National Parks

I was recently scrolling through The Front Page of the Internet when I happened across a compilation of 1 star Yelp reviews of National Parks. To save you some time, here they are:

I thought for a long time about my anger about these reviews, and would have liked to say that it didn't piss me off anymore after just realizing that some people are selfish, self-centered, terrible people who care about nothing more than themselves; however, I am not that calm of a person and I never came to that conclusion. So all I can really say at this point is: Get the Fuck Off My Planet. I don't want you here because you are the people who are willing to destroy these beautiful, peaceful places to build another strip mall with another chain store, and another chain eatery, so you can buy one more "thing" or stuff your face with one more 5 pound steak to try and fill the void in your life because you aren't content with who you are as a person.

We are destroying everything on this planet, and we are killing off entire species for our own carnal pleasure. It makes me sad, and because I am not the Dalai Lama, it also makes me extremely angry. It makes me angry to see runway models carrying a dead fox down the runway as an accessory, and people going out of their way to hit a squirrel on the road, people killing a spider that is outside of their house because they think it is "creepy," and people poaching elephants because some shaman tells them that their erection will last 6 hours with the tusk of an elephant mixed with the blood of a rhinoceros. We sit in our Westernized cultures thinking that we are above this stuff because we would NEVER kill an elephant for its tusk because we are "civilized." We comfort ourselves with this statement as we bulldoze trees to build another housing development that displaces all the animals that lived in that patch of land... then we get pissed because we hit a deer with our car and now have to pay for the damage. Stupid Dumb Sum-Bitchin deer, you were on MY highway!

The selfishness of some at the detriment to all is something that I have a very hard time coping with. Even in my personal life (not on the global level, because honestly, my life is only truly valuable to a handful of people and so is yours), this is something that I struggle with. Selfish people really get under my skin and turn me into a person that I try hard not to be. They are the "takers" of the world who will take, take, take from people but never once give back freely without condition.

I need to meditate more often, my resolve to be a better person today than I was yesterday is not working out so well for me this morning.


"Whether you call it Buddhism or another religion, self-discipline, that's important. Self-discipline with awareness of consequence."
~ Dalai Lama

"It is not the Mountain we Conquer, but Ourselves." ~ Sir Edmund Hillary

Love is a funny thing, sometimes. By funny, I mean foolish, irrational, terrifying, and awe-inspiring. The suddenness and intensity of falling madly in love with another person seems to take all of the constants out of the equation that was your life and replace them with variables. Telling someone that you are in love with them is the most terrifying thing on this planet because of all the variables involved. I would rather BASE jump off a cliff 40 times over than to do it. So why is vocalizing your love for someone so gawd damned scary? Is it a fear of rejection? A fear of getting an "I know?" It is like it plays on every single emotional vulnerability that we have and uses the special amp that goes to 11 to broadcast it to our brain. So why do we feel the need to vocalize our undying love for someone, especially when we have absolutely zero idea of how that person feels toward us? We can make a guess and assume things based on their actions, but you know what they say when you ASSUME... 

I have recently tripped and fallen into a puddle of love, and it has been a very challenging thing for me to verbalize. The emotion leading up to telling this person was probably the suckiest feeling in my life in the last 4 years. I had so much anxiety leading up to it and the only reason I even acknowledged it aloud is because of a conversation that made me face it, otherwise, I probably would have continued to keep it to myself for another two months before I worked up the courage to say anything... because I don't know exactly how this person feels about me. I can assume, but again... you know what they say about that. So why did I feel the need to tell him?

This part of the equation is so much more difficult to answer. I knew what he would say and I knew what his reaction would be, it did not surprise me when it happened the way I thought it would. Knowing his reaction made it no less distressing... it actually made it worse; however, it did give me a sort of freedom now from myself, which is often times my worst enemy. Emotional vulnerability is one of the biggest fears I have. I am the product of an interesting environment that forced me to develop some austere coping mechanisms, which have proven to be difficult to keep in check at times and even more difficult when it comes to merging lives in a relationship.

