By popular request, my wedding invitation rant, straight from my Facebook. Cut and paste for your pleasure! Nothing has been added.
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I know of a few people planning weddings right now. Wedding planning is stressful as hell, and weddings are expensive. So when people post about their happy day, whether it be the initial "we're engaged!" announcement, or progress on their venue, etc., the appropriate response is "congratulations!" Appropriate responses do NOT include "I had better be getting an invitation!" or "I'm invited, right?"
What the fuck makes you so entitled? You're not. The couple is under no obligation to invite people to avoid hurt feelings, whether they be friends or family. Weddings are EXPENSIVE. Not only is the couple paying for venue, photographer, officiant, etc., they are paying FOR YOU to be there. You're getting a free ride on them, and if they decide not to invite current or former coworkers, distant relatives, YOUR CHILDREN, or not allow a plus one, that's their decision, because you know what? It's THEIR day, not yours. Nothing about it is about you actually.
And demanding/asking to be invited is rude as hell.
I know someone who was asked CONSTANTLY about an invitation to her special day, someone she didn't particularly want to invite, and it made her uncomfortable. Wedding planning is stressful enough to begin with, don't be the asshat that adds to the stress because YOU, as a special motherfucking snowflake, HAVE to be invited or the world ends.
If someone does you the honor of inviting you to their wedding, be gracious. And for fuck's sake, dress up. Nothing says "I don't really care" than showing up to a wedding (or a funeral, for that matter) in jeans and a t-shirt.
I don't think I've ever ranted about Valentine's Day before, but I'm kind of glad I waited until now, because my thoughts are a bit more cohesive about why I intensely dislike this "holiday." And because I like lists, let's do this in list form!
1. If you love someone, show them every day, not just on one arbitrary day a year. Let's start off with one of my biggest gripes about Valentine's Day in general, and that's the fact that it seems like a "catch up" day, the day you really have to prove to your significant other that you really, really love them, and here's a stuffed bear and chocolate to cement that proof! I'm sorry, no. If you really truly love someone, you should treat them like gold every goddamn day, not some arbitrary saint's day in February (surprise, it's another Pagan holiday turned Christian feast). You should want to spoil them with affection all the time. Getting your partner little "I love you" gifts shouldn't be reserved for one day a year. If they matter, show them every day that they do.
2. It's sexist as fuck. Yes, it's sexist. Let's think of the marketing. Everything about marketing Valentine's Day is about getting her gifts. It plays into the stereotype that women are shallow, greedy princesses and if you don't get her just the right gift, everything is ruined. Where are the advertisements aimed at gifts for men? Where are the gifts for men in that aisle that is a sea of pink and red and teddy bears?
3. It's terribly heteronormative and exclusionary. What about homosexual couples, transgender couples, and nonbinary individuals? Why don't I see people of color in advertising? Valentine's Day marketing tells me that it's a holiday for middle class, heterosexual, white people. And don't even get me started on how shitty it makes single people feel to see all this emphasis on love and being part of a couple and having it shoved down your throat at every turn. I'll even admit, it gets to me a little, and I'm happy being single.
4. Speaking of marketing... it's just a holiday for sales boosting anyway. I mean, think about it. It's February. Between Christmas/New Year and Easter (and I understand this is theocentric as far as Christian holidays) there really isn't a major holiday. Something needs to stimulate economy. In the winter, flower shops don't do as much business, retail locations are down. Why not market giving flowers and chocolate as a solution? It's big business. It's an $18.6 billion holiday.
These are my big 4. I'm sure there's more reasons floating around in my noggin about why I think Valentine's Day is bullshit. But for now, that's it. Monday, I'm going to enjoy the marked down chocolate from this commercial day.
Also: Valentine's Day engagements are tacky. So are weddings on Valentine's Day. Sorry. Be original.
