books, writings, shoes & nudes

Tag: life

  • hoes before bros

    Some people would say marriage is a trap. Me, I am some people. Marriage is highlighted as the goal or the way of life in our society and friendship comes as a sidekick. The “love interest” can be found in almost every movie, but we do not get to meet the best friend or the group of friends in those movies. Although marriages have been around since forever, studies have found that friendships are healthier and last longer. It can be argued that marriage provides deep intimacy, but so can deep friendships. 

    This topic is important because with the rapid mental health decline in America, marriage tends to support more of the negative side given the divorce rate peaked at 22.6 divorces per 1,000 married women. Making friendships be the center instead could positively help. Marriage affects everyone and has been around for centuries. It is a timeless institution. The wedding industry is a huge successful industry. While marriage is often celebrated as a cornerstone of adult life, friendship plays a more important and enduring role at the center of our lives by providing emotional support, personal growth, and a sense of belonging that transcends the formal commitments of marriage.

    People believe marriage provides deep intimacy. Marriage provides legal and financial security, and the excitement of weddings tends to make people want to dive headfirst in. Dating is exciting. That adrenaline surge as your heart races. Then dopamine giving you the feeling of pleasure and reward, mixing with oxytocin that deepens bonding and intimacy; all dances around when we fall in love. Having someone propose to you makes you feel like you are the only human in the world. You were chosen. Someone chose you. Plus that gorgeous ring you get to show off on your left hand. Then that big fancy beautiful wedding that you go into debt for. Double dose of serotonin to make us really happy. It is magical. Who would not want that? Connect with one person who loves you deeply and will be your person. Marriages also provide legal and financial security, two huge pros. Two incomes in this economy are always better than one. People married can benefit from each other’s inheritance when relatives die. The tax breaks are better when you are a couple. Health insurance is cheaper and has better coverage. So many people get married specifically for the health insurance. Increased borrowing power when you need a loan. Social security benefits is a fantastic benefit later in life. If you are not good with money, but you marry someone who is, it can be very balancing for people. One partner can do the laundry and the other the dishes. Having someone to be sexually adventurous any time they consent is a huge benefit of marriage. 

    When you get hitched, you not only add your partner to your family, but you also add their entire already existing family. Double holidays, double celebrations, double the gifts and love. You also have the option of creating a family of your own. Getting married also gives you the opportunity to change everything about yourself, including your name. 

    Friendship is statistically healthier explained by the American Psychological Association. Friendships can provide almost all the same benefits as marriage and are so much more flexible. When it comes to friends there is less pressure to spend all your time together. You can go do your own thing for a month and come back. The friendship is still there right where you left it. There are no long-term financial agreements made. If you have a disagreement or get in a fight, you can easily find solutions. You can take a break from each other or reevaluate the friendship without having to get the law involved. Friendships provide vital social support that can buffer against stress and protect against mental health issues like depression and anxiety. Studies have shown having strong friendships has been linked to lower rates of premature death.

    You can have multiple friends that bring you joy for different reasons. Friendships are built on a foundation of shared experiences, allowing for a deep understanding of each other. You can have work friends that you only interact with at your job. You can have hometown friends you see when you come back to visit. The hockey friends you get together with every Thursday from October to May. You can have friends you only see when you travel. Book club friends that only discuss the latest smut book you read. You can have internet friends all over the world that you have never met but still feel so close to. There is not a limit on the number of friends you can have. There is a legal limit on how many spouses you can have. You can be yourself with your friends. You do not have to look your best. You can snort when you laugh and there is not a fear of being abandoned. You do not have to hold in your farts until your stomach hurts for the first few months of friendship. It is a safe space, and if it is not, you can remove yourself from the friendship. Strong friendships can make you feel like you belong and are good enough. They can bring you laughter, love, and memories. When you marry someone, you are stuck in what you both agree your life is going to look like. For example, if you marry someone who is afraid of flying, you may never get to travel to Iceland with them. If you marry someone who gets a life changing condition, it is now both of your sickness. If you marry someone who develops an addiction, you now both have that addictions. Their bullshit is your bullshit. Friendship has so many backdoor escapes that marriage does not have.