Building walls and keeping people at bay comes naturally to me and when I perceive a situation a certain way, my automatic response is to put another brick in the wall and close up shop. I start devising an escape plan to GTFO when it comes to boyfriends. So why did I tell him? Well I did not tell him that I loved him for validation or for acknowledgement from him. I told him for me, because I don't want to be emotionally damaged anymore. I want a partner for life and I want someone that I can finally unload my emotional quirkiness on and know that he isn't going to judge me. I want someone to go on a grand adventure with through the rest of our lives. It might turn out that this man is not the one for that epic adventure, I am not ruling that possibility out... but at least it won't be for my lack of effort this time to develop anything meaningful... and gawd dammit this one is going to hurt a lot if it fails.

I am going to sound like a hypocrite when I type my next statement, as I am 33 years old and have done a bang up job of closing myself off from emotional vulnerability all of my life - we can't let fear from the past continue to emotionally batter us.  Some of us are emotionally banged up.... too bad, so sad. That is part of life sometimes, but that doesn't mean that we are not worthy of being loved or that we can not give love. Continuing to close yourself off from the full range of emotions will protect you from the certain hurt that is part of life, but in the end you will also miss out on some of the greatest emotions, love being one of them.

“We're all a little weird and life's a little weird. And when we find someone who's weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.” ~Dr. Seuss

God is Impotent... I mean, Omnipotent.

I saw something interesting today while looking through Google+ (Yes, I know that I am one of the 15 people on this planet that actually uses Google+). It was a picture of a man who had been born with no limbs, with his baby swaddled and tied to his chest. He is a motivational speaker so he has a public page that has many followers. His caption was "dream come true." Which is fantastic for this man, I am happy that he is living his dreams. What was most interesting to me though was reading the comment section from his followers. There was 492 comments at the time that I looked. Many of them were along the lines of "Praise God, god truly is great," "God is just too big, I give Him all the glory," "God is indeed great" Etc.

As many of you know, I am an atheist and I find these comments to be grotesque, to be honest. I find them to be absolutely absurd, and all they do is reaffirm my decision to be an atheist. Aside from the scientific aspect of my non-belief, if this is the type of Christian god that I am supposed to worship, that religion can go fuck itself. God will have a man be born with no limbs and cause hardship all through his life, but dammit he'll make it up to him by giving him a baby that he can't hold, can't change, can't soothe or pick up when it is crying, can't pick up off the ground when it has fallen and skinned its knee... but dammit, he has "blessed" him with that baby so that god must be great.

I think it is great that this man is not letting things like no limbs hold him back, but I can not give glory to a god for that. I give it to this man and his personal strength. I give it to his parents for raising him to be strong and to not let his differences hold him back. I give it to his wife who is going to have to do all of the things that he will not be able to do because he has no limbs. I will not give glory where glory is not due. Human beings are stronger than they give themselves credit for, yet for some loony reason they want to attribute their personal strength to a higher being. Religious people will acknowledge the fact that god has given them free will, so that means that this man could easily stay home and be a stick in the mud about his situation. Instead, he chose to make the most of his life. That was not god, it was this man.

Anyways, moving on. I am not here to discuss religion. I just find it absurd that people believe that "god works in mysterious ways" and that this man having a baby is a true testament to what a great and powerful god there really is. He gives the man no arms and no legs, but dammit he gave him a working phallus so the world is right. Phewww, god really is omnipotent... and a man. I'd rather burn in the 6th circle of hell with all of the other heretics than to worship a god that would allow for these situations to exist.

