Category: creative nonfiction

Picking Dandelions

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In preparation for Thanksgiving, I am cleaning around the house, making mashed potatoes, and watching shows on Hulu.

Just like every Thanksgiving-themed television show, things do not go the way we want them to. Timing is never impeccable, and still, somehow, we learn to have gratitude in our hearts for those who invade our personal space and burrow into our lives.

This might show itself as an ex-boyfriend who realizes what he lost too late, or perhaps the perfect man, showing up in the midst of heartache and friendship betrayal. It might mean having to drive over three hours to pick up your mother the night before Thanksgiving because she doesn’t like highway-driving, and it could very well mean messing up your very first, ever, batch of garlic and herb mashed potatoes. (Let’s hope not!)

Maybe the tangled strings don’t all get tied into pretty bows like they inevitably do in sitcoms, but we know we have to accept the chaos, because those people in our lives are here to stay throughout the good, the bad, and the absolutely heinous.

Just about nothing has gone the way I would have liked it to in the past year. Although, when does it ever? Even though there’s been a tremendous amount of pain, loss, and having to say good-bye, I’m not sure that I would change anything.

Yes, I lost my male cat, Zen, a year ago very tragically. However, I would not have the capacity to love and appreciate my female cat, Aum, as much as I do had his death not occurred.

I had a terrible argument with my ex right before my birthday this year, which resulted in months of him hiding away and not speaking to me. If I hadn’t lost my sanity that night, I wouldn’t have sought out and received the help I needed to regulate my PMDD.

Saying good-bye to the beautiful man from Brooklyn nearly decimated my heart, but if I had not made myself completely vulnerable to him in our last moments together, then I would never have known that all this time he truly did love me.

Having a massive falling-out this summer with a good friend, who found many ways to betray and hurt me, led me to learn how to have true forgiveness for someone and manage to find a way to have him in my life in a redefined space. I realized I didn’t have to let go of someone for good, I just had to reconfigure how our friendship now operates.

My failed attempts at dating this summer, the agonizing disappointment of rejection, the yearning to move forward and move on with seeming difficulty—these obstacles literally led me right into the arms of a well-deserving man, who with his gentleness for my heart, has shown me patience and selflessness in ways I didn’t think were possible.

The events in our lives that don’t go the way we want them to, developing into hurt feelings, lost relationships, betrayal, and heartache, do serve a purpose. Sometimes, they help us to understand what we really need to do. They bring us to a patch of our lives, which has been neglected and is overgrown with worry, dampening sorrow, and unacknowledged emotional baggage.

It is here that we begin to sort through the clutter, pulling out the weeds.

We don’t actually have to toss them away, because unbeknownst to us, they can be brought into our homes and flourish what has become dingy and distraught.

Life is a pretty painful existence. It’s necessary to pick out the good bits, which usually end up being pretty flowers disguised as the weeds.

Disintegrating

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I am sitting on my couch, alone in my living room, thinking about all of the people I care about and how I haven’t seen most of them in so long that I can’t remember their voices or how they smell.

My heart is breaking into a million pieces.

It might be my overly active hormones at play, but it is still real just the same.

My chest aches and my lower lashes feel the kiss of tear drops, because I miss these people. But it is more than that. I am proud of them. Real damn proud.

I think about acquaintance friends with whom I haven’t visited in many years—how they are married now or having kids. I can watch them through the filtered screen of social media. I see their lives growing and changing.

My old best friend from grade school is a successful fashion consultant with her own company in NYC. I was just visiting her website and admiring how professionally and elegantly done it was. My old best friend has accomplished so much. I can hardly believe the magnificence of humans, sometimes.

The first man I said “I love you” to recently got engaged.

Everyone’s lives are just branching out like a well-mannered fractal into outer space. These lovely branches curving and splitting, and my heart just wants to burst with genuine excitement and joy in the happiness that is others’.

I don’t know if my mind is searching out these longing memories tonight because my hormones are peaking for a window of time due to PMDD, or because I’ve experienced loss so near in the past.

