happy boys and happy girls

I am happy!

THIS IS BIG.

list:


- buying $50 worth of fresh fruits and vegetables yesterday and eating them
- starting to arrange Walkin' by Thundercat
- starting internship
- Heather inviting me to Roxane FUCKING Gay!
- AGO this morning; membership pass!
- 4 am hike tomorrow morning
- collaging with Laura
- LAURA and her magic??!
- park times with lovely CAMH girls
- Music day with Kyle!
- learning SEASONS CHANGE last night and drinking Wellington Brewery beer and feeling great

I am happy.

I am allowed to be happy.

Desktop Diary // Radical Acceptance edition

RADICAL ACCEPTANCE

it's ok to have irrevocably lost touch w your iPod Classic

it's ok to collect whimsical 1970s cookbooks and picture books for future use in fantastical collages you know you will never make when you can't stumble out of your room. 

                 it's okay to have what you internally deem an inadequate vestibular sense of history.

it's okay to like things a lot and not know why and not want to learn more about them.

it's okay to treat yourself like a child.

it's okay to put on a brave face.

it's okay to find relief only in the company and under the unwavering supervision of others.

it's okay to be unproductive. it's okay to feel overwhelmingly lightheaded and depressed every morning and night without any external or chemical cause.

it's okay for your every concrete action (that isn't just you imagining partaking in the action in the near, near future) to be the compromised product of competing involuntary internal negotiations. it's okay to only actually do 1/8 of what you believe you're capable of. it's okay to live exclusively inside your own skull, the knowledge of this providing no sanctuary. it's okay because you are somehow okay and doing okay.

it's okay to feel important without having earned it. it's okay to feel unimportant when you deserve to feel important. it's okay to think that anyone 'deserves' anything; that we live in a karmically policed cosmos. it's okay to believe in an ever-receding future in which you will suddenly be counted among a 'deserving' and confident elite.

it's okay to let seconds and days and years blow away. it's okay to feel isolated by neurosis and self-hatred and the inability to be 'fixed'. 

******DISCLAIMER: I DON'T EARNESTLY BELIEVE THE ABOVE IS A HEALTHY EXAMPLE OF THE PRACTICE IN DBT KNOWN AS RADICAL ACCEPTANCE. IT'S A GREAT SKILL (WHEN USED MINDFULLY) BUT I'M NOT READY TO HARNESS IT. MY HEART IS TOO FRACTURED, MY SELF-ESTEEM TOO WOUNDED, MY ANXIETIES TOO DEEPLY EMBEDDED IN THE SYNTAX OF MY THOUGHTS (WHICH IF AREN'T MY VERY ESSENCE, WHAT IS?)*****

Vancouver

kate.

new lows

EVERY LOW IS THE LOWEST

so angry

but too tired to move

always always tired

modafinil

adderall

they're not helping

at all

make me feel washed out with chlorine

make me feel groggier than i already did

the sore adderall afterglow getting sooner and sooner

it's not chemical

SURPRISE,

it's YOU!

SURPRISE,

drugs dont work if you dont

they dont work if you sleep for 12h 

they dont work if you go to bed at 3 or 4 every night for no reason

silently postponing sleep via hours of swiping on tinder

absorbing no music or literature or news or trivia 

becoming nothing 

getting further and further from former benchmarks of intelligence, creativity, achievement

where is my chutzpah 

oh wait, i've been on this spectrum for years

been applauded w high grades for my chronic procrastination problem since i was, like, 8. 

maybe younger

it's just so much worse now

i am all out of hope. i am all out of muscle memory. 

now i can request an extension due to my 'disability' 2 hours before a paper is due

and it's granted just like that

it makes me feel like shit because i wrote off the previous 2 days to 'work' on said assignment 

squandering them doing literally nothing. 

not watching netflix, not hanging out on youtube.

no. 

indulgently talking with my ex about existential nonsense and stupid crap we'll never do, perhaps. 

refreshing my email, fb, instagram for hours, yes. 

but DOING anything? no

i've lost that function

i've lost all control of myself

i feel so so so so so so far away from myself

i have no mastery of myself

no grip on my time

i can't think of any reason why my time would have value

no impetus to do anything but dawdle when not directly in front of others

SHOULD I SPEND EVERY WAKING MOMENT OF MY TIME WITH OTHERS

and is this an important crossroads at which i make the 'right' decision? or is this where i drop out of sight and don't know where i went?

