’t measure up. “Perfect” isn’t good enough, and even Kim Kardashian doesn’t fit the mold.

Much focus is placed on the media’s agenda-setting function in setting standards of female beauty, as the average girl receives around three hours of media exposure each day. Most of the images they receive of women will be directed toward their appearance, as 37 percent of articles for young women and 50 percent of ads targeting them focus on beauty. In film, research tells usthat “58% of female characters had comments made about their looks,” a rate twice as high as their male counterparts.

However, Kirk shows that the problem isn’t just the media. It’s all of us, as our culture affords a privilege to those considered beautiful. UK’s Social Issues Research Center argues that attractive children are more likely to be favored as job applicants and co-workers, where they are more likely to be promoted or earn higher salaries. They are less likely to be found guilty of a crime by a jury of their peers and if convicted, they face shorter sentences.

Throughout their school years, it’s not just other students that shower affection on attractive kids. The SIRC found that “teachers give higher evaluations to the work of attractive children and have higher expectations of them, which has been shown to improve performance.” Although adults should be setting an example for children, they are contributing to our “beauty bias.”

Do you think my fifth grade girls were enrolling themselves in fat camps? They had to be put there.

In an article for PBS, Catherine Steiner-Adair argued that the pressures we place on young women starts when they are born, when parents instill “gender-based expectations on how girls should behave and what should interest them.”

“Adults respond so much to what a girl looks like that by age five or six, young girls are getting the notion that their body is their selling point,” Adair wrote. “When body image, clothes, marketing for girls is so sexual, it is that much harder for girls to develop a healthy, non-sexualized relationship with their bodies.”

We learn so much about the world from our parents and raising a body positive generation of kids means de-emphasizing the premium we place on looks. The One Direction model of body positivity means telling girls they are secretly beautiful—but only you can see it, as their mate or parents. It’s what Alexandra of Feministing argues is the problem with Dove’s “Real Beauty” campain: “The message—that you’re thinner than you think you are—reinforces the assumption that thinness is valuable.”

Instead, Adair argues parents should compliment girls on their intelligence, stamina, perseverance, courage or ability to be a good friend—the same way they do for boys. Rather than continuing to oversexualize young girls, adults need to change the conversation and tell girls life is more than about how you look. It’s what you’re made of.

I’ll never meet the women who rode the train with Kiki Kirk, who expressed concern and sorrow for Kim Kardashian’s unborn baby. “Sh*t. I feel so sorry for that child,” one woman said. I might dislike Kim Kardashian, but it’s not her kid I’m worried about. I feel sorry for theirs.

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Somewhere in my teen years, you got cool points if guys saw you as a chill female. If boys thought you were cool, then you, person with XX chromosome, were in fact cool. This way of thinking has permeated the current modern society we live in. Guys are seen as laid back, relaxed, and uncomplicated while girls, as we all know, “are full of drama.” And this kind of attitude has metamorphosed the perceptions girls have of each other. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard another girl say a form of, “Girls just don’t like me. Guys are so much easier to hang out with.”

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hold that attitude defiantly at one point. I’d be lying if I said I don’t still sometimes gravitate towards guys in social situations because of the accustomed perception that guys are less judgmental than girls. Ever since I was young, girls always seemed nastier and unkinder to me – they are the ones I associate with mostly being cliquey. In my adulthood, I have often been warned about how women treat each other in the workplace, especially in subordinate-superior contexts. We’ve all heard the tales of how women at the top seem to make lives difficult for women below them. So in many ways, females have been conditioned to see other females as foes and competition first, and to wannabe guys’ girls.

I think it’s a fascinating phenomenon – WGG – but a phenomenon that does not help womankind at all. In seeking guys’ validation in this way, a lot of women perpetuate men as being the standard and ultimate deciders of what constitutes pleasant constructions of womanhood. Women, in their own way, place men in a position of power through fighting for their seat at a table of being one of the guys. And the cost is many times permitting sexist judgments on other women, reassured that they of course, are an anomaly with respect to these judgments.

I like guys, I’ve always liked guys, and growing up with boys, it’s an easy default position for me to be one of the boys. And I’m sure there are a lot of girls who may feel like this. But I have wonderful relationships with many women. So ultimately I had to realize that I cannot allow for an accident of birth, combined with the social conditioning of society’s attitudes towards women to affect how I see an entire gender – an entire gender that I am a part of. And this is the biggest the mistake of WGGs: constructing guys in a positive light at the expense of constructing girls in a negative life.

Maybe I’ll always be one of the boys in some sense, but I’m happy to report this doesn’t keep me from also being one of the girls. And so maybe a question worth pondering if you find yourself slipping into the role of a WGG or simply thinking other women don’t like you: If you think an entire gender of people dislike you, is it really the entire gender that has the problem? (Or are you the problem?)

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1. You don’t have at least one tattoo. Anyone who decides to forgo beauty because of too much pain will never understand my self-destructive tendencies or masochistic impulses. You also, probably, won’t appreciate my numerous skim emblems.