I might not have another Tuesday night with my best female friend. Tuesday was our day. She’d come over with beer or wine and we’d sit and talk or watch a girly movie. There’s been a rift between us, and I haven’t even had the chance to explain myself or talk to her, because she has protectively boarded up her emotional walls and shut me off like water lines in the middle of winter, so the pipes don’t burst.

I said goodbye to a man I have loved fiercely and passionately for over a year. I don’t know if I’ll ever smell his hair again or try hopelessly to get him to open his eyes wide enough to stare into mine for more than two or three seconds.

And he—this man—has accomplished so much. I haven’t been able to be there for any of it, but I’ve cheered from the sidelines and been supportive from the other end of the phone. I’ve pushed him to fight for what he loves, and I’ve lost everything I could have ever had with him to the gamble of his potential success, hanging out there in the future like an amorphous, looming question mark.

I want to take this palpitating heart of mine and shred it up into tiny fibers. Little thread-like viscera. I want to connect myself physically to all of those people who have ever mattered to me. The friends I haven’t forgotten. Loved beings who have amazed me all this time.

Yet… I can’t.

I can’t, and that’s why it’s paining me. To have to stay whole when I want to be a part of everyone. To have to continue to live my own life when my memories dredge up nostalgic yearning to be close to others. To walk my own path, knowing I could never see any of these people ever again. And that I would just have to be okay with that.

Who can always just be okay with that?

Not even the strongest person is truly at peace with the reality that something they love so much might never be close enough to them again that they can just reach out and touch it; embrace it; breathe in the essence of it, whether it be their voice, their graceful demeanor, their smile, their laugh, or just the comfort that is silently acknowledged between two people when they are relieved to be in another’s presence.

And since I am only little Amanda and possess no tool set to cope with this massive sense of loss—this deprivation of familiarity—I wrap up into myself in the fetal position in my bed and cry. I write. I love everything and everyone I can while I can. I hug tightly, say I love you genuinely, and kiss like I’m nominated to win an award for it.

My body is the glue that holds me together, while my thoughts and tears scatter across time.

Not all of these people, or even most of them, probably know how much I hold love for them still in my heart.

One knew. He told me so. I whimpered to him through desperate, emotion-laden declarations that for so long I was afraid to tell him how much I loved him. Right then, he cut me off and said, “You didn’t have to say it. I knew.”

There’s a calming feeling that comes with the knowledge of his heart knowing my heart so intimately all this time without me ever having to verbally confirm that what we felt was real.

For those I’ve lost or not seen, and may never see again, if they could know my love is expansive and unyielding in its many forms, then I am connected to each, instead of my fear of disintegrating into a pile of ash, like every time the one I love steps out my front door.

Unsettled

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Is it weird that my heart breaks when my ex talks about his relationship woes?

The drive from Willimantic to Southbridge was nice. We needed to catch up, since it had been a few months since we had seen each other, and we text far less now that he has a girlfriend with whom he lives.

When I parked on the steep hill and stepped out of the car to find him on his front stoop, I wasn’t sure if she was there… if I should go introduce myself. Turns out, she had left the house before I arrived, so he got in my driver’s side and drove us to my mom’s, since I had just been driving for an hour. I joked with him that it’s fine, because I was too lazy to ever take him off my insurance.

On the way, we talked mostly about him—how things have been going with the girl; how involved he is with his church. We passed the cemetery I once peed in, because I couldn’t wait any longer, and I pointed and said, “I peed in that cemetery.” J replied, “Yup. And we were listening to Death Cab for Cutie. Fond memory of the early days.”

At my mother’s, he was his usual reticent self. While my sister chattered on about work and gardening, J pulled out his phone and silently played a game. Occasionally, he would say a word or two, but mostly he’d pause to look up at the tv and then back at his phone.

This might be regarded as rude, but it’s not. It’s just J. As soon as someone engages him in conversation, he’ll talk. He’s just always been the more introverted, quiet observer-type.

Out on the deck with my sister, I commented, “I was thinking about how quiet J was being and then I remembered J is always that quiet.” She goes, “Yeah. That’s J.”

It did not feel odd in the slightest to have him there with us while we celebrated my mom’s birthday. My sister provided a delicious dinner and we sat around and talked for a while. My belly was full, my eyes were stinging from cigarette smoke, and I was starting to get a headache, so very shortly after my sister departed, we decided to, also.