I hear "I'll [insert activity] once I lose weight" a lot, and I'm guilty of it myself. I told myself, through my 20's "Once I lose weight I'll start getting tattoos." I hit 30, hadn't lost weight, and realized "why am I waiting?" I'm lazy. I hate exercise, love decadent foods. I manage to maintain my weight but I don't lose it, and I'm honestly not trying too hard. If I had stuck to my "I'll get tattoos when I lose weight" idea, I would never have gotten tattoos. At 30 (almost 31, looking back at the picture on Facebook), I got my first tattoo, pictured on the right. Look at my fatness. That's my body, and I own it. And I have adorned it. Now, I do have a much more flattering picture taken with my stomach sucked in, at a more flattering angle that makes me look much thinner, but my point is, I'm lumpy, curvy, chubby, and if I'd waited for all that to disappear, I wouldn't be as happy in my skin because honestly, I've wanted tattoos ever since I was a kid, and I know that that's how I want my body to look. I don't care about being skinny. I don't particularly give a fuck about what others think of my fatness either. Tattoos aren't just for skinny people. Fat people aren't regulated to arm tattoos where it's less offensive to be fat. One of the tattoos I'm going to plan out with my tattoo artist is a sternum tattoo which, if you search on google, appears to be a skinny person tattoo. There are only a few images of chubby girls with sternum tattoos. But you know what? Fuck it. I want it, I'll get it, and I'll rock it.
During healing, same person, better angle
Stop waiting. Stop delaying. If you keep telling yourself you're going to delay what makes you happy until you lose weight, you'll never be happy. A friend of mine mentioned wanting to cosplay a favorite character and told me "if I could lose weight, I'd totally do it." My response was "just fucking do it, dude." If you want to lose weight, and you do it, and work toward it, awesome. But if you struggle or just aren't motivated, why deny yourself? Be happy. As the kids say, you only live once. So if you're fat, stop letting society tell you you can only have certain clothes, accessories, engage in certain activities. And for fuck's sake, stop thinking you're unattractive to others because god knows, I get more ass than some of my skinny friends.
You're allowed to feel beautiful, sexy, confident, regardless of size. If you want to express yourself in a certain way, just do it. It's okay to love yourself, regardless of size, and it's also okay to want to change if you want to. It's okay to be happy, I promise.
Lately, I've gotten back into doing makeup, so I turn to the Internet for inspiration. I already live on the Internet, so I can see what a horrible place it is. People, especially when it comes to makeup, are so hell bent on cutting others down instead of building them up. It runs the gauntlet from "you would look better with less," "I don't need all that crap on my face" "girls who wear makeup are insecure" "this is why I have trust issues" (followed by "take her swimming on the first date!"). There's more, so much more. Beauty blogger and makeup artist Samantha Ravndahl quite succinctly talks about makeup shaming in an older video on her secondary channel.
What does it matter if a girl wants to draw on her eyebrows? I, personally, am not a fan of the heavy, fade-in-front Instagram brow, but you know what? What other people do with their makeup doesn't affect my life. And news flash, neither does how someone does their hair or the clothes they wear. Makeup is a means for personal expression, and if someone wants to contour the hell out of their face, or overline their lips, or draw on eyebrows, or wear minimal makeup, it's their choice. No one else's. Want to get lip injections? Awesome. I personally love Kylie Jenner's lips. Boob job? Rock on, because I'm not brave enough to get one myself. There are these outmoded "rules" to makeup that are more about controlling a woman's appearance than actual "beauty." Rules designed, in part, to design women that are appealing to men. Those rules need to be thrown out.
However, before we can throw out those rules, women need to stop cutting each other down. Don't like someone's makeup? That's okay. What's not okay is to tell her she's ugly, insecure, a slut, a clown, etc., etc.. Instead, we should be building each other up. It takes so much more effort to comment negatively on a picture on Instagram, a video on Youtube than it is to just scroll by. Why are you so concerned with how another person looks? It's like the women who try to tell other women that leggings aren't pants. If you want to wear leggings, go right ahead. I'm not going to argue with camel toe. And bigger girls can wear them too. Let's stop policing each other's bodies and appearances, okay?