    Given our cultural conditioning and religious beliefs on marriages, they will not be going away any time soon. A better plan is to normalize a new way of life, such as groups of friends living in a neighborhood together or coexisting. We live with our friends. We spend most of our time with our friends. Our spouses can be people we see on the weekends or occasionally go on vacations with. Highlighting the support of platonic relationships with multiple people for multiple reasons. Normalize long distance marriages. When it comes to the legal side, marriage licenses should have an expiration date, one that you must renew every four years or its void. Just like we do the president. We could even have a second term limit considering the dreaded 7-year itch. There are so many people in the world, we should not be tied to one person for the rest of our lives. Normalize bringing friends home for the holidays and celebrating friendship anniversaries. If we switched from marriages being the goal to focusing more on our friendship, we would see the rates of sexual assault and intimate violence decrease. If we were with our friends more and not isolated at home waiting for our husbands or wives to come home, we would live safer lives. Plus friends are just way more fun.

    In conclusion, although marriages are an incredibly common practice with some positives, there are benefits to having marriages take a backseat to friendships. 

  • My parents’ differing  actions, words, and behavior played a significant role in shaping my understanding of gender expectations for myself and the perception of gender in the rest of the world. My family of origin is the institution that has the most influence on my personal understanding of gender roles.. This matters because the lack of my dad’s presence majority of the time helped my mom combat a lot of the social conditioning, but then my father would randomly pop in and shove gender stereotypes down our throats causing us to have complexes. 

    My mother had a very equal mindset while my father did not. My mother was forced to be a single parent so she took on both roles of mother and father. I grew up not knowing where a “woman’s role” ended and a “man’s role” began because she did it all.  She taught me about feminist theory by questioning the status quo to promote equality for everyone, not just women.

    Growing up my mother did many things to challenge gender roles. One being through gifts she gave us. When I was eight I received a pet sea monkeys kit for my birthday. Stem is stereotypically not encouraged for girls. The box was blue and could be found in the boy’s toy section in the store.  When I was 10, for Christmas I received a sling shot (It was taken away four days later for shooting out my neighbor Edna’s window). I did not grow up with a pink bicycle, my brothers didn’t grow up with blue bikes. We had green or orange or red or black. Easter baskets were not color coated pink and blue. They also contained things like potato shooters, soda, cookies and nerf guns not the norm of barbies and race cars.

    When it came to choosing our extracurriculars, my mother challenged gender norms by encouraging us to learn, not focused on gender traits while never discouraging our curiosity or passion. She would not let me join Girl Scouts because  “There is more to life than learning how to care for babies and cook.” All my siblings and I were signed up for snowboarding and swim lessons. I was put in horseback riding lessons because “You’re not going to be afraid of animals.” No matter what our gender, all activities and sports were an option (with the exception of Girl Scouts). There were no gendered sports and if there was a gendered sport we wanted to play, my mom would fight for that spot. For instance, my freshman year of high school, I wanted to play football. I was told no by the coach. “We don’t have the kind of equipment to keep a girl safe.” I let my mom know, and I was on the team, along with three other girls the following week. My younger sisters played competitive coed hockey from age five to eighteen. My youngest brother was in showchoir. Singing is usually reserved for girls and women. I also never had gendered sport equipment such as pink cleats or pink gloves. My father would take my brothers hunting, I was never allowed. 

    The tasks around my home growing up were not separated by gender, but instead were set by skill set. My brother and  I are allergic to poison ivy so my younger sister mowed the grass because she had no allergies. Mowing grass is typically a male task. Christmas lights were hung not by the man of the house, but by me, the only one not afraid of heights. We all had to learn how to change the oil or a tire on the car before she would let us take our drivers test. I grew up watching and helping with the home maintenance my mother would do, from laying new flooring, painting, and installing doors. 

    I grew up in overalls, muddy, and barefooted. At my dad’s house, I would get disciplined for having dirt under my fingernails when my brothers did not. To my mother, marriage and babies were never the goal. Education was. Even my father’s family would reinforce gender roles by saying  “When are you going to give me grandbabies” as if that was my only job in life. My brother heard “Are you going to play for the NFL?”. Being a mother and being expected to be good at sports are not the same, but to my father’s family it was life. 

