I don't know

I don't know what to say here. I haven't been writing much lately... which sucks. I don't know really why. I've been living a lot of life and thinking a lot or escaping a lot in the last... 2 years or so, I guess. Seems like a perfect writing mindset, but...

I don't know what to say here.

I have loved and fought and lost and loved again and been proven wrong and lost and am drowning in love currently... oh this love. this is that love. the one... and it is causing... overwhelming panic. Overwhelming panic. Good fucking god, how did I let myself get here? Overwhelming panic... mixed in with overwhelming happiness...

And yet...

I'm just not sure what to say here.

I can write something pretty, from the very depths of my stupid, weak, romantic heart. This stupid heart. "What does your irrational heart tell you?" he asks... "I don't want to listen to my irrational heart, she's a tried and true fuck up." Tried and true. Overwhelming panic. I listened to my irrational heart...

I can say that I am sitting on a couch adjacent to my bed in my "cave" studio apartment, and you, well, you're a little sick and sleeping in that bed. I'm listening to love songs on my headphones and feeling lovedrunk... real drunk... the overwhelming panic... and I'm trying to pull myself together. Because for fuck's sake. And you... sometimes you move. You breathe heavier and snore a little, and turn over. Your sweet smell and your sweet, soft breathing... You woke up abruptly for a minute... I asked you if you were ok. You asked me if I was... good god, can you read me in your sleep? What is happening? No, what has happened? Did this happen? Is it real? (Please be real. Please.)

Breathe, turn, panic, love... Love. love.

This made very little sense. I just don't know exactly what to say.

Less than air

What are the things you say to yourself
When a person who used to love you
(who you "used" to love)
Purposefully makes you a stranger
a ghost
a cloud
the mist...

...to make it not feel like someone let the air out of your entire being?

A Rambly, Lightweight Drunken Post About Friendship and Shit (not actual shit)

So, if you're like me, when your friends start having kids, you kind of hate them at first. Not the kids, you haven't even met them yet - your friends. You hate your friends, and you feel like shit about it but... You panic. What the hell guys, why you fuckin' with our very awesome dynamic? (A fair question, but...) At the beginning of this trend amongst friends, usually, you can still say shit like, wow, we're so young, I don't think you know what you're doing (note: they don't. second note: you need to shut up.) It's a lot like when they start to really settle down with their significant others and get married (although sometimes this moment is one and the same). You're just left kind of feeling like - where the fuck did you go?

Here's what you have to know - it is totally valid to feel that way. It is also totally valid for people to want to build a life and a family. It's not personal - and then again, it completely is. I've suffered through this immensely, and it was horrible. I come from a very spread out, distant (physically and emotionally), disjointed family - who I love, but I'm sure would agree - we ain't around for each other a whole lot. Soo - I've always made my friends my family, truly. When these life changes have occurred with my friends, I felt like the bonds I'd built with those people were sort of a lie.

Before this turns into a poor Sarah story - people have different reasons for why they hate their friends as they begin this "adult" life (btw, that's not the only definition of "adult"). Point is, it happens. And yeah, you love them, and you're happy they're happy - but, fuck them, you know?

Whether or not you're being a selfish asshole, this is something, a feeling, that happens - you either are the family builder or the friend that gets left behind. Back to my "here's what you have to know" statement that I didn't actually complete from above - it's ok. It really is. If the friendship is real and deep and true, things circle back around in time. For example, I felt disconnected from my best friend for something in and around 7 years? Something like that. I felt like giving up many times. We went months without speaking - I felt forgotten, and maybe I was. There was a lot of hurt feelings. But I stuck around, I held on (and I guess she must have too) made my appearances and took what I could get - I love my best friend with the whole of my heart and I didn't see that going away, regardless - and ya know what? She came back around. Pretty much on her own - somewhere in there, she just, figured it out, or something. So here we are, and I get to spend time with her and her son, who I love with all my heart, and annoy her husband who stole her from me (I think he's really starting to like me too, in moderation) - and she's everything I remember and more.

Life is crazy, and we are crazy for the way we try to label it and mark it and put one stopping point after another as a way to figure out who, what, where we're supposed to be. Life is fluid, ever-moving, and it does not work the same for everyone. It isn't this thing where you go from childhood to adolescence to college age, graduate at 21 - 24, begin your career, start your forever relationship, get married, have babies, etc etc etc... or, any other version of that (go to grad school, climb mt. everest, blah blah). Even as  you reach momentous occasions (which yes you should note and appreciate, of course) it is still coursing forward. And through it all, you don't stop being you - your friends don't stop being themselves! We do experience joy, hardship, we achieve, we fall, and, hopefully, we learn through these things and grow - but things move onward, simultaneously ebb and flow, and we continue to become.