I see it all the time on Facebook. The fat-shaming memes are the worst, especially when paired with the exploitative and violating "people of Walmart" posts. Why the fuck are you making fun of the appearance of some stranger and posting it on the Internet? What if that was you? So what if you think their outfit is ridiculous, does it affect your life at all? No, it doesn't. That's a person you're publicly shaming, a person with feelings. It's disgusting and it needs to stop.
You recently posted on your Facebook (yes, I can still see everything you do, motherfucker, and no I won't tell you how) that your grandmother would have a lot to say to you right now if she was alive. Let's talk about that, because I'm sure as hell she didn't raise you to be unfaithful or to be such a liar. If I accuse you of cheating to your face, you will lie, you will backpedal, just like you did years ago when all I wanted was a casual fuckbuddy and you swore it was over with your girlfriend. But it wasn't, and I realize this is a pattern with you. You weren't done with her when you were asking me to send you nudes, and you weren't done with her when we started fucking. And you swore, during our 5 year relationship that you weren't the type to cheat on a woman. You swore you'd work on our problems and not cheat on me. The fact that so many of our fights were about my lack of interest in sex and that you would repeatedly say "I haven't cheated on you yet because I love you" should have been a red flag. But I was blinded by love. I took the blame for my lack of libido and clung to hope. But you know what? Fuck you and the fucking boring sex we had for five years. Fuck you and your excuses when I'd tell you the sex was boring. "I'm too tall for that position to work" "we just don't fit that way" (maybe because you were too fucking fat and unwilling to change, maybe your dick is too small). And when I got suspicious of that coworker you started talking a lot about? Fuck you. I had a right to be suspicious, and I was right. A month after you dumped me, I found out about her. And I did the math. And I tell you what, an emotional affair is still an affair, even if you're not getting your dick wet. But most off, how dare you lie to my face on the day I sit crying on your couch as you dump me and I straight up ask "is there someone else?" How dare you lie to me and say "no, I just need to be alone for a while." I can take the cheating. But how dare you insult my intelligence by lying to me. Did you think I wouldn't find out? I'm more Internet-savvy than you. You knew this. Did you want to get caught? There was a short time I thought we could remain friends, but not any more. You fucking disgust me. I realize after 5 years I wasn't anything to you. You didn't dedicate Facebook albums to me. You made excuses every time I talked about moving in together or marriage. You didn't care. You're the most disingenuous, disgusting scumbag for wasting my time for so long. You knew my stance on children 5 years ago when we met, went with me when I got my tubes tied, so suddenly you're a family man? Fuck you. Fuck you and your cheating, lying, fake self. You've freed me by breaking up with me. You've freed me to go back to the person I was, who I always was in my heart, and I've gone back to living my life for me. Oh, and I've had more amazing sex since you dumped me than we probably had in the last year. So thank you for that. Thank you for showing me I should never have trusted, should never have committed to a relationship, just like my instinct told me. You took a bird and caged her. Now I'm free. I'm on the prowl for men better than you, even if for a casual fuck. Because there's an honesty in being a slut that you don't get. You didn't play the game right and I hope she cheats on you like you did to me and the one before me. I hope you feel pain and betrayal. I hope you're lied to and your trust shattered, like mine was. I hope you hurt. Have fun with your downgrade, asshole.
I have, for several years, described myself as "dead inside" but it's hard to explain to other people exactly what that means. For such a finite term as dead is, a feeling of being dead inside is terribly complex. My two favorite bands, Tool and Ludovico Technique, both have songs with the over-arching theme of being dead inside, and I've been able to relate to them although they're vastly different songs with different themes of inner deadness. Let's start with the Tool song, Bottom.
Back in 2012, I wrote about the type of mania you don't usually hear about when people talk about Bipolar disorder. I had this month-long episode of rage mania that was frightening, to say the least. It was a constant, overstimulated, adrenaline-fueled, heart racing episode of palpable rage. And in that time, I did my best to channel it, even if it involved driving around with Bottom on blast, screaming along to the lyrics that at the time spoke to my soul: "Dead inside/Hatred keeps me alive/Loneliness keeps me alive/Weakness keeps me alive/Guilt keeps me alive/At the bottom." I was fueled entirely by my hate and anger all while wrestling this angry demon in my head, which the lyrics "If I let you, you would make me destroy myself/In order to survive you/I must first survive myself" seemed to so accurately describe. I don't pretend to know Maynard James Keenan's personal connection to the song but this song is one of my personal descriptors of my mental illness.
