cleanse

i want to cleanse myself
after tonight
i want this chronic system of sucking to stop being chronic

tonight

i will 
finish this essay

and sleep like a motherfucker

but tomorrow 
i will

1cleanse the ugly shit from my room 
all of it
gone
2text baknel and michelle and plan a sick weekend
3plan to attend a training at gus ryder for the winter
two shifts there over the winter thursday daytime and sat or sun
4finish fuckleberry hinn 
5research jazz choirs and arrange auditions
6shower and look hot for a great day

the ethics of birth control - a personal essay

today I told my boyfriend that achieving balance between great sex and effective contraception is no longer my private battle. 

(and that, with diligence and communication, there shouldn't be a trade-off)

as mentioned in past posts, i love my boyfriend and i am almost positive he isn't an asshole. he has a great heart, a great sense of humour and a great mind. he's great.

he's a liberal-minded, self-identified feminist, and i am thrilled with him 95% of the time. however, i often forget that he's still a 21-year old male raised in patriarchal suburban Ontario where misogyny and hyper-masculinity rein supreme and old tropes die hard. 

he's not a fan of condoms. 

he is also blissfully ignorant of all things birth control. he didn't know what an IUD was before i got one (out of sheer terror at all the unprotected sex i found myself complacently having). and when it slipped out a month ago, he didn't seem to care that i no longer had this necessary backup. when i sarcastically answered yes in response to his inquiry of whether birth control medication was effective after three days of taking it properly, he believed me. three fucking days. the standard is one pack (28 days) although liberal doctors have told me that 7 days can be adequate, depending on your body mass. but why would i ever want to be liberal with my sexual health - and my future? 

he also seems unaware of the common practice of using two forms of birth control so that if one fails, the other won't, which is essential when your life is as unpredictable as mine. 

so here -- 6 months late, but just as relevant -- the confrontation: 

*

take it from me, in the heat of the moment, it's easy to revert to primal instinct, dig in and let someone come all over your insides because it's so hot. or to non-commitally mutter "yeah whatever" when the guy you're madly falling for delivers his pitch about not having condoms that are big enough (aka not-condom enough) to not constrict his poor, deprived dick. makes sense, right? fuck now, worry later. right?!! heaven forbid you kill the vibe. 

but wait a minute... 

if someone supposedly cares about you (as i know my boyfriend does), why would they want to subject you to a nightmarish existence of pregnancy tests, costly morning after pills and irregular bleeding/cramps from IUDs and/or the birth control pill? 

... and (most importantly) the private burden of bearing full financial and social responsibility of taking these precautions? 

why is this the norm? 

why would any man - in 2014 - feel entitled to condomless sex, lacking two forms of contraception (the only standard i personally feel comfortable with) or even one, leaving women the full responsibility of salvaging themselves after reckless sex? and even if they salvage their bodies, can they ever truly salvage any sense of equality to their sexual partner?

even if no pregnancy results, the implications on the woman are still adverse, and i have continually known them. risky sex makes me feel used and cheap and like any day now it'll be my turn to face the decision no woman wants to (or should have to) make. 

and if someone prefers not to use condoms, that's totally forgivable. condomless sex (in context) can be incredibly beautiful, intimate and just goddamn great. it's furious, it's hot, it's as evolution wanted it to be. 

but there's a right way to do it. 

a way that's more hot, more intimate and ultimately more true and ethical for both members of a partnership. 

it might not yet be the norm,

but a loving partner (or one possessing even a drop of human decency) must 

research the alternatives, 

support his partner through any procedures such as an IUD insertion 

and not hesitate to contribute equally in terms of cost and effort. 

and, out of love or at least respect of both the woman and her efforts to increase his pleasure, a man should not hesitate to put on a condom until whatever chosen alternative(s) becomes fully effective. 

for me, and for many other women, pregnancy, is earth-shattering but ending a life is simply unthinkable. i am not catholic, or a moral extremist and i believe every woman has the right and freedom to choose. 

but i realized a long time ago that it was in my full power to prevent this situation from arising in the first place. and it's time for men to assume an equal role in making this possible, if they want to have a healthy, loving and fair intimate connection to a woman. 