2. You’re happy all the time. If you truly believe the glass is always half full you’re nothing more than a walking pair of rose-colored glasses, incapable of living in reality or embracing the darkness of life or sinking in the sweet loneliness of pain.

3. You’re a morning person. Anyone who wakes up full of delighted promise, when the complexities of that day are a complete mystery, is clinically insane. You can prepare for the night with drinks and makeup and run-ins and music, but the morning? Without three cups of coffee how can you possibly prepare for a sunrise? Or me?

4. You don’t drink whiskey. If your pinky is out when holding a martini or your tongue craves the sweet simplicity of some fruit-labeled cocktail, I’m clearly too much for you. While you prefer a sweet kick I demand a harsh burn and those two never mix.

5. You don’t like sports. If the draft doesn’t get you hard and the postseason doesn’t turn you on and a touchdown doesn’t feel like an orgasm, you’ll never handle me in the bedroom. If you can’t play a shit talking game of tit for tat, believing you capable of handling serious conversations is impossible.

6. You refuse to read a book. How can you be reliable without knowing Faust or meeting Holden or understanding Atticus? If you haven’t cried a Million Little Pieces or valiantly fought windmills or burned 451 degrees Fahrenheit, you cannot possibly be entrusted with my heart.

7. If you don’t completely disregard this list. If you can’t stand toe-to-toe and push when I pull and call me out on my ridiculous judgements and disprove my natural conjectures…

How can I trust you at all?

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Like many American 20-something girls, I use Pinterest. Unlike many American 20-something girls, I do not have a wedding board. Sure, I may have pinned a wedding dress to the obligatory style pinboard that comes automatically with every Pinterest account, but that’s about the extent of my interest. Since a wedding is something I would probably only wish to have once (at least at this point in my life), and since I’ve never really thought of it as the defining event of my life, I really could care less about looking at wedding ideas. There are so many other things to think about in life, like Benedict Cumberbatch, whether peplums are flattering or not, and Wes Anderson’s next film.

People with wedding boards annoy me. I understand seeing a pretty dress and wanting to remember it, but seventy nine pretty dresses? Seventy nine dresses which are all variations upon the mermaid dress. When is the point where a girl says uncle? How will pinning seventy nine dresses help you narrow it down? Will you really be able to judge fairly between dress number three and dress number forty one? These are all questions that I asked myself as I was slogging through my Pinterest feed after one girl had gone on a wedding dress pinning binge.

After a few days of this madness, I realized that I didn’t need to subject myself to this and unfollowed her wedding board. That was all it took. My Pinterest feed regained normalcy and once again provided me with a steady stream of pretty desserts, cute kittens, and Modcloth dresses. I became drunk with power and vowed to never let my feed be hijacked by a bridezilla again. I systematically unfollowed every other wedding board I had inadvertently subscribed to when I had so innocently and unknowingly clicked the “follow all” button. Pinterest very wisely makes it difficult for a girl to see who still follows their boards, and only if they go through all their followers will they see that you aren’t a devoted fan of their fetish for cheap, dead ringers of Kate Middleton’s wedding dress. I was in a state of supreme bliss.

And then it happened. One day I found myself barraged with wedding horrors pinned by a girl who had recently become engaged. She was making up for lost time by going on a pinning spree that rivaled that of a shopaholic with a new credit card. Well, fine. I would unfollow her too. No sooner had I done this when I realized I had just made the worst mistake of my Pinterest career. Her wedding board was like What Not to Wear: Wedding Edition. The magenta and gold eye shadows, garish bouquets, and satin prom dresses straight from the 1980s were simply begging for an intervention by Stacy and Clinton.

My sense of the absurd began to silently reproach me. I found myself regretting my hasty decision to unfollow her Pinterest board. But my hands were tied. If I refollowed it she would be notified and then she would know that I had unfollowed her. And so I learned my lesson, even as I counted down the days until the wedding of the century. Be careful who you unfollow, because sometimes the bad can be a blessing in disguise, and since we still have a few days until Arrested Development comes back, we need all the entertainment we can get.

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But three years later, I’m not sad anymore. I just feel sad for those graduating.

Graduating college sucks. There’s no sugar coating it. I tried the past three years to pretend how great it was to be a college graduate and to work every day. I wrote articles sprinkled with advice to not be sad because ‘life doesn’t end after college… it begins!‘ And I’m not saying that isn’t true. It is. It’s just a different kind of life.

Three years after starting that life, I won’t say I hate it. But I won’t say I love it. Hopefully one day I will. Hopefully one day I’ll actually have money… and I’ll be able to save that money. Hopefully I’ll be doing what I aspire to be doing for a career. Hopefully I’ll be okay with the fact I can’t drink as much as I could before and I’ll actually enjoy boring dinners with friends that make me feel 40-something. Hopefully this will all be okay soon… but it will honestly never be the same as it was in college.

Our biggest worries in college were handing in papers on time and figuring out whether or not so-and-so felt the same way about us. We didn’t necessarily have to show to class and being poor was in.

