imzenagirl-blog

[imzenagirl-blog]

Top 10 of the 2010s

Being that I’m home and reading top 10 lists, I thought I’d have to make my own of the top 10 moments of the decade.

1. Reading the book Born to Run.  

The book is about how we became humans because we run, it’s in our DNA to push our bodies to the extreme.  The writer goes on an incredible search into the mountains of Mexico to find the Taramahumara, an indigineous tribe accustomed to running hundreds of miles through difficult terrain for their livelihood.  Along the way, other strange characters are pulled into his story.  Most of them are normal people who decided to accomplish insane feats that nobody thought they could do.  After reading the book, I decided that I could do anything that I wanted to do.  Anything is within reach.  I had always competed in sports, but reading the book gave them a new life and purpose for me. I went from seeking average, to wanting to win. Not to beat the others, but to find out who I was and what I was capable of during the pursuit. This attitude has stuck with me throughout the rest of my life.

2. Deciding to do cross country instead of swimming in high school. 

I know, I know, this sounds like such a small and meaningless choice. Who cares whether you ran or swam in high school?  But at age 13, this was the most existential decision of my life yet.  You see, swimming and cross country were both Fall sports. I had been swimming since I was 4 years old, my mom was a coach for the club team, and I was a shoe-in to make the varsity squad in my first year. I had only started running a year ago and I wasn’t even that good at it. A few weeks before school started, I looked at my mom and told her I was going to run. In that decision, I decided to go against the grain. I didn’t do what was expected of me, nor what was easiest. Instead, I did what I loved and I worked way harder for it. 

3. Being bullied in high school.  

Ok, this isn’t a moment, but it’s the majority of what my adult personality is based off of. I’ve spent my 23 years as someone who, as my mother likes to describe, “beat to the sound of my own drum.” In highschool, this felt like the opposite of love, the experience of isolation that comes with hating how one looks and speaks and moves. Although I felt emotionally tortured by the sense of feeling different from others, I had to focus on school and carving out my own little life. There really seems no alternative but to be miserable in mid-adolescence if I was to stand any chance of making a go at the rest of my life.  The bad feelings I became acquainted with are now the fuel for the ecstasy I feel when I am a recipient of love and acceptance. As an adult, I’m confident and inclusive for the necessity of being able to take on hardships like some of the moments in 4-10. Plus, I’m funnier and more interesting, obviously.  

4. Being kicked off my high school rowing team and moving across the country to Connecticut.

I graduated high school early, skipping graduation, prom, and being like my friends to go on a big, scary adventure. I put everything on the line to do what I love to do and work toward my dream of winning a medal at Junior Worlds. I learned to take care of myself, I dealt with housing insecurity and overdrawn bank accounts, and bad types of characters that I didn’t yet know existed. I learned that the real world was hard, but it didn’t faze me because I had a bigger dream to work towards.

5. Being sexually assaulted

If this list was ranked by importance instead of chronological order, this would actually be number one. Being assaulted changed me in ways that nothing else ever had before, nor I bet ever will.  It made me who I am today more than anything else. Afterwards, I became deeply depressed and wanted to kill myself. I no longer loved rowing. I hung out with different people. It affected my relationships and friendships. I went from a conservative rule follower to a rebel who despised authority. I was, and am, a different person.

6. Taking a semester off of rowing.

I loved to row. I loved it enough that I thought I’d grow up to be like the crazy dedicated people I lived with in Connecticut.  I’d be someone who graduates and sacrifices their career to train for years for just a shot at qualifying for the Olympics. Rowing was not what I did, but who I was. When I started to hate it, I had a total identity crisis (plus all the mental health issues that come with that) and had to leave for a semester, something that I don’t think anyone else has ever done. To the surprise of the coaches, and to me, I ended up returning to the sport, but not as the person who had left.

7. Taking acid.

I wanted to take this one off the list. Part of me hates how it’s on here because I don’t want people to think that taking psychedelics will change their life. That’s completely false, only you can change your life. But taking acid for me was a mindful decision of the life that I wanted to live. It’s set me up for a lifetime of participating in society, but having a keen interest in the other side of the coin. It doesn’t change how you think, but it does add a new lens that you can choose to pay attention to or not.

8. Being fired from my first job in NYC. 

For the second time in my life, everything I thought I wanted wasn’t true anymore. I thought I wanted to be a hot-shot in NYC working for a cool startup. Turns out, I didn’t. I didn’t know what I wanted to do at all. I was so busy doing all the things I thought I was supposed to be doing that I hadn’t even thought much about what I wanted to do. Failing forced me to figure out what I wanted and where I would belong. 

9. Living in my parents basement.

I learned that I have to create my own happiness.  In Iowa, I had none of the things I had spent years trying to derive happiness from jobs, sports, friends, romantic partners, and all the different pleasure buttons I liked to push to distract myself. None of that worked because I was still a deeply unhappy person.  My dream is to one day be the type of successful person that gets to give speeches on what made them successful, and living in my parents basement will be the first thing I’ll cite. Nothing teaches who you are then coming up-close-and-personal with your darkest self.  

10. Moving to Nashville. 

I had never even been to Nashville when I called up the hiring manager and told him I was coming into town.  Now, I was only going to make the trip down if he agreed to interview me, but he didn’t have to know that. Nashville wasn’t my dream city by any means. Up until this point, I was only really considering the West Coast, but the grass is always greener on the other side. I moved to town with the mindset that I was going to have to make it work and that has made all the difference. Now, I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else because I’ve built such a home and community right where I am.

I’m not sure what the next decade will hold, but there’s two major lessons I’ve taken away from making this list.  It’s two things I’ve always known, they’re integral to who I am, but seeing them in such a blunt way makes them all the more clear.

First of all, never be afraid to go against the grain! I should always be relentlessly who I am. 2,3, 4, 6, and 7 all taught me this. 

Secondly, failure and pain teaches and shapes who I am than anything else.  For all of the horrible things on this list, one of its glories is that the suffering is rooted in some of the most crucial developments and realizations of my young adulthood. 2, 5, 8, 9.

Thinking that the 2020s will be the best decade yet.

[imzenagirl-blog]

Back home

My parents have always felt like static characters in the movie of my life. My mom was always mad at me for infrequently saying I missed her when I was away. She was even more mad at me when I explained that I couldn’t possibly miss her when I spoke to her on the phone every day.  

