An Open Letter to My Life

Dear Life,

I would ask you how you are, but I already know the answer to that question, which is why I am writing you this letter. So I'm going to skip all of the conventional greetings and hospitalities and cut to the chase.

WHAT HAVE I EVER DONE TO YOU?!?

Seriously, life. I thought we were friends. I mean, we've had our ups and downs over the course of our relationship. It hasn't exactly been 20 years of sunshine and rainbows, but you know, I've enjoyed most of our time together. Lately though, things have been more than a little short of idyllic. I think that they may be creating a whole new level of hell, just for you.

We've always disagreed on a lot of things. All I want to do is sleep, but you're going to be miserable if I don't stay up and work on a paper. I want to go out with my friends, but you're going to start failing if I don't go to work. Usually we can meet some kind of compromise, though! I promise to do my paper if you allow me to take a nap, I'll go to work now if you let me go out with my friends tomorrow night.  But lately you just aren't willing to compromise. You aren't letting me sleep, you aren't letting me relax, and you throw all of your little projects at me all at the same time. Oh, and if all this emotional bullshit is your idea of a joke... you have a very warped sense of humor. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, LIFE?

We have to work through these problems, Life. There isn't any other option. I just can't live without you. I'm willing to do anything for you. So why can't you ease up on me? Just calm down and stop throwing so much stuff at me. I'd like to spend a nice long time with you, and it would be beneficial for us to establish a nice, enjoyable relationship now, while we're young. We can work through this. You just need to be a little bit nicer to me, and we'll be the best of friends again in no time.

With lots of love and appreciation despite your bitchiness,

Becca

Tattoos!

I was recently asked about my thoughts on tattoos, and I've been thinking about it a lot today. If you think about it, tattooing yourself is a very strange ritual. Injecting ink into yourself to form permanent pictures under your skin sounds like a kind of drastic and painful step to take without serious cause, but it has become a fairly routine act.

 For some people it is a "rebellion," but I realized last night that getting a tattoo as a form of rebellion is really a kind of method of conforming. Instead of rebelling with a crazy, socially unacceptable extreme, getting a tattoo is a generally accepted (if not necessarily approved of) method of rebellion that is common and is widely recognized as a method of mild rebellion. It gets the message across without ostracizing the bearer or cutting him or her off from most sectors of society. Most people, particularly females, don't go out on too much of a limb when they get a tattoo, placing it in a discreet area of their body or getting a relatively inoffensive image or phrase. I'm a pretty good example of this. My original reason for wanting a tattoo was to prove to my parents (and the world) that I am going to do "whatever the fuck I want" with my life, including alterations to my body and appearance. But my tattoo is in the center of my back, where it is extremely coverable, and is of a completely inoffensive image.

           my first tattoo in the first week after I got it

So do we have to have better reasons to get tattoos? I guess the answer to this is no. Nobody has to have a particularly "good" or "meaningful" reason to get a tattoo. Anyone can just think "Hey, I think that a tattoo of a big cat jumping out of my bicep would be pretty fuckin' awesome," and that is just as legitimate of a reason for tattooing ones' self as wanting the name of a dead loved one, or a symbol of one's faith borne on their skin. It's not really my idea of grand reasoning, and I personally am not a big fan of what seem to be arbitrary images for tattoos, but I also acknowledge that it is very difficult to tell what tattoos really mean something and what don't. Maybe the red neck in Walmart has a jaguar ripping out of his arm because it means something to him, or maybe he just thinks it looks cool. I'm not sure that it really makes a difference.

Getting a tattoo totally repulses some people, which I find interesting, because I am absolutely fascinated by tattooing. The tattoo on my back feels very much like it belongs there, and has been there forever, even though I only got it about 6 months ago. I plan on getting a second one when I come back to school in the fall, and would like a couple more after that before I am (probably) done with my own skin. I find deep personal satisfaction in having the tattoo that I got last fall, and I look forward to getting others.