On the drive home, there was more serious talk about our relationships and god. It’s so fascinating to me how, now, we agree on so many things, that I give him advice and insight, and he listens and understands. We’ve traversed miles of communication barriers and selfishness in the four-plus years we’ve been apart.

We both wondered if we’d only ever be each other’s one shot at “it”. I told him that sometimes I thought so. Maybe that was our chance for love and we couldn’t do it. Maybe we are both destined not to find our “ones”. Those chances were buried just like the graves next to which I relieved my full bladder on one of our happy, free-spirited rides when love was young and rife with hope.

There’s only one other person since J who has remotely made me feel the way J has in terms of depth of connection and romance. In terms of overflowing emotion and true compassion and appreciation for their existence. He knows who he is.

But lately, I’ve just been wading endlessly in an ocean with a hazy horizon point. I can’t tell where I’m going, where I’m supposed to go, and what I’ll find when I get there.

Since I already have found what I’m looking for, twice, I don’t really know what else I’m supposed to uncover.

It’s been a long four years of feeling unsettled. Even when I was in my on-and-off-again relationship with my other ex after J, I never felt assured. I had no idea if he loved me or not, and he continually kept me dangled on some potential hope we might live together only to sabotage things and pull it away from me.

For years, I’ve learned only to trust myself. To love myself. And to know that even if I never find the “one”, I have enough self-love that I’ll be fine.

That doesn’t mean my heart doesn’t break whenever I think about the one who got away from me, or the ones who won’t give me a fair chance. That doesn’t mean that although I would not get back together with J, my heart doesn’t wrench and sizzle with anger that he’s dealing with immaturity or a person who doesn’t share the same aspirations and passions.

I want to cloak and protect him, maybe because we couldn’t protect ourselves from each other.

Maybe because I’ve been guarding and protecting myself for so long, it’s the only thing I know how to do.

The Universe’s Hickey

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The target on my back is starting to get itchy. Can someone take it off? Maybe I’m allergic to the adhesive…

I seemingly have the best and worst luck with men. Best as in, I get asked out a lot. It’s not that guys don’t like me or think I’m beautiful. Worst as in, I am utterly disappointed by the ones I actually like back. They suddenly withdraw or don’t follow through with plans.

I whined through tear-filled eyes yesterday afternoon about how I don’t get how I can’t just have a good thing for once. How I don’t even believe in the Universe targeting people, or bad things happening to people, yet in my case, it impeccably appears that there’s a hex on my love life. Without fail, a guy that I’m attracted to, interested in, or in love with will just up and leave.

My friend pointed out that my energy lately has been placed in all the right areas. Self-love, health, and improvement. Alone time and positivity. It allowed, in the first place, for an interest to even enter the scene.

“Yeah”, I muttered, “but I liked this one. I actually was excited for date number two.”

“Well, the Universe has left you a hickey”, said my friend. “Annoying in the time being, for sure, but a reminder of good things.”

This little bump is a sign that I’m making room in all the right places and someone can even enter my life again in an intimate way.

Didn’t think of it that way, of course, but he’s right.

I’d rather the boy didn’t try to leave a mark in the first place, but since I got the damn Universe’s hickey on my neck, I have to smile in the mirror and know I’m headed in the right direction.

Obsessed

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I think every serious writer is a bit obsessed.

She’s infatuated with words. Specifically, her words. She’s never satisfied with her vocabulary. Scribbled notes adorn scrap paper—ideas for things about which she wants to write. Fearing a good thought will go to waste, she has a hard time parting with any of her years-old scraps, usually tossed into a folder or heaped in a desk drawer.

A serious writer reads and re-reads her work dozens of times before publishing. Even then, she reads it some more, in case she’s missed something. Always scouring for a grammatical error or the perfect position to place an important insight.

She defines herself as a writer. She jokes that ink runs through her veins instead of mere mortal blood. She feels like a conduit for the universe’s silent language and song. It is her honor to ensure the unspoken gets transcribed so it can be committed to the bank of human understanding and memory.

