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bigmouthbadsleeper · 7 years ago

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The One Time I Went Roller Skating.

I spent the first thirty years on this blue marble as a single person. That is, a person who never had a boyfriend or romatic relationship of any kind really. As a result, I got really good at being alone. In fact, I got so good at being alone that I didn't really care if I ever found a boyfriend. That was problematic for me on account of the fact that I wanted to get married and have kids someday. Because I had these desires, occasionally I would force myself to attend a “singles activity” or two. Over the course of my single days I participated in many ridiculous things, all in the name of trying to meet someone. There are so many ridiculous activities that I can't even begin to tell you all of them. Instead I'll just tell you about one of them. It just so happens to be the last singles activity that I ever went to. Not because it was awful, but because I got fixed up on a blind date shortly after, and got married four months later. Some people think that I move fast, but I must bid adeiu to those people, because I was single for thirty years! If that's moving fast, then consider me a speed demon, I guess.

I'm gonna take you back to the harsh spring of 2014. It was 80’s night at Skateland. Maybe you don't know what Skateland is, so I will enlighten you. Skateland is quite literally a land where people skate. Why, at thirty years old, did I ever want to go to a place where I would have to skate? For one reason, and one reason only: because I could. I was never allowed to go there as a kid because my dad was a cop and he knew the kind of shady business that went down there. Every year at school I would get a flyer that advertised our school's skate night, and every year I would ask if I could go. I always got the same answer, which was no. I never really felt bad for myself about missing out on skate nights until I went to school the next day. Skateland always dominated the lunchtime and recess conversations for at least three days, and those three days were pure torture for me. Maybe that’s why I felt the need to go as an adult, so that I could have all the fun that kid me never got to have. There's a lesson that's gonna be learned in here, can you feel it?

Spoiler alert: Skateland is not that fun! And it is really quite trashy. My dad was right, lots of shady business happens there, FOR SURE. The night started off with me having to rent skates, and it just slowly glided downhill from there (skating reference!). Turns out I’m not a fan of sticking my body parts into holes where other people’s body parts have been. I know they “sanitize” the skates, but the guy behind the counter didn’t look like he cared whether or not I got a foot disease (not too comforting). I also had to pay $3 for socks that would maybe fit an eight year old, and a dainty eight year old at that. Then they made me sign a waver saying that I wouldn’t sue the rink if I got injured. That really made me feel confident and excited! They also made me read a list of rules, and sign off on each one. One of the rules was: NO GUM CHEWING. I rolled my eyes because I was a grown adult woman, and I’ll chew gum in a room full of twenty-something singles if I want to. This is America, afterall. One of the questions on the waver was “Do you have insurance?” And I wanted to write “Obamacare” in the space provided. I didn’t, because I have my own insurance and I didn’t want to make the night about politics. The last thing they asked was what what level of skater I was, which I didn’t think was anyone’s business. I wrote “advanced”, which is maybe the funniest part about this story, so if you want you can stop reading now.

Here’s another spoiler alert for you: I am not an advanced skater. I was at one point in my life, but that was the 90’s, and that was on roller blades. I learned the hard way that roller skates are an entirely different world. The brake is on the front of the skate as opposed to the back, which I think is ill advised. I almost fell backwards about seventeen thousand times. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving my Givenchy purse (30th birthday present from my mother) in a 50 cent rental locker, so I wore it the entire time, which made me less aerodynamic (hahahahah). It took me about 23 minutes to get into the rink, because I was terrified of falling in front of everyone. I could just imagine me rolling on the floor, taking out 13 other skaters on the way. You know that book Divergent? It's probably not a thing anymore, but in the Spring of 2014 it was, and I used it as motivation to get my butt moving. I had to pretend that I was Dauntless and this was my first task to prove my worthiness to the rest of the group. “If you don’t skate tonight then you’ll be kicked out, and forced to live in exile”, I told myself. It was a stupid thing for me, a thirty-year-old on borrowed rollerskates to be thinking about, but it worked!

(apropos of nothing, just a hilarious gif of liz lemon roller skating down her hallway as a child.) Once I was out amongst the skaters, I became intensely scared of falling. As a result, my entire body stiffened up like one of those black Halloween cats you see in cartoons. The only way I could move was if someone pulled me, which luckily two of my friends did (this is real and not exaggerated). While they were pulling me, one of the gnarly expert skater jerks crouched down on his skates and WHIZZED THROUGH MY LEGS. I feel that it's important to put that in all caps because it was terrifying and also extremely inappropriate and invasive. I saw my life flash before my eyes, all thirty years of it, which basically means I watched all seven seasons of Buffy really fast. I was so angry that I said the mother of all swear words at him, breaking the no-swearing rule (stupid rule, IMO, when you have people on wheels, breezing through the legs of other people on wheels). As I was yelling, my gum fell out of my mouth and onto the floor, which I guess is why they have the “No Gum Chewing” rule. So that rule I guess, in hindsight, makes sense. I still think the no swears rule is stupid, though. How can you expect me to defy death in such a way AND keep my emotions in check enough to not say swears? You’re pushing it, if I'm being honest.

In the end, I made it three times around the rink, which is three more times than I wanted to make it, so I guess I belong in Dauntless after all! (I realize that in 2017 this is no longer a cool reference to make. I made it anyway! The bravery continues.) I think that experience really taught me what it means to be thirty, because I was sore for about a week after. I'm telling you kids, your body just starts to slowly deteriorate at thirty. Though it was a singles activity, I didn’t score any digits from any hot singles, but I guess that wasn’t really the point of going. I wanted to prove to my 8 year-old self that she wasn’t missing out on anything by staying home with her family during those school skate nights all those years ago. I didn’t know it then, but it was better for me to be home with family where I didn’t have to sign wavers or worry about foot diseases, and I could chew gum or swear as I pleased.

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bigmouthbadsleeper · 7 years ago

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Grape Soda.

Dear friend,

I am young today. Maybe I am three, maybe I am five. My days are long and warm and good. My nights are peaceful and quiet. I sing, I sing all day long. I tell jokes. I make them up myself.

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Bushes.

That’s one I just thought of now. Don’t you love it, friend? I think it is hilarious. Do you know what I like, friend? I like purple soda. It has a picture of grapes on the can. It tastes like grapes but not really, it tastes like fake grapes. Don’t tell anyone but fake grapes are better than real grapes. Fake grapes burn your throat as they go down. Fake grapes sparkle. I love swinging. Swinging is the best. It’s great if there is someone there to push me, but it’s even better when I can push myself. I can go higher and higher. I push my legs back and forth and watch the ground get farther away from me, then close again. Far, then close, far, then close. Sometimes I think maybe when I get really high I can jump off. Nope, too risky. Someday I’ll jump. Someday I’ll risk it. Not today though. It’s definitely too risky today.

I discovered something today, my friend. It was a very magical thing. I am smiling right now just thinking about it. It’s giving me butterflies in my stomach! Have you ever heard of that, of butterflies being in your stomach? That is the best feeling. My butterflies come to me when I am very excited about something, or when I close my eyes and spin really fast. Shall I tell you what I discovered? I will! I will tell you because I love you, friend, and I always share my best things with those I love. The beautiful lady and I are sitting at my table drinking the burning purple grapes. I tell Beauty one of my jokes. It is a really funny one, better than the bushes one I told you before. The beautiful one laughs and touches my hair, taps my nose with her finger. You are my sunshine, she tells me and she smiles the most beautiful smile in all of the world. I feel warm and happy, like the sun is shining down on me so bright, like I will never be happier than this. I take a sip of the fizzy sparkly grapes and something not too great happens. I spill a bit of the liquid gold that I love so much. It rolls off of the table onto the white carpet. I watch it drip, drip, drip. I watch the purple on the clean, white get bigger and bigger. The beautiful one hops out of her chair lickety split and grabs a towel. She brings it over and covers the evidence, soaking up the precious purple juice. I am going to tell you something now that I am not too happy about telling you, alright? I’m going to tell you what happened next because we are friends and I love you. I know you love me too and that you will be careful with what I am about to tell you. I know that you won’t say anything to anyone else. While the beautiful one wipes up my mess, I cry. Stop crying, I beg myself, but I don’t listen. I can’t help it. I am scared and I am sad about hurting the white carpet with my purple mess. I don’t like crying, it gives away my tears. Tears are dangerous, friend. You must be careful with your tears. Once people see them, they never treat you the same. I didn’t want the beautiful one to be mad at me. Beauty is so great though; do you want to know why? Because she always does the right thing, and she always knows what makes things better. Beauty looked at me and smiled her beautiful smile. Don’t worry sunshine. That’s what she said as she wiped away my tears. Even though I loved the way her fingers felt on my face, I worried about her handling my tears like that. I worried about her grabbing them and saving them and using them against me. When her fingers touched my tears I wondered what part of me she had taken, and where that part would go. Once my tears fall, are they no longer mine? I wondered if she could read my mind now, or maybe she would start telling my jokes. Would my words be her words? Would she start loving grape soda the way I love it so? Would she sing all day the way I do? What Beauty said next was the most magical thing I had ever heard. Do you want to know, friend? I know you want to know and that is why I will tell you. She said it will be our little secret. A secret! Can you believe it, friend? I have a shared secret with the beautiful one! I said the word out loud just to make sure I hadn’t made it up. Secret. It is the best word I’ve ever heard! The butterflies come again and I start thinking about secrets, and who might have them. I bet everyone has them, and not just one. I bet everyone has hundreds of secrets. Not me, I only have this secret. Just one but it is the best one ever because it is shared between me and Beauty. I start to wonder how I can catch these secrets, how I can make them mine. The butterflies stay.

When the strong one came home, he kissed the beautiful one and patted my head, and ruffled my hair. He didn’t even notice the purple mistake. And Mrs. Beautiful winked at me. Because she knew that Little Miss Sunshine had a secret.

I’m not completely sure what a secret is yet, but I know I want more of them. I want to have hundreds, probably thousands. I wonder when I will get another one. I wonder how I find them. How do I get someone to give me one? I think I must be careful with my secrets though, friend. I need to keep mine for myself, and not give them away. It seems too risky, just like jumping when I am swinging so high. Secrets, like tears, are dangerous gems that fall without warning. I must put an extra layer on so that nothing falls until I want it to.

I will tell you something for free, friend. I barely know what a secret is, but I know that I will be good at keeping them. I know that I will have many of my very own. I am promising myself that I will tell them to no one. I will keep my tears to myself. It is better this way.

Dear friend,

I am nine now, friend. Can you believe it? I am nine now, and the beautiful one still loves me. She handles me with care. I still sing, and I still love purple soda pop. I still feel the butterflies. I swing still but I don’t need a push anymore. I can do it all by myself. I haven’t jumped yet, it’s not time. It will be time soon though I think. My armor is getting stronger. I have to make sure that it is strong enough to stand against a fall though. I cannot risk my tears.

Since the day with the carpet, I have not showed the beautiful one my tears, even though there are times when I really want to. The strong one still comes home, still holds me, still protects me. But no one has my tears. They are protected by me. I hide them. I love something else now, friend. I love stories. The beautiful one tells the best stories. She laughs when she is supposed to and cries when she is supposed to and she gives the characters different voices. Some are loud and scary, for the giants and ogres; others are small and quiet for the mice and the birds. She runs and jumps and swings me around. We become the characters. We are strong and brave, we are beautiful and kind, we are loud and we are quiet. We sing songs, most of which are songs I have made up right there on the spot. We live other people’s lives until the strong one comes and tells us it is time for sleep. Sometimes we stop after being told just once, but most of the time we laugh and keep going until the strong one is laughing too. On the best nights, the strong one joins us. He becomes the giant, stretching his arms up and changing his voice. He takes me from Beauty’s arms but I am not afraid. The strong one would never hurt me. He lifts me so high that I touch the ceiling with my fingertips. I touch it as gently as Mrs. Beautiful touched my face that day with the tears. I take the ceilings tears, and save them for later. The strong one places me in my bed and does the covers tight just how I like them. This is where I start doing something else that I am really great at. I start pretending. I pretend I am asleep. Beauty kisses me and whispers that I am her sunshine forever and always. Mr. strong whispers to me, it’s something silly. He is testing me to see if I am faking. I am faking but he’ll never know it. I don’t crack a smile. I am a great pretender I have decided. One day I will see if I can make a career out of pretending. I know deep down that I must be a good pretender. Beauty and Strong have to think I am sleeping. They stand over me and watch me, I can feel them. I can feel their smiles. I must remain ever so still, so that maybe I can take beauty and strength for myself. I must be strong and I must be beautiful. I must be funny. I must be brave. I must jump.