~ approximately 24 hours later ~

if you made it to the end of this, I wholeheartedly congratulate you for bearing with this extremely sleep-deprived, heavily-medicated, very pissed-off monologue of mine. despite any small errors or inconsistencies due to the aforementioned realities of its production, this was a very honest, open and important personal rant and i feel infinitely better for writing it. 

if you're wondering how this all panned out, my boyfriend was extremely apologetic and responsive to my confrontation and promises to care just as much as me in the future about this. we look forward to using mint chocolate and tropical punch flavoured condoms which i hoarded from the birth control clinic (free!) until my new contraceptive patch fully kicks in. yay for compassion, equality and an open line of communication! 

*my boyfriend's name is not Heathcliffe Huxtable. fyi. 

mental illness - to have or not to have?

ever since grade 7, my mom has been chalking up my erratic behaviour, claims that i don't 'feel real' and nightmarish attitude to hormones. hormones, hormones, the natural expected social script of hating your mom and everything, wanting to rebel, hormones, academic stress, doing too many extra-curricular activities, hormones. 

i'm sure plenty of people who have had a mom will know that it's so annoying, isn't it? 

i'm pretty sure that not every 12 year old cried literally every waking moment of Jesus camp, begging incessantly to use off-limits camp phones just to hear her mom's voice. I'm almost positive they didn't skip out on planned activities in pursuit of an elderly lady from the trailer park beside camp who 'understood' her, listened to her teary admissions and gave her shoots of lavender. I'm pretty sure not every 12 year old broke into tears at the culminating camp concert while preaching of God's glory because she saw her mom in the audience but couldn't hug her just yet. I'm pretty sure not every 12 year old wanted to go home and never come back at the mid-week camp parent concert. I remember crying through everything. people say that, but I was actually that kid who was silently bleary-eyed at dinner, choir... even while learning sol-fa at theory or examining the cycle of fifths with a genius 7 year old who really knew her shit. i remember laughing through tears at the absurdity of it, when people asked what was wrong. "oh, i'm just homesick. haha!". what was really happening was that i was experiencing the first crippling bout of depression of my life and being forced to recover from an eating disorder i was convinced i didn't have.

now, i'm sad to say that i'm the same old kid. only now instead of a weeklong summer camp, it's my entire life that i want to run home to my mom from. i live 'on my own' now. but i'm a mess. a fucking mess. i roll around in fetal position (because it's the closest an isolate can get to being cuddled) crying, dreaming of sprinting off my rooftop to a euphoric death, wishing my boyfriend knew just how fucked i was that i couldn't rub up against his hairy, naked body each night like a cat. to be fair to myself, it's been over a week since we've shared a bed, and after about 4 days, i start to feel an emotional headache similar to that same home-sickness i suffered so drastically at camp. almost a biological drive that makes me anxious, frantic and ultimately gnawingly empty when left unsatisfied. 

Everyone feels like their story is unique; that no one else can understand the complexity and almost beautiful formula to their pain. and I know this is largely a cliche; that we all think we're the crazy ones, the ones who truly see and truly feel. and that's because, to us, we are. and i think this alone makes our feelings valid, no matter how erratic or possibly even deluded. 

I've been to psychiatrists and i've struggled to decide what i want to have, what i want to be, and what i wanted to treat. because there is no fine line and there is no boundary. some days you have everything. 
some days you have nothing. 
illnesses i have lightly grazed, flirted with or fully had include (in somewhat chronological but more likely concurrent order) obsessive compulsive disorder (more obsessive; less compulsive), anorexia nervosa, rumination syndrome, bulimia nervosa, depression, (whispers of) bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder. 
I've even been fine. but that was my own diagnosis, and only for short but unsustained periods. 

i really do want to be fine. 
i want to regulate my own emotions, be my own master, but i know i have to forfeit this power if i want to reclaim it. 
i know in my core that i am ill. 
that these relationships are all wrong, that missing someone so powerfully, dreaming of them for 2 full years, to the point of full-on depression, is unhealthy. 
but that's the problem; i can't simply stop.
i can't stop using food as a crutch, as a drug. i can't stop bringing back up fatty, starchy, sugary foods to experience them again, and again, or perhaps to dispel them into the sink or toilet. I can't stop indulging in suicidal thinking, either literally or in terms of certain 'lives' i assume within my larger one. i can't stop feeling lonely, empty, devoid of any purpose, to the point where i can't sleep and can't stop thinking about how stopping every activity in my life (the good ones) is the only way i can really be true to myself. myself being no one. i can't stop feeling manic, feeling infinite, and then wanting to drop out, cut off my family, disappear. I can't stop crying in public or spurting out comments, always inappropriate, or hurting people. 

