Self-Love
These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beautifully written and wise.
I like to think I’ve gotten pretty good at this “live in the present and love thyself” philosophy over the past couple of years. Ah, the mid-twenties graduate student, jugglin’ life like a pro.
(Psst… Don’t forget Mother’s Day on the 13th.)
Nod to a Missed Opportunity
(Written 2004-05)
I know it’s odd to notice now
The way you make me feel
Always there, you were my mark
The one I could count on, the one I thought
might count on me.
I could see us together but that’s just how I feel when I’m with you
I liked you too much to “be with” you
Every Christmas song I hear, I think of you
And now, hearing of another girl, I have to hide
There’s just a funny thing inside
I guess you’re not really mine, you’re my friend
And I am yours…
Your friend.
The Stripper Chronicles
In the Sex-for-Money System, the people are represented by two separate, yet equally important groups. The professionals who exploit their sexuality, and the curious observers who appreciate the offenders. This is my tweet journey.
Bro: Come for a drive? “No.” Bro: Please? This girl likes me, I don’t want to meet her alone! “Wait, is she a stripper?” Bro: Yes. “I’m in.”
No seriously guys, she’s a stripper. I’ve met her.
Oh my goodness, it gets better. We’re picking the stripper up from her place of employment, Bare Fax.
My brother actually just compared being a stripper to being a hairdresser in a barber shop.
I’ve got “in love with a stripper” stuck in my head.
Is it fair at all that the stripper gets the seat warmer??
Wow, strippers give really long hugs.
We’re talking about job pay. Stripper wins?
She has such little hands.
Stripper just offered me $40 to hang at a bar so she gets alone-time with my brother. So many mixed emotions.
My brother just told his barbershop analogy to the stripper. And she just winked at me.
So, she wears a perfume endorsed by Tila Tequila. It’s all coming together.
Am I surprised that the stripper is a consumer whore?
Brother just asked Stripper if she lives at the 7/11. Love the brother now.
Think strippers feel like celebrities when they’re recognized on the street?
She’s addicted to “money.” *sniff, sniff*
Should have jumped on that $40 offer. Carsick.
Stripper is a tea-drinker because it’s good for you. Okay wait, she qualified it with “keeps you skinny.”
Holy shit. Holy shit.
First: stripper offered me her roommate to fuck. He’s gorgeous. Which is why she dated him. Oh, and he has a big cock too. And THEN
And THEN she turns to my brother and says “Oh, not bigger than yours.” BaRF BARF!!! There goes that carsick.
AND the coffee guy overheard it all. And I’m dying of horse allergies. Stripper bought me a tea.
Did I mention she told me I’m hot and should be a stripper? SO many mixed emotions. Man I love you guys.
I want all of you to know that I let a $40 offer disappear so I could tweet about everything Stripper said. Love me, love me.
I smell like stripper, I’m going to barf up all my Chinese food in a coffee shop restroom, and I look like Quasimodo from horse allergies.
No, I CAN’T barf in the coffee shop restroom. There’s a couple getting busy in there. Normally, big whoop, but it’s single-stall.
She makes $300-500 a night. I’m not supposed to tell, in case everyone runs out to become a stripper. Hell…sign me up.
We just looked at penises online together, she and I.
This is so romantic. The stripper professed her love for my brother, and he’s recounting the first time he laid eyes on her. JUST EYES.
Update: that couple is still in the bathroom. I know this because I still feel barfy.
Ugh. Tried to take a picture of their loving stare; choked on tea; drew attention to self. Dagnabbit.
Stripper: that beeping means put on your seat belt!!
She has a pole in her apartment. OMFG! New BFF!!
Stripper tried to pass off a Cartman quote as her own. Foiled! I am the South Park Hero! (@TheCartman)
I was going to send @shamelessplug a *stripper kiss* but, who am I joking, working gals don’t kiss. #prettywoman
Whew. The sticky adventures have concluded for the evening. Stripper is tucked safely in…well, someone’s bed, and I did not barf.
*****
I finally found a cure for writer’s block, and it was chock-full of dolla dolla bills!!
CAUTION: I spent the rest of that night barfing. Strippers are people too, and karma’s a bitch.
The biology of romantic relationships
I’m into psychology; I’m into evolutionary theory; I’m into self-improvement. Since my mother is a few months away from an empty nest, I bought her a book combining my interests and beliefs, but decided to breeze through it myself, first (if occasionally taking notes and marking sections of interest through 400 pages in a few hours can be considered “breezing”). It’s part of a group of “the owner’s manual to you” series by M.D.s Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz, my pick of which was You: Being Beautiful.
The book focuses on three main concepts of beauty: looking beautiful (i.e. attaining healthier-looking skin and hair), feeling beautiful (i.e. overcoming chronic pain, depression, or fatigue), and being beautiful (i.e. strategies for finding and embracing happiness through quality of life). The following is an excerpt from the third section, “Being Beautiful”:
You need to look beautiful – at least if you hope to continue the species – because it’s used to attract a mate. You need to feel beautiful to signal that you are healthy and worthy of parenting a potential mate’s offspring. And when someone indicates that he or she is attracted to you and interested in what it takes to perpetuate the species, it naturally gives you the joy and confidence you need to be beautiful. On every level, love, not to mention the intimate/exciting/body-melting sexual relationship that goes with it, is the biggest beauty boost of them all.
Great, now I feel unattractive and lonely. Time to go find myself a relationship self-help book.
I Like These People
Sometimes I need a good push to continue to strive to be the person I could be. Here are six quotes that mean something to me, and why:
“Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you’ve never been hurt and live like it’s heaven on Earth.” — Mark Twain
I’ve let bad past relationship experiences haunt current and future ones. Wouldn’t it be glorious to start fresh with each new person?