She reads a lot. She’s imbued with fantasy, whim, heaviness, and stardust. Hours alone are her favorite, as she can prepare her art form uninterrupted. Inspiration comes at a stop sign, while listening to a podcast, after a heart-breaking evening, and in the shower—every writer’s worst nightmare, because a pen is not nearby.

She thinks about the book she will someday write when the perfect storm coalesces with a stroke of genius. She knows she might never write that book.

She writes every day. On days when she can’t, she feels the withdrawal; the same pull that addicts experience without their muse or playmate.

A serious writer never gives up, because even if most of the world has never read a single thing she’s ever written, the pure ecstasy of putting thoughts into tangible strings of mellifluous sentences is her truest passion.

A serious writer is obsessed, head over heels, doe-eyed in love with the written word.

She loves it more than almost anything else, and will constantly take her experiences and those she adores and decorate them in poetry, in song, in memoir, in essay, in fiction, in creative nonfiction, in novel, in journal. Any way she can, she will.

And she does.

Little Earthquakes

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I can’t believe I allowed myself to be in that situation again.

Everything was normal. Fine. Maybe a little too fine. When I first arrived, he was overly eager to give me a hug. Exes aren’t typically overly eager to do anything unless it involves inflating specifics of their life to make things seem better than they really are.

I was standing outside when I heard him say it. She was here.

Immediately, my gut wrenched. My body went into a post-traumatic shock, where all I wanted was to flee. To smoke a cigarette and flee. Against my body’s persistent urges to get in my car and get the hell out, I stayed, reassured by others that they would be there to support me.

Jello shots and whiskey helped ease the anxiety for a time. But only for a time.

“I don’t hate her or anything,” I said to my ex, standing in the driveway and pulling drags of his cigarette without his consent. “I just have zero desire to ever be around her again.”

“The fact that no one thought to tell me she’d be here is preposterous and really inconsiderate!” I added.

The avoider of all conflict reassured me that he would not ignore me or act differently. To please just suck it up for one day.

Let me explain what it feels like to suck up PTSD:

It feels like you constantly want to throw up. Your body is uncomfortable. There’s a littering of egg-shells in every direction you walk. Your mouth is duct taped. Censored. Your actions are bound. Censored. Your thoughts are rampant and sweating. Outwardly, you’re silent. Outwardly, you act calm, collected, and cool, because you don’t want to ruin anyone else’s time, you don’t want to cause a scene, and you can’t let people know how much you are hurting because they won’t take you seriously.

They didn’t feel the shockwave blow a hole through my body when I walked in on him and her kissing on the same day as one of my good friend’s funeral.

No. They could never know how low I felt as I scraped the snow off my windshield at two in the morning, wailing at the top of my lungs, after having an argument with a belligerently drunk dolt of an ex-boyfriend who would not assume responsibility for his actions, which ended in a fervent slap across the face from me.

Only my good friend, who heard me crying and came out to offer support, could know the level of messed up I was. I was actually traumatized. My system had had too much at this point. What with the passing and grieving of a friend, the assumed trust I shared with a man, and the broken friendship that stabbed deeper than any of the rest, I was a total heap of distraught. She had repeatedly told me I was way too good for him only so she could climb into his drunken arms, while I was asleep upstairs, because I was invited to stay at the house so I wouldn’t have to grieve alone after Isaac’s passing.

When I arrived home around 4am, I sat on my bed and drank whiskey straight from the bottle. I had no cigarettes and would have to wait until a gas station opened. I was wide-awake and completely rocked from what my heart, eyes, and body had just gone through.

I would never be quite the same again.

And then, they all just expected me to be okay with this? I know it’s been over a year, but would you bring an ex-infantry soldier to a movie about war?

I don’t really remember leaving, except to ask my ex for a cigarette.

I woke up at 4am with several texts asking if I was okay. I felt anxious, so I took half a klonopin and went back to sleep.

Today is Sunday, and the dust has settled. For now.

Come At Me, Bro

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There’s a couple of things about me everyone who meets me should know: I’m not as innocent as I look, and I sure as hell am stronger than fortified steel when push comes to shove and I have to prove myself or survive.