When I did return home, everything was how I left it, a home that I knew intimately, down to the finest detail.  I knew my parents inside and out; how their day was by the different expressions on their face, the particular way they fill the dishwasher, the clock that’s set 7 minutes fast, how they say my name when they’re frustrated. I can tell the time of day by the way the sun shines through the windows in the living room and the temperature outside by the dew that sticks to the door in the morning.  The stains on the carpet and trinkets that line the shelves are etched into my mind the same way that I’ve become familiar with the back of my hand.  Six years later, I can tell who is upstairs by the sound of their footsteps alone and can recite each article of clothing lined up in my father’s closet.

For the longest time, my world was so small that all I knew was normal, I had nothing else to compare life against. It was only to be expected that I play mediator between my parents crumbling marriage. Or that my brothers violent outbursts came like clockwork and we all sat around biting our tongues as we waited for the next one to unfold.  It wasn’t only trauma passing before my eyes unnoticed, the love came unrecognized as well.  I didn’t see when someone helped with my homework or packed my lunch.  Having another conversation about the school day or sports practice was overlooked as an act of caring.  I imbibed love, and trauma, unknowingly in the hustle of everyday life.

During my teenage years I started to despise my parents.  At this point, I didn’t have the emotional intelligence to have justifiable reasons to hate them. I hated them when they did what was best for me. I hated them for saying no. I hated them for existing. It was a painful experience for me, and surely them, but necessary to develop trust in my parents and other people.  It was important for me to be able to test a few examples. I had to tell them the worst things I could drum up and then watch them stick around and forgive me. Unfortunately for us humans, I think you have to have a few gos at breaking love to believe that it’s really there.

Years later, the world came crashing down on me harder. I hated my parents for good reasons, reasons that didn’t make me want to scream “I hate you,” but reasons that made me despair for the damage they had evoked without me noticing. What’s peculiar is that the last thing a disturbed parent will tell you is that they’re disturbed. I hated them for making me believe that I needed to be successful in order to be loved. I hated them for making me want to fix people because I spent my childhood consoling their pain. I hated them for making me think that being sexual is incompatible with being a good person. This time, I couldn’t even tell them that I hated them because they wouldn’t be able to comprehend why.  In doing so, they would be admitting to their own wrongdoings in parenting.  At the bedrock was their selfishness of maintaining the veil of normalcy, being only nature for the mad to avoid the thought of being mad.

As a young adult, I retreated home to live in my parents basement after being fired from my first job. At the time, it felt like my life’s ultimate failure, but now, it feels like its greatest lesson. I now knew that life is hugely harder, more insane and less fulfilling than I could have ever expected.  The profound realization struck that my parents couldn’t have been completely sane because nobody is. Parents are perfect, but humans are flawed. 

I now had the unique opportunity to get to know my parents as the people they always were, people who were deeply disturbed trying to unpackage their hurt and not always doing so in the best of ways.  If I lived in a sane world this wouldn’t be the case, but that was not the world I lived in and I had to be sympathetic to the pain my parents inflicted.  While my home looked and felt the same as it always has, I could now see my parents with a compassionate eye, one that looked to understand them not only as parents, but as individuals. All it took was asking a few questions that I never thought to ask to understand why they are the way they are, which in turn helped me learn who I am.

When people say they had a difficult childhood, I think to myself that they probably had a typical childhood. Most of our trauma is caused without any malice behind it. Our childhoods hold the secrets to our adult identities. It is up to us to understand our childhood, our parents, and our psychological complexities.  As adults, we must relearn to love our parents not as parents, but as people with a mixture of tenderness and realism.  We can see their frailty quite clearly, but can cope with and forgive it with appreciation.

[imzenagirl-blog]

in love

What does it feel like to be in love?  There’s really nothing normal about being in love with someone.  It’s a million emotions with a million and a half reasons why.

On September 11th, 2016 I sat down to write a daily entry in my journal like I had always done.  But on that day, for whatever reason, words didn’t pour out of me and onto the page, I was entirely consumed by one thought.  All I could muster up to write, “Am I falling in love with Joe?”  

It was the scariest thought I’ve ever had.  I felt both brave and defeated for writing it down.  For weeks I had been pushing my feelings day by day into tiny boxes shoved into the back closet of my brain marked “avoid at all costs.”  But on that day, when I opened the closet door, all my unresolved feelings flooded onto me and I was forced to face the overwhelming mess that couldn’t be squeezed into a back closet any longer.  Finally facing what I had been avoiding, but fearful of what I might find.

How could I have created such a beautiful disaster?  That’s the funny thing about love, you feel it without knowing quite how or where exactly it comes from.  Never part of the master plan, it somehow manages to catch me by surprise every time.  Being someone who desperately searches for the reason why I feel what I feel or do what I do, love is absolutely terrifying because there isn’t a way to track it, predict it, or measure it.  Fuck, it’s difficult enough to understand it.  

A couple weeks later, I was under the influence of LSD with my dear friend Joe.  In the spur of the moment, I opened up my journal to read him an entry and dropped my laptop in the process.  My computer laid open to the entry from September 11th as he nonchalantly set the computer back down on my lap.  Only one line on the screen, the only line in all 73 typed pages that I couldn’t bear for him to read.  “Am I falling in love with Joe?”  Immediately I broke into a million tiny pieces.  Fearful that he finally knew my biggest secret, that I loved him so much that I didn’t believe there was any way that someone as wonderful as him could feel the same way about me, I teared up and sat there feeling helpless that my closet door was wide open and couldn’t be squeezed shut again.  He claimed that he didn’t read anything so I felt better.  (Nowadays, I’m pretty positive he did read the entry and deliberately chose not to say anything.  He was always a calculated partner who was patient enough to wait for the right moment and that moment was not ideal for a profession of love.)

Being in love feels like having someone unlock doors that you didn’t even know were there inside of you.  It’s overwhelming and uncertain to reveal all the vulnerable details that you deliberately share and to uncover new unknown ones alongside someone else.  Being in love forces you to grow as a person through discovering new parts of yourself and find extensions of yourself you weren’t aware of beforehand.

Love feels like being alone with someone else.  You do all the quirky things you’d do if you had been alone.  You let someone enter your world for those tiny moments of getting toothpaste all over your face or crying for no good reason or wearing your ugliest pajamas with the holes in the butt.  No longer needing to entertain or put your best face forward, you can be seen for the good and bad parts of you.  That someone likes you the most when you’re just being yourself.