I have a secret for you, friend. I am scared. If I am not strong or brave, funny or beautiful, then am I anyone? If I do not jump, then what do I do? Can I swing forever?

I go to school and I try to make friends. I talk to people, I smile at them. They don’t smile back. I walk up to a group of girls and they walk away. I try with all kinds of people, not just the popular ones. Play on your own and they’ll come to you, Beauty says. I try that, but no one comes. Don’t they know that I am funny? Don’t they want to hear my jokes? Do they know that I am the beautiful one’s sunshine? Do they know how high I can swing? I wonder if they know about the purple stain. That’s impossible, right friend? That is a special secret, one that no one knows. I wonder if they know that I cry. I wonder if my tears fall purple down my white face. I have to stop. No one can know, I promised myself. I promised that I would keep that secret. No one can know that I cry. I catch my tears and put them away. Not now, little guys. You stay put until I come get you. You stay put now, you hear? Tears are tricky things. You can’t let them get away with too much.

Dear friend,

I am older now, friend. I am thirteen, to be exact. Isn’t that a magical age? I am wiser now too, but I hope that I haven’t reached my limit on the wise side of things because there are still a lot of things that I don’t understand. I don’t need bedtime stories anymore, which is for the best since Beauty doesn’t have time to tell them and Strong is gone most nights. Nights are my favorite time. I don’t sleep well, friend. Sometimes I don’t sleep at all. But I am still a good pretender, and nights are when I pretend best. Long after Beauty thinks I have fallen asleep she comes in my room and sits on my floor. I love the moon in these moments, friend, because it lights Beauty up so perfectly. The moon knows Beauty really well it seems, because his light hits her in all the right places. Beauty is older now and even though she never says anything, she is tired I can tell. But she is still beautiful, and I am still her sunshine. In these moments when beauty thinks I am asleep she tells me her secrets. Sometimes I think she is telling the moon, too. Maybe that is why the moon knows Beauty’s face so well. She trusts the moon as much as she trusts me, and for a moment I am jealous of the moon. He gets to see everything that I cannot. He has his watchful eye on everyone during the best time which is night. I think to myself about how I might get secrets from the moon. What would I have to do to get him to confide in me? Beauty can never know that I don’t sleep or else she would worry about me. She definitely can not know that I am awake when she sneaks into my room at night, or else she would stop doing it. She would find someone else to tell her secrets to. Do you see now why I must be such a great pretender, friend? Beauty needs me, and I must be there for her. In the quiet of the night I find out things about Beauty that no one else knows. Beauty is scared. Beauty is lonely. Beauty is heartbroken. Beauty cries. She lets her tears fall freely. I try not to flinch as they hit the floor, but I can’t help it. It’s so dangerous. Isn’t she worried that I will find them? Beauty misses Strong, and she worries about him. Beauty wants a brother for me. We had one, once. Strong, Beauty, Sunshine, and Charming. A Perfect family. We were perfect. We were happy. But Charming went away. She cries when she tells me and the moon about Charming. She sings to me, she sings to the moon, she sings to Charming. When she starts singing to Charming, I am so sad that I can’t do anything except hope that Charming can hear her. I turn in my bed so carefully and so quietly so that Beauty doesn’t see. I turn away from her so I can cry too. I cry for Beauty, I cry for Strong, I cry for Charming. My purple tears fall on my white pillow. The wall sees me but I don’t care about the wall. I miss Beauty’s stories. I miss singing. I miss Charming. Beauty misses him too. I know Strong does, but he won’t tell me. He doesn’t whisper things to me anymore, doesn’t lift me up to touch the ceiling. I forgot what the ceiling feels like, so I once climbed on a chair and tried to reach it on my own. I wasn’t tall enough. I stretched and reached, but it wasn’t enough. Alone, I wasn’t enough. Will I ever be enough, friend? Will I ever feel the ceiling again? I looked below and wanted to jump, but I am not ready for jumps yet. Sometimes I feel like at thirteen I should be ready for jumps. Maybe I am just a slow learner. I teeter on the edge for a moment, trying to get the courage to step off.

Beauty found me on the chair and pulled me down. She told me that she didn’t like me up so high. Can’t I just stay out of trouble for one day? Knock, knock I said, but Beauty wasn’t interested. Not now, she says. But if not now, when?

These nights with Beauty have taught me how to be quiet and how to listen. I need to remember to add “listening” to my list of things I am great at. At school I have no friends but I am quiet and I listen. I catch secrets all day long. You wouldn’t believe what people say when they think no one is around, friend! I write them down sometimes, to save them for later. Sometimes I hear them and just let them go because they aren’t worth it. But the good ones I save for later. I think that reading them might make me brave. Reading them will make me smart. Other people’s secrets will make me strong.

Secrets don’t make friends, is what I hear teachers say. What nonsense. Without secrets, how can you make friends? Secrets make perfect friends, secrets make BEST friends. Sometimes I wonder if I don’t have anyone to tell my secrets to, how can I have any friends? If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to see it, does it make a sound?

If my tears fall on my pillow and there’s no one there to see them, do they exist? Do they mean anything at all?

Dear friend,

It is me again. I’ve missed you. I am old now, older than I have ever been, but younger than I will be next time I speak to you. I am seventeen. Seventeen should probably be my most magical year, but I hope that isn’t the case, because I don’t feel very magical. I don’t tell jokes anymore, mostly because no one listens. Sometimes I will think of a really good one and tell it to myself, I will even get a good laugh out of it, but then I just feel stupid. Who laughs at their own jokes? If secrets really don’t make friends, I wonder if jokes do. I sing sometimes, but mostly just in my head. Noise irritates Beauty, and Strong doesn’t have time. I have a friend now, and she is what I would call “best”, but she doesn’t feel best. I know a lot of her secrets. Most of them make me sick. At first, I loved collecting them from her. Guess who I love, she would ask me. Guess what I want to be when I grow up? These are the kind of secrets I love. The ones I don’t love so much, the ones that make me sick, are the ones that say guess who I kissed? Guess who is in love with me? Guess who I have seen naked? And even worse, guess who has seen me naked? It was around this time that I made a new partner called jealousy. Who is this girl gaining all these secrets? How is she so lucky? My secrets pale in comparison to hers. I am sad most of the time, unless I am with Best. When I am with Best, I am at my happiest and my saddest at the same time. I am such a great pretender that I don’t know which one I am pretending. When Best would tell me her dark secrets, I would get butterflies in my stomach. This is when I learned that butterflies didn’t always mean happiness. Sometimes butterflies mean scared, or lonely, and in those times I call them bats. When I am around Best I almost always have bats in my stomach.

Beauty is sad now and strong is tired. I can’t even remember what the ceiling feels like or what Beauty’s voices sound like when she tells stories. Beauty stays out of my room now. Sometimes I wonder if she figured out that I was pretending to be asleep all those nights in my room. She never touches my cheek or whispers her secrets to me. I know she still has them though. I hear her sometimes telling them to the phone. Purple hits the carpet then. It stains my cheeks. I thought I was her sunshine. I wonder if the moon is as sad as I am about this change.

I haven’t gone swinging in years but I went today. I pumped myself higher and higher until I could see the tops of the trees. This is the highest I have ever been and I was doing it all on my own. It is funny because all I wanted was for someone to be there to push me. Or at least to see how high up I was getting. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it… I wanted to jump. I tried to jump. I couldn’t do it. I dropped purple gems down my cheeks until the swing stopped moving. I walked home alone.

Best has secrets and she has boyfriends. She even has the boyfriends that I wanted first. I let her have them though because I love her. I did let her have them, right? They didn’t choose her over me? I have so many secrets but I don’t have anyone to tell them to. I wish I had someone who wanted to know my secrets. I can’t feel sad for myself though. I have to be strong. I have to be funny. I make jokes, sometimes people laugh, and sometimes they don’t. It’s fifty-fifty. I am not fifty-fifty though. I am always consistent and I always laugh at my jokes. I will always think I am the funniest, probably because I will always be the funniest.

If a joke is told and nobody laughs, is it really a joke? I have stopped catching my tears. I don’t worry about anyone stealing them because nobody notices me anyways. In order for someone to steal them from me, they’d have to be watching me. The perks of being a wallflower: all of my tears are my own by default. I wonder if the moon can see me in this state, and I wonder if he tells anyone how I act at night. Once I asked him to look in on Best and tell me what she was doing with the boy who should have been mine. Moon just looked down at me and smiled that same smile. It’s a smile that I once thought was beautiful and mysterious but now I just think it is stupid and foolish. Sometimes I feel really very lonely even though I know that I am not. I know that I have Beauty and Strong and that they love me very much. I know that I have Best. But still sometimes it feels like I have no one. On those nights, I try to talk to the wall, but he doesn’t say anything back, probably because walls are stupid and boring. Probably because Wall wastes all of his time being jealous of Ceiling. But the real reason is probably because wall has seen all of my purple tears, and he can’t be bothered.

I am going to tell you a secret, friend. This is my deepest and darkest, and it is the thing I want most in the world. I want to kiss a boy. His name is Handsome and he is in one of my classes at school. He is amazing. Do you want to know what is so amazing about him? EVERYTHING. Sometimes it hurts to look at him. Even his hands are amazing. Can you imagine having amazing hands? I have caught myself on more than one occasion wondering how amazing his feet must be. I want him to wear sandals one day so I can get a peek. Handsome smiles at me a lot. He laughs at my jokes sometimes. He even noticed when I changed my hair, he even told me that he loved it. I couldn’t help myself then, the butterflies came over me and I smiled so big that I giggled. One time he asked to borrow a pen from me. He put the cap in his mouth, I watched him. I keep that pen in my pocket now, I think I will keep it forever. I might use it one day for a love spell. I love handsome so much that my body aches. I think the only thing that would make the aching stop is if handsome held me in his arms, or even just touched me. On our way out the door once he ran into me and knocked my books over. He grabbed my hand and I died a little bit inside, but in a good way. He asked me if I was ok and I couldn’t make any words come out. I wanted to be lovely and charming but all I could say was knock, knock because I knew for sure that I was good at telling jokes. Handsome laughed and said that maybe I should get my head checked. He did the most unfair thing in the world at that moment. He winked at me! And then he just walked away. How awful is life if winks from amazing boys are followed by goodbyes?

Sometimes at night, when I cry my purple tears, I imagine that Handsome is holding me so tight and wiping my tears away. I imagine that his lips are next to my ears. I pretend that he whispers to me. Everything is going to be just fine. I’m here now. I will never leave you. And I believe him because I love him more than life. The greatest thing is, I don’t even care if handsome sees my tears! I want him to see my tears, but not so much that I would go up to him and start crying or anything like that. In the quiet of my room with just the moon watching, I tell Handsome that I love him and that I would do anything for him. I show handsome my tears. He must like purple because he smiles when he sees them. I tell handsome my jokes and he laughs. Handsome gets so close to me that his hair tickles my cheeks and the butterflies come bigger than I have ever felt them in my life. Handsome whispers that I am beautiful and that I am his sunshine. Then he whispers something funny just to make sure that I am not pretending to be asleep. Then handsome tells me his secrets. The moon laughs and shakes his head at my make believe. I ask the moon if he can please tell me what Handsome is doing. I plead with him and I tell him that I want to know about Handsome’s secrets more than I ever wanted to know about what Best was up to. But that old moon just looks down at me with that smile that is both accepting of my mess and disapproving of it. The last thing I remember doing before sleep comes is sticking my tongue out at the moon. I wake up lonely, with purple stains on my pillow. Handsome and the moon are nowhere to be found.

Dear friend,

It seems as though I will never be older than I am right now, but I know that is not true. I feel much older than I did the last time I wrote you, but I won’t give you a number. Guess what I have done since we last spoke, friend? I hope you are ready for butterflies because I have got enough for both of us. Since we last spoke, I have changed. I have grown, I have evolved. I have kissed. I have laughed. I have cried. I made friends. I fell in love. I have lost friends. I have let go. I have left people behind. I hope I am not the smartest that I will ever be, because I still have a lot of questions. I wonder if I will ever know how smart or pretty or funny I am. I wonder if I will ever truly appreciate myself. I wonder if I will ever think I am good enough.