    Emotions were meant to be felt. If my brothers were hurt, they were given the opportunity to cry but not by my father. They were “given something to cry about”, or “suck it up, men don’t cry”. My mother did many things to challenge gender roles when it came to clothing, but my father saw life a different way. I was forced to wear dresses to holiday events. I went through a “tom boy” phase where I only wanted to wear ball caps and my dad would make negative comments “you look like a boy”. 

    This had such a big impact on who I am as a person now. I have a deep rooted belief that I am capable of anything. I work in a male dominated field. I am the owner of a business. I teach self- defense and coach Brazilian jiu jitsu. I also grapple for recreation. I challenge power, roles, and expectations that are shaped by gender and I often challenge traditional ideas that keep women in less powerful or unfair positions. Traditional ideas like marriage. I am attracted to female lead relationships. I am the head of my household. I make the decisions in my intimate relationships. I am very comfortable as the protector. I also respect women as leaders more than men. 

    Although I am very grateful how I was raised, I am aware being a white woman raised in a feminist, inclusive home equals privileges. I benefit from racial privilege, meaning society often treats me more fairly just because of the color of my skin. Growing up in a feminist environment, I had access to ideas about equality and self-confidence that helps me challenge unfair stuff. I had more support to pursue my goals without being boxed in by traditional gender roles. 

    My maternal side mostly spaced how I understand gender, with the occasional social conditioning from my father. Thus highlighting my mother’s way vs my fathers way which is a fantastic example for the broader stereotypical world.

  • i had a good run

    I’m not afraid of death; I’ve had a good run. It’s inevitable, regardless of my fear. Being scared won’t make it slow down. Won’t make it less real. Fear won’t make me die less. Fear doesn’t make people less sick. Within at least 2 years I’ll have done the things. The book will be publish. The building will be ready. I’ll have ran a marathon. I’ll have had a successful business for 7 years. 7 is my favorite number, so it seems fitting. I will have read 3000 books and taught so many people all the things I can. I think dying young feels ok if you’ve lived so many lives. I was told I was going to die 10 years ago, and here I am. Every day since then has been a bonus. I hope they forget me. I hope they don’t remember. I know I was joy, and bright days and boldness. I hope they find someone else to fill that void. I don’t want to be remembered. I want to go peacefully into the forgotten bliss in their minds. I don’t want them to grieve or reminisce on the things I did or say. I don’t want the sadness to be the lingering love they had for me. I want them to move on. Not hold on. I don’t want something named after me. I don’t want flowers on my grave. I don’t want my name to be remembered, I want the legacy to live on. I want the things I started, the choices I made, to just keep going without ever knowing the author. I want the stories to be retold for years to come, but I don’t want them to be signed by me. I want to silently disappear as I go. Because I’m not afraid of death. I had a good run.

  • god, the scapegoat

    I want there to be a god. I want to believe I will see my people again. The gates can be whatever shade of white, as long as they get to walk through them. I’m ok with the threat of hell as long as they’re in some kind of heaven. Eternal punishment sounds fine for me, as long as they get the peace they deserve. Peace in their world and peace in their minds. Angels or fluffy clouds, I don’t care.

    I just want it to be real. I want to believe there’s a purpose. Something better than us. I want to believe there’s a net to catch us all as we fall. I don’t believe. It won’t change my behavior, I will still choose to be a better human every day. I miss it. I miss talking to someone more powerful than me. The hope it brings. When it gets so very bad down here, we can just pray and that’s our I-did-something-to-help box to check. Without the box, we have to actually attempt to make things better. Everyone has imposter syndrome, so no one will. Without a god guiding us, who’s going to make a move?

    I want to believe there’s justice or rewards in some kind of afterlife. Some magical equalizer. I want to believe when we die, you sit in a room and watch in 3D all the moments you hurt someone else. You have to feel all the feels your victims had to endure. I want to be in that chair. I want to know what I’ve done, how it felt and the impact I made. I deserve that. I want the people that hurt me to have to sit in that chair and feel how I felt. They deserve that.