Oddly, in a manner similar to how some people are turned off by tattoos, piercings are a little bit of a conundrum for me. Unorthodox piercings (which by the way are a far truer form of rebellion than most tattoos are, in my opinion) kind of freak me out to be honest. Like corset piercings, or genital piercings. Even getting a cartilage piercing in my ear was a much more difficult and far edgier decision for me than getting a tattoo. I have a hard time wrapping my head around them, but in the end I guess the most important thing is that we aren't afraid to express ourselves through our bodies, whether that means getting tattooed, or pierced, or keeping our bodies free of modifications. That means that even though someone might have a 15 piercings in his or her face and a bunch more in places I can't see, I'm going to try not to jump to the conclusion that he or she shouldn't be teaching my kids someday, or nursing me in a hospital, or inventing vaccines, because body modification shouldn't be used as an indicator of limited intelligence, or incompetence, or untrustworthiness.

Just something I've been thinking over lately.

Really Gail Hanson? REALLY?

It's academic crunch time for me. So of course, I am surfing the web. On facebook, I stumbled across a link that someone had posted called "How not to talk to a survivor of campus sexual assault." Which was obviously looks far more interesting sounding than my 25 page paper or my job application.

The post I am referencing is credible, as it has a video within it of the actual incident being recalled. It concerns, as many stories have recently, Gail Hanson and her refusal to submit an application for a $300,000 grant to help  prevent sexual assault on AU's campus. This incident in the article occurred when a girl from AU related to Mrs. Hanson how she herself was sexually assaulted on campus, and asked Mrs. Hanson to say something to all the individuals who will be sexually assaulted between now and the time next fall when the university will reconsider the application. Mrs. Hanson's response was to inform the girl that her story was "based in emotion" and that she was seeking "applause."

Now, this whole VAWA grant scandal occurred shortly after my last blog post, in which I related the story of how I was raped on campus last year. I debated a long time after I finished writing that post about whether I should actually publish it or not, but I did, and told myself that was the end of it. I decided I wasn't going to talk about sexual assault and rape anymore.

But this is too much. When Gail Hanson decided that mandatory education on sexual assault was too much work, I was furious, but didn't say much, because I didn't have the energy to keep talking sexual assault and rape. When student protests to convince her to change her mind and submit the application did not change her mind, I again did not say much because I was too uncomfortable talking about the subject. But now I have to say something. So listen up, Gail Hanson and everyone else who thinks that talking to someone in that manner is appropriate:

I have had enough. Even when I wrote last time about the attitudes I had faced after my experience with rape, I did not imagine a response like yours. Talking about how she was assaulted is "too emotional?" Excuse me?  Is crying at a funeral too emotional then? What you don't seem to realize is that there is no such thing as being too emotional about sexual assault and rape. What you don't seem to realize is that when you have your very autonomy stolen from you, there is no such thing as forgetting. What you don't seem to realize is that you are speaking to a human being, who suffered an incomprehensible grievance.You seem to think that emotion shouldn't play a role in the discourse over actions that alter people's entire lives. So this student is looking for "applause?" Do you even know what the hell you are talking about? NO survivor of sexual assault is looking for applause. Survivors of sexual assault are looking for closure, they are looking for support, they are looking for healing. They aren't searching for a celebration of what happened to them. But yeah, Gail Hanson, I do applaud this student, because she was brave enough to stand up to someone as rude and condescending as you and talk about what she experienced. She was willing to hold you accountable for your decisions, which is clearly something that you yourself are not willing to do.

Your lack of empathy, compassion, and basic human decency astounds and disgusts me. Between now and the next application cycle for this grant, more people will be sexually assaulted and raped on this campus. Will it be Gail Hanson's fault? Of course not. But she is responsible for the fact that she did absolutely nothing to try to stop it. With that in mind, I make one basic plea to our university community as a whole. If no one else is going to try to stop sexual assault on this campus, we must do so ourselves. We all know what dangerous situations look like. It takes a lot of bravery to stand up and stop them, but I promise you that if you do so, you can change someone's life for the better. We can all be a part of making this community a better, safer place for everybody, but in order to do so we have to look out for one another. And next year, when it comes time for the next application cycle to begin, let's tell Gail Hanson that we will not take no for an answer.