I still cry, my friend, but not so much for myself anymore. I cry for the lonely and broken, for the beaten and the forgotten. I cry for Charming, my very own brother that I still miss. I cry for Beauty and Strong, and all the pain that they have felt and the time that we have lost. I worry a lot more these days, more than I ever have. I feel as though I am happier now than I have ever been, and happier than I ever will be, though I know that is not the case. I know that there is much more joy to come in my life.

Best is no longer in my life, though at times I wish she was. I wish she could see what I have become. Best, it turns out, wasn’t the best thing for me. Do you know who helped me realize that? Handsome did. Remember how I told you that I loved him so? I was so young but I felt it then. I can feel it now, as if I saw him for the first time just yesterday. I wonder if he knows. If you love someone and do not tell them, does that love count? Can they still feel it? I must remember to ask.

Are you wondering about Beauty, friend? Beauty is still the most beautiful thing in the world. She is prettier than any person or item or treasure or photograph or sunset or moon. Beauty smiles when she sees me, Beauty misses me. She tells me that sometimes she sleeps in my empty room, wishing I was still a young girl, wishing she could still hold me. I wonder if she can see my tears on my pillow. We talk on the phone every day. Sometimes Strong gets on the line, just to say something funny so I will laugh. I still laugh. I think I get my humor from him. knock, knock. Who’s there? Bushes. The bushes are always there. Each conversation with Beauty begins with “do you want to know a secret?”, an offer that I always accept. Our conversations end with “you are my sunshine, always and forever”. I can hear the tears in her voice, as I suspect she can hear the tears in mine, but we don’t hold them against each other. I’ll tell you a secret for free, tears don’t always mean sadness. Sometimes they mean happiness or love, and the people who love you won’t ever hold your tears against you.

Sometimes I imagine Strong lifting Beauty up so that she can touch the ceiling. I haven’t seen it myself and I wouldn’t believe it except that it comes from a very reliable source (the moon).

There was a time when the moon knew all of my secrets. Sometimes I think he still does. The moon knows me well. He sits outside my little house in the quiet of the night which is still my favorite time to be awake. He smiles at me as I sit in the rocking chair, holding her. I hold her gently and rock her softly and sing to her. I tell her my jokes. I nourish her and hold her tight. I listen to her breathing. I tell her that purple soda is the best taste in the world, and that driving in your own car listening to music is a perfectly acceptable way to spend a Friday night. I warn her about jumps and about secrets and about bests. Even though I warn her about secrets, I give her all of mine. She is Stunning. Beauty and Strong think Stunning is perfect, and that’s because she is. She is the perfect mixture of Sunshine and Handsome, with a bit of Beauty and Strong. She will be funny like me, probably funnier. She will be kind like handsome. She will be beautiful and strong. When she is old enough I will tell her stories with all of the voices and Handsome will lift her high to the ceiling. She will be loved and happy and she will not be afraid to swing high all by herself, loosen her grip, and jump.

I don’t want to let her go but I do and when I do, I can see the moon smiling at her, like he knows something that I don’t and he probably does. After all, the moon knows what happens when a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it. The moon hears all of our words unspoken. The moon knows all of our secrets and sees all of our tears. And the moon loves us anyways.

I climb into my own bed and look at Handsome. I tell him a funny joke to see if he is faking. He is faking because he laughs. I am still the greatest pretender, but I don’t have to pretend much anymore. Handsome lifts up the covers and I climb underneath. I take his arms and I wrap them around me. I bury my face in his collarbone. I inhale, I smile. Handsome smells the very best. I feel his hands on my back and I know that I am safe. I know that Stunning is safe. Sometimes I think my name should be Lucky, because that is what I am. That is what we all are; Handsome, Stunning, and me. The Lucky Family. Sometimes I can’t believe that I have Handsome’s perfect hands in my life. Sometimes when he holds my hand I can’t help but laugh, and he asks me what is so funny. Bushes, I tell him. When we lie in bed, he is so close that his hair tickles my face as his lips hit my ears. He whispers the biggest, most incredible secrets to me. No one’s secrets are better than Handsome’s. Handsome’s secrets are the best because they are my secrets. He holds me tighter than I ever thought I would want to be held, as I tell him: your secret’s safe with me.

Things are perfect here in my house that is a home. It is a house filled with imperfections and mistakes and love and kindness. It is a house filled with sadness and happiness and greatness. It is a house where someone is always singing and the moon is always welcome. It is a house where no ceiling is too high, and no one is jealous. A house whose refrigerator is always filled with purple soda pop made from fake sparkly grapes. It is my house, it is my home. It is where I belong. It is where my secrets are told and kept, and my tears are wiped away and not used against me. It is a place where butterflies are just as welcome as bats, because it is important to know the difference. It is a home where nothing falls without notice, and all of my I love you’s are heard.

It is a house that is a home with purple carpet.

(Inspiration for this story comes from my childhood, insomnia, a friend, and the songs “secrets”, “a house is not a home”, and “me and the moon”.)

#story #writing #grape soda #love

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bigmouthbadsleeper · 7 years ago

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Both.

Who I am and who I once was are having lunch together.

Who I am is sad and who I once was is happy.

Who I once was loves the sun and who I am loves the moon.

Who I am doesn’t get much sleep but who I once was is always rested.

Who I once was laughs too much and who I am cries all the time.

Who I am knows nothing and who I once was doesn’t care to know anything.

Who I am is the winter, who I was is the summer.

It could be days between them, it could be years.

Or maybe it’s no time at all.

Maybe who I am and who I once was are the same person, and that person is just eating lunch alone.

Happy and sad.

In and out of love.

High and low.

Winter and summer.

The sun and the moon.

Maybe it’s possible

To be both at the same time.

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bigmouthbadsleeper · 7 years ago

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Mix Tape

“No new friends” she says.

“You always need friends” everyone else says.

But what about those of us who have only friends?

What about those of us who are always just friends?

“I have too many already” she says,

“My inn is full. My friendship cup runneth over.”

“No such thing”, everyone else says. But everyone else doesn’t get it.

“It’s a waste of time” she says.

“You’ve got nothing but time” everyone says back.

It doesn’t feel that way.

It feels a different way.

Like time is the water that swirls down the drain after you shave your legs.

A mixture of soap and hair and dead skin cells.

“There could be a colony of my skin cells in the sewer. Eating pizza and watching whatever the sewer version of Netflix is.”

“You’re high” he says to her.

“Get out”, she says back, “I don’t need friends.”

She makes too many mix tapes.

She shared too much too soon with too many.

So now she doesn’t share at all until she knows it’s safe.

But sometimes it doesn’t feel like it will ever be safe again.

As soon as he is gone, she wishes he were back again.

“No new friends,” I say to him, “I already have enough.”

He smiles and laughs with someone else, as if I care.

“No new friends” I say to myself, because sometimes you have to say things to yourself to make them real.

Sometimes you have to say them more than once.

And even then they don’t feel real.

I don’t need any new friends.

I don’t want any new friends.

But still, my first instinct is to make him a mix tape.

#mix tape #new friends #no new friends #poetry #poem

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bigmouthbadsleeper · 7 years ago

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Seat Stealer.

On Tuesdays I go to the movies. I go alone. I don’t eat popcorn, I don’t drink soda. I don’t get Reese’s Pieces. I don’t think about anything. I just watch the movie. Just me. Surrounded by people. Alone. In the dark. I watch.

The first time he sat by me I couldn’t breathe. I wondered how he knew where I was. I hadn’t seen him in months, maybe a year even. My lungs burned like the first time we got high together. I held my breath like he taught me. Held it until I couldn’t hold it anymore. Then I let go. He didn’t say a word. I didn’t say a word. He didn’t have popcorn. Or a drink. Or Red Vines. He just watched the movie. Just him and me. Together. In the dark. We watch.

The next time he came I was ready. He smiled at me. I didn’t smile back. I let him have the arm rest. Can’t risk touch. It would be much too much. Again I wonder how he found me. I don’t ask. He doesn’t say. We don’t have popcorn. But I wish I had a drink. There are no Milk Duds. We just watch the movie. Just him and me. Alone. Together. In the dark. We watch.

He comes again on week three. I smile first this time. He sits. He has popcorn, and the arm rest. Touch is still out of the question. But I eat some of his popcorn and he laughs. It reminds me of how he would laugh at my jokes. Even if they weren’t funny. (They always were.) It reminds me how I cried when he left. He just left. I stop eating the popcorn. I need a drink. There are no Sour Patch Kids. Just him and me and popcorn. Together. In the dark. We laugh.

He touches my face when he leaves. Leans in and whispers, “I love what you’ve done with your hair.” It reminds me of the first time he slept over. “Don’t call it that,” he teased. “Call it spending the night.” I smiled because I was happy. He smiled because he was happy. “I simply love what you’ve done with the place,” he said from my bed. It was just me and him and my sheets. Together in the dark of my room. I watched him. He watched me. We watched each other.

This time I save him a seat. I still don’t know how he finds me. I don’t ask. He doesn’t say. He has popcorn. I have the drinks. No one brings Junior Mints. We laugh as we sneak vodka into our Cokes. It reminds me of the party on the beach. This time we share the arm rest. We hold hands like we used to. We laugh like we used to. Back before the end. Back before her. Back before everything. We don’t say anything. We just hold hands. And drink our sodas. And eat our popcorn. Together. In the dark. We share.

He waits for a sad movie to kiss me. It feels like it did the last time. But he tastes like sorry and self doubt. I don’t know what I taste like. Maybe I taste like indifference. I don’t ask about her. He doesn’t tell about her. But I do wonder where she is and what I taste like. I wish he didn’t wait until I was crying to do it. But he did. And that’s why I probably taste like salt. And sadness. Even though I am the happiest I’ve been in a long time. Just him and me. And our hands. Together. In the dark. We explore.

“I can’t remember the last time I was happy,” he says on a different Tuesday. And I worry because I am happy. Even though I know they’re together. He doesn’t say. I don’t ask. But I know. He has his hand in my lap. It reminds me of the time we took the train into the city and he fell asleep on my shoulder. With his hands. In my lap. I didn’t move the entire two hours it took us to get there. I just sat. So still. “If I move it will ruin everything,” I thought. So I didn’t move. Just him and me. On a train. In a theater. Surrounded. Alone. Together. We sat.

“I have to tell you something,” he says. On the last Tuesday ever. “Not now,” I say, kissing him. “After.” He brings M & M’s because he knows they’re my favorite. There is no popcorn. But there is alcohol. And I load up because I know he’s going to talk about her. Even though I didn’t ask. He will tell. He sits next to me. He doesn’t touch me. He just watches me. I don’t move. If I move it will ruin everything. Except everything is already ruined. I cry throughout the movie. He cries too. We sit. Together. Not touching. Just crying. Even though it isn’t sad. Even though it’s supposed to be funny. Even though I have M & M’s. I hand him a red one. I take a blue one. I watch the movie. He watches me. We watch. Together. Chewing chocolate candies. We wait.

“She’s pregnant.” He leans over and whispers at the end. During the blooper reel. Everyone is laughing except me. And him. Surrounded but alone. We cry.

“YOU KNOW WHAT’S FUNNY?” I want to yell. What’s funny is he waits until I am crying to kiss me. What’s funny is he waits until I’m laughing to do something sad. What’s funny is I never asked about her. What’s funny is I used to love M&M’s and now I hate them. What’s funny is I never wanted any of this, I just wanted to go to the movies. Alone. With no popcorn. And no drinks. And no arm rests. Or hands in my lap. I didn’t want to taste anyone else’s sadness or regret. I wanted to be left. Alone. In the dark. To watch.

Now I go to the movies on Thursdays. He doesn’t come. I don’t get popcorn. I don’t drink anymore. I buy myself Butterfingers. They are my new favorite. I don’t think about anything. If the movie is sad, I cry. If the movie is funny, i laugh. If the movie is happy, I whisper “liars” at the screen. To no one. Because it’s just me. Surrounded by people. Alone. Without him. Just me. In the dark. I am.

#poem #poetry

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bigmouthbadsleeper · 7 years ago

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Why Should The Fire Die?

