Advice for Loving Life pt. 3

On the eve of my twentieth birthday before I fell asleep, I took some time to reflect on my teenage years and although there were some major cringe-worthy memories I was actually sort of impressed with myself.  In the past three years especially I’ve done things that really made me feel like a human. 

As a woman it is easy to sometimes feel limited in your decisions and actions, but when you go against the grain it feels so good.  These are some things that I really feel that every single woman should do ASAP.  

1)      Cut your hair off.  All of it.  I can tell you, from experience; there is nothing quite like coming home from the salon with the back of your head buzzed.  It was one of the scariest decisions I’ve made.  There were multiple instances where people thought I was a boy and many more where I felt ugly and spent a half hour crying. I thought I needed to compensate.  I thought, since I have a boy haircut I need to stop biting my nails so they look more feminine. Or I should wear makeup and dresses now so people don’t call me a boy.  I did all that for a little while until I got sick of it.  I learned to be way more comfortable with myself and my body. I stopped being upset about what people thought because at the end of the day, it wasn’t their life, it was mine and I wasn’t going to let them ruin a single day of it.  I didn’t hide behind my hair.  It was so freeing.  I can truthfully say it took away an body images I’ve struggled with.   

2)     Get muddy. Along with my short hair, I started acting a little less conservatively.  In some ways I guess I was motivated by the fact that I could emulate a man, I did something that was new to me.  I started hiking.  And in no way is that a man’s activity, I always never thought I should do it.  My favorite things about hiking are the moments when I am afraid I might get hurt.  One particular moment I love the most happened while I was trekking up the side of a creek.  It was fairly steep and icy.  I was using tree branches to help me not to tumble to my imminent doom.  There was a moment when I slipped and I thought I was going to fall, then my foot slide and caught on a tree root and my ankle twisted. My palm got scraped by the branch I was holding on to and my heart was in my throat. Things like that don’t happen every day and I think that women are sometimes too afraid of getting hurt so they don’t push themselves. Just the feeling of knowing I was strong enough to keep going after the thing I was afraid of happened, it gave me a thrill.  I would definitely twist my ankle again for more moments like that.

3)     Be weird.  I am naturally wacky, so this was easier for me.  I am a big proponent for seeing how strange you can be until you embarrass yourself.  Recently I was in my car and an awesome song came on and I thought to myself, man this song is so good I want to scream, (you know that really fun yell/scream people do in movies in convertibles?).  Well, I went to yell but I hesitated and went silent.  It was almost too embarrassing to do in a car by myself in traffic headed to work.  I have moments like this where I will be singing my lungs out to Christina Aguilera then stop because I don’t want myself to notice I’m enjoying being an idiot.  I have found the best way to counter your filter is to be even weirder.  I make chicken noises, do interpretive dances, and make goofy faces to myself.  I think weirdness is essential to being happy.

A lot of what I just talked about really boils down to going outside your comfort zone, so if I were to give one bit of advice to women and girls who are unhappy it would be to go so far out of your comfort zone that you build an immunity to it.  That’s when you begin to feel special.  

Love Can't Wait

Recent events in my life have sparked my thoughts about inequality in society right now.  I just dealt with some raging sexism at work and I realized it was the first time that I had personally dealt with the effects of inequality. I knew that we needed feminism and I’ve been an open supporter of it since I was little, but I was always coming from an outside perspective.  Now that I can say that I have been personally affected by sexism, I understand in a very minor way what the problem is.  A lot of people that aren’t supporters of feminism and think we’re already fixed don’t understand the effect it has on people.  The same thing happens with the LGBT community.  I have some real life experience that I can share with all of you about the bullying in schools towards gay people. 

During my senior year of high school, there was this boy who gave my friend and me a particularly hard time.  As us girls who are very close, hetero or not, we hold hands.  It was not uncommon for my friend and me to walk to our next class hand in hand.  We were not a couple, just really comfortable being as close as we were.  Every so often, after our lunch period, we would have an unpleasant encounter. 

One day in particular I remember, we were walking down a hall with very few people in it and from behind us came this boy who went right between us knocking our hands apart.  It wasn’t crowded in the hall so he had plenty of room to walk around us.  This sort of thing happened a few times and looking back at it now, I probably should have done something more than saying “What the f***?” because I can only hope that he will not do that to other people.  We thought it was rude and homophobic but we weren’t hurt by it so we didn't do anything.  

One other incident that only I experienced one time happened when I was walking to class alone in a hallway and he was coming in the opposite direction.  As we passed each other, he turned to me and said “Dyke,” then walked away.  As a person who doesn’t offend easily I kept walking and laughed it off, but I always worry that I wasn’t his only target and he was taking it easy on me.  There were plenty of other people in the school that were gay and I regret a lot that I didn’t do anything to stop him.  I might be lucky enough to have thick skin, but not everyone is. 

Whenever people say that we don’t have to protect the LGBT community, that they chose this life and need to deal with it alone, I’m always very upset by that.  Some states don’t include gay people in policies protecting from harassment, Indiana can refuse service, and now someone wants a bill passed that legalizes shooting gays in the head.  

Why in the world are people so offended by the idea that someone wants to kiss the same gender that they think murder is acceptable? I will never fully understand it and it terrifies me.  I am scared for the people involved in hate crimes and I am extremely upset for people who feel like they don't belong in this world.  Believe me, you do. Much more than someone who wants you out of it. 

I really hope that that boy either stopped or was stopped and that he didn’t make someone’s life miserable.  I say this as an apology to whoever has to deal with people like this.  I’m sorry I didn’t do anything then.  I also say this as a message to people who see this happening and I urge you to say something. As for the people who are perpetrators of harassment or worse.  You spend such a short time on this planet.  How about you focus some energy on healing it, not hurting it.