Here is the link to the article and video I mentioned: http://www.tbd.com/blogs/amanda-hess/2011/04/how-not-to-talk-to-a-survivor-of-campus-sexual-assault-10028.html

Respect? What is that?

First off, I just want to clarify to everyone that this isn't about hating men. It isn't about stereotyping men. It's about the lack of respect that is often coupled with being a woman.  Some of my closest friends in the world are men. Some of the people that I respect the most are men, and there are a lot of men out there that have treated me with respect and kindness. For every douchebag that I know, I know at least two men who are wonderful.

But the nice ones seem to form a silent majority, and are represented by the vast vocalness of the minority of men who represent their gender as a group of chauvinistic, misogynistic jerks. These individuals waste too much of their time and mine degrading women because of our gender. I have heard too many times that, because I am a woman I "can't think," or that I am only good for household chores and as a slam-piece to a superior man. I am a sexual conquest, a prize essentially interchangeable with any other member of my gender. If I'm not attractive and obedient I'm pretty much useless, anyway. The enormously ignorant heteronormativity and chauvinism of these statements astounds me. I'm shouldn't have to explain why these remarks are ignorant, incorrect, and unfair. A lot of people pass these comments off as jokes. And some of them really are. I make woman jokes about myself, sometimes. But the prolificness of these "jokes" creates an atmosphere of insecurity and unsureness for women. It creates a standard of degradation so that we accept the kind of comments that should never, never be accepted.

The worst of all the comments that I hear from men are the sexual ones. Society at large has created separate standards of behavior for men and women that they seem insurmountable. Men who sleep around are regarded as winners, sexually dominant and impressive. Women who do the same are sluts and whores. What is morally unacceptable for women is perfectly acceptable for men. And it isn't just men who perpetuate this standard. Women suppress themselves by conforming to these standards, by looking at each other and calling each other sluts and biddies and bitches and cunts. We all judge each other harshly without thinking about the ramifications of our own thoughts, and in doing so we hurt ourselves more than anybody else.

Alcohol brings a completely different level to the discussion on women. I have found that despite lots of lofty proclamations about how rape and sexual assault are horrible things, people are far too willing to accept both of these as the result of drunkenness on a man's behalf. I was raped, and alcohol was a factor. I didn't say anything to anyone because of the excuses I myself made in my own head, and because I didn't know how to approach the issue of assault by someone that I knew and trusted. That was a mistake. But even when I finally felt comfortable enough to tell my close friends what had happened to me, I found very little support where I needed it, particularly from my male friends. While my female friends acknowledged and continued to acknowledge what happened to me, my guy friends brushed it off. They don't acknowledge it. A couple of them even see fit to make jokes about that night, as if they don't remember a word I said about what really happened. The things that have been said to me have made me feel ashamed of myself for something that I never wanted and could not control. Writing it down here, where I know people can see it, frightens me when I know that it should not. I don't need people to get involved in the situation. It just isn't something that I need help with. All I need is for people to know and acknowledge that these things are not okay, to stop it from happening to anybody else.

Something like that is not erasable. I still get nervous in certain situations. I'm not going to distrust men in general because of what happened to me. I still hang out with drunk guys. I haven't altered my habits drastically. What hurts the most about what happened is the lack of support I received from my male friends, more than what happened itself. That feeling of alone-ness caused me more damage than anything.