I’ve written many love letters, love poems, love stories.  The first one I shared with someone else was written in the first page of a scrapbook of photos I gave to Joe for Christmas.  I purposefully left the photo album half empty, to symbolize the memories to be shared in the future.  It wasn’t my first time giving the gift of a photo album, I had given one before to another boy I loved, delivered half-full as well.  The difference was that this time around, I understood love a little differently because I had already experienced heartbreak.  Giving the album the first time around, I only ever intended for it to be full of photos of us together.  When I gave it to Joe, I wrote to him that I hope he would always cherish the memories we had made and that I hoped to make more with him.  But I wrote that even if we weren’t together anymore, I hoped he would fill the book with more joyful memories he had made.  I genuinely wanted him to be his best self and be free from all the chains that kept him from being happy, whether that involved me in his life or not.  Love is not about me or us together, but about him and my deep desire for him to be happy.  

To me, love is vulnerable and painful and overwhelming and scary and intoxicating and wondrous.  It is not singular nor selfish nor easy to comprehend.  To explain it feels like constantly having a word on the tip of your tongue and never knowing what the right one is because no word is ever strong enough.  All I can say is that if you don't think that being in love is the greatest feeling in the world, then you probably haven't felt what it's like to be in love.

[imzenagirl-blog]

Does Tinder Work? A Personal Inquiry

Last week, I was asked the question, “What habit do you have that conflicts with your values?” on a Burning Man app.  It’s tough to clearly see my own faults, so I asked Sam since he’s the sort of friend who knows all about my bullshit and calls me out on it.   “Well, I’d say that you’re someone who places a high value on meaningful connection and relationships.  But you continue to use Tinder even though it’s unlikely to find that on the apps.” Ouch. I quickly became defensive, “Oh c’mon, you can find awesome people on the apps!  Think about the girl you’re super good friends with right now through Tinder.  Or all of the relationships I’ve been in.” “Yeah, sure, you can find meaningful relationships on Tinder, but that’s not the usual, it’s a fluke.  I’d be curious to know how much success you’ve actually found.” 💡 Luckily for me, I am a crazy person who keeps a list of every person I’ve met from Tinder.  Don’t judge me for it!  It’s useful for self-reflection, noticing patterns, remembering good stories, and knowing if anyone I’ve met becomes super famous one day.  I keep tons of lists, I’m a list person.

I’ve used all the apps; Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, Feeld, FetLife, The League, CMB.  At the end of the day, Tinder is by far my favorite because I find the others to be a bit elitist.  Tinder is a classic.

I’ve met a lot of people on Tinder.  88 dates to be exact.  Did your jaw drop? *(actually I’ve met 92 because I’ve met a few couples). That’s a lot of people to be meeting and time spent meeting them.  In some periods of my life I would consider meeting people to be a bizarre hobby of mine.  But how many of those meetups were “successful”?  How can I even quantify that?  Should I measure it by length of time spent together?  How comfortable I felt sharing things about myself with that person?  How frequently we hung out?  Did we hold hands? Did we spend the night?  Did I meet their friends? How can I possibly measure the success of a relationship?  This is not a black or white decision.

Out of the 88, 50 were a one-time thing.  At first glance I thought, oh, then those dates must’ve been unsuccessful.  But looking through my list, that couldn’t possibly be the case.  Only a handful of dates I’ve gone on have been “bad.” (But even then, everyone loves a horrifying first date story!)  A single date was a worthwhile use of my time on plenty of occasions: -Learned about what I do/don’t like in potential partners -Acted out my kink of crying to strangers -Listened to many fascinating stories -Learned about how other people work -Listened to new music that was shared with me -Went on an 8 mile run through Manhattan w/Ryan -Spoke with Eric, a former high-end escort, about his lifestyle for hours -A rich french man named Julien bit a mole off my back -Went to super cool or exclusive bars I could’ve never otherwise afforded -Attended concerts for free or received drugs -Convinced someone who superliked me to go to the Mermaid Parade for 6 hours after only 3 messages back and forth -Went on a date with the sole purpose of seeing how long I could get this guy to walk with me for.  We walked for almost 6 hours -Met my longtime online pen pal Troy after we matched on his bike ride across the country -Threw a party and thought it would be a good idea to invite two guys from Tinder.  It was nerve-racking when they started becoming friends with each other, but in the end it’s a half-decent story to tell -Tried dating the manager at my favorite pizza place because it was my favorite pizza place (Neopapalis by the way).  Things didn’t work out, but it was worth the try.

I’ve gained valuable experiences through people I’ve met via Tinder: Tinder helped me discover myself.  As some of you may know, I spent a period of my life truly believing that I was gay.  I was able to get over my fears and meet women, date them, and have sex with them.  I learned that, hey, pussy ain’t for me.  But I’m so happy that I know for sure instead of having to question my sexual identity any longer.

Tinder empowered me to embrace my sexuality.  The second person I ever met from Tinder was in a polyamorous relationship.  We were never romantic because I felt a bit weird seeing someone with a girlfriend, but we became good friends.  His name was John and he loved kink and he loved drugs.  I learned all about this taboo world I had always been so curious about from him until I felt comfortable enough to venture into it on my own.  I’m not sure if I would’ve otherwise been introduced, or had the courage to find myself, these two forbidden topics.  He was the first person I met who openly talked about his depression.  I would run my hands over the cuts up and down his arms and finally felt like I was a normal person.

I lost my virginity through Tinder.  Yup, you heard it here folks.  After experiencing sexual assault, the idea of having a positive experience with consensual sex seemed out of reach.  I matched with someone I had known for awhile, finally signaling my sexual attraction to him.  Well aware that I was a virgin, he treated me well during our several interactions.  It was a great day and changed the trajectory of my thoughts toward sexuality and men.  He has a girlfriend, but some days I think about writing him a letter to thank him for helping me feel comfortable in my body.  

I met the craziest person I know, Prince.  Otherwise known as The Prince Hot Jordan 11 (because he is the one again).  As a model/recording artist, Prince lived an insane lifestyle.  We hung out in the nicest house I’ve ever seen in the West Village.  We went on a triple tinder date.  A body guard hung around us for a reason I do not know.  He sent me outlandish sexts that I’ve posted on my finsta.  Overall, he’s an absolute madlad that I would love to cross paths with one day again.

I went to Burning Man.  I met a man for lunch at a Thai restaurant and went back to his apartment to see the lightshow he had built for this years event.  After only one conversation, he offered me a ride to Black Rock City.  We met one more time for ice cream to finalize our plans, but a week later I flew to SLC and went on a road trip with him to BM.  We went to Great Basin National Park and did a lot of other neat stuff.  We were from two different worlds, he was 35 and had a totally different perspective on life.  Either way, he patiently listened to me talk for hours about my life and my feelings.  After months of not feeling ok in NYC, I felt content in the middle of nowhere with him.  He was a good person, I hope he finds someone.