 

songwringing

original title: Strictly Professional

This is ripped from a 2012 email i sent to my supervisor turned first luv turned intermittent friend in which, after a sad experience involving drunken cuddles and timid not-so-heavy petting under the cover of the frigid rural night, i made it clear via email that i wanted our relationship to remain 'strictly professional from now on'. he never responded to that stilted / stunted message and i'm thinking now it was maybe bc i sent it to his work email which might have been visible to future pplz holding his position? oops. i'm sorry if i got you in trouble, sweet baws of yesteryear. but also you stole two years of my life, pumping them with desperate drafts to 'no recipient' at all on my lg slidephone and hypnogogic sensations that were not so welcome to a suffering 17 yr old me, so im not sorry at all. 

Influences: literally aretha franklin's 'daydreaming' and less literally syreeta's 'black maybe'

i wanted to use their drunken, sweet motown musings as a nice soup stock for an equally unmoored, washed-ashore ditty. 

Lyrics:

ch: Day drinkin and i'm thinking of you
one notification and i'll spew
day drinking n my brain is soaked thru
dont hold me then say i can't kiss you

this chorus describes the central theme of the song / the central experience that informs it. right now, i'm floating in a weird slimy extracellular fluid in which all i know is that i am desperate as fuck for affection and intimacy. this state led me to a place where i got so day-drunk that i found myself semi-blacked out in a bunkbed attached to my ex who gingerly avoided my lips but otherwise participated in the exchange of something like physical love. when he slinked away, i asked him frankly to kiss me from the bunkbed from which i could not pry my wilted person, to which he just woefully grimaced, leaving me w overwhelming feelings of shame and betrayal. i felt as if i was being parented, or looked out for; or as if he thought i was being creepily needy by wanting to be kissed, when i'm p sure he was the one who instated the cuddling configuration in the first place. to make me feel overly attached or like i was deluded re: our relationship made me angry and still does. i feel kind of sick when i think about being rejected, sexually, here but more importantly, emotionally. i couldve really used a friend in that moment instead of having him fearfully pull the plug and leave me to sink into my own filth. 

v1: nihilism saw me force a connection
nihilism saw you to my bed
i'm too fucking good for this knot in my chest
i'm too fucking good for this psychic bedrest

this describes a sad sexual encounter a week before the one previously described in which i unsuccessfully tried to use a douchebag's physical body to fill a void. it was all wrong and it was all bad and the fact that i slept w a disgusting homophobe that i feel ashamed even telling my good friends about is not smthn i'm living down to myself anytime soon. i shouldve gone home and eaten ice cream instead of gotten drunk enough to think this could lead to anything other than self-loathing and nausea for dayzzz. 

v2: an omnipresent material dream
a gaunt angel at my sickbed
your careful hold my stillborn fix
a bait and switch; my stomach lead

this describes my beautiful and cruel ex visiting me as a celestial and sadistic apparition. this weird second intimacy was as painful as it was with my first love (for which the song is named). both experiences were an unexpected but conditional drunken recoupling where familiar intimacy was reinstated but also carefully policed and thus feeding into a painful power imbalance at which the shame was unfairly allocated to me. 

drafts//stutters

Hey I just want you to know that I did not intend to cuddle with you yesterday and don’t know what circumstances led to that happening. Like I just remember suddenly being in a bunkbed and then you leaving and being kind of repulsed 

also, idk if you care but a million years ago I hooked up w Baknel again after a while apart and it was similarly sad because although we were touching each other, he wouldn’t kiss me and it made me feel similarly awful and alone and FYI: don’t solicit affection from someone but then make them feel foolish for wanting    . It’s a huge fucking power trip. I

I feel really shitty about yesterday. I don’t remember how we started cuddling and I didn’t think I was responsible, so you acting repulsed by me when you clearly were comfortable enough holding me kind of hurt and seemed like a power trip (whether intentional or not) on your part. Anyway, I want to drive the point home that regardless of what happens or doesn’t, it is crystal clear to me that we are not going to be romantically involved in any way and no one here is confused about that!

