Tough Love. A Tribute To Hard Love, By Bob Franke

I remember being little and my mother held my hand,

giving me the courage to step up and take a stand,

because I knew that if I fell I would have the softest place to land,

because my mother knew the softer side of Tough Love.

And my daddy made me brave, made me stubborn, made me strong,

He taught me it takes power to admit it when your wrong,

and when I feel his strength, I am right where I belong,

Because where he is I know I will find Tough Love.

I remember when you came to me, I was stumbling in the dark,

but you lit up my existence, in the darkness you're a spark,

It would have been too easy to just let you break my heart,

But the only love I had to give was Tough Love.

Then I found out that I stole you, I was such a pretty thief,

and I sat there in the darkness, anticipating grief,

but much to my surprise, I only felt relief,

I have never been so grateful for Tough Love.

But I loved you for your humor, and your perfect lack of shame,

I loved the way you touched me, and the way you said my name,

And maybe it is true, all men really are the same,

and I already know too much about Tough Love.

And I still can't help but see you, even though I know your past,

But you said you never lied, and I guess I never asked,

I count up every new sin, and then forgive the last,
because no one really knows the rules to Tough Love.

I know I should walk away, yes I know it cant be right,

I just cant lay down my sword, no I cannot help but fight,
And I cant help but see your face when I close my eyes at night,
because there is nothing in this world that hurts like Tough Love.

I won't tell you how I loved you, if you ask me I would lie,

I won't admit how much it pleased me to wake up by your side,
or how much I would give, just to call you mine,
because my love will not be wasted, even though its Tough Love.

Yes, its Tough Love, but it is the only love I know,

The only love that I can give is a love I'll never show,
So I'll forget I ever loved you, as I watch you turn and go,
because I know that loving me is really Tough, Love.

You Lose...

The way
I went out of my way
to make this easier for you,
all the hoops that I jumped through,
and all for nothing.
Because I just
couldn't fathom,
that while I sat there
feeling blessed,
you felt trapped,
deceived, depressed.
No, I never
would have guessed,
by the look in your eyes,
wrapped up in
your pretty lies,
that you were such a chicken shit.
You make me sick
and at the end of the day,
you don't get to pick
and choose,
how this all works out,
for you,
when it comes down to it,
you lose,
every time.
You don't get to be confused,
or keep me waiting,
wondering, debating,
on whether you might come around,
to the simple realization,
that its not entirely,
about you!
I didn't take your choice away,
make you leave
or make you stay,
so the blame is all on you.
And when you start to rethink this,
and think of all the life
you'll miss,
every single good night kiss,
just remember my promise,
it will be like I never existed.

And when it comes to me,

don't you worry,
cause you're free,
And I am doing fine.
You cannot have
what's mine,
you cannot change
your mind.
So,
don't come looking
for a chance,
for a family,
for romance,
because I wont be missing you.
I will hold my head up high,
and my loved ones,
by my side,
and we'll all say,
"I thought he died..."
No, I don't need
your last name,
your falsehoods,
your pain,
your shame,
This is not a game.
And a couple years
from now,
when you realize,
you're a coward,
well it's gonna be too late.
And when people ask me how,
I'm just gonna tell them
Fate
and I will stand my ground,
no I don't,
need you around.


I bet your mother's proud.

Less and More.

We are burdened by a society that envelops us from birth, ripping us away from our mother, before we can even walk, holding our hands and toddling us along at a pace beyond our abilities, in a race we never signed up for. From the minute we can form thought they aim to own us, force feeding us our first words; for girls, pretty, skinny, delicate, thin, malleable, lean, soft spoken...skinny. Before we can even count, we know our worth is in our waistline. And boys, don't think I assume that you've got it easy, no, lord I know, nothing comes for free. The measure of a man, according to The Man, is in his ability to woo a brain washed woman into believing he is everything she never even knew she wanted in the first place. Masculinity lives in the weight of wallets and barbells, in tone and testosterone, and god forbid you have anything more or less. Any of us. Because vanity is not a sin, anymore. And self-worth is the enemy of progress, and heaven help me, if I love the way I look, or dress the way I want to dress, egotist. And what's more, they flash fry our brains with images of their warped view of perfection, make us crave it like addiction, until we are beating down their door, to buy their brand new product, that will make us less like us...and more...just more. We are lost in the balance of less and more, terrified of their indifference, of average, because how dare we, be happy? They would say we settle, because obviously they have worked for far too long, put too many years into building your self-loathing, brick by brick, to have it all torn down by something as simple as love. Ladies, wouldn't love feel so much better if you were a little less, or Men, a little more, how can you know for sure? Well the only thing I know, is that if I don't love me, no one can. And I don't need their products, because the secret to self-love is its free. And if every person chose not to believe their lies, not to mindlessly buy whatever they are selling, whatever secret miracle cure there may be to the curse of just being yourself; if we all stand up and say that we understand that the key to love doesn't come in a bottle, cant be bought from a shelf or ordered from the back of a magazine...if we all take the reigns of our lives back, then they cant touch us. And the years of mindless indulgence in their hate-speak, all those hours standing in front of the mirror hating every single thing we see, with their voices in our head telling us that we will never be good enough...unless...Its all for nothing, the minute we choose to be free, we tell them we can't be bought through buying into their hate-filled propaganda, We are free. This is our revolution, we are united in our ability to stop their reign of terror by ending our subscriptions to the issues they have shoved down our throats our entire lives, those are not gifts, we can choose to give them back.