I’ve had several positive relationships through Tinder.  We never fell in love, nor was that perhaps ever the intention, but I cared deeply for each one of them.  

Smitty was the first boy I really liked who liked me back.  We matched on Tinder, but had never exchanged messages with each other.  A couple of weeks later, he sat next to me in class and had the courage to ask me out.  He would play music on his record player and teach me all about it.  I smoked weed for the first time with him.  We went to parties, he met my mom over ice cream.  I slept over at his house almost every night over the winter since it was cozier.  I had stronger feelings for other people throughout our time together and I feel bad about that.  I cared for him and he’s now an incredible photographer in California.

Koerner was a special soul.  We met at my apartment when I had first moved in and my only piece of furniture was a mattress on the floor.  That’s where we talked for hours, until my friend Atkinson (who I had invited to come over before making plans with Koerner) showed up.  Koerner wasn’t weirded out by the invitation of my friend to our Tinder date.  He was a great cook and would make us dinner.  We had many intense philosophical conversations, he was a good listener when I cried.  He had great stories about starting a non-profit in Somalia and living on a ranch in the Sierra Nevada mountains.  Later on, I dated Joe and they actually became close friends in an odd twist of fate.  We’re still friends.

I met Arlo on the same day of a serious breakup.  He listened to my feelings.  He was there as a relief, someone to talk to.  We loved to play loud music and dance when we were together.  We would trip on acid and go swimming in the lake.  We went jogging in the park.  He became friends with my friends and we hungout at porch parties all summer.  I had been sleeping with a guy named Spencer in a poly relationship and in bizarre coming together, we all became good friends.  We had a foursome even.  I’m still very close with Spencer’s ex gf, too.  It’s my favorite story of how I met a good friend.  At the end of the summer, he left to go back to school.  We don’t talk anymore, but that’s ok.  

I met a boy on an apartment staircase on my way to an Odesza concert.  I was on a lot of drugs and thought that he had a weird lisp.  Later, we matched on Tinder and I learned that he was from London and not just talking funny.  We hungout at his place and he made a move while we were watching Vine compilations.  I had recently broken up with my boyfriend and wasn’t ready for any more pain, but spending time with him was so easy and simple.  We would go to the gym together in the morning.  I went to fraternity parties for the first time with him.  He became friends with my ex boyfriend, which was weird, but also oddly endearing.  Now he’s in love and he deserves it.  

Finally, the fluke outcome.  Out of 88 people, I fell in love with one.  Joseph from Tinder.  Joe was number 8.  We met at a men’s rowing party and I took him home to have the most awkward sexual encounter of my life.  We didn’t speak all fall semester until I accidentally sat next to him in the front row of Econ 401 during winter term.  In a 400 person class, he was the only one unafraid to raise his hand to answer questions and he was always right.  Nothing happened between us.  Over the summer, I was on a Tinder date with Juan, who offered me LSD.  In my altered state, I decided to text dozens of people to come join us in the park.  Joe came and we eventually ditched Juan and went back to his apartment.  He told me crazy stories and for the first time ever, I became attracted to Joe.  We became friends and started dating months later.  Long story short, we grew up together, he helped make me who I am.  Things didn’t work out, but I will always love Joe, the boy I met on Tinder.

So, what’s the takeaway from all of this?  Does Tinder work?  Truth is, there’s no simple, black and white answer.  You can read my stories and determine for yourself.  From my point of view, I’d meet all 88 people again.  But I never found exactly what I was looking for in a single one - everything good came by accident.  Tinder provided me with short term bursts of happiness and connectivity, but any long term happiness was a rare outcome.  My suggestion, if you want to find people different from you and have no expectations from them, then go ahead and use Tinder.  It’s fun.  If you want to find love or friendship, get out into the world and open your eyes to the people around you.  

[imzenagirl-blog]

no heroes, no sinners

I’ve been thinking a lot about love recently.  Maybe it’s because my dysfunctional family is all together right now.  Or that I’m addicted to watching Youtube clips of the British reality show First Dates. Either way, I’ve had some thoughts.

When I was growing up, I saw my parents as perfect saints, people who did no wrong and always made the right choice.  Eventually, about the time I went to college, that visage of perfection quickly faded away.  I became acutely aware of the flaws in each of my parents, the faults in their marriage, all the things I was seemingly blind to beforehand.  The new knowledge that my mother can be selfish or judgemental and that my father can be cold and emotionally distant rocked me.  I almost felt personally offended, how could it be that the people who raised me were so deeply flawed?

Eventually, I entered my first romantic relationship.  Looking at my old journal entries, I was intoxicated by the idea of an ideal partner.  I spent months and months writing about my love for Joe, but looking back it’s so easy to read between the lines, to see the blatantly obvious flaws and shortcomings.  I ignored all the bad, in search of perfection, pure happiness.  I thought that’s what love was supposed to be, a constant joy, the picture-perfect romance I saw in movies.  And in due course, the same as with my parents, I started to see the deficiencies in the relationship.  And it rocked me.  

If my parents and my partners are so deeply flawed, then what about me?  In search of perfection in others, I also lost sight of my own shortcomings.  I only wanted to see the good in others, but also within myself. Just as my mother can be so engrossed in her own life, I am frequently self-absorbed with my own problems.  I have a tendency to think that my problems are more complex and interesting than others. My dad can quickly write other people’s feelings off as insignificant or unimportant.  While I think I can be understanding with mental health issues and heartbreak, I have to admit I’m awful at dealing with drama or people with low self-confidence.   Joe was an obsessive partner.  We were both awful at setting boundaries and expectations for each other and frequently ran too hot and cold.  I refused to hear any critical opinions from others about him, when I should’ve listened more to the people who cared about me.

I think that to reach a certain point in emotional maturity to truly understand what it is to love someone, you have to experience the coming-of-age realization of your parents imperfections.  You have to experience heartbreak by someone you thought never would do that to you.  At the end of the day, you have to believe that there are no heroes nor sinners, that all of us have this wonderful perplexing mixture of the good and the bad.  No matter what, people are flawed and they will continually hurt, anger, disappoint, frustrate, and disappoint us.  But I suppose that love is deciding whose pain is worth suffering for.  It’s saying, I see your light and I see your evil and I choose to stay for both.