My Journey with OCM

What is OCM you ask? It is the Oil Cleansing Method. I have terrible skin on my face. If I could change any one thing about myself, it would be that. It has gotten worse as I have gotten older and I'm not entirely sure why other than hormones. I have tried every facial cleanser out there that promises to clear up acne such as Proactiv, Neutrogena, Biore, Duac (prescription only), and Clearasil. I have gone to a renowned dermatologist at Johns Hopkins and tried the harsh chemicals that he prescribed. I tried Retin-A and I tried to use CeraVe and Cetaphil. I have tried everything and yet my face still breaks out. The Retin-A would make my zits go away faster, but I still got them. It also made my face INCREDIBLY red and INCREDIBLY dry and flaky.

After many years I have finally found something that works for me, it is OCM. It didn't work at first because I was not doing it right with an oil that was too much for my skin; however, I have been playing with it for a little while now and tweaking the oils I'm using. It first started about 2 years ago with jojoba oil. I read on a site that jojoba oil was the cure-all oil for acne sufferers. So the science behind the idea is that oil breaks down oil and that certain oils can not be absorbed by the epidermis because of the chemical compound being too large to be absorbed. These are called carrier oils and their comedogenic ratings are all very different. Comedogenic means that it will clog your pores. For a list of some of the popular ones: click here. The non-comedogenic oils are: Hemp Seed oil, Mineral Oil, Sunflower oil, and Safflower oil.

I bought some jojoba oil and I used it religiously for a few weeks before I knew about comedogenic ratings. It cleared my skin up a little bit but then all of a sudden my face broke out like crazy. So I gave up on it after that because I had been told my entire life that oil breaks you out and makes things worse, but I figured I had to try it anyway. So the next two years I used Proactiv Extra Strength. Let me tell you, this is some serious shit! This is 10% benzoyl peroxide wash, 2% Salicylic Acid Toner, and 10% benzoyl peroxide lotion. It was so incredibly harsh on my skin that it started to fade my beloved freckles! My freckles were being bleached by this stuff and I was developing fine lines around my eyes that should not have been there because it was drying my skin out so badly. I love having freckles on my face, I can not be using crap that bleaches them and it didn't even clear my skin up. My breakouts were less, but they still occurred even though I was using these strong chemicals. So I gave up on it and switched to using Cetaphil cleanser twice a day and nothing else. Yeah, fuck that noise. My face broke out all along my jaw line and chin. You must be able to understand my frustration by now?!?! I am in my 30's, I should not be getting zits!

About 3.5 months ago I decided I would start taking hormonal birth control in an attempt to clear my face and because I was in a committed relationship that doesn't want kids... but mostly to clear my face up. I also started Retin-A about a month before that. My routine in the evening took about 15 minutes just to wash my face and I noticed in pictures from New Years Eve that my face was incredibly red compared to my neck and arms. I sunburned one day when I was out in the winter sun for 20 minutes, and that is when I decided I didn't want to be using these harsh chemicals on my face, that I needed to find alternatives. So I started searching... and searching... and searching.

One day on Reddit, I discovered a sub-reddit called SkinCareAddiction. I subscribed to it and started reading the FAQ's. It changed my life. They were recommending the oil cleansing method and there was a lot of information on it. Information by people who have done it and have nothing to gain by praising it or bashing it. It was the stories of hundreds of people who have had success and failure with it, stories of what oils worked for what skin types, and stories just like mine where nothing else worked. I spent some time reading before I decided to try it and they recommended starting with Mineral oil, which is just baby oil. Baby oil is mineral oil with fragrance. So I started with baby oil, then wiping it off with a baby wash cloth, and then washing with Cetaphil. It is called double cleansing. I noticed a difference in my skin's texture but it didn't clear me up, it just didn't break me out either. So I did this for a couple weeks but then noticed I was getting some zits along my jaw line again, which I attributed to something in the Cetaphil but I couldn't be sure. So I switched oils to Sunflower Oil which has a comedogenic rating of 0 just like mineral oil but does not have fragrance added to it, meaning it is non-comedogenic and it was good for acne and other skin conditions according to Garden of Wisdom. I have been using this for about two weeks. I noticed the texture of my skin changed considerably but I was still using CeraVe pm moisturizer and still had some zits. I made the decision earlier this week to give up moisturizer forever because there is something in it that breaks me out no matter how friendly it is supposed to be or how recommended by dermatologists. So I went on the hunt for a moisturizing lotion...

