Walking Contradiction

I'm a walking contradiction. I claim it's because I refuse to let people put me into a box based on my gender, my activities, or what they assume to be true about me.

I'm a sorority girl, in fact, I'm our VP Recruitment. Making me, by stereotype and definition, the Most Sorority of All Sorority Girls. I'm the one that tells everyone what to wear to recruitment events, where to sit, how to eat, how to speak, and which topics to avoid. I have to be uber concerned with the superficiality of the entire situation because, like it or not, it's important.

I'm also living in a frat this summer. Nothing makes me happier than kicking back with the bros, grilling a steak, and enjoying a beer (or eight). Often, I do this in sorority letters, with a bow in my hair and pearl earrings on. People high-five me when I burp, and I usually get bonus praise if I'm wearing eyeliner at the same time.

People don't expect other people to be so willing and able to defy labels. And might we remember, I'm living in Berkeley, among arguably one of the most accepting and progressive groups of people in this country.

People laugh with me, but very rarely at me. People are often surprised by me. People usually don't know what to do with me. I've been praised, complimented, told that I'm appreciated because I "just don't give a fuck".

That's not entirely true. I give lots of fucks. I don't go around living my life with the express purpose of defying stereotypes and surprising people. Do I do it often? Yes. Do I enjoy it? Absolutely. But do I act for the sole purpose of acting out, or gently pushing the status quo? Sometimes. But more often than not, I just do what I think makes me happy. And I absolutely give fucks. I care very much about people close to me, people that I love. I'm a fiercely loyal friend. I examine problems critically. I put in tons of effort to my education and my job. I care about my own health and well being, and I care about my happiness. I care about my sorority, and the obligations I have to them (including my position as VP Recruitment). I care so much about the things in my life that I deem worthy of my attention. And acting a certain way to perpetuate some stereotypes about my gender or any other group that I happen to fit into isn't something that I deem worthy of my attention.

Today, I talked on the phone for 45 minutes with my dad. In our conversation, we discussed a ton of things, one of which was my upcoming job. I had some questions about my W-4, so he was helping me out. In the same breath, though, I complained to him about how upset I was with the agency that had done my drug testing, because they had cut a square inch of my hair out. He sympathized with me, and told me how angry he would be because "hair doesn't just grow back and it's not like you have short hair or anything". Too true dad. The next sentence out of my mouth was "So I'm thinking of buying an Xbox for my room next year, do you think I should get a 24" or a 32" TV?". I went from complaining about my hair to talking about gaming systems, and he wasn't surprised in the slightest. And you wouldn't be either, if you knew me. It's just who I am.

I don't think it's superficial to care about your appearance (as I just spent $150 on a bag and business clothes for my job training next weekend), and I don't think it's "too boy-ey" for a girl to own an Xbox. I can cook very well, and I'm respected for it by guys and girls alike (because I don't do it to seem domestic, and when someone suggested to me that cooking was a "women's" thing to do, I snapped back that my dad did all the cooking in my house and I learned from him, and if he had any more comments about cooking being girly he could save them because I was going to go grill a steak thank you very much). I have a very large appreciation for good beer, which two different (guy) friends of mine have told me is their favorite thing about me. I think they were kidding about it being their absolute favorite thing, but oh well.

I don't think it's too forward for girls to express interest in guys. This past week, I (maybe too brazenly/obviously/boldly) just walked over to my neighbor's and knocked on the door and told him I wanted to hang out with him (which in Fratland is equivalent to saying "I want to snuggle with you and watch a movie and maybe make out with your face a little bit), walked into his room, and sat down. Not usually something that [sober] girls do, but I don't understand why. I wanted to see him, so I went out of my way to let him know that. And after I had done that, I couldn't help feeling like I had "come on too strong", or I hadn't been "coy" enough, or I had somehow failed at being a girl because I didn't sit on my ass and wait for a boy to come and whisk me away. I thought this boy was very cute and very interesting and thought we got along well, so I took the initiative. What's wrong with that? (P.S. "nothing" is the only correct answer to that query).

I have a wicked sense of humor, and by that I mean that I refuse to take myself seriously and often laugh at how ironic/unfortunate/coincidental my blunders are. I laugh at myself so much that I'm impossible to actually make fun of and offend. Because I've already done it to myself, and believe me, I'm a much harder critic on myself than you could ever be.

I'm done ranting, mostly. I'm just praised so often for refusing to fit into a box, and I'm at best, confused by this and at worst, angered. Because that praise means that I'm doing something novel, something that's somehow noteworthy enough to praise. And granted, I think that I'm doing a pretty damn good job at going through life and making choices for myself and doing it gracefully, and it's nice to hear reassurance, but I'm not reinventing the wheel here. I'm not drastically defying status quos left and right, and I'm not trying to make some sort of statement.