I suppose no first interactions start by asking, “How are you crazy?” But maybe they should.  “How have you hurt the people who love you?”  “What makes you hesitant about loving someone else?” “What are you too nervous to share with me?” “What’s wrong with you?”  We’re too self-conscious of our flaws or don’t have the emotional maturity to be aware of them.  But taking the deep dive into someone’s insufficiencies, becoming aware of their shortcomings, that’s how you learn to love them.

The same goes for loving yourself and being able to allow others to love you.  Facing your own issues so that you can let others see them too.  So that you can be aware of how you don’t live up to perfection and let others learn who you really are.  I’m trying to spend more time thinking about my own problems and answering the questions above for myself so that I can love myself and so can others.

And in this painfully ironic way, I usually find that people’s flaws are what fuels their strengths.  Their energy comes from their dark side.  Once you can see that, feelings are deeper.  I’m incredibly fascinated by what people don’t like about themselves.  What they do like.  I’m curious about their perceptions of their parents and their former friends and partners.  Do they see the complexity of their relationships and their love?  Do they see where they went wrong too?

And perhaps that’s what this finsta is all about for me.  I share with you my flaws, my fears, my secrets, my insecurities.  All in hopes that you will still love me for those as well.  You can see first-hand my self-absorption, my obsessiveness, my deviancies.  I tend to overanalyze.  I’m sometimes elitist.  I oftentimes find others boring. I am deeply flawed and scared and sad and I hope you will accept my shortcomings with the good pieces of who I am, too.

[imzenagirl-blog]

sparks

(written February 13th, 2018)

First of all, I hate myself too.  That's why I made a blog.  It's easier to let people know that I'm pretentious by saying, "I'm writing a blog" then having them come to their own conclusions through experience.  It's more efficient this way.  You're welcome.

If you've hung out with me at least twice in a group setting, you have witnessed my ability to repeatedly talk about my feelings or my theories.  Apparently, speaking with a therapist once a week isn't enough. I have to write about it, too.  Dr. Scott did tell me that he thinks I'd be an interesting writer.  Not sure if he has to follow the same rule as my mom where they're required to say nice things about me, but at least I have two possibly-dedicated fans.

I've generally discussed my feelings and theories in different contexts, but those no longer feel suitable.  Aka, perhaps a finsta account isn't the best platform for long-form writing.  A blog would better allow me to encapsulate the entirety of my thoughts as well as give more artistic freedom for the creative juices to flow.

I learned about creative juices during my sophomore year Creative Writing class.  On the first day, the professor discussed all of the assignments for the semester and prompted us to write as frequently as possible.  A student raised his hand to express his concern that habitual writing would deplete our creative juices, that over time we would produce lower-quality work.  The professor, Greg, paused to look at the chalkboard before responding.  He said that creativity is not like a gas tank.  There's no fixed amount.  There's no gas light that comes on once you're nearing low.  You can't run out.  Creativity is limitless.  Creativity is like a fire.  You can put a stick into the fire and take it out and the fire and the stick will both burn just as bright.  

I've thought about creativity being a fire ever since.  But, I think the metaphor extends beyond what Greg said.  Fire is infectious.  I can put my stick into other fires and feel the warmth of the flame.  When I watch films or read books, I can learn about another perspective on human nature.  The blaze inspires and enlightens.

While I love to feel the vibrancy of other fires, I think it's about time to start my own.  In essence, this blog is my hearth.  I'm in search of more sparks so that eventually my thoughts, my writing will glow brilliantly.  Maybe you'll put a stick in to feel the fire and we can both burn.

[imzenagirl-blog]

ropes

(written February 14th, 2018)

Depression feels like you’re suspended over water with dozens of ropes attached to your appendages that keep you hanging in midair.  You have always been hovering there, but only now do you notice how close you are to the water.  You start to consider cutting some of the ropes, inching yourself closer to the abysmal sea.

You don’t need to hangout with your friends.

You don’t need to be in this club or on this committee.

You don’t need to go to rowing practice.

You don’t need to show up to Calculus at 8:30.  

You don’t need to change out of pajamas.

You don’t need to care.  

You think about cutting all of the ropes.  Why not?  It’s easy to get rid of them.  All the things that used to matter to you don’t anymore.  Any positive impressions or good feelings are muffled by the invading fog of thoughts that nothing matters, everything is pointless.  It’s terrifying, isn’t it?  Nothing matters anymore.  Maybe it never did.

Why was I depressed?  Maybe it was the rough start to my freshman year.  My sexual assault.  Being ostracized by my rowing team.  The batch of bad chemicals pulsing through my brain.  Maybe the magic potion that caused my depression was a concoction of all of these.  

Each morning, I would wake up and think to myself, “Is today the day I let myself fall in?”  I thought about how by default we are living.  We didn’t choose to be born.  We wake up every morning, still alive, due to inaction.  We are bounded to live by being in auto-pilot.  Being suicidal made living a conscious decision for me.  I weighed the pros and cons, all the while I cut more ropes.  

The turning point in my life wasn’t abrupt.  Ever so slowly, my mind made a 180.  I would wake up and think, “Today, I choose to live.” No longer on auto-pilot, I expressed my free will to go out into the world and experience the new day.  It’s cliche, I know, but I had to get close to death, graze my fingers over the water’s surface, to realize why my life was worth living.   And the ropes that I cut, well, I’ll never get those back.  I don’t want them either.  They don’t matter.

No longer do I care about fake friendships.

The score on my rowing screen.

Worrying about the future.

Whether people like me or not.

The remaining few ropes that keep me hanging onto life are all the more valuable now.  They make life worth choosing.

I used to keep my Lexapro prescription on my nightstand, even after I got better as a reminder of where I started.  As the two year anniversary of me discovering life again, my therapist gave me the book “The Art of Happiness.”

[imzenagirl-blog]

grit

(written February 28th, 2018)

A lot of people like to talk about grit.  Everyone wants to be gritty.  Companies want to hire me because they think I’m gritty.  They think I’m gritty because I wake up at 5:30 in the morning with no complaints.  They think I’m gritty because I train hard, go to class, train hard again, and go to sleep.  

I’ve always been attracted to sport because of grit.  I never did sports that require much skill, like basketball or golf.  I wasn’t talented enough for those.  No, I had to do the hard sports, the ones that require grit and then some.  Swimming, running, rowing.  I’ll never outperform someone, but I can sure as hell out train them.  