Now, we have to show up to work. We have to make money. We want to find a significant other, but we don’t know how because that community we had during grade school and college is gone. We start to worry about having a relationship with someone who we actually see ourselves with in the long run because we’re getting closer to our thirties, but we don’t want to yet. We have to live with no scheduled change after a year or four years. And whether we live at home or with friends, it’s just not the same.

Everything and everyone becomes so much more serious each year after graduating. And getting together with friends keeps getting harder. There are bars we have to name as extinct because everyone who goes there is now ‘too young.’ It’s like, when did this happen? I graduated college and I don’t even want to go back anymore because I would have to drink tonight… and I’m tired and want to lose 5 pounds, so staying in sounds better. When did this happen to me?

Sure that older adult who exclaims ‘YOU’RE SO YOUNG‘ when they find out you’re in your twenties might make you feel slightly better about your fleeting youth for a hot minute… but, like, imagine what they say to a college student. They don’t say ‘you’re so young.’ That’s a given. Instead, they say ‘YOU’RE SO LUCKY.’ Duh.

Graduating sucks. So when you go to leave the place you love and hug your friends goodbye, hold on a little longer because it’s not that ‘it’s all downhill from here‘ … it’s that life is going to be so completely different from here on out. Good luck.

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This is a label I’ve struggled to understand through the years, having lived comfortably in an enclave of fixed gear bicycles and endless tattoo sleeves. It is a space that is very much removed from the American gun culture. That isn’t to say that I’m immune to the political discourse surrounding the issue. In four years of living in Denver, I have witnessed firsthand two public shootings.

While these experiences have no doubt come to shape my views of gun control reform, I’m cautious in employing them in an attempt to define gun culture as a whole. As Colorado continues to position itself as ground zero in the ongoing debate, I remain ignorant of a culture that, by and large, remains closed to the rest of society. It is a brotherhood of sorts, a fraternity of firearms, which has successfully maintained a political and social presence for several decades. If one were to begin to try and understand the underlying implications of gun control in America, the easiest and most direct route might well be the Tanner Gun show. With over 700 tables of high powered assault rifles, handguns, magazines, butterfly knives, and the occasional baked good, it is the perfect place to take in America’s obsession with firearms.

However, the gun show emerged from our local consciousness onto the national stage in 1999. It was at this time that two 18 years old, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, purchased several firearms which would go on to be used at the Columbine High School massacre. In the process, these two shifted a national focus to the nature in which these gun shows operate. More importantly, it moved gun shows, and specifically the Tanner Gun show, into a sphere of rhetorical debate. Overnight, the trade show became a gun control battleground. Having nothing better to do on a recent warm Sunday afternoon, I drove down to the Denver Merchandise Mart to take it in for myself. I wanted, if nothing else, to see this phenomenon firsthand in an attempt to understand it from perspective removed from judgment. I did this with the belief that one day, we will all have to try to understand one another just a little bit better than we are now.

I dressed conservatively in an attempt to fit in. It was ironic, as I had no idea what I was getting myself into, and I perhaps believed that my boot-cut Levis would shield me from unwanted political debate. The idea was quickly dashed when I first encountered the fliers warning against the illegal sale of firearms from the parking lot. I may have gone home right then, if I hadn’t been encouraged to come inside by the security staff patrolling the area outside of the hotel lobby.

In fact, most people I encountered were terribly nice, the kind of warm and honest geniality that one almost doesn’t trust entirely. Having explained my position to the ticket takers at the door, I was let inside the convention center for half price, with the agreement that I wouldn’t take any pictures of what I saw inside.

There were no weapons laid out on the first table I saw. Instead, I found highly polished bits of turquoise and small bits of silver jewelry. From the earliest onset, one can see how these individuals view themselves within the framework of American history. This is Colorado, after all, and we are quick to embrace the ghosts of the old West.

Beyond these specters of the American cowboy, I saw an vast sea of elongated card tables, each covered with handguns, ammunition, butterfly knives, and brass knuckles. Many were draped with banners depicting various forms of Libertarian rhetoric. Old men with receding hairlines casually strolled by wearing t-shits quoting Wayne LaPierre, and smiling ladies sold old glossy photos of John Wayne in Western wear. Off in the corner, a group which claimed not to be a militia recruited teenagers of both genders for pseudo-military exercises, citing the ongoing “culture war” and the necessity for preparedness. They would smile as they came over to show me how to properly hold and AR-15 assault rifle, clearly picking up that I had no idea what I was doing.

The sobering moment, if there was one, came at a table adorned with large plastic bags of spent ammunition. Each was labeled in a series of unfamiliar acronyms. After politely inquiring as to what they were, I was informed that each was conflict specific, and that some people liked to collect shells from various wars around the globe. I picked up a small bag, labeled “German, WWII,” and I felt a tremendous sadness in the weight of it all, speculating on where the other half of these bullets might have ended up.
I recognize that this does not reflect gun culture in America as a whole, but couldn’t help but feel the irony in the suggested violence of these small objects.