What does this have to do with anything? I don't know? Back up, I said I'm a lil tipsy in the title! Shit y'all.
Anyway,  I look at my friendships. My friendships are my everything, and I have many, MANY close friends. Some people think that's not something you can do in a genuine manner. Lacking depth, maybe. I don't see it that way. My friends are so varied and have so many amazing qualities between them all - I have met people in different phases of myself and appreciate so many things about each one. Most of these people I've been friends with for many years now, as I'm in my 30s, and that's one of the amazing benefits of getting older, these long, developed, deep relationships with people you've known since they weren't much more than children. I've seen so much change in myself, and so, so much change in each of my friends. Our relationships have gone from strong, to weak, to almost gone, to strong again, and lots of variations in between. I've watched friends wait until their 30s to hit maximum chaos. I've seen myself become someone who is more balanced than others - which is, in itself, crazy and sort of unbelievable (I'll be back bitches!). Again, life is so fluid and ever changing - but ya know, all - ALL relationships - if they're worth it, if there is that true bond and love and loyalty and chemistry and love and connection and love - they'll last. They'll last through the times when you don't think they will - when you don't even want them to. It might take years...

So yes, at first, your friends might leave you to pursue something else, to have babies, what-the-fuck-ever. And you will hate them. Just give it time. Seeing my friends flesh out their identities through motherhood (or career, or both, whatever) - has made me love them all the more. Their kids are pretty dope too, turns out.

One thing is One thing - Talkin bout Me, Privilege, Feminism, Chris Rock, Race, Oppression... and a George Carlin rant

Patricia Arquette used some crazy phrasing AFTER her awesome Oscar speech the other day, and now everyone wants to paint her as the asshole entitled white feminist. I think she just tripped on her words and meant to say - hey, all of us in minority groups, being made less than in this society, let's back each other up. And maybe she was also saying - hey, have feminism's back for once, ya dicks - because you don't see a lot of other groups jumping up to do that, and no one is really giving a shit lately (including these awful anti-feminist women who defy logic). There is a lot of press for Gay Rights, and a lot of press for Civil Rights, particularly with all this awful police brutality being brought to light - but women's rights? Kind of just not important it seems.

Now, this "white feminism" thing is a big problem for me - anyone else feel like this is just a really good way to cause divisiveness among women as a whole? My ex used to say, "One thing is one thing..." which drove me fucking nuts, but really, applies logically to so many things in life. We overlap and argue and mix ideas and points on issues so much, that we make the waters incredibly murky. We forget what it was we were after in the first place.

No shit the life of a black woman is different from that of a white woman, and a gay woman is different from a straight, and an older woman different from a young, and my experience as a white girl is much different than your experience as a white girl (if you are one) and so on and so forth.

Privilege. A funny thing. I in no way deny that I am privileged - though it was something that I had a hard time coming to terms with for many years (as it tends to be for most white people, for various reasons). For me, the problem was my upbringing was not one of privilege. I was primarily raised by a single mother, who taught me you gotta be self-sufficient and work as hard as you can and life isn't fair. We were constantly moving - I watched my parents fight furiously at a very young age (many explosive fights, break ups, then moves) -  and then after a momentous fight where the car windshield got busted out, they called it quits. My mom and I (and for awhile my brother) lived in low-income housing (most my neighbors and little friends growing up were not white), living around immigrant families, weird neighborhoods, having neighbors with drug problems - even saw my Mom get in a fight with a neighbor of ours that was a coke addict. Times were hard on my mom, and in turn on me. A bit later, I watched her put herself through a BA and MS program, while raising a child, alone. I never lived in a house we owned, and for that matter, rarely ever lived in a house, but instead apartments, though I have also lived in a car, motel room, and other people's basements. I could go on, but the point is, the stereotype of rich white girl who was given everything and loves fall, her Uggs, and pumpkin spice lattes - well, that ain't me, that has not been my life. My privilege was a hard pill to swallow because I never felt privileged, not until I was better educated and could see what it truly meant - that despite my personal experiences, because I was white, people and institutions would always assume certain things about me, oblige me in certain ways, treat me with a certain kind of care that others did not get. Also, because I am a straight woman, I am attached to a type of normalcy that makes people feel safe, and so though I walk down the street hand in hand with a Mexican-American man (and yes, we do get looks occasionally, if you can believe that shit), he is still a man - we are a hetero couple. There is privilege in that too.  So I get it, and I guess it still can be hard for me to get my head around sometimes - personal experience and all - but I do own it. I own my privilege. But one thing is one thing.