My week started off great. No complaints whatsoever.

Sunday: Great company, mini-golf, and good conversation. Followed by a delicious dinner and wine Monday night with more flowing conversation.

Tuesday, things began to trail off, as I was asked last-minute to pick up my best friend from the bus station in Hartford that evening. I love her, but she knows my anxieties associated with sudden city-driving requests like this. I did it anyways, and, ultimately, it was fine, even if I parked in the wrong place because I get easily flustered.

Wednesday, I had a follow-up appointment with my doctor to take my blood pressure. It’s been six weeks since my last appointment where my blood pressure was at 120/90. I’ve consistently been at 120/70 for years before I re-started birth control. She’s concerned about the sudden change, particularly because blood clots are a risk after thirty.

I quit smoking cigarettes six weeks ago. My appointment had been on a Friday, when the doctor told me smoking was probably raising my blood pressure. The following Tuesday, after Fourth of July weekend, I quit.

I started doing yoga 2-3 times a week in May. I routinely go running, hiking, or walking.

I don’t drink alcohol at all during the week anymore, with a rare exception for a special occasion.

A little over two weeks ago, I began a ketogenic diet, where I’ve cut out carbs and sugars. I’m taking a handful of vitamins suspected to help diminish PMDD symptoms, and I’ve lost about an inch off my waist and a couple of pounds so far. I feel like a million dollars on roller skates. There’s no stopping me…

My doctor charted my blood pressure at 120/82. Still too high, she says. She was going to take me off the birth control that day, but I begged her not to. I told her I felt anxious because the medical assistant’s vitriol about the possibility of me being pregnant (I’m not!) and demanding a pee sample shook me a bit. The birth control I’m on makes my period so light that I basically don’t get it anymore, so my doctor conceded and said, sure, let’s go three more months, but you need to chart your blood pressure multiple times a week and write it down for me. Okay.

I’m just buying time, at this point. If I’ve done everything right and my blood pressure isn’t going back to normal, then the birth control is negatively affecting it. My options are to stop birth control and go back to managing my severe mood swings on my own, try a different birth control, which won’t be as effective with mood stabilization (and could have potential side-effects, since I’ve had horrible luck with nearly every pill I’ve ever tried), take blood pressure medication, and/or go off birth control and try antidepressants.

Ninety-five percent of those options I refuse to do. I’m not going to pump my body with more chemicals that I simply don’t need.

Defeated isn’t even the word. I’ve missed every train, despite my best efforts to make it on time.

After coming home Wednesday, I found out my roommate doesn’t want to renew the lease. We have about a week to sign it and send it back. He waited until now to tell me he wants to move out at the end of September. I’m frustrated that that leaves me no time to either move or find a new roommate, so I am stuck paying over a thousand dollars a month again. This means I will have no life, because I will have no money. I can probably keep going to yoga, but that will be about the only thing I can afford to do if I want to try to save a couple hundred dollars each month.

Thursday was fine. Just fine. I didn’t feel normal, but I didn’t feel awful. All week, I’ve been irritable, having a bit of trouble getting to sleep, and generally pessimistic and down, but nothing like what I would feel without the birth control, in which case, I’d be writing this while crying and between cigarette and whiskey breaks.

I just want things to be easy. I did what I was required to do, life, now you uphold your end.

My doctor, with slight panic in her voice, said to me, “Don’t start smoking again, despite these results. You’re doing so good!” Don’t worry, Doc. Not my intention. My hormones and blood pressure might fucking hate me with the boundless rage of a sixteen year old’s first revenge after being dumped, but I’m not really the quitting type. Well, except for the time I quit doing all those bad things and bread, recently.

So, this is how my week is going to go? Okay.

I am into the weekend now, and the pessimism is subsiding a little.

I had a dream last night that I was eating bread. Years ago, when I had been a vegetarian, I dreamt about eating meat. After quitting cigarettes, I dreamt about smoking for days on end. Last night, it was carbs.

But I’m doing it. Each day. Yesterday, I thought about cheating and grabbing a small fry at McDonald’s in Bloomfield, since I had just stopped at the Jamaican bakery to buy coco bread for a party I’m attending this afternoon. I didn’t. I allow myself minimal cheats during the week, because I am striving hard for my goals.