Despite coming close to purchasing a vintage 1851 Colt revolver, I ultimately decided on a picture of Val Kilmer, dressed as Doc Holliday, and signed in silver ink: “I’ll be Your Huckleberry, Val Kilmer, DOC.” It was, without question, the most unintimidating piece in the entire room. It was also the most satisfying purchase I had made in the last three months. Everyone loves that movie, and Kilmer is badass.

It is in gestures such as these that individuals like myself, whom may feign ignorance in the face of a culture they do not understand, in turn celebrate various aspects of America’s troubled and violent past. The ghosts of the cowboys continue to haunt the state of Colorado in ways that words cannot adequately describe. While we struggle to navigate the complexities of the modern world, we still continue to romanticize the complicated violent legacies of our past. While I may not understand this perspective completely, I think that’s alright.

Given that we operate in a system of multiple subcultures, we are allowed to have different perspectives or definitions of what we consider freedom. In these varying perspectives, one opens the door to the possibility of multiple “truths” that may exist simultaneously, varying from one individual to another, and defined by our surrounding environment. While we may not understand the significance of gun culture in modern America, it has become an aspect impossible to ignore, let alone reconcile. Ultimately, regardless of how we interact with one another, the world remains how we choose to see it as individuals.

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Know yourself. Watch for the things that most heavily lift or sink your heart. These are the markers of who you are. Look at your qualities objectively, especially when they are less than appealing, these are just as important as the great things about you are. Don’t work on accepting the person you project to other people.

Be ready to be vulnerable and imperfect. You don’t have to like your imperfections, but you do have to be able to sit with them, acknowledge them and embrace that they are present in you for one reason or another. Dig and find the root of what cultivated them. Work on undoing what needs to be undone; work on being better.

This self-acceptance business is not an excuse to be a terrible person. If being yourself means this, you will deal with the consequences of your actions in due time. Don’t think that because you are “being yourself” you are excused from anything that is derogatory toward or detrimental to someone else.

Know that you are or will be loved for the things you find unlovable. Some things I’ve loved most about people are the things they’ve later said to be most self-conscious of. The ways in which you don’t fit into the mold of a socially-generated-perfect-human are the ways in which you are unique and they are the things about you that the right people will be most enamored by.

Baby steps. Don’t expect anything immediately and be good to yourself for trying. Overhauling your entire life in a day will not end well, go ahead and try if you don’t believe me.

Understand that a large element of this is choice. While I don’t believe you can change who you innately are, I do believe that you can choose to take life from the perspective of your best self. Choose to do that. Choose to keep going even when challenges arise. Choose to forgive yourself for your moments of indiscretion.

Realize you are not the summation of your past. It is part of you, it is your story, and it has helped craft you, but it is not who you innately are. You can always choose differently. You are a beautiful person for admitting that you are only human and you’ve done wrong, but you’re working on it.

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Monday is like touching a scalding hot seatbelt buckle. It’s dropping your toast, jelly side down or making toast and realizing you’re out of jelly. Monday is the opposite of bacon and the first cousin of black licorice. Sometimes you can convince yourself that there’s a bright side — for example, those feelings of new week, fresh start motivation that linger for 30-45 minutes until you actually interact with that first customer, or your Dwight Schrute-esque co-worker irritates you, then it’s back to dreading four more days of these horrors.

Tuesday

Honestly I’m not sure why Tuesdays don’t get more flak for sucking like a Dyson vacuum, but if I had to guess, I’m betting the mass Taco Tuesday festivities across the globe play a role in softening the blow of its criticism. Taco Tuesday is cool and all, but eating delicious food doesn’t necessarily change a crappy situation.

Would you happily experience waterboarding for the next 96 hours if spoonfuls of Nutella were being served before the torturing commenced? I know what you’re thinking — how big of a spoon are we talking here? — but I promise you it’s not worth it. Look, here’s the bottom line: Tuesday is still within the first half of the week, making it impossible for a work hating individual to feel anything other than disappointed… And gassy – y’know, from the tacos.

Wednesday

Based on its SLOW, uphill feeling, Wednesday should be renamed Weeeeeeeedneeeeeeeeesdaaaaaay. All co-workers and shoppers and callers and clients and humans you interact with are suffering from the same, I’m-over-it type feeling. That lingering mood gives Wednesdays at work the dull, ‘why me?’ vibe of drawing the middle seat on a lengthy flight or realizing post-shower that you’ve got to poop.

Thursday

There is a little bit of hope because everyone is awaiting the freedom that is looming. Seeing friends, drinking adult beverages, hitting the town or staying home to binge watch Game of Thrones – all we know is that weekend is coming. Thursdays create a happier environment, much like a kid on Christmas who is 24 hours or so away from glory. Thursday is probably the most bearable day of the workweek when you hate your job Why not Friday? Well, because…

Friday (BEFORE 5 P.M.)