Last night I tried Hemp Seed Oil for the first time because it is supposed to be a good moisturizing oil, non-comedogenic, soothes skin, slows down the effects of aging, and helps with acne. I am in love. My face has already improved and I have only used it twice. I am also experimenting with Argan Oil right now mixed with Sunflower Oil as a wash and Hemp as a moisturizer.

The oil cleansing method is not for everyone and all oils are not created equally. Jojoba oil has a comedogenic rating of 2, which was too much for my skin. Some will break you out and some won't. All I know is that my life has been changed by using oil on my face as my cleanser. As a person who has suffered from skin problems since my teens, and has tried everything on the market, this is what works for me. My skin does not look oily, it is not greasy, and it is more radiant than it has been in years. I think the chemicals that were in all of these products were exacerbating the acne on my face.

My current routine:
AM
Splash water on face
Small amount of oil in the palm of hand, massage on face for 2 minutes, wipe away with baby wash cloth (hemp seed at this time, but trying Sunflower mixed with Argan this week)
Use a couple drops of fresh oil to moisturize (hemp seed oil)

Paula's Choice Best Face Forward Tinted Sunblock

PM
Splash water on face
Small amount of oil in the palm of hand, massage on face for 2 minutes, wipe away with baby wash cloth (hemp seed oil)
Put fresh oil on after wiping away the dirty oil, splash with water, rub in for a minute. Blot with towel.
Pure Shea Butter after to lock in all the moisture while I sleep


If you are interested in OCM, I recommend a few sites for information about how to do it and the best oils for whatever condition you have going on. You can find most oils in the food section of a decent grocery store like Wegmans or Whole Foods. Garden of Wisdom also offers an oil sampler pack where you can pick 3 oils based on your skin type to try out to see what works for you and what doesn't, that way you are not committed to large bottles of oil that won't work... the upside is that you can cook with most of them if they don't work out for your face. :D

Garden of Wisdom
SkincareAddiction Sub-Reddit

The Age of Excessive Materialism

I really enjoy reading financial independence blogs and articles about how 30 somethings have retired at 35 by curbing their spending, saving more, and making wiser choices. Sometimes I have to remind myself of what my financial goals are and these blogs do that for me. The last couple months or so, I feel like I have been hemorrhaging money out of my butthole like it is my job. My budget and my bank account are not very happy with me. So this blog entry is going to be kind of a reminder to myself of what my financial goals are, ways I save money, what I splurge on, and a reminder that a fancy new thing is not what will make me happiest in life. So I am going to tell my dirty secrets with my bad spending the last two months, as well as what I try to do to save money, and ultimately what my goal is.

In the last two months, I bought a new car, have spent approximately $2,200 on airfare, spent $675 on a car rack for the said new car, spent over $600 eating out at restaurants in the month of November alone, $200 in December eating out, and over $1,000 on clothing in the last two months.  This is absolutely ludicrous! Of these things, I could have easily not bought any more clothing... I assure you, I do not need it. I don't even prefer eating out, it makes you fat and the food is always loaded with sodium. I didn't *need* a new car, but my old one was costing me nearly $500 a month in gasoline to commute to work, so I traded it in for that reason alone. I will save some money by doing that at least. I am not sure that I needed the car rack right now for the car, but it is needed for my lifestyle. I probably could have shopped around to save some money on that... but I didn't. I let my want for it overrule my judgement in saving $100 by buying it online. The airfare, well $600 of it is for vacation in March, the other $1,550 was partly my fault for trusting American Airlines to not be a bunch of douchebags and wanting something (getting to Oklahoma 10 hours earlier) that ended up costing me $1,000 extra after it was all said and done. I really wanted to get to OK earlier though and be with the Boy Toy and his family, so it was an expense I was ok with. Travel is usually one expense I don't ever mind paying for, I do shop around for airfare though, usually for a few months.