What I'm driving at is this: I live in the United States of America. A supposedly free, supposedly equal democratic society in which everyone is supposed to be protected. Civil and personal and Constitutional rights are supposedly observed here. Yet, everyday in this "forward" and "liberal" society I find that I am subjugated based on my gender. It is assumed that I am going to college to find a job that I will only keep long enough to find myself a man, so I can stop working and start popping out babies. It is assumed that I am weak, and emotional, and naive, and interested in cooking and cleaning and doing laundry. It is assumed that the right thing for me to do is to give up everything that I have worked for in order to build a family in which I stay home while my future husband has a fulfilling career. People think that because I play a contact sport I'm either crazy and am going to injure my poor weak self, or they assume that if I am strong enough to take a hit I'm a butch lesbian dyke. I'm expected to wear make-up and make myself look presentable and pretty. Its assumed that when I was little I played with dolls and loved horses and dolphins and watched My Little Pony and Sailor Moon. Every single day, women are categorized, subjugated, and oppressed in front of the entire world, even in the most minute, subconscious manner. All I really want to say in response is this:

you can tell me that I'm a raving feminist man-hating bitch. You can tell me that I will never be as strong as a man. You can tell me that my place is in the kitchen. You can even tell me that getting raped was my own fault, or that I deserved it, or that the guy wasn't to blame. But I'm just going to tell you that even if you can't treat me with respect, I know how to respect myself. No matter how hard you try, you can't take that away from me. My gender does not, and will not ever, be the most important detail about me. It will never form the standard for my interests or ambitions. And I want to tell every one of the nice guys to stop being silent. Stop letting the idiots represent you. I want every woman to take a good long look at herself and promise to respect herself, and every other woman (and man) that she runs into everyday.

 I am not a woman who is a weak, who is named Becca, who is a rape-victim. I am Becca, who is strong, who will not live like a victim, and who just happens to be a proud woman as well.

My Friendz is Da Best.

First of all, spring break is a glorious thing. I made it through midterms with only about 90% of my brain shutting down and refusing to work anymore. I almost missed my supershuttle, and subsequently, my flight home, but when all was said and done I made it and am now sitting in my old bedroom at home in NH.

Last night I got to spend a lot of time with a couple of friends I haven't seen all that much since high school, particularly in the last year. It's always been one of those "let's hang out!" "okay!" "oh shit, I'm leaving tomorrow, sorry," kind of things. I always let stuff get away from me. 

We hung out in their dorm room and went out to dinner and then just hung out some more. It was a pretty uneventful night, but was altogether one of the best nights I've had in a really long time. It always surprises me how much you can learn from, and about, a person you've known for a while. People assume that they know every worthwhile thing there is to know about someone after they've known them for six months, a year, or two years. Turns out that isn't true, that you can always learn something new and interesting about someone. 

Also, let's think about the fact that there are some people you can make such an effort to keep in your life, and go out of your way to talk to, and spend time with whenever you are geographically compatible, and yet, your relationship sucks. It's shallow, or disinterested, or you just don't click anymore. And then there are people, like Hannah DeBenedictis and Bri Massicotte, that you don't see for a long time and sometimes you don't even talk to for long periods of time, but you get together and you all have a great time, and laugh, and have worthwhile conversations and learn a lot from. 

Right now, I have a best friend in Scotland and a best friend in Wisconsin, neither of which I have seen since Christmas break. But I love them! And I love knowing that, like last night, the next time I see them we will have so much to talk about and laugh about and learn from each other. Basically, this blog post is just all about how I love my friends, and I love the that life has presented me with the opportunities to know such awesome people <3

Life Contingent Upon Love

  Earlier tonight as I was studying for my veryveryfrightening midterm tomorrow, I found myself wondering why I hadn't just dropped out of college and joined a traveling circus already, and decided I needed a study break. So I watched a few episodes of my favorite show, Bones. The reason I love Bones is that, in addition to being a pretty kickass forensics/crime-drama, it also has all these little insights into relationships, behavior, and life in general. For instance, in the last episode I watched, a Japanese man was witnessed by the main character, Dr. Brennan, struggling to cope with his younger sister's murder. Brennan, who is oftentimes frustratingly empirical and logical to a fault, questioned, 

 "Is it worth it? To have your own happiness contingent upon another human being?"