Every single waking moment spent at work on Friday is excruciating. We’re too close to freedom to focus long enough to accomplish significant work, yet we’re liable to do something considering we’re still on the clock. Time is a turtle riding a snail, covered in molasses – in other words, agonizingly slow. You can almost taste that first beer of the weekend and feel the couch under your exhausted body – wait, no, you’ve still got spreadsheets and papers and responsibilities. This day will drag and you’ll feel as if you’re stuck in a never ending episode of The Twilight Zone. It’s brutal when all you want is to begin those 2 1/2 days or so of freedom. But when they  do eventually arrive, don’t blink because you might miss ‘em.

Afterwork on Fri+Sat&Sun

These three days mush together and last for what feels like a total of seven hours. Also, Sunday at around 4 P.M. you’ll find it difficult to even enjoy yourself because you’re well aware that 40 hours (or more) of work responsibilities are waiting for you on the other side of the sun, chomping at the bit for another bite of your soul. 

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For an opportunity to feature your own content, send submissions to be considered for publication to Hudspeth@thoughtcatalog.com or reach me on Twitter.

Office Space (Widescreen Edition)

No males in my generation want to be men. Why do I say this? I met an extractor. His quote?

“Have you seen the movie Taken? That’s what I do.”

That is a man. He goes to foreign countries to retrieve people who have been kidnapped. Not only does he go, but he comes back. Comes back! That’s a man. When he’s not doing that, he’s a bodyguard for Saudi princes and people like Ralph Lauren. And before all of this? He was a New York City drug cop in the eighties. Boom. Full man. He’s been a man for decades!

I could have talked to that guy for hours. Talk to men of this generation?

“Oh, I’m a web developer.”

“I work in advertising.”

“I re-tweet things for companies.”

That last one is a job? Unbelievable. Men of older generations wanted to make an honest living. Men now want to make money by making statements in 140 characters – by making videos or taping a friend getting hit in the nuts with a voiceover of what the pole says.

“Whoops, that guy’s nuts are coming down on my head. One of us is gonna feel this! Won’t be me, I’m made of metal!”

No men want to get dirty anymore. Everyone wants to look perfect and smell good.

“Change that tire? Didn’t Steve Jobs create something to do that before he died? He didn’t? Well, then that’s what I’ll focus on. Re-animating Steve Jobs so he can make that thing. Does my iPhone re-animate?”

Past men created electricity, light bulbs, and the telephone. Men of this generation?

“Hey! I made an app that allows me to tell other people where I am! Pretty sweet, huh? You check in, you win things. I’m the mayor of your house! I just raised the tax! Get out of your house!”

I’m guilty of not being a man. Am I a man? No. I write, say funny things, and take on no real responsibility so I can continue to do so. Is that going to help me if I’m lost in the woods? Is that going to scare off a bear?

“Oh, man. A bear! Hey, hey, you like funny situations?”

“ROAR!”

“Wooo, tough crowd.”

Being a man doesn’t just mean doing “manly” things. Chopping wood, building Chevy trucks with your bare hands, all while drunk on whiskey and hollering at women. Being a man means taking on some sort of responsibility. Being accountable for something. No men of my generation want that anymore. No one wants kids. No one wants a job that pays anything less than what a basketball player makes. No one wants to have any commitments that could stop him from watching Breaking Bad.

“Mom’s funeral? God, did she have to die today? She knew I was doing a season three marathon!”

Mark Zuckerberg, for example. Arguably, the leader of my generation. Multi-billionaire, Facebook creator. Man? Absolutely not. Let’s look at what he really created. Mark Zuckerberg created a site that basically annoys everyone and wastes our time. Would a man create a site that lets you stare at your ex and look at picture memes? No. Had a man been around when this was being made, it would be different.

“There! Done. Just added the “Poke” button.”

“Uh huh. Where is the “Work” button?”

“There is no work button! Facebook is meant to take a break.”

“You know what a good break is… work! Add a work button, then get to work!”

Men who take on responsibility are really needed in this world. Date a girl who had a good relationship with her dad who was responsible. For the most part, she is a very well adjusted person. Date a girl whose dad didn’t take responsibility? Big difference. Most times? Emotional train wreck.

“Who just called you?! WHO JUST CALLED YOU?!”

“It was my cousin.”

“That slut cousin Susan?”

“She’s family!”

“She wants to sleep with you! I know she does! Oh, god. Why do you like to do this to me?”

“What the hell is going on? Why are you crying?”

“Fuck you! Just fuck you! I love you – that’s why! Please don’t leave… get the fuck out of here!”

If the pioneers had known that they were finding new land and building on it so that one day men could see how many head shots they could rack up online, they would have stopped.

“What? I’m gonna cut down these trees while I have scurvy so that one day a thirty two year old man can talk to a thirteen year old through a headset and be called a loser? I don’t think so. I’m going to lay down and die right here.”

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In 2009 I got really fed up with my 9-5 job and decided to quite and spend a year backpacking around Asia. It took a year of living with my Mom, saving every dime and basically driving everyone in my life crazy, but I finally actually did it.