 You don’t need to be cautious because I am not deluded or hung up on you and no one is confused about what is what. I was just very drunk. Anyway, yeah, just putting it out there that regardless of your intention, I feel 

anyway, if you did indeed consent to touching me, I just want to let you know that it’s kind of a 

Hey, so I feel kind of sick about yesterday. I could go into the nuances of why it hurt me (and, actually, they don’t have to do with me still wanting to be with you or anything in that vein) but I guess I’ll just say that, although I don’t strictly remember how we ended up cuddling  am not fully sure how it happened, and that it’s not a big deal and wouldn’t be if it happened again. 

Yo just want to let you know that, although I briefly enjoyed it, I didn’t intend to cuddle you yesterday (and don’t remember exactly how it happened seeing as I was SO. DRUNK.) and it hurt when you acted repulsed towards me/ran away instead of wanting to talk to me or comfort me when I was feeling super fucking horrible both physically and spiritually. Anyway, ofc it’s not a big deal, but I just wanted to let you know that that hurt me and also that there’s no reason to EVER act afraid of me because I do not harbour any latent dreams of pursuing anything romantic w you (and acting as if I do is a power trip ya don’t need to take). Okay? okay. 

Feb 18th, 2017

I’ve come full circle 

My throat feels like I’ve smoked, bacterial tendrils just hinting at exposure, not detectable except by painful proxy

Food is my enemy

I can’t fucking eat

Exactly like, when depressed; when anxious. 

i want to; it would be good for me; it would make me strong; it would be the first step in such a fucking LONG journey of repersonalization and getting my ears and head and neck and heart back 

Of stripping away everything that clogs me, makes me unable to read a sentence on a page without already failing to encode 

Why am I such a brute

WHY AM I SUCH A BRUTE!???

There is so much I want to see and do and be! But I can’t move. Or I don’t. I’m afraid to know what I can’t and what I don’t do bc maybe I really am dull. Maybe I have an aptitude for nothing. Maybe I taste nothing. Maybe my sphere of influence is small and my senses are as dampened as they feel

I am ill right now, yes

But the physical symptoms: an adamant stomach of lead that recoils at the sight of solid food; at the thought of —god forbid— a meal, is a PROUD stomach. It is an anorexic stomach. It is a stomach that restricts for a living; that sustains its own shrinkage, in the way that fat cells and goopy skin and stretch marks could only dream of. 

I am sick. I am so sick. 

I NEED to be sick. This cannot be who I’ve grown up into. 

I used to be a girl who, albeit hyperactive and distracted, COULD read; COULD impress, COULD ace theory exams and math exams and chemistry exams and ANY FUCKING EXAM YOU COULD NAME, and who could balance her life and remember what she did the previous hour

But now i am a girl who self-sabotages even when she doesn’t self-sabotage. do you know what I mean?

There is nothing to sabotage!

I don’t DO anything!

My inner life is a monster. I am sick. I am always always always tired. I don’t know why I’m in school. I don’t know why I’m alive. 

fuck

i am so depressed.

nobody loves me.

i am stunting my own growth.



I SHOULD FUCKING PUSH EVERYONE AWAY LMAO LMAO GAHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA OMG WHY DON"T I JUST WITHDRAW FROM THE WHOLE GODDAMN WORLD !!!!!!!!!!