I need to make myself feel a little better now about blowing my budget, so these are things I do that save me money:

1. Recycle/reuse clothing. I wear my jeans and most shirts more than once before washing. I reuse towels anywhere from 1 week to 10 days.
2. I grocery shop... I know it doesn't seem like it from the above expense breakdown, but I do. I usually spend about $50 a week for groceries, sometimes a little less. I don't eat a lot of meat but I do eat a lot of fruit and veggies... which when you eat seasonally, this is pretty cheap. Not eating a lot of meat cuts my costs considerably. I also buy meat when it is on sale and freeze it.
3. I shop around for airfare when I want to go somewhere, usually months in advance. Airlines usually have specials that just pop up randomly on certain days, so I will setup alerts for places that I want to go and watch the airfare. In regard to the $600 airfare this past month, Iceland was on my Boy Toy's list for places he wanted to go and I wanted to go back as well. We were planning a vacation in March, we just hadn't nailed a place down. I saw the airfare on Wednesday and it was $750. I looked again on Thursday and it was $550, $578 after all fees. Yay, saved $200 and going to Iceland again in March. :)
4. I fix things in my house. It is a rare day that I hire something out to a contractor to fix. Youtube will pretty much tell you how to build a rocket, so fixing drywall or a pipe is not that difficult to learn how to do.
5. I buy things that last (or ask for them for holidays). I have nice knives, nice pots and pans, solid wood furniture, etc. I have had most of it for at least 10 years. I only buy white linens now as well because I can bleach them, so towels don't start to smell funny after a couple years of use. Plus, white is always fashionable and goes with every bathroom decor.
6. I buy open box items at places like Target. I bought my KitchenAide mixer for $100 at target because it didn't have a box... it is a $350 mixer. Yay! 
7. My water comes from the tap, which also gives me the added benefit of fluoride so I have not had a cavity in many years.... could be my brushing but could also be the added fluoride. 
8. I use a site called geartrade.com to buy a lot of the gear that I need for my lifestyle. It is a site that has privately sold items as well last season items so you can find a lot of technical clothing, climbing gear, camping supplies, etc. on there for 1/3 of the normal cost. Some of it is used, some of it comes from outlet stores new. REI attic sales are also amazing. I have a $2,600 mountain bike that I paid $600 for that was almost brand new when I got it. Same with my kayak.
9. I contribute 15% of my income to my 401k, this lowers my taxable income as well as sets me up for earlier retirement. 
10. I invest money in the stock market. As of this writing, I am up 60.56% on my initial investment by doing my best to research what I am buying into.
11. I used to have a cell phone plan in my name, it cost me $150 a month. My company will pay for my cell phone and give me a phone. I did not take advantage of this for my first year with the company because I was paranoid about the content that is sometimes sent to me.... then I realized I didn't care and neither did they. 
12. I don't have cable. I pay $7 a month for a Netflix subscription instead. 
13. I rent my textbooks for school rather than buy them. There is a site called Chegg.com that rents text books for about $30 for the semester, this is fantastic as many books can cost more than $100 and you never use them again after the semester is over.
14. I grew a garden last year. I have been growing my own tomatoes for about 5 years now in the summer time, on my deck, but I went all out last year and grew a bunch of stuff! I plan to do the same from now until forever. It was a fun hobby, but it was also neat to be able to pick green peppers from my garden and make stuffed peppers with them that very night for dinner. Pretty cool in my opinion. 
15. I make my own coffee every morning and put it in a to-go mug to take to work. I used to love Starbucks and drank it regularly, then I realized how much I could save by doing it myself and have more control over the flavor.

Back to dirty secrets... these are things that I waste money on regularly. It is my goal this year to fix these things.

