Advocacy: Stop Trying to be Who You Aren't

Life is hard. When we are young and naive, we don't need to put up walls. Our only defenses are our parents and our teachers who look after our own well-being. We are immune to the effects of tragedy far away, and we are too young to understand tragedy close to home. then we grow up, and we begin to comprehend the world around us.

That is when we start building our fortresses.

A friend of mine thought it prudent to psychoanalyze me one night. I wonder if it was just because he saw my pain and wanted me to know it is okay. I haven't felt pain in a while - just numbness and refusal to register the lack of emotion I feel for most anyone at this point in time. I will be the first to admit that I read like an open book. I am not hard to figure out. I am, for the most part, as transparent as anyone can get. For this reason, I make a very terrible liar.

I stood at the counter of the desk that he works, downstairs in our residence hall, and he sat at the desk, watching me as he listed off so many things I didn't believe were obvious. It scared the shit out of me. For all my armor against the world, it does me no good when people can see me for what I truly am: a romantic, a girl who desires love and who desires to give love tantamount to that which she receives, a girl who is afraid of making connections, but doesn't want to be...how did he know all this?

I kept my brave face on as he continued, but I knew in my heart that once I was alone, I would break down. So I did. All that effort, all those prickly barbs I had grown to shield myself, they were all for nothing. They were nothing more than a waste of time. I still am the naive little girl with rose-tinted glasses, praying for someday to meet someone to share a life with, and despite trying to groom myself to be otherwise, it has all been in vain.

The point in all this? You can't change who you are. However, you can learn to do with that person what is best for you. God knows how I am going to make this work for me, but I will try...

At Least Derek Kilmer Has Vowed to Refuse His Pay

To the crackpots in Congress: thanks, guys. Now I can't do my Earth System Science lab because you couldn't get it together. Now the NOAA, NASA, USGS, and all those other websites we use for our work book are down. Don't worry. My teacher is scrambling to figure something out for us. And, hey, once you get your rears in gear, you can send my dad a big bonus for being cool about you cutting his employment. Oh, and I didn't need that government money for school anyways, so its cool if you lay off all those people who would be taking care of my application. You guys are stellar.

WTF?!?!?!?

Come on, guys! How hard is it to be real human beings for once? How hard is it to look for a good compromise? Stop sticking to your party lines, stop worrying about getting re-elected next year, because at this rate, I don't think it will happen anyways. People cannot live off of their savings for long. People cannot just stop using money. For one thing, we just got out of the Great Recession. We don't need a new one. For another thing, it will come, one way or another, to bite you in the ass.

Good luck getting re-elected. The only one of you who will is Derek Kilmer, and that is because he is giving up his pay until Congress gets back on track. Meanwhile, I am going to continue fuming and wait for everything to cool off while I look for a new job...something that has absolutely nothing to do with the government shutdown.

Opposites Attract...And Then the Relationship Commits Seppuku

As I gradually make more friends here in Bozeman, and my view of the people here goes from rose-tinted to dark and angry, and gradually lightens again, my world rocks once more with drama. DRAMA, DRAMA, DRAMA.

I will be the first to admit that I am not very emotionally available. There is one person of non-blood relation to me who has ever gotten past my walls, and he is two states away and doing his best to forget me, which is fine...because I need less people to count on, I guess. This leads to a very flighty, flaky individual who gets nervous when the progression of a relationship takes off at speeds that move too fast for her to examine the person she is interacting with appropriately. My latest realization: not only does my new friend attract drama, but she creates it as well, and it is annoying as shit. The best part: the more she makes, the more inclined I am to retreat into myself.

As much as I appreciate how welcome she made me feel, I do not need a rerun of my last "great" friendship - a big cluster of "I love you"s and a whole vat of passive aggressive remarks from one party to the other (me) to result in me feeling like I am insignificant, like my feelings are insignificant, and like the whole world of details that I forwent in the process of going with the flow are greater than the sum of the whole. Does that logic seem a little unsound to you too? It does to me. And I am female, last I checked, so, despite crazy coming with the territory, I am left feeling like the calmer, less unsettled party.

Sometimes, Letting Go is Best

Rush of water - you get caught up.
You get caught up in flows and flux that you don't know the end to.
You think it is fun. You think that it's a game to play.
But when we hit the wall, and the water falls from beneath us,
you will cry for help.
How can I help you
when I'm drowning just the same as you.?
Why do you shout at me, looking for attention,
when I am swept up in currents too strong
to swim against, to catch you and save you from yourself?

You wanted this - you yearned for the thrill of new faces,
new experiences, someone to give you vent.
Now we're headed to the cannery,
and you claim I held the gun, safety off, trigger loose.
Did you look at the fingerprints? They look like yours,
but they could be mine.
Still, I wasn't drunk enough to forget.
I wasn't the one who wanted to chase white rabbits down black holes.
I wasn't the one who pushed the boat into white waters.