A common misconception is that grit shows up on race day. Maybe in the middle of a race, when your heart rate barely tops 200 beats per minute.  Or maybe in the last 250 meters, when you’re faced with a head-to-head match to the finish line.  

Your grit is on showcase for the world to see during a race, but that’s not where it’s made.  Grit is made when your alarm goes off and you choose to get up, when you don’t slow down in the last mile of a workout, when you decide to go to sleep instead of doing something with your friends.  Grit comes slowly, until you no longer need it anymore.  It’s just routine.  

I loved that my grittiness would win me races.  That it would take me to worlds.  That it would earn me a scholarship.  People would be able to see how much grit I had.

Rowing quickly isn’t the grittiest thing I’ve done.  It’s been 7 years of morning alarms, blistered hands, painful erg sessions, and meditative rows.  That all feels easy now, it’s my routine, my daily life.  

It’s required a hell of a lot more grit to be average.  No longer striving to be exceptional, but to make it to the next day.  To not give up.  You can’t see this grit, it doesn’t win me races or give me anything special.  I hope it teaches me something to use in the future.

I’m gritty because I went back to sport after being assaulted and depressed.  Things are better, but my past sometimes still makes the past hard.

I’m gritty because I’m coached by someone who doesn't like me.  They don’t know my academic major, what I did last summer, or what I’m trying to do with my life.  My sweat and tears are for someone who doesn’t care about me as a person.  I hope they see value in me as a person.

I’m gritty because I’m given no legitimate platform, but I still try to positively lead.  Even when my influence is minimized, I attempt to make grassroots change.  I hope I can help people onto a positive path.

I’m gritty because I continue to try hard even though it will no longer affect the outcome.  When I was quick, I was boated poorly.  When I’m sort of fast, I’m boated poorly.  And when I’m slow, well, I’m boated poorly.  

I’m gritty because I do it all with a fucking smile on my face.

That’s the hard part.

[imzenagirl-blog]

what i’ve learned

(written May 18th, 2018)

I wanted to sit down and write about college.  About the past four years of my life. What a ridiculous idea, to think that I can somehow summarize all of the thoughts, experiences, feelings, and revelations into one concise message.  Now, I sit here, trying to type, with my brain going a dozen different directions. My thought pattern does not move in a linear motion. Instead it’s like a spider web, where each cross-stitching connects to several different parts of the web, all needed to make a large, secure net.  The big picture, perhaps.

Apparently, after four years of higher education, I am qualified to enter the so-called “real world.”  I majored in Economics. Shit, I can’t tell you much about econ (don’t tell anyone). But, I can tell you about other things I learned along the way.

I think that many students persistently worry about their GPA, their social standing, and their professional outlook.  Those are all valid things to worry about, but I think it’s easy to become overly concerned with the importance of these social constructs.

What is important?  I think that real things are important.  To me, real things are anything that would exist in a hunter-gatherer type of situation.  This includes simple aspects of survival, like nutrition, rest, sunlight, and movement. Take care of yourself.  But once you achieve a healthy lifestyle, things you should spend effort achieving would be a sense of community, a feeling of purpose, authentic human connection, love, learning, and more.

Learning. During my sophomore year, I stopped being worried about my GPA and instead shifted my focus to learning.  I enrolled in 18 credits a semester for the majority of college. I took challenging graduate courses. I joined projects that I was totally unqualified for, but they let me in because I was enthusiastic to learn.  Sometimes, the harder classes like intro to computer programming or a difficult finance class, made my GPA suffer. But I was compensated with the A’s I earned in several grad classes or creative writing courses. In the end, I cared about the classes I was taking and it was easy to show up every day.  The homework was easy. All-around, my academic experience was more rewarding. Some employers will only be concerned with your GPA, but is that the person you want to work for? I prefer working for someone who cares about what I did and what I learned, not about a single number.

Authentic human connection.  We’re all concerned about whether or not people like us or think we’re cool.  I do, too. Here’s the secret to being cool; be yourself and stop caring about whether or not people like you.  Don’t ever try to make someone like you. I found people who truly and deeply care about me. I don’t wear that fur coat because because I think other people will think it’s cool, I wear it because I look smoking.  I try not to say things to impress people, instead I talk about things I care about or ask others what they care about. This one requires a lot of practice, but it’s how I’ve become dope as fuck and I swear by it.

A feeling of purpose.  To find this, I try to constantly ask myself, why?  Why do I spend time doing this? Why do I want to study this?  Why do I want this job? It’s easy to live your life without reason, but it’s fulfilling to dedicate your time and effort toward something you care about.  I didn’t necessarily have to join the Peace Corps to find purpose, but I had to find something that made me feel like I was getting the opportunity to help people.  I urge you to find what gives you a reason why.

Sense of community.  I try to surround myself with people I enjoy and who help me grow as a person.  I know this sounds simple, but we’re all guilty of spending time with someone we don’t even like.  We all know someone who talks behind the back of their alleged friends. I try limit my time spent with people who do not make me feel good or show me a useful perspective.  There are SO many amazing people in this world to meet and explore, give yourself the opportunity to connect with them.

Love.  My favorite thing.  While I sometimes tend to go a bit overboard in this department, the chance for love is what gets me up in the morning.  Falling in love with every barista I meet is the secret sauce to my joyfulness. If I’m struggling in a class or through a rowing workout, I think about someone I love and that makes it easier.  While you may not need to take it to that extent, I do wish people would see all of the possibilities for love in their life, because I think it would put them in a better mood everyday. You could fall in love with anyone you meet, the person sitting next to you in class, the homeless man on the sidewalk, they guy who makes your sandwich.  Anybody could mean the world to you in a year from now! Treat them like you love them and they will probably do the same in return.

So, that’s what I’ve learned and that’s how I try to live my life.  I think more than anything else, this view on the world and the manner in which I live my life will bring me purpose, professional success, and enough wealth to be satisfied.  

[imzenagirl-blog]

body dysmorphia

(written on October 4th, 2018)

I wish I didn’t have to live in my body anymore.  But I don’t know where else to go. I’m here for now.  Living here is difficult.

Seeing old friends makes me anxious.  They’ll see me and think in their head, she has gained some weight.  But not say anything.  That’d be rude.

I don’t want to go to the grocery store.  I run into people from high school and they notice that I look different.  They probably go home and tell their mom that they saw Haley from high school and they casually mention that I gained some weight.  Now their mom knows too.

I can't bake the cookies for my mom's party.  It makes me think of how much I hate myself.  One time my mom needed me to bake brownies and I ended up eating all of the brownie batter.  I didn't want her to know so I went to the store and bought a whole new brownie mix and made them again.  At the party I pretended I didn't like how they tasted.