1. I live in a massive house. I live in a house that could easily accommodate a family of 8. I plan on downsizing this coming spring/summer to a smaller, cheaper house that is more centrally located to the things and people I like. 
2.  I love brand name laundry detergent. $15 for Tide? You got it! It is dumb. If you look at the back of a Tide bottle versus an Xtra bottle that costs 1/3 the price, they are the same ingredients. 
3. I buy books. I buy a lot of books. Why? I don't know. I love the way they smell and reading an actual book?!?! They just take up space, or I end up giving them away. I'm going to use my library card more this year and the Kindle Owners Library, both of which are free. 
4. I love jackets and backpacks. I have so many jackets/coats and backpacks that some only come out twice a year. I'm not buying another coat or backpack for the entire year of 2014. 
5. I use Pureology shampoo and conditioner. At $30 each, per bottle, per month, I'm being ridiculous. I have this idea that it makes my hair softer/silkier/healthier etc. but it doesn't. No more so than a mid range shampoo or conditioner that would be half the price and still do the trick.
6. I buy high end shoes and high heels when I go on vacation. I have multiple pairs of shoes that I hardly ever wear but I justified spending upward of $400 on some of them because I was on vacation. No more shoes for me this year! I have a closet full of shoes and boots. 
7. Since cutting my hair short, I have noticed that my salon bill has almost quadrupled. I was going to the salon every 8 weeks to get it done over the last year, at $150 (sometimes more) each time it was beginning to add up. I'm letting my hair grow out a little bit now so I don't have to get it trimmed/cut/touched-up so often to keep it looking nice. (If you're keeping track, my yearly hair care is at about $1,260 this past year... that's absurd)
8. House plants. Every spring, every year, I go to Home Depot and buy a boat load of house plants for my house because this is the year that I will be able to keep them alive!!! I can never keep a house plant alive, ever. Over the years, I must have spent at least $1,000 on plants that I just don't water and don't care for.... and then I wonder why the plant has died. 
9. I buy $15-20 lip blams and lip glosses regularly... and I promptly lose them after two uses. I am not buying anymore expensive lip treatments for 2014! I prefer to use Vaseline on my lips at night anyway, I don't know why I buy those things. 

So I was at my friends house the other night, and on her refrigerator there was a "WANT/NEED" list. Seeing this list changed my life and helped me remember my financial goals versus all the shit I have been buying lately that seems extremely excessive as I write this. She told me that this list really helps her to remember what is important and her wants versus her needs. I decided I am going to start doing this so that I can visualize my wants vs. needs to help curb my spending. 

There are certain expenses that I will not ever cut out of my life because they make my life a better place, even though I would save a lot of money doing so. Those are:

• Organic/local food. I will always opt to buy organically or locally if the option is there. I will happily pay a few dollars more for a happy chicken rather than one pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, its breasts too big to walk and just left to rot on the floor of a chicken coop. No thanks.
• Travel/Experiences. I spend a lot of money on these things. I love to travel and I love to go on adventures. These things make my life a wonderful place and they are the reason I want to curb my materialism a little more. I want more free time and more money to experience the joys of life and the beauty that is in this world. I do not want to be held down by my possessions. I do not want to be a slave to my job because I live a lifestyle filled with "stuff." I want to see every single country on this planet, that is my goal in this lifetime.

We have been taught that we are consumers and our worth is based on what we own. The media looks at humans as consumers and the majority of our economy is based on consumables. I read an article that calls childless people "selfish" because by not having children who will later become consumers, soldiers, and tax payers later in life, we are contributing to the economic collapse of this country. Surprisingly (because it came from Fox News), it said that immigration is necessary to keep America as an economic superpower. We are taught to shop until we drop, spend spend, spend, throw things away, THIS IS THE AMERICAN DREAM!!!! Fuck that. I don't work because I enjoy it and I'm not selfish because I don't have children. I work to support a lifestyle that I have become accustomed to. Well what happens when that lifestyle no longer costs as much as it did before because you aren't buying ridiculous shit that you don't need??? Your living expenses go down, you can save more, you can work less, and you can live more!