Well that year lead to another year, and another, and I still haven’t managed to find my way back to a desk job just yet. I wrote an ebook about my experiences during that first crazy trip called “A Year Without Make-Up.” It’s not really about make-up though, it’s about traveling in your twenties, falling in love on the road, falling in love WITH the road, having random conversations with local hustlers in Cambodia, acting like a minor celebrity in China and so much more.

I hope you’ll check it out, but in case you’d like to sample before you buy, here is a summary of some of the biggest lessons I learned backpacking around Asia.

1. Traveling Solo is Really Not That Scary

I’m a serious introvert: I hate talking to new people and even mundane tasks, like ordering a pizza, cause unhealthy levels of anxiety. Paradoxically, I loved traveling alone.

For the first time ever I could do whatever I wanted, with absolutely zero judgement. Chocolate shake and foot massage for breakfast? Why not, I’m calling the shots! I didn’t have to talk to anyone if I wasn’t in the mood, and when I was, the fact that I had nobody else to rely on gave me that extra push to get out of my comfort zone. I met tons of interesting travelers and locals, I negotiated border crossings and I even mastered eating out by myself. It was very liberating.

2. You Can Get Used to Almost Anything

It was probably around my third night-bus ride, sitting awake on a dark bus full of snoring Vietnamese passengers while the driver played chicken with oncoming 16 wheelers, when I realized that my perception of reality had become oddly skewed. Almost everyone I knew in life was at home sleeping in real beds right now, and I was listening to my ipod on a careening death bus like it was no biggie at all.

Among the things I became alarmingly unfazed by: squat toilets, riding on motorbikes, being photographed like a zoo animal, extreme air pollution and roosters yelling literally all night (that crowing at dawn myth is total bullshit).

3. Alcohol Buckets are Not A Good Idea

It doesn’t matter if it’s Saturday night, or New Years, or the Full Moon Party. You are definitely going to regret drinking that plastic sand-bucket full of cheap vodka and Thai Redbull. Maybe not tonight, but definitely tomorrow when you wake up in a strange hostel room with weird cuts and bruises and a bad case of the runs.

4. I am Extremely Privileged

Look, I’m not rich, neither are my parents, and I’m currently battling an obstinate pile of student loans, but I’m still a thousand times more well off financially then the majority of the people I encountered on my trip.

Travel really throws this into sharp perspective.Factually I already knew this, but there’s knowing and then there’s coming face to face with extreme poverty, limbless landmine victims and child beggars. Not only did travel open my eyes to a world of injustice, it made me truly grateful for the things I do have.

5. Standards of Beauty are Different Everywhere

I stopped wearing make-up less than a week into my trip (hence the book title). To my surprise I didn’t miss it a bit- and neither did my boyfriend or the Cambodian tuk tuk drivers who serenaded me every night in Sihanoukville. It actually felt really freeing and made me think about the aesthetic demands put on western women.

Of course, almost everywhere has their own unique impossible beauty standards. In Japan it was insane high heels and contact lenses that make your pupils look enormous, in China it was skin whitening creams and in Hong Kong it was a crazy emphasis on high fashion. The more you think about it the more exhausting it all seems.

6. The Best Food is Usually The Cheapest Food

As a backpacker on a tight budget I found myself usually eating quite low to the ground (sometimes quite literally, perched on a colorful plastic stool on the sidewalk in Hanoi). As it turns out, some of the most mouth-watering, memorable meals I’ve ever had were street food costing less than $2.

It makes sense: the less you have to spend, the closer you get to the real, authentic soul of a country. You can spend $100 a night on a fancy hotel or you can spend $10 and stay in a local guest house. I know which I’d choose (well, most of the time).

7. Travel Plans Are Basically Useless

Originally I had huge plans to circle the world, visiting 25 countries in the span of a year. In reality, I managed to hit seven Asian countries and Australia. I traveled much slower than I expected and made some really random and unexpected left turns, like spending months living on a college campus in China of all places (somewhere it had never even occurred to me to visit when drawing up my plans).

Planning for travel is entertaining, but ultimately the reality of life on the road trumps any ideas you had before.

8. 3-D Porn is a Real Thing

A real, and popular thing! I went to see one when I was in Hong Kong, but you’ll have to actually check out the book to see how that one went down.

Mostly I learned that travel is unpredictable, absurd, sometimes miserable, but always interesting. If you’d like to hear more about my adventures, and maybe learn about how to pull off your own big trip,please check out my new eBook here on Thought Catalog.

A Year Without Make-Up, by Stephanie Yoder

Only $2.99. Purchase it by clicking here.

1. Hand holding

Pro: Your ineffectual fist will fit easily in his, as his hands are substantially larger. His mugs radiate heat as if they had a handle and were filled with chai tea. He will squeeze your hand just a smidgen tighter when walking past a questionable individual. You will inevitably feel safe.

Con: You will be rendered incapable of locating a worthwhile resting point for your hands while walking in his absence. You will fight the urge to grab a random stranger’s hand, if only to feel some phalanx warmth. You will feel a smidgen more vulnerable when walking past a questionable individual. You will miss him. 