It's an interesting question, really, and one that is worth some thought. Most of us don't question our motives in forming relationships with the other individuals in our lives. That's just what people "do." It seems reasonable to believe that if being with other people makes us happy, we should pursue that avenue of joy. What if Brennan is right, though? Does the joy of being with and loving other people somehow last long enough to overpower the desperate unhappiness we eventually feel when we lose them? Is it worth it?

I, for one, say yes. The urge to be with others is not just an instinctual trait evolved for safety and security. It isn't about all the material and social gains we can acquire through developing relationships with others. At least not for me. Being with other people and loving other people is what I believe brings value to my life. 

Without digressing into an explanation of my spiritual beliefs, I'll suffice it to say that I do not believe in God. I do not believe that life has any intrinsic value. What I do believe, is that any value that our lives bear is derived from what we do with ourselves. Because I cannot believe that I exist for an inherent reason, I give my life reason by creating a network of relationships that form a vast web radiating from a central point, myself. Key to these relationships is love. 

There are people who live alone for the entirety of their lives, whether figuratively or literally. That is the perception that society holds of these individuals, but I question whether they do indeed hold the same fragile, loving relationships that the rest of us do, in some way. I'm not entirely sure that people can really exist without that form of association. It is the loving relationships in our lives that define us as people, that give our lives momentum and purpose. The love we share with our families and friends is what helps us form a core identity. Without the presence of others, we cannot appreciate our own uniqueness. Without any form of standard, we cannot appreciate the concept of "uniqueness" at all. 

Being with other people helps me to be myself, and it makes me happy for reasons I can't explain. Interactions with other people move me to learn, understand, and feel in ways that are often taken for granted, but that could not exist without the presence of others. Even more importantly, I love others. I've heard a lot of scientific explanations for love, but I choose to ignore them, because frankly I don't think that they explain the depth of emotion that exists in loving relationships. Hormones and pheromones can only explain an attraction on a base level, not the many intricacies of human emotion. It is this love that creates the divide between existing and living. Loving other people feels like sunshine. Or seeing new flowers popping up in spring. Or whatever other cheesy imagery you can come up with. Loving other people feels good, it feels beautiful.  It proves its own worth. And yes, it hurts when you lose someone you love. I'm not unfamiliar with that feeling. Hurting is not a mere result, but a continuing expression of love. It is worth it to hurt because if we did not hurt, we would not feel anything. I can't explain why, but as humans we seek feeling. We would rather feel sad than feel nothing, and we acknowledge that it is everything negative in our lives that makes us appreciate the positive. 

Having my happiness be dependent upon the presence of the people that I love is not something that I question the value of. It's not something I fear, or something I think unwise. When I lose someone that I love, and am hurt, I know that it is worth it because it will enable me to feel happiness even more completely than I could before. It will allow me to love more deeply and entirely. Unhappiness leads to greater happiness, greater love, and greater purpose. And I think love is always worth some risks. 

Say hello, lit minor

It's been a long time since I last posted (insert usual excuse about how busy life has been). But no seriously. I have been rather overwhelmed lately. One of the biggest things that's had me running around in circles was figuring out exactly what I'm doing with my academic life. It's not that I don't know what I wanna do when I "grow up." It's that I know I don't want to do the same thing for my entire life, and my interests are so broad that I wish I knew how to educate myself in preparation for all of them. Unfortunately it would probably take me approximately 7452.89 years to graduate if I took all the classes for things that I might want to do with my life. I feel like this is a pretty common problem for a lot of people, really. Everyone seems to think that now is the time that they should know what they want to do with their lives, and they start panicking because they don't. Well, rest assured, general public of panicking college students; you are faaaar from alone in your confusion.