My two cents on the matter.

A Congregation of Canoes

As the New Year rang in I was reminded why going to bars sucks sometimes.... because sometimes, douche canoes congregate in them. Why is it that certain types of men think they can come up on women in bars and become belligerent and rude when a woman does not want to talk to them? Do they think that they can just intimidate them into a conversation? I suppose it does work every now and then because there are a lot of women out there who really like assholes or are too passive to deal with the situation, but when a woman tells you to go away, why would you not just listen? Save your ego and go find someone who actually wants to talk to you.

Being the person that I am, with the experiences that I have had, these men do not sit well with me and their arrogance infuriates me. Their belligerence and intimidation tactics just make me want to punch them in the face, to be perfectly honest. I suppose a lot of women will just brush it off and let it go; unfortunately (or fortunately), I am not that relaxed when it comes to these situations and I don't brush off their acrimony. As I found myself yelling at two complete strangers for thinking they could force my friend to talk to them, and that they could insult me when I told them to leave, all I could think about was why they would willingly put themselves in this situation when they could have so easily walked away and found a woman who actually wanted to talk to them? Did my friend and I have a look about us that told them it was ok to disrespect us?

I chalk this type of behavior up to a chauvinistic/sadistic character flaw in these men that make them think they can act like this toward women. This isn't the first time this has happened, I have found myself in this situation before and I have watched it happen to plenty of women over the years in bars... some are actually flattered by it. I was in a bar on St. Patty's day quite a few years ago and I watched about 10 men get into this one girl's face because she slept with one of the guys and his girlfriend found out. People stood around and did nothing as a couple of those guys punched her in the face and kicked her. I got my ass kicked by a group of guys that night because I'd rather get beat up than to be the person who stood around and did nothing. My face was nicely wrecked that night thanks to those guys. The night ended with a huge bar fight, one girl getting her front tooth knocked out, and tons of cops showing up, but I have zero regrets when it comes to deflecting some of the punches for her.

I grew up watching my mother get beat up by men, so maybe I am overly sensitive when it comes to men being hostile toward women, but that junk does not fly with me. I would rather get my butt kicked a thousand times than to let men like that think that women are objects for their entertainment rather than individuals with their own morals and standards. I was overly polite when I first told them to leave because my friend was not interested, yet their open disdain for women had to complicate the situation. Lucky for me, there were three men with us who had my back, but they shouldn't have had to step in because it should have never escalated the way it did.

Gender roles still exist in Western culture and gender inequality is still prevalent in the United States, these are just the facts of life, folks. Men are seen as more assertive and absolute; whereas women are seen as more yielding and sensitive. I am even guilty of enjoying my gender role sometimes, as I quite enjoy having a big-strong-boyfriend that makes me feel safe and protected; however, these  generalized stereotypes have made some men think that they can treat women like they are less than equal. It makes them think they can put their paws all over a woman and that it is perfectly acceptable to berate her when she objects to it. No society treats its women as well as its men, but do not be offended when a woman stands up for herself. Do not look at her like she is any less of a human being or like she should not have handled the situation in the exact same way that a man would have.

Super Sucky

Do you know what is super sucky, eh? When you find yourself terrified of something that you equally care about, so instead of owning up to this thing, you find yourself feeling senseless things that threaten to destroy all good things so that you don't have to face that which scares you most... being vulnerable to someone else. This is a compulsion that I've battled for most of my life when it comes to my relationships. I know why I do it, but we aren't really here for psych sesh, so we'll touch base on that another day. Today is just a writing therapy day to help me stop being an ass who wants to burn and destroy all things that are good that get too close to me. I needed to note my compulsion in writing to help me recognize my tendency to do this. 

I'm not doing it this time... this one is something extraordinary to me, but god dammit I hate this feeling about as much as he hates running. For once in my life, I feel like it is worth being afraid in exchange for the feeling I get when I'm with him. Now I must learn to not be an asshole to the one person that I really like. :/