FUCK EVERYONE

FUCK "LOVE"

lol hahahahahahhhhhhhhhhhh fuck my own expansive feebleness




FUCK PPL WHO ARENT AWAKE ALL NIGHT FOR THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF CATERING TO MY EVERY NEED


FUCK THEM!!!! FUCK YOU FUCK FACEBOOK THAT REPRESSES AND OPPRESSES


FUCK

PRAYER CIRC(ULAR THINKING)

Dear God (me), 

you are beautiful. you are strong. your problems ALL stem from the extreme pain you experienced whilst witnessing your mom shower your baby brother with inequitable portions of love throughout your childhood, carrying him to school every day long after he passed the age after which she stopped carrying you. 

you're jealous by nature. 

you cry at the drop of a hat, almost every day and almost everywhere.

you're anxious and depressed. you were anorexic as a pre-teen and bulimic as a real-teen.

you now masturbate maliciously in alleyways and force bolus back up your esophagus to never stop eating and suck back half cigarettes to deprive yourself of oxygen and see stars, all desperate attempts to self-soothe. 

you love too deeply and not at all. you only love to cry. 

you hate success. you hate engineers, doctors and lawyers. you hate people with confidence. these people usually ignore you or are your "friend" with so many conditions that you can't help but hate them and their hypocrisy and their dumb white sneaker-clad posse. they also all call themselves photographers and writers and this makes your skin crawl with envy. 

you like guts and failure and unemployment and 1am pizza orders from Papa Johns and loneliness and old spice and poop-green eyes. 

you love to pine. 

and you love to be right. 

and most of all, you love to angstily google things like:

"what do i do when my boyfriend reads my msgs and never responds!?"

"why a guy won't text back??"

"how to not be emotionally needy"

"how to make someone like you more"

"how to make someone want you as much as you want them"

this is who you've become. 

when you do get ahold of him, he always signs off prematurely -- dismisses you with things like: 

"I gotta go to sleep now" (it's 11:30pm and you know he'll be online for another 2 h)

"well, it's time to go to lunch!" (he's been on his phone throughout 85% of all meals you've "shared" with him)

OR .... or. here's the one you just loooove the most (and also, INCIDENTALLY, the most prevalent of ALL the aforementioned outcomes!!): 

you'll send him a vid. a funny meme. tell him a ridonkulusss story. send 'im a strange pic from your mom, who he claims to find endearing. or you'll tell him about something really infuriating. something important. something funny, interesting, smart ... something you really really really wanted to say. or maybe you just wanted to scratch away at his swaddled-in-iron persona; enjoy a fun, heart-warming "we're in this damn world together" response from the person who at least tentatively claims to love and desire you. 

AND. 

he responds with things like: 

desktop #1

i have a compulsion where i save screencaps from sitcoms / movies / the net on my desktop. instead of letting them dribble into the sludgy abyss of my trashcan, they're getting posted here weekly. enjoy.


from American Beauty as seen on an angsty Thora Birch's computer screen








i dont feel the need to label these SORRRY



Simpson's gelatin desserts yimmy yam yum

<< << SEPT 19 DESKTOP DEBRIS >> >>

a compulsion for virtual cataloging*

Jonny Negron - for if you like thick honeys and big titties

Ice ice baby's in full effect! yup yup!

Claire Milbrath - meeting your homoerotic, meadow-related needs since always

SisQo's belly button ring

*stuff like this is all I care about.

make yourself your own subject

make yourself your own subject

the past

not history but the past

Old Redmond

ontario place

the mythical utopia of Daddy's basement

disposable cameras with expiry dates in the mid-'00s 

a preoccupation with hideous teal bat-winged '80s sweatshirts 

Maya Fuhr

my now-antiquated well-intentioned sticker-plastered prayer journals

Uncle Shayne's mix tapes and their long-winded names

the importance of Shakespeare's Sister and their forgotten aesthetic to my 2008 self

the dead little boy with an angel face an an artifical jew-fro

the oppressively hypnotic '60s sci-fi sensibilities of the Centre Pompideau 

Duane Hanson's Queenie

Desperately Seeking Susan

these things incite a visceral reaction in me; make me squirm 

all of these things together mean something

1:18 cig

i stand here in reverence of the 1:18 cig
just when my dopamine levels were dropping
and so were my prospects
i remembered my secret and adoring superpower at my disposal, tucked safely away in my backpocket:
the 1:18 cig

i can steal you away to a secluded corner
and inhale your deep, vast, understanding calm
i can fuck you with my mouth

knowing the wonderful truth that my indifference to you makes you exponentially more effective

i can have my weekly, sometimes monthly treat
sometimes sober, mostly drunk

i can buy you and i can love you
but i won't ruin you and jade you

no

because you wont give me those intense shivers of pleasure or immense feeling of zen