All I Ever Learned From Love...Was How To Shoot At Someone Who Outdrew You...

Thank you, Leonard Cohen, for giving me that quote to carry around with me every day, for my entire life, it has both helped and hindered me more than I can say. It has been said, I don't know by whom, originally, that falling in love is like driving a car at night, you can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole journey that way. Maybe that's true, but it is also true that 40% of all fatal car accidents happen at night, and can you really argue with those numbers? I am notorious, even amongst those who have only known me for a short time, for having the worst luck with love; and it has often been asked "really, why him?" And my sexual awareness is also well renowned, to put it mildly, and some of my sexual partners are even more...questionable, to some.

I suppose it's safe to say that love is different for everyone, and if there is anyone out there who can actually tell me, exactly, what love is...please teach me your ways, Jedi Master. But until then, I feel like we, as humans, simply seek the love we need most in the moment. We accept the love we think we deserve, but we also seek the love we think will cure our deepest ills, the one that will silence our demons and quiet our doubts. I feel that women, in general, have all felt at one point in their lives the desperation of lovelessness, even if it was completely self-imposed, and due to the pain of that feeling, drove their car-of-love right off the nearest overpass. Not all love is the right love, not all love is forever, not all love works...but that doesn't mean it's not real. I think we tend to forget, when everything goes straight to hell with no warning, that whatever kind of love we have is the love we have chosen, it's exactly the love we wanted when we got it.

I don't "fall in love" I crash into it, full speed, and maybe for me love is more like driving at night, in a foreign city, on ice. I am cruising with unfounded confidence, simply along for the ride, when I see it, the telltale flicker of headlights on crystals, and I have just enough time to panic. Then I am whirling out of control, the whole world goes sideways, full tailspin, fight or flight takes over and I try, against better instincts, to correct the skid, but it's too late. I see the median coming on like the goddamned horseman of the apocalypse, one last second of terror, muscles contract, brace for impact, and I hit. It has happened so many times, I have the whiplash to prove it.

I have loved, and been loved in return, many times, and though none of them stuck, they were all tragically, earth-shatteringly, heart-breakingly real, and they were all mine. When I think back to why I may have loved the people I did, and what I might have been searching for, the void they may have filled at the time, I can only really come up with small snippets to describe the mayhem that was my heart and mind at the time...but in the end, my cup was empty, and in their own way, they filled it.

So here are the answers, broken and partial though they are, this is all I have...

"Why did you love Him??"

He sang to me in the dark. He was Lost. I saw myself in him. He needed me. I needed him. I was Lost. He was a lot like my father. He was nothing like my father. He loved his children. I loved his children. He was nothing like my ex. We were young. Hormones. Rebound. He made me feel beautiful. He made me feel worthwhile. He left me a voicemail every morning. He said he loved me. I was out of control. I was afraid no one would ever love me. I was afraid no one else would ever love him. I don't do anything half-ass. No man had ever touched me so gently. He made me feel proud of myself. Sex. He made me laugh. We had everything in common. We had nothing in common. Because loving him, was the best thing I have ever done.

I'm Hungry...

So I have officially been bitten by the blogger bug (try saying that five times fast) and I cant keep these things from jumping out my fingers and onto the keyboard, my train has officially jumped the tracks, and here we go.

I'm Hungry...

For the longest time that was the hardest thing for me to say...Sometimes it still is. I used to have an eating disorder...maybe I still do a little bit. People often comment on my strange eating habits, on the fact that sometimes I appear to live off of coffee and other times I always have a snack on hand. Or the strange things I eat or don't eat, and when it comes to the things that I don't eat, the fact that I will eat them when the mood strikes me. Well here it is...on and off for about as long as I can remember, most of my life since puberty struck and gave me this god-forsaken woman's body, I have shifted between starving myself, and shoveling food into my mouth with much gusto. I have always been self-conscious when it comes to my body, I have always had a really negative body image, until fairly recently. And there are still times when I look at myself in the mirror and shriek internally.

I have such a sick double standard for myself, and I just cant help it most of the time. I see women who look like this

and it makes me SICK. I can't believe that we live in a society where women do this to themselves and think it looks attractive, or people tell them it looks attractive. And I will stand of my soapbox all day and advocate women who have natural bodies...and then I will skip lunch. I know in the deepest part of myself that those women are not beautiful, that that is not a healthy lifestyle, that this is wrong. And I do love my body, most of the time, but there are times, when I am feeling particularly out of control, that I find myself slipping away. I always say things like "I just want to be healthy" or "I just like to eat right." But I don't eat right, I throw my body through a crazy obstacle course of food and hunger. I eat nothing but spinach for a week, then shovel Arby's into my mouth like its manna from heaven, and then get terribly sick afterwards and swear I'll never do it again.