    I want the foster mom with all the love to give finally gets her reward. Her throne. All the medals to make it all worth it. To remind her that her life’s choices weren’t for nothing. I need a god to tell her she did well.

    I want to believe I was created for a reason. My meaning bigger than I can imagine. I want to believe someone loves me so unconditionally they know every hair on my head. Almost desperate to believe I was known before I was in the womb. I want to believe I belong to something only made for good. How comforting that must be.

    And so, the echos of faith and justice linger. Yearning for a world where shadows yield to understanding.

  • dear paternal issues,

    I don’t write about you too often because you’re so 1900’s trauma, but today I am feeling particularly gynarchal. I don’t even know you, but I still have a lot of recordings of the speeches you gave me on repeat in my brain. Even now. 34 years and the daddy issues are still there. 

    I am reclaiming those. You were never an actual dad (insert Mim’s dad joke here) so I can’t REclaim being my own dad, so I will just have to claim. 

    I am now my own Daddy. Back up bastard mentality I gots some shit to say.

    I was a 4.0 student, Dean’s list, merits out the ass. I am a successful business owner. A business that was built on brutalization that I survived by myself. I am the strongest of all the sons. I went ahead and got all the therapy so I could stop that generational trauma. I’m not a cheater, so that’s a huge win from the blood line. I crawled through glass of my own guilt and loneliness to get to be overwhelmed with the amount of people who love me. I get to be authentically me and people still adore me. I have a hot bod, great feet and I am really fucking good at educating myself. I’m financially independent and own 2 cars, including my dream car. I have no children, so no child support court cases in my routine. I speak up for myself and others. I am an undefeated state champion in Brazilian jui jitsu. My skeleton is broken, like super broke, but I am still joy, I still coach, I still run and I’m still great in bed. I fucking taught myself how to read and read more books than Valkyrie’s professor does in a year while my brain is actively trying to make up letters and sounds. I will be Dr Lindsey fucking Falcon and I’m really fucking proud of me for that. I sometimes still have dirt under my fingernails and my hair is always a mess. But I’m fucking funny. And quite frankly I’m the best damn father I’ve ever had.

    So you sit in your unfaithful 18th marriage, and I’ll be sippin’ cold brew out of my #1 Best Dad mug.

    Sincerely,

    The spite-filled oldest daughter.

  • i will let the past have it

    I loved you deeply, as deeply as I think I could love a sister, but I had to love me more. I miss your curly hair and the tone-deaf duets of Christmas music we would sing in the car.  I think about you often. How I could change your entire existence with the magic of Thrive. But I must let you be lost in the tight grip of the past. 

    I wanted so much more for you. I wanted you to be great. I wanted you to be traveling some far off place and not have to keep you at least 500 feet away from me at all times. You chose the end for both of us. I will eventually paint over the blown kisses and butterflies. 

    I chose you repeatedly. I dropped everything and ran when you called. All I needed was for you to love me. I wiped your ass, canceled your cable, spent money I didn’t have, and you still chose to save your poison over me. 

    I broke myself for you. I lost sleep, I lost days, I lost time. You got drunk. I cleaned up your blood, your drool, your piss and your vomit. You got high. I looked high and low and every fucking nook and cranny in-between to fix it. You looked for an escape. I stressed over your daily being; you gave no fucks. You were perfectly ok with making a mess and having me safely clean it up.

    You made a mess of things. I trusted you without ever trusting you. I believed your buckets of trauma and sob stories just to kick those buckets over when I had enough. You were 6 feet 7 inches of territorial diaper wearing mommy issues. 

    I trusted you with my NDA.You weaponized my secrets. You went against the one thing you can not do. The one thing. “I know you.” You’re so careful to never say it. But you said it in the worst way you could have spoke it. I’d rather be strangled, because this was so constricting. Although I won’t be letting the past have you, I will be letting the past have the version of me that allowed you access. And you’ll never even know it. 

    I will let the past have it all.