I'm trying to act in a manner that makes me happy. I'm trying to do the things that I love with the people that I love, and I'm trying to live my life in a way that I want to and that, when I look back one, ten, twenty or fifty years from now, that I'll be proud of. That's not novel, that's not groundbreaking, and that's not revolutionary. At least, it shouldn't be.

That's living your own damn life and being unapologetic for doing so.

Eyes

For as long as I can remember, people have always complimented my eyes first. Always. From a very young age I learned that not only were my eyes my widow to the world, they were also the biggest thing on my face. My eyes are HUGE. The better to look upon the wonders of life, I guess.

Anyways, everyone commented on them. My parents' friends would do it, my friends wild do it, and most commonly, boys would do it. Many times it was my friends that did, but many times it was a stranger- and it was the second thing out of his mouth after his name. 

"Hi, I'm him" 

"nice to meet you" 

"can I just say that you have the most gorgeous eyes I've ever seen?"

All. The. Time. It's become something I take as a given, and if someone does compliment my eyes it's unappreciated

Recently, I met someone who drunkenly one night, told me that he loved my eye contact. Not my eyes, my eye contact. This was the first eye-related compliment that I had ever gotten that made me stop and appreciate it. He told me that when he was talking to me, he really felt like I was invested and interested in what he was saying. That my eye contact was amazing, and not commonplace. That single compliment made me feel heard, and not just seen. It was unique and very, very meaningful.

Aftershocks

Have you ever really thought about the past and pointed to a relationship and said "I was in love then. That must be what love is" but absolutely not realized it at the time?

Sometimes clarity is convenient. And sometimes clarity comes almost four years later. 

Oh well. C'est la vie.

Timing

Tonight was a rough night.

I was trying to unwind after the most confusing and scattered first-day-back ever, one that began with a fifteen-mile bike ride (Bike the Drive in Chicago, everyone should do it) and ended with this. After going in my hot tub with a friend of mine, C, I settled in to bed with half a cantaloupe to catch up on my life.

The first thing I did was catch up on the news. There was a shooting in Isla Vista on Friday night, one that left many of my peers shaken (UCSB is still in the UC system, and many students at Berkeley know students at SB, so many people that I know were personally affected by this awful, awful tragedy). I have no words of my own to attempt to process this event, but I will link you to articles here, here, here, and here. For a world where news travels so fast, I was vastly under-prepared for what I was about to read. It's a horrific thing in and of itself, and as a female member of the Greek system at a closely-linked university, it was particularly hard to stomach due to the targeted attack on sorority women in the area. My LITB and Panhellenic love goes out to all women at UCSB; I cannot even imagine having to be in your shoes and am extending love and support your way.

After taking a minute to process one person's devastating lack of value for other human life, I turned to Amazon Prime Instant Video. Wanting to watch a movie that would allow myself to relax, clear my mind, I skipped past all the action movies and settled on a comedy about high school life in the eighties. Made in 1988, this movie was cited as the precursor to Clueless and Mean Girls, among other films, and existed in the same time frame as John Hughes movies, so without any more information on the subject matter or the plotline of the movie, I began watching Heathers.

Forty minutes in, I was horrified. The timing of my processing of the shooting, then watching the movie, could not have been worse. For those of you (like me) that are unaware of what Heathers is about, the plot follows a girl named Veronica who has succeeded in joining the popular clique in her high school called the Heathers: a group of beautiful popular girls all named Heather. After a college party night goes awry and alpha Heather makes fun of Veronica (in a very clever, scathing way), Veronica plays a game of strip croquet with the new-to-the-neighborhood psychopath, JD (whom has jokingly "shot" two people with blanks in the school, already, with no consequence), to whom she gripes about Heather and vocally wishes alpha Heather dead. Now JD takes things literally, so in a well-intentioned prank to make alpha Heather throw up the following morning by having her drink a mixture of orange juice and milk (Veronica's idea), JD decides to ratchet up the stakes and feed alpha Heather drain cleaner instead. She dies, and JD convinces Veronica to help him pass it off as suicide. After killing two more students at the school (this time, misogynistic football players, killed by shooting them) and also passing them off as suicide, Veronica and JD have a relationship reminiscent of Bonnie and Clyde.