Because I also am painfully aware that, because I am a woman, people and institutions assume certain things about me. Treat me with a certain type of disdain, or dismissiveness. I am less. I am not even thought human enough to make choices regarding my own body. I am not thought human enough to be paid on par with men in this world. I am not thought human enough for people to think rape, in all it's variations, is still rape and an atrocity - instead government bodies, composed of mostly men, who combined have raped god knows how many women in some way - they are going to tell me whether or not I've been raped. Or her. Or her. Or you.

This is my lucky experience as a white American female. Women of color, black and latina women in particular, make even less money and are generally treated with even more disdain. I know this and I do not pretend to not understand it. I am not an idiot or incapable of using my powers of observation, critical thinking, and shit, I have plenty of friends that aren't white girls. So don't come at me like I don't know. But one thing is one thing.

Chris Rock gave a really amazing interview - so many awesome, brilliant remarks on everything from comedy to race, I really recommend you check it out (link below) - but one part of it really got me thinking, and then annoyed. He said white people need to own their actions (slavery, structured racism, segregation, lynchings) - "Not even their actions. The actions of your dad." Now, I get where he was going with that, but man - first of all, it just is so illogical on so many levels. Own those actions how? Shit, my family didn't live in the South or own slaves ever - now I know that all of America was and is guilty for slavery, for ignoring it for so long, for subsidizing it and making it a necessity by buying the goods manufactured off of toil of unfree people. Same thing that sponsored the bullshit situation of share-cropping on through history, keeping black people impoverished to this day. Yes, these things are attached. Aside from not ignoring that all this exists and still effects us, and is evident in this country in a huge way, and therefore continuing to keep chipping away at it - what is there to do?

My second question for Chris Rock is - would you, as a man, be willing to do the same for the ladies? Is it not fair, from his line of reasoning, to then ask him and all other men to own up to their actions against women? All the cat-calling, rape, abuse, oppression, murder, forced child-bearing, forced raising of said children alone, inability to vote, inability to participate in sports, the to-this-day-fact that we are believed by a large enough majority to be so under-qualified at everything in comparison to men that we do not garnish an even wage at any job, from janitor to engineer to movie star? That often we still cannot make choices (still!) about giving birth and in many other countries, women suffer acid attacks, stonings, and much worse? All of this illustrates clearly the place the world has given us - all women. ALL WOMEN. We are the only minority group that no matter where we go on Earth, we will still be the minority - we will still be thought of less. If I go to Africa, or Mexico, or India, or Korea, or England - I will always be a woman and I will always be considered less than a man, even if not in someone's conscious brain. I understand that subconscious belief because society has so strongly drilled it into my own head, that even now, as I write this, I hesitate as I think of all the ways in which people might think I'm bitchy, or overreacting. Being dramatic. Whining/complaining/nagging. Come on woman, it's not that bad. I almost second guess myself, which is a blessing in a way. If I did not, it would not be so apparent to me how big the problem is.

Everyone should fight for their rights - as a very smart woman told me today, we're all just looking for autonomy out there. I am into that for everyone, and hope soon everyone can support each other there (yeaaahhhhh - outlook bad on that for now). But I do not appreciate the separation between women, and again, I feel like it's "them" (media, society?) plotting against us. If they can separate it into black v white v brown v gay v straight, and have us all yelling at each other about how "you don't understand what it's like!" - then they continue to win. And we continue to lose. I own my privilege, and I own my oppression. But one thing is one thing.

Links to articles sited, and an awesome feminist rant by George Carlin that you should REALLY listen to.

Patricia Arquette thing (one of so many articles):
http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/patricia-arquette-has-responded-to-that-oscars-controversy--gkmk0sygae

Chris Rock interview:
http://www.vulture.com/2014/11/chris-rock-frank-rich-in-conversation.html

Interview written by Black Feminist to White Feminist that also irritated me:
http://www.forharriet.com/2015/01/sht-white-feminists-say-to-black.html?m=1#axzz3REzpt5iG

George Carlin awesome feminist rant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Akwy4pxF0

This is a Feminist Rant. Get Over It.