“You know I don’t like to do this,” I sigh, rubbing my temples and taking a sip of my drink. What am I drinking? I didn’t order it, Liz had, and it’s too fruity. Additionally, it doesn’t look full enough. I scan the room for our waiter so I can ask for another… whatever it is, or maybe so I can get something less diluted with strawberry jelly and more diluted with clear liquor, but I don’t remember what he (or she) looks like. I’m bad about looking people in the eye sometimes.

I’m in the middle of being set up on a blind date, which is why I’m drinking. Liz thinks I’ll say yes if I’m drunk. Joke’s on her though, because there’s nowhere near enough alcohol in this fruit cocktail to even get me buzzed. My least favorite thing about being single in a group full of couples is the blind date part. Couples have this really bad habit of thinking that a person can’t possible be happy if they’re living life as a single. Everyone wants the right to be a couple and to be married to the person they love, it seems. Which is fine, I get it. But I want to be able to exercise my right to be single, and to NOT be with whomever I choose without being hassled about it. I have intentions of making a shirt that says LEGALIZE SINGLE LIFE I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Being single isn’t something I’m terribly familiar with, since I was one half of a couple just over five weeks ago. Forty days to be exact. I’m still in the phase where I’m counting, which means I probably shouldn’t be set up with anyone. And yet, this is not the first time.

“I know but I really feel like this is going to be a match. I promise! I wouldn’t fix you up with someone if I didn’t know you would be perfect together!” The way she said “perfect” depressed me. The way she gestured so emphatically depressed me. The way she is now sipping her strawberry jelly concoction through the tiniest of straws depresses me. Everything about her depresses me right now, even her outfit. Who wears pink anymore? I swear this girl vomits pink; trust me, I’ve seen it. I’ve been best friends with Liz, whom I lovingly refer to as “Elle” (as in the letter “L”. We were tragically clever with our junior high notes), for fifteen years now. We met in seventh grade P.E. and bonded over how white our legs looked in our forest green gym shorts. I love her, but her details depress the hell out of me sometimes. I swirled the tiny pink umbrella around my mystery drink which was also, you guessed it, pink.

“Right, but this is the seventh guy you’ve said would be ‘perfect’ for me in the past month. I’m starting to think that maybe you don’t know what you’re talking about.” I made sure I emphasized the word “seven” so she knows I have been keeping track. I mean it lovingly, and I know she means well, but I’m serious. She doesn’t know what she’s doing when it comes to finding me a mate (I hate myself for even using those words, just so you know). She has experienced mild success in finding mates for some of our other friends, so she fancies her self a real matchmaker. At first it kind of hurt my feelings that she couldn’t find me a match, especially since she’s been able to match some of our other friends without knowing them half as well as she knows me. I try not to take it personally. It’s not that she doesn’t know me; in some ways she knows me better than anybody. I just don’t know what I want. It’s crippling. It’s not just with men either; I don’t really know what I want at all right now. That’s why I’m drinking a pink drink. I had been unable to choose what I wanted, so Elle ordered for me.

She rolls her eyes at me. “Please. Forget about them.” She says, swatting her hand in the air, as though years have passed since she last set me up on a blind date, when really it has been days. “Besides, it could have easily worked with any of those guys, if you’d had an open mind and hadn’t treated them like they were charity cases.” She possibly had a point there, but I didn’t let her know I thought so.

“But they were charity cases,” I reminded her, “I only went out with them because you asked me to.”

“Yes, and I appreciate that! Just like you should appreciate the fact that I am still trying to set you up. If I didn’t who else would?” She acts like this is a good thing; like this is something I want. It’s nothing close to what I want. I want to be left alone at the moment.

“No one,” I said pointedly, looking her right in the eyes for emphasis. What a wonderful world that would be. I could grieve in peace. Everyone who acts like a break-up isn’t the worst thing in the world is a liar. What about death, Gee? He could be dead. Wouldn’t that be worse? My friends had asked me this on our first post-split outing. No it would not be worse! I had said, and I still stand by that. Being dead means he is in the ground, rather than off falling in love with someone else. Being dead means I get to move on first. It means I would be mourning on behalf of the world, because we lost a good man, and not solely for myself, because he is an asshole who ran off with someone else. If he were dead, I wouldn’t have to watch his life play out on various forms of social media, which is something I allow myself to do once a week, because I am a masochist, and it’s my God-given right to feel shitty.

“I know, right? So this guy works with Drew at the firm. He’s single, obviously, dark hair, he can grow a beard, and he wears Burberry ties.” It’s killing me how excited she is about all of this. How can she be so excited about every single guy she finds?

“What makes you think we’re so perfect for each other?” I say, polishing off the remainder of the pink jelly, and poking myself in the eye with the pink umbrella.

“I just told you,” she says, and shoots me a look like, duh, because she’s referring to the thing she said about the ties and the beard. It’s painful really, the fact that she thinks these are reasons, but she just does. It’s how she functions. This is the woman who had only said yes to a date with the man who is now her husband because he had dark hair and light eyes, and was going to be a lawyer. “You don’t want to be alone forever, do you Gee?” she asks. She gives me a look like she pities me, which makes me feel kind of sick because I don’t want her pity, but also because I am scared that maybe I need it.

I look at her with her perfect blonde hair and expensive clothes, her doe-eyed expression and full lips turned into a pout. We used to be so much alike, but right now I can’t find one thing that connects us. Every single aspect of me is the opposite of her. I visit briefly the idea that we may not always be friends, which makes me feel awful and sad, but also a little bit free, kind of like letting a balloon go. It’s sad to watch it float away, but what is the alternative? Keeping it enclosed in an environment where it has no choice but to deflate after a few days of being in the way? I never understood the point of balloons, or flowers for that matter. Why give someone a gift with an expiration date? I don’t like to watch beautiful things suffer and die. I’d much rather let them go on my own terms. I’ll always regret the fact that I didn’t end my relationship with my boyfriend when things were lively and colorful, instead of hanging on desperately and suffocating both of us in the process. But who wants to throw flowers out when they’re fresh, right? You’d be crazy to do that. Somehow it seems less crazy to watch them wither away in front of your eyes, only throwing them away when their once pleasant fragrance turns to stink.

“Earth to Gee! Hello?” Elle is waving her perfectly manicured hand in front of my face. “Zone out much? Hey, are you- are you crying?” she looks around, embarrassed. I bring my fingers with their chipped black polish to my face to find that she’s right- there appears to be a salty discharge sprouting from my eyes. This is unexpected but not shocking. I mean, if it were me six months ago, this would be unheard of, but lately my emotions have become more and more unpredictable. It wouldn’t be so bad if I could control them, but control is a luxury I’ve lost somewhere in the past forty days. My face is hot, and the tears are coming faster now.

“Gee!” Elle is whisper-shouting at me now, implying that I’m causing a scene. I always thought she would be such a good mother because she is an expert at whisper-shouting. The thought of her bearing children makes me cry even harder.

“Oh, Elle!’ I sob, grasping for her hands frantically, “I don’t want to watch the flowers die! You’ve got to help me take them out now, before it’s too late. Please, Elle. I’m not strong enough to do it while they’re fresh. It has to be you, Elle. Don’t you see? It has to be you.”

#short story #writing

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bigmouthbadsleeper · 7 years ago

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A Gnat With A Side Of Ranch.

Do you know that ranch dressing is one of my very favorite things? I ask for a side of ranch practically everywhere I go. It’s actually kind of annoying. I like it on pizza, chicken, fries, burgers… I draw the line at sweet stuff, but really that line is written in pencil, not ink. I’m going to tell you my favorite story that involves ranch dressing. Are you shaking your head right now, thinking I’m writing you an article that is all about ranch dressing? Are you doubting my story telling skills? Oh, ye of little faith. This is a story about the time my husband and I had to make an emergency run to the grocery store to get some ranch dressing for the pizza we were having for dinner. We had to hurry because we left our pizza baking in the oven. (Disclaimer: My Time to Blossom does not advocate leaving your dinner to cook whilst you run a fool’s errand). We had thirty minutes to go to the store, grab some ranch, and hurry home.

We walked into the store and headed for the refrigerator section of the produce department. As any dressing aficionado knows, this is where the best store-bought ranches live. On our way there, we got “stuck” behind a man in a wheelchair. Something about this man caught me off guard. He was a little bit scary looking. He appeared to be old, but he wasn’t old—if that makes sense. He was frail. His fingernails were painted with a glittery nail polish. He had long hair with clips in it and smeared eye liner rimming his eyes. His ears were pierced all the way around. He had two bags on his wheelchair that were overflowing with personal belongings. He had a baseball bat on the back that he used to hang empty bags, presumably used to carry items like groceries. I wasn’t sure, but it looked as if maybe his wheelchair was also his home.

He was balancing all of his groceries on his lap, wheeling himself around with one arm and holding his items with the other. I was impressed by his skills and became sort of mesmerized by him. I found myself wondering what kind of life he had lived to end up where he was: alone, handicapped, homeless. He looked like maybe he was on drugs, and that made me nervous. I noticed a sign on his back, but couldn’t get close enough to see what it said. I’m still not sure how it happened, but after we got the ranch we came for, we ended up behind this man in the checkout line. Immediately I became transfixed again. I watched each item that he placed on the conveyer belt. Yogurt. Bananas. Hamburger patties. V-8 drinks. He mentioned to the cashier that he might have to put some things back if it turned out that he didn’t have enough money to pay for everything. Now that we were closer to him, I was able to see some of what the sign on his wheelchair said. There were lots of words on there that were covered by his belongings, but from what I could see, this man was sick with AIDS. I was watching a dying man decide which foods he could afford. My heart sunk down into the pit of my stomach, and I felt like I was going to be sick. This man is someone’s son. He was born the same way I was. He was once a baby, a toddler, a teenager. Where was his mother? Did he have any friends? What kind of choices had he made in his life? I wanted to save him, and I’m not even sure from what.

What happened next is one of the most profound spiritual experiences I’ve ever had. A voice came to me, loud and clear. I don’t know whose voice it was, but sometimes I remember it as my grandma’s. The voice said, “If Jesus were here today, this is who he would be hanging out with.” My entire body was filled so strongly with the spirit, I don’t know if I had ever felt anything like it. There is a reason I am still talking about this experience three years later, you guys. My heart was bursting with love for a man I had never even seen before. I felt an urge to take care of him, to give him a place to sleep, to buy him a meal, to cut his hair. I just wanted him to know that he was loved not only by me but by his Savior.

When the cashier finished ringing him up, it turned out that he was over budget a bit on his groceries. I watched him carefully consider each item. Keep the bananas. Lose the yogurt. Keep two of the V-8’s, but lose the other four. He came to a package of frozen meat patties. “Put those back,” he said quietly. I couldn’t believe it. That was so much protein! How many dinners could those hamburgers provide him? Like a month’s worth! I turned to my husband. I was silently sobbing at this point. “I want to buy him the meat,” I whispered, “but I can’t say it; I need you to say it.”

“Hey, my friend!” my husband began. “We’d like to buy those hamburgers for you.”

The man wouldn’t even make eye contact with my husband.

“They’re $26,” the cashier said to us. “Do you still want to buy them?”

My husband looked at the man again, “Can we get those for you?”

The man kept his head down and whispered, “If you want to.”

The cashier finished ringing the man’s groceries up and then rang up our ranch and the meat patties. We were poor newlyweds, so we charged all of it on a credit card. I didn’t care. I’m probably still paying off interest on these meat patties, and I still don’t care! I was silent through the whole ordeal; I knew if I started to talk I would lose it and then I would just be known as this insanely unbalanced woman who bawls uncomfortably in check out lines. As I watched the man roll away with his groceries, I felt sad. I wanted to follow him and make sure that he was going to be okay, but I knew that I couldn’t. I looked back at the woman behind us in line. She was crying, too.

This story and this man are so close to my heart that I am weeping as I am typing this right now. I can’t even tell this story in person without crying and getting the chills. I don’t know why I was able to have that experience that night, but I am grateful for it. For a small moment, I saw someone the way the Savior sees them. And not someone that I love already, like my family or friends. Not someone rich or powerful or outwardly beautiful. Someone who was having a bad night. Someone who was sick. Someone who didn’t have enough money to provide himself with basic human needs. Someone who seemed different from me in every way possible. And yet, when it came right down to it, we were so much the same—both needing the forgiveness of our Heavenly Father and the love of our Savior.