 

 

I am not proud of these things, but they are real, they are true, they are me. When I'm feeling out of sorts, or nervous, I find myself feeling my bones, my clavicles, my ribs, my hip bones, making a circle around my wrist with my thumb and middle finger...measuring my worth in my mind, again and again. Throughout the day, I will enter my bedroom, walk around, then stand in front of my mirror, lift my shirt, and stare at my stomach, waiting for it to let me down. I still do these things, constantly, even though I don't consider myself to be sick anymore. I don't weigh myself, because I become overly obsessed with the number, and I cant keep myself in line, that's' a battle with myself that I know I can't win, so I don't, I just don't. I know there are a lot of women out there who are a lot "sicker" than I am...I'm not trying to compare my suffering to theirs, I am not in a competition, I am not saying that my suffering is more or less that theirs, there is no harder, there is just hard. I am trying, a little more every day, to say those words, I'm Hungry. It was so hard to say it at first, but I did, and some days I can say it loud and clear, and other days, its a whisper, but I try every day.

 

I do think this is beautiful...

And I do think I am beautiful, I truly do...

But that is something I have to choose...

Every day.

And some days the choice is harder than others.

 

 

As a person, I don't feel this way all the time, it's just little pieces that make up my whole day, I consider myself to be a healthy woman, mind, body, and soul...but there are just things I do that remind me that maybe I'm not 100% okay. I can be all of these things, people have layers, you don't have to be only one, or many things in equal measure, I am so many things...

 

I Am:

Beautiful

Thick

Loud

Happy

Imperfect

Strong

Real

Honest

Afraid

Curvy

Confident

Self-conscious

Powerful

Weak

Loyal

An Advocate

A Sister

A Daughter

A Friend

Damaged

Headstrong

Stubborn

 

Hungry, I am hungry.

 

 

Hey cool cats and kittens!

This is my first time, ever, blogging, so I figured I would start with a little about me, why I'm blogging, what I want this blog to be about...ect.

First of all, what my blog title means and why it's relevant to me...

This quote means so much to me. Ever since I left my last, of many, unhappy relationship, I decided that I wouldn't compromise who I am for anyone ever again. It was kind of like coming out of a closet, in a way; not that I'm homosexual, just that I was hiding for a very long time. I was a bit of a people pleaser, I was convinced that I could be someone who everyone liked, I could be someone who made everyone happy, all day, all the time. And it was exhausting!  And in the end, they were happy, but I wasn't, and I realized that eventually I would revert back to just being myself, I would leave the closet door open just a crack, and some of myself would fall out, and they would be angry. They would say things like "Why are you acting like that? Just be yourself!" But what they meant was "Be the you who pleases me, be the person I think you should be, be unhappy!" So I stopped, and it was the hardest thing to do, but in the end I am so much happier. I became a butterfly, and I eventually had to stop talking to some of the caterpillars in my life, because they were bringing me down, they weren't happy for me, they wanted me to go back to crawling around in the muck with them...But I Had Wings.
So a little about me:

 

 

I feel like we live in a society of falsehood, of people hiding, and lying, and tip-toeing around so we don't offend someone, or more often, people just keeping things to themselves, because they are terrified of confrontation, I know this because I was one of those people. I was so afraid of confrontation that my heart would race, my palms would sweat, my head would pound, just at the thought of having to argue with someone. I was completely chicken-shit, and I had done it to myself, so during my coming out, I threw away my filters and started saying exactly what I meant. And some people hated it, but more people loved it. And now it's just who I am, people say "Oh, that's just Em, she has no filters." No I don't.

So yeah, that's me, just here, being me, and to all of those who don't like me for who I am, that's fine, I never needed your approval in the first place. I am done lying, I am done being anything but who I am.

I am also a lover of the 50's and anything pin up, fashion, make up, hairstyles, photography...So be prepared for a whole lot of vintage love coming your way.

 

 

 

Why I decided to blog, and what I want this blog to be about:



 

Do you ever feel full, like if you don't just write, or sing, or dance, or paint, or craft, or run, or skip, or cartwheel...you'll just overflow and freak out everywhere? That is why I am blogging, I feel like I'm ready to overflow. I just wanted an outlet, something that could be mine, that I could share, that might change someone's day, or inspire them, or uplift them, or make them laugh, or make them cry, or make them feel exactly like I'm feeling, right in that moment. That's what writing is to me, it's reaching across infinite space, and grabbing your hand, and showing you things I couldn't show anyone normally, and then at the end of it, neither of us are alone. We are completely together, in these words, and that is passion. I don't really know what to expect from this blog, it might be ranting about injustice, it might be poems about lost love, it might be me talking about my love of the 50's and everything pin up, it might be jokes and sarcasm, but I can promise you this, it will be completely, 100 proof, me.