My sexual partners don’t find me appealing.  For the first time out of preference instead of convenience, I had sex with my shirt on.  Please don’t look at my body that I do not wish to live in. Only feel my body. But feel the good parts, just my breasts and ass.  The parts of my body that are supposed to mold underneath your hands. Not the bad parts, my stomach or my thighs. I want to hide those with darkness and your bedsheets.

I hate feeling my own body.  When I lay on my side and feel the skin around my stomach fall with gravity.  When I walk and feel my thighs rub together. When I put my clothes on and they squeeze me.

I hate seeing my body.  I avoid mirrors. I go so far to avoid looking down.  That’s how much I don’t want to live in my body. I hate what I see.  The place I live. I wish I could live somewhere else.

[imzenagirl-blog]

my favorite way to get high

A mixture of hope, horniness, and loneliness.  Better than anything else I’ve tried.  Albeit, I haven’t tried the best, most addictive chemicals.  This is my vice.

To get high with me, it usually starts on Tinder.  Sometimes in person, but the apps nowadays are an efficient way to get things rolling with a stranger.

Tinder is a numbers game.  While I can receive dozens of messages a day, I don’t think there’s a rhyme or reason for the ones I choose to respond to.  The formula is simple; you’ve caught me at a particularly lonely or boring moment and you’ve said something other than hey.  Boom. We dive on in.

You’ll definitely like me.  I have a certain type of charm when I want.  It’s almost chameleon-esque.  Of course, I’m still Haley- I’ll be open minded and adventurous.  That’s part of my allure.  But I’ll shed pieces of myself and replace them with a mirror of what you’d like to see.  Whatever the fuck Eric or Brandon or other stupid white boy name want, I’ll be that.  

You’re athletic?  I’ll play up being a college athlete and my passion for fitness.

You love music?  Great, I enjoy that genre too.  Let me send you some songs based off of your interest.

You’re a total nerd.  God, I love nerds.  That’s so hot to me.  Tell me about it.

I’ll ask the questions I know you enjoy answering.  

I’m anything or anyone.

Next, I’ll suggest for us to make plans to meet.  Sometimes I let you make the plans if I think you’d enjoy proposing what to do.  Recently, I am drawn to people who allow me to make the plan so that I can feel in control.  I like making a plan that will push you out of your comfort zone slightly so that you’re a little nervous.  The butterflies in your stomach will make you like me more.  

I’m not anxious when we meet.  I used to be, when I first started doing this.  But I’ve met strangers so many times now that I don’t get the same thrill out of it.  Which is probably why I now seek out weirder people or weirder situations - to feel a knot in my stomach again.  

From there, we move like clockwork.  I greet you saying, “hi stranger.”  I always say that.  When you don’t go for a hug I tease you in hopes it makes you a tad bit more nervous.  

I tell wild stories that make you think I’m exciting and how I can potentially be someone to spice up your boring life.  You say, “I’m worried I’m too boring for you.”  I say, “No! You’re not boring at all.  You’re so interesting!  And I’m not just saying that.”  I’m actually just saying that.  You’re most likely too boring for me, but I picked you as my partner for the evening and am not turning back now.

Eventually, I try to make you feel at ease.  Slowing down my speech and inching closer to you,  I talk like an old friend and make you feel comfortable.  I tell you my secrets.  Sometimes I reveal extraordinarily secret feelings of mine, ones that my close friends don’t even know.  (My most intrusive thoughts are spread across dozens and dozens of strangers.  I suppose I like to reveal dark things to people I never have to see again.)

I desperately want you to feel so comfortable around me that you can tell me anything.  And I want that anything to be dark and emotionally traumatic.  I hope that you’ve suffered great loss in your life.  Or that your sexual fetish is a disturbing, dirty secret.  I hope that someone has broken your heart.  I hope you had a rough childhood.  

I’m sorry for wanting that from you.  It’s absolutely disgusting, but I love it.  I soak it up, it takes me over the moon.  I want to comfort you and love you unconditionally and for you to do the same for me.  I savor the moments where we exchange emotional insecurities.

I feel almost aroused by this exchange of experiences.  I don’t know why.  My current best guess is that I have the deep insecurity that if someone knew everything about me they would be incapable of loving me.  I desire my partners to be deeply flawed and in pain, so at least I have a chance.

Eventually, things always lead to sex.  This is where every road goes and where it tends to end, too.  I can’t put my finger on the reason I feel intensely compelled to have sex with you, but I do. I do it when I don’t want to.  Even if I don’t like your personality or I’m physically unattracted to you, I do it.  Is it because I want to make you happy?  I want to be liked?  I want to feel connected with someone to feel less alone?  I wish I knew what the void is that I’m trying to fill.  

When the sex is good, I make a lot of eye contact, I want to stay in your bed for as long as possible, and I wish to never leave you.  I know once I leave the bad feelings will begin to flood in.  When the sex is bad, I want to leave immediately.  The comedown happens almost immediately and I want to get out of there because I start despising every aspect of your being.

In the end, I always come down.  Whether on the drive home or a trip on the subway, tears will spew out of me.  No longer enthralled off of our shared pain and interconnectedness, I feel alone in the world.  I feel disgusted with myself.  

I meet someone else the next opportunity that comes.

I follow the pattern over and over again.  Pretending to fall in love with a scarred stranger, only to return home feeling more alone than ever before.  I momentarily fill a void in my life at the expense of my emotional wellbeing. 

It’s my favorite way to get high.  

[imzenagirl-blog]

Some notes on, like, feeling ok

During your first therapy appointment, they make you sign a waiver saying that your therapist won’t tell anyone what you say unless it involves you harming yourself or others.  That made me pretty skeptical, so I spent the entire time sussing out whether an athletic department therapist could be trusted with my secrets.  (In the end, he was a pretty trustworthy guy).

During my second therapy appointment, my thoughts pour out to Dr. Scott.  You know when you turn a garden hose on full blast and you try to turn it off, but either way you twist the nozzle the water doesn’t slow down so you’re left there twisting it back and forth frantically with water still gushing out?  That’s what my therapist experienced trying to shut me up for a moment.  Major, boyfriend, friends, rowing, jobs, drugs, parents, siblings, etc.

“Ok, so those are pretty much all the things I’m dealing with right now and that’s why I’ve come back to therapy.”