I think a lot about when Jesus taught amongst the Pharisees. The Pharisees were thought to be the most righteous and spiritual people around. They made sure that everyone saw how good and holy they were. They wanted everyone to see that they were pure, so they only spent time around other people who they thought were good enough or clean enough. When Jesus walked among them, he did things much differently. He ate with the sinners and the rejects. He spent time with and taught those who were looked down on and those who the Pharisees thought were unrighteous and unclean. When they saw Jesus among these people, they accused him to his disciples. “How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners?” When Jesus heard them ask this he answered, “They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick.” This was a rebuke to those who would never let themselves be caught with someone who didn’t look or act the way they thought was right. Jesus spent a lot of time around those who were the most different from Him because it was those people who needed him the most.

If anyone today runs the risk of ending up like the Pharisees, it’s those of us who are members of the Church. We are the ones who know the scriptures like they did. We are those that believe we are trying to keep all of God’s commandments. When Jesus speaks to the Pharisees, we should listen as if he were actually correcting us—not some group of faraway bad guys. The Pharisees cared more about looking like they were good people than actually being good people. They would never be caught spending time with the “sinners,” the homeless, and the outcasts. The funny thing is, instead of keeping them clean, this made them sinners and hypocrites. Do we ever do the same thing? Who are the sinners and outcasts today? Do we treat them more like Jesus did, or more like those Jesus rebuked?

The Pharisees made a really big deal out of little rules, and they had a LOT of rules. They had rules for how many steps you could take without making the Sabbath unholy. They had rules saying you couldn’t bake on the Sabbath. You weren’t even supposed to look in a mirror on the Sabbath, because that would risk you seeing a gray hair and tempt you to pluck it out. If you plucked it out, that would count as “reaping,” which apparently was not allowed in the field or on your scalp. And yet, even with all of their super strict and specific rules, they ignored some of things that matter most. They were so worried about looking holy to other people by acting and speaking a certain way that they shunned and ignored the people who needed them. Jesus had an amazing way of describing how hypocritical they were. He said that they would “strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel,” meaning that they would strain and make a fuss about swallowing a gnat, and then immediately swallow a whole camel like it was no big deal. They were so worried about their friends catching them looking in a mirror on the Sabbath that they ignored helping the poor and kept entire groups of people from being around them.

I grew up in an area with a lot of LDS members. It took me a long time to separate the actual gospel of Christ from the Mormon culture that I grew up around. I had grown up thinking that there wasn’t a place for me in the Church, when really there just wasn’t a place for me in the Mormon culture that I had grown up in. The more I worked on my personal relationship with Christ, the deeper that relationship became, and I was able to gain a stronger sense of who I am. I saw myself the way He sees me. Not as a perfect person, because none of us are, but as a good, kind, and loving person who was trying her best to make everyone around her feel loved and accepted.

I’ve not always made the best choices in my life. I have made mistakes here and there, and some of those mistakes have made certain people think that I am not religious at all. When people find out that I am a Mormon, and that I am “religious,” they often say, “I knew there was something different about you.” I know that on the outside, I don’t always match what some have culturally come to know as “Mormonism,” but my insides match those simple gospel teachings of the Savior. “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” “Serve one another.” “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.” I am not perfect in all of these principles, but I am trying my best every day. I know that The Savior makes up for what I lack—the same way He does for everyone.

Jesus came to earth to die for our sins, but He also came here to set a perfect example of how we should live. Though we will never be perfect as He was, we can always read and study the stories in the scriptures so that we can better understand how God wants us to be. When we know better, we will do better. These stories, combined with prayer, help me to understand which things are actual gospel principles, and which things are just cultural ideas about the gospel. What is the gnat you’re straining to swallow? What is the camel you’re swallowing whole? I testify to you that if you strive to have a deeper personal relationship with Christ by studying His life and praying to Heavenly Father, the Holy Ghost will confirm to you which principles are most important for you to follow and which things are mostly cultural ideas, and therefore may be less important. You see now, this wasn’t really a story about ranch dressing at all.

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bigmouthbadsleeper · 7 years ago

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In Which Your Surrogate Big Sister Talks About Aging.

I don’t remember what I ever thought turning thirty would be like when I was younger. I don’t think that I considered much about aging when I was a kid. That’s not to say I wasn’t numbers-obsessed, because I was. As a society, we are. I know that I looked forward to sixteen because it meant driving, and I looked forward to eighteen because it meant adulthood. As a kid, I thought that I would be married by twenty. Then when I got to be twenty and still wasn’t married, I said 25. At 25, I stopped counting.

When I got to junior high, I started obsessing over numbers on a scale. I still remember being weighed in eighth grade P.E. in front of the whole class. “My overalls are really heavy,” was what I said when I sat back down on the hard wood floors of the gym. While other girls were counting on both hands the boys they had kissed, I was counting with one thumb the one I loved and wished so desperately would love me back. He never did.

I continued to count guys in my early twenties. By 25 I could use two fingers to show how many I’d kissed. I didn’t have enough fingers or toes to count the ones that chose my best friend over me, or said they would date me if only I would lose weight. I stopped counting how many times I was told what a great friend I was. I thought a great friend wasn’t a bad thing to be. I just didn’t know I’d be stuck in that spin cycle for the next five years. My love life felt like reruns of a bad sitcom without the laugh track.

I like to think thirty was a bit of a turning point for me. It’s not like I’m completely rehabilitated and no longer counting, or trying to live up to society’s harsh expectations or anything, but I’m softening. I still struggle with some of the same things I struggled with in my twenties, but I started to count things differently when I turned thirty. Hours spent with friends became more important than how many boys I kissed. The joy I felt from writing a good piece became more important than whether or not I had a book deal. The scale is still my number one nemesis, but I’ve started to appreciate my body for the amazing machine that it is. My body can get up early to exercise. It’s hard, but my body persists. My body can dance. My body can drive my car. My body can run around Disneyland. My body can work so I can support myself and contribute to my family. My hands can cook and clean and create things. My mind can think up stories and string words together until they make sense. Getting older means my appearance is changing. Things are gradually starting to sag. It’s not my favorite thing in the world, to be honest. I’m working on not caring about my drooping stomach or the lines on my face. I’m working on being brave. I’m working on being patient. I’m working on becoming something great. Everything takes work. I’m working, I’m working, I’m working.

I remember driving in the car with my mom when I was twelve. Deana Carter’s “Did I Shave My Legs For This?” album was on the stereo, and we were listening to “Strawberry Wine,” a song I listened to no fewer than 378 times my seventh grade year. There’s a line in the song that says, “I still remember when thirty was old.” I’d listened to it hundreds of times before, but I had never considered that line much. It stands out to me in this particular memory because of my mother’s reaction to it. “Thirty is old, chick,” my mother said, out loud but quietly, to no one. She was 32 at the time with three children, two jobs, and a husband who worked graveyards. I remember wondering why my mother felt that way. Though I hadn’t ever imagined being thirty, it didn’t seem so old to me. Looking back on it now, I think she had just lived so many lives by the time she had turned thirty that it probably did seem old to her. She worked hard, raised children, took care of her parents and siblings. She had done more than I have or probably ever will by the time she turned 28. It’s funny how people can live in the same exact place but live two completely different lives.

I don’t think we should be afraid to embark on new decades of our lives, because each one brings something new and fresh and challenging. I know it sounds trite and cheesy, but every day is a blank slate, and you have the pen to write whatever story you want to write. The future is unknown, which is always scary, but underneath that fear, I feel excited about it. I am lucky to know the people I know. I have a wonderful family. I have Netflix. I have really amazing pajama pants that can almost pass for regular pants. I have pizza. I have a sharp mind and a bright soul and a dark heart.

I think a lot about the daughter I will have someday and what I will tell her about thirty, or any other age really. I want to be able to say that thirty is the year you stop worrying about scales and counting broken hearts, but I’m 33 now, and I still think about both of those things every so often. That is an unavoidable part of life, and there’s nothing age can do about that. I will tell her how the world is so beautiful, and sometimes when your heart breaks it’s because of the beauty of things and not because of the ugly. I want her to know that sometimes things seem so unbearably dark, but it’s only so we can better see the blinding light of the good that surrounds us. I wonder when I will get a daughter, or if I ever will. If I do, I hope she is smarter than I am. I hope she hurts less and is more careful about who she shares herself and her mixtapes with. I hope she knows that, wherever she is now, she is so, so loved.

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bigmouthbadsleeper · 7 years ago

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Tragic Spinster Discovers Bigfoot, Or: How A Cynic Fell In Love.

I’ve seen the same doctor for ten years, and she is amazing. She knows pretty much everything about my life; we are practically best friends at this point. When I got engaged, I made an appointment so I could tell her about it. During the time of my engagement, I was also planning a solo trip to Europe that I had booked before I met my husband. I didn’t want to change those plans just because I had gotten engaged, so I was going to go despite the fact that I was planning a wedding at the same time. During this time in my life, I was going through a lot of changes—probably more than ever before. Because of this, I was feeling overwhelmed and more anxious than ever, and I found myself yet again crying in my doctor’s office. The more things change, the more they stay the same, am I right? After listening to me vent about my fears and anxieties, along with my excitement, my doctor smiled and said, “I think this relationship, along with your trip, actually will be quite healing for you.” I’m one of those girls whose doctor doubles as her therapist. (I would be embarrassed by that but I’m too busy thinking it’s awesome.)

Along with the feelings of anxiety that are attached to such milestones (turning 30, traveling to Europe, getting married), I was also experiencing all the wonderful feelings that occur as a result of being a part of a loving relationship. While I have loved boys before, I have never been completely and fully in love, nor have I been completely and fully loved in return. Love fascinates me. I grew up thinking it was some sort of fairy tale affair, full of orchestral movements and huge declarations outside bedroom windows in the middle of the night. When I entered my twenties and started experiencing life with the opposite gender, I realized I was wrong. There were no grand gestures meant for me, just a bunch of one-sided feelings and misread signals. I started treating love like Big Foot. Some people had seen it and knew it existed; I just wasn’t one of those people. I wasn’t a member of that club. I spent many nights wondering why I hadn’t been chosen when I wanted it so desperately. I imagine a similar feeling being felt by some dedicated Big Foot truther who spends his life searching for Big Foot only to overhear some woman at a diner say she saw him on a camp out. She wasn’t looking for him, but there he was anyway trying to break into her Ford Focus.

(smdh even Goofy got to see Big Foot.)

It’s been three years since the elusive Big Foot finally revealed himself to me, and in some ways I’m still shocked that it ever happened. I have fallen in love truly and completely, and in some ways it feels just like people said it would. In other ways it has been different, because love is an individual experience, and it will always be a little bit different for everyone. The love I have is different than my parents’ love, or the love my friend has with her husband, or the love that Kristen Bell and Dax Shepherd have. Over the course of my marriage, I’ve enjoyed learning more and more about the type of love that my husband and I have. Since I am obviously an expert now (lol), I wanted to share some of what I’ve learned about love, and being in love, because let me tell you, I have learned a lot (I know almost literally nothing, you guys).

LOVE MEANS:

Never having to watch Netflix alone. This is a major plus for me, as one of my favorite things to do is force those I love to watch the television I love and then discuss it with me afterward. On my recommendation, my husband and I have watched “30 Rock,” “Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad,” and “Bob’s Burgers” together. I’m still trying to get him to watch “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Felicity” with me, but so far he’s refused. Nobody’s perfect!

Never having to sleep alone. I actually thought I would hate this part of being married, because I slept alone in a big bed for so many years, but it’s actually one of my favorite parts. Occasionally I fall asleep on my husband’s chest, rolling off somewhere around midnight, and then back on again around 3 am when I wake up and realize he’s on the opposite end of the bed from me. I am a very annoying person who wonders if she did something wrong because her husband drifts during sleep. One of my favorite middle-of-the-night moments happened a couple months after I got married, during a particularly hot evening. My husband and I woke up on opposite sides of the bed, covered in sweat, our duvet in a pile at the foot of the bed. He pulled me towards him to claim my usual space on his chest, realized immediately that it was far too hot to be touching that much, and muttered groggily, “Let’s just hold hands.” And that’s what we did. So cheesy! The majority of people that I talk to seem to not like to be touched during sleep, so I realize I’m in the minority here—this is what I mean when I say everybody’s love is different!