if i fuck you in my sad mouth every day

youll just fool my brain and enslave me and label me

plus i dont even want to
with regularity and mundanity your appeal dissolves completely

no

youre my 1:18 cig and youre always there and youre always secret unless
i dont want you to be
youre my secret friend who doesnt expect to use me in any way
you just like it when i come around
its a pleasant surprise

you fill me with euphoria, make my breath smell like bitter coffee

you make me a grownup

even if i rub you up against a brick wall and save you for another anxious or drunk night
once ive ridden out the high

so this ones for you
and for how you give me that little friendly push and reinforce my loneliness in a happy way

my 1:18 cig

pretty sure this lil lady could use a 1:18 cig!

april 19, 2015

As I stormed out of the feminist letter reading society's inaugural journal launch and letter reading where I had previously made an ass of myself and then laughed/apologized profusely for making an ass of myself, I realized that this pattern could not continue. 

The pattern of, time and time again, misapprehending myself and then throwing myself away as adamantly as is possible. 

I threw myself away yesterday. 

I took my hard work, my confessions that were supposed to be powerful, inspiring in their bitter honesty (at least to myself) and cathartic. 

Instead, they made me sick. 

they made my eyes burn and my body tense

like words i had never intended to write, they alienated me. 

The design editor had left out a large part of the collage that I had carefully assembled to correspond with the rest of the piece. 

Parts I had considered necessary to the nexus of visuals that had been my secret weapon, my refuge, in my imprisoned world. 

a way to smirk at the world, a way to lose myself, a way to win.

last night was not victorious. 

I felt cheap. I felt alienated. 

my anxieties (let me give you a brief little tasting of the very best of my ever-increasing smorgasbord of mental fuckeries that NEVER GO AWAY: feeling I don't know enough about music, books, art, movies, TV, world events, politics, comedy, ANYTHING; so that I am in such deficit that I have actually become less than human; an uncultured swine unworthy of any of my "accomplishments" and certainly most unworthy of the high esteem of people that I respect and admire) finally confronted me in a very real way. 

I realized in trying to "out" myself as something dangerously close to a nihilist, I had really just set myself up to share something with the world that I simply could not be ready to share. that exposing the sacred contents of my distorted mind did not bring redemption or understanding but airway-restricting fear. 

I had tried to learn to swim by throwing myself in near-freezing, stormy waters, and I could feel my airway filling up with water as the reality of my illiteracy came crashing down on me. 

this chaos (or at least the chaos it represented) wasn't something I was ready to write. 

I should have written about the maddening fact that a little part of me is furious with those who are effortlessly thin, able to wear the mini-est of '90s skirts without destroying them upon sitting down and the tinyest of vintage dresses violently erupting from them in a seemingly-innocuous inhale. Those who are effortlessly thin and don't have to betray their personal ideology of feminism and freedom and individuality by starving themselves in order to be that way. 

I'm in a catch-22. 

starving would save a hell of a ton of money. ha ha. 

and it would work. 

it has before. 

and although i am neglecting to acknowledge that it is there, i have that discipline. 

I could do it. 

I could wear jeans. 

and be able to actually assume a sitting position without physically feeling my soul shrink. I could look at my thighs in a mirror and not shudder; getting dressed in the morning could not be a sickening cocktail of total war and desperate denial. 

I could finally be like those elusive Ethical Ectomorphs who write for trendy papers and journals, bikeride not in head-to-toe Costco spandex but in delicate vintage dresses and non-stretch denim because they aren't liable to physically break out of them, somehow manage to attend every event and concert despite their involvement in every social justice / arts / political organization on campus that's cool enough to merit their membership and live in what is essentially an arts collective of young overachievers who use big words correctly and unapologetically do it all. 

Instead, I neither appease my set of feminist ideals or reach the illusory goal of being thin, perfect and suddenly shedding my anxieties in favour or LIVING. Instead of both, I have neither. And will continue to if I continue to let my mental life ensue like this. 

I don't currently have anorexia nervosa, though I once hospitalized for it when I was 10. 