So That's Why I Don't Like You

So now that I have the whole "I hate stupid people" rant out of the way, I will say this.

God loves people who laugh at themselves.

Okay, maybe I'm making God in my own image. That being said, I'm pretty sure he does anyways. For all those times I've been shunned or spurned or cast an evil glare, behind it is someone who doesn't know how to live life to the fullest. They can't learn to just let it go.

Life is spreading sunshine to each other. Life is like love. It dies if you don't give it away. It shrivels up inside you, and it makes you gross and mean and hateful. You then pass that on, and people around you start looking at life through gray-tinted shades. You really do reap what you sow.

I may be a little shy. I am the new girl, after all. I am not exactly comfortable going into a new environment and proclaiming to the world, "Hey, look at me! I'm new!" But isn't that even better of a reason to reach out and say, "Hey, I'm Mary! Let's talk about you!"? (FYI, that really happened, and I adore this lady now.) I am not demanding a maid of honor for that wedding that I may or may not have someday, nor am I looking for some handsome stranger to make babies with. I just want to be able to go to work and not feel like an outcast.

Which leads me to my main point: I have an old coworker back home who I adore. She is like my second mother. I made a great game out of scaring the bajeezus out of her constantly. I would sass and prank and snark with all my buddies back home. I can't do that here. I am fairly certain I would get stabbed if I made so much as a move to make someone look like a fool. They take themselves way, way too damn seriously. Even the girl who best resembles a best friend here takes herself way too seriously, and I cannot, for the life of me, find it in my heart to so much as put her foolishness on display, because I know she'd be offended. Back home, this simply would not be true.

I try to set a good example. I am hoping to make it so that my charming, devil-may-care ways rub off on them. My ways might not be so devil-may-care back home, granted, but here, I am finding myself in dire need of someone to play with, and really play with in a comforting and free manner in which I don't have to worry about what is about to come out of my mouth. I don't have anyone here like that. I hope for someday, but for now...I guess I will have to do for now.

For The People at Home, and the People Who Won't let Me Feel at Home

It is always great being the one inside looking out, mocking all the people who wish they were you, who wish they could be friends with you, or who think they are as good as you.

Bullshit. Whoever you are, if you have that attitude, you are a jerk and a half, and I loathe everything you stand for.

I am in the process of getting a huge, HUGE reality check. All that stuff about Montana being God's country? I feared I would take it too far, but here it is: totally romanticized bullshit.

It is, to a degree, God's country, for the people who refer to themselves as "natives". It is a wonderful place where you can go have conversations with random people in bars and spend the night with them (I did this once with an interior designer named Lori, and we went bar hopping after talking for an hour) or going out with your buddies and getting drunk off your you-know-whats, or even going to the football game and cozying up with strangers as you all cheer on the home team.

I was born in Great Falls. I hoped that this fact would lend itself to my admittance into the "in" crowd. The very plain and simple (and very painful) truth of it is that being a native is knowing the right people, knowing the culture, knowing the ins and outs of the place you are from. If you are an outsider, no one likes you, you are instantly judged, and people start a crap load of gossip about you, even though they haven't bothered to ask you what or who you are. Apparently I am a lesbian, sleeping with the girl who was brave enough and kind enough to be my friend. No one has asked me if this is true or not. In fact, the most I get out of ninety percent of my coworkers on a regular basis is silence and a turned-up nose. If I say hello, fifty percent say hello back and casually ask me how I am doing, the other fifty are broken into a ten percent of "hey, I want to know more about you: let's talk!" and forty percent, "oh my God, it's talking to me."

And I though Gig Harbor was snotty.

While the money and uptight air that presented itself to me back home was stifling and made me feel constantly judged, I feel like an exile here. I have done NOTHING to make you people think that I am a bad person. I have done NOTHING to give you the idea that I want to take all your secrets and sell them to the government to spy on you. I have done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to allow you the right to look down on me like a second-class citizen. I am not here because I am trying to steal your land or your guns. I am not here to bastardize your culture by playing Hollywood's version of cowgirl. I am here to get back to my roots, to learn, to broaden my horizons. And all you can do is snub me? You all are some pieces of work.

You are not better than me. You are not more cultured than me. You are not tougher or smarter or kinder than me. YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW ME. So what the hell gives you the right to walk on past me without so much as a kind smile and a hello to make me feel human? How would you like it? How would you like to be thrown in a strange place and treated like a bug on the floor? I am working my ass off to make this world a better place by exhibiting some compassion, and all you can do is ignore me when I greet you?! And here I thought the Seattle Freeze was bad! Jesus, people, are you so uncaring that you can't take in a young woman, miles away from home, with no family or friends nearby to speak of, under your wing? I'm not asking for dinner and a movie or anything! I just want a human connection so I don't feel so damn alienated! Is that too much to ask?!?!?!?!