Not being able to run your A/C as much as you want to because it costs too much money and you are a poor newlywed couple. Please see previous story about being soaking wet in the middle of the night. This is the cost of love, people—and it is steep.

Never having to fill your car up with gas. Did you know your significant other/life partner will do this for you?? Is this the biggest perk to having a significant other? I can’t say. But yes.

Your family doubles in size. Really, you get to just inherit his family and friends! They are legally obligated to love and cherish you and shower you with compliments! Just kidding. They aren’t obligated, but most of them love you anyway. Isn’t that great?

Spending a lot more money on food. Why? Because it is fun to go to restaurants with your boo.

You get to flip the arm rest up at the movies. Seriously though, how long have you been waiting to do that—for something other than napping at the movie theater or storing extra treats, I mean?

Being excited to come home at the end of the day. Walking through my door at the end of the day is pretty much like walking through the gates of Disneyland. I just need to find a way to make hand-dipped corn dogs and Mickey pretzels in my kitchen, and I’d be set for life.

Feeling safe even when something scary is happening. I’ve been through lots of scary things with my husband. Rain storms, horror films, third degree burns, bad acne… Once I went to the ER, and he rubbed my legs for me the entire time I was in there. He holds my hand whenever I have to get blood work done, because it is truly my least favorite activity. Once I thought someone was breaking into our house because I heard a really scary noise, and he went out to inspect—no questions asked. It ended up being nothing, but after that we got some weapons (aka baseball bats) in case it happens again.

Your issues are still issues. I’m putting this in here because I know there’s this idea amongst young girls and maybe amongst young men, too, that when somebody loves you, you automatically love yourself, and all your problems and neuroses go away. THIS IS NOT REALITY. I cannot stress that enough. If you are having problems, getting a boyfriend or getting married will not make those problems magically disappear. If anything, it throws those problems under a magnifying glass and makes them appear bigger than ever. I am happily married, but I still have to work hard every day on loving and accepting myself and making myself better. Having someone who loves me unconditionally is my happiest truth, but on some of my darker days, it still isn’t enough to shake me out of it. The great thing is that I don’t have to face my dark thoughts alone anymore.

There was a long period of time in my adult life where I thought I would never find anyone to share my life with. I really thought I would have to die to find the love of my life on the other side, and I had resolved myself to being “just” the good friend and the cool aunt. I was okay with that for the most part. I made a good single life for myself—surrounded by good friends and family. I know some of you are single, and you might think nothing in this article applies to you, but this part does: Your romantic relationships do not define who you are or what you’re worth. Life is about so much more than how many boyfriends you’ve had or how many people you have kissed. Though I do think love is life’s greatest blessing, I don’t think it has to be romantic love. Love can be found anywhere. For some people, it’s a rainy day, a good book, a road trip, or your favorite song. Love is in the earth, in the trees and mountains, and in the oceans. It’s in every flower, every bite of pizza, every late-night drive. It’s in the subtle quiet moments and in the darkest, loudest, busiest days. It’s all around us, really. And it belongs to everyone. How cool is that? It’s pretty much the best thing that I know. Even better than seeing Big Foot.

#love #relationship #bigfoot

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bigmouthbadsleeper · 7 years ago

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Best Friends Means.

There are certain things you can get away with when you're a best friend, simply because you are. These things are usually embarrassing/socially unacceptable/unattractive/rude, but a best friend understands that just because you act that way sometimes doesn't mean you actually are that way (this is why best friends are the best). Here is a short list of very real things that I do with my best friends on the reg that I wouldn't do with anyone else on the planet. No judging.

Send her ugly selfies/photos that portray my life in an unflattering way. Allowing someone to receive an ugly picture of me is probably the deepest level of trust I could ever grant a person. Some of the pics I send to my best on the regular include, but are not limited to: crying selfies, zit cream selfies, double chin selfies, piles of laundry on my bedroom floor, and my sweaty gym clothes. Sometimes I just need her to know how messy my house is so she can understand how I am coping with the stresses of daily life. And sometimes I just need to show her how many zits I have so she can compliment my inner beauty. Best friends are great at knowing just what you need to hear and saying it in just the right way.

Engage in “boy talk.” This includes but is not limited to: whining, crying, over-analyzing, and over-thinking about a guy. I hate boy talk, okay? But I boy talk frequently. Sometimes it makes me want to set myself on fire, so I totally understand if my friend wants to be the one to light the match. Bests are great because they keep the eye rolls and sighs to a minimum. And they never tell you you’re a crazy person for reading into things or analyzing text messages. They just listen to you analyze—and occasionally doze off (which is totally understandable; I make myself tired, too). Now that I am married, I do a lot less boy talk, since most boy talk when you’re single consists of asking, “Do you think he likes me?” or “What do you think he means?” over and over again until you and your best friend are blue in the face. Luckily, I don’t have to worry about stuff like that with my husband, but my best friends are still there to answer all the questions I have about marriage if I need them to.

Discuss my workout schedule. Aside from the occasional twitter post about how much I hate going to the gym, I don’t talk about how much I go to the gym, mostly because I know that nobody wants to hear it. And I get it, gym posts are annoying. But sometimes I just want people to know how amazing I am for getting up early to exercise! I always appreciate the fact that I can text my best and tell her how many miles I ran and how many calories I burned. She will send me a text telling me how amazing I am and add the clapping emoji, which I think is a nice touch and also very supportive!

Get freaky emotional. I bet you guys think I save all my emotions for the pieces I write, huh? Well I don’t! It may or may not shock you to know that I am much more emotional IRL than I am URL. Sometimes I need carbs to help me work through my emotions, and sometimes I need my best friends. My best lets me text her and tell her that I am dying because it feels like there is an angry bee in my uterus, and also I saw a gif of a baby elephant sneezing and haven’t been able to stop crying since. Also, what do you think happened between Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears, and why do people cheat on each other? Why does everyone have to move away, and why do people die? And have you ever seen that video of the baby kitten falling asleep? Do you think true love exists? What if I never have kids, and do you want to get dinner somewhere like right now? Is this exhausting you? Welcome to the wide, wild world of being an emotional human. Now you know what a saint my best friend is because she lets me indulge in all these “what ifs” whenever I need to. And when needed, she offers her honest opinion on them. (I really am still sad about Justin and Britney, you guys.)

Sing. You may not know this about me, but I love to sing. I love it so much. I don’t sing at a normal, socially acceptable volume, though. I sing at a very loud volume. How loud? Louder than I should. I usually only do it when I’m alone, but when I’ve had a really hard day, I will go for a drive with my best; I will sing at the top of my lungs; and she will just sit there like an angel and let me. It’s so embarrassing, that I don’t even like to think about it really. I get really into my songs, and I know my behavior is not what one would call “normal.” I can’t help it, though. When I feel it, I gotta express it, you dig?

Pig out. I’m sure a nicer way to say this is, “Indulge in all the fine cuisine that life has to offer,” but that makes it sound way too fancy. The kind of pigging out I do with my friends is not fancy. Sometimes it’s food that we order at drive-thru at 3 am, and sometimes it’s meeting at Red Robin and getting clucks and fries AND an appetizer. Anyone will share dessert with you, but the best friendships of your life will be formed over a hot plate of mozzarella sticks or potato skins—and extra sides of ranch. Always, always order extra sides of ranch.

Let her take pictures of me. Confession: I hate having my picture taken. I’m a selfie queen by nature, which means I have no problem with authorized photos taken of myself, by myself, but I have a huge problem when other people have cameras and are taking photos of me without my consent. It’s so bad that on my wedding day when I walked out of the temple I put my bouquet over my face so I would just look like a flower head if anyone took any photos of me and my husband without my permission. It makes me sound like a real cow, I know. I’m just extremely self conscious, and it gives me such bad anxiety to have my photo taken by someone else. I can’t explain it! Guess who I trusted enough to let her take my wedding pictures an hour before I got married? My best friend. And every time we go to Disneyland, she takes candid shots of me eating a corn dog or riding the tea cups. She knows all my best angles, and she never, ever does the squat and snap. I can hear you asking yourself what the squat and snap is, so I will tell you. It’s when a person crouches down to ground level zero before they take your photo! Why anyone would do this I’ll never know, but the amount of people that do is truly shocking. No one in the world looks good from below; why would we want to preserve that look in a photograph for our posterity to look at one day?

I’m sure there are lots more embarrassing things I do in the company of my bests, but in the interest of saving time and to save my pride, I’ll stop there. I love all of my friends, not just the ones I consider “bests.” I have a hard time not calling every friend I have my “best” friend, though, because I really and truly believe that they are the best. I always say I don’t need new friends, but that’s only because I don’t think that I could find friends that are any better than the ones I already have. I’m proven wrong on this every so often, when I meet someone on Twitter, we bond over mutual love for a TV show or food, and then a URL friend becomes an IRL friend and my inner circle expands to make room for her. It’s a pretty great feeling when that happens.

Learn to recognize the people that you want in your inner circle, and keep them close and treat them right. In order to have good friends, you must first be a good friend. I say that all the time but only because it is a truth that should be universally acknowledged! For a lot of years I was the better friend in a lot of my relationships. I was backstabbed and left out and made fun of and ditched. There were times when I thought I would never find another person who understands, loves, and supports me. And then I graduated high school, and I met a whole bunch of people who loved and accepted me just as I am. There are a lot of amazing people out there, and I consider myself super (hashtag) blessed that I’ve crossed paths with the ones I have. Human relationships are no joke, guys. Be good to the ones who deserve good, and kick the rest out of your life. Ain’t nobody got time for hop-ons.

#bffs #friendship #bestfriend

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bigmouthbadsleeper · 7 years ago

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Movies In My Mind

I’ve always had a very vivid imagination. As a child it served me well because I was rarely bored, and as a teenager it got me through some pretty lonely times. As an adult it pretty much just annoys me. I get these thoughts in my head sometimes, these little scenarios that come out of nowhere. I don’t know how or when I started doing this, but at this point, I’ve thought of them so many times that they play out like movies in my mind. These thoughts can happen anytime- while I’m working out, driving, cleaning, working, etc.- and though I know that I have control over them, they can still cause me to have a panic attack. I realize that giving power to these scenarios is a waste of my time, but my mind often lacks reason and logic. I’ll be minding my own business, shampooing my hair, or doing some other routine task, and one of these scenarios will pop into my head and my heart will start to race and I’ll start breathing heavy. I have to remind myself that nothing has even happened, I’m still in the shower, washing my hair, and not falling down a flight of stairs exposing my holey underwear (I don’t even own holey underwear). I’ve complied a list of the most common scenarios that I torture myself with on a regular basis. You might be wondering, why is she sharing this with the world? I guess it’s because I think it’s kind of funny, and I’m hoping someone else will find it funny, too. Also, I figure I can’t be the only one who does this. Maybe someone else out there can relate, and we can bond over the ridiculousness of our brains.

Tripping, falling, and exposing my underwear. Okay, so this has actually kind of happened to me once. I was walking down the hall at church, in between classes, and I saw a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. I headed towards her to say hello, and somehow my skirt fell off! I didn’t even notice it was happening until the skirt was at my ankles, restricting my steps. I still cringe every time I think about it. I mean how do you even recover from that?? Full disclosure: I was wearing Spanx. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse, but I’m inclined to say it’s worse.

Letting go of my steering wheel on a curved road. Would I ever do this? No. But what freaks me out is that I COULD IF I WANTED TO. Doesn’t it ever make you rethink things when you realize how in control of your own destiny you are? I’ll be driving and the thought will come to me and I will start to wonder things like, “Where would my car go?”, or “How long would it be before my car stopped moving? Would it just stop, or would it stop because it crashes into a wall?” Oh yeah, I’m driving right now. Better pay attention. Yikes.

Falling off of the treadmill/elliptical. If I were the star of my own television show, there’d be a scene where I fall off of my treadmill at least five times per season. “But wouldn’t that get old?” you might ask? No, it would not. Falling is always top comedy. Falling while on a fast-paced, moving belt just makes it that much funnier. This has only come close to happening one time when I had a tangled up earbud fiasco. I got a little too cocky and tried to untangle the rat’s nest while I was running. I managed to get my footing and stop myself from falling, but it was a close call, guys. So close that I’m starting to sweat right now just thinking about it.