2. Leaning Against His Arm/Chest

Pro: As you lean into him he turns his body towards yours and you are able to sink into complete acceptance. You feel wanted by him and the stability of his figure against yours. He will pull you closer, letting solicitous strangers know you are his, while simultaneously making you feel small and fragile. You will inevitably feel safe. 

Con: His absence will become palpable. Loneliness will begin to set in as you walk solo past the landmarks that had previously greeted a duo. Your attire will require layers as you get colder, easier. You will miss him. 

3. Rubbing His Back and/or Putting Hand Across Stomach

Pro: Your appendage’s journey will lead your mind to the previous evening, when there wasn’t a shirt between your fingertips and his skin. You outline the masculinity of his body, boastfully highlighting the pride you feel when standing next to his frame. Feeling the contours of his hardened back through silently scorned material, you are reminded of his power and strength. You will inevitably feel safe. 

Con: Your fingertips feel abandoned as their carpet has been swept out from underneath them. You notice you’ve been crossing your arms and rubbing them as if it was the middle of December. Walking dangerously close to a stranger may or may not end in unwanted, extremely inappropriate, petting. You will miss him. 

4. Polite Kisses.

Pro: Waiting to find one another void of an audience becomes an obsolete necessity. Leaning in to softly solidify a greater passion requires your hand pressing upon his chest. A requirement that will make you feel whimsical. You will hold your lips to his for only a mere moment but the taste will linger. You will know that he is proud to be with you. You will inevitably feel safe. 

Con: Your favorite pastime is stolen by distance. You find yourself pressing your mouth closed so your lips are not lonely. Moments in which a quick kiss would be warranted happen more and more frequently. With every lost opportunity your heart heavies. You will miss him. 

Section B: Joining of the things.

1. He Uses Your Closet

Pro: His clothes grasp the cologne he previously adorned, subsequently filling your closet with his intoxicating scent. In a rush you can quickly slide into a pair of his boxer briefs. Or t-shirt. Or wife-beater. And feel closer to him even when on opposite ends of the room. You will see carelessly distributed pieces of his demeanor, all as comforting as his arms. You will inevitably feel safe. 

Con: The clear wooden floorboards scream locational awareness and you are reminded of his current proximity. You can almost envision the offhandedly thrown jeans or the bundled up t-shirt or the lone sock, only to have it vanish as if you were in the Sahara. Every moment that passes diminishes his lasting scent. You will miss him. 

2. Sharing a Bathroom

Pro: You will wake to the sound of him taking a shower. It will be as comforting as the rain. As the door opens steam and the scent of his body wash escape as he carelessly covering himself with a towel. You will admire his physique while lazily laying in bed, glad to wait your turn. You will find comfort in seeing his toothbrush. You will inevitably feel safe. 

Con: You will begin to resent the previously adored vanilla bean scent of your shampoo as it demolishes the smell of his early morning shower. You can no longer lazily lay in bed while he gets ready for the day as there’s no need to take turns with a ghost. No longer can you kiss him while wrapped in a towel as if it was as pertinent to your shower as turning on the water. You will miss him. 

3. Falling Asleep Together

Pro: Laying next to a human furnace will make your blankets electric. Falling asleep will be as easy as when you were strapped into a carseat and chauffeured around the block. You will feel small with his arms wrapped around you. He will play with your hair, exploring the texture of each strand between pinched fingertips. He will kiss you goodnight on your collar bone or the back of your neck or your shoulders. You will sink into his chest. You will inevitably feel safe. 

Con: Tossing and turning is a foregone conclusion. You will feel lost amidst the seemingly endless amount of blankets and sheets. You will cocoon yourself within your comforter in an attempt to duplicate the weight of his arms with every additional, twisted layer. You are only disappointed. You will miss him. 

Section C: Day to Day Entanglement

1. Conversations

Pro: You feed off his energy and enchanting mannerisms. Tunnel vision occurs and you are suddenly equipped with the magical capability of making populations disappear. You will see his attentiveness manifested in physical form. You feel like your words are loaded with importance as he leans into his heedfulness. You will inevitably feel safe. 

Con: The cellular medium becomes a burden. You will strain to imagine him in front of you or his facial expressions or his inquiring shoulders. Their absence leads you to assume different words mean different things.Your conversations will end with a click of a button, not a hug or a kiss or the swift agility of unconsciousness. You will inevitably miss him. 

2. Inside Jokes

Pro: Seeing his smile only enlarges yours. His laugh is contagious and you hope you catch it. You will find one another’s eyes from across the room when someone alludes to a previous moment in time. You will speak words to him without ever opening your mouth. Your aesthetically disparate eyes will flirt with one another amidst the simultaneous chatter of others. You will inevitably feel safe. 

Con: Your chuckles will have no way of escaping your discouraged lips. You will hold back the urge to point out what would have normally been a shared discovery. A bombardment of moments in which you two would have conversed silently leaves painful twinges of longing. You will miss him. 

Fine Print: All positives outlined in the former sections are cohesive to the negatives. One may not, under any circumstanc, be experienced separate of the other. Any side effects, such as but not limited to: sleeplessness, sadness, diminished patience, inability to concentrate, constant sense of want, and/or debilitating fear are assumed by the reader and not up for negotiation. 