I haven't binged and purged since grade 11 when I gorged myself at a birthday party and then subsequently left an incriminating amalgam of lasagna and chocolate cake in the hosts' toilet that would later elicit adamant food-poisoning defences from my brother when his concerned female classmates questioned my mental health. 

But that doesn't mean my depression and anxiety isn't also comorbid with living (eating disorder) hell. 

because it's not my eating patterns or my nutritional intake that's dysfunctional. 

it's my mind. 

I have rumination syndrome. 

no one in this fucking hemisphere knows what the fuck that is. 

ever since i discovered the joys of severely restricting my food intake - revelling at calling one tiny slice of pizza dinner or of systematically throwing out 2/3 of my lunch daily - i had instinctively known how to regurgitate. my food. 

let me explain it to you since not many people readily admit to this maladaptation. 

I eat my food. and then when I'm caused to stop - for social, personal or logistical reasons - I bring it back up using my diaphram (hey! all that vocal breathing technique mastered for my abandoned music major is useful for something!). 

I re-eat my food. for about 30 minutes after a meal or until the chunks of bolus become too watery or my stomach acid renders them toxic. 

It's an asocial type of problem. which is why I found out it was a thing after 8 years of googling in vain that only yeilded biological information about momma birds' eating and feeding patterns. Finally, when I was in grade 12, I discovered that there were other people with my secret disorder. 

It's not that it's harmful in the same ways that anorexia or bulimia are. The long-term effects are not known and there is precious little literature on the subject. Most people who do it (like me) never tell anyone. I will most-likely not die from this, and can largely lead a normal life without having to complete the near-impossible task of giving up rumination. 

There are just a few problems that I have with the fact that I re-experience my food daily:

1. I'm doing it to self-soothe, much like an alcoholic depends on booze. I need it, I cling to it, there is no place I will not do it. But it takes the place of other outlets that, if aren't physically healthier, are at least mentally healthier. 

2. it isolates me. It makes me feel like a freak. It's disgusting, it's wrong, it's backwards. more than anything though, it's just so obscenely weird that it causes me daily shame. it's so odd that if I were to tell anyone, they would a. forget its name, b. think they had imagined it or c. instantly forget i had or that this is something that plagues me daily

3. I can't control it. Sometimes I go weeks without doing it. Maybe I'm not eatingenough to bring anything back. but other weeks it's a 24/7 thing that puts me in my place.

4. the psychiatrists that I have seen and even staff at eating disorder clinics have never - I repeat NEVER - heard of it. Those who do their research are not aware of an effective way to cure it, or if there's even a real incentive to stop, as it is not necessarily physically damaging. 

5. although i have taken a hiatus from what used to be my passion, I am a singer. coaxing my food the opposite way through my esophagus must have some impact on the already delicate balance of my system of singing organs. 

There are two people I have shared this condition in the decade that has elapsed since first discovering this
'secret talent'. They are my mother (who couldn't help but ask me how I could be eating something when dinner ended 20 minutes ago) and my big sister and eternal confidant, Heather, who I can safely say that I love. i told my first boyfriend too, but he didn't say much, and I can safely say that he had no idea what i was talking about as we were both naked and i could have pretty much told him that I had committed infanticide for all the attention he was paying to my words.

in conclusion, i will make a few statements:

1. I am fragile. 

2. throwing around your secrets like unrestrained breasts during sex will not make you free

3. regardless of whether it's rumination syndrome or anything else, no one - not even a professional in the appropriate field - owes it to you to understand or even begin to solve your problems for you. 

friends, allies ... anyone who understands the threat of tears behind this plea and behind a lot of my daily life, 

please understand that all I ask of you is that you allow me to write and speak freely about myself. that is, don't let me throw myself overboard, whoring out my secrets and earth-shattering anxieties, but let me tease out my problems and flirt with solution. 

yours in being peacefully and willingly scraped-away,

Jaime Redford 

dreams of the annex ~ a visual essay

fav toronto mural entitled wu-tang forever

leisure reads

sex 2k - the gay cruise & but i'm a ginger something something of sex 1999

found at the intersection of bathurst and harbord

kids

harbord collegiate institute + boob cliff

lighting au naturale in the room i would stagnate in for 14 hour depression-induced, un-regulated by mom slumbers when i should have been filling my brain up with "knowledge"