Losing a tooth. Not like losing a tooth when I was a kid and they were bb teeth that were meant to be lost. Like losing a fully grown, high school graduate, adult tooth. This is probably my biggest fear. It started when I was young, probably because I saw an episode of Jerry Springer or some other daytime talk show and there was a person sans teeth on there, which of course led me to freak out about the state of my own bicuspids. What would I do if my tooth got knocked out?? Once I read that if it happens, you should put the tooth in milk to preserve it, which is why I always carry a packet of milk with me. JK I don’t, but I really have thought about it because that’s how scared I am of this happening to me. Seriously you guys, HOW WOULD I RECOVER FROM THAT? I am pretty positive I couldn’t rock the missing teeth look. And this is coming from a girl who used to wear sweat pants with the name JOE JONAS emblazened on the legs out in public. In her twenties. On the regular.

Walking into the men’s room on accident. I’m going to be really honest here, the men’s room is a complete mystery to me. I have no idea what goes on in there. I caught a glimpse of one once and there were toilets on the ground- ON THE GROUND I SAY!! That seems risky to me. Usually this paranoia hits me after I’ve finished running on the elliptical at the gym and I’ve still got my headphones on and I’m all disoriented and sweaty. I mean, the boy and girl restrooms are right next to each other, I could easily meander into the wrong side! Most of the restrooms I see are marked with an “M” or a “W” which is practically the same letter even! Whose idea was that?? I think this fear might be rooted in the fact that when I was in high school, I had a job as a janitor basically, cleaning a medical office. I thought no one was left in the office so I was just carrying on like I owned the place, and stormed right into the bathroom with my cleaning supplies in my hands and I walked in on a guy going pee! I really did this! And guess what he did?? This image still haunts me to this day. He kept peeing, turned his head around, gave me a little nod, and calmly said, “Sup?” A part of me died in the bathroom that day, my friends. I can’t talk about it anymore because I am getting shortness of breath just remembering the harrowing details.

Ripping up money. Now this is one I would definitely never do, obviously!! But one day I was playing with a hundred dollar bill (because that’s what hundredaires like myself do in their free time) and I thought about how easily I could rip it into pieces and I would be $100 less rich. How weird is that? Money is just paper?? Is that really the best system for our currency? I could be $100 less rich with one tear. Ugh. That scares me worse than the Chucky movies, if I’m being honest.

Sending the wrong text to the wrong person. This one plagues me on a daily basis, because I am an avid texter, and I text multiple people throughout the day. I’m married now, but when I was single I used to make myself sick worrying about sending a text ABOUT the guy I like and the details of our non-relationship TO the guy I like, instead of to my friend. What if my boss gets the text I meant to send to my mom where I vent about my job? Or worse, what if someone (anyone) gets the text I meant to send to my mom about how I really need to have a poo but can’t go in the toilets at work? I know what you’re thinking, I shouldn’t be texting these things to people. You’re wrong. These are exactly the types of things I should be texting to people. You may also be curious as to why I text my mom about my bowel movement issues. Don’t worry. A healthy poo text is normal every once in a while.

Cutting off a chunk of my hair with craft scissors. Let me preface this one by saying that I am in a constant state of growing my hair out. I am forever wanting long hair and lacking the patience it takes to get it. All of the work I’ve been putting into having long hair would be for nothing with one snip. Sometimes I think about that scene in Sixteen Candles where Caroline gets her hair stuck in a locked door at Jake Ryan’s house and her friends get her out by cutting off the backside of her hair with scissors they found laying around the house! That scene chills. Me. To. The. Bone.

Divorce. I honestly don’t know why this terrifies me so much but I think it’s because I find it so terribly, horribly sad. I once read a statistic that said 50% of marriages end in divorce and right there on the spot I started to feel tightness in my chest. I think the very thought of something that was once so happy and full of love disolving and falling apart scares me. It leads to lots of invasive and paranoid thoughts about love. How do you ever really know if someone is right for you? How do you know that someone won’t fall out of love with you, or hurt you, etc. You know, the usual sad cocktail. It’s just like universal smart woman June Carter Cash said, “It burns, burns, burns.” Being with my husband has really helped me calm down about broken love in relation to myself, but I still worry a great deal about all the other relationships out there. It doesn’t matter if I know them personally or not. I still haven’t fully processed Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s divorce, and I can make myself depressed just by thinking about Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder’s breakup, and they were never even married! I have so many feelings, my friends. So many.

Good news, these irrational fears actually have a clinical name! They’re called “intrusive thoughts”, and according to the internet (v reliable source for information), four out of five people experience intrusive thoughts on a regular basis. An intrusive thought is described as “an unwelcome involuntary thought, image, or unpleasant idea that may become an obsession, is upsetting or distressing, and can feel difficult to manage or eliminate.” If that aint me, right? I don’t know if it’s more comforting to have a name for what I’m experiencing, or if it makes me feel more insane. It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one going through this, though. It makes me feel better to know that I’m not alone, and that there are others who can relate to me. That’s what life is all about, I think; connecting with others by sharing our experiences with them. Kinda makes all the difficult stuff we go through seem special, doesn’t it?

#anxiety #irrational fears

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bigmouthbadsleeper · 7 years ago

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Are You There Pizza? It's Me, Gabi.

When I was twelve, my favorite album was Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill”. There’s a song on it that I love called “Mary Jane”, and it remains my calling card to this day. The lyrics cut me real deep, in particular the part that goes, “I hear you’re losing weight again, Mary Jane. Do you ever wonder who you’re losing it for?” One time on a car ride I told my mom that I felt like I was Mary Jane, and when she asked what I meant by that, I told her about that line and she started to cry. I didn’t understand why back then, but now I think it was probably because she knew what it was like to be a woman. It probably hurt her that even at twelve I felt the pressures of a society that placed so much emphasis on looks rather than on being a person of substance.

I’m trying to remember the first time I became aware of my body, and I think it was in sixth grade. A boy in my class called me a whale. He didn’t mean it as a compliment, like “Hey, whales have excellent hearing, and have a very intriguing way of communicating. You are very much like a whale.” It was in a mean way, said with disgust. “Look at her, she’s a whale!” I guess he meant it in more of a “Whales are very large mammals so it’s no surprise that they consume large amounts of food” way. I don’t remember why my body was a topic that was up for discussion at that time, I only remember the sharp sting that came along with that word. It was as if I had been slapped across the face. I was stunned into silence, which was odd for a kid who was pretty much widely known for being a big mouth (apparently avid communication is another thing I have in common with whales). I just sat there staring at him, with a burning urge to punch him in the face. I knew I couldn’t do that, and not in a Martin Luther King Jr., “violence is never the answer”, kind of way. More like an “I would never be strong enough to overpower a boy” kind of way.

(When the twerp in your class calls you a whale in a mean way even though they are majestic creatures and also no one should ever comment on your body because it’s nobody’s business!)

I don’t know when society decided that fat means ugly, but it has been the story that has been told to me all of my life. That I WOULD be beautiful, if only I wasn’t so fat. The first time a guy said some variation of that sentence to me, I was 14. I’ve heard it so many times over the course of my life, I can’t even count them all. Although I am confident about certain talents that I have, I have never ever been confident about my body. I don’t know a life where I haven’t been aware, at all times, that I am overweight and therefore less desirable, less capable, and less beautiful than everyone else in the room.

I wasn’t a fat kid, but I was a chubby teenager who grew into a fat adult. If these terms make you feel sad or uncomfortable, I feel you. They make me feel sad and uncomfortable, too. I didn’t ask for these to be the words that described my body or my looks, but they were the words that were thrust upon me by those around me, and by society at large through movies, television, and magazines. The majority of people who made comments about my body were boys, but some of the more cruel girls would make remarks too. Sometimes they were meaner than “fat” and “chubby”, and sometimes they were more subtle, like, “Are you really going to eat that?” or “I thought you were on a diet?” As far back as my memory takes me, my weight has always been an issue, and it’s been an issue that, for some reason, other people feel the need to comment on. It’s exhausting for me to think about my weight; to think about every piece of food that I put in my mouth, and to plan out every bit of physical exercise I do. In many ways it is a miserable life to constantly feel like who you are is wrong, lazy, bad, ugly, etc. As exhausting as it is to calorie count and restrict myself, the bigger pain associated with my body comes from the unsolicited comments I receive from other people about it.

Despite my weight, I’ve always been an active human. For many years of my life I got up at 5:00 in the morning to walk around the block before work. When I got a job that started earlier in the morning, I joined a gym and started exercising later at night. I’m a Just Dance champion. I use five pound weights with my workout DVDs. I do yoga. At one point in my life I could hold a plank pose for three minutes straight, which I think basically means I’m Wonder Woman? Being overweight means most people assume you’re lazy and you do nothing but eat all the time. To those people I say GOOD DAY SIR. Most people are surprised to find out that I don’t binge, snack, or overeat, and that I exercise regularly. While exercise is a big part of being mentally and physically healthy, it doesn’t make you skinny. Obviously.

My body isn’t like other bodies. Because of my medical condition, I have a very hard time losing weight. I’ve tried many diets in my lifetime, some more weird than others. I once did I diet in high school where I ate a grapefruit and bacon for breakfast every morning. That lasted all of five days. I’ve tried the Atkins diet. Body For Life. Weight Watchers. I’ve choked down more gross food than I can count. I saw the best results when I counted calories. For a straight year I exercised every day, and restricted myself to a daily intake of 1,250 calories. I lost twelve pounds, and four of them were lost in the first month. Those kinds of results are depressing to say the least. I got the feeling that I was trying so hard to get my body to be something that it wasn’t. Losing weight seemed impossible for me, so why was I trying so hard to look like someone I wasn’t?

(at least she got to eat cheese, right ladies?)

A couple months ago, I decided to try the Whole 30 program. I first heard about it a few years ago, through the #whole30 Instagram hashtag, and when I looked into it initially, I thought anyone who did it must be crazy. As someone who loves food, I couldn’t imagine being that restrictive on what I ate for an entire month. No bread, no grains, no dairy, no sugars, not even honey. I am not one of those people who eats for fuel. In fact, I am a person who rolls my eyes at people who say they eat for fuel. I eat because I love food. Food is my friend. Food helps me cope with difficult things, it helps me feel better when I am sad. Pizza would never let me down. Cheeseburger always makes me feel happy. I couldn’t imagine going a whole month without my friends. What was I supposed to do when I had a bad or hard day? You mean to tell me that I can’t talk to Burrito about it?? I have to just deal with it on my own?? What kind of sorcery is that?? It wasn’t something I ever even considered possible for myself, which is primarily why I decided to do it. I didn’t like that there was something out there that I thought was impossible to do. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do something that was very difficult for me. If I lost weight on the diet, I would count that as a bonus, but what I really wanted to do was challenge myself, and hopefully change my relationship with food and my body.

I’ll be real honest with you, this diet was rough for me. I really struggled. On the first day, I got a migraine and barfed three times. As I sat on the bathroom floor, sobbing and gripping the toilet seat, I started to doubt myself. I wondered if this was maybe not the best idea for me. I was doing the diet with my husband and a couple members of my family, and they all assured me that it was okay if I needed to quit, and I did seriously consider it. I laid on the couch with my head throbbing and tears in my eyes and looked over at the white board that was in my kitchen. My husband and I had written so many encouraging things on it the night before, along with meal ideas and grocery lists. Emblazoned in the middle of the board in bright orange ink were the words “DAY 1”. I stared at that board for a long time, imagining what it would look like when it said “DAY 10”, or “DAY 15”. I thought about how amazing I would feel when I would finally be able to write “DAY 30”, and I wanted so badly to feel amazing about myself. I wanted a win. With the image of myself writing that on the board secure in my mind, I decided that I wasn’t going to let one bad day keep me from finishing what I had started. I was going to keep going, and I was going to finish.

(every day we would write something on our white board that encompassed how we were feeling that day-most of them had swears- I wish I could share them all with you, because they were top comedy.)

Spoiler alert: that wasn’t the last hard thing I went through. The first ten days were miserable. I choked down every broccoli floret, every dry piece of chicken. I lived for the few “treats” that I allowed myself; dried apricots, Utah peaches, and a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice. I savored those things and they tasted as good to me as any scoop of ice cream. Three days into the diet, I dreamed that I drove to Little Caesar’s and got a Hot n Ready pepperoni pizza, without my husband knowing. I took one bite out of it then began to sob because I cheated and ruined my diet. I tossed the rest of the pizza into a dumpster and woke up in a cold sweat. The dreams I had on this diet were truly wild, man. I dreamed about chicken strips, I dreamed about ice cream. I dreamed about taking a bath in ranch dressing. I spent many waking hours being disappointed with the weakness of Dream Gabi. She’s a maniac, I tell you.