Should consequences become overwhelming or side effects everlasting, please consult your nearest travel bartender and go take a shot of Jack Daniels. 

You’ve fallen.

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said&done

1. No, cat calling is not flattering.

I feel like every man who has ever tried to convince me to take some rando shouting “Hey girl, nice ass” at me as a compliment sees it this way: You’re sitting outside some Italian café in a Betty Draper dress sipping a prosecco when all of a sudden your dainty neck scarf flies off in the light breeze. Joseph Gordon Levitt, wearing a linen suit with a pocket square and no socks with his penny loafers, steps off his Vespa and hands it to you while saying something witty about how it’s almost as beautiful as you are. You then both ride off into the sunset, laughing as Dean Martin plays in the background and the director yells cut on the espresso commercial that is your life.

In reality, it’s you getting yelled at by a bunch of sweaty men standing outside a bar at eight in the morning, telling you about how fuckable you look in your sweatpants when you’re just trying to get a bottle of milk in peace like a goddamn human being. And it is the opposite of a compliment.

2. Sexism definitely exists in the workplace.

Perhaps it doesn’t always come in the form of some obese man in a pinstriped suit who smells of cigars slapping you on the hip with a folder and telling you to “get that pretty ass to work,” but it’s definitely there. And the fact that it’s not some outtake from the early seasons of Mad Men that they cut for being too overtly misogynist makes it all the more frustrating. When brainstorming after-hours drinks are held and you are not invited, when people feel that you are not going to be competent enough to negotiate with the client, when you are passed over for a promotion because the boss just feels like he could hang out with the guy two cubicles down despite his general distate for working — it happens. And you just have to learn to work against it on a daily basis.

3. We are always under pressure to be pretty.

Every woman has experienced the vast and shocking difference she receives from the world around her when she puts effort into looking good versus when she just goes out au natural and/or in full-on scuzz mode. And while it’s true that dressing snazzily will generally elicit a better and more respectful reaction for all people who do it, there is a distinct pressure and reward system in place for women who look pretty for society at large. Depending on the outfit your wearing and the deftness of your makeup application, your whole world can become a whirlwind of free drinks and compliments. If you commit the mortal sin of walking out the door while looking like an imperfect human, you can expect a cavalcade of men who act as though their gross advances should be flattering, being completely ignored by everyone else, and having your thoughts roundly dismissed. Your worth is directly related to how you look, and it’s impossible not to feel when it’s happening.

4. Constantly smiling is not a natural state.

I have developed a theory that all of the randos who insist on directing you to smile while you’re walking through the street, minding your own business, do so because saying “Show us a little nipple, baby, you look so boring right now” is politically incorrect. I am currently working up the courage to respond to men who do so by telling them to get an erection and stand with their penises pointing north so he serves some kind of purpose and caters to my viewing pleasure.

5. We will always be on a double standard for sexuality.

We have all met the supposedly “open-minded, feminist” man — you know, the kind who insists on going down on you terribly until your entire vagina is completely numb and you just want to watch The Daily Show — who proclaims how egalitarian he is right up until the moment where he gets vaguely jealous over your sexuality. Whether you slept with one too many men, or have a flirtatious personality when going out, or dated some guy that he feels threatened by, there is no escape from the deeply harmful social norms placed on us about how women are supposed to handle their bodies and their desires. Let’s not even talk about the bros who blow through an entire sorority house in two weeks and yet are ready to get that horrible lock and key metaphor tattooed on their overdeveloped bicep. They should just never be discussed in polite society.

6. If we don’t orgasm, it’s not to spite you.

There are few feelings more frustrating than following up a sexual encounter that, sadly, didn’t end with an orgasm (which is not to say that sex can’t be fun without reaching the summit — it completely can), only to have to painstakingly explain to some guy how it’s not his fault that you didn’t operatically climax from 2.5 minutes of indiscriminate thrusting. In a terrible turn of events somewhere in the darkest parts of the cosmos, the person who didn’t reach orgasm is the person tenderly consoling the one who did it within 45 seconds, trying to come up with myriad reasons — having nothing to do with his performance, of course — why it just didn’t happen this time. And God forbid you fake it, as that is what horrifying succubi do to punish man for the sins of their forefathers, and those harpies should be burned at the stake.

7. We don’t actually want special treatment.

“You greedy bitches just want us to pay for dates so you can spend your money on clothes or whatever!”

No, you anthropomorphic anal polyp, we just want to get to a place in society as a group where outdated social norms such as these aren’t even a question anymore, and we’d be happy to start with getting paid the same amount for the same job in all fields. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have to go read another 45 overwrought articles about how we’re supposed to have it all — complete with stock image of confused-looking woman juggling a baby, a martini, and a briefcase — because apparently gaining equality in the professional sphere doesn’t mean that men should also consider taking a more pronounced role at home. Of course not, they have important shit to do, and rich people’s hands to firmly shake.

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