Some people find it difficult to stick to a routine or diet. I was always one of those people, until I realized that my life depended on it, and the only person I was cheating was me.

My blood pressure might not be impressed by my recent changes, but my mental clarity and my overall physical health are giving me silent applause.

If my week wants to be a little bitch, she can. I’m finally finding the muscle to hold on a little longer, even if it burns every fiber of me in the moment.

Shakedown Isaactown

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I can’t believe it’s been a year since the last time we came together to do this.

Some people just leave a lasting imprint on the physical world behind them when they leave.

Isaac is one of those people.

It is unusually steamy. The air outside feels like Connecticut’s geographical location has moved to Florida.

I plant myself on the couch and eat a disgusting version of some nutritious experiment with my Nutribullet that turned out much like bland baby food. I don a romper and think about grilling a hamburger patty to eat instead of this pea-green mush.

I lean my head back and my cat, Aum, is lying behind me. I can hear her quiet breathing as she begins to purr. I think about how I love her more than almost anything. How leaning back to rest my head against her ultra soft fur is so reassuring and wonderful. How I won’t always be able to do that, so every time I do, I cherish her fully.

Around 7pm, my best friend, Rachel, and I get our beer and head over to Rose’s house for what we assume to be an epic party, as usual.

There’s a stage set up for musicians to play; food is being grilled. There’s a banner that says “Shakedown Isaactown” and a giant pickle with a hole cut out so you can take your picture. As nighttime falls and more people arrive, the path from the shed house to the fire is lit with glow sticks to look like a magical fairy lane.

Every time I attend an event in honor of Isaac or hosted by Rose, I see familiar faces but I also meet new ones. This is my favorite part. It’s truly a community and family, even if we’ve just met, bound by the common thread of a shared adoration for this man who only stayed on earth for a mere thirty-odd years.

In the shed house stands the keg we all wrote on for Isaac last year at his birthday party. I participate in several games of beer pong. I dominate the table for a while, garnering cheers and gasps with my somehow amazing bounces and throws. I guess all those years at Uconn finally paid off. In between drunken high fives and complaining about my sweat-soaked romper and the hole I tore in the crotch from bending down to pick up a ball, I look at the walls of the shed and think about Isaac. How many times he stood in the exact place I am standing. How it’s so painful that he’s not here to share in this experience with us.

My beautiful friend Jo made a four-hour drive from Vermont to come to the party. She plays guitar and we sing “Blue Jeans” by Lana Del Rey, the song she was playing at Isaac’s celebration at Old Well when I went up and introduced myself to her, because I had learned that song on guitar, too.

Shortly after, it begins to storm pretty heavily. It had rained a little on and off over the evening, with bursts of thunder, but not even enough to put out the fire. This time it is torrential. We all run and huddle under the tents together and listen to the booms as they echo across the sky.

Is this Isaac’s birthday gift to us, perhaps? A group of people forced into even closer quarters with nowhere to escape or find distraction. We have to be there in the moment and wait out the rain. Albeit most are inebriated, we are all there together with nowhere to go. Maybe he just wants us all in the same place for a little while.

Once the rain calms down, Rachel and I Irish-goodbye and make our way home on the windy back roads of Canton and West Simsbury. In my room, I sloppily tear off my romper and plop onto my bed.

The thing is, I know I will see this group again. They are my friends. Some I know better than others, but I cherish knowing them, because the way I was brought to them, although heart-breaking, is so beautiful.

To be someone who makes an impact every day is important. Yet, if your impression on others continues to ripple out and echo across time like a loud crash of thunder, then your breaths on earth were not wasted.

Get the Trump Outta Here!

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Okay. I’ll just say it (because we all already know it): Trump is a dick, man.

I am not a journalist, nor am I writing to bring factual information about the election to light.

I am writing about humanity and common f*cking decency.

I was sitting at my local pub on Tuesday evening after a rigorous yoga practice, while scrolling through my facebook feed. An NPR article popped up that piqued my curiosity. It was about Trump and his audacious behavior, naturally.