I read a lot about this diet and most everyone commented on how hard the cravings would hit you, and they weren’t kidding. On day ten I went to the grocery store to get a couple things I needed for dinner, and I became a salivating savage in the bakery section. I walked around like the velociraptor in that scene from Jurassic Park. You know the one, where the steam from the raptor’s nostrils fogs up the window? Yeah, that me. I went to the little containers where they sell fresh baked bread and lifted the lid and took a giant hit of fresh Kaiser roll. My eyes rolled into the back of my head. I sadly slunk past cheese island without taking any samples. I was a hero, I tell you! Strong and noble. Joan of Arc and her flames have nothing on me and my resistance to carbs and dairy! Feel free to write about me for future school papers on strong women.

During the first part of the month, I cared more about food than I ever had in my life, mainly because I couldn’t eat any of the things I wanted. Going to the movies was a particularly sad affair. Two weeks into the diet we snuck fresh pressed juice into the theater in my backpack. I was disappointed in myself for spending $13 on two small orange juices, but desperate times call for desperate measures! Movie popcorn is my number one all-time favorite treat. Not being able to have it was bad enough, but smelling it and listening to everyone around me smack it around in their mouths during the movie was torture. Over the course of that month my husband and I had many “nothing” fights, purely because we were hangry. In a particularly low moment, during an argument where I was unnecessarily irritated because I was so hungry, I started crying like a toddler and then maniacally laughing. It was a wild ride, my friends.

(sadly, pizza and I could only be internet friends during this time period. which basically meant I googled pictures of pizza all the time and cried.)

People online talk a lot about the “Tiger’s Blood” phase of the diet, which sadly I never achieved. I never felt anything even remotely like a tiger! I was generally less energized, more tired, and my skin was as bad as ever (I knew my acne was all hormonal but that didn’t stop me from hoping that it would clear up when I cut out dairy completely). Most of the time I continued on with the diet only because I didn’t want to be a quitter, and I really didn’t want to let myself down. Because I’m such a fan of social media, I really wanted to be able to post about my experiences online. I decided against sharing anything related to the diet until after I finished it, because I didn’t want to have to tell all of my friends that I failed. Except for the vent sessions I had with my husband or my mom, I kept everything I was feeling to myself. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m most surprised by, the fact that I went 30 days without pizza, or the fact that I did it without talking about it online. Both were difficult in their own way.

(here’s a pic of how our board looked when we were a little over halfway through and we really got our crap together.meal planning and cooking was really the worst part of all of this, tbh.)

Reading all this probably makes you wonder if there was a single positive thing I felt while dieting. The answer is yes! I did have some good feelings! Most importantly, I really never felt so proud of myself. I was so thrilled to write “DAY 30” on my white board. I still haven’t erased it, it’s just so dang satisfying to see it up there. I feel accomplished. This is the furthest I’ve ever gone with an extreme diet. About ten days in, my belly started feeling smaller, and continued to get smaller throughout the month. That was a huge deal for me! My husband and I took measurements and weighed ourselves the night before we started, and the morning after we ended. I lost 21 pound and five inches off my waist. That’s almost double what I lost in a whole year of calorie counting. I do love that during this diet I didn’t have to count or measure anything out. Sometimes I feel like I spend my life counting, and that gets old after a few years.

I’ve been done with the diet for a few weeks now, and sometimes I still can’t believe it’s real. I can’t believe I really went a month without pizza, soda, ice cream, chicken strips, etc. The people who work at the Soda Shop probably think my husband and I are dead! Though we are finished with the initial 30 days, we have decided to continue with the Whole 30 program during the week, and eat in moderation on the weekends. I’m hoping to continue to lose weight while still allowing myself to eat for enjoyment every once in a while. I’ve found a new appreciation for my body in these past 30 days. I think it’s kind of amazing, all the things it can do for me. Although I have changed the way I see food, and I now make better decisions on what I eat, I still love food a lot. That hasn’t changed much. There’s a quote from a famous supermodel that goes, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” and that makes me sad because she’s obviously never had the sourdough pizza that we make in our backyard, and I feel bad for her.

I think back to who I was at twelve, the girl with the flushed face and balled up fists in her sixth grade classroom, irate over the boldness of a strange boy who felt like her body was available for his commentary. I love that girl. I don’t think she is fat or ugly. I think she is brave, and smart, and kind, and it makes me sad that she ever felt like anything less than that. Why do those feelings only apply to past versions of myself? Why is it so hard to feel that way about myself now? I think maybe what I’m most proud of myself for is the fact that I did this for myself. I could have quit, but I didn’t I kept going because I wanted to prove to myself that I could. I hear you’re losing weight again, Gabrielle, do you ever wonder who you’re losing it for? This time I was losing weight for myself, and that really does feel better than any pizza tastes.

Well. Almost.

#whole30 #diet #self love

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bigmouthbadsleeper · 7 years ago

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Don't Let Me Drown

There’s this reoccurring dream I have where someone I love is drowning. At first, I see them like I would on a movie screen, a dot far away in the ocean. This person has no face, but I know it is someone dear to me. I don’t know how they got out there, and I don’t know why. I want to help. I want to save them. I know I’m not strong enough to swim out there on my own, so I get in a boat and row. I call to them, I reach out for their hand, but I get nothing. I throw a lifesaver, but still nothing. What I’m doing isn’t enough, it’s not working. I don’t understand why. Why won’t they respond? I begin to panic. It’s my responsibility to save them. Why didn’t I plan better? Why didn’t I bring more supplies? I want to reach in and pull them out of the water but I can’t, I’m not strong enough. I am angry. I am hurt. I dive into the ocean in an attempt to reach my friend, the one I love. If I can grab a hold of them I think maybe I can save them. But I can’t. The ocean is too big, the water is too overwhelming. I can’t stay afloat. I am sad. I am sick. It feels like I just swam out into the middle of the ocean to save someone who has made friends with an anchor.

A couple of months ago, I wrote a piece about my personal relationship with mental illness where I shared some ways to cope with having it. There is a whole other aspect to dealing with mental illness when it’s affecting those we love and care for. Depression and anxiety are not convenient. They don’t care if you have plans with friends, or if it’s your wedding day. They don’t even respect federal holidays. They can show up anytime, anywhere. I am aware that when I am in the middle of a depressive episode, or a panic attack, I am not the easiest person to be around. My anxiety makes me irritable and my depression makes me weepy. I know that isn’t fun for people. So how do we better care for those we love when they’re dealing with a mental illness?

Bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, ADHD, eating disorders, schizophrenia, and borderline personality disorder are just some of the mental illnesses that someone you know might be dealing with on a daily basis. There is a lot of shame surrounding mental illness. Most people are afraid to admit that they suffer from it, when in reality it’s no different than struggling with diabetes or cancer. These are illnesses that one doesn’t always have control over. Even though there are ways to manage them, there’s no way to ever rid oneself of them completely. Be patient with those who suffer. I’m aware that depression can make someone a “downer”, and it’s not always fun to be around. My hope is that I provide some healthy suggestions that can help you have a better understanding of how to be a good friend to these people.

I don’t like to make lists with bullet points when I’m dealing with something as broad and personal as mental illness, because everyone is different, and there are lots of different types of relationships. The advice I would give to a parent who is dealing with a child with mental illness is different than the advice I would give to someone who has a spouse with mental illness. And that advice is different than the advice I would give to someone who has a friend that suffers with mental illness. Because of that, and because I’m not anyone’s therapist, my goal isn’t to tell anyone exactly what to do, rather to give suggestions on how to be there for our friends that struggle. As both someone who suffers from mental illness and someone who loves many different people who suffer from all kinds of mental illnesses, I feel like I have some insight to both sides of the issue.

Don’t say “Call/text me if you need anything!” It’s a lovely offer, but I’m not going to take you up on it. I feel too embarrassed, and the last thing I want to do is inconvenience someone else. Instead of saying this to my friends, I try to have a plan in place before I text or call them. Service is the best way to let someone know you’re thinking of them. I’ve cleaned my friends’ houses before, babysat their children, taken them dinner, or just dropped off a soda at their houses. If you have a friend who is struggling, call or text them and ask them if you can do a specific something for them. “Hey, are you home? I’m out and about and I wanted to bring you a soda!” Who’s going to say no to that? I will sometimes, to be honest. There are times when I just don’t want to see anyone, and I know sometimes people don’t want to see me. I’ve left many sodas, loaves of bread, cookies, and pizzas on friends’ doorsteps because they don’t want to see me. It’s better to have done a drop-off than to leave a doorstep empty! One of the best things my old visiting teacher would do for me is leave an Evian on my doorstep when I told her I wasn’t in the mood for a visit. God bless the dropper offers!!

Don’t tell me to count my blessings. I understand the idea behind this, and it’s something I try to do all the time, not just when my mind is failing me, but the last thing I want to be told when I’m in the middle of a depressed episode is that I need to be more grateful. I already know that, and I’m trying. My brain is broken, and I’m sorry. But the fact that I have a family and a job and a hundred more blessings than the starving children in Africa, or even so-and-so up the street doesn’t make me feel happier. Sometimes it makes me feel worse, because I know I have much more than most, and I still feel sad.

Be empathetic. I don’t expect other people to solve my problems for me. In fact, I know they can’t. But it’s always nice when someone opens up to me and shares their own personal experiences. It makes me feel less alone. “I understand how you’re feeling” is one of the most comforting things anyone can say to me when I’m having a panic attack, or when I’m in the throes of depression. Though you may not struggle with mental illness, we can all relate to feeling alone, sad, hopeless, and scared. When you open up to someone and share your experiences with them, it makes them feel more comfortable and loved.

Be understanding. My mental illness means I might not be able to go to your baby shower. Or high school reunions, weddings, relief society activities, birthday parties, etc. I try to be to as many of these things as I can, but I cannot go to them all, and when I do, I can’t always stay as long as I want to. Try to be understanding about this with your friends. It’s not about you, it’s not because they don’t like you or don’t think your party is fun enough. I’m happy you’re getting married, I just can’t be in a room full of people right now. I definitely try to manage my feelings so that I can be a supportive friend and make it to as many events as possible. But when I do have to miss out, understand that it has nothing to do with you. Your friends who are suffering with depression or social anxiety feel the same way. There have been times when I have gotten completely ready for an event and not made it past my garage. It’s awful and humiliating. I always appreciate my friends who are kind and understanding about it, and don’t try to make me feel worse than I already do.

Sometimes caring for someone with a mental illness can feel a lot like trying to rescue someone from drowning when they’ve got an anchor tied to their foot. It can be frustrating, scary, and at times can feel completely hopeless. I love what Elder Holland says in his talk “Like A Broken Vessel” from October 2013 general conference. “If you are the one afflicted or a caregiver to such, try not to be overwhelmed with the size of your task. Don’t assume you can fix everything, but fix what you can. If those are only small victories, be grateful for them and be patient. Broken minds can be healed just the way broken bones and broken hearts are healed. While God is at work making those repairs, the rest of us can help by being merciful, nonjudgmental, and kind.” Caring for someone who suffers from mental illness can be hard on us. It’s okay to step away for a bit, care for ourselves, and then come back. I know I can’t care for someone if my own mental health is failing.

When I think about mental health, I always think about riding in an airplane. How the flight attendants bring you peanuts and sky juice (aka ginger ale) but they also tell you what to do in case of an emergency. Put your own oxygen mask on first. You can’t help the person next to you with their mask if you’re passed out because you didn’t take the time to put yours on first. THIS IS SO IMPORTANT AND RELEVANT TO LIFE, GUYS! If we spend all our energy and time on another person (or people), there will be no time to care for our own bodies and minds. Check in with yourself and make the changes you need to make so that you can be healthy for yourself, and for those around you who may depend on you. Mental illness might seem like the anchor that keeps someone we love attached to the sea, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t row out to try to save them. Some days you may have to try harder than others, and some days it might feel like you’re ignored completely. Stay in that boat. Keep trying. One day, you just might rescue someone.

#depression #anxiety

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