~ i miss this place but i was also miserable as hell there. considerably more so than i am now ~

i felt the exact same way when i was your age ~ nonsense time with kate

hi. after a little hiatus from this blog that literally NO one reads (except exactly 5 people who wanted to know how to make vegan friends - awful sorry, but this ain't the blog for you! SURPRISE!) i'm back for some more lavish bellyaching. the above photo is from the first time i took a pregnancy test and started sobbing and feeling so much self-pity i actually confused it with a rush of euphoria because i misread the test and assumed i'd have to move to guam to have my kid in peace, away from the social constraints of the merciless patriarchy!!

well, lucky for the kid i didn't have, i didn't have a kid! (and i guess i'm sort of lucky too. not that guam isn't nice)

well, here i am, 8 months later, sad and apathetic as fuck and managing to balance nothing. 

i'm writing an essay on Faulkner right now. but you'd never be able to tell because my sprawling notes on the nature of time have exploded all over the expanse of my room, managing to soak up the layers of filth in here like a goddamn roll of ultra charmin. 

sigh. can i do this? 

can i put an earnest effort into my schoolwork?

the fact is, i'm not doing anything else with my life at present. 

and like going to the gym or trying new weird things with new weird people, putting actual cold hard effort into school feels GREAT when you get around to strangling the little bitch inside you, holding a switchblade to her throat and screaming WORK. WORK, BITCH.

so that's what's happening. i mean, i do have enough time to FUCKING. DO. THIS. 

and i should also be able to do my credit/no credit assignment too. 

i fucking can

and i can do more than just do it. 

i can do more than just breathe. 

i can LIVE GUYS I CAN LIVE 

ugh. 

i'm sounding like the deluded 51 year old soulcrushingly hopeless romantic part-time yoga teacher single mom with 15 grand in debt and a too-humid apartment above an institution gloriously named REALTY LIFE. (this is my first boyfriends real actual mom who wouldn't keep real food (read: bread) in the house, opting instead for organic produce that she would relinquish to the juicer. lets just say that i was really thin that summer. 

but chuck or frank or whatever code name i'm using was sweet as fuck and made me fondant. he was really cute in that "i like you sosososos much, you're so special just love yourself irrationally like i doooo" kind of way. but i dumped him.

anyways, i'm going to ~ put my big girl pants on ~ and put an honest, concerted effort into this colossal essay. 

bc faulk it. 

omg i'm so not funny. 

well, friends, thanks for putting up with this obnoxiously formatted, even more obnoxiously schizophrenic "blog" "post"  that you didn't read.  i love you. because what's my love worth anyways that i can't squander it on you sad, lonely vegans on misguided soulmate-pilgrimages? i have ample love for you. and you. and .... well not you. 

-- love kate

HERES WHAT I HAVE TO DO :

I'm in 2nd year at U of T.

and i have to WORK. MY. ASS. OFF.

I need a newspaper position ASAP.

I need to be confident as FUCK.

I need to get these two exchanges.

I need to find a sick-ass internship in the arts for this summer.

I need to do summerschool and fucking ACE it.

I need to learn jazz guitar.

I need to be admitted to the English Specialist program at U of T.

I need to be admitted to the minor program in Visual Studies.

I need to go to grad school abroad.


and if i don't work towards and get all of this (and more), I might as well just plant myself on the couch and die a netflix-induced death.

hi guys

another dumb post on how i'm going to change my life.
but actually!

new game plan moving forward:

- dl music all ze time
- keep up w shows in those spare cracks
- do yer fucking laundry; it's rly not that hard
- never not be reading, working, etc
- buy groceries. be a human!
- be an adult! bring sleeping pills w you to yr bf's place so that you don't roll around attempting to spark "philosophical" discussions all fucking night.
- always have a fully loaded cam w you
- practice guitar way more often and just be u and rock it and be happy and remember that you're cool
- don't be constantly texting your boyfriend !!!!!!!!!! yas? yas.

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.