Living with a mental illness sucks, but the medication can be worse. At my highest dosage, I was on 900mg of lithium, which isn't the highest adult dosage, but my doctor deemed it was the right amount based on seemingly endless blood work. Lithium is supposed to even you out, make the cycling between mania and depression less frequent. For some people, it works. I felt like a zombie. I tended to cycle more toward depression, and never had any highs. I didn't feel passionate about things any more. A lot of the time, I didn't feel.
When I hear Ben V.'s lyrics for Dead Inside "Draining/Regenerate this spiraling mind/how will I be alright/when I'm Dead Inside... Balance/was a trace/of something misplaced/before all was uneven" it reminds me of my struggle with Bipolar, that deadness I felt while on lithium, that desperate search for myself because I felt lost inside myself, behind the medication haze. Eventually, I made the decision to come off lithium, with the support of my doctor. I am not a medical professional and my experiences may not be the same as yours. Always consult your doctor about medications! Being off lithium has been the best thing for me, honestly. Yes, I have manic episodes, and downswings into depressive episodes; that's just life for someone with Bipolar disorder, and that's why I keep this blog, so I can learn about my disease and share my experiences.
I still describe myself as dead inside. I'm in general a pretty happy person. But there's that part of me that lives in moral ambiguity, that part when mania takes over and I become a little reckless, that part that just doesn't care. Am I being succinct in describing this part of me? Probably not. As I said, it's a terribly complex feeling. The connection to music during rough patches, though, has been monumental.
Just being able to identify with the lyrics and know I'm not the only one that feels dead inside, but can function as a human, is immensely comforting. I could take the entire day and dissect each song line by line and explain how I relate to it, but I won't. Just know, Maynard and Ben, that your music has touched me and means the world to me, more than you can know.
Lately, all I've wanted to do is live, eat, sleep, breathe art. I almost feel like Ricky Fitts from American Beauty when he says "I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it, and my heart is just going to cave in." I feel more alive and more mentally awake than I have in a very, very long time. Maybe it's a combination of factors that has brought my creativity back to life-- being back in academia, listening to music that opens up my mind to different thoughts and challenging the status quo, stimulating conversations with people I truly respect. I've gone out into the world and found beauty and sometimes it's so much it makes me weep, whether it's music, or a piece of art, a statue. If you've been following along with this blog, you'll have seen I've been much more active in writing, and if you follow me on social media, you'll see I've started photography again after not really doing it for a very, very long time.
My mind has been so active, nonstop, for months, and sometimes it's hard to organize and channel those thoughts constructively. Long drives help. Listening to music helps (but often adds to the overstimulation-- blessing or a curse?). I've done a lot of introspection and reflection on the past also. There was a long period of time in my life now I realize I was simply too dead inside (I'm still dead inside) to even feel any passion for anything. Was my passion killed by the medications meant to even out my bipolar disorder? Probably. Was it killed by trying to live for others and not myself? Definitely. Was it dampened by being in unhappy job after unhappy job? Absolutely. What I know and what I am certain of is that life is a constant journey of exploration. I want to dive into my academic studies, I want to make art and have stimulating conversations. I want to lose myself in music. I want to challenge my way of thinking and perceiving the world around me every day. I feel free, I feel alive. I feel like me again.
What the fuck makes you so entitled? You're not. The couple is under no obligation to invite people to avoid hurt feelings, whether they be friends or family. Weddings are EXPENSIVE. Not only is the couple paying for venue, photographer, officiant, etc., they are paying FOR YOU to be there. You're getting a free ride on them, and if they decide not to invite current or former coworkers, distant relatives, YOUR CHILDREN, or not allow a plus one, that's their decision, because you know what? It's THEIR day, not yours. Nothing about it is about you actually.