Everyone by now probably has heard about Trump yelling at a baby for crying during one of his speeches. He used his typical lexicon (pure idiocy) to say it was “beautiful” that the baby was crying. Everything is beautiful to him. I think it’s one of 10 adjectives he knows.

He began by saying it was okay. I didn’t hear the speech, so perhaps his tone was sardonic. As the baby continued to do what babies do (not driven by their ego, but by their actual necessity for survival), he outright scolded the woman for sticking around with a weeping infant.

I’m not saying Obama’s any saint, but given the same situation, he probably would have gone out into the crowd and patted the baby on the head. I mean c’mon.

Trump surely wants that woman’s vote, and he’ll take it by figuratively grabbing her infant and smacking her over the head with it. Because verbally abusing and belittling people is how you get them to love you, right?

He’s that guy in high school who had no clue and said really awkward things during class. So unaware of the people around him or their feelings because of his own ineptitude to emotionally connect.

I’m not here to bloviate about the Presidential Election, because that is not my schtick at all, but what I do care about is how people treat others. For me to be writing about anything even remotely related to politics means I’m peeved.

I am frightened, like literally scared, that citizens of the United States can watch this facade and charade unfold in front of their eyes, where Trump has disparaged women and other races, stuck his foot in his mouth countless times, and with the grace of an ox, delivered inarticulate and platitudinous speeches, which not only scrape my ear drums, but make my stomach churn and my soul deteriorate–AND they still want to elect him President.

Do we really want someone who is nasty to others to be guiding our Nation?

What did we learn in preschool and Kindergarten? To be kind to others. To share. Not to use words that hurt. We teach compassion and the value of friendship to our youth, because it is the keystone to raising an intelligent, informed, and selfless society that truly wants to benefit all members out of a sense of responsibility that when one part of the tree is damaged, it needs nurturing, so the friggin’ tree doesn’t grow fungus or uproot and fall over.

In my honest opinion, no politician is appropriately suited to bring our Nation to where it needs to be. Politics, although necessary in the way we currently run things, are dirty. Trump, however, is by far one of the most ill-representative of what I believe the United States wants to be seen as.

Why would we pick a jerk to decide how to run things? We don’t like jerks, do we?

Trump was quoted at one point during his campaign as having said that he was humble; in fact, he said,

“I think I am actually humble. I think I’m much more humble than you would understand.”

This statement makes me want to douse myself in gasoline and light a match. It’s that painful that I’d rather blisteringly burn to death.

I wouldn’t want that person as my friend, I can say that much. Who wants to befriend someone who is that full of themselves? You can’t trust them, because they can only view the world as they are and how the people in their lives bring benefit to themselves. If I can’t trust you, I also do not want you running my country.

I don’t need to hear the particulars of his sloppy campaign speeches or know all the details of what he allegedly will do for us.

I trust no one to run this country without scruples and sincere compassion for others.

Love may not be able to pass laws or give us tax breaks, but if I am stifled by the mere presence of another human because their behavior and words have indicated nothing other than nescience, rudeness, and total disregard for others, then I can have no part.

Based on his reputation, as fueled by the evidence of his actual ignorant and arrogant behaviors in seeming perpetuity, I say that Trump should get the hell off the stage and relearn common decency. Maybe even redo preschool.

Promises to Myself

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I found this loose note tucked into one of my college journals last night. The note is dated January 5, 2002.

It is a bit cheesy, as I was lofty in my writing style at the time, but it’s amazing how every single item in the note still rings true to me today. I can proudly say I’ve adhered to every single one without even remembering I had written this. 

Promises to Myself:

  • Don’t give up on love or life
  • Remember after a storm, there’s always a rainbow
  • Be a good friend always, even when the other friend isn’t being very good to me
  • Never underestimate my emotions and feelings because of something someone else may say; they are what make me a beautiful human being
  • Know that a greater love shall arise; I will not be alone in life
  • Forgive others; we are not infallible
  • Know that it will all come in good time; patience has gotten me this far
  • Remember all is not lost; if a friend really loves you, they might not be able to show it, but it’s in his heart and will someday be known
  • Pick myself up after being kicked down
  • Be a friend to someone who they will never forget