With that moment of silence, he walks up to the whiteboard in his office.  He draws a bell curve on the board.  The X axis is success.  The Y axis is people.  

“Where do you think you’d have to fall on this line to be happy?”

I point to the far right of the bell curve.  The point with the most success, with the fewest number of people.  

“I think I’d only be truly happy over there, or at least close to it.”  

Dr. Scott sits in silence and rubs his chin.  Eventually, he points to the middle of the curve.

“How do you think all those people in the middle are still happy?  Those are teachers, UPS drivers, even me.  Don’t you think that they’ve managed to be happy too?  You’ve already achieved so much success, I’d imagine that even on your worst day you’re still further right than at least half of the people on here.”

I spend the rest of the session pushing back on what he said.  Those people aren’t really happy, they’re just settling...At a certain point we have to accept our circumstances and make the best of them...I’m different from all the other people on that line and maybe that’s a good thing, I don’t believe I should settle...We are better off suffering on our way to become the best...Whatever reasoning I could come up with.

That type of mindset makes me sick. With the help of Dr. Scott, I realized I was happier devoting more time into my relationships and projects.  

Eventually, without seeing a therapist and a change of setting, the mindset creeped back in.  I wanted to live in NYC and work at a startup with the hopes that I would be more successful with other people on the chance that shit blew up.  I would live a more interesting life.  I would have more money.  I would be liked.  I would be bigger and better.

I wanted to put a dent in the fucking universe.  But when I didn’t do that, or get the money, the success, the devotion that I wanted right away, I felt devastatingly unhappy.  I turned to quick fixes to drown out my feelings momentarily.  Sex, drugs, sugar, attention.  The highs left me feeling worse than before.

I went to fucking Burning Man to feel so fucking happy in a psychedelic wonderland and still felt like shit.

Now I’m at home.  I’m doing nothing big.  I have no particular success.  There’s few people around to give me attention, I’m mostly alone.  I hangout with my dog, sometimes my mom.  That’s about it.

It feels like I’ve drowned out the whole world outside of me.  I’m bored. Isolated.  But in the silence, I have learned so much about myself.  I can choose to suffer or to make my own little world content.  Drugs and lust make me happy, but maybe all I need is to be content.  And that could happen anywhere on that bell curve.  

On my flight home from Burning Man, I was pretty distraught over my life.  While in an altered state of mind, I wrote down what I wanted my life to look like.

I want a job that I care about

I want to create social value for society

I want to communicate with a lot of different people at work.

I want to build a community.

I want to live somewhere clean with few items.

I want to have a comfy bed and natural sunlight.

I want to feel like I have a home.

I want to like my housemates.

I want to bike or walk to nearby locations.

I want to be a regular at local spots.  (Lucky’s Market preferred).

I want people to know my name.

I want to workout a lot.

I want to be in a running group.

I want to treat my body well.

I want to have friends that bring out the best in me.

I want to try new things.

I want to volunteer.

I want to feel ok.

Lucky for me, feeling content is not so far-fetched.  It’s at my fingertips (-:

[imzenagirl-blog]

how many people have you slept with?

What a stupid fucking question.  Anytime someone has asked me this question, our relationship has taken a turn for the worst.  

“I don’t want to answer that question.  I don’t think it matters.”

“Yeah, I mean, it doesn’t matter, I’m just curious.”

“Well, obviously it matters otherwise you wouldn’t be asking the question.  No matter what my answer is, you won’t be happy with it.  If I answer with a lower number than you, you will think I might be lying.  Higher than you, I’m a slut.  There’s no winner here and there’s nothing to gain.”

I’ve had that conversation too many times.  Turns out, the number of people I’ve slept with is irrelevant, but I’ll share with you some stats that I think are way more interesting.

These stats are representative of the people I’ve had sex with, meaning that I’ve had some form of oral or penetrative sex with them.

I mostly have sex with men, only 5% of the people I’ve slept with are women or non-binary folks.

When I have sex with someone, it tends to be penetrative at some point (I don’t love oral sex), 88% of my sexual encounters included penetration.

Out of all the sex I’ve had, I only consider 52% of those experiences to be positive.  The other 48% I feel like I could have done without.  I’ve determined two periods of my life that were approximately 2 months each to be phases where I suffered from sexual addiction and felt compelled to have sex.  These phases include 54% of my sexual encounters.  If I had sex with someone during this phase, there’s a 67% chance it was an overall negative experience that I could have done better without.

81% are White, 10% are Black, 7% are Asian, and 2% are Hispanic.

27% of people I’ve had 10 or more sexual encounters with them.

24% of people I’ve had 2-9 sexual encounters with.

49% of people I’ve only had 1 sexual encounter with.

I was under the influence of a substance during 18% of first encounters.

If I was under the influence there’s a 73% chance it was a negative experience.  I usually try to avoid drinking or substance use mixed with sex, especially during the first occasion.

I’ve mostly met people I have sex with from apps.  50% of people I’ve met on Tinder, 23% I was friends with beforehand, 10% I met at a party, 7% I met on Fetlife, 5% I met on Bumble, and 5% I met on Feeld.

I’m mostly attracted to people who are slightly shorter than me!  I’m 6 feet tall.  40% of people have been 2+ inches shorter than me, 33% have been the same height, and 27% have been 2+ inches taller than me.

I’m mostly attracted to people who weigh less than me.  I’ve weighed anywhere between 160 and 180 pounds.  I estimate that 40% of people weigh 10+ pounds less than me, 33% weighed the same, and 27% weighed 10+ pounds more.  I’ve had sex with one person who was overweight.  

I enjoy light BDSM.  28% of my sexual encounters included some component of BDSM.  Out of those experiences, I was exclusively submissive with 76% of people, I was a switch (dom and sub) with 18% of people, and I was exclusively dominant with 6% of people.

23% of people were more than 4 years older than me.

20% have no education past a high school diploma.

35% are in the top 10% of US incomes either because they earn it or their parents provide for them.  15% are in the top 1%.

3% are/were homeless.

5% have been incarcerated.

I have some form of contact (even if it’s as small as still being Facebook friends) with 48% of people I’ve had sex with.  I still talk to 20% of people regularly.

I had anal sex with 8% of people.

8% of people were actively cheating on a partner by having sex with me.

I love artists.  25% would consider themselves to be an artist or a creative.

I love engineers.  32% are an engineer.

17% had an accent.

I like skater boys.  22% were skaters at some point.

The majority of people have normal sized penises (which is my preference).  12% had smaller than average penises.  10% had larger than average.  7% were uncircumcised.