Obviously, I feel a little passionate about this. Obviously, I am feeling a little crazed. But why shouldn't I? I spend most of my day crammed in my dorm room, hiding from the leering eyes that condemn my every move as "outsider". I spend nights awake, crying, wishing I could go home because everyone here is too stubborn and pig-headed to let me in. I haven't done anything wrong! I will not let you punish me for simply living! Get over your self-obsessive ideals that outsiders are not welcome. If that were true, you would have a serious issue with inbreeding, and I don't mean your cats. Stop acting like the rest of the world thinks you are : a bunch of crazy hicks. I know you aren't. I know that you are becoming engineers, or that you've been sign-makers, or that you love the Body Exhibit, or that you secretly want to marry Audrey Tautou. I listen. I hear you. I understand. If I am willing to look beyond your stereotype and appreciate you for the human you are, I don't think it would be that much trouble to take a moment and ask me, "So, what brings you to Bozeman?" You will probably make my day, especially if you really listen. Stop treating me like a leper. Start treating me like a peer. Don't be the haters that you are making yourselves out to be.

For My Parents

The two people in the world who are not allowed to read this are getting a page devoted to them. My mom and my dad are two eccentric, smart-ass, perfectly devious people who have taken the last twenty-two years to make me the person I am today. Through everything I have been through, everything I'm about to go through, they have pushed and pulled my stubborn little ass through hell and back to make me stronger. I am who I am because they loved me.

I went home tonight, sat down on the kitchen floor, and started crying. It's something I do a lot now, because of what's about to happen in the next few weeks. I'm leaving home. I'm doing what none of my sisters or cousins have done. I'm flying the nest. And despite my mother's laughing pleas to make me stay forever, they have gone above and beyond to make this next step in my life possible. I won't forget that. And neither will I forget the fact that, despite the fact that fifty percent of their peers have gone through divorce (one set of my godparents included), they have stayed together. They stayed a team through my terrible twos, my dorky pubescence, my raging adolescence, and even now as I set sail to my independence.

Anyways, so as I'm sitting in the middle of the floor, my mother comes up to me, and instead of any other mother who would ask if I was okay and rub me on the back, she laughed at me and likened my appearance to that of Piglet for how pathetic I looked. Then she sat down next to me and asked me "Can I get you anything? We've got plenty of beverage..." Beverage meaning alcohol of the distilled variety. I, of course, laughed ruefully. Alcohol isn't going to solve my problems. But then my dad joined in, and all of a sudden, I wasn't crying anymore. Granted, I was definitely whining for my dad to stop teasing me, but that is usually a given. The point is that I don't know what I would do without them. I really just don't know where I'd be if they weren't the people they are.

Momma, Da, if you ever read this blog (I'm praying for my dignity's sake that you won't) I love you. Thank you for everything you've taught me and everything that you have been to me.

The Fallacies of Being a Human in Love

It is incredible how much effort a human being can put into something when the chances of success are so slim. Are we gamblers by nature, or is it the pressure of a society that thrives on rooting for the underdog? the reason I ask is because right now, there are a lot of relationships around me going sour. There has been talk of separation, divorce, abuse, anger...and all out of people wanting to be loved. Where does it go wrong? And why, when we finally get the chance to be happy, does it have to get so complicated? Where is it that human error gains its foothold? And how is it that we let it take control? Where's the line?

I have never doubted that there is someone out there who is almost perfect for me. Honestly, no one is ever one hundred percent, but it has always been a given that I would find someone who makes me feel safe and warm and loved. But all this sadness...it gets to you. It brings you down. And it makes you wonder if it is all really worth the struggle.

I get that people have baggage. I have baggage. I have my issues, my insecurities, but I deal. I've learned to never project if I can help it. My problems are for me to resolve. Am I the only one who sees that our baggage is our own and no one else's? It is one thing to find some comfort that someone else is going through what we are, but to make it someone else's problem when it wasn't there to begin with...it causes an awful lot of unnecessary drama.

I wish, for all my friends out there who are going through this, that they can find some resolve, some peace, and maybe even some strength in themselves and in the people who love them. I can't imagine what it is like to love someone and have that love hurt them more than it it saves them. For that, I have nothing to write. No poem for my friends, but a song that, today, inspired me to be stronger. I've always prided myself on being that strong, impenetrable fortress. This song is about finding the strength to rise above the hurt that we deal each other.