it just seems there's no promise i can make anymore.

it's not that this is me, or the primary me, at any rate. 
it certainly isn't and there have been long periods where i've almost thought depression or disordered eating had eluded me for good. i have gotten awards, taken on leadership roles, felt loved and accepted, achieved things that have made others envious. i have been an overachiever; someone who people have looked at and written off as someone that no one ever has to worry about because i'm just automatically on the right path to the right place, plodding along and staying true and being a good kid. i've been that kid, really and truly i have. 

it's just that some of us really are sick. we aren't just doing this for attention or exaggerating the ups and downs of normal life. some of us really do feel alienated from everything in a big way; to the point where we cannot manage our emotions or cope with the simplest facts of reality. 

and no one has authority, evidence or perspective to tell me that my problems aren't real. feelings, no matter their source or their context, are valid. and deserve, if not to be answered to and pursued , then to simply exist without condemnation. 

i absolutely understand that every 20-esque human faces a ton of shit and has their own never-ending existentialist crisis of a life. i get it. i see that. but that doesn't make us all exactly the same. we are not all swept up in the same reified epidemic of apathy and quick-fixes and bingeing on everything. maybe we are, but it's more intricate than that. 

the notion that unwell people have that they need to somehow prove the validity of their case by taking extreme measures is absurd. 

to have or not to have? 

i'm coming to realize that the choice is not mine to make. 

Tinder Memoirs of a Feminist - to be continued

Hi. I'm Jaime. And I'm here to tell you that it's OKAY to have Tinder. Really, I don't want to hear your sheepish explanations of how you're on it "ironically" or whatever. I've made them too. and will probably continue to make them as a sort of social reflex. but in truth, I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. 

Picture this. You're 18. You've been in two relationships, both of them short-lived and neither of them even remotely involving the elusive and sought-after concept of love. You've been single a while. And you really just want to get out there, meet people, have new experiences, embrace spontaneity and pour back a few pitchers of sangria with a stranger that might become a hot-sex prospect/something in that arena. You have nothing to lose and you're flexible, adventurous and open to trying anything. Except meth. One lonely night you are restlessly rolling around in your twin bed at your mom's suburban home dreaming of something more than this. The last person you kissed was your best friend on a bathroom floor in a condo while being high on M for the first and only time. You had to keep yelling at angry bathroom-users to "FUCK OFF AND USE THE LADIES' ROOM!". Basically, you've had it. So, you do the unthinkable. After much deliberation, you rationalize downloading the notoriously stigma-ridden yet increasingly more acceptable hook-up app, Tinder. 

It ends up being fun. And also, as many others can likely testify, a great way to inadvertently conduct your own social research project on sexuality and gender differences. Upwards of 10 of my matches commented on how I was (one of) the only girls to initiate a conversation. This is not exactly groundbreaking news. We still live in a culture where a girl is encouraged to play hard to get and where every self-help article tells women to hold back and mute their initial sexual desires, if they want a lasting, real relationship. The fact that the sentiment of "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free" is still echoing through the poor heads of women floating around in the matrix of modern dating is a major problem. First of all, the "cow" is also getting milk from another cow! The cows are consensually milking each other, and in theory, benefitting equally! Everything is reciprocal; and a woman is not simply a commodity to be "milked". Furthermore, if a woman chooses to wait, that's her personal decision. But it shouldn't be because she feels that she will be cheapened or seen as "easy" if she fucks a guy on the first date. If she's great in bed on the first date, chances are that same chemistry will still be around on, say the 15th date... or over the course of a relationship. Of course no one assumes someone is "the one" on the first date. So how should you know whether or not to go for it? If anything, having sex or sexual encounters right away is an easy way to tell if you're compatible with someone. Or not. Believe me. 

blurry person

I am a blurry person

I do not exist in focus

I am the moment that you cannot recapture with sharp edges

I am the night you can never remember in chronological order

I am the large, loud girl that obstructs your field of vision, but ceases to exist when she departs from it

I am nothing but a misrepresentation of something that never existed

-circa September 2013-