Without going too much into detail and ruining the movie, let's just say I was appalled. I took to the good ol' interweb to see what the fuss was about Heathers (specifically, if my disgust was shared by the mass populus), and was floored. Reviews of it as a cult classic were overwhelmingly positive, lauding it as an important dark comedy, a necessary piece of cinema, and a gem, even 25 years later. All I saw was a movie glorifying suicide and murder, which left a horrible taste in my mouth. I didn't understand how the movie could have ever been made, let alone celebrated, let alone labeled a "classic", with or without the world "cult" in front of classic. I was shaken, shocked, and appalled.

Then I took my surroundings into account. I don't know that I would ever love Heathers, given its dark subject matter and my reluctance to personally jump on board with the whole murder/suicide thing, but had I seen it on a different night (i.e. not right after hearing about Isla Vista), I would have felt differently. I will say that I appreciated it for it's biting wit and it's cleverness, and it's commentary on social cliques in the high school scene. It's a well-done movie, and though I won't throw the word "important" around, definitely has earned it's place in the history books, in my mind.

Maybe I'll try again to watch it, give it some time, and see what I think. For now, I'm just going to bed. I'm on Pacific time, and even for that, 2/4 am is too late to be awake.

God bless.

EDIT: I did do some reading on Heathers that changed my mindset just a little, or at least put my viewing of Heathers in the correct frame. I'll link ya: here, here, and here.

This Year

This year was the worst year yet. This school year. It had it's ups, but it had its deep downs as well.

This year:

My depression came back in a really hard-to-deal-with way, and I was luckily able to call someone when I most needed it.

I changed majors. Which is definitely for the better, but the academic courseload got about three times harder, and I got less and less sleep as I progressed through the year and the semester. Which made life hard to deal with.

My baby sister's growing up and that's freaking me out because she's going to college.

I was sexually assaulted by someone that I trusted.

I got a concussion. The week before finals.

A friend that was really close to me was just generally very very shitty and out of left field. 

For the first time in my life I've had to come to terms with some things that weren't so pretty, namely that I am human. This means that from time to time, I fuck up. Bad. I make choices that I can't stand behind the next day, and there are times where I look in the mirror and I'm not proud of the person that's looking back at me. I've been trying to learn not to beat myself up about it, but it's taking time. It's a process.

Mistakes

Mistakes suck.

I'm not talking about the simple embarrassing spelling error on a letter to your grandma, or forgetting to write the subject line in an e-mail to your TA which took you two hours to compose because you're in love with your TA. I'm not talking about forgetting to call your sister on her birthday, or not paying your credit card bill one month.

I'm talking about huge huge mistakes, gargantuan fuck-ups, things that you can't, at the end of the day, tell yourself will be okay. Things that society frowns upon, things that make your skin crawl and make you wonder if you'll ever be okay. Mistakes that ruin friendships, mistakes that ruin relationships, mistakes that ruin lives.

Okay, maybe I'm being a bit dramatic, but I've made a few mistakes. Very recently. That have had serious shockwaves. That weren't able to be brushed off by a simple apology, or justified by the fact that I had good intentions. They're things that I can't go to sleep at night and not think about, and they're things that make me cry one, two, four, seven months in the future. I've had to accept the fact that I'm a human that makes large mistakes from time to time, and that this is a part of learning and living.

And it fucking sucks. Coming to terms with the fact that I'm imperfect is horrible. And not an endearing imperfect, not the fact that I make light of my flaws, really, truly, horribly imperfect.

E, J, and how I learned my life was a joke.

A year ago, I did not know myself.

A year ago, someone else wanted to know me.  His name was J.

A year ago, I don't remember what happened, but J stopped talking to me, out of the blue, showed up with another girlfriend, and we cut contact.

In this year, I've grown closer to E. He knows most of my secrets, supports me when I need it, encourages me, makes me laugh, and best of all, does all of this in a platonic way. He's one of my best friends.

That is, until about four months ago.

Four months ago, E changed. He turned harsh, callous, insulting, and complacent. He stopped answering my texts, both when they were trivial and when they were important. He stopped answering my phone calls when I needed someone to talk to. It seemed like he stopped respecting me as a person, and I have no idea why.

To top it all off, E accused me this weekend of throwing myself at J when I knew he had a girlfriend. Not only is that not his place, that's not who I am, at all, and it felt like shit. This person, who I had trusted, loved platonically, helped, opened up to, and made myself vulnerable in front of betrayed me. It hurt worse than any breakup with any boyfriend, any fight with any other friend, anything else, ever.

It fucking sucked. And it threw me off my rocker completely. I have literally no idea what to do, where to go from here, or what to say. I feel so used and emotionally manipulated, and for someone who prides herself on being strong and able to see through bullshit, this is not a fun place to be in. I feel taken advantage of, both physically and emotionally. I don't know what to say.

This sucks.