“I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.” — Marilyn Monroe
I should stop worrying about my half-and-half friends. If they can’t lend a hand or stand by my side when I’m down, I’m only feeding their selfish interests by giving them my best.
“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” — Robert Frost
Que sera, sera. O-bla-di, o-bla-da. Tomorrow is a new day. Just follow each breath with another.
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” — Anaïs Nin
Having a degree in psychology, I know all about projection and bias and self-concept. When I love myself and I am happy, life will be all that much better. I will trust again.
“It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not.” — André Gide
I’ve spent the better part of my life trying to please everyone, and compromising my own happiness to ensure that of others. It is hard for those close to me to accept just how unhappy I have been for a long time, because I did not burden them with the knowledge. I shave off bits of myself that I feel might offend certain people. No more. No more sacrifices. I will be me, and be proud, and love the people who choose to love me then.
Besides, no one great and successful can be loved by everyone, because making a bold statement intrinsically involves the risk of disagreement.
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” — Lewis Carroll
While there is a fun, carefree aspect to this quote, I see this point instead: without a goal, I am liable to drift onto any path – perhaps a good one, but, equally likely, one of self-destruction. I need to provide myself with enough guidance to make the right decisions when I reach these forks in the road.
What or whose words do you choose to live by?
President-Elect Obama
Yay Americans! Your decision is overwhelmingly supported by the majority of Canadians, as far as I can tell. Don’t think that, just because we couldn’t vote in the election of President Obama, it doesn’t affect us as well. I attended a hockey game tonight, and every U.S. vote update announced was met by ecstatic cheering.
Change is good – congratulations on making history.
A Quick Thought
“We are our desires.” –Aristotle
What is my deepest desire? I suppose it is to be loved, firstly by myself. I think everyone has conflicts with who they are and who they wish they could be, but after acceptance of self, the love of others is the next best thing. Like a love hierarchy, if you will.
What did Aristotle mean by “we are our desires”? He could have meant that without our desires, we have no motivation or purpose. If we are not constantly striving for something, some form of improvement, there is no true purpose to living. Our existence is based on these desires. I need a goal to define myself, and then perhaps happiness will follow.
What do his words mean to you?
Good News or Bad News?
Good News: After a few bad experiences this past week, I can take a deep breath in realizing that I am over my love/heartbreak thing…or at least, I’m pretty sure I am. The fact that I can breathe while intentionally and directly thinking about it is a really good sign. It also doesn’t strike me as a topic of interest in conversations anymore. I’m over it – and with relatively good feelings toward the other intact.
Bad News: Now I have to take a deeper breath and figure out what else it is that is making me die a little inside each day, because the aforementioned offers only trivial relief.
It’s scary that I might have to change a lot more about my daily life than I first anticipated; not my behaviour or habits, per se, but my relationship style (I’m talking friends, family, everything). I bend over backwards for people far too much, and convince myself that others’ needs are more important or urgent than my own. Every time, it’s like a bite out of me. I am a crumbling cookie. Hehehe.
I figured out which words I want to have tattooed with my [not yet existent] hourglass tattoo. “Ikke flere ofre,” a loose Danish translation for “No more sacrifices.” That is my promise to myself.
Now I just need a design. Any ideas? $20 if I use yours ;)
Details (e-mail rezmoron@gmail.com with any questions or suggestions):
- Hourglass (sharp or rounded, broken or intact) with most of sands at the bottom or spilling out
- Includes the text “Ikke flere ofre” in readable but attractive type
- Black ink only is preferable
Music’s Love Story
I just came across a page in a notebook from about 2001 that I remember so clearly. I was waiting at the airport with my headphones on, and decided to give a little project a try. I focused on the lyrics, and for every phrase I heard about relationships, I jotted it down and moved on to the next song.
Once the page had been filled, I read over it, and scrawled across the top, “Part 1: The Romance, Part 2: The Reality.” The following is what came of the exercise.
You were like nothing I’d ever known
Loving you came easily to me
You needed love to light the shadows in your eyes
You became the light on the dark side of me
Two worlds collided, I didn’t want to miss a thing
I was living for the only thing I knew
There was nothing in the world that could change my mind
Who needed them when you meant everythingI’ve never felt so good since then
I don’t ever wanna feel like I did that day
Get over the faithful yesterday
Face to face with something I couldn’t have admitted
Look carefully, the result of the pain you committed
I could see the glow slowly fading from your eyes
Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?
Everything’s made to be broken.
Everybody’s got a story that can break your heart.I’m happy cause I smile but how much can I fake?
Still waking up late at night crying tears
Is it safe to look within?
Is it gone? Tell me what went wrong
I’d rather be alone than unhappy
And I don’t want the world to see me, cause I don’t think that they’d understand
It’s the human connection that kept us apart
Without you in my life I’m completely incomplete
This is what you do
You make me come, you make me complete,
You make me completely miserable.
I bet most of you recognize at least a few songs out of there! I challenge you to pick a topic, try the same thing, and share the results below.
My Secret, Your Voice
Sometimes you see a PostSecret that sounds like it came from your very lips, though it was submitted by a complete stranger. There is comfort in knowing you are not alone.
Thank you to whoever sent in the following secret, because even if I am incapable of forgetting or forgiving the hurt, someone out there is just as stuck and it makes me feel less powerless.
Fuck the part of me that holds on
About
Everybody’s got one. Hi – this is mine.
Permanent state these days…
I like to share things that interest me, make light of my most awkward moments, and help others learn from my experiences. Leave a comment!
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