I have some fucking complaining to do. Things need to be ranted about. Here I motherfuckin' go:

Hey girls, guess what? We're a minority - in fact, as a whole, we are perhaps the most discriminated against and vehemently hated minority that ever was and is to this day. And what do we do? We perpetuate the hate, the status quo, by doing a vast number of things. What things? Oh, so glad you asked:

Buying into a set of expectations and standards in a world that was not built for us, but was built for us to serve it. We do this and we let ourselves be called names that don't breathe life to the respect we deserve if and when we decide to own that as a truth - I DESERVE RESPECT. And here's an idea - why don't we try respecting other women because men and society and the world at large sure as fuck aren't going to do it - so we probably should. I may not like these women, but I'll be god damned if I'm going to contribute to the already enormous message of "she's just another dumb bitch" out there in the world. I will respect them even if they don't really deserve it and aren't respectful in return, just to pay it forward, just on principle, just in the hopes that somehow it makes some kind of damn difference that I did. Because look around, look at the news! We are viewed as commodities, or much worse. Men that live in the United States of America think a valid excuse for going on a shooting rampage is not getting sex from a woman - if only the cunt(s) had put out. And Elliot Rodgers was not the only one (check this article - http://jezebel.com/lessons-from-a-day-spent-with-the-ucsb-shooters-awful-f-1582884301?utm_campaign=socialflow_jezebel_facebook&utm_source=jezebel_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow).
We are told we should have no rights to make decisions about our own reproductive system, we are told simultaneously to be virtuous and to be promiscuous. In other words, your uterus, and your pussy, are not your own. That's what those of us lucky gals in the US get to look forward to - and believe me, that is lucky. THAT'S THE BEST THE WORLD HAS FOR US LADIES. It's only gets worse in the world at large and we ALL know this.

So get it the fuck together, and let's at least try to treat each other right - we're working against some bullshit odds here. Stop being a feminist hater and start being a feminist.

You Ain't Special

Nothing is more irritating to me than celebrities posing with their baby bumps on magazine covers, all over social media, on TV - AS IF we need to fuel the flames of the Breeder Revolution some more. 

Hey, guess what? You’re not a unicorn. You’re just knocked up. It happens. A lot.

Random rants while I'm at work on a Saturday

Hey Guys.

First rant - I hate when people use the word "passionate" in conjunction with things that are meticulous, boring, soul-sucking. Like, for instance, sales. Or organization. Or detailed data-entry. Or working in the corporate sphere.You cannot be passionate about those things and it's blasphemy to say that shit - shame on you. Passion is a word that implies high emotion, beyond the confines of logical thought or pragmatism. Ya know - we fell passionately in love, or we were blinded by our passion, or even CRIMES OF PASSION. You have to use passion to describe something that is the reason you want to live, either on that particular day, or has been your reason for living for years - lights a fire in your soul. If working in the corporate sphere is your reason for living... you may actually lack a soul, or heart, or both... my guess is you're a robot. Not even a replicant, for those of you familiar with Blade Runner.

Rant 2 - I have a lot of friends who work for a particular, well-known technology company - I used to work there too. They love to post about the perks they get, and, without fail, end the post with "love my job!". Ok. You don't love your job. You may love the company you work for, or more accurately, the free shit they give you - believe me, I get it, I was there. You love that they spoil you and give you food, drink, entertainment that is in no way related to your actual job function, which clearly you do not love, because if you did, your posts would say something closer to this:

"Stared at candidate profiles all day, emailed about 50 people, as I did yesterday and the day before. Heard back from 4 people from emails earlier this week - 2 were condescending. Got feedback from the phone interview for one of my candidates yesterday - apparently he was an idiot and so am I. Still waiting on feedback from one last interviewer on onsite interview from last week - taking his sweet ass time. Love my job!"

OR

"After weeks of courting this rockstar candidate and going to bat to get him an incredible offer, homeboy just turned us down - got himself a better counter-offer. I think he may have been using me for that all along. I'm exhausted and need a drink. Love my job!"

All I'm saying is, you don't love your job. Doctors Without Borders - they love their fucking jobs. They probably don't like it all the time, but they definitely have a skillset that they could just sit back on and rake in the dough - they decide to travel to shithole locations to save people. For basically nothing. That's love. 

Speaking of jobs - I should probably get back to work. I work at a Vet - no, I don't love it. I will love my job when I'm writing and performing and getting to make people laugh for my living. And I'm working on it (I wrote this while on the clock at the Vet, so technically, I guess, I AM getting paid for writing!LOVE MY JOB! )

K bye.