Speaking in the vein of academic and life confusion, I recently made the switch from being an education minor to a lit minor. I did it for practical reasons, really. I want to teach in an education program for incarcerated youth. The best way to get into those programs (according to the information they put out there on the web, at least) is to have background in a normal area of education and perhaps some experience as a teacher in public or private school. So lit teacher position, here I come! Why, might you ask, do I not have some combo of major/minor in lit and education? Well, I'm a justice major. And I love it. I flim-flammed about for a while thinking "Fuck. Fuck fuck fuckety fuck I have no idea what I'm doing or if I need this major but I don't wanna drop it just in case I do but what if I don't but I might I'm not sure holy shit." It was really my experience switching to a lit minor that convinced me that keeping my Justice major is okay, and makes sense.

I was hesitant about switching my minor. The realization that I wanted to be a lit teacher in public school for a little while before moving on to the reformation programs threw me off kilter a little bit. After having already changed my major, I wasn't really sure if changing anything else was the right decision. I have a tendency to get really impulsive sometimes and jump into things and then decide I have changed my mind, and it's getting a little late for me to be jumping around between majors and minors and whathaveyou. But I switched into the lit minor. And starting taking Interpreting Lit.

It's a gened class, so a lot of the kids in it aren't necessarily all that into lit. So I was going to have to get my energy from myself on this one. The first few classes weren't that bad. It was nice to be doing some lit readings again, instead of text books. Analyzing the first couple of plays we read was a good experience. And then it came time to write my first lit paper since I graduated from highschool almost two years ago.

Of course, the day before the paper was due, I had two classes followed by work, consecutively. Got back from work at seven and grabbed some food so I could start functioning more like a normal human and less like a zombie-esque humanoid. Figured I'd start my paper or go to the gym after that....no. Fire alarm. Spend half an hour in McKinley with a group of very depressed/angry/annoyed looking fellow dorm-dwellers. Get inside with just enough time to get ready and head out to an intramural basketball game. Get back to the dorm at almost 11. Eat again and decompress until 1. Start lit paper. Realize I no longer have the instructions for the paper. E-mail lit professor explaining that I'm an idiot. Start writing paper anyway.

At this point, it was almost 2 a.m. and the four hours of sleep from the night before just weren't cutting it anymore. So I left the rest of my paper for the morning. When I woke up in the morning I had a general hatred of life, solely based upon the fact that I was awake, and my eyelids were rebelling against this state of affairs. But I forced myself to sit up, wake up, and start to write  my paper.

The book that this paper was supposed to be written on was As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner. The basic  guideline was essentially just pick a passage, do a close reading, talk about the meaning of the book as derived from that passage. If you've never read this book, you should know that it's full of complex passages that all mean something. Honestly, it's a beautiful piece of work. And I am so grateful that it was the subject of my first literature paper in college. Before I started writing, I had forgotten how it felt to delve deeply into someone's words and pull out a coherent interpretation. Even writing my intro, late at night, on little sleep, I was interested, but not invested. But the next morning, when I sat down, and I looked at that text and starting pulling strings in my brain and building tiny bridges between different words and situations... I felt like I found an energy I lost a long time ago. It's been a long time since I've felt truly overflowing with passion about something I was writing.

It's not to say that I am not interested and excited to write many of my papers. This was an experience on an entirely different plane, though. It was like a 3 year old with ADHD who was sugar high on Christmas was jumping around inside my brain. It was awesome. It was everything that I've been missing from my college experience so far. I am legitimately excited to go to this class and discover new secrets about the text and then walk away still thinking about it for the rest of the night. In other words, I'm so excited that I'm taking a literature class and getting the opportunity to do close analysis of great literature, that I'm still talking about it.

Moral of the story? Do what you want. Literature is what I decided I wanted to do, and I wasn't sure whether I could do it or not. I allowed myself to go to it for practical reasons, but I am so, so happy that I am doing this now. A lot of my friends know what they want to do but are scared to pursue it, or they pursue an alternative for "practicality's sake." Seriously, though... I have no idea if having an awkward combination major of Justice and minor of Lit is going to actually prove practical in the long run, but I'm finding it worth it if only for the fact that I might actually enjoy my classes for the next two years of my life and come away with knowledge in areas that I actually care about.

And that totally, totally makes it worth it to me.