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.